Found

"I heard the voices of the crowd around me.  They were hurling stones, condemning the man who stood alone and exposed on the parapet.  He had the noble air of a martyr, his face stoic for all the hidden pain in the eyes.  I knew that he had in some high and righteous way offended the crude sensibilities of the vulgar masses, and I admired him for it, and felt a deep kinship with him, and longed to share in his courage and patience in suffering, longed to share in the firm set of his mouth and the straightness of his back despite the revilement of the crowd.  I was but a child, and loved him, or thought I did.  I did not yet know what love was.

"The perfume evoked ancient thoughts, ancestral memories of rich velvet gowns and the smooth velvet skin of the ladies who slipped out of them, memories of alluring glances, of sinuous limbs, of hearts driven to erratic rhythms like the first beating of tribal drums.  It was strong and heady; it filled the lungs and intoxicated the spirit.  She was there in the midst of the cloud of scent, which made her gown as rich and velvety, her skin as smooth and velvety as a lady's.  She was not a lady, nor was she beautiful.  Nonetheless I gave her my arm, and led her to the bed, and claimed her as my own, breathing all the while her strong perfume.  I did not love her, and even not knowing what love was I recognised this.

"I was young, and caught up in my own youth and its accompanying beauty and strength.  So impressed was I with myself that I loved only myself, though I did not know it.  I did not know love even when I saw it.

"There were others, some ladies, many beautiful, a few both.  There was food and there was wine and some of it good, and most nights there was a soft and warm place to lay my head.  I was very content, and indeed thought myself happy and fortunate.  I wanted little and needed nothing, not love, not God.  I had no God and was glad of it, until I saw him and remembered.  For he was the man, the noble martyr of my childhood, and he was to become my God.

"I gave him my body, mind and soul, gave him my life to do with as he pleased, and, foolishly, trusted that it would be safe in his keeping.  But I neglected to tell the man that I had given it to him, and so he did not know, for he was not God, but only His servant.  It was not he but I who failed, for I failed to understand that for one to be a martyr, there must be something higher than oneself.  When, not knowing that my life was entirely bound up with his, he treated the latter carelessly and so lost them both, I blamed him – but unjustly, for only God knows what He has not been told, and man cannot guard a possession he does not realise he has.

"I wept, but my tears were not solely for my own life.  They were for his also.  I had loved the man, and had recognised it.  At last I knew what love was.

"I stood alone and exposed on the parapet, and the crowd's voices rose in condemnation even as they hurled stones.  My eyes filled with tears, my face crumpled in shame and grief, my back bent and I hung my head.  I had offended the sensibilities of the vulgar masses, but my way was neither high nor noble.  My love for the man was real, but my kinship with him was an illusion, my imitation of him a mockery.  With shuffling feet I walked away.  I did not have the strength to face the crowd.

"Weary of life, I gave myself up into the hands of a God I knew nothing of and whose existence I had never before acknowledged.  I did not love him, but I allowed him to become my master.  He demanded of me that I make a journey to a great palace, and I obeyed.  My own will was weak and worthless, and I went on this God's journey for the want of a better occupation.

"I journeyed for a long time, and was very old indeed when after a great stretch of bleak and lonely wasteland, the palace came into sight.  I was waylaid at the gate and ordered to surrender all earthly possessions, and I cast them all aside, but for my still-living love for the man, the martyr.  This I could not bring myself to give up.  Still clutching it to my heart, I passed through the gate.

"The lake was large and deep and still, the water almost black.  All that surrounded was perfectly reflected in it: the great, silent stone palace, the trees that flanked it, the blue, blue expanse of the sky, the brilliant disc of fire that burned in it like a fevered eye, glaring down upon the earth.  The tableau was more perfectly, unnaturally still than a painting.  Nothing moved, nothing whispered, nothing breathed.  There was no sound at all, no feeling.  The very beating of my heart stopped for what might have been seconds or years, before, all at once, I recalled my love.  Everything wavered and disappeared.  I was left in a confused world of sight and sound and thought and feeling before my vision grew black.

"I was ill and blind and did not know where I was.  In delirium I wandered, in a dark shadowy land of nothingness, and I could do nothing but call upon the name of God.  I was learning to love Him with the desperate love of a child who must cling to its parent or die.

"That night I sinned and that night I repented, that night I breathed again the cloud of perfume, gave my life once more to the man, stood once more upon the parapet.  That night I relived the pleasure and contentment of my days of vain youthful profligacy, and that night I knelt in cathedrals in the presence of the Most High and told Him all my sins, my hopes, my desires, my pleas.  And that night, having done this, I surrendered myself utterly, and saw for the first time that not only were there things that mattered as much as me, but things that mattered more.  Though I had known what love was before, that night I reached the pinnacle of love.

"I woke, and found myself, for the first time in my life, at home."

The musician was listening, spellbound in spite of himself, leaning forward with his mouth slightly open.  When he realised that the vagrant was done, he shook himself, closed his mouth, and affixed once more to his face that look of detached superiority which he had so carefully cultivated.

"Thank you for your story," he said languidly.

"It was true," said the vagrant staunchly.  This was not what the musician had expected; he was caught off guard.

"I know," he hastened to assure the other man.

They exchanged a few more niceties, but what had needed to be said had been said.  The vagrant rose from his seat and left almost at once, disappearing into the throng of revelers.  A moment later, the door opened and closed, and he was gone.

The musician sat and finished his drink, slowly, pensively.  Slowly, he got up and moved toward the door, ignoring the jostles of his fellow patrons.  A blast of cold, wintry air hit him as he stepped outside; he had forgotten the season.  But it was not snowing now.  He looked up, and saw that the sky was clear, and full of stars that seemed to wink and wave at him like old friends.