DieterM
10-09-2010, 09:24 AM
I don't know how to tell the story. The words that used to come so easily seem to elude me now. I have lived too many years, seen too many generations slip away; too many people have died before my eyes. Decades, centuries, eons have passed since the days when it had happened.
I am no poet. I'm just a tired wanderer. Will I recall the right sequence of events? Will I find the right words?
My memories are all that I've got… The past… What exactly am I supposed to do with the present? I've seen so many people weep – believe me, they still weep the same way they did in the olden times.
I'm kneeling here, today, in this stone desert, surrounded by gravel mountains. Above me, clouds are drifting in fast motion, sweeping over the cheerless lands. My thoughts drift with them, drift through time…
There's no story that shouldn't be told. I've decided to tell mine: a poor and tired wanderer's story. May all the priests curse me, may the people hate me. I don't want to destroy their legend, which has grown and acquired more and more wondrous nuances. People resemble children; I don't want to rob them of their naive beliefs. But I have been there. I have seen it happen. Thus, I will write down all I know; maybe, one day, far less blinded men and women will chose to believe my words rather than the priests' dumb and dumbing prattle.
While I'm here, on my knees, under those drifting clouds, under this high mountain that disappears in the formless whitish grey above, a thousand stories are gliding through my head and mingling. Too long have I wandered; too much have I seen.
Yet, I will write down just one story. This one. It has softened my heart and makes me tremble, even now, after all those long, long years. If only I was not so clumsy with language! My rough fingers can barely hold the quill, my simple mind can barely dress in words what I feel and what I think. It's been too long since I've been writing for the last time.
A coarse wind tugs at my robe. But I forget about the wind and the cold, the clouds and the sea of stones. I'm lying in a room, and it is hot…
***
It happened during what they called the 'Great Heat'.
I had arrived in the city some days earlier. I hadn't planned to stay for long. I was merely there to do what I had been told to do. I had a message to deliver. I wanted it all to be over as soon as possible, then go on with my wandering.
Yet they made me wait. No activity was to take place for an undetermined period of time, they had decreed.
All I could do was wait and suffocate on my anger and impatience. And sweat.
The blazing disk sat in its heavenly throne above the dusty town. The sky melted away in all directions, taking a pale blue tinge near the horizon. The sand glowed red-golden in the fire of an endless day while time ran slowly like syrup, sticking to the moments like honey. No gust of wind slashed the mesh of heat. Each movement seemed wrapped in cottonwool.
Barely conscious, I lay close to the window, burning on my bed, my dull and unseeing eyes turned towards the ceiling. I had draped a threadbare piece of cloth over the window. Through its holes came the heat, in ripples and waves, without pity. Like a cloud, the sweat-soaked air coated my body; I was lying in a puddle of my own liquid, close to final evaporation.
All the windows in the town were covered up with sheets, limply hanging pieces of fabric. Behind them, the population, apathetic.
A child cried somewhere, far away, too far away to sound real. A long scream cut through the cemetery silence of the shimmering town; it stopped abruptly. I could hear someone in the adjacent room rolling and tossing restlessly in his bed.
My bones were ablaze, my mind and senses withering under the hot Eye of God. My body dripping slowly into the thirsty clay soil. Next to my house, a bone-dry fig tree caught fire. Nobody noticed it. In the empty streets died cats and dogs, locked out by uncaring holders and long forgotten.
Barely conscious, uncaring, unseeing – thus the town vegetated in its daily coma.
The town was reduced to white huts and sand-covered streets and a brown field of dried up lawn near the oasis.
People were reduced to suffering, sweating, smelly bodies yawing for a breeze.
No one wasted a thought on Him. Surely not I. I didn't believe in Him. Not anymore. I had become Someone, an Important Person. A messenger, arrogant and self-sufficient and proud and hurt in my self-esteem by the long wait they made me endure.
I had seen how He had been created. I had been there. At first, He had been simple, useful, a divine explanation for what was too complex to grasp. Consolation, hope, protection. By and by, He had been expanded, deflected from His origins. A cast of priests had hijacked Him, inventing rules and rituals and interdictions and decrees that didn’t have anything to do with Him anymore.
I didn’t care about Him. I didn’t believe in Him. I didn’t love Him nor hate Him. But I despised the priests and those who listened to them without thinking for themselves.
And now, they made me wait in these inhospitable lands, in this foreign oasis town. I despised them even more. I was so absolutely sure about who I was, what I was.
Somewhere, a man and a woman were arguing.
Somewhere out there under the scorching sun, a war took place.
There were always wars, somewhere.
Somewhere out there in that singeing oven, people died.
Somewhere, a man took a rope and hanged himself from a tree.
Somewhere, a husband killed his wife. Nobody noticed it. Nobody would be interested anyway.
Children wept, somewhere out there in the brooding heat.
And in the Palace lay the old king under a velvet baldaquin. He was very old and numbed by the constant talking of the High Priest.
***
The day was dying. Time stuck to the town, as glutinous as jelly, and resembled a black and fat fly squatting on a syrup-coated bubble. Soon, the black fly would be fat enough to hide the sun. A short, muggy night would begin.
Hard as concrete, the air stood in my room. Each movement hurt when I stood up. Myriads of tiny water drops sprang from my body and evaporated immediately. My eyes burned with dried up tears. I saw ants crawl over my soaked bed. Cobwebs brushed my hair as I sat down on the hard wooden chair next to the window. I thought I could smell the downfall: I noticed a strange stink of decay, dissolution, the end of an era. I grabbed the night-dark robe I had thrown at the foot of my bed and slipped into it.
I had an appointment in the Palace. At last. Someone had delivered the message I didn’t know when. I had probably drifted off for a moment. When I had woken up, I had discovered the yellowish piece of parchment on the floor, close to the door.
When I stepped out into the street, the heat hit me like a club. For a moment, I thought I saw the light-brown houses come crumbling down all around me and turn to dust. The air shimmered and danced before my eyes. In the distance, I recognized the forbidden high walls of the Palace, blurred and bleary, like a mirage floating on a haze of liquid oxygen. My bare feet flinched when they touched the hot sand. Even in the shadow, I could hardly walk. Nonetheless, I advanced slowly.
***
What happened then?
It’s been so long, oh so long… I’ve seen too many things. My poor head… will I recall exactly what occurred? I hope so…
I am chained to this sweet moment by my memory and, I suppose, by… my love…
***
Three houses away from me, a door opened suddenly. A young girl, her naked body barely concealed by white veils, ran out of the house, showing an agitated face, eyes like enormous black bulbs. She extended her arms towards the still blazing sun and yelled with rapture in her voice, eyes closed now, fingertips starting to glow: ‘He’s coming! I’ve seen Him! Look!’
She pointed at the roof of the house she had just left. Then, just as suddenly, she caught fire and became a living torch within a second, her veils disappearing in the flames like sheets of parchment. And she sang in ecstasy. And other doors opened, and people streamed out of the houses and fixed their uninterested gazes on the burning girl who was writhing on the sand, her blackened arms still outstretched towards the sky. And I saw their looks change from impassibility to surprise, the first emotion I had ever perceived on their bleak faces.
The streets quickly filled up with mute men and women. An old, seemingly drunk beggar staggered in front of me, his clothes torn, his cheeks unshaved; he kept babbling foolish words under his breath. Abruptly, he halted, cried out and lifted up a trembling finger to the same light-blue portion of sky the girl had pointed at. Sobered, he screamed: ‘Behold, humans, He is coming!’
Everybody looked in the same direction. A bird, it seemed first, was approaching from above. No bird had been sighted in these barren lands for an eternity. But when it had come close enough, I realized it was no bird at all. It was…
I thought the heat was playing a trick on me. Until I noticed that the void and apathy in the population’s eyes changed into amazement, bewilderment, rapture. And I knew that we were all beholding the same unimaginable sight: a winged young man.
A whisper ran through the crowd, rising and swelling until it became the roar of a thousand voices: ‘He’s here! He will liberate us! He has come!’
The young and wonderful creature with the white wings landed in front of the house where the girl had announced his coming. He stepped in the smoldering heap of ash that remained of her and watched the people, once again silent. Nobody dared utter a word but I almost could feel the tension, the excitement. Agape, I watched the heavenly creature before me. When suddenly, he turned his eyes towards me and I plunged into his gaze…
***
…those eyes! How I remember them well!
Irritating, soothingly human, soothingly superhuman, soothingly divine, warm, cold, open and receptive, closed up and sealed, springlike-friendly, yet, the moment after, winterly-untouchable. A warm shadow flew into blue eyes which got darker and darker, then sparkled, greenish, like deep forest ponds; brown and tender the gaze, like caressing hands; dark at last, a black wall, unapproachable, unfathomable, bottomless, a stronghold hiding feelings. Again, they transformed, blue and smiling, shooting beaming flashes. That face, those eyes played through the whole panoply of the entire humanity, hurt, surprised, hilarious, depressed, wounded, gay, happy, humiliated, arrogant, humble…
No gaze of no other being should ever look so human to me…
***
The crowd started whispering anew. The murmur swelled, the mindless dull masses roared like a horde of wild animals, and their roars’ echoes resounded from the high Palace walls in the distance. Chaos broke out. The wonder-being, the human angel lifted his arms to appease the crowd, yet in vain. The people pushed and approached and surrounded him, this new God, wanted to touch him, wanted to be part of him, wanted to be him, wanted to have him. They had seen him, had looked into his eyes and chosen him to be their new God. They loved him. Closer and closer they came, pushed me closer to the winged young man as well (or was it I who pressed forward without knowing?).
Under the menace, the young mythical being flapped his wings and rose into the air.
The crowd abandoned all restraint. They pushed and fought, they hit and bit, they yelled and roared. They didn’t even look at the divine angel anymore, whose wings lifted him up and up and higher still into the sky whence he had come. The first cries of ‘Kill the false priests!’ rang out. ‘To the Palace!’ ‘Liers!’ ‘Impostors!’ ‘Kill! Kill!’
I was the only one who followed with tear-filled eyes the wondrous apparition disappear in the hot sky above the desert sea. I wanted to yell, too. I wanted to cry ‘Wait! Don’t go! Stay!’ But no sound escaped my throat. I was the only witness of the winged young man slipping like a tiny shadow-speck before the sun’s fireball. I was the only witness who saw Him wed the sun.
And while the Palace blazed away, while the priests, imprisoned in the main chapel, died singing a last gospel, while the High Priest was stoned in the cathedral, while the old king was chased into the desert, while the people’s anger raged through the town and destroyed all that reminded the ancient order, while all around me was murder and fire and stealing and roaring and drinking, I was roaming through the havoc, thinking of that human amongst humans, the wonder of his eyes, without seeing the debris of those times.
At last, I sat down in my room again, or rather, what had been left over. Charred furniture, crumbling, sooty walls. I couldn’t find my tears, couldn’t make them mount from my weeping heart to my dry eyes. I could hear the new religion be born, though; I could her quills scratching on parchments in hidden corners, I could hear new priests explain to each other what had been seen, what everybody had to believe, what all that had meant. New lies and legends were invented, tales of a new God that didn’t resemble at all the being I remembered.
***
I’ve never wept again.
It’s done; this is the end of my tale; whether the story is good or bad doesn’t matter anymore.
Weak as I am, I’ll always think of him, the divine human. I’ve lived amongst humans for thousands of years. I’ve seen them weep and laugh, murder and loot, be happy, love. Still, I’ve never been able to be a human myself. The only time, the only moment I felt genuinely and deeply human was when I looked into the eyes of that singular, outstanding creature. I gave him my tears when he disappeared. My parting present.
Although I am but a tired wanderer and will remain one till the end of eternity, I hope that this germ of humanity he has planted in me will never die nor wither. And I hope that one day, he will come back and make it bloom at last and take me with him.
That’s how the story ends. It’s a true story, from the first sign to the last.
Mind you, perhaps all this has just been a dream?
Perhaps, a child’s dream has only made up this whole story, and me, and the world, and those times of marvel…
I am no poet. I'm just a tired wanderer. Will I recall the right sequence of events? Will I find the right words?
My memories are all that I've got… The past… What exactly am I supposed to do with the present? I've seen so many people weep – believe me, they still weep the same way they did in the olden times.
I'm kneeling here, today, in this stone desert, surrounded by gravel mountains. Above me, clouds are drifting in fast motion, sweeping over the cheerless lands. My thoughts drift with them, drift through time…
There's no story that shouldn't be told. I've decided to tell mine: a poor and tired wanderer's story. May all the priests curse me, may the people hate me. I don't want to destroy their legend, which has grown and acquired more and more wondrous nuances. People resemble children; I don't want to rob them of their naive beliefs. But I have been there. I have seen it happen. Thus, I will write down all I know; maybe, one day, far less blinded men and women will chose to believe my words rather than the priests' dumb and dumbing prattle.
While I'm here, on my knees, under those drifting clouds, under this high mountain that disappears in the formless whitish grey above, a thousand stories are gliding through my head and mingling. Too long have I wandered; too much have I seen.
Yet, I will write down just one story. This one. It has softened my heart and makes me tremble, even now, after all those long, long years. If only I was not so clumsy with language! My rough fingers can barely hold the quill, my simple mind can barely dress in words what I feel and what I think. It's been too long since I've been writing for the last time.
A coarse wind tugs at my robe. But I forget about the wind and the cold, the clouds and the sea of stones. I'm lying in a room, and it is hot…
***
It happened during what they called the 'Great Heat'.
I had arrived in the city some days earlier. I hadn't planned to stay for long. I was merely there to do what I had been told to do. I had a message to deliver. I wanted it all to be over as soon as possible, then go on with my wandering.
Yet they made me wait. No activity was to take place for an undetermined period of time, they had decreed.
All I could do was wait and suffocate on my anger and impatience. And sweat.
The blazing disk sat in its heavenly throne above the dusty town. The sky melted away in all directions, taking a pale blue tinge near the horizon. The sand glowed red-golden in the fire of an endless day while time ran slowly like syrup, sticking to the moments like honey. No gust of wind slashed the mesh of heat. Each movement seemed wrapped in cottonwool.
Barely conscious, I lay close to the window, burning on my bed, my dull and unseeing eyes turned towards the ceiling. I had draped a threadbare piece of cloth over the window. Through its holes came the heat, in ripples and waves, without pity. Like a cloud, the sweat-soaked air coated my body; I was lying in a puddle of my own liquid, close to final evaporation.
All the windows in the town were covered up with sheets, limply hanging pieces of fabric. Behind them, the population, apathetic.
A child cried somewhere, far away, too far away to sound real. A long scream cut through the cemetery silence of the shimmering town; it stopped abruptly. I could hear someone in the adjacent room rolling and tossing restlessly in his bed.
My bones were ablaze, my mind and senses withering under the hot Eye of God. My body dripping slowly into the thirsty clay soil. Next to my house, a bone-dry fig tree caught fire. Nobody noticed it. In the empty streets died cats and dogs, locked out by uncaring holders and long forgotten.
Barely conscious, uncaring, unseeing – thus the town vegetated in its daily coma.
The town was reduced to white huts and sand-covered streets and a brown field of dried up lawn near the oasis.
People were reduced to suffering, sweating, smelly bodies yawing for a breeze.
No one wasted a thought on Him. Surely not I. I didn't believe in Him. Not anymore. I had become Someone, an Important Person. A messenger, arrogant and self-sufficient and proud and hurt in my self-esteem by the long wait they made me endure.
I had seen how He had been created. I had been there. At first, He had been simple, useful, a divine explanation for what was too complex to grasp. Consolation, hope, protection. By and by, He had been expanded, deflected from His origins. A cast of priests had hijacked Him, inventing rules and rituals and interdictions and decrees that didn’t have anything to do with Him anymore.
I didn’t care about Him. I didn’t believe in Him. I didn’t love Him nor hate Him. But I despised the priests and those who listened to them without thinking for themselves.
And now, they made me wait in these inhospitable lands, in this foreign oasis town. I despised them even more. I was so absolutely sure about who I was, what I was.
Somewhere, a man and a woman were arguing.
Somewhere out there under the scorching sun, a war took place.
There were always wars, somewhere.
Somewhere out there in that singeing oven, people died.
Somewhere, a man took a rope and hanged himself from a tree.
Somewhere, a husband killed his wife. Nobody noticed it. Nobody would be interested anyway.
Children wept, somewhere out there in the brooding heat.
And in the Palace lay the old king under a velvet baldaquin. He was very old and numbed by the constant talking of the High Priest.
***
The day was dying. Time stuck to the town, as glutinous as jelly, and resembled a black and fat fly squatting on a syrup-coated bubble. Soon, the black fly would be fat enough to hide the sun. A short, muggy night would begin.
Hard as concrete, the air stood in my room. Each movement hurt when I stood up. Myriads of tiny water drops sprang from my body and evaporated immediately. My eyes burned with dried up tears. I saw ants crawl over my soaked bed. Cobwebs brushed my hair as I sat down on the hard wooden chair next to the window. I thought I could smell the downfall: I noticed a strange stink of decay, dissolution, the end of an era. I grabbed the night-dark robe I had thrown at the foot of my bed and slipped into it.
I had an appointment in the Palace. At last. Someone had delivered the message I didn’t know when. I had probably drifted off for a moment. When I had woken up, I had discovered the yellowish piece of parchment on the floor, close to the door.
When I stepped out into the street, the heat hit me like a club. For a moment, I thought I saw the light-brown houses come crumbling down all around me and turn to dust. The air shimmered and danced before my eyes. In the distance, I recognized the forbidden high walls of the Palace, blurred and bleary, like a mirage floating on a haze of liquid oxygen. My bare feet flinched when they touched the hot sand. Even in the shadow, I could hardly walk. Nonetheless, I advanced slowly.
***
What happened then?
It’s been so long, oh so long… I’ve seen too many things. My poor head… will I recall exactly what occurred? I hope so…
I am chained to this sweet moment by my memory and, I suppose, by… my love…
***
Three houses away from me, a door opened suddenly. A young girl, her naked body barely concealed by white veils, ran out of the house, showing an agitated face, eyes like enormous black bulbs. She extended her arms towards the still blazing sun and yelled with rapture in her voice, eyes closed now, fingertips starting to glow: ‘He’s coming! I’ve seen Him! Look!’
She pointed at the roof of the house she had just left. Then, just as suddenly, she caught fire and became a living torch within a second, her veils disappearing in the flames like sheets of parchment. And she sang in ecstasy. And other doors opened, and people streamed out of the houses and fixed their uninterested gazes on the burning girl who was writhing on the sand, her blackened arms still outstretched towards the sky. And I saw their looks change from impassibility to surprise, the first emotion I had ever perceived on their bleak faces.
The streets quickly filled up with mute men and women. An old, seemingly drunk beggar staggered in front of me, his clothes torn, his cheeks unshaved; he kept babbling foolish words under his breath. Abruptly, he halted, cried out and lifted up a trembling finger to the same light-blue portion of sky the girl had pointed at. Sobered, he screamed: ‘Behold, humans, He is coming!’
Everybody looked in the same direction. A bird, it seemed first, was approaching from above. No bird had been sighted in these barren lands for an eternity. But when it had come close enough, I realized it was no bird at all. It was…
I thought the heat was playing a trick on me. Until I noticed that the void and apathy in the population’s eyes changed into amazement, bewilderment, rapture. And I knew that we were all beholding the same unimaginable sight: a winged young man.
A whisper ran through the crowd, rising and swelling until it became the roar of a thousand voices: ‘He’s here! He will liberate us! He has come!’
The young and wonderful creature with the white wings landed in front of the house where the girl had announced his coming. He stepped in the smoldering heap of ash that remained of her and watched the people, once again silent. Nobody dared utter a word but I almost could feel the tension, the excitement. Agape, I watched the heavenly creature before me. When suddenly, he turned his eyes towards me and I plunged into his gaze…
***
…those eyes! How I remember them well!
Irritating, soothingly human, soothingly superhuman, soothingly divine, warm, cold, open and receptive, closed up and sealed, springlike-friendly, yet, the moment after, winterly-untouchable. A warm shadow flew into blue eyes which got darker and darker, then sparkled, greenish, like deep forest ponds; brown and tender the gaze, like caressing hands; dark at last, a black wall, unapproachable, unfathomable, bottomless, a stronghold hiding feelings. Again, they transformed, blue and smiling, shooting beaming flashes. That face, those eyes played through the whole panoply of the entire humanity, hurt, surprised, hilarious, depressed, wounded, gay, happy, humiliated, arrogant, humble…
No gaze of no other being should ever look so human to me…
***
The crowd started whispering anew. The murmur swelled, the mindless dull masses roared like a horde of wild animals, and their roars’ echoes resounded from the high Palace walls in the distance. Chaos broke out. The wonder-being, the human angel lifted his arms to appease the crowd, yet in vain. The people pushed and approached and surrounded him, this new God, wanted to touch him, wanted to be part of him, wanted to be him, wanted to have him. They had seen him, had looked into his eyes and chosen him to be their new God. They loved him. Closer and closer they came, pushed me closer to the winged young man as well (or was it I who pressed forward without knowing?).
Under the menace, the young mythical being flapped his wings and rose into the air.
The crowd abandoned all restraint. They pushed and fought, they hit and bit, they yelled and roared. They didn’t even look at the divine angel anymore, whose wings lifted him up and up and higher still into the sky whence he had come. The first cries of ‘Kill the false priests!’ rang out. ‘To the Palace!’ ‘Liers!’ ‘Impostors!’ ‘Kill! Kill!’
I was the only one who followed with tear-filled eyes the wondrous apparition disappear in the hot sky above the desert sea. I wanted to yell, too. I wanted to cry ‘Wait! Don’t go! Stay!’ But no sound escaped my throat. I was the only witness of the winged young man slipping like a tiny shadow-speck before the sun’s fireball. I was the only witness who saw Him wed the sun.
And while the Palace blazed away, while the priests, imprisoned in the main chapel, died singing a last gospel, while the High Priest was stoned in the cathedral, while the old king was chased into the desert, while the people’s anger raged through the town and destroyed all that reminded the ancient order, while all around me was murder and fire and stealing and roaring and drinking, I was roaming through the havoc, thinking of that human amongst humans, the wonder of his eyes, without seeing the debris of those times.
At last, I sat down in my room again, or rather, what had been left over. Charred furniture, crumbling, sooty walls. I couldn’t find my tears, couldn’t make them mount from my weeping heart to my dry eyes. I could hear the new religion be born, though; I could her quills scratching on parchments in hidden corners, I could hear new priests explain to each other what had been seen, what everybody had to believe, what all that had meant. New lies and legends were invented, tales of a new God that didn’t resemble at all the being I remembered.
***
I’ve never wept again.
It’s done; this is the end of my tale; whether the story is good or bad doesn’t matter anymore.
Weak as I am, I’ll always think of him, the divine human. I’ve lived amongst humans for thousands of years. I’ve seen them weep and laugh, murder and loot, be happy, love. Still, I’ve never been able to be a human myself. The only time, the only moment I felt genuinely and deeply human was when I looked into the eyes of that singular, outstanding creature. I gave him my tears when he disappeared. My parting present.
Although I am but a tired wanderer and will remain one till the end of eternity, I hope that this germ of humanity he has planted in me will never die nor wither. And I hope that one day, he will come back and make it bloom at last and take me with him.
That’s how the story ends. It’s a true story, from the first sign to the last.
Mind you, perhaps all this has just been a dream?
Perhaps, a child’s dream has only made up this whole story, and me, and the world, and those times of marvel…