“It was the only way out,” she said.

“No, you did a terrible thing. You have hurt me beyond words.”

She shook her head. “I have noticed for a long while how my hands grated on your skin, and my lips brought nothing but a chill. You are young. I am old. This was what you meant the other day when you asked me to look at your hair. I understood.”

I was stunned. “No, no, my dear, it was not that. It was not that! I hoped that I too– —”

Her convulsions became more and more violent. The physician could prescribe no antidotes. More painful even than her approaching death, was her misunderstanding of my motive. I had really killed her—unwillingly!

On my return from her funeral, Aurelia, the most beautiful courtesan in Jerusalem accosted me. King Herod himself had paid for her embrace one thousand talents in gold.

“Cartaphilus, spend the night with me!”

My first impulse was to upbraid the insolent woman, but I felt so lonesome, a sorrow so deep gnawed me, that I could not wrench my arm from her grasp.

Fatigued by her caresses, I fell asleep profoundly. When I awoke, she asked me, smiling: “Cartaphilus, where is the place?”

“What place?”

“I have searched your body everywhere with my lips…”

“Your lips pleased me.”

I was always gallant.

“I am glad of that. But I have not discovered it…”

“What do you mean?”

“The prick of the needle where you insert the magic potion that gives you undying youth. I have loved much. I have shared the couch of many. I have known the loves of old men from whose touch the skin shrinks as from a reptile. I know that you must be sixty, but you have the skin of a boy, the muscles of a gladiator, the insatiable endurance of youth. I have given you joy when you were most distressed. I can give you tenfold, a hundredfold greater joy, Cartaphilus. I know the love secrets and the love potions of fifty nations. I know,” she whispered, “the secret of unendurable pleasure indefinitely prolonged… All my knowledge will be yours, if only– —”

What?”

“If only you will let me share your secret.”

I pushed her away from me.

“Cartaphilus!” Her delicate breasts trembled. “Make me your wife, and let me partake of the elixir. I have been all women to all men. I shall be all women to you alone.”

“You are raving, woman! The heavy wine has gone to your head. Let me sleep.”

Her face grew livid with rage. “You fool! You really believe that I care for you? I loathe you! Even the old men, who come to me with their silver and gold, with lecherous lips and limbs marred by disease, are not as loathsome as you. They are at least human…!”

She stamped angrily out of the room.

‘At least human!’ reverberated in my ear, as the other phrase which I always tried not to repeat, even mentally. Not human! Not human! I was set apart from all other men. I was alone. Everybody would sooner or later point at me: ‘Stranger! Outcast! Alien!’

I dressed myself and went to consult the most famous physician of Jerusalem, an old rascal, addicted to strange drugs and stranger vices. I explained my case to him. He laughed. “You are the first patient who complains that he is too young. I need prescribe no medicine. Time will remedy matters.”

“I am not jesting. I bring gold, but also a—dagger.”

He bade me strip. His lecherous eyes devoured my naked body. He felt every muscle, tested every nerve with the strange instruments known to the priests of Isis, analyzed my saliva, measured the pressure of my blood. He consulted his books and pondered over old diagrams.

“You tell me that you are sixty. I tell you that you are thirty. You may bring any witnesses you please. You may swear a solemn oath by your mother. I shall never be convinced that you are more than thirty. You may even slay me, Captain, but that will not alter my conviction.”

“Doctor, can I have children?”

He summoned a slave girl. Hovering near, he waited upon us like the obliging maid in a house of pleasure. Then, assuming once more the cold severity of the physician, he brought strange vessels from his laboratory, and made curious tests.

After pondering over his retorts, he turned to me: “No, you will have no progeny, Captain. Fate which has given you much has denied you this.”

‘However long your life may be, Cartaphilus,’ I thought bitterly, ‘you must walk without kin,—alone!’

ENVY disguised itself as hostility. My friends insinuated, laughed, mocked. An old woman, whom I had befriended for a long while, refused to accept the silver coin that I was in the habit of offering her.

“Have you become so rich, good woman?”

She shook her head.

“Do you need more, perhaps?”

“I need God’s alms, not the Devil’s.”

“What do you mean?”

She glared at me, and ran off.

The gay women who used to accost me, shrank away at my approach. No doubt Aurelia had spoiled my reputation in the demimonde of Jerusalem.

I visited another physician for some trifling disorder. He hardly listened to me. “All diseases are curable, provided the patient lives long enough to overcome the initial cause of the complaint. You, Captain, can overcome all diseases.”

I was on the point of drawing my sword, but stopped, reflecting that the murder of the physician would require a longer explanation than I could afford to offer. I laughed. “Here is a gold coin, leech. You are a philosopher.”

The beard I raised only emphasized my youthful appearance. I shaved it off.

I lived alone. My only servants were two country boors, morose and taciturn. I realized that before long popular envy against me would burst out, like a volcano. What would happen to me, whether I could really be killed or hurt, I did not know. But I was certain that it would be unpleasant. I liquidated my estates, a matter which I already found very difficult to accomplish, resigned my position in the Roman army, and left the city on horseback.

The sea was like a vast liquid jewel. I walked up and down the deck of the boat, thinking of Lydia. For a long time now she had disappeared from my memory, and I felt a pang of conscience for this neglect. I laughed. My very name predisposes me to laughter. Isaac is Hebrew for laughter. Nevertheless, my laughter startled me. I understood, as if by some revelation, that laughter was to be my weapon from now on—to laugh and forget, much and quickly.

The boat was crowded with people of many nationalities. Suddenly a tall, thin man exclaimed in a Latin tinged with the accent of some Oriental tongue, “He is the Messiah! He is the Christ!” He stopped, looked upward, and made a gesture with his right hand, first horizontally, then vertically. His enormous Adam’s apple moved up and down as if the shock of his voice continued to stimulate its activity.

“He died upon the Cross; three days later He was resurrected, and rose to Heaven.” Some nodded, and made the same curious gesture with their hands. Others smiled. “All who believe in Him shall live forever, for His death was an atonement for our sins.”

“Did you know Jesus?” I asked.

“How could I know Him since He was crucified thirty-nine years ago? I am only thirty-two.”

“Thirty-nine? That must be an error. It’s only thirty-four.”

He shook his head. “Thirty-nine.”

Jesus was becoming a legend.

“Tell me—have you heard of a man by the name of Cartaphilus, known among the Jews as Isaac Laquedem?”

“Cartaphilus, the cursed one!” he exclaimed. “He must tarry on earth until the Master returns!”

“And where is this Cartaphilus—the cursed one?”

“Who knows? He must be roaming about, like a starved beast, seeking the Master.”

‘Like a starved beast seeking…’ It was true. When I left Jerusalem, I thought I was merely fleeing for safety. But I realized now, because of the remark of this tall man, with an extraordinary Adam’s apple, that there was a deeper meaning in my pilgrimage. Seeking—but what and whom?