Ready to perform to some invisible audience, he pursed his lips stage left, stage right.
Hardly had this tomfoolery begun than astonishment froze Florent Max’s countenance. Picture someone who believed himself the victim of a practical joke, only to discover he was wrong. Damn wrong.
He couldn’t help looking up, even if he knew that no telegraph lines climbed the mountain. Gaping, he questioned the rock, the sky…but of course he saw no electric cables. What he was hearing, though, resembled a nest of telegraph wires spanning the void. It was like approaching an ear to hollow wood, to catch the howling tide of a faraway crowd, the rumble of rioting people overflowing an immense square, in some mysterious place.
There was no heavenly organ playing, no celestial harp. There was only their music, floating in mid-air from a fixed point. The aerial sound sustained a chord of multiple musical notes, rich with agreeable tunes. Yes, it came from the right, from the incline…He moved in that direction, and the music vanished. He moved back, and the sound blossomed like an otherworldly flower sprouted from a soil of silence.
Florent Max studied the incline. Forty yards away. The slope shot upward, stopping the slanting sunbeams with its formidable vertical wall, lumpy, cyclopean. The painter thought that an echo ricocheted on that surface. A particular echo, like in a crypt. He then noticed that the incline formed a large round hollow, the interior of a spherical niche, a concave reflector. A vault opened in front of him instead of hanging overhead. Surely the concavity concentrated an echo into a single spot. It was the foyer of an acoustic mirror. Or so he decided. So the mirror reflected sounds that came from the opposite direction. But behind him only forest covered the mountain, and there was nothing there, at any rate nothing that could produce that sound. It wasn’t the noise of a swarm, or torrents, or telegraphic wires, or clover fields, nor was it some concert created by the wind.
The other side of the ravine, he thought, only sent the marvelous harmony back to this wall, after receiving it from an unknown source…It came from afar, by a string of ricochets, reflections, resonances. That must be it. Did it travel by way of air? Beneath the ground? From a distant place for sure.
He could hear voices, whispers, breaths, the sounds of light feet, the rustling of mousseline silk…or wings. An organic murmur. The chattering of a lively crowd.
So beautiful, he thought, as beautiful as a distant memory.
He blinked. A low-pitched, melodious note had risen over the pedal’s humming.
How to explain that such a perpetual symphony was being played, instead of the din of ordinary human life? He decided that, by some fortuitous circumstance, he had encountered a city that existed elsewhere. Like Venice. Devoid of horses and cars. He’d visited Venice, and the memory of Piazza San Marco haunted him. But he had to abandon this theory. The distant memory didn’t originate in that city: those jingling sounds playing at regular intervals weren’t reminiscent of Venice. And the voices spoke no Italian.
He shuddered when he was able to discern the first accents. Two voices approached. He thought a couple of superior creatures moved over the crest of the ravine, stepping across the void. After a moment, the image was gone. The two voices remained for a few delicious moments until they faded, too, like minutes of shared happiness, which always end in separation.
So beautiful, he repeated. As beautiful as my life when I was young.
His throat tightened. A sentiment akin to pain convulsed his eyebrows into an expression that had no theatrical fakeness. He was about to cry, and he didn’t try to hold back his tears.
Other voices floated close. He was standing a step or two away from the speakers!
He hollered then, but suavely, to avoid scaring the strangers away. No reactions signaled that his calls had been heard. He didn’t try again, contenting himself with listening.
He made a fine figure, a bulky man standing on the rim of a ravine, hand curled like a conch shell around his ear, scanning the landscape with the stupid gaze of those who see nothing because they’re trying to use all their senses minus sight.
I would need, he thought, an instrument to listen with both ears.
For the time being he rolled up a sheet of paper to use it as an acoustic horn, which didn’t improve his appearance.
He was caught in his delight, bewitched, happy.
That day, he didn’t feel like painting. Florent Max stood at the edge of that ravine. He ate the cold cuts Marie had enveloped for him in brown paper, and spent the afternoon listening to the sounds.
Night approached. He set off, overexcited, heat on his cheeks. He had to turn in. Marie would make herself sick with worry. But tomorrow…
What if the whispers disappeared? A string of echoes can be easily broken.
He would procure a manual of Acoustics.
Did the sound travel through the atmosphere? Or through the terrestrial mass?
The place existed somewhere. He needed to know, to find that forum of happiness. He had to go there. He could not live elsewhere. He could not.
Why did his mind insist on “remembering”? What was Florent Max remembering?
Joy filled him like a goddess possessing her lover, puffing up his chest as if a human shape could not contain her whole. Still he had yet to hear the supreme voice! The superior being that would accept him by her side.
He ran down the rocky path without seeing anything, hearing anything but the memory of those marvelous echoes. Life played her victory song for him. The world had changed.
Marie asked, “What happened? Are you sick? You’re so red in the face! And you’re late.”
Florent Max shook himself awake, as if he’d been dreaming. Should he tell her? He, who had climbed down the mountain like a hero descending the Hartz, he who had almost encountered another species, should he break the incomparable news?
Experience advised against telling. Jealousy ordered to keep his mouth shut. The treasure he’d discovered, he would not share. The whispers were his. He owned them. Nobody else would taste that happiness.
He answered by a groan.
Marie studied him.
The table was set with a blue-checkered cloth. They ate in silence. His body was there, but his mind transported him to that solitary ravine, over to the mysterious dimension whence the sounds came.
All of a sudden, he stood and began walking about.
“What’s the matter with you?” Marie’s voice trembled.
“Shut up!”
The reminiscence. He had it! That fantastic city of domes and minarets, those suspended gardens, that serene multitude of palaces and columns glittering through the mist. He’d had this vision as a little boy. He remembered. He remembered.
He remembers. He is ten. He’s sitting in that armchair of red velvet lined with a tapestry band. Before his eyes, the marvelous city. In his lap, a book. Is it a serious book or a collection of tales? He can’t remember. He had taken the book from his father’s library, whose destiny was to be reduced to cinders by the Germans. After thirty-five years, he can still see the text. How could he forget? It was one of his childhood’s enchantments.
This is what the book said:
“At two in the afternoon, our caravan resumed its journey. A murderous heat engulfed us, and the air fluttered so strongly the desert seemed to be shaken by marine waves. The sky filled with treacherous images created by refractions on the hot layers of the atmosphere. Oases materialized. Mountainous chains soared, to disappear in an instant. These mirages were sometimes reversed, and sometimes doubled. They lured us with apparitions reflected in calm rivers.
“One of these illusions was so enchanting we thought ourselves at the Opera House. In a moonlight brighter than sunshine we entered the most beautiful of cities. We glimpsed a terrace with walls and balustrades mirrored on the surface of a lake. Edifices of exquisite architecture surrounded the place
. A profusion of domed houses with ribbed balconies stretched to the horizon. Thin spires and turrets pierced the sky, more numerous than masts in a crowded port. A steeple soared above the terrace, topped by a gleaming disc that released a blinding light whenever a sort of gigantic hammer struck it. We thought the disc worked like an oversized drum. For a moment, we perceived the hustling movement of a busy place, but we couldn’t observe the passers-by, as the vision faded too quickly.
“Our curiosity piqued, we surmised that this city was the reflection of a real place, but despite every one of us had crossed the four corners of the world, nobody could recognize it. We had glimpsed the capital of an empire hidden in the mystery of Africa, or a civilization that existed on some plane of existence separate from ours. Such hypotheses, however, sounded like nonsense, and our companions chose to think that the heat and thirst caused us to hallucinate.”
Florent Max compared the description of the “tympanum” with the jingling sounds playing at regular intervals that punctuated the music from the ravine. Two impressions created certainty in his mind: the story was no tale; the mirage was no hallucination. The city existed. Because a man had seen its reflection and another man had heard its echo.
But where was it?
The style of the narration didn’t seem archaic. The book had probably been written around the beginning of the nineteenth century, or the end of the eighteenth. Had some kingdom been discovered since? Not really. A few tribes. Villages made of adobe. Hadn’t everything been discovered already? Still, the city must have been somewhere. Physical laws proved it!
Florent Max knew he would never find the book, not his own, not another. He had no title, no author.
At the same time, the thought struck him that the city was out of reach, that he had to give up the project of finding the place, that he should content himself with listening to the adorable sound, without trying to discover its origin.
That’s when he had the idea of purchasing the ravine and having a house built there, with an elegant room for him to recline in, at the exact place where the whispers came alive. He would lounge there, a cigarette—
“Darling, please, tell me what is going on…”
He was going to say: “What is going on is that your voice screeches like a broken rattle.” But he saw her, elbows on the table. She seemed so affectionate, and so unhappy. And he thought that his voice, too, would sound like a rattle. He pitied her, because he pitied himself a great deal. He took her into his arms and, cheek-to-cheek, he said:
“Ma petite Marie, forgive me…I’m afraid I’m not aging gracefully.”
But now the thought of growing old, he accepted it.
The day after, he left as usual, before the first light, but he told Marie that he would surely come home late in the night as he intended to do a few studies au clair de la lune up in the mountain. He reached the ravine at the break of dawn. Venus still shone in the sky. His heart thumped in his chest, and the cold chilled his limbs. He halted, as tense as a lover who fears to find the door bolted. His head probed the air with tiny movements, he faltered, gave a little smile.
There it was, the whispering.
He listened, watching the stars, but Venus vanished, drowned in light, and Florent Max remained alone with the sound. He couldn’t discern any variations, any changes from the quiet of night to the busy hours of the morning. The city lived on a different time, far away from the ordinary lives of humankind.
The high-pitched gong vibrated. Florent Max pulled out his watch. A red star resounded and died with a slow diminuendo. He counted seven minutes and three seconds between the tingling sounds. Wherever that world was, time existed in the same way. Maybe the two worlds weren’t that different. Maybe the other dimension was accessible.
* * *
—
One day, he heard a voice that detached itself clearly against the background of whispers. Another day, the murmuring grew to reach an extraordinary intensity. The gong clanged as strong as the low-pitched bell of a cathedral, and the beautiful voice brushed against his skin like a kiss. But an ice-cold gale dissipated it. Temperature and humidity influenced the quality of the sound.
He pictured the whispering like a bunch of rays. The niche in the vertical wall turned a little to face the sky, and there the acoustic rays rebounded to span the valley. There, there, just before the forest, the echo faded. Finally, he devised a method to study the phenomenon. He should try tracing the direction the sound took across the ravine.
The morning he should have completed his calculations, as he climbed the path, two detonations, followed by a third, split the quiet. He had heard about the project of widening the path to let automobiles reach the plateau above, but he hadn’t thought his ravine would be touched.
When he arrived at the usual place, he already knew. All day he looked for the sound, but he couldn’t find it. The felicitous coincidence of angles and right lines that allowed the whispering to become audible was broken.
The last place, the precise spot where the echo disappeared into the forest, he left for the end. There started a daring bridge in the air, which carried the sound over from the other dimension. The night found him at the edge of the ravine.
* * *
—
Marie found him lying on a bramble, which hadn’t softened his fall. He looked like something honorable, très clair de lune. He wasn’t old any longer. Like others before him, he had come to believe that hope is better than memory.
Ryūnosuke Akutagawa (1892–1927) was a Japanese writer of eerie tales who also went by the names of Chōkōdō Shujin and Gaki. Akutagawa’s evocation of the fantastical and uncanny was unique, and much of his work still feels sui generis. He is among the most translated Japanese writers and quite a few of his 150 stories have inspired writers, mangakas, and film directors for generations. His later tales were less popular, as they lacked some of the dark, macabre intensity of his early works, but nonetheless, they are still an important part of the literary canon of Japan’s Taishō era. In fact, the lurid fable of a novel, Kappa (1927), created a whole new creature of Japanese folklore. “Sennin” (1922), reprinted here in a new translation, is a sly, clever tale.
Sennin
(IMMORTAL)
Ryūnosuke Akutagawa
Translated by Gio Clairval
LISTEN TO ME, you all. Given that I am presently in Osaka, I would like to tell you a story that happened in this same city.
In the olden days, a man came to Osaka to find work as a servant. I do not know the man’s real name, but given that he was offering to serve as a valet, legend has preserved him simply as Gonsuké, a generic appellation given to hired hands.
So Gonsuké pushed past the fluttering fabric of the noren, into an employment office and uttered his request to a clerk who held a long kiseru bamboo pipe clenched between his teeth. “You see, sir, I’m offering my services as help, but I’d like to transcend my human condition and become an immortal sennin, too, so I’m asking you to find me masters who could teach me the new trade as well.”
The clerk was left speechless in surprise.
“Did you hear me, sir?” Gonsuké asked, and repeated his request word for word.
“I’m really sorry, believe me, but…” said the clerk, who meanwhile had resumed smoking his tobacco, inhaling large puffs. “Your demand to work as a sennin has no precedents here. I would advise inquiring at some other office.”
Visibly upset, Gonsuké shifted forward on his knees—he was wearing blue working trousers with a tiny pattern on them—moving nearer, in order to argue his case better.
“The matter is in slightly different terms. Let’s see, what is written on the noren in your doorway? Doesn’t it read ‘any placement’? This surely means that you must be able to satisfy any request for a job. Or maybe you have written a lie on your noren?” From his point of view, he had good re
ason to be outraged.
“That writing is by no means a lie. If you must insist on your demand to find a position as a servant, meanwhile learning to become a sennin, too, kindly come back tomorrow. Within this very day I shall start looking for someone who may suit your expectations.”
The clerk thought this response was the only possible way to get the visitor to leave. In reality, he did not expect to find any household that could teach our man the way of the immortal sennin, assuming they would even hire him as a servant. No sooner had Gonsuké left than the clerk set forth toward the house of a physician who lived nearby. After explaining chapter and verse, the clerk asked, puzzled, “What do you make of this, Doctor? To whom should I turn to find, on such short notice, someone who would teach that servant to become a sennin?”
Upon hearing this question, even the physician seemed perplexed. He pondered for a moment, arms crossed on his chest, eyes fixed on a pine that loomed solitary in the garden. His wife, on the other hand, a quick-witted little woman known as the Old Fox did not hesitate to intrude into the conversation.
“Send him here. In a couple of years we will make a true sennin of him.”
“Really? That would be wonderful, and you would do me a great favor indeed. In fact, I was under the impression that there were a few affinities between a physician and a sennin,” said the naïve clerk.
Then he bowed several times before leaving, quite satisfied.
The physician looked at the clerk’s retreating back and then drily addressed his wife. “What got into you that you should say such nonsense?” he scolded her. “I’m curious to see what you’re going to tell that poor hick in a couple of years, when he’ll start complaining that we have taught him nothing about the way of the immortal sennin.”
The Big Book of Classic Fantasy Page 121