60.

Entering Truth

One afternoon as grapes were ripening and I stood in my field, I heard death fingering his lyre among the wheat. Eight was the number of his song, eight gods, one note dividing, harmony returning. I laid aside my work, gathering what I knew and loved. Clothed in the skin of a priest, I hurried toward light bearing the light within. Toward the unknown world I bore the world I had known. Then came the floods, the wind storms and the fire, and the solid earth shook itself into a thousand pieces. All I thought was mine was driven from me. I entered darkness. I entered stone. Naked, I entered truth. No fragrant cedar tree grew there. Acacia trees sent forth no shoots. No figs ripened, no honey dripped from the trees, no fragrant boughs soothed. Neither herbs nor grasses clung to the ground. I was awed, afraid to enter the place of hidden things. Without eyes or ears or tongue or flesh, I was nothing, possessing nothing. I came across the desert through shifting sands, driving wind and mirage to meet my god.

With me stood a thousand others called from their fields, from their kilns, from their boats, their lovers' arms. Some cowered, some hid in the mask of their hands. Others swooned. They clung to each other trembling. I raised my arms and spoke with the night. Darkness gathered—I could not see my own hand, the night so thick I could not feel my own skin. Like clouds in the wind or the pattern of weather, the crowd dispersed and I stood alone.

A star trembled in the empty air like the winking eye of god. Closer it drew, brightening, directing its light on me. In that light I saw a throng of others, glimmering like countless stars, dimming then growing bright—men and women, children passing, walking before me, growing young then old, turning into bones, then into dust, then into swirling lights. I saw men become women, snakes become birds, cattle become stone, skeletons become children. I saw them couple and I saw them dance. I saw worms writhe in their bellies. They sang and cried. They laughed and were silent. I looked in their hearts and saw their secrets. Their countless thoughts and dreams filled me. As they walked, each passed through me and I shivered. I knew their stories better than my own, recalled their pleasures and sorrows, their failures and moments of grace. And as they marched on in infinity like a thousand bodies streaming from one body of sky, I saw the gate from which they had flooded lay open. I entered into truth.

Thick winds blew the torrid air across an expanse of sand. A multitude of lights fluttered, becoming birds: hawks, swallows, herons, ibis, geese, flamingo, quail, hawks and vultures, lapwings, sparrow and owls. They stormed my head, calling to each other, then settled in the branches of a sycamore. They cocked their glittering eyes. I waited. Soon the jackal came, sniffing at my belly, tearing at my flesh. My arms and hair filled his teeth. I let him make his meal of me. My heart he tore out, pawed and sniffed, then turned it over, thinking, weighing his words.

“Beyond skin or meat or bones,” he said, “beyond blood or hair or humours, he is one of us. His odor is as calamus, sweet as frankincense. He is fragrant as a god. From far fields he passed through towns, crossing the river, winding under date palms. Long years he passed through wind and fire. He walked upon the flood waters. His journey is marked by sorrow and joy. His triumphs are etched in his heart. He is an old man come in peace with a story.”

The birds in the tree nodded looking one to the other. For a long time I stood listening to the hot winds shuffling sand. “Speak,” said the jackal, and this I said:

I stand before the mirror looking back in time. I was born a man. Before that I was a god. I was with you when time began. I've not denied you. To do so would be to deny myself. Because I delight in fresh bread, the smell of clover and the thighs of women, I live; therefore, you live with me. We are the same—more than brothers. We are one heart, one fire.

I was a man of Egypt, born of woman on a sheet of linen in a green valley rent by a river between two worlds of sand. I was earth in the hands of the potter who gathered me, who molded me in fire and air, who made me a child and gave me to my mother, a poor woman and a goddess. She suckled me, gave me the power of words. I was healthy and sick, prosperous and poor. I learned hope and regret. When I was a man I was given my own children—such delicate gods it broke my heart. I cradled their heads, brushed the down on their cheeks with my fingers, gave them bread to eat. Some I buried before me and wept bitter tears. Then I grew old and my children grew strong. I was a grandfather many times.

I was a man of Egypt going to the river often to behold the gods who dwell in the rushes, who dwell in the frogs and in the heron. In my hands I held the divinity of colored stones, and in time I learned to handle the delicate hearts of men. By discovering fragrant cedars, date palms and eagles, I discovered life. I burned incense in the temples, but offered only myself for nothing else was mine to give.

I've known the charms of sycamore trees, children hanging apelike from sturdy branches, or passing clouds snatched for a moment by green leaves, or cattle lowing in the shade. And I know the lifeless sand that forms after the tree is gone. To the trees I made offerings of water. In this way I paid homage to gods. I plowed my fields. I milked my goats and cows. I took care of my wife and mother. I danced with my daughter, made friends with fishermen. I saw beggars with outstretched arms gathering at the river. I saw rats run between the feet of children. I saw strong women hauling water in the red flag of evening. I saw priests and judges bathing in the rushes. I saw crocodiles slip silently from the bank. I saw houses of mud and white cities glittering beneath date palms. I saw fields of wheat, grapes and cotton. I saw fish floundering in nets and donkeys steaming in the river. And I was full of wonder.

On the water many afternoons I fell to silent dreaming. I wandered the valley, the mountains and desert searching for the sun's end, but discovered more secrets and travelled more ground in the arms and hips of women. I fought those who would have harmed my children. I threw an ax in the face of evil. I did what I thought was right. When the oxen were tired I let them rest. When the children were hungry I gave them bread and honey. Where the statues of gods were overturned I set them back on their pedestals. And when, after so much effort, my plans went awry I acquiesced to a greater authority.

Then one day, laden with flowers and lamb and cake, I visited the tomb of an uncle and found myself lying there among the spices and linen. That is how I left the garden. That is how I entered the heart of the mountain. I had wondrous dreams of bright hawks soaring through dark corridors. At the well I met a blind woman who called me ‘son.’ In the temples I stood so long the priests gathered, asking, “What brings a man so far to sit and stare into the air?”

“I want to see beyond the veil.”

“Go back to your fields, old man. There are no secrets here.” They laughed and left me to thought.

For several years I came and went in the temples, praising the gods, staring into the faces of their statues. Then one afternoon—I don't know why, perhaps the sun shone on me—a priest led me to the room of secrets. I saw a young girl spinning strands of flax and an old woman baking raisin cakes. Through a window I saw a man plowing his field, struggling to upturn a stone and calling to his stubborn donkeys. A hawk circled overhead, while two children tossed a small fish back into the river.

I moved to speak, but the priest held up his hand. “You must be silent now. You are staring into the face of god.”

And I wept with joy. Though I'd seen my life before, that moment I knew it differently. From then on I sowed barley and walked under trees with wonder. I stumbled once and fell, then sat laughing in the road. Two boys rushed from their houses to uplift me.

“Old man, where do you live?” they asked. “We will carry you home.”

I stretched out my arms, flinging them north and south, east and west. “Here,” I said. “In the house of perpetuity!”

One day I died and was wound about with linen, myrrh and gum. My wife wept and my children sang. They poured spices and tears over my chest. The village men circled me with earth. They lay copper necklaces in my tomb, returning precious earth to earth. Left in the mountain for some days, I rose and uncovered myself, shedding skins like a snake. I was naked and new. I left bones and rags hidden in the dirt and I walked the corridor toward light.

There I came to this desert. Before me a thousand souls rose from the sand like gods. Together we walked the wasteland, together we crossed the bitter lakes. Naked we entered Truth. I stand before you now, having seen the ghosts of the long dead and the unborn, having seen skeletons and children, having seen blue starlight filter through the outstretched wings of a bird. Before you I stand a whole man speaking. I made a long journey. I did what I thought was right. I have come to see the gods.

Then rose the snake from the sand and coiled about my ankle hissing. “Fantasies all. What gives you the right to make demands of the gods?”

“I speak in truth,” I said. “Not to humor you. Dead men have no need of pretense. What I seek is truth, light beyond light beyond Light. There are those who will tell you a different story. Who is to say which is right? But this I know: what I've seen with the eye has been fantasy, perhaps; but what I've known with the heart has been truth.”

The snake observed me with amber eyes. He motioned toward a door that opened from air into air. “If that is so, can your heart name the name of this gate?”

“Being,” I said.

“And the lands on either side?”

“Creation and destruction.”

“Pass then, Osiris,” he said.

The snake withdrew and the multicolored birds gathered, circling in the dark, gathering me, lifting me up. I stepped through and nothing changed, yet I had entered heaven. Still myself alone on the desert at night, I walked while winds scoured the sand below with sand and in the distance a jackal howled at the stars.