62.

The Bath

My mouth and hands were green innocent seedlings, moments in time. “Come, come,” the beautiful one said. I grew in grace under the eyes of gods. I thought I was content, but the cat drank sweet milk and the ass bore the burden in the house of cross purposes. My joy was mindless and I was afraid even of the shadows of passing clouds. I lived in the fear of loss. So, relinquishing comfort and ease I journeyed.

I have seen the broken down boughs of the fig tree overladen with fruit. I have seen death dance over desert sands, his bone white head turned behind. I have offered up saffron and myrrh to goddesses. I know the bread and honey that old men like. I have walked nine days in wonder down a long, dust-swept road just to say: You think you are awake, but you are asleep. When was the last day your heart leapt and cried, “I am alive in Egypt?” I stand poised in the fragrance of purple amaranth. I am a flower that never dies.

Lord of the winds, deliver me like a seed blown to fertile ground. What has become of the leopard's three spotted whelps who once played outside my door? Do their skins cover the hides of priests? Do their tails make fringe for the tax collector's wife's robe? Do the woman and the priest cover their faces when they parade their souls in town? Let our lives and deaths be toward some purpose. I smell a change coming, a shape turning leaves in the wind.

One night I went out under the cover of stars to the southern pool and bathed there among the lotus. My breast, my face, my buttocks, my feet I immersed in water and moonlight. I was silver, alive, no part of me untouched by beauty or dread. I rested. In the field of reeds that lay to the north, I heard grasshoppers chew the tender stalks and a thousand legs leapt into the silence as a snake slithered by, disturbing their feast. I saw, too, the luminous faces of the dead—sailors all—come quietly from the house of gods to bathe with mortals in the pool of lotus under a silver moon.

“We come night or day to this water of the spirit,” they said. “It is good to feel again the liquid pleasure of earth.”

“It is good,” I answered and they were surprised for as many as they are and as often as they come, few men of earth ever see them. They gave me then a honied cake to eat that I, like them, might pass through the villages invisible and touch with my feet the floor of the gods' house in the sky. They gave me, too, a bitter cake that, when this night of spirits had long passed, I might eat again and remember.

“Who are you, brother?” they asked. “What is the secret name of your soul? From where do you get your power?”

I read the name etched on my heart. “Iam the sweet-smelling flowers of the olive tree,” I said.

“Come,” they said and I took on the robe of night. We passed north of the towns through the rushes. And I saw through the windows of houses women bent in love above their husbands, old men staring into the dark, children dreaming of flying. “What do you see?” the sailors asked.

“I see flesh walking. I see souls sheathed in paper. I see the spirits of two children hovering above a woman in love, waiting to jump in her belly and be born. I see comfort and sorrow, rejoicing and forgetting. I am staring into the heart of Egypt.”

Then the sailors reached into the air shimmering around them, pulled down a stylus of fire and a tablet of crystal. “Write it down,” they said, and I wrote it down, and it seemed I was not so much recording what I had seen, but remembering what I already knew. Then they parted the bones of my chest with their hands and buried the tablet within my heart. As it touched me crystal words sprang to my lips. A message coursed through my veins and etched itself in the lines of my palm. I became fertile ground in which the shining ones planted seed, into which I'd written my own destiny, taken on my own becoming, and that night began a new life.

The stylus of fire extinguished itself and its smoke curled through the air, a white ribbon weaving in and out of stars. We rose following it, like a flock of geese lifting easily off the surface of water, flying straight into heaven.

“Fly,” they said, and we flew until we came to a great house in the sky made all of air. In it gods and goddesses were walking. They danced and sang, ate cakes, drank wine, and their laughter echoed through the night. And I knew I saw what, in the twinkling nights I had passed on earth, had seemed the quiet conversation of stars. I was amazed, struck dumb; and the sailors smiled. “This is the party you've waited for. The ways have been arranged. Call it eternal life, call it vibration. It lasts a million years. Go in. The gods wait for you.”

I moved to enter and the hand of a god touched me. “This feast is for gods,” he said. “Are you a god?”

I turned in confusion. I am no god, I thought. I am only a man who has spent most of his days behind the ass of a donkey and plow. I am but a sack of bones covered with skin and, often, mud. I have no right to feast with gods. Hot tears of shame scoured my cheeks and the shining ones laughed, slapping each other's backs.

“Have you forgotten so soon what you learned in the lotus pool? Try not thinking so much. Look at the words in your heart.”

I looked and saw, and facing the guardian said, “I know you. I have seen you a thousand times. You are the bolt of heaven, the truth, flickering light of the morning star.”

“Who am I?” called another and another and another and another.

Then I named them one by one. “You are laughter asleep in two jugs of red wine. You are the presence of gods on earth. And you, lady, are the white gazelle gracing earth, quick and beautiful. You are water bubbling out of the well. And you, you are the backbone of the sky. You are mother of birds, maker of nests, feeder of young, the soarer, the watcher. You are the blue eye of heaven, the gold knot of life. You are ether. You are the abyss, the mouth of the crocodile, the rose-colored mountain at dawn. You are the thoughts that gods see. You are the shadow, the shade of trees, the entrance of caves. You are wind, a lion walking in light. You are the arms of heaven. You are mistress of the house, a snake sleeping coiled in the water pot. You are mother and midwife and concubine. You are the sunfish darting between the reeds. You are the power of things alive, essence of flowers, of rams, of men. Yo.u are sorceress, mother of jackals, friend of sparrows, weeper of tears, singer of songs. You are my hands, my arms, my face, my feet. You are all parts of me. You live in my head and my heart and my belly.”

And I crossed the threshold of the great house. The gods embraced me with joy and weeping. “It is good to have you here. No man comes home unless he knows in his soul who he is. You have lived too long away from us who are yourselves. The traveller Osiris, the son, the god is home.”

Then I ate with them the bread of life and drank the wine of remembering. We danced and I was drunk with knowing and pleasure. I wore the white linen of a god. We danced until the walls of the great house burst into flame; the fire joined me to them, all to myself. I fell down and wept and when at last I opened my eyes, I saw before me my own face reflected on the surface of a pool of water.

I rose from my bath as the sun burst over the horizon. A new day had come. I had died in the night and been reborn. Then I dressed and walked the dusty path toward my house, thinking, “My wife will be waking now. She will wonder where I have been.” And I thought with pleasure of the amazement on her face when I would answer her. “I was everywhere on heaven and earth with gods.”