"Much of what follows will be incomprehensible," wrote Monk in his Zen Sobor Chronicles(ZSCF1a) and he was right. Even the Teller of Tales herself conceded, "Verily, I can make nothing of them," and she was right too. But forgive Shahrazad: the chronicles are not chronological.
The confusion would not have dismayed Monk. Rather he seems to have basked in the incomprehensibility of the world: "Does not the world present us with a golden mean?" he once asked(ZSCF339b). "Much is incomprehensible. If everything made sense we would have long ago grown bored and if nothing made sense we would all be mad. Is not the balance perfect? that precisely much is incomprehensible, not quite so much to drive us mad, not a drop more than is sufficient to delude is into thinking we can understand the rest, yet enough that we never grow bored. The Lord is wise. Amen."
One of the less comprehensible aspects of the world is Monk himself. We imagine the cowled figure bent over his desk; we set a dripping candle by his side and a quill tapping at his lips. The fragments remain, yet the features of their author have been eroded by time like a water-stained icon. Only his sigh and his smile hang in the still air for centuries and centuries. You can see them.
In Volume One of the Supplemental Nights Shahrazad wonders, with Berlioz, why Monk has thrown over his clerical vows. Let us ask. No response.
Monk is not being uncooperative; he is merely not there. The only tale we will get is from his pen. "The life of a Trappist," he wrote near the start of the Zen Sobor Chronicles(ZSCF2), "is a vertical one. Devoid of external extractions we are meant to plum the depths of the soul to come closer to God. I have always felt the mode to be a valid one and have sometimes found in it similarities to wetness, but Trappism was simply not for me. I must admit to distractions. To watch other monks die after a four-year diet of roots and berries was a distraction. I confess to this. (Our abbey was very strict about such matters as diet and vows of silence.) Devising techniques to devoid any thought of sex occupied ninety percent of my waking hours. This I confess was also a distraction. As a matter of fact, this I did confess to Berlioz when we first met, didn't I? I don't know. After ten years of silence I found that I had...let's see, um, yes, lost the ability to speak and, after ten years of pluming the depths of my soul I found . Where is it now? Yes, I found . Oh, I suppose I stumbled onto a few morsels here and there, but they were no more than breadcrumbs and might well have remained undigested for all the nourishment they provided. To be a successful plumer of the soul one needs a personality. I decided I had none, Kyrie Eleison. I was a carte blanche, if not a tabula rasa. Therefore, before I could embark on any program of self-improvement, be it in the Trappist mode or otherwise, it became necessary to find a personality."
(ZSCF2b): "Note for future chronicles: My chronicling style needs improvement. Let us try a 13th century personality:
By the Will of Our Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God I, the unworthy and sinful servant of God, will try, despite my poor mind, to write the history of Alexandria, and the lives of Kiril, Berlioz and the others who prospered here. I am glad to tell about their holy, noble and glorious lives in the same way as I have heard from older people, as well as about events I have seen myself, while I lived in this University.
"A distinct improvement in authenticity. I should keep this in mind as I chronicle further. Amen."
And so, free of those encumbering nuisances called personalities, Monk
quit the monastery, crossed paths with Berlioz, and set off for Afghanistan.
The journey, long, arduous and dry, did not bore him for he lacked the
capacity to be bored. He proceeded calmly to Dehli, northward to Punjab
and Lahore, onward to Peshawar. There, some kilometers east of the Khyber
Pass, according to Shahrazad, he was forced to disembark; there are no
railways in Afghanistan. But this did not annoy Monk for he had no capacity
for annoyance. His single contact with annoyance--or the more acute spleen--had
been the nonsex of the monastery and his reaction had been to quit. The
spasm he regarded as purely biological--it bore no more than an amoebic
relationship to personality, or perhaps protozoal. Everyone agreed: "Monk
was very impressionable." "Like a sponge." Shahrazad always
maintained she liked him for this very reason. "Allah hath granted
him the gift of innocence, like a child."
Monk would probably dissent but his memories are unavailable. The cause of his revelation that he was personalityless lies as if beyond a mist, but there are tales: With elaborate gesticulations, the Trappist secured a birth on a wagon bound for Kabul; he clambered atop the grain sacks and, as he awaited departure, it hath reached me, he recalled his career as a manuscript illuminator and painter of icons.
It was during his forty-third rendition of St. John the Baptist that Monk discoverd he lacked a personality. The epiphany struck like lightning. Having recently finished Baptist forty-two, he stood it on the easel and compared it to Baptist forty-three, in progress. They were identical. With mounting curiosity, Monk gathered together the previous forty-one versions, lined them up in his cell and scrutinized them with taper in hand. Indistinguishable. The curve of the fingers, the lilt of the forelocks, the arch of the eyebrows--all conformed hair-by-hair to church canon and to themselves. "Surely a painter with personality could manage to distinguish John the forty-third from John the first, Inshallah." Monk plumbed the depths of his soul and summoned all his creative energy and inspiration, but the fifty-sixth pair of eyebrows arched neither more nor less than the forty-third. Monk faced facts. He was shorn of creativity, emotion, divine light. Most striking of all, it didn't bother him. The sure sign of a persona non persona.
Much later, on that day in favilla, when the scatter of birds pockmarked the blooded bull's eye sinking to western horizon, Kiril turned to Monk and asked, "Are you happier with a personality or without one?"
"Ah, Kiril."
Monk's realization that his icons were identical and that the personality behind them was no more than a simulacrum of the real thing did not cause him to abandon the cloister, however. Departure actually followed a second important discovery: causes do not exist. His first questioning of causality occurred one day in the sanctuary when a flaming arrow shot through the window and lighted all the sanctuary lamps. As soon as they were lit, the arrow shot back out the window, but the precious fires remained burning in the lamps. This gave Monk pause. Later, in the refectory, another monk suddenly stood up at the table and abruptly slashed his own throat. Theories to explain the suicide were manifold: possession, delirium, epilepsy, mushroom poisoning followed by hallucination, miracle. As Monk watched the body being carried out, he was illuminated by a flash of light: none of these explanations explained anything. Not only could none of them be proved, but if it was delirium, where was the cause of {\sl that}? And if it was possession, where was the cause of {\sl that}? And if possession and delirium were indistinguishable, then two distinct causes produced indistinguishable effects, which was not satisfactory either. And a miracle? By definition without cause. Monk found himself confused. Who would not marvel at this?
Another fragment of the Zen Sobor(ZSCF23c) testifies to his state of mind:
"Ah, causes. When I first quite the monastery, I told everyone reason was the distraction of nonsex yet, in retrogression, I am not sure that sex evasion was to blame. Ah causes, I am not very good at pinpricking them. I should speak to Kiril again about the matter, perhaps take some lessons from him in causality. The time is ours. Where he sees distinct causes, I invaribly see fog. His landscape is a structured one, with iron links forged between each event and the next. Mine often seems to have the consistency of chocolate pudding or even molasses which oozes around sharp edges in avoidance of any {\throughstrike locomotive} train of thought. Domine, at this moment, in any event, I suspect the real cause for my leaving was quite different than nonsex. I had begun to doubt that causes exist. And now, I cannot even term this discovery a cause for my departure for, if I did, I would be in the same logical knot as the Greeks, would I not, who practiced moderation in all things and thereby ended up with an excess of moderation. Ah, where will this all lead?"
To Kabul. On the road, the driver continually screamed at his assistant in Farsi. Monk understands nothing. Worse than the burning sun is the wind which showers everything with a fine coat of white dust. The driver covers his mouth and nose with the loose end of his turban. Monk bows his head and draws his cowl tight about his face, tighter. The high- pitched whine of grasshoppers echoes throughout the gorge. Listen. Absently, Monk brushes the insects off his habit and moment by moment their exoskeletons are crunched beneath the horses' hooves. Half a kilometer does not pass before a wheel slips on a rock or sinks into the soft dirt. The wagon stops, the horses balk. Everyone pushes. Monk's lips are parched.
Yet, for all this, the air is clean.
Two or three hours out from Jalalabad, Monk's head nodding off to sleep, the sun set behind a haze of dust. The driver pulled up to the dried mud walls of a small, nameless village and the wagon was immediately surrounded by five grimly armed men. A short exchange followed and the driver motioned with a leathern finger for Monk to climb down. They entered the village, a cluster of houses of the same cracked mud. Monk's primary impression was--brown. The crowd of brown faces in procession behind him increased with every step. Monk, expecting to be executed, followed the driver as he jumped aboard a low brown wall and climbed to the roof of a large brown building. The prospect of oblivion intrigued Monk: was death distinguishable from his present state of personalityessness? He would offer himself for sacrifice. Asia, I should like to see assassins smiling at the executioner who cuts off the head of an innocent. But Monk thought twice--a primordial instinct for preservation made itself felt and he shuddered.
Any fears proved groundless. His hosts bowed. Brown mats were spread. Dirty shoes were taken off. Freshly baked {\sl nan} (brown) and brown tea were served. Sour milk and rice (white) were presented in a great bowl. Ripe melons provided dessert.
Monk ate hungrily. "I cannot remember a more peaceful moment in my life," he later recalled. "The simple joys of rustic living were perfectly suited to my lack of personality. In the cool evening breeze, I felt I could have spent my entire life eating nan and melons, never having to learn a verb conjugation nor reading a single commentary on a Florentine incunabula."
As if by some sixth sense--a slight bristling of the hairs on the back of his neck, or a light shiver through his spine or by the truth of the Messiah, Monk gradually became convinced he was being watched. He turned around. Crouching on two sandaled feet, arms wrapped around knees, a pistachio twig clamped between his teeth--one missing--sat an Afghan, his head graced by a skillfully wrapped black turban and his face by the three- day-old stubble of a beard. Two ammunition belts, entirely loaded, crossed his chest; an ancient tribal rifle, elaborately ornamented with ivory and brass, lay by his side. Smiling, he extracted a single bullet from his belt and loaded the rifle, which responded with a sharp click. Monk attempted to ignore the Afghan, but for reasons he could not explain, he was unsuccessful in this endeavor.
"Mistah, do you speak Engleesh?" the Afghan said, taking aim at Monk's head.
Monk was convinced that his life depended on the answer. "Ah, causes," he sighed in extreme unction and crossed himself. To the Afghan he nodded. "I...I...yes, speak English, do I, ecce signum."
The Afghan cocked his rifle. "Are you sure?"
"Y...yes, sure. But I will be rusty, rusty am, am rustae, tense." "Good," replied the stranger and lowered the rifle until the dark of his eye was visible over the sight. "I have idea I want to discuss with you."
"P..please, please," said the monk to the Afghan, "discuss. Let's. What is your causa bella?"
"I," the Afghan announced solemnly, as he placed the stock of the rifle on his knee and curled his fingers around it, "have a plan for a perpetual motion machine."
Monk stares at the Afghan. The Afghan stares at Monk. A full thirty seconds pass while the Trappist carefully forges a reply in his mind. The leaves on the trees rustle, a donkey brays in the distance. Monk speaks: "I...I am very glad to hear that. I am sure...your design is wonderful, but I know of perpetuum mobiles nothing, absolutely nihil. Y...you see, this is n...not the g...garb of a scientist."
"Bravo!" exclaimed Berlioz. "That really was well done. How marvelously diplomatic."
"I doubt I could have pulled it off," added Kiril.
"It reminds me of my narrow escape in Sumatra," Berlioz continued.
"Sumatra?" asked Kiril skeptically. "When were you in Sumatra?"
"If Chateaubriand was in America, I was in Sumatra."
The Afghan laid his rifle on the ground. "It is a pity, Mistah." He ceremoniously produced a worn letter from the folds of his shirt and handed it over to Monk. The stained envelope, yellow and brittle with adventure, had traveled from some distant land across the face of the known world. With a peremptory nod of his bristling chin, the Afghan indicated that Monk should read the letter. The Trappist gingerly followed orders, fumbled with the envelope and scanned the brief note. It explained why perpetual motion machines would not work. The postmark was Alexandria.
"A...Alexandria!" stuttered Monk. "I...I not long ago met a traveler bound for Alexandria, Domine Deus. Perhaps you might there write and a more detailed explanation ask for."
"No, Mistah," snarled the Afghan. "Someday I go there myself and kill the dog who wrote this letter. Ten years I have worked on machine, you see? It is new age for mankind. Do you think I let this offspring of sodomy with a camel tell me it not work? No, Mistah Monk. I will kill the curr. I put bullet from this rifle through his stinking head." He paused. "Allah is great."
The tribesman stuffed the letter back into his shirt. From there it vanished into history. As a result, no textual analysis has been made of the document that could direcly illuminate the cause of the Afghan's outburst. However, fragments of undoubtedly similar letters have been found in Alexandria at site 53A. A typical one reads:
...........................................................................
...violates the fi an se...
Thank you for wri...
The Alexandrian Academy of Sciences 53A-1312
...........................................................................
Monk himself could not comprehend th Afghan's violent reaction. "Once again," he noted in the Zen Sobor(ZSCF12b), "my great quest for causes was fruitless. Why this man should be so upset that a thing which could not work did not work was entirely beyond me. Why the blame should be laid on an anonymous scholar in far-off Alexandria who simply detained the impossibility of the invention, I do not understand. Perhaps I should have consulted Kiril. My own attempt to fathom the outburst ended in failure, which I supppose is not surprising. I asked him if he would really go all the way to Alexandria to kill the worthless son of snake pus and he replied, 'Have I not sworn it?'
"'Do you even know where Alexandria is, Mistah John?' I wondered.
"The Afghan rolled his eyes. He leaned over to my ear and spoke in a hushed whisper. And let God know my words are those of the Afghan when he said: 'Mistah Monk, they say it lies at the end of the world and sits atop a fortress carved from the living rock by a dragon.'
"'By Allah, that is a fairy tale. No, Mistah John, I have heard it said that Alexandria is a land of cannibals who suck out the brains of their victims before eating them.'
"'Brains! Allah, why brains?' the Afghan cried, clearly worried. "'That way they grow smarter.'
"My man fell silent for a long time and scratched his cheek nervously. Eventually he spoke again. 'Mistah Monk, I have decided. Brain-cannibals are no match for a swift horse and a long whip. I will go to Alexandria and strangle this excrement of a jackal with my own hands. But you, yes you, Mistah Monk, will come with me.'
"Again, I was taken aback by the Afghan's temper. I told him I
had no intention of going to Alexandria to have my brains distracted. And
besides, the one thing everyone knew about Alexandria was that no one who
entered the country ever returned. I refused to talk to him further and,
being very tired, fell on to my mat then and there. As I passed from consciousness,
I began to formulate my law of Causelessness and Effect, which I do not
understand to this day. I slept soundly, though I dreamt the Afghan was
crouched behind the fire, watching me every moment. I, an unworthy one,
have not yet been able to comprehend the truth of reason, and so I can
only tell what I have seen and heard. I am unable to add anything to the
narration for the purpose of embellishment, as is the habit of those who
are clever with words. Amen."
The founding of Alexandria is lost to the measureless caverns of prehistory. Attempts to fix the date by scientific methods have failed miserably, resulting in a yield of contradictions and enigmas. No records concerning prehistoric Alexandria have been found among the remains of the Great Library, nor is there any evidence that such records ever existed. Until fairly recently, popular wisdom held that Alexandria was founded in the 6th century B.C.. During that distant age, Esar-Haddon would restore fallen Babylon to its former grandeur. He would bring the second Assyrian Empire to its zenith with an alliance to the Scythians and by the conquest of Egypt. Fifty years after Esar-Haddon's death, as blood coursed through the streets of Ninevah, the Assyrian Empire would be forever extinguished. The Olmecs in South America were then carving giant, monumental heads, while in Ionian Greece, the plain of Ephesus was soon to be graced by the temple of Artemis. The piecemeal construction of the Great Wall of China would not begin for another three centuries; Stonehenge was already a thing of millenia past.
At Alexandria was the Barometz. According to tradition, a treacherous usurpation of the throne by a ranking general, and a threat to execute the captured princess, forced the great Phoenician King Alexander into exile. Sailing beyond the reaches of the known world, Alexander and hs crew finally ended their long wanderings at the western shore of the caldera. Months of exploration in this wilderness eventually brought them to the Barometz, which was found growing atop the central peak of the crater.
Alexander must have realized at once that the region's volcanic soil had produced a Barometz remarkable above all others, for it possessed the ability to speak, and by its speech revealed marvelous oracular powers. The fame of the Barometz spread rapidly through the trading voyages of the exiles. Soon, arriving from the four corners of the globe, pilgrims flooded the Alexandrian Gates to consult the vegetable lamb which had sprouted from a baobab tree. Many remained as disciples and Alexandria soon grew into a thriving commercial center. The Barometz predicted that Alexander had now only to set foot on Phoenician soil in order to retrieve his daughter, the captured princess. No sooner had he done so than the usurper died in his palace, blood gushing from his nostrils, a victim of unknown forces. Alexander brought his daughter to his new kingdom, chose for her a suitable husband, and founded the Alexandrian dynasty.
The 14th century naturalist, Lionni, attributes to the Barometz, not only the Alexandrian prophesy, but the outbreak of the Peloponnesian Wars ("A dark time is coming"), the sack of Rome, and the discovery of America. In honor of the Barometz and the safe rescue of the princess, annual games were established in Alexandria with prizes woven from Barometz wool, which was of exceptionally high quality. In 1576, the Barometz vanished; in its place was found a live lamb tethered to the dismembered baobab.
Recently, it should be pointed out, that considerable doubt has been thrown on the version of the founding of Alexandria and modern scholars tend to dismiss it with a smile.
[Editor's note: The following fragment, recently discovered, may force the above author to modify his claim that the Barometz vanished in 1576:
This year, due to a deficit of Barometz wool, prizes for the Alexandrian Games will be made from alpaca.
Chancellor]
Contemporary theories which have come to supplant it will be discussed in later chapters.
Monk awoke with the sun and the rattle of wagons bound early for market. The Perpetual Afghan had vanished. This relieved Monk and his primordial instinct for survival which the Afghan threatened. Soon, his unknown hosts appeared on the roof carrying breakfast and shortly thereafter the Trappist was once again sitting atop the wagon headed for Kabul.
The second day was much like the first. The driver continued to scream at his assistant. The temperature had climbed to forty long before noon and dehydration set in. Monk watched the formation of a desert whirlwind. The miniature cyclone whipped up the dust into a funnel, paralleled a moment the course of the wagon, disintegrated. The driver yelled again at his assistant.
They reached Kabul at twilight. The mountains that ring the city were shrouded in dust. The wagon trundled across the dried-up river bed in the south of town and rolled toward Chicken Street. Monked eyed the ant-picked remains of a starved dog heaped upon the rocks next to the road. At the center of town the wheels creaked and the driver abruptly dropped him off by a teahouse. Mournfully, Monk watched the wagon slowly lumber away. A boy, dirtier than he, approached begging baksheesh. A second walked up, holding out his rags for sale. A third appeared with honey and shoved the second away. A fourth scooted past in a small cart, pushing himself along with his hands shoved into a crumbled pair of boots, for he had no feet.
Asia, Asia, marvelous old land of fairy tales. I should like to see fine silk turbans atop black faces with gleaming teeth; I should like to see eyes melancholy with love and pupils glimmering with joy, set in skin yellow as oranges; I should like to see clothes of velvet and long-fringed robes.
"Ah, Kiril," the sigh rolls into the valley.
"So, Mistah Monk, you have arrived. I thought you would." The voice was familiar and Monk peered into the chaikhana. Pantaloons, jangling silver, strings of lapis and cloaked in giggles; a girl dissolves into the shadows. But smiling, a skewer of shashlik slid between his teeth and legs crossed, sits the Perpetual Afghan. "Come in...," he points, "and take off your shoes."
Monk did as he was told. Everything about the Afghan made him uneasy--as if the fellow was balanced on a razor's edge between the twin abysses of friendship and hostility. But here at least was a man with a personality and Monk considered co-opting a bit for himself. "Perhaps violence is the key to success, Agnus Dei." Did not the fairy Gul-Nazar, Queen of Palmyra, grant to Antar the joy of love, the joy of power and the joy of vengence? The Trappist again fell into a great confusion about the path of life he should follow. Shahrazad.
Green tea was brought for Monk. He swirled the first cup and poured the tea onto the ground and drank the second.
"So, Mistah Monk, you have not told me why you are in Afghanistan."
Monk stroked his beard. Love? Joy? Vengence? No. Personality? causality? Yes. But Monk told the Afghan what he had told Berlioz. "I am in the buzkashi mode."
The Perpetual Afghan wrinkled his nose. "You are a dead goat?"
"N...no."
"You are filled with sand?"
"C...covered with sand."
"You play buzkashi?"
"I...I want to have buzkashi learned."
"Ah, Mistah Monk," said the Afghan as he filled the bottom of his teacup with sugar, "buzkahi is a very difficult sport. Have you a horse?"
Monk then epiphanized(ZSCF12b): "And then the Lord saw fit to put in my head that I was not fit to play buzkashi. Why it had escaped me before I arrived in Afghanistan that I did not even know what buzkashi was, I still do not comprehend. I suppose my weak causality linkage was acting up again. This characteristic of mine was so pervasive that Kiril, much later, dubbed me Epiphanus Ectropion, which he later abbreviated to {\overstrike E}. The reason for this last abridgement he once explained, but the enlightenment was entirely lost upon me. Amen.
"Cancel that Amen. My search for causes, which began in the monastery, has never borne much fruit; if it had, I would have a cause and the search would be perfectus. But I don't and it isn't. I do not think I have ever seen a cause. On Wednesday a young man may be radiant because he has just gotten engaged and on Thursday despondent for the same reason, though nothing has changed at midnight. How can this be explained? It is beyond me. I have looked for an answer and have failed. Forgive me." Finally, Monk spoke aloud, his finest sentence. "No, I seem to be without a horse. Perhaps you could advise me."
"Mistah Monk, you could have found no better advisor. A fine buzkashi horse is the Afghan's most prized possession, valued above faithful wife or marketable daughter. A buzkashi horse must be strong and swift. He must be able to take lash of your infidel opponent and grasp buz with his teeth like so--." The Afghan bit into his kabob with relish. "Such a horse, Mistah Monk, is great treasure."
"Y...yes, I can imagine. What is the buz, did you say?"
"The buz? Why the buz is the goat's carcass--"
"-- filled with sand?"
"Of course."
"W...what with this buz do you do?"
"Carry it around posts to the winner's circle."
"Carry it? Wait--"
"Yes?" the Afghan paused.
"I mean weight."
"Ah, forty kilos, at least."
"And with your hands you carry this buz?"
"Of course. Or with your teeth. Or with horses teeth."
"O...oh. H...how do you get the buz?"
"Why you take it, naturally."
"From w...who, I mean whom? Ah," Monk sighed, "obliqueness."
"Who, whom, who cares? Anybody who has it, on the opposing team that is."
"B...but how is it taken?"
"How? Come, Mistah Monk, any way you please. You might lash your
opponent, scum of the earth, or you might knife the infidel, but this requires getting very close indeed. Usually, you just grab."
"G...grab. I see."
"They will be trying to grab from you too."v "They?"
"They."
"How many they?"
"As many they as there are," the Afghan gesticulated with a skewer in his hand. "Ten, twenty, thirty...one hundred..."
Monk nodded in final comprehension. He paused a full minute to forge an iron-clad sentence in his mind. "There is something I am missing in all this."
"And what is that."
"A moment. I will think of the word." He grimmaced. "Rules."
"Rules?" the Perpetual Afghan smiled toothily. "Mistah Monk, do you wish to become great hero of people? If so, I tell you, get killed in a game of buzkashi as soon as you can."
Monk was not discouraged. His initial reaction, he notes later, was one of encouragment: "A game with personality."
"Now is the time to tell how Monk became a great buzkashi player?" No, Shahrazad.
The waiter brought Monk his kabob. Beef was scarce this summer and camel meat had been substituted. While Monk ate with one hand and whisked flies away with the other, the Perpetual Afghan came to a decision.
"Mistah Monk, we have to find you a job, a good paying job. Buzkashi horses do not come cheap." The Afghan gulped down his tea and put more sugar into the cup. "What can you do? What are your marketable skills?"
"W...well," replied Monk, putting down his shashlik and beginning to count on his fingers, "I am an e..expert at p...praying--my specialty was vespers. Chanting, meditation, exercises of devotion, k...knowledge of sacred literature, i...icon painting, manuscript illum...mination, farming small, jellies of production..." He trailed off with a question mark.
The Perpetual Afghan nodded and tossed a pistachio nut into his mouth. "Yes, I think I see. Mistah Monk, I have idea. We establish you as Mullah. You already have a beard--excellent--Allah is with us. You chant, I translate. Tonight you stay with me. Tomorrow we start."
That night, Monk slept more soundly than he had for weeks, on the mat
in the Perpetual Afghan's home. His state was entirely imperfective. He
dreamt briefly of Berlioz's fit of spleen in the railway station: How wonderful
it must be to possess a personality which gives way to such heart-rending
outbursts. In his dream, Monk requested of Berlioz a course in personality.
Berlioz's reply was to rip his heart out of his own chest and hand it over
to Monk who, in gratitude, handed his to Berlioz.
Monk awoke to find his habit spread across the table, thoroughly washed and pressed. An amulet of silver and crystal lay atop his vestements with a chain looped around the hood. Monk dressed quickly and wandered into the main room, whereupon the Perpetual Afghan handed him a melon for breakfast.
Afterwards, they rode south to the river on horseback. At the river bank gnarled women arrayed in rotted wool flailed the day's wash with sticks. They beat clothes like enemies against flat stones and shot fierce glances at the intruders. The Perpetual Afghan took his position on a boulder that stood ankle deep in water. There he struck up a chant, banged on a crumbled pan, and began to attract a crowd. The men strolled by, unwrapping and rewrapping their turbans. Eyes of anonymous wives blinked out from screens in full length chaudris. Nothing could be seen and nothing can be said. Nomad women were describable: black shawls draped like tents, silver bracelets jangling, necklaces from melted coins, lapis. Monk felt he had walked into the Bible.
I should like to see princesses with delicate hands and scholars quarelling over poetry and beauty.
After severel dozen people had gathered 'round, Monk's agent stopped banging and motioned for him to mount the boulder. Monk splashed across the rocks, feeling again as if he were about to be executed.
"An opening speech, Mistah Monk."
"W...what?"
"Tell them why you are here."
"I d...don't know. C...causes are not my allegro."
"Tell them anything. They are an ignorant people."
Monk understood at once that he was in a poor position. He had never considered himself a proselytizer which was one reason he had entered the Cistercians to begin with. His entire body rebelled against the prospect of conversion; sweat broke out on his forehead and his stomach knotted up to such an extent that he doubled over. Nevertheless, in the midst of this mental and physical anguish, Monk realized there was no choice. He spread his arms and began:
"Te Deum laudamus: te Dominum confitemur..." No, t...this won't do at all. He reconnoitered and started anew. "I..I d...do not know why I will be before you standing." Pause. No, this is not right. Find a cause. "Could it be Dei Gratia? or de profundis of the heart? A priori or a posteriori, the cause is lost and never to b...be recovered." He gestures, a finger in the air. Go on. "What saith I...? What saith thou? M...more to the point, w...what is there to say? I am sure you have heard it all before, or will before the end. All Last Testaments should be written now. Because...because, let me see, the world is a round, or...or if not a round, at least a square, but it is not a line." Yes, this is it. "Surely, nature abhors a line. Have you ever seen one? N...not I. The line, of infinite length and zero breath, has fallen victim to suffocation. But w...we are speaking of exhalation as opposed to inhalation. Infinite length and zero breadth. Thair, that's it. Invent such a thing? Who would? Is it the culprit Euclid, whose pencil joins dots of not merely zero breadth but of zero width and zero height? Are our lives to be constructed of these naughts piled upon nullities propped up on voids? Mourn not the passing of the line. Day from day, rather day today--no-- today, you feel yourself progressing forward. B...but surely you have felt days when you progressed not but retrogressed. And if you join your hands in a circle, can you n...not dance in both directions? P...perhaps that is not the local custom. But is it not the custom of the planets? You can look in the sky and see Mars d...do his dance. And if the planets retrogress, w...what right to we have to say that life goes forward? B..but some say such contrary celestial motion is illusory, due to our ethnocentricity, anthrocentricity, no doubt anthrax as well, because the planets move {\sl absolutely} in one direction. Is this true? Can you say? T...this concept of absoluteness surely must be relative--or is it vice-versa? Let us sigh. Answers are difficult but questions are harder. For when we question a pose we shake a pedestal. When we shake a pedestal we shall loosen a fundament and faith shall be shattered, excuse my a...alliteration. And when faith is shattered and confusion hangeth in the still air, what shall we say? We shall say alleluia. Alleluia at the Introit, alleluia at the Offertory, alleluia at the Communion, for it is the best thing to day, to say, and tomorrow: Alle-lu-ia, Alle-lu-ia, Alle- lu-ia..."
When the words alleluia rolled softly over the banks of the Malachite, Kiril fell to his knees and cried. When the five joined hands for the last time and danced their circle dance beneath the seven domes of the Zen Sobor and sang, "Alleluia," their feet left the ground and they floated freely into the air. When monk finished his sermon, the Perpetual Afghan had long since ceased to translate. He stood as one among hundreds who had by this time gathered, while Monk mounted his true glory, basking in the yellow sun with arms outstretched to embrace his eager disciples. Monk himself was entirely bewildered. He had begun with a message; what it was he could not now remember. As usual, his train of thought, like molasses, had oozed out of his grasp.
But he alone was in doubt. To his enthusiastic audience, comprehension was complete; his universal message had shattered all language barriers. The effect was electrifying. The collection box that had been placed on the rocky bank began to overflow with trinkets, beads, coins, jewelry. A goat was proferred. Afghans danced in the water.
"You have made many people happy," said the Perpetual Afghan.
"I...I...I don't understand," coughed Monk. "Although I did not know it at the time," he later wrote(ZSCF718), "The Law of Analogy was already at work." So was the Law of Causelessness and Effect.
While attempting to divine a cause for the success of his sermon, Monk felt a slight hand on his shoulder. An aged Afghan, his skin brown and weatherbeaten to the toughness of leather, bowed earnestly before him. "Oh young Mullah," he explained through the Perpetual Afghan, "I live in a small village far from here. We have no water supply or our own and must get our water from unfriendly neighbors. Can you help us find water? Perhaps your amulet is a magic lens which sees beneath the ground."
Monk gazed down at the crystal amulet whch the Perpetual Afghan had given him earlier in morning and which now hung over his chest. "I...I'm sorry," he replied at a loss. "I water cannot d...divine. But t...take the amulet." He lifted the chain from his own neck and placed it gently over the villager's head. The old man bowed profusely and walked away. Monk thought he was happy.
"Ah, Mistah Monk, you have been duped," said the Perpetual Afghan, twisting his lips into a snarl. "He just wanted the amulet."
But Monk was not convinced and the incident disturbed him throughout the day and the following three weeks. During the same three weeks, he continued to function as Mullah. The crowds grew daily, and the contributions by leaps and bounds, but something had gone out of it for Monk since the he gave away the magic amulet.
Three weeks later after his sermon, a man, twenty years younger than he looked, approached him, dying of consumption. Monk spread a balm on his forehead that was said to have come from China. The man hobbled away into the dust, content, and Monk decided to resign. At that very instant, a scream went up from the crowd. A small girl was choking on a date. Monk grabbed her from behind and slapped her soundly on the back. The date popped out and the girl breathed freely once more. Her father, a local chieftan, presented Monk with his finest buzkashi horse.
The famous Mullah vanished. Within a month, rumors began to circulate of a hooded buzkashi player from afar who seemed born to the game, who delighted in thundering across the plain carrying the bloody carcass of a goat slaughtered by his own hand and who, soon, would be unstoppable.
Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased to say her permitted say.