Contents
Cover
About the Book
About the Author
Also by Amos Oz
Dedication
Title Page
Crusade
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Late Love
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Copyright
Unto Death contains two beautiful short novels linked by death and destruction. Crusade is set in 1096 – a year of sinister omens. Count Guillaume of Touron sets out on a crusade to Jerusalem and on the way he serves his God by killing any Jews he meets. But will the Count find the peace of mind he seeks when he faces the terrible realities of war in the Holy Land? In Late Love Oz portrays an elderly professor living alone in Tel Aviv, a man neither loving nor loved. His last mission is to expose the plight of his fellow Russian Jews and alert the people of Israel to the conspiracy that threatens them. But nobody wants to listen...
Fiction
My Michael
Elsewhere, Perhaps
Touch the Water, Touch the Wind
The Hill of Evil Counsel
Where the Jackals Howl
A Perfect Peace
Black Box
To Know a Woman
Fima
Don’t Call It Night
Panther in the Basement
The Same Sea
Non-Fiction
In the Land of Israel
The Slopes of Lebanon
Under this Blazing Light
Israel, Palestine & Peace
Help Us To Divorce
A Tale of Love and Darkness
For Children
Soumcht
To the Memory of
My Father
Yehuda Arieh Klausner
Born in Jerusalem in 1939, Amos Oz is the internationally acclaimed author of many novels and essay collections, translated into thirty languages. His novels include My Michael, Black Box, To Know a Woman and The Same Sea. His most recent book is A Tale of Love and Darkness. He has received several international awards, including the Prix Fémina, the Israel Prize and the Frankfurt Peace Prize. He lectures at the Ben Gurion University of the Negev. He is married with two daughters and a son, and lives in Arad, Israel.
IT ALL BEGAN with outbreaks of discontent in the villages.
Day by day bad omens began to appear in the poorer areas. An old farmer of Galland saw the form of a fiery chariot in the sky. In Sareaux an ignorant old woman croaked out oracles couched in the purest Latin. Rumors went around of a cross in an out-of-the-way church which burned for three days with a green flame and was not consumed. Our Lady appeared to a blind peasant beside a fountain one night, and when the priests fed him wine he described the vision in scriptural language.
The faithful seemed to detect a kind of malicious joy fermenting throughout the winter in the dwellings of the accursed Jews.
Strange things happened. Bands of dark wanderers, huge and black as bears, appeared simultaneously in several places. Even educated folk could sense at times a murmur gnawing inside them. There was no peace to be had.
In Clermont, in the year of the Incarnation of Our Lord Jesus Christ 1095, Pope Urban II summoned the flocks of God to an expedition to liberate the Holy Land from the hands of the infidel, and to expiate their sins through the hardships of the journey—for spiritual joy is achieved through suffering.
Early in the autumn of the following year, four days after the end of the vintage, the noble Count Guillaume of Touron set out at the head of a small troop of peasants, serfs, and outlaws from his estate near Avignon and headed toward the Holy Land, to take part in its deliverance and so to find peace of mind.
Besides the blight which had afflicted the vines and the shriveling of the grapes, and besides gigantic debts, there were other, more immediate reasons which moved the noble Count to set out on his journey. We are informed of these in the chronicle of an extraordinary young man who himself took part in the expedition, Claude, nicknamed “Crookback.” He was a distant relative of the Count and had grown up on his estate.
This Claude was perhaps the adoptive heir of the childless Count, perhaps a mere hanger-on. He was literate and almost cultivated, though prone to violently alternating fits of depression and enthusiasm. He would give himself over by turns, restlessly and without any real satisfaction, to ascetic practices and to the delights of the flesh. He was a great believer in the power of the supernatural: he kept company with half-wits, fancying he found in them a holy spark, and much-thumbed books and peasant women alike fired him with a wild desire. His excesses of religious fervor and gloomy melancholy inspired feelings of contempt and loathing in others and consumed the very flesh from off his bones, kindling an evil flame in his eye.
As for the Count, he treated Claude Crookback with sullen toleration and ill-suppressed rudeness. Some uncertainty, in fact, prevailed at court about the status and privileges of this young but silver-haired fellow who had, apart from everything else, a violent and ridiculous love of cats and who was a passionate collector of women’s jewelry.
Claude mentions in his chronicle, among the factors which prompted the Count to set out on his journey, certain events which occurred in swift succession in the course of the preceding year. “At the beginning of the spring,” he writes, “in the year of Our Lord’s Incarnation 1096, the sin of arrogance raised its head among the peasantry. There occurred on our estate several cases of insolence and insubordination, such as the destruction of part of the meager crop, motivated by anger at its very meagerness; daggers were stolen, the river flooded, barns were fired, falling stars were seen, sorcery was practiced, and mischievous pranks were played. All this within the confines of our domain, apart from numerous crimes in the neighboring districts and even across the river. Indeed, it was found necessary to oil the torture wheel once again, and to put to the test several rebellious serfs, so as to quell the rising fever of violence, for suffering begets love. On our estate seven peasants and four witches were put to death. In the course of their torture their crimes came to light, and light purges all sin.
“In addition, during the spring our young mistress Louise of Beaumont showed the first signs of falling sickness, the very disease which had carried off her predecessor two years earlier.
“On Easter Day the Count carried his drinking beyond all reasonable limits, and on this occasion he did not succeed in soaring above the state of tipsy rage to the heights of drunken joy. There occurred episodes,” continues the chronicler in a rather veiled tone, “such as what happened that night, when the Count smashed six valuable drinking vessels, family heirlooms; he hurled these gorgeous objects at the servingmen in reprisal for some fault whose nature was not clear. Injuries were done; blood was spilt. The Count made reparation for his error with constant silent prayers and fasting, but the fragments of the shattered goblets could not be pieced together—I have them all in my keeping still. What is done is done, and there is no going back.”
Claude also writes as follows:
“In the early days of the summer, in the course of the barley harvest, the Jewish agent fell under suspicion. He was put to death in consequence of his fervent protestations of innocence. The spectacle of the burning of the Jew might have served to dispel somewhat the anxiety and depression which had caught hold of us since the spring, but it so happened that the Jew, as he was being burnt, succeeded in upsetting everything by pronouncing a violent Jewish curse on Count Guillaume from the pyre. This terrible event occurred in the presence of the whole household, from the ailing lady down to the most ignorant servant girls. Obviously it was impossible to punish the wretch for his curses: it is in the nature of these Jews to burn only once.
“In the course of the summer our lady’s condition grew worse and she began fading toward death. Without grace even love is of no avail. It was a pitiful spectacle. So grievous were her agonies, so loud her screams in the night, that the Count was finally compelled to shut up in the tower the most delicate of the flowers of his garden. Therefore was the Son of God meek and mild when He bore our sufferings upon Himself, that we might know and remember that the finest harvest of all is this, when the harsh scythe bites into the tenderest crop in God’s world, and this was a sign for us. By night, by day, and by night the Count gave orders for vigils of prayer by the cell of our ailing lady.
“Our lady was young in years and her pale face seemed ever filled with wonder. Her limbs were delicate and she seemed completely transparent, as if made of spirit, not of base matter. She floated away downstream from us before our very eyes. Sometimes we could hear her voice raised in song; sometimes we secretly gathered up her tear-soaked handkerchief, and in the small hours of the morning we heard her cry out to the Blessed Virgin. Then her silence would rend the air. These days saw a severe deterioration in the affairs of the estate. The creditors were arming themselves, and even the peasantry nursed a muttering rebelliousness.
“All speech was hushed in our halls. So frail and white-faced did our lady appear that, kneeling at the foot of the cross, she seemed to us like Our Lady Herself. She was flickering and dying away. Meanwhile the Count withdrew into silence, and merely kept on buying more and more fine horses—far in excess of the needs of the fields and vineyards. He paid for them with parcels of woodland and orchards, since the money we had borrowed was being steadily eaten up.
“Early one morning our lady suddenly heard the gentle sound of the bells of the village church. She put her golden head out through the lattice, and when the sun rose she was found gathered into the bosom of the Saviour. I still keep her sandals in the chest in my room, together with two tiny bracelets and a green cross of pearls which she wore round her neck, a gorgeous object.”
The chronicle of this relation of the Count also contains some turbid musings, fraught with confusion, written in troubled and disconnected Latin. Some of them may be quoted here:
“We are touched by inanimate objects. There is a secret sign language which weaves a net between things. Not a leaf falls to the ground unless it is touched by some purpose. A man of the brooding type, such as my noble lord Guillaume de Touron, if he is but cut off for a while from the sphere of action, is immediately liable to come under the influence of the supernatural. If he is not found worthy of grace, it enters into his vitals like a gnawing poison, unseen, unfelt, but lethal. The anguish of vast plains scorched by the noonday sun, without a man to cast a shadow. Scents borne on the breeze. Woods, restful yet menacing. Perhaps the allure of the ocean. Or the tender, bitter silence of distant mountains. So a man of the finer breed, in the middle of his life, toward evening, as the wind drops, may suddenly pause and shrink back, shrink back listening with all his might, and as he listens he gnaws incessantly at his own soul.
“For all these reasons, then, and for others which cannot be put into words, Guillaume de Touron set out for the Holy Land, bent on taking part in its deliverance and thereby also on finding peace of mind.”
SLUMPED IN HIS saddle like a weary huntsman, his features hewn of granite, his skull big and broad, the Count led his company up through the Rhone lands toward the town of St.-Étienne. There, at St.-Étienne, he meant to break the journey and pass a day or two. Claude Crookback supposes that he wanted to spend some time at the cathedral in solitary prayer, to ask the bishop’s blessing on the expedition, and to buy fodder and arms. Perhaps he also intended to take on a few knights as mercenaries. The roads are fraught with dangers outside the city walls; the sword must hew out a passage for the forces of grace.
The Count rode on his mare, Mistral. His pace was still leisurely. This was not due to hesitancy, nor to that calm which follows the moment of self-dedication; it was simply a slow horizontal growth along the road. The mare Mistral was a massive, broad-built creature, just like her master. At first sight she seemed like a work horse: she could never be roused to the point of anger, thanks to a kind of feigned modesty which extended over all her movements, like a sort of inner deliberation—placid, ruminative, almost sanctimonious. But at a second, more penetrating glance—when one noticed, for instance, her capricious manner when being saddled or unsaddled—one could see quite clearly that just as it was impossible to arouse her, so it was completely and utterly impossible to enforce total submission on this mare Mistral.
And everywhere could he felt the creeping, fawning intensification of the forces of autumn on the plains and in the hills. The odors of the vintage everywhere accompanied the expedition on its way. It was like a constant melody, soft yet at the same time penetrating and persistent.
The signs of the drought and the blight on the vines were everywhere plain to see. The faces of the peasants bore expressions of muted, ill-suppressed malice.
Even in times of plenty these districts ever gaze up to the gray sky with a tight-lipped look: mud-spattered peasants, rotting roofs of thatch, clumsy crosses like the very faith of the region, blunt and strong, row upon row of black haystacks, and at dawn and at dusk there comes rolling from afar the sound of rustic bells, calling to the Saviour out of the depths.
At these twilight hours one could also make out the taut lines of powerful birds in flight. And their sudden screeching. In everything there could be seen the mounting evidence of a heavy, thick reality—or, at a second glance, the slight impulse of some abstract purpose.
Everything, even the silent, baffled docility of the plump peasant girls who paused to gaze from a safe distance at the company of men on horseback, everything was somehow open to several interpretations.
Had Guillaume de Touron considered the possible interpretations? If so, he did not show it on the surface. His few, brief words of command bore witness to an inner distance. It was as if he were sunk deep in a problem of logic or preoccupied with the checking of books which would not balance. Our chronicler, Claude, who frequently noticed his lord’s silences, was sometimes inclined to attribute to him abstract speculations or spiritual exercises. In short, it was sometimes felt that the Count omitted to answer questions, or answered without being asked. “Come here,” he would say. “Put it there.” “Now.” “Fetch it.” “Forward.”
Those who heard these orders might easily have imagined that they were uttered by someone who was about to fall asleep, or who was struggling to rouse himself from a deep slumber.
Nevertheless, the man surrounded himself with a cool ring of lordliness, which needed neither effort nor stress: a strong, inborn quality, compelling fear and silence even while he slept, a crouching wolf.
An inborn quality. In Claude’s chronicle one can read a short description of the appearance and bearing of the Count at the start of the expedition, and also a comparison which—after the manner of the chronicler—is rather fulsome:
“Truth to tell, the comportment of Count Guillaume de Touron was not only extremely natural and composed, but entirely free of doubts and excitements. It was like a gentle stream wending its way calmly among the meadows of a plain. Placid and leisurely it flows, never tearing at its banks or throwing up waves or spray, but everything which falls into its current is swept constantly on by a force which is neither friendly nor yet timid: a peaceful, inexorable stream.”
AT DUSK ON the third day of their journey the band of believers reached the gates of St.-Étienne. They handed over their weapons to the officer of the gate, they paid all the dues, both sacred and secular, they submitted to a personal inspection at the hands of the guards, lest there should be found among them an invalid or a Jew, and finally the Count and his men were permitted to enter the city. The ignorant folk stroked and chewed their beards at the sight of such plenty of women, priests, traders, and merchandise.
In the square behind the Hospice of the Sacred Heart Guillaume de Touron reviewed his men. He gave orders for the horses to be well fed, set guards over the baggage and animals, distributed two pieces of silver per head and gave the men leave to disperse around the town until daybreak the next day, “so that they might satisfy their needs with women and drink, and also purify their souls with prayer.”
The Count himself, after a slight hesitation, chose in the first place to make his way to the cathedral. Above all he sought peace of mind. As often happens to men who are looking for something the nature of which is unknown to them, he felt a kind of vague physical unrest, as if his body were rebelling against his soul and defiling it with evil vapors. His body was tough, massive, and compact, his head held slightly forward, as if the weight of the world hung more heavily upon him than upon the mass of ordinary believers.
On his way to the cathedral there passed through his mind the forms of the death of his two wives, the second and also the first. He contemplated the forms which death had taken like a man looking at the shapes of icicles in the winter. He felt no sorrow for these women, the second or the first, because neither had presented him with a son and heir. But he saw quite vividly that their death was the beginning of his own. He visualized his death as a far-off place to which one must go, climbing perhaps or breaking through by force, and he joined together with a blind and stubborn bond the words “to redeem,” “to be redeemed,” “to set fire,” “to go up in flames.” Summer by summer, almost day by day, he felt his blood running colder. He did not know the reason, but he silently yearned for simple elements—light, warmth, sand, fire, wind.
Meanwhile Claude Crookback went down to a house of ill repute on the edge of the town. He found a woman of easy virtue, dressed her up in his clothes and put his cloak around her, and handed her his dagger. Then he stretched out on the ground for her to trample on him, and begged to be tortured. While writhing with her, drenched with sweat, Claude screamed and laughed, cried and talked continuously. In the confused account which he composed that same night in his cell in the Hospice of the Sacred Heart he does not wallow in the details of his sin but limits himself to an enthusiastic description of the eternal power of grace. Does not the sun deign to be reflected even in pools of mire without withdrawing his reflection?
The worthy bishop of St.-Étienne, a small, rotund, simple man, was sitting motionless in his study, contemplating his hands stretched out before him on the table, or perhaps contemplating the table itself, and cautiously digesting his food. Guillaume de Touron’s expression as he suddenly entered the study, half-blocking the doorway with his bulk, was—as the bishop himself later described it in his. diary—“clouded in a manner which implied either abstraction or concentration, two states of mind which are far harder to distinguish by their outward indications than is commonly supposed.”
After the Mass the bishop and his guest sat down to a meal. They permitted each other a small drink, after which they closeted themselves together in the library. The light of ten great candles in copper candlesticks wove intricate patterns on their faces, on the curved outlines of the objects in the room. It exaggerated every movement and translated it into a language of gloomy shadows. Here the bishop and his guest conducted a brief conversation which touched on the subjects of the quality of humility, the City of God, horses and hounds, the hardships of the journey and its chances of success, the Jews, the price of woodland, and the varieties of signs and wonders.
The knight soon fell silent and let the bishop of St.-Étienne talk on alone. The bishop, as we read in the studied Latin of his diary, “was delighted by the intelligent and thoroughly polite, yet extraordinarily restrained attentiveness” of his guest.