. . . and in this year everyone talked too of the affair of the young men and the Great Pyramid. It was said that they were seven and known for their closeness, the convergence of their passions, and their habit of accompanying one another wherever they went and of embarking on all their undertakings together.
Often were they seen together, whether in the pigeon market or the candle makers’ market, the street of perfumes or that of the coppersmiths, the tentmakers’ district or that of the sword makers, the Muqattam or the Barrages, the coffeehouses of the countryside or those of the city. They were seekers after knowledge, trustworthy in their reports, bold, daring, ready for adventure, and often they left together for the desert and the countryside nearby. They were men of promise, and time lay all before them.
Once they had decided on the matter and agreed to transform thought into resolute action, they consulted their dear ones, visiting their shaykhs one by one to seek their permission and blessing. Reactions varied, few encouraging and supporting, many cautioning and warning, but this neither weakened their resolve nor turned them from their path.
Their going forth was witnessed, and many still remember the brave show they made, the sweetness of their companionship and the gaiety of their merriment during the moments when they climbed the stones and waved to those who stood, watched, and stared; how each turned before passing through the breach created by the Caliph Ma’mun; how each looked toward the east, toward the throng, some of whom cried out in encouragement and farewell.
In fact, even more was made of the business later on, when it was remembered how they had resolved not to turn back before reaching the immutable, distant, inviolable heart of the pyramid. With them they took provisions and ropes, tools to scale walls or plumb abysses, herbs and preparations for the treatment of wounds. How they would vanquish loneliness and terror, however, was up to them alone.
Some assert that they had frequented the company of everyone who had any connection to the pyramid, and especially those who had penetrated its interior to varying distances and spent time among its abysses and heights, and that what they embarked on was the result of no whim, but the fruit of study and planning.
Others assert that they left without giving a thought to the deep ravines of the far interior and set off equipped with nothing but a terrible desire to know, and to arrive at the borders of the unknown. Had they been possessed of even a measure of such knowledge, they would never have contemplated such an undertaking, for to understand a thing is to be unnerved, and one who becomes aware of what lies in store will opt for what he has, for what obtains. This is a truth; however, it is certain too that what they embarked upon was unlike anything anyone before them had attempted.
After the breach there is a rise, like a hallway, which ascends at a slight slope that seems neither tiring nor uneven, and which many imagine, even as they climb, to be level and think will cost them no effort. The young men penetrated the opening in high spirits, bounding with enthusiasm and looking about them. They were forced to bend, the height of the ceiling preventing a person of middling stature from standing upright. They had known this, and were aware of the need for them to walk bent over for long distances. Each of them looked to the front, especially the first among them, who was neither their oldest nor their most experienced but rather the most determined and the one who seemed steadiest, the one in whose hands, during their preparations, they had agreed to place their trust— for man is ever in need of someone to direct him or guide him, this need being equal in all but degree at all stages of life and taking varying forms, as of a mortal being, or of ancient words in a book preserved, or of admonitions kept and passed down. The first of them was reliable, appearing calm, steady, and strong in confronting the unexpected. They felt no disquiet, for these first stretches were known. Even, in some cases, recorded.
What they did feel was that anxiety that accompanies every inception, every beginning, every shift from one state to another. Setting out to seek the unknown must disturb any man, whoever he be, but the first made every effort to hide this in himself. He was the only one who did not look back when they arrived at the point at which the light from outside grows dim and distant, the echo of an echo (one step more and it will be gone), especially with the turning of the passage to the left, after which another light will appear, one that is calm and low, a light that has puzzled both ancients and moderns because its source is unknown and it does not grow stronger here or weaker there and makes no shadow either for beings that stand still or for those that move fleetingly on, but appears to pass through whatever it encounters. Has anyone seen a shadow inside the pyramids? Have any of those who entered them reported such a thing?
At this point of separation all of them spontaneously turned, maybe to catch a last glimpse of a reality that was known and familiar, even if it too contained what was unknown. What they were moving toward, however, was more mysterious, for everything is relative.
As they advanced through the empty space with its light of unknown origin, they drew closer to one another to a degree that was imperceptible then but which they became aware of later. And when their voices rose, the first of them said that from then on their laughter must be calculated, their speech measured; every effort consumed a certain amount of energy and the latter depended on the air, of which, naturally, there was less available inside than out.
There was nothing strange in this for them. They had heard of it during the days when they were equipping and preparing themselves, before their crossing from one reality to another, from a world they knew to another with whose roads and borders they were unacquainted. With every stage, indeed with every step, each seemed to become more in need of someone to remind him of the knowledge he had acquired before passing through the breach, to reactivate the self-evident truths that they had exchanged and committed to memory before setting off. This, however, was a phenomenon common to all manner of men: great is the difference for anyone between what he reads or hears and what he sees for himself and knows.
After they had traversed the first passage and embarked upon the next ascent, the effort required of them increased, though not unreasonably. The comparison was between one stage and another, both of them inside the pyramid, and this was something new to them. When they reached the square chamber inside which lay the tattered corpse in its marble basin, they looked at one another and, even though the time that had passed was short, each seemed to see the other for the first time, perhaps due to the dim light, or because they were face to face again after walking carefully in file. They were overflowing with energy and liveliness but appeared wary, each of them holding some desire in check, whether it be to speak, or to laugh, or to comment to the others on what he had experienced. None of them was complaining yet, not even the third, who was the youngest, the weakest in physique, the most delicate. At the same time, however, most of them had a secret certainty that some change had occurred, possibly in their features, or in the way they looked at things, or in their degree of curiosity, albeit the explanations for this were many and convincing, such as the quality of that light or the slow ascent, achieved only with a quickening of the breath and an increase in effort. Their estimation of time also seemed confused, some imagining that much had passed, others being certain that, were they to return and pass through the breach from the inside to the outside, they would find the sun of their first day not much higher in the sky; indeed, it might not even have reached its zenith yet.
The first of them spoke of this later, when they had reached a further point. He said that he was certain that the pyramid had its own, different, laws of time and place, the step having its special measure, the time its distinct rhythm. In the first place, there was no discernable east or west here, nor morning and noon; there was no late afternoon or mid-morning, no light to vary or shadows to jump out and then hide. What seemed to them to be the elapse of an hour on the inside might be equal to the passing of a month on the outside, or more. This took them aback. They made no comment, even when he insisted to those who thought of turning and going back that they should not be shocked if they found that the time there was utterly different from that to which they had become accustomed and with which they had become familiar.
They did not stay long in the square room. They made their way to the opening that was there, at the start of which, as they passed through, they had to bend yet further down. Also, according to the notes of others who had passed this way before, the gap between each of them was to widen here. Later, the third of them said that the first gusts of nostalgia and remembrance arose in him as they sat facing one another inside the square room. The smell of an ancient fig tree, the tips of whose branches dangled and touched the waters of a deep canal and which he would pass, sampling its fruit, every day, caressed his heart. It was the merest touch, something fleeting, and meant nothing to him at the beginning, at the moment of its occurrence, but later became an invisible way station at which, as they penetrated further, he would often make long halts, discovering in its revisiting things he had failed to notice at the time. Here, in this so narrow, so apparently limited, space, he would apprehend things he had not taken in when looking at them directly on the outside. Often one fails to absorb a thing at the moment of hearing or seeing, but everything is completed when one returns to it in the imagination, and the interpretation, so long recalcitrant, flashes out at the moment of recall from the interstices of the memory. This became their conviction as they advanced further, penetrated deeper.
The rise in the following hallway was not the same; its starting point was of a different order, the act of stepping into it had another significance. The first time the rise had begun at the breach—at the opening that separated the outside from the inside—that lay between the two worlds. Now, however, the transition was from inside to inside, from same to same, so that the variation was of degree and not of quality, or so it seemed to them at first.
To advance within the second hall required a different arrangement. In the first, they were close together and each one, if he so desired, could have touched the other by stretching out his arm, while to do so here he had to cover a distance, maybe of only two steps or three, but still a distance. Sometimes there would be an instant when it was not possible for any of them to see the other. The sound of movement, the act of listening out for footfalls, did, however, serve to reduce the sense of unexpected solitude. Each of them became concerned with his breathing, though each also gave thought to the others, for this was merely a part of his concern for himself. His safety was their safety, anything that befell the others might befall him, and whatever the first was subject to might equally affect the last. Their feeling of kinship was stronger at the first stage, before they reached the first stone chamber, and weakened somewhat thereafter. They knew that others had preceded them to this ascent, that earlier steps had come this far, but despite this a covert anxiety was in the air. The path was not well enough traveled. A surprise could occur at any moment, without warning.
Despite the risks, a sense of joy ran through them, especially at the constant feeling of moving upwards, at the unconscious awareness that they were continuously climbing, at the sense that, even though the slope was almost unnoticeable, there was an ascent toward an unseen, unap-prehended, undefined point, a point that could not be fixed and the direction of which could not even be indicated, a point that no one had previously described, a point that, perhaps, was different for each of them and thus, if this were so, would not unite but divide them.
All eventualities remained open.
The inner space bore no analogy to the outer. The words of the first of them were easier to understand now. This place was a different place, and its time was a different time. One who imagined, by analogy with what he knew, that a day had elapsed might discover on returning and passing through the breach from the inside to the outside that an age had passed—at which moment, no longer recognizing landmarks and features and finding nothing familiar but the pyramid, he might turn back again to press on toward a final goal, being, however, precisely as ignorant of the depth at which this lay as were the people on the outside of where the boundaries of the structure ended and the extent of its hidden buttresses.
At the same time that they were fully seized of the idea that they were moving upwards, a certainty also grew that they were suspended, and that had their eyes been able to penetrate the rock, they would have seen themselves to be at the center of emptiness, despite the solidity of the stones, the proximity of the walls. Their confidence in their leader, who had given no indication of any fear, hesitation, or misgiving, became yet firmer. They accepted without demur his presence at the front even though he had told them frankly that his knowledge of the depths was scarcely greater than theirs and did not go beyond the limited distance that others before them had trod, some recording their observations—though even these meager indications he had found, on direct inspection, to differ significantly from the reality. He had informed them of this when they reached the first chamber, but they had forgotten it all, or had chosen to ignore it, each furnishing evidence to confirm that they had placed matters entirely in his hands. They even waited whenever he came to a halt to see what he would tackle, to observe what signal he would give.
At the moment of their reaching the second chamber they were overjoyed. Relief appeared on their faces. One stage was over. They had emerged from one hallway. They became aware of a current of air, of unknown origin and uncertain direction, but comforting and refreshing.
They looked long at one another, as though becoming acquainted for the first time since their immersion, and they started to go over their steps, making observations on what they had seen. Their leader, however, said that they must not stay, that to continue was imperative and that this was what everyone who had reached this point before them recommended. Also that they must be alert, for the third rise came at the end of a passageway, previously trod, at the end of which they would continue into places of which no earlier mention was to be found and into which no one had dared intrude. He did not tell them that some might have tried to do so but had failed to return to report on what they had seen, perhaps because he was not certain, because it was not in his nature to hide things or be duplicitous: to him, frankness and clarity were as natural as an intake of breath. This, with other factors, reassured them and instilled trust in their hearts. During these moments when they found themselves face to face, they scrutinized him more closely than they did the paintings on the walls of the room with their brilliant colors and the mysterious letters that seemed to be in constant motion from top to bottom or bottom to top.
The chamber dividing the second ascent from the third was rectangular and devoid of any basin, be it marble or wood. Its walls were entirely covered with drawings and pictures interspersed with what looked like letters, though these were neither Greek nor Syriac nor, naturally, Arabic. It seemed to them all that their leader understood some of their secrets even if he could not comprehend them all, but that he appeared puzzled before certain of them, a fact which he did not hide, saying that what was painted on the outer walls bore no relation to what he saw here, and that this was troubling.
They did not stay long. They did not seek to explore the matter deeply. Their submission was total. Every saying passed down and every meager written line advised haste and warned against the desecration of the paintings, the utterance of a coarse word, or the commission of the scandalous act. Everyone knew the fate of every man and woman who attempted such a thing. The ancients told of how a young man and his girl had entered in search of privacy and been transformed into dead cinders. On another occasion, four men had abducted a comely youth; the moment they started, all had been struck rigid and turned to stone.
These things were known. There was no doubting them.
What did call for alertness was the change in the air, which had become so oppressive that it could lead to the triumph of slumber; any who dozed off even for a second would never open his eyes again.
Sleep was not the greatest danger that threatened the travelers, however. The danger lay in the dreams that came with it: dreams in which female faces would appear the like of which were unknown in the world from which they had come—sweet, beautiful faces with greedy eyes overflowing with desire; lips that moved; cheeks with roses begging to be picked; dreams with voices, whispering and coquettish, that set the repressed senses on fire; dreams containing colors without peer in the physical world that could neither be defined nor reproduced nor related to the colors of the spectrum; colors through which rippled instants of shimmering, blazing convergence that emerged from unseen absence into ephemeral presence, refreshing the latter and erupting into it with a burst of light to either resist or absorb which could result only in eternal rest. The leader did not advise them to take any particular steps—to recite holy texts or seek refuge in alternative memories.
It was up to each of them to face alone all temptations and snares, and this may have been the reason for their reticence, for their growing distance from one another, not merely in space but in the sense each had of the other, for what they had to resist during this ascent was of the inside and did not come from the outside.
Before them lay forty-four bottomless chasms, to cross which it was necessary to widen one’s step or sometimes jump. Their leader cautioned them of this and bound a rope around the waist of each that he then attached to the next, so that if one slipped their fate would be tied to his and if they did not make the effort to raise him they would join him.
There was no doubt that the light had changed during their ascent. It might be said that the light was not light. It was a darkness that did not conceal where to place one’s steps but weighed heavily on the ground. Many reasons led to a growing certainty that the space was of awesome character, and also infinite. The smell too had changed. It was heavier without being either enervating or rotten—a mysterious smell that both puzzled the brain and induced fear, for it hinted at something unknown and difficult to apprehend. The sense of moving upwards was still strong and this may have helped them in some degree to resist sleep and its visions for it called for an effort that led to a quickening of the breath that in turn rendered the effort easy.
The greatest difficulty facing the leader—the first among them, their guide, he who was acquainted with the writings of the ancients—the most troubling among the surprises he confronted were the human voices, feminine, soft, and expressive, that interspersed the instants of transition from wakefulness to the borders of sleep, of the oscillation within that forced, inescapable wakefulness. He did not know their exact source, since the songs passed through the pores from outside to inside and from inside to outside. At first they seemed confused, but they could be distinguished from one another with the concentration and careful listening that came with surrender to the pressure of sleep, within whose gradations lay agitation, euphoria, and a feeling of power—brief instants of climax preceding the extinction of lust and the perfection of desire.
However, to attain such a climax here, at this point within the interior of the pyramid, meant to be shattered and dispersed—and not just him, but those with him, his companions who had given him charge of their affairs. This was the hardest stage so far. After it was completed came the first painful, devastating surprise.
In the third chamber, which was narrower but higher, with a narrow ceiling, pyramidal in shape, as they faced one another exhausted and expectant, they realized that the time of the complete had passed and the time of the incomplete begun.
How had their companion been able to undo the rope that tied him to them? Or had he been forced to disengage himself? Maybe that was the easier to imagine, especially as he was the last of them, the seventh, the most vigorous of them all, the most enthusiastic before their departure.
Where had he gone?
It was difficult to answer. Only surmise remained. Maybe he had yielded to sleep, or followed the voices and fallen in, or been overcome by fatigue and fallen down, or preferred to stop and fallen back.
They looked for the opening through which they had passed to reach this spot and could not see it. The dim light did not help them. Perhaps they did not want to stop lest they discover some painful fact; so men are sometimes, though only briefly (quickly they pull themselves together, take note, comprehend, attempt again).
Their leader was aware now that they had come to a point that no one before had reached. Everything thereafter was untrodden, or places of which what was known had disappeared with those long gone, so that now they were unknown to any. Each one of them recalled the features of their vanished companion as best he could. After the comradeship and the sharing, he now could be summoned up only in the imagination, disappearing for a few short instants here only to reappear there, and at a certain moment being swallowed up without sign or trace. Here their progress and the tread of their footsteps had no relation to themselves, were no longer of their own volition as they had been in the earlier, elapsed stages. However, they had no choice but to wait for the appearance of the opening, which for each one of them took on a different shape—round, rectangular, or triangular. The timing of its appearance lay beyond their control; rather, it was linked to factors difficult to interpret. Many had been kept waiting here, many had grown despondent and turned back, and it may be that some had gone on and not returned.
Some of them went over in their minds reports of the alarms to which wayfarers were subject—a sudden sinking of the ground, the emergence of an ogre carrying a sword who cut off the heads of any who went beyond a certain point inside the pyramid (though which point was not clear and, indeed, was said to differ from person to person), or the sudden rising, from the center of the pyramid, of winds that swept all before them, reaching into its tiniest crannies and destroying all who had been daring enough to enter. The gentle, soft, refreshing current of air that blew incessantly and steadily, moving with a force that neither waxed nor waned, puzzled them. It would from time to time strengthen, but in no case made any sound. They feared that it would shift so as to blow them all away. Their leader kept from them his foreboding and his fear of that good wind, whose delicate soughing aroused in him a secret shudder. He had no information as to how long it would last and had seen no mention of it in any of the authorities he had read, while none of those who claimed to have knowledge of the secret and the hidden had spoken of it to him. This, however, was but a detail. They were now at a crucial fork in the path; henceforth would be a different form of penetration, steps of a different kind. The narrowness of the ascent was another spur to a feeling of confinement and regression. The bending had been painful to start with but they had grown used to it, especially since they had learned to move their limbs in a certain way. Then, at a certain point, their speed had increased and they had felt as though some force was propelling them, or that the ground was being pulled along beneath their feet.
At a certain moment, their sense that they were ascending started to diminish. All became certain that a degree of decline had set in. The slope was imperceptible at the beginning but as it increased their leader demonstrated caution, and like him they were compelled to try to slow down and to cling on, holding onto the blank sides.
Despite the pressure of time, its heavy pace, and the strain, this seemed to last only minutes. Soon they found themselves on a platform of level stone. Tall walls allowed them to straighten up—insofar as they could, given that their bodies had become somewhat accustomed to the narrowness of the ascents and the position, almost doubled over, that they were obliged to adopt. There was no apparent source for the light, which had increased in intensity.
To the right a false door.
To the left another, opposite the first.
The shadow and its original. Alike in appearance, facing one another, like sound and echo. On the walls were barely identifiable figures in red paint. They all paused around the circular aperture that led directly downwards. Had it always been present in the middle of the stone platform, or had it just then appeared?
There was no explanation. But what was the point of being sure, if choice did not exist?
The leader turned to the others. All maintained their silence. Some of what he had predicted had come to pass with the length of their silences and the loss of their desire for speech. Once a shaykh from Morocco, who had come from the Furthest West to observe the pyramids, had told him of the danger of silence, especially if it occurred on leaving or on setting off to fight for God’s cause, for it was a sign of misfortune. The Moroccan, with his brown skin, triangular beard, and brilliant smile—he could see him before him now—told him that he had gone out one day with a band of his companions into the southern desert on some business, he being their leader, appointed by his shaykh. Circumstances compelled them to stay at an isolated place close to a small spring, waiting for help that did not come. He feared the effect of the waiting on them and ordered them to clean the sand. They showed astonishment but he insisted, asserting that these were the instructions of the shaykh and could not be refused. When their time of waiting was over, he informed them of the reason that had impelled him to give such a strange command, saying that had he let them be, each would have been left to commune with himself, and thus would have been carried away by his thoughts, departed in a moment of homesickness, and become too weak to continue. They nodded their heads and not one of them scoffed.
But the difference was plain. The Moroccan had been in the desert and they had stayed where they were, but inside the pyramid it is beyond any man to do anything but progress, move, walk, advance, in the hope of attaining that goal that is different for each individual—for some enter seeking buried treasure, some come searching for ancient sciences, others desire to inform themselves as to the unknown, though in all cases it is impossible for one who has entered the pyramid to draw back, to halt; he must continue or abandon the attempt. The pyramid is like a bridge and bridges are for crossing, not for settling on. Thus every traveler presses on in agitation, with a degree of insecurity, security being ever reserved for the destination, not the journey.
All they could do was descend, so long as it was not in their power to break through the solid wall or that imaginary door that led to nothing. All that they could do was move onwards through the tunnels, slopes, and chasms made to plans drawn up in an era of which they were ignorant by others whom they would never encounter.
At every edge, every entrance, they would recall what they had lost, and especially their companion. Where, they wondered, might he be now?
They did not know what had happened to him. They had no indication as to his fate. How could they?
If any decided to return, what certainty would he have that the path he had followed on coming was the same that would lead him back, would lead him to the same beginning? As they had seen with their own eyes, there were openings that appeared without warning, hallways that went on for longer than they had estimated, so what could guarantee them a safe path of return?
In the first chamber one had said laughingly, “Can it be that to leave the pyramid is the same as to enter it?”
What had been a jest seemed tragic now. Under the influence of the exertion, the mysterious light and the fear, each recognized his companion with difficulty. Each held of the other two images: one, conserved in the mind’s eye, went back to before the time of their entry, and a second, which was what their eyes now beheld, was magnified by the conditions of the place, the emptiness, the coursing of the air, and all that came or went via the secret tunnels of which no living creature had knowledge.
There was no alternative but to go on.
In the days when they were preparing and equipping themselves, before their passing through the breach, their leader had told them of three who had entered in an ancient age and of whom all news had been lost, so that their people had thought that they had perished, and how after forty whole years one of them had appeared close to the desert of Abu Sir. It is said that he came out through an unknown hole now covered by deposits of Nile silt. He had refused to speak and had divulged nothing.
Who knows?
He threw the rope down and descended from it dangling. The five waited for his signal. They were not left standing there for long. Their stout-hearted leader pulled on the rope. When they came to rest next to him, they realized that they had moved from one state of confusion to another.
The space was strange.
They had not stood in its like before. It was impossible to say whether it was round or square, for it combined forms they had never seen. What was disturbing to them was to see, for the first time, the confusion of their leader. They knew him as one who was steady, capable, one of whom it was not only impossible to say what was passing through his mind but who also concealed from them his pains and vexations. Following his puzzled look, they understood what was making him alarmed and agitated.
Which way, and how?
For the first time, they faced two openings that seemed to have been cleft that very moment, at the same instant, and were identical. The first was on the right, the other on the left, but this itself was relative and only by analogy with their hands and eyes, for no direction could be exactly determined at this depth within the pyramid; what one considered right another might consider left. Directions inside the pyramid have their own altogether distinct criteria, yet to be understood.
It was the first time that they had been obliged to follow two paths, or so he, who was to that point still the leader of them all, in the end, decided. He said this after pointing to the two openings and saying that each was an invitation, and that both invitations must be obeyed. He did not appear to expend any effort in choosing. He seemed hurried, disposed to swift action, uninterested in discussion.
They divided. After pointing to the one standing closest to him and the one next to him, he asked the three others to appoint themselves a leader. Then, before they could discuss or start taking a decision, he advanced—a resolute act, as though he had arranged it all beforehand, as though he had prepared for a moment like this. No embrace made, no words uttered. Just a slight gesture with his hands.
An ellipsoid passageway lined with a yellowish white stone. Despite the fatigue, and the cramping of their muscles due to the forced bending, progress was faster than in the preceding stages. The leader appeared confident, even though all that lay ahead of them was unknown.
Each of the three thought about his other companions. How far had they gone? What had they found? Separation was a spur to extended grief and to an attempt to recover some of what had been, especially since each was now seized by a sure intimation of the impossibility of their ever meeting again, and that what had once been would never return. Had a party ever split before inside the pyramid and met up again? Had they ever heard the like of that?
As their progress through ellipsoid hallways, deep chasms, and suddenly appearing openings continued, all those who had gone slipped from their minds. They penetrated ever deeper. Their leader averred that these passageways and apertures would lead them to a conclusion. Every book of invocations and spells that he had consulted confirmed that.
They were less capable now of exchanging words. All thought of their other colleagues or of previous stages, with regard to which each had a different sense, had vanished. One certainty, however, enveloped them; it concerned time and affirmed that its rhythm was increasing in speed the further in they went, that to distinguish between night and day had become problematic, and that sunset and sunrise no longer took place outside, but rather inside, them. Thus the old question “Is it night now or day?” no longer had meaning. Each could identify what he himself was experiencing, and they all lived the same moment together; for one, however, that moment might be night, for another day. A further certainty concerned place; it was absolutely sure that the ascending stages were over and that they were now moving through a pyramidal abyss that led downwards, whereby they might even have passed below the level of the ground on which they had so long trod before their entry into these depths. What sometimes puzzled them were the sources of those hidden winds and their courses, and likewise the degrees of light and its wellsprings, and the plunging haste manifested by their leader, who no longer looked at them.
From chasm to chasm they passed, from passageway to passageway, from triangular to rectangular to circular, from funnel-shaped to spiral, from octagonal to hexagonal to square, to forms that defied description.
The rooms through which they passed no longer excited their curiosity, they were so many. With each step, older steps were dismissed, to vanish altogether from the memory and be erased from the imagination, till everything became mixed together in their minds. One of them doubted the existence of his former comrades, the second believed that he had long known the interior of the pyramid and was merely expending effort recapturing what he already knew.
On reaching a certain point in time and space, the leader stopped and raised his hands before his face, taken by surprise by a sudden effulgence that left him almost blind.
This was what was predicted, albeit only in vague hints, in certain ancient manuscripts. No one had described it in full because its attainment had remained in the sphere of the impossible. No created being had recorded with any precision this blending, this permeation. Now they were harvesting the fruits of their striving, their patience, their endeavor. Now he could speak frankly to his companions and tell them that their struggle, their boldness, their efforts had not been in vain. Inside him was an overabundance that he could scarcely contain.
He no longer cared whether their motion was upwards or downwards. All directions were the same to him; all the passageways led to him and for all of them he was the way-mark; all began with him and ended with him. The stones in their courses passed through him and he passed through and was distributed among and across them. He had now arrived at the fluid, incandescent, constant essence of the pyramid, which no human had described before—beyond image, beyond depiction, beyond gesture, beyond words, beyond movement.
He had entered the pyramid and the significance of that penetration had now caught up with him. He was but created atoms. He was he. Here was there and there was he. His circuit was completed, point had met point, and henceforth all turned on itself.
He must tell his colleagues. He must apprise them. He must see what they were about.
In vain, however, he searched for a sight of them. Before him was nothing but himself. He was utterly solitary, severed, subjected.
One who came this far could only be alone, freed of all attachments. This instant, at this distance within the fathomless depths of the pyramid, brooked no companion.