The Seven Days of Wander
Page 43
the pillow. He then gave a nod, the guards closed the two doors of the combined room. Bolts on the inside were distinctly heard to be closed.
The king then spoke to the sergeant again in this odd almost guttural language. As the sergeant spoke in a long unbroken speech, the Beggar could not understand it but it was obviously of the day's proceedings as quite often the sergeant gestured or nodded at the Beggar.
The Beggar studied the face of the listening king. Though fat and rounded, one would not say puggy or flab. A fat, congealed, hard, compressed, as if pulled inward by skin reluctant to sag forward into the world. The ears small and pressed to the side of the head, an almost shrivelled form so seldom was their head to all but the key phrase. Small nets to scoop the pearls; leave the oysters of slime adhere and shells of colourful tone balance unnoticed.
For fools drone amongst kings, as bees do amongst their queen. The difference lives in the deposit of honey.
The face topped with a higher crown, balanced with a heavy chin. A nose in centre curved slightly, a hawks beak mellowed with an easy hunt for luxury. Skin a pallor of rubbed oil, a waxing upon an idol not left to soak the rain but rather even elements must be repelled.
Finally the eyes though in reality it is the eyes that tear first across the distance and demand a man's stance. Demand whether his weakness will cringe and look away or his strength will hold, the strength of a hand calmly placed in coals, the strength of a foot dangling in open jaws, the strength of a gut falling to sword point. Such are these eyes which swallow, peel, flail layers of the world where they are driven to gaze. Eyes that return with the meat of a gouge in their talons, fly back to the nest and regurgitate for a brain's digest what has been plundered and taken.
For these are not the eyes of madness unchecked or a fool's unending drink of splendour. Madness has no direction and will tumble into its own throat. A drunken fool likewise.
King Hindus was a man who believed, nay divined that there was no other place but his place. He was as if a mountain top whose movement literally dragged all that of the world under him to re align to his new position. Nothing existed but that which he looked upon or thought upon. A man brought before his eyes had no history of wife or family or experience.
His destiny began and ended with the gaze of King Hindus. So too art or food or women or slaves or property or a moon or sun or cities or animals or beggars. Men have known before a philosophy of existence only by sensory awareness. But this was not the limit of King Hindus. Not only was there no awareness of anything not immediate to his hunger, there was no belief in such. Thus the consideration of any other man's hungers was inconceivable except the hunger for the place of King Hindus himself.
Since the universe remained thee, all hunger ended there.
Everyman from a rich merchant trading with other cities to the lowest man begging bread, all desired something of the universe, all attempted to nibble at King Hindus fist. All sought to
pluck something of his foothold.
He was just one man, even as King. In the reality of the city's works, much was moved and sold, bartered and stolen. King Hindus remained blind to it. But let a man with a morsel stumble before him and the eyes tore revenge, grasping at the crumb, tearing a belly. No other man could be allowed the divine right of possession for he who possessed all, saw all, and thus was the creator of all. All power of what he commanded, all knowing of what he thought, all seeing of what he saw, thus he became divine by the exclusion of what he could not
possess or create. These exclusions convenient to both himself and his subjects.
So that he only looked upon what was his; what was not his only moved where the eyes were not hunting.
Now these eyes circled a beggar he had created; a ragged thing materialized in his presence. He obviously did not hunger for it or its possessions but the amusement of it maybe worth its price of being.
For the problem of divinity in its understood but never spoken dilemma of immortality is amusement. It is critical that a creator remain novel or pathos may darken the lips with a darker stain.
"Beggar" spoke the inkling recline, in a voice a shade of soft or feminine, yet of sharp carry like a skull swung against a bell.
"Tell this for your life's sake. Am I wise and am I great?"
The Beggar replied "Only the truly wise question their greatness and only the truly great doubt their own wisdom".
The king's laughter sang delighted in the small room, though no one joined his revelry. The king dried his eyes with a large silk taken from his sleeve, adjusted his feet upon the boy-stool and asked (with a even sharper dagger of glint) "But am I divine?"
"None but the fool blinded to a grave stumble would not see the issues of life and death balanced in such visions of a king. What can be seen must be known. And who knows the place and time for
life and death but a God".
To this the king did not laugh, even it could be said, a slight frown laid on his chin. "Though indeed your own life or death crawls in shorter stay across a majestic brow, it was not to such a worm's crisis I would hold to be divined. It was of this noble men's last of immortality I demand a Beggar's nod or nay. What say you then in the immortal terms of everlasting, am I God or not?"
A thoughtful pause and then the Beggar answered: "All men give upon their kings godly pleas and all kings give upon all men the whims and hazards of godly doings. This is called prayer; as real as prayer should be. And if prayer goes to fixed address, then the bearer within becomes full to his worshipped throne. In a phrase, King Hindus you are a god where other men are not. A heavy crown does not always hold godly things, there is need of a stiff neck to raise it heavenly.
Just as a river needs both water and banks to contain it. So a god's power needs narrow eyes to hold to noble purpose.
From this you ask stems immortality? Stand to the bank and name the end of a river. Is it drought? Yet the banks, the direction remain. True one sees not what is a river but one understands what was a river and will be a river. Then the river sleeps now, regathering its strength in the mountains, its breath an embrace wrapped in virgin hold; the white clams trickling from withheld by a river's lust to surge, even in this tender spring of sleep.
What of the river? When the banks curve away, even to out of a man's vision? Do we call this the end? But is the river ended or the man's vision ended? The river so swollen upon itself, so wide in its own destiny that the sun, how can there be any compare?
Cannot these rivers be kings? Kings gathering in their sleep to begin a surge which soon is so grand, so swallowing of all vision that mere men are drowned as flooded to live amongst small boats. And pray.
At the time of the flood, who amongst present men can deny immortality, for to argue outside one's lifetime is to babble without experience. A fool speaking with kingly airs.
At the time of the drought, the footsteps are seen. Who amongst present men has such for sight of predict to name what was will not be? Do they expect blood or dust to return?
Nay, they know time repeats, if not a pool of a day. Then the ebb of a life and a king returns from less salty dancing rapid on a wave of destiny. The craft of lesser men will bow or worse capsize, Their folly of denial heard through gathered nights.
It is not I, oh King who define your god; your immortality. If you decree as a god you are one. If your acts are beyond mortal doing then they are immortal. With your acts immortal, thus are you immortal for no man lives longer than his doings."
King Hindus though presenting an appearance of lax-a-day interest to the Beggar's offering was none the less a little impressed. If for no other reason than in similar fixation of the way an observer's eyes will dance with a moth as it caresses a flame. The enchanted party even forgets it holds the candle so enraptured his eyes become with the destiny of a moth's hunger.
The King asked: "A river king, yes, will be flood and unchecked flow. What uproots oaken pillar and carves granite to pebble will stall no heed to the
twigs of following or the beseech of rubble. This I understand well. But in the drought when a river returns, is this the same king or a new king?"
Beggar: If a king were to attack the city to his right and in that victory he were to order all men, women, child put to
death, what would he do when he attacked a city to his left?
King Hindus: Not necessarily the same.
Beggar: Only a king would answer such. A tiny man would argue the king must do unto the left as onto the right. But the tiny man has lived on only one bank. Having no taste of limitless depth, he dares not straddle to place of half god and half man. Every answer for him must have a carve of reason, of logic. To find this he must see a thing over and over. Hence the reason become it was therefore it is.
But a king knows the right and left. Knows their difference in a chance, a guide of the universe. The king knows that what looks random may have purpose, what repeats may be of no design. Just as a ball maybe thrown wide on purpose but by chance end its flight at a flight of stairs there to repeat a descent over and over.
Thus a king's fondle of power has instructed him in a natural cause. Repetition becomes the burden of powerlessness like the ball going down the stairs. Randomness is not without purpose; its purpose being the destruction of repetition. Now here is where the middle men err. Mathematicians,