Jonah

NAAMAN sat beneath his acacia tree. Gentle and austere, his thoughts usually concerned themselves with the universe and with God, who he did not believe belonged exclusively to the Jews. However, he no longer felt called upon to say so, unless he was asked; then he stated his opinions with dignity but without the least hope of convincing any one. When any one wished to know why he, who loved peace, clung to such disturbing ideas, he replied, “I am an old man, and I like to have in my mind only what is comfortable there.”

Now, however, his brows were drawn in a frown, and he looked gloomily at Jonah, who sat with bent head at his feet. And his hands, as he caressed his long white beard, trembled with age, with pity, and with indignation.

“So, my son,” he said, “you have hurt yourself. When you were a child you used to come running to me with eyes full of tears, to show me some bruise you had received. I can still remember what I used to tell you: if you did not fall you would not get a bump. The one followed the other, almost as to make one believe that they were the same thing. And so I used to ask you: Jonah, are you crying because of the fall or the bump? Well, my son?”

Jonah smiled sadly. “Yes,” he replied. “And then you went on to say that I was not a philosopher. How that used to wound me, for I wished above all things to be a philosopher.

“Well, now it is the bump that has made me cry, Naaman.”

Naaman nodded his head. “Exactly,” he said. “But do you think perhaps you are any more of a philosopher than you were then? I doubt it, my son. For you bring me your bruise with the same astonishment as of old, not seeing that, having fallen, you can expect nothing else.”

Jonah spread out his hands in a gesture of discouragement. “How is one to stand upright in this world then, Naaman,” he said, “being but a man, and less than a god.”

The old hermit regarded him gravely. “You are not a man, Jonah,” he said finally; “although,” he added quickly, “you are not a god, either. But you are not a man in the sense that your brother Aaron is a man. Nor do you live in the world he lives in. You belong to another world altogether, as different from that one as Thebes from Nineveh.

“And that world, my son, where you belong, is not here, among the tribes, among the towns and villages. It is in the desert; it is in the wilderness, where there is quiet for God to speak, where there is room for His angels to move about. When you left Golan, your heart was like the desert, spacious and calm. But now it is like a crowded village, full of tumult and pain.”

“Yes,” said Jonah in a low voice, “it is full of pain.”

“I hoped you would not stay here,” continued Naaman; “I implored you to return to Golan, to your home. Yet you stayed; with the result it was impossible not to foresee.”

“I did not foresee it,” said Jonah.

“That is because you are ignorant,” said Naaman severely. “You do not know the world, yet you wish to live in it.”

“No,” said Jonah, “that is not true. For such things do not happen to everybody, or to other people. Why, love is holy, Naaman. It is as though God had told a lie.”

“Be silent,” exclaimed Naaman harshly, “and do not blaspheme. Love is not holy; and God does not lie. That alone is holy which concerns itself with holy things. But love ... no, my son; it is pain and impurity, it is violence and sorrow. The world of desire is the world of demons, of concealment, of Sathariel which hides the face of mercy.”

Jonah regarded the old man with astonishment. “You are so bitter,” he exclaimed; “I have never heard you speak in that tone before.”

Naaman peered off beneath his shaggy white eyebrows to the distant hillside, swimming in the haze of summer heat. For a moment he did not speak, but presently he said, sighing,

“You know but little of my life, my son. I, too, loved in my youth. Does that surprise you? Yes, it is hard to imagine that old men have ever been in love, swept by the flames of passion and of sorrow. And sometimes it is hard for the old to remember how it goes with the young men, with their joy, and their pain.

“I, too, was young like you, Jonah. Do you think your heart is the first to break? Other hearts have broken before; and other men have wept, as you are weeping. I know; for I, too, wept, Jonah, my son.”

He was silent. Jonah took the old man’s trembling hand between his two brown palms. “I am sorry,” he said. And he remained respectfully silent.

“But, Naaman,” he broke out at last, “what then is holy here on earth?”

Naaman replied gently and inexorably, “My son, the love of earth is holy, the love that God bears the least of His creatures, without desire, without envy, and without malice. That mercy and generosity with which the sun warms and the soil nourishes its flowers and trees, is holy; all that gives of itself, without reason, without measure, and without return. For that is the way of God; it is the way of the One, from which all things spring, to which all things return. Go back to the desert, Jonah; go back to the desert, and learn that God is One, and that His love is holy.”

But Jonah did not understand him. “Yes,” he said. “I shall go back to the desert, because that is all I can do. But I shall have no happiness, Naaman; my heart will never be at peace again. There is no beauty in the world for me now, ever. Oh, Naaman,” he cried suddenly, clasping his hands together, “if God loves His creatures, how can He make them suffer so?”

Naaman looked sadly at the young prophet whose face was hidden from him. “Must you have beauty, too, Jonah?” he asked.

“Yes,” said Jonah.

Rising to his feet, he added, “You do not know what it is to love and to be unhappy.”

And he went home again. As he entered his yard, a green beetle crossed his path. He went a few steps out of his way in order to tread upon it.