‘Not long.’
Chen went back inside and re-worked the lens surfaces. He ground them down, adjusting their curvature, which he then checked against a series of curved wooden templates on his workbench.
‘Why is it so hard?’ asked Paolo.
‘Convex shapes are everywhere in nature, like the drop of water on a leaf, a teardrop, or weather-worn pebbles shaped by wind, water, and rain. They are solid, strong, and natural. Here we are working against nature. This is unstable, thin in the middle, easily broken. The rock crystal can shatter. We must hope for luck that we find the right curve for you, a lens that bends the light to correct your sight.’
He continued to polish each lens in circling movements, and at last the crystal began to emerge, glittering with reflected light.
Chen held each lens and checked its clarity. Then Paolo took both carefully between his fingers and raised them to his eyes. The previous world lurched into focus. He could see into Chen’s eye, watching him, smiling hopefully.
‘Yes, these.’
‘Let me finish them.’
Chen took a piece of iron with a fine point and bored holes into each side of the almond-shaped lenses. Then he threaded a piece of leather in a metal clasp through the two inner holes to form a supporting bridge. He reached for a pair of calipers and measured the circumference of Paolo’s head before cutting a second piece of leather to length, finally tying the glasses in a knot at the back.
Paolo began to test and adjust the lenses in front of his eyes, trying to find the most comfortable place for them to sit, seeing the whorls of his fingers up close against him. He blinked and began to readjust his vision, looking out into the distance, as if he lived in two different worlds: one close to, the other far off.
They walked into the streets and Paolo could see lanterns receding far ahead, green, red, and white, hanging in the doorways of every shop front. They swayed gently in the breeze against embroidered beads or jade curtains, but now, instead of witnessing the scene through frosted glass, he saw each lantern whole, clearly defined, one from another. There were lanterns that turned under a trickle of water; others were shaped as boats and dragons, with horses and horsemen, or as gods and goddesses decorated in gold and silver, pearls and jade.
He looked back at Chen, who now appeared too close, too large, before him, the lines on his forehead as distinct as if they were inches rather than feet apart. He took the glasses away from his eyes, and then raised them once more, testing the sudden shock of sight.
For the first time Paolo could see the thickness of clouds, their depth, detail, and texture. He felt a rush of vision, and almost stumbled at the new world around him. His gaze became so highly focused that everything he saw had acquired a concentrated clarity.
He tried to walk, but felt disorientated, as if he had just disembarked from a ship in a foreign country. Objects appeared to hurtle towards him. They came so close and so quickly that his head began to ache, pained by the clarity of the world. Scribes and acrobats, fortune-tellers, astrologers, palm-readers, prophets, and seers crowded past. They walked more quickly, came into vision more swiftly, and departed too soon. The world had suddenly become fast.
Was this how Aisha saw?
He walked away, out through the tanneries, and saw the rich saffron, scarlet, mint, and antimony dyes of the women, their arms coloured, bright cloths curtaining their homes to shade against sun and brightness. A bare-chested, muscular man with stained arms pulled stretches of indigo-dyed cotton out of a vat that had been hollowed from the earth. He rinsed it clear so that the water turned a dark and violent blue. The stain followed the veins of his arms. Paolo had never noticed the blood beneath another man’s skin before.
He saw the women reeling silk, making looms, and rearing worms. He noticed, for the first time, the threads hanging from the mouths of the silkworm caterpillars, the white circles near the breast and head, the three-fold spur in their tails.
Now he could read the letters on the votive strips that hung from the trees above a potter glazing a set of bowls. He stood, waited, and watched the transformation as the cobalt glaze became a rich deep blue. He saw the pots cooling in sand, and looked through the peephole into the orange glow of the kiln as the potter waited for the glaze to become as golden as sunlight on snow.
The smoke and heat of the potteries reached up into his eyes, which now began to smart. A pedlar offered him hot water and Paolo took off his glasses. He scooped the water from the bowl and felt the warmth and the wetness cleanse and heal. He reached for a cloth and patted his eyes dry. When he opened them again, the water still clung to his eyelids and he felt his vision swim. He blinked against the light. And then, when he could see again without his spectacles, he saw that the earth had returned to its former mist.
All this time he had looked with soft eyes.
He put on the spectacles once more. His head ached with the excitement of the new possibilities before him. At the same time the world became threatening, as objects loomed into view, good and evil, without any differentiation, sharply defined before him, like a clear and sudden view of death.
And the town was louder now. The cries of children, the barking of dogs, and the shouting in the market came from every direction: ahead, behind, from the sides, above, and below. The sounds met each other in Paolo, travelled through him, and bounced back off the walls to hit him again with their reverberation, echo upon echo, so that he was no longer sure which way he was walking. The noise had become cacophonous. He had to get back to the firework maker, talk to him, and ask him to explain. Was the world meant to be so clear and so sharp; or did the lenses contain some dark magic within them?
‘What do you think?’ asked Chen.
‘It is too much,’ replied Paolo. ‘I feel like a blind man who has been granted sight …’
‘If they are too strong …’
‘Let me walk a while,’ replied Paolo. ‘Let me try to get used to them …’
‘You will need time …’
‘I am two people now: one who can see and one who cannot.’
‘Then you must decide which man you wish to be,’ said Chen. ‘Clear vision is painful as well as enlightening. The further we see into the distance, the more we understand its limitations.’
Salek and Jacopo were amused by Paolo’s new-found sight and celebrated by buying three kites which they flew from a hill on the edge of the town.
Paolo watched the paper stream across the sky, a great wave of red against blue, and felt hope at last. He longed to go home and show his parents that he could see. He wanted to tell Simone, not only to give him the stone with which he could paint eternal life, but also to explain what it meant. For he knew now, with each vista that opened up before him, with every sense of distance, what it might be like to paint space, to imagine infinity.
‘At least we won’t lose any more animals,’ said Salek. ‘You can see when they are camels and when they are rocks.’
‘I can see everything. Even when you are teasing me. Before I had to guess when you were being serious and when you were not. Now I can read your face.’
‘We never tease you. We are your friends,’ said Jacopo.
‘I am not so sure of that.’
‘Sometimes,’ said Salek, ‘I think you are ungrateful. We have shown you the world. Now you can see it clear.’
‘I do not know that I always want to do that. It is so sharp, so lustrous. Sometimes I want to close my eyes and let the brightness pass.’
‘There will be time enough to close your eyes,’ said Jacopo.
‘One day’ – Paolo smiled – ‘just for one day on this journey, it would be good not to be reminded of death. You have taught me, and taught me well. I have learned my lesson, and it does not need to be repeated. And so perhaps you could refrain from referring to the fact of our mortality each time we discuss our lives. Is that too much to ask? Do you think you could do this? Just for one day?’
‘I do not think so,’ said
Salek.
‘Impossible,’ agreed Jacopo.
Over the next few days, Paolo’s earliest doubts and uncertainties began to take hold. Despite the sharpness and the brightness he also saw flaw and decay in everything around him. He could see how furrowed a brow could be and how swiftly a man aged. He saw disease, blisters, wounds, and unhappiness. He noticed, for the first time, that the bundles of rags lying in the road, and abandoned at regular intervals, contained people. He could see them clearly, arms outstretched, their faces wrought with pain. Perhaps God had given him short sight to protect him from such clarity; and the lenses were, after all, an aberration, a disavowal of the divine plan for his life. Paolo felt like a man who had been given all the riches of the world and only longed once more for his poverty.
He talked to Chen’s customers. People came who thought that they would never see again: a man who wanted to watch his son fly a kite in the sky before he died; an astronomer who wanted to help his brother to see what he saw, mapping the heavens, understanding the divinity of creation. There was a nobleman who wanted spectacles for his horse, and a lady who was convinced that such a device might help her cat kill more mice. Another man came because he wanted to spy on the courtesans of the city, asking Chen if he could make a lens that might let him see through their clothes without payment; while a wife brought her husband a pair of spectacles to make him aware of the flaws of women he had wanted to seduce.
One man came and complained that he saw too clearly. He asked for spectacles to cloud his vision so that he could not see long distances so sharply. He wanted to live in a narrower, shorter world: to live, as Paolo had done, with softer eyes.
Chen told Paolo that he should spend a day and a night looking at the sky to soothe his eyes and calm his thoughts. If he wanted to see beauty he should always look upwards.
‘Imagine the sky is the eyeball of our creator,’ said Chen, ‘curved in its socket, looking down upon us.’
Paolo should study the clouds, and trace the colour of the heavens as they changed from dawn to day and from dusk into the night, taking his thoughts away from the frailty and vanity of mankind. To look up at the sky was to know one’s place in the universe: the light of the setting sun over the mountains was the halo of Buddha.
Paolo watched the stars and the colour of the night sky through all its clouds and clarity and wanted to tell Aisha that now he saw as she did. He saw the moon as a crescent illuminated against a darker sphere. Before, it had always been a patch of white. Now he could see its dark planes and far craters.
When he returned he told Chen how the world served only to remind him of the suffering it contained, the love he had lost, and the futility of his own existence.
‘I am sorry to hear you say this.’
‘I am sorry to feel it. What can I do?’
‘If the sky does not bring you comfort then you must go to see my father.’
‘He will help me?’
‘He is a holy man. He does not always speak. But he knows of the sorrows of the world. That is why he has withdrawn from it.’
‘But does he see the world clearly? With all its faults and yet know what it is to live within it? Does he believe there is a purpose, even if this life is all there is?’
‘It is his only concern, his daily hope,’ replied Chen.
It was the eighth day of the fourth moon. Approached through a grove of elms and poplars, the caves of the Ch’ien-fo-tung lay to the southeast on a steep bare slope of the Altyn Tagh range of mountains. Inscribed silken banners hung from the cliffs, stretching hundreds of feet down to the ground. A honeycomb of rock temples paid tribute to the dream of Lo-tsun, a monk who once had a vision of a thousand Buddhas in a cloud of glory.
The head lama was a small man who combined religious certainty with an air of distrust, as if he were far more confident of the next life than he was of this. He asked if Paolo had come to trade or to seek wisdom. If the former, then he required candles, lamp oil, small metal cups, and bowls; if the latter, then his journey need go no further.
The caves stretched back into the darkness, each lit by a series of small flames. Here people prepared to scale the ladder, climb the tree, cross the perilous bridge, ford the river or ascend the mountain to the blaze of heaven. Some of the monks were making images: first in straw, and then covering them with clay before firing, glazing, and firing again. Others contemplated the paintings on the dark walls: Avalokitesvara with eleven heads and a thousand arms, cock-headed demons on pothi leaves, the lotus pond of paradise, or scenes from the life of the Buddha. Pilgrims lit silver lamps at shrines whose light pierced the darkness of the sky. Travellers intoned from sacred texts, made offerings, and burned incense, either praying for protection as they embarked on the start of their journey over the silk route, or thanking the gods for their safe return.
Chen’s father was meditating.
He was a tall man with a shaved head and an expression that was more determined than serene. He wore a yellow robe, and sat perfectly still, his twisted feet bent back in the lotus position. His strength and vigour suggested that he must once have been a warrior.
Chen and Paolo sat and watched.
An hour passed.
Paolo looked at every head and every arm of the painting of Avalokitesvara on the wall of the cave; he tried to analyse what made each detail different but could only surmise that they all seemed the same.
Another hour passed.
He wondered what it would be like to walk around with eleven heads. Was one head in charge of the other ten, or were they all equal? Were there eleven brains, each with different roles and responsibilities? And what must it be like to carry a thousand arms with you as you walked? There must be five hundred on each side of the body. Paolo thought that reproduction would also be a problem but he supposed that the gods were beyond such desires. Still, he thought, it would involve a great deal of grappling if it ever happened, never mind the eleven heads.
Paolo listened to the monk’s breathing. It was shallow, almost imperceptible, with a long intake and a slow release. The three men sat in silence. When Paolo could bear it no longer he asked Chen if anything else might happen.
‘Those who speak know nothing; those who know are silent.’
Finally the father opened his eyes, although he kept staring ahead.
Paolo realised that this was the only event of any interest that had happened in the previous four hours.
‘This is Paolo,’ Chen said at last.
The monk turned, nodded, and remained silent. Perhaps he was still in a trance.
‘I am troubled,’ Paolo said quietly. ‘Now I have spectacles I see the world too clearly.’
Chen’s father answered at last. ‘And what do you see?’
Paolo paused and wondered what he did see. The central line of wrinkles on the monk’s forehead. His small brown eyes. The saffron of his gown. The flower floating in the bowl of water in front of him. He looked away, out to a bamboo grove in the distance.
‘I see the leaf of every tree.’
The monk nodded, as if he understood; but how could he know what it was like? How could he live as Paolo lived?
‘Then take time to study.’
‘Every leaf?’
‘Each leaf. Or one leaf. From spring through to summer. Its rise and its sap, the greening and the fall. In one year you will understand all years.’
He had already spent one night looking at the sky darken and then lighten again. ‘You want me to spend a year looking at a leaf?’
‘It is not me who should want such a thing. I have no wants and no wishes. It is you who must want it: as the leaf needs to grow and then fall, so must you.’
‘Such a long time.’
‘One of our ancestors, Bodhidharma, spent nine years in meditation facing a wall. Great things are disclosed through the small. You will be glad of the leaf.’
‘And if I cannot do this?’
‘Come to me again when you can.’
; For the next few days Paolo tried to ignore the monk’s advice but found that the idea would not leave his head. He must try such an experiment, however absurd. Perhaps he would learn more from standing still than he ever had from travelling.
His only mistake was to tell Salek and Jacopo.
‘I do not understand,’ said Jacopo. ‘First you want to stay with that woman. Now you want to live with a leaf.’
‘How will you ever return home?’ asked Salek.
‘I will come whenever you are ready,’ Paolo replied.
‘Then we look forward to hearing of your adventures.’ Jacopo smiled. ‘Perhaps the leaf would like to join us on our return? I anticipate much philosophical conversation both with the leaf, and, indeed, upon it.’
Paolo walked out to find a cherry tree at the end of a long avenue on the edge of the town. The ground was damp with dew. He attempted the lotus position, just as the monk had sat, but could not manoeuvre his legs in the correct manner. Never had his body seemed so unyielding, as if his limbs were too long. In fact he could not find a single position in which he could relax and concentrate. He tried to lie on his side, but the ground felt even harder. There was a chill in the air, and he found that he could think of nothing but the damp earth beneath him.
‘Om,’ he said, half-heartedly.
Nothing happened.
‘Om, Om, Om, Om.’
He wondered if he should abandon this activity, but to return now, so soon, would admit failure, and he could not face scorn from Jacopo or laughter from Salek.
An hour passed before he decided to lie down on his back and look up at the tree, watching the light filter through the leaves.
He was surprised by the difference between the leaves. Upon which one should he concentrate? Perhaps this was the message of the monk: to find his own life in the midst of so many.
He looked at a branch already gnarled with age.
A pale-green leaf, lighter than jade, nestled under a piece of blossom.
He wondered if he could not meditate because he was frightened of what he might find. Perhaps that is why he had never stopped for long enough to think further on what his life had meant and what it might become.
The Colour of Heaven Page 15