by Peter Harris
3
The Rat and the Rose
But the hermits had heard his call. They took him in and rubbed his limbs, wrapped him in blankets and revived him with hot soup, and the next day he was accepted as a novice. The Writer of the Book, they said, did indeed live among them. However, he had taken a vow of strict seclusion, and could not meet him. So Calibur passed the winter in the hermitage, in humble toil and meditations, practicing with the other hermits a life of simplicity and renunciation, sharpening their one precious iron axe, hewing their firewood and drawing water from their well.
He soon learned that the brothers did not approve of images of the sacred, or of any beauty save that of the mind and spirit. For they were Platonists. So, since he could not bring himself to destroy it, he kept his icon of the Perfect Woman hidden.
The One, he now perceived, is the Primeval Absolute, independent of space and time, just as the truths of geometry and arithmetic, of logic and ethics are, and he often rejoiced and marvelled at the ineffable mystery of that Truth, compared to which all Worlds are but straw and stubble. And he marvelled at the human mind which can apprehend it.
Yet his mental ecstasies would pass, all too soon, like a wave on the sea, and he would be dejected and fall to wondering why the World, in its suffering and imperfection, exists at all. And every now and then, though it was forbidden by the hermits to have any images of the divine, let alone of a woman, Calibur would take out the icon of the Perfect Woman, and wonder, and ask her, ‘Why, why, does anything but God exist? What possible use can He have for all these imperfect beings, whose highest visions are but fleeting sparks in a dark cave, when He is the noon-day sun, That than which nothing greater can be thought; the infinite Sum of all perfections, while we (as the brothers rightly say) are like wretched blind rats fighting over scraps in a sewer?’ And her smile seemed to gently mock his metaphors, as if holding a secret far beyond their reach.
But Calibur began to guess at it, and doubt the wisdom of the brothers.
Every once in a while, a group of pilgrims would pass that way on their way to Avebury, and the hermits would bless them and in return receive their offerings of food and wine. The pilgrims would give to them in the name of the Goddess, believing them to be holy men devoted to Her; otherwise why would anyone live up there on her snowy heights? And the hermits would accept the food and wine as from the One God above, and Calibur began to have his doubts about who was closer to the truth: the simple pilgrims who accepted Life as from the divine Mother of all; or the Platonic hermits who despised them, and life itself, and laid claim to the transcendent realm as the only fit home for the soul. He began to see them as those who look a gift horse in the mouth, or complain that water is too wet, or grass too green.
After one such visit, when the hermits were in high spirits from the wine the pilgrims had brought (and perhaps also from the mouldy rye-bread they were eating), Calibur ventured to voice his doubts about their attitude to Life, and what they said the about the One being irrevocably divorced from the World, and there was a loud disputation, until they came to agreement, upon which they all turned to him and accused him of blasphemy. He tried to counter by repeating some of the things he remembered Rosa had said, about the truth of the world being found within a single flower, and the meaning of life in the smile of a baby.
But they were silenced by the irritable knocking of the Writer’s staff on the floor of his locked cell above. And retreating to the silence of his own cell, Calibur meditated urgently on the question of the true nature of the One and Its relationship with the World, and had thoughts of returning to Rosa.
But in the morning he settled back into the normal routine of privation and prayers. And so the days passed, until the next time they were all drinking the wine offerings from the pilgrims (except for the old Writer, who remained in rigorous seclusion), and entering into spirited disputation. This time Calibur had his thoughts clearer. He stood up and said, ‘My brothers, while it is undisputed that there is “That than which nothing greater can be thought”, and It has necessarily all positive attributes, including existence (though not on our merely contingent, ephemeral, material level); nevertheless, who is to say what view or image of that Being has the most truth; that which would paint It as a stern and distant Father, or that which portrays it as a loving Mother, as present to us as the air we breathe, flesh of our flesh, and bone of our bone, in Whom we live and move and have our being? My brothers, if the latter is true, why have we left our mothers and our fathers and our friends and beloveds, to come to this lonely place? For even here, behold! We still have our bodies, which we cannot deny while we live, chastise them as we may. And behold the mountains and the life-giving waters, which issue forth from this place and flow down into the valleys and give life to fish and fowl and crops, teeming and sensuous!’ But the hermits grumbled and replied,
‘For shame, little brother, you have let the wine inflame you with wild lustful follies and blasphemies, instead of using it to warm your enthusiasm for the Truth!’
‘But the Truth must encompass this World and permeate it with meaning, or what is this existence for?’
‘It is a testing-ground, a vale of suffering and temptation, to separate the sheep who will follow the shepherd of heavenly Truth out of the valley of worldly lusts into the mountains of snowy purity and the eternal Forms, from the blind goats who prefer bondage to the material world and its idolatrous images,’ said Faunus, the oldest hermit, whose long hollow-cheeked face and drunken eyes (thought Calibur) did indeed resemble a goat’s. He restrained a laugh, and ventured to reply:
‘Yet, venerable father, if from the earth an artist may fashion a heavenly form, and in it the heavenly and the earthly meet and are fused, so that all who look on it are enlightened, how can that be wrong? What if the Earth too is sacred? And what if Heaven and Earth wish to be married? Will you refuse then to come to the wedding?’
‘Blashphemy!’ slurred the old hermit. ‘Ignore brother Calibur!’ said the others, ‘He is a drunken and unteachable novice,’ and they all turned their backs on him, and returned to their disputations about the best form of meditation and bodily purifications in order to more fully apprehend the One and defeat the temptations of the body.
Ashamed and angry, Calibur went to the Room of the Abyss, which was built out over the outermost crag on which the hermitage was built. He looked out the window at the airy gulf above the sheer mountainside on which the hermitage was perched, and the full moon hanging over the cloud-covered distant valleys like a wheel of blue-veined cheese rising from a sea of milk.
As he sipped the last of his red wine, far down beneath the cloud he thought he could hear the faint sound of waterfalls fed by the thawing snow, or was it just the wind in the firs? He cupped his ears, trying to block out the sound of the other hermits still disputing in the next room. He imagined he heard, further down still, the bleating of lambs and their mothers answering. He yearned to go down to that land of milk and honey and dance with Rosa in the moonlight and make love with her in the scented darkness, and in the morning watch the lambs playing in the fields, and admire his wife’s cabbages and ducklings, and see the dew on the roses sparkle in the sun.
But in the morning Calibur had a terrible hangover. He cursed his rebellious flesh with its wayward desires, submitted willingly to the disciplines Faunus laid upon him, and tried to forget the mundane world he had left far behind.
Yet, try as he might, he could not stop the questions. And there came another occasion, when the brothers were discussing whether there is an Ideal form for all things, even mud or dust. And Faunus said ‘No, it cannot be that such foul excrescences of the lower can be modelled on the Ideal Forms which reside above with the One. Only such things as the five Platonic Solids, and the virtues, can have Ideal Forms.’
‘But venerable master,’ burst out Calibur, though he was on silence for a previous indiscretion, ‘In the divine wisdom which permeates all life, the mud brings forth the beautiful lot
us, and the dust when watered yields the soil which nurtures the wheat, without which our bodies would die, and the minds that contemplate the eternal Ideals would perish with them.’ The brothers remained silent, and encouraged, Calibur went on, ‘Even excrement when mixed with plant matter, feeds the worms and produces fine dark compost in which good women grow cabbages and carrots and apples, and all good things.’ He was thinking of Rosa now, and her garden, and wishing he could walk with her in it once more.
‘Blasphemy!’ said Faunus, and Calibur apologised for referring to excrement, and fell silent. But he kept thinking about gardens and life, and the divine goodness of it, though admittedly imperfect, unlike the Platonic Solids.
Meanwhile, back at his old cave, the Book which he had thrown away had landed in a crevice half-way down the mountain-side, where the rat, having lost its home to Calibur, had nevertheless lived well off the rubbish Calibur threw down. The rat pulled the Book in and chewed it up to line its nest.
Then, being old, it died, and its remains and the remains of the book rotted away together.
One day in early spring when the snow was still on the ground, from the rich soil in the rat’s crevice a rose seed began to sprout. The little plant prospered, but, feeling its life was precarious, it put all its energy into a single lovely bloom.
On the day the rose was fully opened, Calibur happened to pass his old cave on an errand to cut firewood for the hermitage. He put his load down and stretched. Looking down he saw the little rose, glowing red in the pure white snow, and marvelled at it. He remembered Rosa and his heart was pierced as by a sword, and suddenly he remembered that he was still a man, and that he still loved his wife and desired her. ‘I can even forgive her for saying she was sick of my swords and my dreams,’ he thought. And his feelings began to thaw like a mountain stream in spring-time, and he rejoiced.
Then this truth dawned on him: that in all the days of his quest he had never truly been lost; the truth of Life was there beneath his very feet as in vain he sought to possess the transcendent One on the bare mountaintop. And he wept for his wife, who could have told him that. ‘So, this is the truth the pilgrims held in their hearts when they left their simple offerings to the goddess of the cave!’ he thought. ‘How I wish I had talked to them!’
Seized with the desire to show his gratitude to Life and the Goddess, he climbed down the dangerous slope and picked the single rose. He bore it carefully up into the cave, and laid it in a little hollow on the stone altar at the entrance, and the air was filled with its fragrance. Taking water from the spring, he filled the hollow so that the rose floated in it. Then he had a long drink of the icy rose-scented water, and looked around, and the mountains seemed to enfold him, and for a moment Life was no riddle, or if it was, he and every other living thing, and every rock and the clear air and the blue sky and the water of the well and the rose floating in it, were all the answer he needed.
He brought his load of firewood back to the hermitage, put it down and said good bye to the hermits. ‘Thank you for all your help and succour, my brothers!’ he said. With you I have found God and Truth on the mountain-top; now I go back down to find the World and Life,’ And they envied the joy in his smile, and his faith in Life and a living destiny. Though they tried to smile back brightly, he saw their crooked mouths and was reminded of the ugliness of the Trader. Still, grateful for all they had done for him, he embraced them. Their hearts were warmed, and they brushed away their tears, and wished him Godspeed. Then Calibur left the hermits and came down from the mountains to find Rosa and beg her forgiveness.
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