Starbook (33 page)

And so it was that on a certain day, now lost in time, with the maiden looking on, her father laid his hand on the statue that was the prince, and said:

'This is my new pupil. Get up! Arise!'

And the prince arose in the dark, as if from an immortal dream; and he bowed gracefully to the master and his strange daughter. And he remained in an attitude of bowing, till the master touched him on the shoulder. At that moment there was a flash of light from that touch which no one but the spirits saw. And the maiden drew breath sharply; her amazement knew no bounds. For the first time she had witnessed with her own eyes, wide awake, what she had only heard rumours about. She had seen her father bring a statue to life. The rumours were true. Her father had spirits that worked for him, that did his carving, his shaping, his moulding, for him. Her father's statues were brought to life by the power of his hands and they served him and did his will. Her father was an artist-wizard, and a creator of monsters. She had always revered her father; now she was in utter awe of him. She no longer thought of him as being entirely human, but something more, which she dared not specify in her mind ...

And, in addition to this, the maiden feared the new servant. She feared him because she knew that he was not real, was not truly of flesh and blood, and had no heart, but was a thing made in the dark workshop of her powerful father, and brought to life by the touch of his mysterious hand. On another day, after his arising, the prince was instructed by the maiden's father to walk once round the workshop, in a perfect circle, in an obscure symbolic ritual. As the prince performed this rite, in slowness and with dignity, he accidentally brushed against the maiden's dress, the effect of which made her jump.

'Don't touch me,' she said, in a confusion of feelings as she felt the warmth of his body as he passed her.

'He feels almost human,' she said, in wonder. 'Is he?'

But she received no answer.

She avoided this new pupil and soon stopped noticing him again because he aroused in her disquieting notions. He made her feel a mild and incomprehensible aversion. He became invisible to her a second time over. And so she was truly herself in his presence because she did not notice him in the brief period after his raising, when he remained silent and still. She was what she was, simply and purely, as he sat there in the workshop, among the gathering images and statues that would one day perplex the minds of men and women.

The new pupil, raised from his sublime immobility, soon began to participate in the life of the community. He ran errands and fetched wood for carving. He took part in the dawn installation of the master's lesser works in front of the shrine. He passed on secret codewords from the master to other masters without knowing he was doing so. He performed many esoteric duties which seemed to him to be perfectly normal tasks. He became an active participant in the life of the tribe of artists.

There must have been a profound spell cast on him because, whatever he did, he was never noticed, never truly seen. And more especially he was never seen by the maiden. He would trip and fall in her presence, he would spill water from a bucket, he would speak to the air in front of her, but she simply would not lift her eyes unto him. Even when she was the object of errands, even when the maiden must have seen him with her father near the shrine, taking measurements for a new work, she still did not notice him. He felt like an object in the world that the light did not fall upon ...

Then one day the new pupil met the mother of the maiden and without a word gave her a bunch of flowers he had picked under the moonlight. The mother of the maiden noticed his tender beauty, his frail and slender body, and the peculiar lively radiance of his eyes for the first time, and fell into admiration of him. That night the mother and father of the maiden talked about him.

'He is not normal,' she said.

'No.'

'His birth is unusual.'

'Yes.'

'Is he a secret suitor?'

'Maybe.'

'Or has he come to steal the secret of your art?'

'He has no interest in creating art. He wants to become an art. But I don't know what art he wants.'

'What other art is there?'

'There are many other arts greater than the art of making art out of wood or stone.'

'Like what?'

'Like the art of making life out of death.'

'You think your servant so exalted in mind?'

'Why not? He turned into a sculpture. He learnt to be a noble statue. He demands nothing, and gives everything. He does not listen, but hears. He does not appear to do anything, but he does everything. Either his birth is noble, or it should be. Or his past beyond his memory is noble. He is like a master who cherishes lowliness.'

'You maybe read too much into his insignificance?' his wife asked, smiling.

'He allows his insignificance to be so much. Insignificant people don't have that tranquillity. They may have contentment, they may have innocence, they may have simplicity, but not that tranquillity. Tranquillity in a man is an achievement, a discovery, almost a by-product of a great insight or illumination.'

'All this in one so young?'

'Some are young in body, old in soul. You know that, my dear.'

'I do.'

'Still we keep a stern eye on him.'

'We shall.'

Even the masters of the tribe, in their irregular nocturnal meetings, commented on the new pupil, obliquely. After one of those long silences, during which, in the dark, many forms appear, one of the masters suddenly said:

'A stranger can wake up a sleeping land.'

Another voice said:

'A stranger can raise men's minds towards the stars.'

'Still, he has passed the tests he didn't know he was taking.'

'And we might have to induct him into the darkness of the hidden tradition.'

'Without him knowing, of course.'

'In case we are showing disrespect to a god, or to a king.'

Then on a night that seemed like any other the new pupil was given instructions to work in the secret forge deep in the forest. He was taught the hidden arts of making. The father of the maiden initiated him, without his being aware of it, into the mysteries of fire and the esoteric art of turning ordinary metal into gold. It was an art known only to a few, brought from their old kingdom and nurtured as a secret tradition. Some say this art conceals the art of achieving immortality.

The new pupil also worked on the outer substance of things; he shaped, carved, polished, moulded, and did patina work on the sculptures, under the strict supervision of the master. All that he learnt in silence, obliquely, he was forbidden to reveal. He was made to swear a blood oath on this in the depths of the forest, in the initiation that he didn't know was one, conducted by figures in complete darkness and whose voices were muffled by ancient masks.

There must have been a profound spell cast on him during the night of the initiation for, whatever he did, he still was never noticed, never truly seen.

A
round that time the clamour of the suitors got worse. They had lingered in the village, they had created their works of art, had seen them found wanting, they had made several pilgrimages to spiritual centres, and shown their piety, dignity and seriousness. They had shown their restraint. They had behaved well. They had made journeys back to their different homes to conduct important affairs of state or business. And they had returned with gifts, both for the tribe of artists and the maiden's family. They had made themselves a part of the village life. Some of them had become so much part of the artistic life of the tribe that they forgot why they were there and took other women as wives and dedicated themselves to new vocations in art which they had accidentally discovered. But many of the suitors, having wasted much time and expended much of their resources, were becoming impatient and intractable. They eventually ganged up together, finding common cause in the elusiveness of the maiden. And, presenting a united front, they stormed the maiden's father's house and demanded that the maiden make up her mind as to whom she would marry. They were angry and, being men of great importance in their different realms as ambassadors, chiefs, aristocrats, sons of noble families, famous warriors, they felt that they were being insulted, being played with, taken too lightly. And so they laid down an ultimatum that the maiden must make a decision within a fixed period of time, or they would spread her name in infamy all over the world and no one would ever want to touch her or consider her in marriage again.

In the forest there are the seeds of trees that lie in the earth for a very long time and seem to be doing nothing. There are plants that are very small and over many years they appear not to grow at all. The sages say that there are some prayers that take a thousand years to be answered; some say such a period of time is less than a moment in the mind of God. There are times when a people take a long time to hear what is being told them, a long time to respond to a provocation, a long time before they are roused to go to war. There are people who take a long time before they acknowledge the greatness of someone amongst them, a long time before mourning the death of a king, a long time before they fall in love. There are plants that never seem to flower or blossom, and then one day, to everyone's surprise, they bloom with astonishing splendour. There are plants that never seem to grow or change, and then one day, to the keen observer, they reveal a shining new leaf, and then, afterwards, they grow at a surprising rate. There are people who never smile, never play, and then, one day, they are like someone new, as if a benign sun has risen in their hearts. Different reasons for these things. They say the gods delay the revelation of our destiny, till it is upon us and the revelation and the living of it are one. They say that about the deep matters of life the rash hurry, but the wise, guided by an instinct beyond reason, choose to delay. Sometimes delay is fear. Sometimes delay is weakness. Sometimes delay is uncertainty. Sometimes delay is prophecy. Sometimes delay is awaiting a sign, the right moment, an alignment, a harmony in the heart with the heart's star in heaven.

The maiden kept delaying her wedding, her marriage, her choice of suitor, because deep in her heart she knew that the person she truly loved had not yet entered her life.

The more her suitors clamoured and threatened, the more she was possessed by the spirit of delay. She became fertile in the invention of new conditions, trials, contests and qualifications. She invented new doubts. She inclined one way then swung to another. She said she could not see any one of the suitors for all the suitors: they were like a forest, and she could not see a single tree. She wanted them to give her breathing space. She wanted to see not their actions, their deeds, but their shadows. She asked each of the suitors to bring her their shadow, so she could see what their spirits were really like. This became a famous riddle. The suitors were perplexed. They did not know how to detach their shadows from themselves. The suitors went about the place consulting witchdoctors, herbalists, wizards, sages, wise old women, witches, but no one could tell them how to separate their shadow from their bodies and give it as an object to the maiden. This problem kept them occupied for a long time.

All over the village, along the great trading routes, among the masters of the tribe, and even in the realm of the spirits this problem of how to give someone your shadow caused much discussion, amusement, and thought.

No one had the answer. But everyone talked about it. The conundrum soon reached the ears of the new pupil. He told his father, the king, about it; and his father, roaring with laughter that made many seeds in the forest suddenly burst into life, and made many barren women become pregnant, and many pregnant women suddenly give birth, and many rivers overflow their banks, and rain fall in dry places, said:

'My son, the answer is as simple as giving someone your love.'

Not all things glimpsed in a dream are clear. All dreams retain an enigma. Not all events glimpsed in the great book of life among the stars are clear. Only while dreaming does the dream make sense. When one awakes, that which made sense suddenly becomes strange, tinged with mystery. When one dreams one beholds a complete picture; when one awakes one finds a few fragments in one's hand of what was a glorious vision. With these fragments one tries to recreate, or suggest, a beauty that is lost when one returns from the stars.

The gaps in the forest began to change; the prince, at first, did not understand the nature of this change. On one of his fateful visits home to the palace the prince noticed that it was an unusually blue dawn. The forest sparkled with silver and with mists that gave off a roseate and golden hue. Cobwebs, with droplets of dew, sparkled like little necklaces of diamonds. It was a dawn in which the trees and the animals, the plants and the birds were stirring from a beautiful dream. And their dream was the bluish colour of the world at dawn. The prince, as he sought the gap that would take him home, felt that he was entering a world he had never seen before. The gods and the spirits shone out from the haze of gold and blue, the roseate hue, and rays of pure sunlight like the magic swords of heaven piercing the enchanted forest. The prince stopped to retain the wonder of that moment. Then he found a tree that he had never noticed before. It was a tree like any other, except that its trunk was pure and fresh like the face of a pretty young girl and it had clean green leaves like broad green hands and it had buds on its branches like the joined palms of children at prayer. The prince sat under the tree, rested on its trunk, and was borne off to sleep. But it was not a normal sleep, nor was it a long one. And during that sleep many things happened to him that he would only remember in fragments of dreams over the many years in the suffering to come. He dreamt the beginning of all things, and their end. He dreamt all the stories of humanity. He dreamt of the answer to the greatest question, told him by a being in space unlimited inside a kingdom of silence. All that he was, all that he would be; all that was, all that would be; and the solution to death; the answer of immortality; he dreamt them all in a brief moment of sleep. Then he awoke refreshed and found himself in a different place. The tree was in flower. The birds had awoken and were singing. Nine maidens in white drifted past him smiling. The forest was gone. The gap he sought stood before him like a ring of enchanted fire. He stepped into the fire and found himself on the other side, near the river of his village. He was full of questions. He made for the palace, and summoned the elders. He knew his time was running out. He had little time left before his life would change for ever. And everything he did, or would do, would hasten time's swiftness. He had to live swiftly, to do what remained for him to do, and yet act as if he had all the time in the world, which he did have.