Julius by Daphne du Maurier Page B

looked about him he could see some sitting in separate pews, like creatures apart.
    He smiled to himself, it was just, it was right. Instinctively he approved of this. Creatures apart.
    He leant against the pew, trying to catch snatches of conversation. The men were speaking a language that was not French, and this too was strangely familiar to him, words he knew and understood, that were part of him, that were connected in some way with his life.
    It was peaceful here and simple.There were no painted figures of saints, no crucifixes, no decoration. The walls were plain, the roof rose in a high dome, and two galleries stretched one above the other round the building. Instead of an altar there were high black gates, and in front of them stood a golden candlestick, bearing seven candles.
    ‘All of this has happened to me before,’ thought Julius, and he felt happy, queer. A man bent down to him and gave him a book of prayer. Julius looked at the letters, he saw words that were known to him, Yöschev Besseïsser, Adonoï Mo-Odom. Alenou, Kadisch , he saw the word Israélite .
    Then he knew, then he understood. It was as though something warm took hold of his heart, clasped him softly, loved him, murmured to him. He was amongst his own people. They saw with his eyes, they spoke with his voice; this was his temple, those were his candles.
    They were poor, ill-clad, ill-fed, their temple was tucked away in the heart of the city, but they came there to be together because they all belonged to one another. Their minds were alike, they shared the same longings, their blood was too strong for them - they were bound hand and heart, they would never break away.
    That was the Rabbin who bowed before the golden candlestick, who chanted in his soft sweet voice. He turned to the people, and lifted up his voice, he cried to them, he whispered, he echoed the prayer in their heart. It was not the Rabbin only, young, pale-faced, who stood there, it was Paul Lévy, it was Julius, it was child and boy and man, it was Père’s mind in Père’s body, it was Julius’s eyes in Julius’s face. And the psalm he chanted was Père’s music, the song that rose and whispered and lost itself in the air, the voice cried out like the music had cried, it pleaded and wept, it sorrowed and rejoiced in his sorrow, it quivered immeasurably high as a bird hovers, beating his wings to escape, it travelled away, beyond the gold sun, flinging itself against the stars, exquisite, trembling, a song of beauty and pain, of suffering and joy and distress, the cry of one who searches the sky, who holds out his hands to the clouds. Julius sat huddled in the pew, his chin propped on his hands, and the chanting was food to him, was eating and drinking, was peace and consolation, sleep and forgetting.
    The young Rabbin was himself, the seven candles were the symbols of his song and the iron gates were the gates of the secret city.
    Julius was lost in a dream, he was nothing, he was no one, nor any longer a little starving boy whose bones showed through his clothes. He had no more tangibility than a measure of music and the tremor of a song; he was as abstract as the sound of wings in the air, of a running stream, of the wind in the trees. He would never be touched, he was the flight of a bird, the shadow on a flower; he was the river bed and the desert sand and the snow upon the mountains.
    When the Rabbin ceased from chanting it was as though Julius could feel his body falling through space, hurtling through the air, striking once more the cold hard ground. The people stood up in the pews shaking hands with one another, the Rabbin leant over the rail and talked to them, the iron gates were closed. Julius had come back into the world again, he was a poor, hungry boy in a besieged capital. Everyone was leaving the Temple. He followed the rest of them, looking over his shoulder for the last time at the seven candles before the gates. Then he was in the cloisters once more