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blood is red coral, and we build an island over the abyss.
    God is being built. I too have applied my tiny red pebble, a drop of blood, to give Him solidity lest He perish—so that He might give me solidity lest I perish. I have done my duty.
    Farewell!
    Extending my hand, I grasp earth’s latch to open the door and leave, but I hesitate on the luminous threshold just a little while longer. My eyes, my ears, my bowels find it difficult, terribly difficult, to tear themselves away from the world’s stones and grass. A man can tell himself he is satisfied and peaceful; he can say he has no more wants, that he has fulfilled his duty and is ready to leave. But the heart resists. Clutching the stones and grass, it implores, “Stay a little!”
    I fight to console my heart, to reconcile it to declaring the Yes freely. We must leave the earth not like scourged, tearful slaves, but like kings who rise from table with no further wants, after having eaten and drunk to the full. The heart, however, still beats inside the chest and resists, crying, “Stay a little!”
    Staying, I throw a final glance at the light; it too is resisting and wrestling, just like man’s heart. Clouds have covered the sky, awarm drizzle falls upon my lips, the earth is redolent. A sweet, seductive voice rises from the soil: “Come . . . come . . . come . . .”
    The drizzle has thickened. The first night bird sighs; its pain, in the wetted air, tumbles down ever so sweetly from the benighted foliage. Peace, great sweetness. No one in the house . . . Outside, the thirsty meadows were drinking the first autumn rains with gratitude and mute well-being. The earth, like an infant, had lifted itself up toward the sky in order to suckle.
    I closed my eyes and fell asleep, holding the clod of Cretan soil, as always, in my palm. I fell asleep and had a dream. It seemed that day was breaking. The morning star hovered above me, and I, certain it was about to fall upon my head, trembled and ran, ran all alone through the arid, desolate mountains. Far in the east the sun appeared. It was not the sun, it was a bronze roasting tray filled with burning coals. The air began to seethe. From time to time an ash-gray partridge darted out from a ledge, beat its wings, and cackled, mocking me with guffaws. A crow, the moment it saw me, flew up from a declivity on the mountain. It had doubtlessly been awaiting my appearance, and it followed behind me, bursting with laughter. Bending down angrily, I picked up a stone to hurl at it. But the crow had changed body, had become a little old man who was smiling at me.
    Terror-stricken, I began to run again. The mountains whirled and I whirled with them, the circles continually contracting. Dizziness overcame me. The mountains pranced around me, and suddenly I felt that they were not mountains but the fossil remains of an antediluvian cerebrum, and that high above me, on my right, an immense cross was embedded in a boulder, with a monstrous bronze serpent crucified upon it.
    A lightning flash tore across my mind, illuminating the mountains around me. I saw. I had entered the sinuous, terrifying ravine which the Hebrews, with Jehovah in the lead, had taken thousands of years earlier in their flight from the rich, prosperous land of Pharaoh. This ravine constituted the fiery smithy where the race of Israel, hungering, thirsting, blaspheming, was hammered out.
    I was possessed by fear, fear and great joy. Leaning against a boulder so that my mind’s whirling might subside, I closed myeyes. All at once everything around me vanished, and a Greek coast line stretched before me: dark indigo-blue sea, red crags, and between the crags the squat ingress to a pitch-dark cave. A hand bounded out of the air and wedged a lighted torch into my fist. I understood the command. Crossing myself, I slipped into the cave.
    I wandered and wandered, sloshing through frozen black water.