The Last Gift of the Master Artists, page 15
Wise heads wondered if the people, encompassed by invisible tragic fears, did not feel it necessary to find something to laugh at, to relieve themselves of the weight of foreboding. Ridicule seemed a way of dealing with a larger, oppressive bewilderment. It seemed the hysterical laughter of the doomed.
58
THE RIDICULE PASSED, but the consternation remained.
They had expected a clear healing image, and had placed great hopes on the maiden. They hoped that she might be their eyes till sight returned.
Instead she had given them this ambiguous image. There were no princes in the tribe. What had this to do with them? they asked, infuriated.
She was startled by the fury, taken aback by the ridicule, the incomprehension. She was shocked by the abuse and the threats of violence, amazed at how quickly she became an outcast, shunned and denounced.
Her talent was declared worthless, her father’s reputation fraudulent. There was this sudden desire to demonise her family. At the same time there was an increased fascination in them.
All this had been touched off by the simple image of a dying prince.
She was caught between two absurdities, one public, the other private.
59
THROUGH ALL THIS her father was silent. He made his art with his usual serenity.
He appeared not to register that anything unusual was going on. He didn’t seem to notice the fury directed at his family.
He went about his business as though he lived in a separate realm. In that realm the significance of events was radically different from that of the real world.
He was invincible. This strengthened his mystique, and magnified the power around him.
When his daughter came to him about it all, he smiled at her gently. With mild eyes, he said:
‘The moment people are unjust to you, they have lost the fight. The moment they attack you, they have lost the war. The moment they try to humiliate you, invalidate you, or destroy you, that moment they have lost the truth. Then they lose all spiritual protection. That moment they surrender power and authority to you, but they do not know it.’
‘Is this true, father?’
‘It is one of the laws of life.’
‘But sometimes people attack and win.’
‘Only for a short time. In the long run they lose. It’s just that the loss comes about in a roundabout way and they don’t make any connection between their injustice and their eventual failure.’
‘But sometimes they are unjust and the injustice stays.’
‘It only seems that way. Justice takes its time. Its power is unfailing. No one who is unjust ever wins. In the end they lose.’
‘But father, sometimes they succeed and people are destroyed.’
‘A bigger destruction always comes upon the destroyers. But it takes a thousand mysterious forms. No one ever escapes the injustice of their destruction of others, even if it takes a thousand years.’
The maiden became thoughtful.
‘The moment people try to hurt or bully or disgrace you, that moment they have lost the true magic of life. Without knowing it they pass the magic to you. Their end is certain. Their defeat is inevitable. The rest is time’s work.’
‘Is this really so, father?’
‘It is. Carry on your work. Be serene. Follow your conscience, and have no fear. The laws that operate in the world are invisible laws. But they are greater than the force of nations. You can depend on these laws.’
‘Can you, father?’
‘Yes, my daughter. Some people kill a little thing and invite a mighty storm on their heads that wipes them out. Take pity on those who try to destroy you. Try to forgive them, for what they call down upon themselves is more terrible.’
The father paused. Then the tone of his voice changed. It became faraway and strange and sorrowful.
‘Perhaps it’s better to endure their stupidity than to let a whole people be wiped out. Sometimes, for their own good, it’s better to fight them.’
‘Why?’
‘Better to fight them and stop a greater and more terrible army doing the fighting for you. Sometimes, when you fight them, you do it out of pity, and even out of kindness.’
‘That sounds strange.’
‘I know. But it’s true, and so, for now, go about your business. Let’s see what time brings.’
*
Much comforted, she went about her business. Like some flowers, some babies, she had an air of innocent invincibility, as if she knew that she could and could not be destroyed. As if she knew some simple secret of eternity. A new smile appeared on her face.
60
ON THE NIGHT of interpretations the masters gathered to contemplate any signs that had come to them from the innumerable agencies of the oracle.
These signs could be the words of a madman or child. It could be words overheard somewhere or the last words of a dying man or woman. It might be a phrase heard in thunder, or the roar of an animal in the forest. Incalculable were the forms of the oracle’s speech.
They came together to tease out the meanings of new parables, paradoxes, stories, songs, or inexplicable sayings. They also gathered to interpret any work of art that perplexed or would not yield easy revelation.
For them the desire to understand a work of art was often a presumption. It got in the way of seeing. For them seeing was endless.
They believed that once a work was thought to be understood its magic was dimmed in the person who thought they understood. Such people become closed to the light of the work, closed to its power for regeneration.
In this way the world is diminished a little, a source of light hidden.
The masters sought therefore only to be open. They made themselves open to the work’s secrets, its language, its inspiration, its guidance.
61
NO ONE MISSED the night of interpretations. Not even if they were ill. Even the dying were known to have attended. It was considered greatly auspicious to be there on that night. It was considered a high honour to die on a night of interpretations, for it was believed that then the soul went straight to the happy land of the ancestors.
On this night the masters convened to contemplate the image of the dying prince. The wiser ones among them had stayed above the ridicule. They had sent the maiden signs of support. The masters knew there could be no hasty response to a work that had come from one newly born in initiation.
The masters knew they had to look deeper into the phenomenon. They had to wait till the work spoke, or till the world gave it one of its unexpected meanings.
On this night they waited for the work to speak, but it didn’t. They pondered its meaning. They could find none. Or they found too many.
Was the land a dying prince? Was their way in danger? Had they lost their way under the sun? Was their freedom dying and they couldn’t see it? Was their conscience perishing and they did not know it? Was the spirit of the tribe in peril? Was their art fading?
The masters were baffled and concerned. The more they probed, the more baffled and concerned they became.
But the work itself did not speak. The work itself said nothing.
62
MEANWHILE THE SUITORS persisted in competing for the maiden’s attention. Meanwhile the Mamba redoubled his campaign of rumour and seduction. Meanwhile the maiden became more obsessed with the enigma of the dying prince. She didn’t eat and roamed the forest for long hours and soon fell ill again.
It was feared that her sculpture was exercising undue magical influence on her and that she was dying with the dying prince. She was falling under the spell of her own creation and nothing could be done about it.
It was thought that she had to go through this condition if she was to emerge as a greater artist. She had to develop psychic protection against the forces of her own mind. She had to acquire an immunity to the laws of art as it affects its creator.
For the second time in her life the maiden surrendered to death. She became ill with her own mystery and died for seven days.
63
SHE DID NOT die as such, but she did not live. She was profoundly ill, yet in strangely good health. Lean and languid, an ineluctable yearning occupied her days. She longed for an impossible, indefinable condition. She yearned for her original homeland in a faraway constellation, where life had been unimaginably beautiful.
To parents and suitors she seemed detached. Broken sentences fell from her lips. She spoke only of a love beyond reason, a love sweeter than madness. Or was it a madness sweeter than love?
She slept most of the time. She slept like a calf, wherever sleep took her. If it came upon her near the river, she would curl up on the wet bank and sleep. If it crept upon her in the marketplace, she would arrange herself on bales of cloth, on heaps of oranges, and sleep the sleep of the innocent. It was as if she had been put under a spell.
64
SOMETIMES, IN HER father’s workshop, she would be listening to the tale his hammer told as it beat upon the chisel. She would listen to the dream being wrought from the resistant wood. Sometimes she would curl up among the masks and images. The images were of beings never seen on earth, faces from remote galaxies. She would drift off to sleep listening to tales being told across the vast spaces, carried by waves of light that were everywhere.
She would fall asleep in her father’s workshop and wake up in the marketplace. She could drop off to sleep at the foot of the goddess or in the alcove of the shrine and wake in her mother’s kitchen, her head on her lap, listening to stories from ancient times. Stories of lost secrets from a fabled land beneath the sea.
She would fall asleep as her mother plaited her hair, and wake to find a bucket balanced on her head as she returned from the river, with water to purify the goddess on the day of celebrations.
Whenever she slept, she dreamt of the dying prince, who gazed at her and never spoke.
65
THEN ONE DAY, in her dream, the dying prince sat up and stared at her. He looked at her as if she were the first flower he had ever seen. It was as if he were trying to see the flower properly, to understand what about it so moved him.
He stared at her as at a work of art that was beyond understanding. She bore his gaze for a long time, waiting.
Then it occurred to her that it was she who must speak. He was her creation. If the creator did not speak, how could the creation? Her speech would free him into speech. She had to invest the dream with life. For too long she had been mute. What a failure in a creator, she thought. If the creation was to have the vitality of the creator then its soul must be awoken with love.
The prince had sat up. He was looking at her simply. She realised that she must seem the most impenetrable mystery to him, because of her silence. Unless she spoke, the prince would remain in his unknown condition. He would be unconnected to her, the sole focus of his being. He would have nothing to say to her. And she would never know herself through the eyes of another. She would remain a mystery to herself.
She realised that she needed the prince more than the prince needed her. Her reality depended on being known and loved by another. If the prince did not speak, she might cease to exist.
Then she understood his stare. He was looking at her with love. A love without suffering, without story. A love that did not know itself. The love of a pure thing that had not lived.
That was what she saw in the prince’s eyes. The purity would have to be broken if the prince was ever to speak or be free. He must be free to love her not as her creation, but out of his own necessity. He must be free to love her as himself. He must be awoken from his enchantment.
Then the maiden, in her dream, spoke to the dying prince.
‘Who are you?’ she asked.
‘I am that which was and now am.’
‘What is your name?’
‘My name is written in your tears.’
She realised then that she had tears in her eyes.
‘Why are you dying?’
‘Because I’m not living.’
‘Why are you not living?’
‘Because I don’t know what love is.’
‘Do you know what love is now?’
‘Yes.’
‘What is love?’
‘Love is life.’
‘You talk back and forth.’
‘It is back and forth.’
‘Why are you a prince?’
‘Because I’m the son of a king.’
‘Who is the king?’
‘The king is the king.’
‘What is he king of?’
‘A kingdom.’
She paused and stared thoughtfully at him. The prince gazed back at her.
‘Is it a kingdom of heaven or earth?’
‘What is the difference?’
‘Am I of that kingdom?’
‘Yes.’
‘How can I be? I made you.’
‘Did you make me or discover me?’
‘What’s the difference?’
‘Sometimes we make what we discover. Sometimes we discover what we make.’
The maiden was perplexed. Then she had a strange notion.
‘Am I dying too?’
‘You can only make what you are.’
‘So I am dying?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Why am I dying?’
‘For the same reason I’m not living.’
It was like catching a glimpse of herself in the clear mirror of a lake and finding she did not look the way she thought. This was going to take some time to get used to.
That was when it occurred to her that she must delay her life. She must delay till she knew who she was, till she gained some wisdom and self-knowledge. Till she learnt how to live.
She was not going to make any hasty choices about who to marry. She was going to take life slowly. Take time to learn.
The prince was silent again, looking at her with candour and simplicity. In the depth of her dream she found peace.
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AFTERWARDS SHE BEGAN a slow recovery. She slept less and went about in the village more. She became calm and humble and less strange.
She listened to everything. It was as if whatever life had to tell her would be told her in between the sound of things, in the least expected ways.
She became attentive. She was as attentive and aware as she had previously been distracted and unaware. There was much she didn’t see because she was trying to see. She wore herself out with her intensity. She couldn’t sustain it long and she became alert and quiet. She was waiting for life to teach her.
Her father saw all these changes with an inward smile. Her mother fretted.
‘We mothers are built this way,’ she said to her husband. ‘To worry even when we know.’
The suitors were exasperated by the maiden’s delay. One by one they fell away. Till there were only six suitors left.
67
TIME PASSED SLOWLY. The river imperceptibly changed its course. The tribe imperceptibly changed its ways. It quietly lost its centre. No longer did it make art as though it were the most essential thing in the world.
People died and were born. The gods perished silently and no one saw it happen. The world impinged on the land and no one saw the shadows approaching in the distance, like the evening.
Lost in its dream. The land was lost in its dream. Lost in its rituals, its cruelties, its superstitions.
It was lost in its ancient ways. Lost in its power, its wickedness, its enchantments. It did not hear the music of the world outside.
Time passed slowly, as in a dream where things are changing. The dreamer is unaware and yet alert. They are asleep and yet awake. They see what is coming and still are blind to what they see. They are deaf to their own prophecies. It is as if they are cursed not to know that they are cursed, blessed not to know they are blessed.
68
TIME DRIFTED SLOWLY down the dreaming way. And many things were forgotten even while they lived.
The image of a dying prince was forgotten. The scandals were forgotten. Because it got worse, and therefore imperceptible, the unease was forgotten. Rumours were forgotten. Suitors were forgotten. Purpose was forgotten. The rituals were dimly remembered. The masters slowly succumbed to oblivion. Their existence became a rumour of conspiracies, of sinister secret societies. The shrines were unremembered.
All this happened in the space of a dream. It happened in no time at all, or in the time it takes for a people to change and be lost. Then one day, inexplicably, they vanish off the face of the earth. As if they had never existed. As if they had been taken away and repositioned in another realm, in another constellation.
Then something unusual came to pass.
69
ON A CLEAR day on which nothing unusual happened, this happened. Mysterious laughter was heard throughout the land.
It was an immense laughter, booming, inexplicable, deep, happy, sad, sublime, light, mocking, ironic, sane, and wise.
Everyone in the tribe heard it in their dreams. They heard it when they were absorbed in their work. They heard it in their passionate moments. They heard it in their silences. The masters heard it in their meditations. The river and the birds and the trees heard it. Children and babies heard it with a special clarity. The deaf and the dumb and the blind and the crippled and the sick heard it. The dying heard it, and it aided their peaceful deaths. Criminals heard it and shivered. The evil ones heard it and trembled. The Mamba heard it and felt a chill come over him that presaged the dissolution of his powers. The suitors heard it. The shrines heard it and the unknown priestesses within echoed the laughter.
The maiden heard it and fell into a trance. Her father heard it and was inspired to create one final work of sculpture, after which he would sculpt no more. Her mother heard it and was visited by a prophecy concerning the future of the race, which she was forbidden to communicate.
