We resumed our walk. For a long time, neither of us spoke. Apollonius, his long beard shivering in the breeze, accompanied us, and enveloped us with his white silken robe. ‘Whenever you desire me intensely, I shall be with you.’ He was with me. Life was eternal. There was no death. Jesus, too, was not far off, walking over the waters, perhaps, as his disciples claimed. He had returned but not to destroy me. He was the Son of God, even as all men, even as the birds that flew above our heads.

Spinoza coughed and closed his eyes.

“Master, were it not wiser to return home? The air is very strong here.”

He looked at me and smiled, placing his hand upon my shoulder.

“We must die sooner or later. The fool alone fears that which is inevitable. The wise man looks upon death as a soft cool bed wherein he may rest after the fever of the day.”

“Is it not a pity that man’s life must be so short that he hardly has time to learn how to walk unscathed among the thorns that surround him?”

“Life—death—are synonymous and interchangeable terms. The sun which is setting now in front of us and will soon disappear—does it die because it is no longer visible?”

“Is it possible, master, for a man to live for centuries?”

“Why not? He would partake of the body of God in a greater measure than the rest of humanity.”

“Would you consider endless life a blessing or a curse?”

“I would consider it useless, but not a curse. God inflicts no penalties. The true mind knows nothing of the bondage of time, thinks of no before and no after, has no future, dreads nothing, laments nothing; but enjoys its own endlessness, its own completeness, has all things in all things.”

“Then, Master, the Wandering Jew may not be a myth.”

“The Wandering Jew is truth whether considered as a living entity or a personification of his race. He is the symbol of restlessness and search. Some day, he will find what he seeks, and will no longer wander.”

“What does he seek?”

“God. Everyone, everything seeks God as every drop of rain seeks and, ultimately finds, the sea.”

I pressed his hand. “It is true!”

“The wise man, my friend loves God with a fragment of that very love wherewith God loves Himself and his meditation is not of death but of life, of the Eternal Life whereof he is a part and has ever been and ever will be a part. He is bound as a nut in a shell, but he is the monarch of infinite space. The nightmare of his phantom life has ceased to trouble him.”

The air became chilly. Spinoza wrapped himself tightly in his black cotton robe.

We turned our steps homeward. He quoted parts of his Ethics and explained them by mathematical formulæ. Never since Ali Hasan did mathematics contain so much beauty and wisdom. I did not dare interrupt the flow of his words lest the cup slip from the hand and the precious draft spill upon the sand.

We reached his door. He looked at me for a long time.

“If the way to God seems exceedingly hard, it can nevertheless be reached. All things excellent are as difficult as they are rare.”

“Master,” I said, almost in a whisper, “you are weary today. May I come in a day or two again and listen to your words once more?”

He sighed. “Yes, certainly.”

He pressed my hand and entered the house.

I did not wish to be importunate, and let a few days pass before I visited Spinoza again.

“Come, Kotikokura, this time you will accompany me. You, too, must hear the master’s words, limpid as the waters that tumble from a mountain.”

He combed his hair and arranged his cloak. “True, in his presence, we must be annointed and beautiful. He holds communion with God. We are his priests.”

We walked slowly, rhythmically. The sun had passed the meridian and like a vase over-brimming, bent a little, to pour his libation upon the earth, the cupped hands of the universe.

A calm and delicious joy possessed me.

“Kotikokura, we no longer wander strangers in an inimical country. We are the children of God—God Himself.”

“Ca-ta-pha god.”

“Yes, he is god. Kotikokura god also. The sun is god. This butterfly that perches upon the window sill, mistaking it for a meadow, is god. The air we breathe, the water we drink—everything! Life is a perpetual eucharist! Ah, Kotikokura, the curtain of night has been lifted, and the truth is beautiful.”

Kotikokura’s eyes closed half-way, voluptuously.

“I sought logic but found instead irrationality. I sought beauty but found ugliness. I sought life and discovered death. The master, in his few years of existence, without hurry, without despair, sought what every man should seek—God—and found Him infinitely more beautiful than any priest or saint had ever imagined Him. People speak glibly of God’s omniscience and omnipotence, but think of Him as dying upon the cross, as shouting through bushes, as riding upon a camel, as howling across the thunder. Spinoza, out of his own magnificent brain, discovered the true nature of God—timeless, spaceless, all-inclusive. No one is a stranger, no one is homeless. The gates have been thrown wide open, all are welcome, all are within the limitless castle. No Heaven, Hell, Purgatory, no angry judge, no sycophantic angels, no merciless devils. We are all one. An infinite circle embraces us like the white perfumed arms of a new love.”

Kotikokura raised his arms ecstatically to the sun.

“This God requires neither prayer nor bribing. No hosannahs must be sung to His Holy Name. The knees need not bend before Him, or His mercy be invoked. He is not merely a human king a thousandfold enlarged. He is that which is. He is ourselves. He is Ca-ta-pha. He is Kotikokura.”

Kotikokura grasped my arm. We quickened our pace. Our hearts beat like triumphant drums.

On the threshold of Spinoza’s home, the old woman sat, knitting slowly. She was not aware of our arrival. Kotikokura scraped his foot. She looked up. I greeted her. She answered vaguely.

“The Master,” I said, almost in a whisper, “is he in his room? May I see him?”

“The Master,” she answered, “is dead.”

The universe, so beautiful, so vast, so perfect a few minutes previously, shrank to the size of a coffin and God assumed the shape of a worm.

“He was buried yesterday,” and lowering her head, she proceeded to knit, tears trickling upon her hands.

I remained standing, silent for a long while. Then I seated myself next to her.

“The Master called you Little Mother. He loved you.”

She looked at me, her face wrinkled as if a nervous hand had crumpled it.

“I loved him too. He was the gentlest man that ever lived. He did not know the meaning of hate. Even the spiders in his room he would not kill.” She wiped her heavily-rimmed spectacles, wet from tears. “He made these, the Master, and I can see through them as if I still had the eyes of my youth.”

“What has become of the Master’s papers?”

“They are locked in the drawer of his table. His printer will take care of them. So the Master ordered.”

“Did he suffer much before he died?”

“It was during the night that he began to feel ill. I went up.

He smiled and motioned me to approach. ‘Master, shall I bring the priest?’ ‘No,’ he said, ‘it is not necessary. God knows everything.’ I began to weep. ‘Foolish Little Mother.’ he said. ‘Why do you weep? Must not everyone die?’ ‘You are too young, Master.’ ‘There is no time, no past, no future. There is neither death nor life.’ I did not understand him. I am not learned. I am an ignorant woman. I see life and I see death, but I felt what he meant. It was his great goodness that made him say what he said. ‘Sit here near me,’ he said, ‘and knit, Little Mother.’ The whole night I sat up. Towards morning, I fell asleep. When I awoke, he was dead. The doctor came but it was too late.”