For a few moments I paced the square, peering up side streets for a waiting car. The two coffee shops where I might have taken refuge—a nostalgia-inducing kind with plastic booths and pastries under transparent domes, and a more chic, awninged one with round marble tables and a conspicuous espresso machine—were lit from within but closed. I used my cell phone to call the two people I’d been in touch with, but a hollow silence suggested the lines were down because of the storm. By now I was angry as well as baffled, and resolved to go directly to the guest house I’d been promised, but when I consulted my papers under the streetlight, I realized I had never been told the name of the place. You’ll stay at the guest house, my contact had said; I’m sure you’ll be quite comfortable. Even if I’d known the name and address, how would I get there? There were no buses or taxis in sight, nor did I have a street map. From the looks of things, I might have been the only living soul in M——.
The night was warm; the air had the cleansed freshness it often does after rainfall, with an odd sweetness like the scent of honeysuckle or peonies, a relief after the staleness of the taxi. I set off down the broadest of the four streets that converged on the square, planning to check in at the first hotel I found. I must have walked seven or eight blocks down an avenue in all respects ordinary, with shops and restaurants on the ground floors of moderate-sized buildings, except for its being deserted. Suddenly, amidst my exhaustion, irritation, and regret that I had ever agreed to come to M—— in the first place, I spied a man in a white robe walking toward me, some kind of priest or monk, I assumed. I quickened my step to meet him. He would be my salvation, I decided, whether he wished it or not.
He greeted me cordially and knew me at once for a stranger. When I explained my situation, he promptly offered to take me to his house, where I could lodge for the night. I expected that the “house” would be part of some monastery or church, perhaps the church on the main square, and I accepted gratefully. Had I not been close to despair, I probably wouldn’t have given myself over so trustingly to a stranger. But I was close to despair, and this feeling, along with his monkish robes and affable manner, overcame any instinct of caution. He led me to an ordinary brick town-house only a few steps away; as he turned the key in the lock I felt enormous relief. Anything, at this point, would be preferable to wandering the vacant streets of M——.
When we stepped inside he removed his white robe to reveal ordinary slacks and a shirt. He was about my height and age, of similar build and coloring, which for some reason I found a comfort. The house, too, was reassuring, with plants, bookshelves, and the kind of pleasant if undistinguished furnishings that might be seen in innumerable towns all over the country. He fixed me a sandwich in the kitchen, and I ate it eagerly.
I know from my travels that people in small cities or towns are highly sensitive to the imputed criticisms of visitors from the metropolises. Though the last thing I wanted was to appear to be deriding the provinces, I couldn’t help remarking, in the most mild way, on M——’s deserted streets. Granted, it was late, but still well before midnight.
He wasn’t at all bothered by my question. “Yes, it must seem odd. Usually the streets are lively at this hour, but it happens you’ve come on a special night. It’s an annual holiday in the province of M——.” He looked at me curiously. “We don’t get many visitors.”
“You don’t? But I have contacts here, and so do many of my colleagues. As I said, I was expected. In fact, may I use your phone? My cell phone didn’t work last night.”
“You’re welcome to try, but I suspect you won’t be able to get through. Why don’t I show you to your room, and then we can make plans in the morning?”
I hadn’t the will to insist. “What’s the holiday?” I asked as I followed him up the stairs.
“The Festival of the Stones. You may have heard about M——’s precious gems.”
I hadn’t heard, but I murmured a vague assent.
“The whole town works all day to get the new gems finished and ready for the coming year, and then we hold our celebration dinner. It ends early, and the town closes up for a night of contemplation. I happened to be out only because I was attending at a birth, the first one after the festival, which is always auspicious.”
“Oh, are you a doctor, then?”
“Oh, no. I am the Stone Master of M——.”
Whatever this quaint title meant, I was clearly being lodged at the home of an important local functionary. Good. Tomorrow he could help me reach my contacts, who had been so negligent. Had they had the courtesy to let me know it was their holiday, I could easily have come a day later. But I put all that aside for now. The guest room at the top of the stairs was a welcome sight, with its large four-poster bed; all I wanted was to fall into it and forget the travails of the past few hours.
I slept well and went downstairs to the aroma of coffee brewing. From the front windows, I saw cars going by, as well as the occasional pedestrian: so there was ordinary life in M—— after all. Not that I didn’t trust my host, the Stone Master—there was something benignly monkish about him even without his white robe—but I couldn’t quite shake the eeriness of last night’s taxi ride and lonely walk down the dark, glistening streets. Now a few phone calls to rearrange my scheduled appearances, and all would be well.
My host was in the kitchen preparing breakfast. Not wishing to appear in haste to leave, after his kindness, I was ready to chat for a while before turning to my affairs. As a matter of fact I wasn’t in haste to leave: the house and the Stone Master exuded a serenity and self-possession, a gathered solidity and denseness that were seductive and of which I felt badly in need, especially after the taxi driver’s nervous fragmentation, which, though I hadn’t realized it at the time, had had an alarmingly contagious effect.
“Tell me something about these gems,” I said, sitting opposite him at the table. “Do you have any around that I might look at?”
He smiled as if I were a guileless child asking the unthinkable. “I’m afraid I couldn’t do that. They’re not for casual display. Or they shouldn’t be, at any rate.”
“Didn’t you say M—— was known for its precious gems?”
“For our traditional use of the gems. Not for showing them.”
“Ah. I assumed you did a brisk business.”
“No. They’re not for sale. We sell our products and labor, not ourselves.”
I was unprepared for this sort of enigma. Moreover, what were the gems, if not the products of labor? “What do you do with them, if you don’t sell them? Wear them?” I had a ludicrous vision of crowds of glittering people studded from head to foot with precious stones, parading through the streets. How different from the bleak scene that had greeted me! What a spectacle I might have missed, arriving on the wrong night.
“I’d gladly tell you, but are you sure you’d rather not be off on your business?”
“My business can wait—if you don’t mind, that is. You’ve made me curious.”
He seemed pleased by this. “Very well. Everyone in the province of M——receives at birth a precious stone that gives off a dazzling, warming light. This is theirs to keep for life. It was these stones we were preparing yesterday, the ones destined for the births of the coming year.”
“Are they a kind of individual bank account or trust fund?” This was a more modest vision, and more familiar. I had heard suggestions in my part of the country, too, that each citizen be given some sort of financial credit line on which to draw for life, but to the best of my knowledge these notions were too radical ever to have been taken seriously.
“Not at all.” Again he smiled at my ignorance. “Or perhaps yes, though not in the sense you mean. We keep them at home in a private place and look at them whenever we wish, according to temperament. Some are so enamored of their stone that they can gaze for hours, barely able to tear themselves away. It may even keep them from more practical pursuits. Others are much occupied with worldly affairs, but they never forget that it�
��s there.” He paused to pour me some more coffee.
“I must say I’m puzzled. You have these splendid costly gems, and all you do is look at them now and then?”
“Ah, but the true value is not in the gems themselves but in the light they emit. The nature of this light is not easy to describe to someone unfamiliar with it. To begin with, the stones are similar, but as time passes their light changes, becoming more distinctive and more subtly nuanced. That is—” and he paused, for dramatic effect, I was sure; as a speaker, I had often used the same ploy myself. “That is, it becomes a faithful reflection, in the shaded language of light, of its owner.”
At those words a slight flush came over me. I realized, as I might have done sooner but for my general confusion, that M——was no ordinary place, and my new friend no ordinary host. Perhaps I should have excused myself right then, but my curiosity was piqued.
“The light of the gems,” he said, noting my discomfiture, for he was shrewd, even if possibly mad, “not only warms and nourishes the spirit but continues to modulate as the owners grow in years and experience, in sufferings and in triumphs. The light absorbs everything that happens and reflects everything.”
“And will your own gem,” I said a trifle frivolously, “soon absorb and reflect your encounter with a curious stranger?”
“By all means,” he said, mirroring my grin. “The stones are our chronicles as well as our great sustenance. In their light we see our powers reflected, together with all that has happened to give us our powers. We take pleasure in them, and we take pride. Even in troubled times, the stones are a comfort, for they show that our sorrows have substance, in the elusive manner of light, and that they shape the spirit, in the elusive shapes of light. And so our people are never bereft of themselves even in the darkest hours. They always know who they are.”
“Surely you can’t all be paragons,” I said. “There must be some who seek to profit by their gems—to display them, even trade them?”
“Profit and trade are out of the question,” he replied. “The matter cannot arise, since the gems lose their light once they pass from the hands of their original owners. They become worthless, nothing but commonplace stones. As far as self-display, yes, just as everywhere else, we have our share. But this is held in check because the gems have one perilous quality. As you must surely have discovered, anything sustaining and nourishing has a perilous quality.”
Was that true? I would have to ponder it later. Meanwhile I asked, “And what is the perilous quality?”
“Their brilliance dims very slightly, almost imperceptibly, each time they are shown to anyone else. And along with their brilliance, their powers of sustenance dim too. Children are warned of this peril as soon as they are able to understand.”
So I had stumbled on a cabal of mystical navel-gazers. I was about to suggest something to that effect, naturally in more diplomatic terms, when my host preempted me.
“Don’t make the mistake of thinking we do nothing but bask in our light and neglect the world. On the contrary, if we fail to use the powers reflected by the stones, their light grows dull and hollow. No, as in any realm, all are encouraged to do as their talents counsel: to engage in civic affairs, or provide needed goods and services, or make beautiful things, or study the mysteries of the natural world. We neither hide our light nor hesitate to use it. But its visible embodiment, the gems themselves, endures best when contemplated in solitude.”
I was speechless.
“Let me assure you,” my host said kindly, “that we are no more reclusive, and no less vain, than the rest of the world. Since the gems are beautiful, and each one unique, it’s only natural to wish to reveal them on intimate occasions, out of pride or out of love—as all people seek to offer their loved ones the radiant light of their spirit. And with the equally natural desire to show off, few can resist bringing the gems out in public now and then; in fact those few are regarded as a bit selfish, or let us say spiritually arrogant, for their austere refusal. Human nature has its own spectrum like the spectrum of light: some of us show our gems far and wide, while others guard them carefully, reluctant to dim the sustaining power of the light.”
“And I suppose those who keep them hidden are rewarded in some way?” I said. “Or perhaps those who show them off.”
“No rewards accrue in either case, nor punishments either. It is true that some gain fame for the beauty of their gems—if you consider fame a reward—but this fame is brief: only as long as the fading light lasts. Those who rarely show them gain nothing tangible for their restraint, not even after death, for the gems are extinguished and buried with them. The issue is much debated, as you might imagine. Just yesterday we had the usual discussion of the attendant gains and losses, as always on the eve of our annual holiday. There were even a number of gems on display at the celebration dinner,” he said, rather ruefully, I thought.
“And your position?”
“Ah, my position. I am the Stone Master. My position is a difficult one. Ideally, I believe, as have the Stone Masters before me, that the gems should be displayed seldom, if ever, in order for the light to retain the highest degree of subtlety and power. What, after all, can have more ultimate value? But this, as I said, is an ideal, even ascetic, position, attainable by very few. On the other hand, as Stone Master, responsible for the quality and efficacy of the gems, how can I not long for everyone to see the splendor of what we work so hard to perfect? I must confess to fantasies of some great bejeweled display, days on end of glittering festivities, with everyone resplendent. What a riotous indulgence that would be. And after our brief burst of glory, well …”
I had a sudden urge to cry out a warning. Couldn’t he foresee the unhappy results? My passionate impulse left me trembling with shock. What could I know about safeguarding the stones or the fate of these strange people who cherished them? But there was no need to tell him anything. He knew already.
“But these are only passing fancies. The indulgence of a few hours, even a few days, would never compensate for the solitary elixir of the light, its growing brilliance faithfully and dazzlingly giving us our lives. Nothing makes that more clear than the fate of those who spend their light most lavishly: their stones grow dimmer and dimmer until almost nothing is left to show or to see. The light, exposed to light, is used up.” We were silent as these melancholy words settled in the air.
My curiosity at this point was urgent. Yet much as I longed to see one of the fabled stones, preferably the Stone Master’s, I knew it would be as pointless as it was intrusive to ask. (Not that I didn’t entertain the probably sacrilegious and certainly unfeasible notion of prowling through the house for a peek.) Instead I asked if I might meet some residents of M——, so as to judge both extremes for myself.
At this my host looked down as if embarrassed.
“Perhaps I expressed myself too crudely,” I amended. “I assure you I wouldn’t trespass on what you hold sacred. It’s simply that I can’t help but want to see …”
He faced me, finally, like someone with the regrettable task of breaking unpleasant news, who would discharge it with fortitude. “Please forgive me, but you are already seeing.”
I didn’t understand at first, but as the silence deepened, his words bore into me. He, the Stone Master, and I, the stranger, were all I needed to see.
There was no more to say after that. I rose and told him I must be on my way, and asked again if I might use his phone.
“You cannot reach your friends from here. But I can take you to them.”
“You can? Why didn’t you say so last night?” I thought my asperity was warranted, especially as he had just been so unsparing with me. “Not that I would have troubled you for a ride at that hour, but I might have called for a taxi.”
“You looked in need of a night’s sleep. And I suppose I indulged my curiosity. It’s not often that I get to meet a stranger. Perhaps even a celebrity,” he said with a touch of facetiousness. “But I assure you no harm has b
een done, as you’ll soon see.”
I gathered my things and followed the Stone Master outside to his car. On the way, he nodded to a few passersby. M—— looked perfectly ordinary, a modest city on a clear autumn morning; but for my talk with the Stone Master, I wouldn’t have found anything the least bit unusual.
We drove through the town square where I was to have met my contacts—in another lifetime, it seemed—then back along the route out of town, past the commercial strips, that my sullen driver had taken some twelve hours earlier. Soon we were at the fork in the road, approaching from the other direction the ambiguous sign that led to M——. My host turned deftly onto the other fork, the one I myself would have chosen the night before but had not had the presence of mind to insist that the driver take.
“So this is the way,” I mused aloud.
“You wanted New M——. But you somehow arrived in Old M——,” said the Stone Master. “Didn’t you see the sign?”
“I didn’t notice any ‘Old’ or ‘New,’” I said, a bit petulantly, I’m afraid. “It was hard to see in the rain.”
“Your driver must have made an error.” He paused. “Or perhaps he was playing tricks on you. A few people, not many, choose to leave M——, notwithstanding its advantages. They find the singular discipline of the stones too constraining.”
“Or perhaps they are lured by what is beyond,” I couldn’t resist saying.
“Very likely.”
“The driver had a rhinestone below his eyebrow,” I said.
“Not a rhinestone,” the Stone Master said sadly. “Never that. Well, you wanted to see an example. His eyebrow!” he muttered, shaking his head.
This road had far more traffic than the one I had traveled the night before. We soon reached the strips of shops and motels, exactly like those leading to Old M——. At the sign announcing the city limits, the Stone Master pulled over. “I’ll have to leave you here. You won’t have far to walk. Less than a mile.” As he pointed the way, I noticed the daylight dimming, as if evening was coming on.
Referred Pain: Stories Page 11