The girl reluctandy let me into a room filled with colored statues, decorated couches and eastern tapestries. After a short while, Damaris came swiftly in, half-dressed and barefooted. Her face shone with glad expectation and she welcomed me with eager gestures of her hands.
“Who are you, stranger?” she asked. “Have you really a greeting for me from Paul the messenger?”
I tried to explain that I had met Paul some time ago in Corinth and had had a long talk with him, and the conversation had made such an impression on me that I could not forget it. When I had heard that Damaris had been in difficulties because of the teachings of the wandering Jew, I wanted to meet her and talk about the matter.
As I was speaking, I looked at Damaris and saw that she was a woman past the best years of her life. She must have been very beautiful and her slim figure was still faultless. Temptingly dressed and skillfully painted, her hair well brushed, in a dim light she would have made an impression on any man.
She sat down wearily on a couch and signed to me to do the same. She must have noticed my scrutiny, because she put her hand to her hair, as women do, adjusted her clothes and pulled her bare feet under the folds of her mantle. But more than that she did not do. Her eyes were wide open as she stared at me. Suddenly I felt content in her company. I smiled.
“That terrible Jew,” I said, “makes me feel like a rat in a trap. Is it the same with you, Damaris? Let’s both think of a way of opening the trap and getting our happiness back again.”
She smiled too, but raised her hand in a defensive gesture.
“Why are you afraid?” she said. “Paul is the messenger of the risen Christ and spreads the word of joy. I did not know the taste of true happi- ness in my life until I met him.”
“Was it really you who made the wisest of men fall?” I cried in surprise. “You talk as though you were out of your mind.”
“My old friends think I am out of my mind,” she admitted unhesitatingly. “But I’d rather be out of my mind because of his teaching than continue my former life. He looked straight through me in quite a different way from that of the lewd white-bearded philosophers. I was ashamed of my earlier self. Through his Lord I have been forgiven my sins. I journey on the new way with my eyes closed as if the spirit were guiding me.”
“If that is so,” I said curtly, “then we’ve nothing to say to each other.”
197
But she kept me there, covering her eyes with her hand.
“Don’t go,” she said. “You were meant to come. Something has hurt your heart. Otherwise you would hardly have come. If you like, I’ll introduce you to the brothers who listened to him and believed in the message of joy.”
This was how I came to know Damaris and some Greeks who used to come the back way to her house in the evenings to discuss Paul and the new teaching. From the start they had been tempted to the synagogue by their curiosity about the Jewish god. They had also read the Jewish holy scripts. The most learned of them was Dionysius, a judge on the Areopagus council who had officially spoken with Paul on his teaching.
To be honest, Dionysius spoke so learnedly and in such an involved way that not even his friends fully understood him, much less fr But he probably meant well with his expositions at our meetings. Damaris listened to him with an absent smile on her face, just as she had probably listened to the other wise men.
After the discussion, Damaris offered us a simple meal and we used to break bread together and drink wine in the name of Christ, for Paul had taught them to do that. But even to a simple meal like this, the Athenians had to give fourfold import. It was Both material and symbolic, morally elevating and a mystical striving toward communion with Christ and a mutual brotherhood between the partakers.
As we talked, I usually looked at Damaris. After the meal I was glad to kiss her, as the Christian custom demands. I had never seen a woman behave so charmingly and yet so naturally as she did. Every movement she made was beautiful and her voice was so lovely that one listened to the tone of it rather than her words. Whatever she did, she did so beautifully that it was sheer pleasure to watch her. Pleasure turned to heartwarming joy as I kissed her soft lips in friendship.
Paul seemed to have given the Greeks some hard nuts to crack. They genuinely enjoyed their discussions. They believed implicitly in Paul, but their own knowledge impelled them to certain reservations. Bewitched by Damaris, I contented myself with just looking at her and allowed the words to pass me by.
They admitted that innermost in every person lies a longing for God’s clarity, but then they began to dispute about whether this same longing was to be found also in stones, plants, animals and in all higher developments of original forms. Dionysius said that Paul possessed a surprising amount of secret knowledge on the spiritual powers, but seemed to believe that he himself possessed even greater knowledge of the mutual order and rank of the spiritual powers. To me, such talk was like running water.
198
Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270