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THE VALLEY
Chapter Eleven
This is an awing and special time in the Process. It is a passage, a crossing over. From the known to the mysterious. The Work is transferred from the seen to the unseen vessel where I can fulfill the complementary Procedures. It is the moment for me to place the awoken Prima Materia into this special vessel in which it can meet and merge with its Other, the hidden aspects of its wholeness.
Our means of opening the Work to higher realms of being is called:
INITIO or to INITIATE
Twilight. Before dawn or just after sunset, I can't tell which. I'm walking down a newly tarred band of highway. Like a black waterless river in the Wizard's chant. There are steep banks of jungle thick and high to both sides. The road's unmarred surface forms pyramids rising before and behind me in the distance. The only sounds -apart from my footfalls- are tiny sounds of life in the jungle about me. I'm walking the same road as in my vision about the Sun of Truth, too. They're the same road. Is that world-ending precipice ahead? Yes, I'm called to experience all that my vision predicted. I'm elated. Moments ago, I was taking Plang's 'sacrament' sitting in the Star's room, looking into his wise and wizened face. Seems I waited for an eternity. There's no memory between then and now. No idea how long ago that was and not a clue as to where I am now. But I'm alive and I seem to be walking somewhere. That's already good news because it eliminates the most unpleasant possibilities in my taking his potion. From my fuzzy head and heightened impressions, it must have contained some psychotropic. But, apart from these after effects, I feel fine. Rested and full of vitality. The chirps and squeaks around me thicken into a joyful weaving as the day warms. The sky lightens at the road's end behind me. First the aura, then the sun's blazing gold rises to wash the sky. It's dawn. I'm clean and freshly dressed. I'm wearing new khaki shorts, a bush jacket, and high, white cotton socks that contrast sharply with the road's black surface. I wear a pith helmet and a pair of sturdy walking shoes. From my jacket's webbed belt hangs a cloth-covered, full, water canteen. A small, partly-filled rucksack hangs over my shoulders. I have no watch. No way to tell time but by the sun. Sunrise now. 5 to 6 a.m.? I've been well taken care of. In spite of not having a clue about where I am or what's happening, I feel good. The rising sun behind me, pouring its light down the road, and my own high spirits, waft me along like a sail in the wind. I peer into the thick walls of jungle rising high to both sides, keeping me separate and alien, as if behind glass. Huge trees soar above me, foliated branches form a roof. A riotous tangle of vines, creepers and trees form a sea in which long, spiky, lacquered leaves bow and nod in some unfelt breeze. The million stubby fingers of an ancient fern sparkle, flutter green and silver. Sense impressions come with unusual and marvelous sharpness. Within the jungle creatures of every kind pass in and out of existence. A band of long tailed, black-furred monkeys, with white beards and eyes, skitter along beside me. They stop to peer at me, nervously screech and laugh, then skitter on. A swaying giant spider-web catches my eye. It holds the mummified body of a teal-blue and crimson hummingbird. Above, a huge disembodied eye locks its frozen stare on me, blinks heavily, then spins out of view behind a sliver-thin beak. The joyful tapestry of sounds is as textured as the jungle seas. Birds, each with a call to match its fanciful plumage. "Cho-ko-ni," one clothed in long rainbowed plumage calls, then swims upward passing through the jungle's roof and out into the sky. "E-ti-ma!" another one calls in delicate response, so costumed like an emerald-green leaf as to be invisible. "E-ti-ma!" The sounds of scurrying animals, the rustling of branches and leather-like leaves. Other sounds with origins that are impossible to define -metallic rattlings, a deep humming as from a high-tension wire, murmurs like crumbling stone, the swish of water flowing overhead. The fabric of sound surrounds and enmeshes me too. A hand-sized lizard with a yellow scaly body and a bright flame head sits on a branch just at eye level to my right. Frozen mid-spate, one stepping leg still in the air, it watches me pass, turreted eyes shifting. Now it breaks into a cacophony of whistles and calls. Cascades of gurgly rasps and hoots thrust out of the lizard's throat. It's eyes roll upwards and the thin end of its spiky tail quivers now as if in wonderment of its own performance. I laugh and clap with pleasure. But the lizard misunderstands this and, jacking itself up on longish legs, it skitters off with the motion of a wind-up toy. Primal colors arrange themselves about me in lavish splendor. Each tree, every leaf and scented flower seems a separate species coming from different corners of existence to vie with one another, luring my attention with the enticement of their exotic shapes and hues. Only I and the road's mat black surface are excluded from this continual unfolding, this symphony of sensations that surrounds me. I'm released from my stale vision of things by this fountain of possibilities. I am a pilgrim on a quest into other dimensions, into unimaginable realities, all new and splendidly alien, full of intrigue and peril. My sight is caught between two orchids, their flattened petals clasped together like fingers, one flower's hue just a shade toward purple, the other's just toward the mauve. They vibrate between sameness and other and create all the tones and colors to fill an indigo universe. I grow more attuned to the complexity, begin to taste more deeply the way of this jungle's life force. Here turmoil is still unbound. The original chaos. The natural laws and forces that elsewhere constrain life into orderly cycles of birth, growth, reproduction and death here are overthrown. Exuberant fertility and fetid rot spring from the same root. Feverish activity turns to strangle and consume itself. Leaves wither, sun-starved beneath the roof of their sister- leaves bright against the sky. Critters scurry in the mulch of the jungle floor and above, naked necked birds-of-prey hover, watchful and ready on their broad feathered wings. Although this splendor touches and excites me and is mysteriously familiar, the overall theme of it is too vast, too subtly intricate to grasp, too savage for me to unguardedly open to. A riotous tangle of vegetation in which survival is master and life is merciless striving and conflict. Lush growth and consuming decay. It is a primal, eternal theme, but the glimpses I see of it are too bizarre for me to grasp for more than just the instant they're here before me. Some knowing opens and I recognize where this niggling of familiarity comes from. This jungle is like the inner workings of my psyche. No wonder I'm both fascinated and repelled by it. Yes, and its rampant like my mind. Fervent feelings and thoughts that barely root and fling themselves skyward, ungrounded inklings hot-housed to consciousness, to action, living or dying as the whimsy of happenstance decreed. Longings and needs that cling and twist their ways along whatever support can be found. Root, blossom and die unknown in the jungle within me. Tormented vines that forever grope back and forth between the jungle's earthy bed, hot and moist as the flesh, and the light of its uppermost reaches. Rills and beams of golden light filter down through the thickness of foliage in arabesques of light and shadow. All is subdued, primeval, timeless. Songs of unknown birds, cries of unimaginable creatures. Butterflies and birds in brilliant fluttering splashes, cerise and green-gold, ebony and indigo, silver feathers streaked with turquoise. Flower-strewn vines and stalks and lichens, feathery ferns and thick moss, lacy foliated branches that entwine it all into the walls that soar above me. This primal incantation is so convincing except that it seems that everything comes into being only with my perception of it, confirming that all this really is in my own mind. The large golden furred monkeys swimming in shadows thick like violet glass. The rainbow crested bird that keeps pace with me along the road, hovering at my shoulder till, at the wave of my hand, it rises straight up then dives down into the jungle's depths like an island boy chasing pennies. All this bewitching wonderment -the cloud puffed sky, the road's pristine black surface, the riotous jungle walls to either side- all this is contained in the vessel of my mind. "E-ti-ma," calls one bird. "Cho-ko-noo," the other answers. My reverie is suddenly broken by the sight of something lying on the road, the only thing I've seen on it other than an occasional leaf or insect. A hundred or so feet ahead is what looks like an arm-thick snake slithering out of the jungle, its undulations glistening in the sun. My hand is instantly at the buckle of the web belt, perhaps as a whip, or to throw the canteen, if need be. With a surge that is both dread and aggressive readiness, I continue to approach it, jubilant at not having a weapon to let me deal with it at a distance. A close in kill feels right. It or me, either way. But as I draw nearer, its no longer clearly a snake and, now at twenty feet from it, I'm inwardly mocking the valor I'd felt. It's a leafless dried branch, no more than two fingers thick. I break into a run and scoop it up, laughing at myself all the more for trying to ignore how clumsy my stiff body seems. The stick is just heavy enough to make handling it exhilarating exercise. I swing it from hand to hand, feeling the muscles of my chest, arms and back swell and tighten. One end of the branch is widely forked and fits the grip of my hand perfectly. It would make an ideal walking stick, it strikes me, and I strip off its few remaining twigs. They snap cleanly leaving a trail of alternating green ovals in the coffee-black bark. For some while I enjoy letting it bend and spring beneath my weight, adding a new dimension to my strides. I hold it angled out in front to scrape the road, picking its way along the minute peaks and dips it encounters, content to feel the quick throbs up my wrist and arm, merely to be the force driving it on. In the middle of anywhere or nowhere, uncertain of the recent past as I am about the future, somehow I feel richly confident, perhaps because I'm freer than ever from the worry of alternatives. I'm so completely here. The heat grows heavier, more penetrating as my shadow on the road before me grows shorter, then disappears beneath my feet. The jungle sounds subdue. The heat swirls in the air grow more and more substantial till it seems the road itself is undulating, "Like a snake," I laugh out loud, tossing the walking stick up to twist in the air. "Like a snake," I roar. No response. Every living thing that can is hiding, burrowing away from this scorching heat. The heady feeling turns to light delirium as I watch sweat stain my clothes and spread out to form circles under my arms and diamond shapes across my chest and back. Dark emblems. I'm wearing a vestment, the vestment of the true Order. All was meant to come out this way. Preordained, I chuckle. Yes, this mission is the one I've been trained and preparing for all along, unifying, surpassing all my previous ventures. I'm not an apostate from the Order, but a real disciple. I go in the true faith. "I'm on a mission," I whisper the well-proven touchstone of excitement. On a mission, and the surge sweeps through me. As ever, the thrill of challenge takes over. A mission to be carried out. Obstacles to overcome. Objectives to be gained. I love the challenge, to ride the edge where every other concern disappears. Unified in one encompassing demand, I experience all my efforts and resources called up to overcome, to conquer. With the wave of excitement, a surge of memory comes. It's from the time in between, between when I took Plang's potion and when I found myself here, walking this road. Full recall takes over. In its strength, the impressions of road and jungle grow misty, diffuse.
I'm flying. My body is full of effort, but there's no movement in my limbs. I'm gliding aloft on my outstretched arms. No, I hear an engine. I'm flying in a single-engine plane. The pilot -in the bucket seat in front of mine-- fills the cabin with his burly back inside a crinkled black leather jacket. He turns to look out the window and shows a face like an ancient idol. It's that daimon minitaxi driver. Coal black eyes. A honed curve of nose. Pellets of gold and dark ivory are bared in his wide grimace. He turns to catch my eye and grins knowingly. He nods to guide my glance below as he banks sharply, allowing me to scan the view below the side-window. "The Ancient Place ," he hollers over the engine's roar and the buffeting rush of wind. "The Inch-Square Kingdom ," he grimaces again and taps at the center of his forehead. Some thousands of feet below is an ancient town, half in ruins, of a period and style I don't recognize. Incan. Remnants of an Angor Wot. Rows of streets and buildings symetrically radiate out around a huge pentagonal shaped temple or shrine.
All at once, a shift. I am in the center of the Inch-Square Kingdom , standing before the Temple 's high, rough hewn walls. Every speck of the salmon-colored stone is carved with the fantastically coiled and twisted signs and symbols I recognize from Plang's Omen Book. The wide gables, the tall columns, all of the facade I can see, writhe with them. I enter the Temple 's high arched entranceway and down through an ample hallway. Its plain, bare walls rise to misty distances overhead. My steps are slow, weighty with intent. The excitement expands me. The monolithic grandeur of the hallway draws me on, coaxing me to further expand to fill its proportions. My feet are on the path. Rich, stone-cooled air bubbles up through me so that the top of my head feels light and open as I remove my sun helmet. "I walk to the Heart of the Inch Square Kingdom ," I solemnly intone and hold the helmet and branch before me. They are the Disc of the Sun of Truth and the Earth Staff. I hold them high on stiff arms, eyes closed, head back in exaltation. I cross my arms so that the Sun Disc is at my left shoulder and the Staff of Empowerment at my right. I bow. I dedicate myself to this quest for the wish-fulfilling Golden Fleece, for the Jewel of Paradox, this mystery that lies before me, within me. Though I know nothing of all this, my body knows these gestures when they are rightly made. I walk on, making signs with my Sacred Implements of Office whose meanings I am certain prepare the way. And prepare me. My limbs carry out the gestures as if they had been long instructed. Flesh and mind attuned and readied, drawn by the experience that calls me. I'm flushed with joy and glory. The way goes smoother and faster while my legs seem to barely move, as if the very stone floor and vaulting walls swept me along. Hall joins to hall through wide portals. Deeper and deeper into the Temple 's heart, and I find myself saying aloud the words I hear whispered in my thoughts. "I float through doors, doors that rise and fade before my eyes, revealing other doors that rise and fade before my eyes. Effortlessly I pass them, effortlessly but bewildered by my inward revelation that I am falling."
Yes, it's Plang's chanting. All at once, I arrive before a huge wooden portal I know to be the last. Beyond, it opens out into an immense, luminescence filled space. I move into the numinous glare and find I'm in a five-sided chamber. Hallways radiate out at each wall, five entranceways as this one I stand in. At the center of this innermost court's five sided floor stands a grotesque altar, as though a black fist of lava had spewed up through the polished white marble floor and jelled midair. In the uppermost crevice of this congealed flow sits some kind of pearl or precious stone. Impossible for me to tell because it shimmers so. Gongs and brass bells hanging from the gilded lattice of rafters overhead play like celestial leaves in the wind. Their tinkling murmur is background to a resounding invocation of many voices chanting in unison.
"Oh, Jewel of Paradox, praise be, praise be. In you is summoned and solved All that is or could be. Jewel of Paradox, praise be, praise be...
Awe struck, I stare at this sphere of flickering, molten energy. Amazed at what had only been an image, a myth. It radiates like the essences of matter and anti-matter entwined. Shining luminosity merges with ebony black in the gem's emptiness. Whirling round and through each other in the flickering swirl to become each other's opposites. The Yin and Yang intermeld, blend to become this vibrantly shimmering Jewel. Boundless, edgeless, all containing in its own tight vortex. Center and circumference interchanging. Stillness in the heart of mind-blurring movement. Enlightened by its aura, I witness how ephemeral my boundaries are, no more than imaginings and constructs. The selves of mine they had kept apart and separate are now together. The selves I love and cling to, the selves I hate and deny. Selves of wonder. Selves of despair. Selves of terror. The desperate seeker of holiness. The killer. All together as one. So bared and naked to myself, it's evident that what I hated in others is the hateful, hidden me. What I sought and disappointedly expected from others is already me and mine. "My dearest friend, my total stranger." Beyond resolving, beyond bearing. Parts that hadn't known of each other's existence now rage and fight, while others meld in ecstasy. I'm tormented that my ambivalence tears apart every thought, feeling and action in my life. Yes, this is what I'd dreamed of, all my parts being one.
But its all too much for my mind to grasp and contain. Traumatized by the Jewel, my world blasts apart. Everything burns and roars in me, floods and volcanoes. I whimper with ecstatic anguish. My eyes bulge and spin, tongue juts from my mouth in silent scream. My face turns blue, breath choked in my throat with this annihilating threat to my sanity. Is this the "wholeness" Plang promised? What mad agony to seek this. Although the shimmering Jewel assures me, "I am the image of your Fullness," for me, there's no peace in that fullness. My inner wolf and lamb still ravage each other through every cell and fiber of my being. Now I understand why I created protective shields of anger and unknowing, the veils between my shadow and reflection. Without those protections, I'm nakedly aware of my vulnerability, my fear, my hopelessness. Now I see the purpose of the my self-fragmenting and denial, in spite of the costs of a constant sense of loss and defeat, always feeling unseen, a misunderstood stranger. Now I see it was to be mercifully blind to this terrible truth of myself. What the Wizard has led me to is what I wanted least to find. "No,' I beg, "no, I can't survive this wholeness. It's too much! Too Much! My mind can't take it. It'll burst apart at the seams." In a breath I'm lifted away, rising up through the Temple 's roof, soaring up through space, the pentagon-walled town is sinking beneath me. I'm wafted up away from that horrible confrontation with myself. I'm back in the plane. The burly pilot straightens the banked wing, then weirdly spins his head full round to stare at me. "The Inch Square kingdom," he repeats, daimon face grimacing and nods knowingly. He taps the center of his forehead again, madness glinting in his obsidian eyes.
In a blink, I'm back on the black road cutting through the jungle. The trance of recall subsides -the flight, the pilot's eyes, the fearfully awesome Jewel. But the choral invocation, "Jewel of Paradox, praise be, praise be..." rolls on in my mind. The words echo with my footfalls as I stagger along. I stop, intent on bringing me back to myself. Finally, I release a long held gasp. I'm back on this sun-drenched furrow of road, back to this sparsely clouded, turquoise sky, wherever it is, swaying and waving the staff and helmet, as if swimming through a sea of bright mercury. Back to being in no known time, in no known place. Was that a recall or pure hallucinations ? I don't know. The plane ride. The Jewel of Paradox. The pilot's familiar features. Though that anguish stays with me, there's a kind of humor in all this. I've taken the step I sought for so long. I wanted something different, something 'other' to happen in my life. And whether this is real or imagination, adventure or insanity, I know its what I asked for, probably what I needed. I stop and put my helmet back on and straighten my disheveled clothing and pack. I see by the sun that its early afternoon. A few hours passed while I was engulfed in that state. I stretch and shake my body to release, to relax it more completely. I breath long, full breaths, intentionally sensing their flow. Maybe I am nuts, was nuts all along. This whole silly while. Going against the Order, threatening Melissa. Risking everything, my life and what little sanity I might have left, on the basis of Plang's promises. Was his Enlightour story that good. Or was I really so fed up with my life that I'd desperately ride on this one chance for hope. Or am I really trying to end it all? Well, whether I'm soul-seeking or just feeble-minded, daring and curious, I smile grimly to myself. There's no place to back out to now. I look up and down the endless furrow of road, the fathomless seas of jungle to both sides, the sun-burnished sky. Inwardly its like I'm in the darkest night. In frustration, I jab the branch's tip down into the road's heat-softened surface. It bores in, then begins to bend more, more. Taking my force and much of my weight, it holds an impossible arch for a long moment, then snaps near the center, releasing a flood of my feelings. Suppressing my helpless turmoil, I take another deep breath and trudge on. Late afternoon. The sun arches overhead, moving to pour and compress heat into this black trench of road, steamy with the jungle's fetid breath. My eyes sting from sweat running down my face and the glare of mercurial pools glimmering on the asphalt surface. My head aches, burns under the sun's blunt, crushing rays. The helmet only compresses the heat and sticks to my dank hair. My endless inner dialogue for one voice continues. All the if onlys and should haves rerun to staleness. And I'm still walking. The road, the jungle, my bones themselves melt and smolder under the burnished sky. Steam rises from everything, all cooking in the same pot together. Heat and fatigue produce a fluish ache in my bowels that I fight down as long as I can. Finally the nausea and pressure become too much. I squat where I stand, just getting my pants down in time, and spew from both ends at once. I rinse my bottom with some of the canteen water and leaves. I try to imagine this glorious Valley Plang talked about. I try to hold an image of cooling and refreshing rest there. But the fever is still in my gut as I stumble on down the road. The weariness turns to trance. No way to enter the impenetrable jungle for even a respite of shade. Nothing before or behind me but the truncated diamonds of road and sky touching at the unreachable horizons that never arrive, that never leave. The sun stops, suspended in this terrible moment. I stagger on, feet dragging with the weight of sweat-soaked shoes and the clinging soft tar of the road. I feel like ripping everything off and leaving my clothes here in the road to burn to a cinder in the sun's most brutal hour. Seemingly ages later, I see breaks in the jungle's wall where a lightly worn path crosses the road. The spell is broken. The sun moves. Time resumes. With heaviness of soul, I turn to the left leg of the path and enter the opening slit through the jungle. But if it's a way out of that burning limbo, it's a downward way. The escape from direct sunlight does little to make up for the steamy, fetid jungle breath choking me. I force my way down through the path, so contorted that the way ahead always appears to be a dead-end, so narrow that even when walking sideways, the barbs, nettles and branches tear through my drenched clothes and flay my bare skin. I try swinging the mesh belt to open the way more for me. But I dislodge bugs and vermin that fall and burrow in my clothes. My flesh is affliction from soles to scalp. I'm engulfed. I'm no more than an ant crawling through this scant trail of pounded soil that twists between gnarled, ancient trees and over knolls of heavy roots. The primordial surrounds, engulfs, swamps me. The pressure grows intolerable and I have to stop, gasping with claustrophobia. Memories of these last days in Balangpur rush through with the same claustrophobic feel, with the impression now of my being overwhelmed, forced into a vortex of influence and circumstance that could only end in my being here, forcing my way past grasping vine and nettled leaf. I stumble and bounce along, not even pausing when I tumble to the ground with exhaustion for fear of not being able to move again, coaxing myself that rest and solace will all be found at the path's end. Without warning, the path suddenly opens out into a broad, verdant prairie of tall, waving grasses. Abandoning myself in relief, I sink to the ground and feel sleep's embrace before my body fully sinks into the cushioning meadow. I wake to find the sun near setting. Rolling mountains of ochre and purple cloud rise above the cliff of encircling jungle. The air is cooler, and I catch whiffs of musty smoke amidst the delicate scent of the grass I lie in. Though still bone-weary and a mass of bruise and itch, I feel somewhat renewed. Maybe I'm less under the Wizard's drug, of those weird states of mind. I know there's no way of even imagining what's happening to me, and thinking any more about it is absurd. Yet I feel on the verge of some awaiting discovery, just beyond my grasp, just barely eluding me. I sense this bubble surrounding me is stretching too, stretching close to the point of bursting. Yes, when I get someplace to bathe and free myself of the torment of this dirt and wound-festering skin, I feel sure much will come clear by itself. I take stock after my vicious jungle passage. My belt, canteen and right boot are gone. Here is the shoulder bag I still haven't bothered to open and, nearby, the somewhat battered pith-helmet. Standing, I see the foot worn path I followed through the jungle continues on across the circular plain. The tall, wild grass about me writhes like a primordial beast, rippling in waves of dark green and silver. I gather myself and continue walking as the sun-singed grass whips and clings to my legs. Soon, I see a large area barren of grasses up ahead. As I approach, it appears as a large depression in the ground. Now I see it is a deep, smooth edged crater, as if gorged into the earth by a mammoth meteor. The steep wall pitches to a flat floor some hundreds of feet below. All of it is a brownish-grey stone like sandstone. The pit appears to be about a mile long and half a mile wide --three, perhaps four acres in area, and oval, like an eye in the plain. And it seems inhabited. But all is in shadow below, blocked from the lowering sun's light, so all I can make out are vague shapes. Huddled to the right are three rows of tumbling stone huts with thatched roofs, resting against the pit's wall for support. They look like a tumorous growth, vile, perhaps malignant. Across from them, against the pit's wall to my left is a raised field of dirt covering about a fourth of the pit's stone floor. I make out three people in the field, hoeing and digging, their movements slowed, as if diminished by the distance. Between the huts and the field is an open area on the crater's flat floor. At its center stands an enormous tree, its sprawling, heavy branches show centuries of growth. It niggles my memory. I recall the Tree of Life I saw caged in Balangpur. Yes, its the same Tree of Life, but barely recognizable because this one is so alive and flourishing. Plang had said at the center of the Valley I sought would be the Tree of Life. I look down guardedly. Can this really be is the goal he promised. First that vision of the Jewel that nearly drove me mad, now this. I arrive to where the path ends at the pit's edge beneath my feet to join with a sliver-thin ledge etched into the pit's wall, zig-zaging down to the floor. Across the way, I note there is a wavelike groove also crudely incised about midway down the encircling wall. I gaze round at all this and grimly set my teeth. So I've arrived. This squalid, miserable scene is the Promised Land Plang described with such loving embellishment. This is my mission's goal, my haven. How he guided me here, I can't imagine. But as that's the Tree of Life, Pole Center of the Universe, the undulating groove in the wall is sure to be the mystic Spiral. The images that were so wondrous when he described them, now embitter me. In my vision of the Sun of Truth, the way was made for me from one revelation to another into that unutterable luminescence. But here is the edge of the world where I'm guided to find higher support and guidance. Image and reality. Vision and realization. With dismal knowledge and despairing consent, I begin my way down. Following the ramp way, I take some cautions, near vertical steps one way, fingertips clutching at the wall, toes curling as if to grasp. The ledge is so narrow that I have to brace myself before each step on the loose, pebbly soil. Then a hairpin shift and a few stumbling paces the other way, hugging to the dirt of the previous slope till it rises out of reach. Pebbles skidding beneath my shoes. Edges lashing at my hands. Shuffling paces one way, then the other, too frightened to pause because it seems the momentum alone keeps me stable. I am carried down, hurled down toward the pit's floor. And now, again, I have to go through all that I've suffered during this day. For as I descend, the heat increases, and with it returns the enervating exhaustion, the burning bruises and eyes, the same despair. And now this agony blends with the memory of the day's agony, compresses into a culmination that echoes back and forth throughout my life -despair flowing out of this moment into all the past, foredooming into the endless future, overflowing the edges of my life. "You will descend to a paradise," I sourly remember Plang saying. I want to climb back up, to spend the night in the plain, to sleep in the grasses till morning. I want to walk back up that tar road, to go back to Balangpur, to... But I'm not really sure where that road goes. So the momentum of it all carries me, and I stagger and stumble on down into the nether-world. I'm descending down through the levels of the earth, back through ages and epochs, down through the layers of my own being. I manage to stop with some safety on the slightly wider ledge. It's where the Spiral groove in the wall intersects with the ramp way, about midway down. The whole sky has burst into full sunset across the encompassing frame of the pit's edge. Long flames of gold and dusky blood pour through the mountainous clouds. Below in the thickening dark, small fires are being lit. I'm aware of the foul smell of musty animals, acrid excrement, a dark, heavy stench of long unwashed flesh and dusty earth. The last of the workers leave the fields, and I hear strange animal meowing and chittering sounds coming from the pens nearby. Some people are walking around the Tree carrying lit tapirs. I think of calling out to them, to come help my way. But I decide it might worsen things by having them unable to help and then left with nothing to do but stare at me in my tortuous descent. Seeming hours later, I'm at the crater's floor. I crouch to rest, my back against the ramp way, gasping and sweat-drenched, though the night air is turning cool. The last tints of rose and pale orange fade as the night flushes up and congeals. The new crescent of moon is caught at the pit's rim as it follows the sun, then slides on in a breath. Stars appear. Clear edged shadows from the bonfires show me the rows of lopsided huts, the fields . And all around me, enclosing like some huge vessel, the stark encircling wall, the sky set down to seal me in, to trap me here below. Weary, disheartened, soaked through and through with layers of pain, dissolved by it down to the bone, I wait, huddled at this last step, my face cupped in my feverish, sweating hands. I listen to the creatures' strange meowling barks and watch the last person left by the field call and gather them to him, closing them up in a pen of branches. At closer look, with their protruding front teeth and thin, hairless tails, my first impressions of their being like overgrown rodents wasn't far off, but there is something of the lemur there too, in their soft, almost tender expressions and hand-like paws. Large, saucer eyes and black leathery noses give them a sad clown look. The man, finished with his task, stares at the pen with obvious satisfaction. Then, on his way across to the hut compound, now active with talk and cooking, he comes in my direction. When he notices me, he stops dead in his tracks, slaps his hands to his thighs and burst into the high-adenoid laugh I know so well. "Here he is. Here he's come for true," he calls and shrieks for joy. "Like the Dreamer has said. The New Born is come." "My amusement stops in shock when I recognize, beneath the tattered rags, encrusted grime, slack grinning mouth and half-focused eyes, that its M. Tussaud. Skeletonly thin, his arms and legs flaying at odd angles in his excitement, but there's no doubt, its him. He draws his face close to mine, wagging his head in silly mirth. "M. Tussaud, what in hell...?" This is so totally bizarre, I don't know what to ask first. He continues shouting out towards the huts, "He's come. How nice, how nice. Oh, yes," interspersed with a high, inane screeching "Oh yes," he exclaims to me, "the Dreamer knew you would come when the Night-Light will be new. Ahhh, he can find out anything in Dream Time." He cackles and nearly falls over with excitement. I remember his courtly elegance, his refinement. Now his skin is dark- grained, weathered. His costume is two wide triangles of tattered material woven from course twine. One tied across his chest over a shoulder. The other is folded across his waist above a hip. They don't cover much. These rags, as well as his own person, are filthy beyond belief, infested with moving specks I try to ignore, all giving off a foul, rancid stink. His hair is grown out. Matted black strands reach to his shoulders. The bright, almost luminous expression he wore in Balangpur now is eclipsed by the look of a good-natured mental defective. His thick triangle of a nose, sparse eyebrows, and small, widely spaced eyes with their oriental folds all seem in complete disarray on his hairless face. He makes great efforts to keep his upper lip down over his badly-formed, decayed teeth, which I don't recall. But he's unable to resist the grin that draws his lips wide apart to reveal his goat-like gums. "And you are lucky to come for Night-Feast," he croons at me, flapping his arms with loose wrists. "I will guide you to the Dreamer's home. But if you want, first you can meet my lovely ubus." He pokes his chin towards the animal pen and the yipping creatures. "M. Tussaud," I splutter with awkward disbelief. I'm surprised... I mean I never expected to find you.." He gazes back at me with soft, wide-eyed interest. No recognition, no shift in his grin as empty as one painted on a dummy's face. The character of the man is totally changed, as if the same body is inhabited by an opposite type of person. Either he's an incredibly convincing actor, or his character has actually been altered some way, with drugs or hypnosis. His macabre presence here awakens more inexplicable doubts in my exhausted mind. If this isn't madness or some charade, it must be a trap of some kind. "Coming to Night-Feast now? Come on. Come on," he pleads, patting his belly. I stare blankly at him. It's beyond me, way beyond my figuring out. Maybe this Enlightour -teaching, altered reality, whatever it might be- maybe it goes beyond anything I might have imagined about it. I'm stunned. I draw a blank. Maybe a meal and a wash-up and a good night's sleep will help my perspective. Maybe by then the drug will have completely worn off. M. Tussaud beckons with his head to follow. I nod in agreement and leave the ledge I've been perched on. He grins even more, blinking and wagging in pleasure. "To the Dreamer's house," he urges with a flapping hand. He turns around, precariously, as if on a tight rope, and staggers off towards the huts. I bewilderedly follow without resistance, desiring only to take care of my bodily needs. As I stumble along, there's a sense of relief from the clench in my gut. I sense there are no real survival dangers here. Sanity issues, maybe. But I've found people, not headhunters, though maybe madmen. So far nothing more threatening than a long taxing jungle walk, some drug induced fantasies. Maybe some impressive acting... I stare at M. Tussaud's twitching walk beside me. I do hope that once things are in perspective, all this will be easily explained. Twenty or thirty people appear in and about the hut area, all resembling M. Tussaud in costume and self-care. Most are involved in preparing a meal. Some look to be family groups, some couples, a few people alone. Few take notice as we pass, as if a stranger's appearance isn't unusual, and none, on seeing me shows anything stronger than mild curiosity. It's growing cold as the night deepens. The crater feel like a huge dark hand about me, mounted by the star filled sky. I feel under heavy pressure. As we turn into a lane between rows of huts, the smells grow fearsome. Soured sweat on unwashed bodies, smoke from questionable fuels, the taint of putrefying food. The small, windowless hovels' walls are low, leaning and staggering, made of rough stones, piled and mortared with mud and pebbles. Little circular openings serve as doorways. Some have a sheet of bark-fabric over the opening. Many do not and appear abandoned. In most of the others there are fires in pits in the middle of the huts' stone floors. Acrid smoke finds its way up through the roofs, thatched with jungle fronds. M. Tussaud stops before a hut with an ancient, elaborately stained door curtain. With visible effort he gathers his forces, neck tendons taut and eyes bulging. "Dreeeamer. Dreeeamer," he bellows over and over till it echoes off the pit's walls, reverberating torrents of sound. I wait, frozen in place. "I am here! I am here!" an irritated man answers from the hut. "I...am...here." It is Plang, of course, though I've never heard that gruff, petulant tone in his voice before. M. Tussaud bends to hold back the door-curtain and, face and eyes contorting with mad glee, he bids me enter. "He is come, as you told. Are you happy, Dreamer? Are you happy, are you?" he continues to blather. I bow low and enter. The hut's thick stench overpowers me, and I sink to the floor. An unpleasant atmosphere of darkness and smoke. Thick, age-old grime and soot covers all the walls. "Yes, yes, Turo. I am happy," the old man's moans. In the glow of the small fire, I see a shape slowly unfold from a corner of the far wall. Without fully unfolding, the stooped figure draws near. The costume party is complete. "Dreamer, sir, here he is," M. Tussaud says, his voice raining with wonder. "The New Born is here!" "Plang. What the hell..!" I blurt out again. I'm relieved, even comforted to find him here, but startled at the incredible change in his looks as well as his manner. I feel an uneasy rush up my chest as I wonder how much time has past since our last meeting. His skin is deeply wrinkled, caked with filth but the tattooing on his face and hands is very clear. He's completely toothless, his lower jaw caved up into his matted beard. His bright simian eyes seem sunken deeper. Shoulder length gray hair scraggles down from around his bald pate. He wears triangles of rag similar to M. Tussaud's over his sagging body, though he sports a brightly-colored headband. I'm struck by the wonderfully woven lightening bolt woven into it. He approaches, folds his arms at his chest, then opens them wide in that familiar gesture of greeting and leave-taking. In a slow, whiny singsong, as empty of genuine feeling as his chant over me in Victoria Hall had been full, he pipes: "Welcome, oh weary seeker," his mouth and eyebrows jangling as if connected to the same string. "Welcome to that peace that is beyond leaving. It does not matter that you go towards what seems like an ending. Keep certain in your heart that it is a miraculous beginning, then it will be. First prepare your heart." "Listen, Plang," I say, feeling an approaching release for my anger and frustration. "So far the tricks haven't been that spectacular -a psychedelic of some kind, that terrible jungle walk, and now this low-budget garbage pit. Not quite enough to convince me that I've come to Never-Never Land or found your mythic Valley. I'll say it's been a provocative day, but right now I'll settle for a bath and a place to sleep." He responds with a smirk of annoyance at being interrupted, then continues on, rotely and without interest. His cheeks loosely flap between his scissoring jaws.
"You think that you have wandered, but it is not so. Not once did you falter that was without purpose. No doubt was fruitless, no conflict was without goal. Flame driven and bliss drawn, you have arrived."
His same little invocation of welcome finished, he theatrically spits in each hand, long and filthy nailed, smacks them together and starts reaching them towards me. I raise my hands to motion him off, just not ready for any of that. Though I'm irritated, I find the scene, somehow, perversely amusing as he repeats the same words I left Balangpur with. "Maybe I'm a little more impatient or demanding than most of your clients on these Enlightours," I start with a smile that drops when he refuses to return it, "but I've got a lot more at stake that just a chance to experience some mystifications you've got for hire." I pause for a moment. Then, still feeling wound up and offended, I continue." And I certainly don't need adventure enough to force myself into going along with any silly games. So please, don't act like you don't know me or what I'm on about. I'll keep an open, receptive mind, but let's play it straight!" We stand silently face to face, mine turned down, his craned back. I breath deep and slow, to promote some calm. The old man wheezes, making odd scratching sounds in his throat. Dropping the pose of haughty disdain he's worn since beginning his little oration, he smiles, his lips dropping back into a wide soft, gum-revealing crescent. His eyes disappear into the web of puckers and dark creases. He shrugs and spreads his hands before me with care. "Most of what you say confuses me. You have just come down out of the darkness. No doubt it is bewildering for you. But see, you have answered my call. So, you need have no doubts. All will be well. What do you call yourself? A name. Do you prefer a title?" "My name is Jason," I answer with some bite in my voice at this humiliating questioning. "Jason Bardow." "Good. Yason is a good name. though later you may want a different one. Yason, you are now one of the Imagos. You have come well." His put-on sweet and pacifying smile and tone does little to take the edge off my irate confusion. "What do you mean, your call?" I snap. "You sent me here, Plang, probably had me carried most of the way." "No," he answers patiently. "I called you. Through my Dreaming." "Who am I supposed to think that was in Balangpur that looked just like you. You gave me that potion, then sent me off with the same words you just greeted me with. Don't you think you could afford to hire a few more people so you all wouldn't have to play double roles and cause these complications?" In cautious, calming tones, he says, "I am the Dreamer in this place. I know the place you come from as I go there in dreams. And sometimes when I climb the Tree. But I have never left the Valley." He pauses and smiles. "None of us here ever leave." I'm convinced the old man doesn't think he is lying. Or perhaps, is some manner beyond my comprehension, in his Wizard self, he isn't lying. I react defensively and bluster out, "I don't believe what you're saying!" "You don't have to believe, Yason." "I don't even want to hear it." "It only matters that it is said," he explains gently. He hobbles around me to leave the hut with a rolling, rheumatic step that I don't remember. "I'm sure the way was long and difficult for you. It always seems to be. Just now, more important than finding agreement between us, you must need drink for your wanting throat, food for your empty belly, and a stone to lay your head on when sleep takes you." I bow out the doorway and follow him outside to where the air is refreshingly cooler with less intense smells. I have no doubt about my most pressing need. "I'd very much like to wash," I plead to him. My skin prickles at the tempting thought of it. "Yes, certainly. We can talk about all that while we eat. My granddaughter must have the Night Feast ready by now," he assures, evasively. He takes me strongly by an elbow, leans on me and maneuvers me a few huts down. Firelight dances behind a plainer, more tattered door-curtain.
Click on the chapters from the list on top left. Copyright Nathaniel Schwartz 2010 |
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