The Freedom Artist, page 11
‘Is he still alive?’
‘Raise him up with the master’s grip, and see.’
Mirababa felt a strange grip on his hand and forearm and shoulder. He felt himself being lifted into the air.
25
Karnak knew now what he must do. His quest had been simplified. He must find Ruslana, the girl of the books.
He had left the flower-seller’s shop and walked round the neighbourhood. The rows of neat houses had bright façades, but there was something heavy and dark and sad-looking about them. Even the trees planted at regular intervals seemed to protest against being there. Their leaves, green and grey, added nothing lively to the streets. He walked around half-expecting to see something. He didn’t know what.
He looked differently at people’s faces now. Before he had looked without seeing. Maybe even looked without wanting to see. Now he was looking for a face with a smile or the reflection of a smile.
Many days passed like that. He wandered, he searched, he looked at faces. His wandering proved pointless, his search fruitless, and he saw nothing special in the faces, only anxiety and the fear that had always been there.
After many days he returned to the neighbourhood of the flower-seller. He hoped that Ruslana would also be drawn back to her past. He stood a good distance away, concealed behind one of the limp trees that didn’t want to be there, and watched the flower-seller’s shop. He never saw anyone go in. No one ever bought flowers there. For a while he could not believe it. But after many hours, and many days, he realised that it was so.
At first this was merely a strange fact. But while walking one day, in an adjacent neighbourhood, he saw another flower-seller’s shop. It was identical to the first one. He stopped and watched it for hours. No one went in there either. No one bought flowers.
26
As the weeping plague spread, clinics were opened to cope with the volume of the contagion. The wailing at night had extended into the daytime. First the dawns were punctuated with sudden cries, as of someone being murdered. The police would investigate and would find that it was a woman wailing as she prepared to go to work; or a man in the bath, screaming as if his entrails were being torn out of him. Then it became more common.
On the buses, on the trains, in the underground, a man would crease up into tears. People looking at him would soon start weeping too. A lady with severe lipstick would dissolve into sobs. The people who tried to comfort her would themselves succumb to sobbing.
It became common also for people to start wailing in the offices, as if overcome by an unaccountable access of grief. The doctors never found any history of madness in these people, or melancholy, or depression. There was no history of crisis or loss in their families. They were all normal citizens.
The weeping plague swept across the globe, leaping across oceans, descending on isolated villages, and wrecking famous cities. It became a universal hazard. Accidents proliferated around the world, in factories, building sites, on the highways, in nuclear power stations. A new kind of doctor emerged, just for the treatment of this new condition. But the Hierarchy denied the existence of the plague. Not a single mention was made of it in the media.
27
Through all this the media was preoccupied with news of the rich and famous. It seemed they were the only ones who existed. The front pages of the newspapers were crowded with pictures of the latest celebrities. Mines collapsed in remote mountainous regions, with hundreds of men trapped below, but the newspapers chronicled the love lives of the celebrities, while the miners got a sentence in the middle of the paper. The sagas of the celebrities were immensely comforting. They never seemed to suffer and seemed immune to the weeping plague that swept the globe. They remained pristine and endured only minor troubles and their lives seemed perfect.
The Hierarchy encouraged this focus on the famous. They were held up as exemplars of the myth of the garden. This was the myth of the great future that the people were working towards. The fact is no one ever saw the celebrities in the flesh. It never occurred to the populace, taken up with its own troubles, that the celebrities were not real.
28
One day, as Karnak was watching a flower-seller’s shop, someone went past in a blur and said something which he heard only afterwards. When he spun round to see who it had been, he saw a man with a backpack striding away round the curve of the street.
‘Shut up!’ were the words he heard.
Karnak was puzzled by this because at the time he wasn’t saying anything. He was just leaning silently against a lamp-post. He puzzled over it for an hour. Then he put it out of his mind, and went on watching the flower-seller’s shop. Suddenly he felt different. He wasn’t sure why. Then he realised that someone had put something in his hand. It was a single rose.
He was so shocked to see it that he dropped it as though it were burning. How had it got into his hand? He looked round and saw the slender back of a girl disappearing round the corner. He picked up the rose and ran after her. When he got to the corner he saw the girl vanish behind a building. But behind the building he saw her melt away into a field. In the field he saw her fade behind a tree. When he got to the tree he saw no one.
The roots of the tree were protruding from the ground. He sat down on the roots. He inhaled the fragrance of the rose as he sat. Soon he drifted into sleep.
29
Mirababa was led up the stone steps. Two of the old bards walked in front of him, and one behind. He climbed the steep steps and emerged onto the mountaintop. It was dawn. The sun had not yet risen but the air was diffused with a soft light. It was fresh and intoxicating and he breathed deeply.
With an overflowing heart, he gazed out onto the splendour of the world he saw from the mountaintop. The sea glittered far below. The green-brown edges of the islands shone in the faint light. The jagged shapes of the rock-faces emerged from the fading mist. He saw far into the distance. He saw the hills and the farmlands and the shimmering horizon.
He saw everything new minted, like a fresh new flower. He felt pure happiness with the clarity of a child. There was a new light in his head. A golden glow radiated from everything. He felt the limpid smile of the whole universe.
The sky was tender and blue. In the horizon he watched a roseate speck blossom out into the heavens. The three old bards silently watched the horizon with him, as if waiting for a sign. They watched in tranquil intensity. Mirababa was compelled to watch too. He didn’t ask what he was watching for. He just watched. He watched with all his being.
As he watched the horizon, he watched himself. Something was rising in him. It was rising in its glory. The roseate hue filled the sky. The passion of the rose in the horizon became a kind of music in the sky. The bards watched with an unchanging intensity. Something magical, without a name, was rising in the boy. It brought a train of power. The rose in the horizon lost its shape. Then it spread and suffused the sky with beauty. Mirababa watched the blossoming red presence as it grew more concentrated. Then mysteriously, everywhere, something changed. The diffusion of the rose was complete.
Much time had passed as Mirababa and the old bards stood there on the mountainside, gazing at nothing on the horizon. Something unbearable, some intolerable paradox, something like pain that was also like bliss, something that was like death but was also like life, rose in Mirababa and overpowered him. He wanted to cry with holy joy. But suddenly, Mirababa beheld the magical disc of the sun, like a shy child peeking over a wall, revealing the tiniest bit of itself in the east.
At that exact moment the three bards burst into an incantation, and Mirababa, overwhelmed, dropped at their feet.
30
Among the forgotten myths of the world was one that told how all destinies are connected by an infinite web of light. The destiny of a stone on the side of a mountain is linked to the destiny of a woman in an office in the big city. A stream that meanders through a cold landscape of trees is connected to a bird soaring in the remote skies of the equator.
The myth tells of all things being born from one thing. In one variation, the thing is an egg. The egg split open and became night and day, heaven and earth, hard and soft, fire and water, earth and air. In another variation the thing was a seed in the great dark which opened out into universes. The seed was a seed of light and it fertilised the darkness with infinite forms. All the forms retained the light of the original seed.
In this myth if a person tugs at the thread of light of one thing all the other threads of light react and answer back. A sound was born in the silence and a thousand forms echoed. In the depths of the myth one of the seeds became an angel, and the angel became human.
But before being human man was a form of light in a circle of gold. Then one day this form of light conceived an unusual desire and fell from the circle of gold into a prison of flesh. But inside this prison of flesh was this form of light, this seed of the origin.
In another variation, man fell from the circle of dreams into the prison of history, from fable to fact.
In another variation the cosmic gourd was shattered and its fragments flew all over the universe, the mirror of the cosmos was broken and its fragments formed many worlds.
When you tug at one fragment of the original myth you pull all the others and there is a reaction in the universal linkage of things.
For centuries people destroyed fragments of the original mirror and pulverised fragments of the original gourd and nothing appeared to happen.
Then one day a rumbling is heard in the mountains and a quaking is felt underground, deep beneath our feet.
Then the infinite web of destinies begins to speak back.
31
When Mirababa awoke, the sun, a golden child, had risen. Dawn on the mountaintop was as beautiful as a dream. Clear were the lights of the sky, and pure was the lightness of its blue.
Without being told anything the boy knew that, as he beheld the world from the mountaintop, so must he behold his life and all life always.
He also knew that sometimes a perfect vision comes early. He sensed that he might never be on the mountaintop, or see this vision, or feel so happy and so pure again. He felt, paradoxically, that he was living the last day of his life.
The three bards with him had preserved a great silence, bearing themselves with dignity, strength, and lightness. They did not smile, yet were not grim. A benevolent gravity mantled everything they did. They were no longer staring at the eastern horizon.
One of them sat, looking down. The second stood, looking straight ahead. The third lay on the floor, gazing into the sky.
The boy understood that they were signs, a language. Their gestures were the high poems of the initiate.
Then the one who looked up rose and touched Mirababa on the shoulder, and began to descend the mountaintop. The one who looked straight ahead followed. The one who looked down brought up the rear.
After lingering a moment, gazing at the sea below, the birds wheeling above, and the rock-faces on the pyramidal mountain, Mirababa joined the three bards on their descent.
They began singing songs from the original myth as they went down from the mountaintop.
32
Karnak woke to find himself in a world he did not recognise. He was no longer sitting under a tree. He was in a dark place. It was very dark all around and for as far as he could see.
He sat up and felt what he was lying on. It felt square-shaped, it was of stone, and he surmised he had been sleeping on a cubic stone. He could see something of its whiteness in the dark.
He slid down from the stone and got to his feet. The earth felt solid enough, but in the dark he walked unsteadily, like a blind man without a stick. Where was he? He had no idea. In a warehouse? An underground crypt? A graveyard?
There were no stars above him, only darkness. After reaching for the darkness with outstretched hands, stumbling on the solid quality of the dark, he touched something substantial and reassuring. When he examined it with his hands he realised that he had merely found his way back to the stone.
As he touched its surface he came upon another familiar object. He could not see it but when he smelt it he realised it was the flower he had been holding before he fell asleep.
He climbed back onto the stone cube and lay down and tried to empty his mind of fear.
33
They were at the shrine. Mirababa was kneeling. The oldest of the bards held up an ancient sword, its haft the shape of a winged eagle. He saw along its blade inscriptions from the original myth. The bard held the sword above the boy’s head.
Standing to the right of Mirababa was a bard in a white robe. He held up a heavy book resounding with incantations. The third bard stood to the left. He wore a crown of pentagrams.
The bard with the sword spoke:
‘The time has come for you to leave. You have been raised to be a bard among us, but your destiny is not here. In accordance with the old man’s wishes you will be allowed to read the book of the original myth. After you have read it you will leave our land and return only when you have fulfilled your destiny. None of us know what that destiny is. But come back only when it is done.’
The bard paused for a moment. There was a catch in his voice, as if he were concealing a strong emotion, but he mastered himself and continued:
‘You will carry the book with you in your heart. The more of it you can remember on your first and only reading, the better it will be for you. Afterwards the book will be buried deep in the earth and not seen again for a thousand years. Whatever you do we are with you. Carry the stone sarcophagus and the mountaintop always in your spirit.’
The bard slashed the air above Mirababa seven times. Then he tapped both shoulders with the flat of the blade. The bard with the book read solemnly from its pages. When he stopped reading the book went on incanting its lines.
Mirababa was led to the room of reflection. In the room there was a white table. On the white table there was a parchment manuscript. There was nothing else in the room except the fragrance of roses.
34
Many hours passed while Karnak lay on the cubic stone. Then gradually he became aware of presences in the darkness. He couldn’t see anyone, but he could sense them. They were in a circle around him, watching him. He lay still and waited. He had no idea how long they had been there.
Then a voice said:
‘What do you seek?’
Karnak sat up.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Then why are you here?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘How did you get here?’
‘I don’t know.’
There was a long silence. Then a woman’s voice said:
‘Do you know where you are?’
‘No.’
A sterner voice said:
‘You can’t get here by accident. We are going to ask you the question one more time. What do you seek here?’
‘I don’t know where here is.’
‘We can do nothing for you till you know what you are seeking here.’
‘Where is here?’
‘You must know.’
‘How can I know?’
‘That’s your business. You must know, that’s all.’
35
Mirababa became aware that the room was not what it seemed. There were no windows. There were no lamps, but there was light. He looked up at the ceiling. What he saw amazed him. He saw a heptagon within a heptagon. In it he saw the signs of the zodiac and the planets and the elements and the ancient letters of the alphabet which were tokens of magic and power, the letters with which the world was made.
In the centre of the heptagon was a rose. The magic letters formed the twenty-two petals of the rose. In the centre of the rose, a pure light, like the sun at dawn, streamed out. He didn’t know how.
He looked at the floor and saw the same heptagon, with the signs of the planets, the zodiac, the elements, and the magic alphabet.
In a far corner of the room he noticed a strange door. It hadn’t been there a moment ago.
In the centre of the room was a heptagonal altar. On each face was a golden plate with inscriptions from the original myth. Curious about the altar, Mirababa went towards it and touched it. To his surprise the altar moved sideways, revealing a white sarcophagus and upon it the miraculously preserved form of the great bard of the race. It was believed that he had written the original myth under divine inspiration.
The great father-bard lay there, preserved in a honey- coloured form, and he looked as if he were asleep. Long ago the father-bard had disappeared. No one knew where he had gone. Legend had it that he had not died, but had ascended into the skies in a white cloud.
Now here he lay, holding a book in one hand, and a sword in the other. There was a fresh rose on his heart.
Mirababa was astonished. When he entered the room it had been empty. He had no idea how the altar and the door and the father-bard came to be there. He felt the enchantment of the moment.
Then with reverence he recited from memory a few words from the original myth. As he recited the walls became seven and each wall was one of the seven colours.
He had discovered, without knowing it, the conjuring power of the word.
