The Ballad Of Sigurd Jorsalfare
Chapter 44
Outremer; late summer 1108
Sigurd took a left turn and headed north towards D’gania Aleph, (the most beautiful and resonant of all Kibbutzim in the Jordan Valley; oasis of palms and dates and righteous pioneers; the wellspring of our redemption.)
Sigurd was arriving at D’gania Aleph a good eight hundred years ahead of its founders, making Sigurd, the reluctant idealist, the prophet of the Kibbutz movement.
It makes perfect sense that a Norwegian bastard King, a pacified crusader in search of his illusive Judeo-Spanish lover in Latin Outremer, would be the heralding angel of the utopian agricultural settlement in modern Israel.
We salute you, Sigurd, king of lost causes. We will visit the feathers shed on your flight to redemption, petrified arrows imprinted into the burning rocks beneath our bare feet.
There are no simple stones in the land of Israel. This Sigurd realized soaring north, his Sufi master by his side. There are no meaningless paths, no empty structures in the rubble below. All who have walked, prayed, killed, loved, and starved below are still there, not one of them absent.
All a heron must do is look and see and fly onwards. When the appropriate tree, the suitable pond, the pleasing grove is spotted, all a heron must do is constrict its wings a touch, change the angle of attack and glide, wings spread over the land like a shelter of peace and touch down.
The signs are all there, waiting for you: the footsteps in the mud, the wisp of hair caught in the bracken, the scent of cardamom and cloves, the sound of departing bells, cling-clanging up the hill.
Evening comes heavy and sweet to the Jordan Valley, the heat rising to the mountains on the east, the stars falling cool from the heavens to the west. Lust hovers over the reeds; love pounds at your temples; desire rises with the dew from fresh grasses.
The sound you are hearing, the wondrous, soft rushing of water is the holy River Jordan, leaving its faithful Sea of Kineret behind, like a fool fallen out of love, dashing madly down a slope, a fall from which it will never again recover.
Pilgrims are baptized here one way or another, willingly or unwillingly, by water or by fire, by the love of God or by the hatred of men; pilgrims are baptized here and all will come out born again, except for the walking dead who refuse to see, who refuse to hear, who will not surrender. For them only final death awaits by suffocation or by stoning. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Armies; the entire earth is filled with his avenging honor.
All faiths of the One God are born in heat and die in water. Accept this, oh human, you who seek to know something of the Lover. Surrender to the heat, give praise to the fire, swallow the embers, drink the flames of the One and you will surely die in the waters of Jordan to be born again a child of love, impervious to hatred, untouchable, inalterable.
Sigurd shed his wings by a willow and followed the scent, chasing the evaporating heat trail, swatting reeds and wild flowers, feet bleeding from thorns and jagged stones, towards the river he ran delirious, light, fading.
There she stood by the reeds, looking from afar to see what will happen to the lad, her head towards Amon, from whence will come Salah ad Din in due time.
A rustling in the weeds, she turned her head and smiled.
“You have come, Malik al Franj,” and turned her head back east and walked into the water.
Sigurd ran after her melting body, wavelets emanating from her towards the shore. Her head was just disappearing under the water as Sigurd reached the riverbank, shedding feathers, garments, his last knife — the first knife he was given by his father, Magnus the Bare Foot, by the fire in Ireland. He tossed the blazing knife clear into the night’s air, an upward seeking comet.
(The knife never fell down to earth again. Ever. Should you be tempted to travel to the River Jordan, remember to always look up to the sky, especially at night.)
The water killed Sigurd Jorsalfare. Instantaneously.
His body washed away like silt in a flash flood. Swoosh. Sigurd could see it float away from him, bubbling and laughing southward, bending and curving around the weeping willows on the other bank and then — water and more water and weeping willows and swaying reeds.
And then dark brown and then no color, no taste, no sound, no smell. And then no object of mind and no fear and also no extinction of them.
Gate, Gate, Para Gate. . .
A head above water and another head. Eyes see eyes.
“Are you?” he asked and she said, “Yes,” and laughed: “I am. I am,” she said.
“And I?” he asked, laughing so hard he thought he’d die again.
“King of Nothing,” she sang and laughed, “Mafish, Hallass,” “finished, done, gone,” she sang and swam.
“Where have you been?” Asked Sigurd who was no Sigurd anymore.
She grabbed his face and kissed him. “I have been here the whole time, waiting for you for centuries, my lover,” and she bit his heart.
Sigurd sank to the muddy bottom of the holy river and sprang up again — a missile shooting through the water, arcing westward. The landing was soft and feathery on the western bank.
Naked stood the newborn king and faced his Rosa, a lithe and lean and perfect athlete sent from the angel Gabriel to cleanse his acid soul.
“Ana bahibak, ya elbi,” “I love you, my heart,” she said and inhaled him.”