“There are really only three kinds of people in this world,” Daralyn said, picking up a thread of conversation from their last brief interval of rest. “Our people; the people from the Far East, of whom I’m also a part; and the people from the hot, humid southern land.”
“The singers look like none of those,” Gwellyn said.
“Maybe that’s because they’re dead.”
Daralyn meant that as a joke, and Gwellyn laughed, but he still took it seriously. “Has anyone ever seen one of them alive?”
“I don’t think so,” Daralyn said.
“Then why do we call them singers?” Gwellyn asked. “Surely they don’t sing when they are dead?” He thought again about how he had helped destroy the corpse they had found, how they had committed those smoky green eyes, that neck like a tree-trunk, to the flames… Would he have felt even worse about destroying it if there was some chance that that neck could sing? Or was there a way of singing without words, without the impact of vocal cords upon the air, an impact that a corpse could have on the world without actually singing?
“I’m not sure,” Daralyn said. “Whenever I’ve heard them called by a name, it’s always been the singers. I think someone once told me that the way they talk is by singing—that they have no words to speak, just melodies and harmonies to sing.”
“But that sounds like someone must have seen them alive,” Gwellyn said.
“Melodies sound like life, yes.” Daralyn smiled. “I like that. But you’re right—no one has seen them alive.”
“But how can that be?” Gwellyn asked.
“I don’t know,” Daralyn replied. “Maybe they were alive a long time ago, before any one of us or our people, but other people saw them then, and passed word down to us about what the singers were like when they were alive.”
“But they don’t look like they have been dead that long…” Gwellyn didn’t want to, but he blurted out to Daralyn what he and his brother had done with the corpse. He felt better after his confession in his lover’s arms.
“True, they don’t look like they have been dead that long,” Daralyn said soothingly, stretching out her legs over Gwellyn’s. “But if no one alive has seen them alive, what other possibility could there be?”
Gwellyn considered. “How long can a corpse stay a corpse?”
“Not very long,” Daralyn said. “Usually they’re picked clean. But I’ve heard stories of people found in the ice, almost good enough to kiss, though they were dead for fifty years.”
“I wonder,” Gwellyn said, “if there are some illnesses that work like the ice, but from the inside.” And he was struck again by the thought that maybe he and his brother had ground into dust something—someone—which was somehow still alive.
HE TOOK IN the deep cerise of the setting sky.
“Looks good enough to drink,” Jakob said, and joined in the contemplation.
“Yes,” Gwellyn said, “like the wine of your Passover. But the only trace we soon will have of this sky will be in our minds.”
“Many of the beautiful things are like that—perhaps that’s why they are beautiful.” Jakob was a merchant from Antioch. He had travelled the Silk Road many times in his long life, the hostile northern route as well as kinder southerly. He had strode upon the Indian Grand Road too, and traversed the Spice Route by water in pursuit of trade with the Byzantines, the Persians, the Mohammetans.
Gwellyn regarded Jakob as a master of judgment in things beautiful. Yet… “I could write a description of it anyway,” Gwellyn said. “I could try to capture that color in my words, so that others could know of it.”
The older man scoffed. “Impossible. Your very words would change the color they were attempting to describe—like trying to fathom the texture of a snowflake between your fingers.”
Gwellyn looked back up at the sky.
“Writing is wonderful,” Jakob continued, “but it is not for everything. The Philosopher’s mentor’s mentor—Socrates—had no use for it. He said reliance on it would cause our memories to dissolve.”
Gwellyn smiled, because he knew enough to know that he had just gotten the better of Jakob at least in this tiny round. “And how do we know this?” Gwellyn inquired.
The smile was returned. “Yes, fortunately—or unfortunately—for Socrates, Plato troubled to record in writing the objections of Socrates to writing. Otherwise, we would never know of those objections. I’ll grant you that. Just as Julius Caesar himself wrote somewhere that he admired the Druids, because they refrained from writing. And we would not know of Julius Caesar’s admiration for lack of writing had he not troubled to record that admiration in writing. But that still does not mean that writing is advisable in all circumstances.”
“When is it not advisable?”
“Writing is a chariot to the future,” Jakob said. “It usually conveys the voice of someone no longer present. If I say something now that confuses you, you can ask me to explain. If I write something that confuses you, and you read it after I am gone, whom do you ask for clarification? I myself am not in the chariot—just my words.”
“But aren’t your words—in writing—better than no words at all?”
Jakob stroked his grey-white beard. “Yes. But that is not the choice. We will always have words. The question is whether we prefer them to be spoken or written. For the keeping of records of commerce, I agree that writing is best. For communication of confusing things—like philosophy—I would rather pass my words on to someone else by speech, so he can question me, and understand my meaning, and then pass his words on to someone else again, who can question him.”
“I still think writing is more dependable,” Gwellyn said. “What if someone makes a mistake as the words are being passed along from speaker to speaker?”
Jakob shrugged. “That could happen, yes. But words in writing are in their own way not very dependable either. The Library at Alexandria has been burning on and off for centuries!” Jakob lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper, louder actually than his normal speech. “They blame it on the Mohammetans. But my friends tell me it’s the Christian bishops too—they’re afraid of the learning!”
Gwellyn took no offense, being a believer in neither Mohammet nor Christ. He believed in the sun and the stars and the moon and the trees—true to the Druid lines that still ran through the mixed weave of his people. But unlike the Druids, he believed in writing.
And so he was horrified by the burnings in Alexandria. Just as he had been horrified by burning the corpse by the river.
“We found a singer by the river last month,” he said.
Jakob put an urgent, bony finger to his lips. “It’s better not to talk about such things!”
Gwellyn laughed in exasperation. “I see. The singer is not only someone I can’t write about, but someone I can’t talk about!”
Jakob held up a quieting hand again, and whispered even more intensely than about the burnings in Alexandria. “You want to learn more about the singers?”
Gwellyn nodded.
Jakob sized up his young friend, so passionate for wisdom. “All right,” he said. “I’ll tell you where you can go to find out more about them. It will require a long trip, by sea. And years, perhaps, of your life.”
GWELLYN JOINED HIS father and Allyn, at the entrance to an underground canal. He joined them on his hands and knees, sifting the soil, assessing its moisture.
His father was not happy. “The mountain springs have been stingy this year,” he said. “Melons all along the road are in jeopardy.”
“Can we widen the canals?” Allyn asked. “That would bring more water here.”
The shaman shook his head no. “We haven’t the knowledge—the Sogdians built the canals more than a hundred years ago, but they have surrendered to Islam.”
“But their Prophet values knowledge,” Allyn said. “He said ‘Seek for Learning, though it be far away.’”
The shaman smiled. “Yes, I think he did say something like that—I see y
our education has not been wasted. But when one people take over another—when one belief replaces another—something is always lost. And the Sogdians, however much they may value knowledge in their new beliefs, are different now from the people who built the canals…”
The shaman stood up, as did his sons. He looked toward the long, dry horizon in the West. “…as we ourselves are changing into a people different from what we once were,” he continued. “The whole world is changing. Our ancestors understood things that we can only vaguely see, or maybe not at all. Loss is inevitable; loss is life itself.”
“Why not gain,” Gwellyn objected. “Why can’t the change be an improvement?”
“You live, you grow old, you die,” the shaman said. “If you are lucky—as I have been—sometime before that second event, your seed blossoms into new human beings.” He kissed the brightly colored silk scarf he had around his neck, for luck, for thanks. “You try to pass on all you have learned—but how can you? Something is always lost. And more is lost with each generation. That is what I mean.”
“But couldn’t that process itself be changed?” Gwellyn insisted.
“How?” Allyn asked.
“I don’t know,” Gwellyn said, “perhaps create a more intelligent seed? A seed whose fruit is not as forgetful?”
“We have control over the accuracy of our ideas,” Allyn answered, “not of our seed.”
“Why not?” Gwellyn countered. “The melons that father was talking about have been improved by breeding. So have the grapes, and I’ve heard even the willows. And the horses and camels and yaks—the seeds of all have been improved over the aeons, have they not?”
“We are not yaks,” Allyn replied.
“It’s too dangerous,” the shaman observed. “Our traditions warn us about such attempts to improve our own seed. If we go wrong with a camel—if it winds up with too many humps, or no humps at all—where’s the damage? But if a man winds up with two cocks, well, I suppose some women—and men—might enjoy that, but…”
Allyn joined his father in hearty laughter.
Gwellyn only smiled, then said, “Are the singers the result of such tampering with our seed?”
The shaman stopped laughing. “A better question might be: are we of the result of their tampering with ours…”
“I’M GLAD YOU’RE coming with me to Hotan,” Gwellyn said, later, to Daralyn.
“Your father wants me to keep an eye on you,” she said. “I may come with you further than that.”
“Mmm…” Gwellyn said, running his hand along the fine hair below her stomach. “My father thinks about just about everything. I’m surprised he hasn’t opposed my going on this journey.”
“You’re the younger son,” Daralyn said. “There could be tension between you and Allyn as you grow older, and he gets first helpings. And you’re smart—too smart. You ask questions. You write too many things down. I think your father feels that everyone benefits with you off on a journey of discovery to the West.”
“I still want to write things down,” Gwellyn said. “I want to write what I’ve learned, what I think I already know, about the singers. But how can I?”
Daralyn nodded. “Your father will seek out and destroy any writing about the singers that you leave behind. There’s no point.”
“But it’s wrong!” Gwellyn was starting to get angry again. “What value is there in ignorance, when we could have knowledge?”
“Perhaps you will find the answer to that on your journey,” Daralyn said.
“Perhaps,” Gwellyn said. “And someday I will return to this place, and I will tell my father and brother and any who will listen what I have learned, and I will write it all down, and hide it somewhere if necessary, so that others in the future, our descendants, may learn and understand.”
THREE
BARBARICON, NEAR THE INDUS RIVER,
CIRCA A.D. 751
Gwellyn stood at the foot of a vast sea, near the mottled mouth of a muddy river.
“They’re calling it the Arabian sea now,” Jakob said, still strong, still encyclopedic in his knowledge, a merchant who had been plying the dunes and the waves and the mountain passes for better than half a century.
Gwellyn turned from the sea to his staff, his companion for the past half year. “The color of your sash goes well with the distant waters,” Gwellyn said.
“This?” Jakob fingered his silken garment, and made a deprecating noise. “Some call it ‘Phoenician royal purple,’ because once upon a time only kings could afford it, and anyone found wearing it who wasn’t royalty could be put to death. Now,” he shrugged, “the silk worm’s in Hotan and Constantinople, the Phoenician formula for purple is known world-wide, and a poor merchant like me can dress like an emperor!”
“And what is the Phoenician formula?”
“Shellfish!” Jakob smiled in contemplation of a forbidden pleasure. “Freshly killed shellfish—that’s how the Phoenicians made the dye. My people are not supposed to eat shellfish—it comes from the sea and it has no backbone. But I’ve had it more than once, and it’s delicious. Rules are meant to be broken—what else is living for!”
“I’ve never eaten shellfish,” Gwellyn said.
“Spend enough time near the sea, and you will,” Jakob said. “Spend enough time alive—live long enough—and you definitely will!” He lowered his voice to his conspiratorial whisper that was loud enough for anyone in shouting distance to hear. “It gives you—you know, more excitement when you make love. That’s important for someone my age.” Jakob winked at Gwellyn.
Gwellyn smiled. “So the Phoenicians were experts at making love in rainbow colors.”
“At more things than that,” Jakob said. “They were a great sea-faring people. They mined tin from the northern edge of the world, they found precious stones in the Nubian continent. And to keep good records of all of these transactions, to make quick notes as they milked the ports for all they were worth, they invented the system of writing that you are so fond of—the Greek alphabet.”
“Then why is it called the Greek alphabet?”
“Ah, the Greeks adopted much, invented little, renamed everything,” Jakob said. “They took the Phoenician writing system, added what we now call the vowels, and it all became known by the names of the first two letters in Greek—alpha and beta—the alphabet.”
Gwellyn nodded. “The Greeks traveled far, Alexander to the banks of this very river. And they carried much along with them… And we are the detritus of it all, of the Greeks as well as the Indus!”
“There are sediments at work here far older than your people and my people combined,” Jakob said. “Come. The flute awaits us.”
“BARBARICON IS NOT the city it once was,” the tall Nestorian said to the two men he guided, one even taller than he, the other considerably shorter, but with a voice that boomed even in sotto voce. “When Parthia—Persia—charged too high a toll for the roads to the West, the Romans prized this city for the silk it conveyed to them by sea. As did the Byzantines, for the same reasons.”
“And now Islam conquers the world, and the roads through Persia are once more closing,” the loud whisper advised. “Perhaps this city by the Indus will rise again!”
“Yes, the followers of Mohammet are changing many things,” the Nestorian agreed. “Their armies are contesting with those of the Land of Silk, near the Talas River, even as we speak.”
Jakob shuddered. “That would not be a good thing, were the Land of Silk to fall.”
The Nestorian nodded. “Their emperors have been very kind to my people. But change is everywhere these days, and not necessarily for the better.”
As if on cue, a narrow alleyway opened before them.
Gwellyn, still accustomed to the open spaces and the whistling winds of his homeland by the Tarim, cringed involuntarily at the sight and the smell.
“There is a sweet music in the dwelling.” The Nestorian pointed to what looked like a piling of stones in the faint moonlight at the
end of the alley. “So at least one of your senses will be gratified this evening.”
The air inside the dwelling was even worse, and Gwellyn took shallow breaths, so as to ingest as little as possible. But there was a sad bright sweet music in the room indeed, barely discernible at first, that seemed to brush against his toes, and move up his legs and chest and underneath his arms where it tickled him, until it presented itself, shy and beckoning, to his ears…
Gwellyn’s eyes adjusted slowly to the light, even less in supply here than it had been outside, soft and flickering and almost starlike. Eventually he saw the source—a small smokeless lamp glowing whitely in a corner—and then the source of the diatonic scales that rose and fell like rain in reverse, from earth to the sky. It was a man, not much older than he, with sallow skin, hollow cheeks, and eyes that clearly could not see.
“Captivating,” Jakob whispered, though Gwellyn could barely hear him for the music. “May we talk to him?” Jakob inquired of the Nestorian.
“For the proper amount of money, one can do anything with anyone in these parts,” the Nestorian replied.
Jakob produced some coins from an inner pocket. He gave them to the Nestorian, who pressed four of them against the flautist’s bare soles, and kept one for himself. The music stopped.
“He of course will not understand Tocharian,” the Nestorian said. “I will do my best to translate.”
Jakob nodded, and asked where the instrument had originally come from.
“He says it was given to him by his father, who was given it by his father, but originally it was made from the bone of a bear, by a very ancient people.”
Gwellyn’s eyes gleamed with excitement. “Ask him if we might examine this marvelous instrument.”
“I’m sure the answer will be yes,” the Nestorian said, “for a price.”
Jakob grunted and produced another five coins, four of which again made their way to the base of the flautist’s foot.
The Nestorian carefully handed the flute to Gwellyn.
“It’s much harder than bone,” Gwellyn said. “I wonder if that accounts for the depth of its sound.”
The Silk Code Page 6