Astonishing the Gods (2 page)

He came to the wonderful avenue of mirrors. The housefronts, the castle facades, the bridges, the villas, the basilicas, were all made of mirrors. The mysterious loggias where statues stared at him with an almost palpable longing and lust were also made of mirrors. They all reflected themselves into an oddly terrifying infinity. When he saw how all things multiplied everything else, multiplying him wherever he looked, he experienced the strangest sensation. It was a sense of the happiness he must have known before birth, a happiness that he suspected was his eternal birthright. It reminded him obliquely of the joy he experienced when he first saw a rainbow. And while he lingered in that mood he noticed a rainbow gradually materialise over the golden dome of the silent church. The rainbow, reflected in all the mirrors of the castles and housefronts, had clear colours of such astonishing beauty, complementing the calm radiance of the moon, that he found himself saying:

‘You must be masters of the art of happiness.'

The voice guiding him laughed a little. Then fell silent. Then said:

‘We are masters of the art of transcendence. We are masters of suffering. I'd appreciate it if you never mention the word happiness on this island again.'

The avenue of mirrors seemed to go on forever. As he went along, shivering in the silver facades, he felt himself becoming more insubstantial, less real. He seemed to be losing his identity to the mirrors. He felt as if the heaviest and least important parts of him were dissolving in the effulgent lights. At the same time he felt himself becoming more peaceful, less questing, and freer from anxieties. He would normally have been quite afraid to lose such a familiar part of himself as his anxieties. But he was much too preoccupied with the brilliance of the lights. He was fascinated by the way they changed, the way they flared in red and gold. He was mesmerised by the gyrating spectacle of an infinity of perfect realms, perfect interiors, pure landscapes of joy, and the atmosphere of bliss that dwelt in the shining depths of the mirrors.

To his astonishment, as he looked deeper into the mirrors, as into the depths of a magical lake, he saw beautiful women playing mandolins, reading illuminated books, singing silently in chorus, reciting words that turned into radiant colours, dancing naked on lacquered floors. White and yellow birds circled them overhead in the spacious air of their palaces made from moonlight.

He was about to speak when another wonderful sight caught his eyes. He turned and beheld, in another mirror, a magnificent garden in which flowers bathed in a celestial glow. As he watched, entranced, a white unicorn with an emerald horn trotted past gracefully, scattering enchanted beams of beatification.

Further on, in the blue mirrors fronting the Great Basilica of Truth, he saw a green lake. In the middle of the emerald lake, focal point of all the magic lights, was the forgotten sword of Justice. Its blade was of incorruptible gold, and it pointed to the illuminated heavens, dazzling the eye with its divine purity.

‘I understand nothing,' he said.

He hadn't recovered from the wonders he had just seen. He never would.

‘Retain your bewilderment,' said the voice, his guide. ‘Your bewilderment will serve you well.'

‘But what do all these things mean?'

‘What do you mean by mean?'

‘Who are the beautiful women? What does that wonderful unicorn signify? What is the sword?'

The voice said:

‘You will meet the women later, the unicorn is seen only by those who can see it, and the sword is the sword.'

‘I still don't understand.'

‘Things are what they are. That is their power. They are all the things we think they are, all the things we sense they are, and more. They are themselves. If they meant something they would be less. Whatever you see is your personal wealth and paradise. You're lucky if you can see wonderful things. Some people who have been here see only infernal things. What you see is what you are, or what you will become. Many of our greatest men and women have been here for hundreds of years and have never seen the unicorn. You have just arrived and you have seen it.'

The voice paused. Then after a while, with a little amused laughter, he said:

‘The council will be delighted by this. The royal astrologers who predicted this moment will be overjoyed. Without knowing it, we have been awaiting your arrival for a long time. If you survive what is to come, if you make it to the great convocation, it is possible that you are the one who will initiate the new cycle of the Invisibles.'

Towards the end of the street he saw angels taking flight in the last mirrors. They had rainbow wings. The upward rush of their lights, their mighty glowing presence, terrified him and almost made his heart stop. His terror momentarily blinded him. It was a long while before he could breathe normally again and resume his journey into the island.

After the flight of the angels, he did not feel quite the same. He wasn't sure what had changed, but he felt as if he were at an angle inside himself. The sudden sight of the angels seemed to have twisted his neck in some obscure way. Besides, after their heavenly brilliance had passed, the world seemed a little darker.

He had entered another marvellous street. The moonlight made the chessboard universe quiver. At first, as he went down the street, he noticed huge white and silver forms looming high up in the air. He noticed the great extensions of their dazzling and partially concealed forms. They filled him with an unaccountably holy terror. The forms, alive in a way that only the most awesome things are alive, encompassed him with their total knowledge of his being. As he passed under them, he became even lighter. He felt himself changing into light.

The huge white forms above were recomposing him as he passed beneath their blinding radiance. They transformed him subtly. They re-ordered his being. Into the holes that terror had opened in him, they seemed to pour a dizzying understanding of all the nameless things he would need to know when he would need to know them.

It struck him that he was being filled to bursting with future knowledge and with joy enough to last all the darkness that was to come. He had no way of explaining it, but as he passed beneath the vast wings of the brilliant forms – radiating light like a new star – he seemed to feel an understanding of things before his time, beyond his time, beyond his life and quest, an understanding that flowed through from all the past and future ages.

As he went he heard strange whisperings within him, as if many voices in code were reciting, gently, into his heart and spirit, all the secret laws of known and unknown universes.

He had always thought himself invisible. He had always thought that invisibility was the worst thing that could befall a person or a people. But as he went under the beautiful power of the radiant wings hovering between earth and star, it occurred to him that he was becoming more invisible than he had ever known before, more invisible than he ever suspected was possible.

It frightened him that there were gradations of invisibility, gradations and depths. His mind spun in the pure horror of this notion. He felt himself sinking into those depths as he passed beneath the charged immanent wings. And as he sank deeper into new invisibilities he had a sudden monstrous suspicion of the endlessness of it, the bottomlessness of it, till he could imagine a stage of invisibility that shaded into the eternal, the infinite.

At that point his mind plunged into total darkness. He found himself spinning in that darkness. Then he felt himself falling, falling away from himself, falling without end into a darkness that got deeper and more unbearable. The only thing he could do to rescue himself from the sheer terror of his internal abyss was to scream. He screamed in absolute horror of becoming more invisible than he already was. So loud and so piercingly did he scream that the entire island seemed to resound with it. After a while he wasn't sure if it was him or if it was the universe that was screaming. He felt himself falling through layers of the world's unheard agony.

And when he stopped screaming, he stopped falling. And when he opened his eyes he found himself bathed in the most splendid black starlight. And up above, like a forgotten god of the mountains, a towering colossus made of primal light, was the startling presence of the great archangel of invisibility.

One moment she was there; the next moment she was gone. Her presence was so brief that it seemed a lightning flash of eternity had passed through him. When the great archangel disappeared, leaving a glorious intensity of lights in the giant spaces she had occupied, with her wing span alone seeming to cover the entire island, he felt that he too had become completely insubstantial, and mightier. He was not sure how, or in what way.

‘I don't understand anything at all,' he said to the wind.

‘Don't try to understand,' the voice, his guide, said to him. ‘Understanding comes beyond trying. It comes from beyond.'

‘Beyond where?'

The voice stayed silent.

He was still wondering about the places beyond, from which understanding comes, when he found himself at the foot of a fabulous bridge. The bridge, completely suspended in the air, held up by nothing that he could see, was a dazzling construct, composed entirely of mist. He was bewildered by the insubstantiality of the bridge. It too seemed to be made of light, of air, of feelings. He was afraid to step on it lest he would plunge down below.

‘What holds up the bridge?' he asked his guide.

‘Only the person crossing it,' came the reply.

‘You mean that if I am to cross the bridge I must at the same time hold it up, keep it suspended?'

‘Yes.'

‘But how can I do both at the same time?'

‘If you want to cross over you must. There is no other way.'

‘And what lies below? I mean, if I should fail to hold it up while crossing what would I fall into? I ask because I do not see any water underneath.'

‘There is no water underneath.'

‘What is there underneath then?'

‘Only those who fall know. And they have never returned to tell anyone else. We have our legend about what lies below, but the legend takes the form of a riddle which you must answer before you can be admitted into the palace.'

‘So am I to make this crossing alone?'

‘Yes.'

‘And what about you?'

‘I will be waiting for you on the other side.'

‘But how will you get over without crossing?'

‘That is something you can learn if you have crossed the bridge once. Not everyone learns it, of course. And many have forgotten; and because of that they have perished. On this island of ours learning what you know is something you have to do every day, and every moment.'

‘In the places where I have been, forgetting is what you do every day.'

‘Too much forgetting led to our great suffering. We always have to relearn here.'

‘I have noticed also that I have grown heavier.'

‘On our island heavier is lighter.'

‘But if I am heavy will the bridge bear me?'

‘If you can bear yourself, the bridge too can bear you.'

‘And I must cross this bridge?'

‘Yes, you must cross the bridge.'

‘And if I do not cross?'

‘You will be nowhere. In fact, you will be worse than nowhere. Everything around you will slowly disappear. Soon you will find yourself in an empty space. Then you will stiffen. You will lose all life. You will become the image of what you essentially are. Then, not long afterwards, half dead and half alive, unable to breathe and unable to die, you will become the statue of your worst and weakest self. In the morning, you will be collected by the garbage men and set up in the negative spaces of the city as another reminder to the inhabitants of the perils of failing to become what they can become. At night you will dream that you can move, and you will wander about in your own inferno, muttering strange words to those too idle to do anything else but listen. You will aid the island by becoming, at night, one of the negative dreams that test and tempt those who might receive prizes from the Academy of Integrity. I assure you, it is better to try to cross that bridge and fail, than to not try at all.'

Not long afterwards, he became aware that his guide had gone. The bridge was now invisible. He found himself looking into an unfathomable abyss.

He stood at the foot of the invisible bridge, with Time howling around him. He was filled with dread. He could see nothing beyond the abyss. He couldn't even see the other side of the bridge. He could no longer imagine his destination.

As he stood there, transfixed by the impossibility of going back or moving forward, he became aware that things were disappearing around him. An inscrutable mist seemed to be effacing the glass cupolas, the golden spires, the palace of mirrors, and the splendid marble facades of the island's incomparable streets. The mist seemed to be wiping out the divine forms which he had glimpsed in the moonlit air. As the mist effaced the colonnades and the marvellous ruins, the glowing hills and the chessboard universe, he realised to his horror that even the road behind him was becoming nothingness.

Time howled from the abyss as the creeping emptiness slowly enveloped the visible world. The emptiness began to devour even the sounds in the air and the mirages that his eyes had conjured in the mist.

‘I did not come from nothing, and I will not die in nothing,' he said to himself.

But nothingness was blooming all about him in his unwillingness to cross the invisible bridge. Soon the empty spaces creeping towards him became a sort of white wind. The white wind blew away the foundations of the street, blew away the cypress trees, and even the gaps between things, upon which he had fixed his gaze, in the vain hope that while things disappeared the gaps between them would remain.

‘I will not die in nothing,' he said again, as he watched the world slide away from him into an avalanche of invisibility.