by Leena Maria
But he wrote to her nevertheless, careful not to tear the delicate paper, telling her through his writing how much he still loved her. The whole ritual was a pitiful imitation of the days he had written to keep her to himself. He knew this, but he could not stop. No one knew of his letters, so no one could ridicule him. And even if they knew, they would be too afraid of him to say anything.
He only hoped that she, somewhere in the unseen worlds and everywhere in his body, would hear the words he whispered while he wrote with the blood that quickly died on the paper.
He had been a merchant's son, living in the southern part of Italy, in an area the Greeks had settled. He had learned their language as a child, and had accompanied his father in some of his business negotiations. It was expected of him. He was to be his father's successor.
The merchants had visited wondrous places and he had listened to their tales with an eager beating heart. There were stories of pirates, and horrible sea monsters, distant lands and gods and treasures beyond anyone's wildest dreams. The stories that most raised his interest were the ones about gods and oracles.
One evening a wealthy Greek merchant was dining with them. When he sipped his wine from a fine ceramic cup, he told them about a wonderful oracle, Pythia, at the great temple of Delphi. This temple was dedicated to the god Paean, who in later times would be better known as Apollo.
The oracle was a woman who went into a trance over a chasm whence the fumes of the great rotting snake Pythos rose. She told the future to the ones who approached her.
But she did not see the future for everyone. A goat had to be sacrificed and its entrails examined before it was decided whether Pythia would take her place seated on a tripod ready to go into trance. If the liver of the sacrificial goat revealed that it was favorable for the Pythia to answer a supplicant's questions, the supplicant was allowed to approach her.
The priests never allowed anyone to approach Pythia if the omens were ill. Once, it had occurred, and the Pythia had gone into a hysterical trance. She was never able to awaken from it, and died a few days later. A new Pythia had to be chosen from among the priestesses of the temple.
The Hunter, whose name was Ambrogio in that faraway life, could not forget the words of the merchant. He just knew inside himself that he was destined for great deeds, much greater than simply trading goods. He wanted to see the oracle, to hear directly from her what his great purpose in life was to be. His would be a life of adventure and wonder and riches, he knew that for certain.
His father was a very down-to-earth kind of a man, and Ambrogio knew he would never consent to his son's request to go to consult an oracle. Father did respect the gods, but his unwavering opinion was that it was not wise for a man to believe the ravings of oracles. Better to make one's own luck through hard work and giving offering to the gods at temples, rather than trusting in words which could be misinterpreted.
So Ambrogio made a plan. Instead of ever mentioning his wish to meet the oracle of Delphi, he began to talk about seeing the world and getting to know the places from which they sourced the goods for their trading business. Creating contacts with good merchants across the sea, that was important to its success. After a few months his father consented, agreeing finally that it was a good idea. And so, a trip was arranged for Ambrogio on a merchant boat on its way to the western coast of Greece. If the trip was successful, he would be allowed more opportunities to travel.
Ambrogio found it hard to hide his joy. For months he had been secretly asking everyone coming from Greece about the location of Delphi. He even had a small map drawn by one merchant. This he hid carefully from his father.
He waited for the spring to come, because Pythia did not give oracles during the winter months. And then spring arrived at last and joyfully he stepped on board the small merchant vessel that was heading for the east. He was certain wonderful things awaited him there.
And so it was. The most wonderful, and most horrible things imaginable were waiting for him.
Would he have stayed at home and become a merchant like his father, if he had known the future? Grown a belly and grey hair, and died respected by his community, surrounded by his children?
The Hunter Ambrogio, sitting on the cliff, wrote the last word of the love poem in ancient Greek and gave it to the wind. It was Japanese silk paper, and flew like a little feather in the slightest of breezes, up in the sky, towards the moon.
He watched it without words, engulfed by his emotions. Love, remorse. The memory of her.
No, he would not have chosen otherwise. All the horrors that came later were worth the love in the beginning. The chance to let her live forever in him, in their children. He listened for her in his own being, but she was silent now. Sometimes, when he wrote with passion, and concentrated on the words, he could feel her light touch in his mind. Like the slightest of caresses, an effort to communicate.
But the words did not hold the same power they had held when he had written them with the blood of the winged creatures, the ones that no longer existed. Ordinary ink would not do, it had to be the right kind of blood. Swans they had called them. Swans with silver wings.
He rubbed at the amulet hanging from a leather string on his neck. It was ancient, from the land of Kemet, called Egypt in later times.
He knew the hieroglyphs by heart.
"In iuwahtuheru en ahau, in iuhebatuimeferpu," he whispered to the silent moon.
Can one add a day to a lifetime, can one subtract from it either?
The flying paper vanished into the darkness. He rose, gathered his cloak, and quietly stepped back into the buffer zone, into his never-ending service of the Masters.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
39. A Lily for Remembrance
It was amazing how quiet everything could be in a small city. Elijah was used to big cities like London or New York or Cairo - where humanity's never-ending noise was always invading the inner space of his mind. The only place where he had found real comfort and silence had been the Egyptian desert. The relief he felt there was almost physical, being one with the earth and its past, as though modern times never existed and he was in a timeless place. Until...
He took a deep breath, drinking in the cool morning air. He was walking along the river, towards the old cathedral where they had given their promises to one another for what he had thought would be forever. He stopped in front of the old building and looked up. This was the national shrine, consecrated in the year 1300 as the Cathedral Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary and St Henry. What had then been a small stone church built to replace a previous wooden one, had grown into a big and impressive stone fortress of faith, where bishops and mighty people were buried. Even a queen of Sweden had found her final resting place here.
Merit had always disliked Christianity because of the way it had treated women, but she had liked this old Cathedral of her hometown nevertheless.
"They had 12 altars here, dedicated to female saints in the Middle Ages," she had explained as if she needed an excuse for liking the building.
There was a small museum in the Cathedral, in the south gallery. Statues of saints and sacred vessels were displayed there - and Merit's favorite piece: a bronze door ring in the shape of a lion.
He had time. He rose the steps to the main entrance, and stopped for a while again to have a look at the steeple, towering 85 meters above. He then pulled at the door handle, and the heavy door opened slowly.
"This church is a house of God and a place of prayer. Let us act with reverence in this holy place and let us respect the right of others to come and pray in silence," said a plaque at the entrance hall.
Then there was another door, lighter to handle. He pulled it open and stepped into the music.
He stepped further and approached the counter in the hall, while the music vibrated in the high vaults as if the stones themselves were singing the glory of God. A young lady was sitting behind the counter, ready to give advice for the asking. There were postcards under the glass c
ounter, and some books. Some more cards were put on sale on top of the counter. He looked into the church hall, let his eyes follow the lines of white pillars and saw the source of the music - a large choir singing without words near the altar, their voices creating a sacred landscape of the mind.
The conductor stopped them and when the music died it felt almost like physical pain - like hearing a car in the desert just when inner peace had set in. Only this time he would not have wanted for the sound to end. For a few torturous moments the silence took over. And then the choir began to sing again and he sighed in relief. It was as though his nerves were open wounds and the music was medicine that softened the pain.
"They are practicing Beethoven's Missa Solemnis," the young woman behind the counter told him in perfect English. "First time performed in Finland."
She looked just right for the job. No makeup, blond hair, a silver cross as a necklace. He noticed how her eyes stopped for a second on the pendant round his neck, the Egyptian Scarab. But she did not show what she thought of it, or of the flowers he was carrying in see-through cellophane wrapping. She just smiled politely. Finns respected other people's space.
Well, he did not look Finnish, so he should not have been surprised at being spoken to in English. The Finns seemed to know their English very well - and they also spotted foreigners very quickly. Not once had anyone started to speak to him in Finnish yet. They might have been surprised to know he knew the language well enough to speak it.
"I would like to buy a ticket to the museum, if possible," he said.
"Certainly. That would be two Euros."
He paid, got his ticket and then turned to the steep steps on the opposite side of the hall. He walked up the flight of stairs, and behind him the young woman pressed the button on the counter that opened the electric lock for him.
There was no one else in the museum. Not even a guard. These people were so trusting... There was a counter on the right, but no one was sitting behind it.
He passed the miniature model of the Cathedral as it was today, the first thing greeting the visitors. On the left of it was another miniature of the older version of the church. He peeked in through the small windows and saw a short yellow pencil someone had dropped inside it.
The bronze lion door ring was to the right, in a glass cabinet against the wall, in line with the miniature churches. He stopped to look at it. The lion's mane was divided into what looked like the rays of the sun, supporting vines with bunch of grapes in a circle around the animal's face. The animal was biting the ring. There was a duplicate of it in the medieval town of Tallinn, he remembered Merit telling him.
"Looks almost like a sun-symbol," Merit had said when they had been here.
So it did. He did not smile at the memory though, but proceeded further into the small museum. Wooden saints in their glass cabinets observed him silently as he passed. A bishop's crosier with an ice-cube-like rhinestone on top caught his attention for a while - in its day it must have looked amazing to the laypeople, reflecting the light, but in this day and age it probably did not catch the attention of young people any more. Not with all the glitter of today's world.
The choir kept singing, and the divine music felt like soothing balm to his heart. He looked over the railing at the musicians and the choir and briefly admired how human voices could create anything so beautiful. He had always loved music, but this sounded exceptionally beautiful. Otherworldly, almost.
At the very end of the museum hall was a large glass cabinet with priestly cassocks. He walked to the left of the cabinet. There was an opening that allowed him to get to a narrow walkway behind the cabinet and look down at a chapel below - the white marble statues of the major general Åke Tott and his wife from the 17th century stood solemnly there. On the high wall reaching up from the chapel, opposite to the back of the cassock-cabinet, red flowers had been painted. They almost looked like something a child would paint - red petals, green stem and leaves. A small wooden door was half open at the opposite end of the little balcony.
He stopped here, and took the white lily out of its wrappings. He had several lilies, but he took only one, snapping the flower off its stem, trying to move so that his back was towards the surveillance cameras, yet trying not to raise suspicions. He then turned his back to the railing, and looked at the pillar on his left, holding the lily flower in his hand. The pillar was made of red brick but it did not meet seamlessly with the vault it was supporting. It extended slightly out of the base of the vault, leaving a small triangular ledge just over his head. He kissed the petals of the while lily and raised his arm to put the lily flower on the ledge.
"I loved you, Merit," he whispered hoarsely, "And now I have come to say my goodbyes, as we agreed. I have finally found the strength to go on."
His voice trailed off.
This was where he had asked her to marry him. She had wanted him to see the lion door ring and they had been standing just here when he proposed. She had looked at the ring he had given her, and then at him, with those surprisingly deep, solemn blue eyes. She had been so solemn always, despite her youth and strong emotions. There was deep humour in her eyes, but she never giggled. You could see the smile deep in her eyes, and hear the fun in her dry remarks, which many understood only later. She was not trying to please anyone.
"We shall make our vows to each other both in life and death." Her eyes had been serious. "If one dies, the one of us who remains shall come here on the anniversary of our promises, when ready to move on, and bring a lily. The lily goes here..." Merit had shown the ledge to him - she had clearly been here before.
"Why there?" he had asked, not wanting to discuss death when they had a whole life together ahead of them.
"Well... because this is my favorite spot in this church." She spread her arms and swirled slowly around, and a rare flash of a smile made his knees melt. "It's a hiding place, where you can be alone. And no one is likely to look at what is here on the ledge, so the lily can remain there as a secret, for a while at least."
He could understand this, looking at the romantic balcony, the painted red flowers on the walls, the vaults, the small wooden door... Hardly anyone entered here, he was certain. The museum was probably not very popular anyway, not in today's secular world, and if the only way to get here was through the museum... a quiet place indeed.
"All right... But what is this about the lily? Why bring a lily?"
"Because it is a symbol of rebirth. You know the water lilies of ancient Egypt?"
He did. They rose together with the sun, from the dark depths of the waters, bloomed for a day, and then receded under water at sunset, back into the inky embrace of the night. The god Nefertem, the "Lord of Perfume" was the god associated with the blue lily. In ancient Egyptian mythology he was thought to be the rising blue lotus out of which the sun rose. The receding lily symbolized the setting of the sun. Even Tutankhamun was depicted as Nefertem in a statue where his head was shown in the middle of a lotus flower. During the dangerous days of the Egyptian New Year the pharaoh used lotus oil as the symbol of renewal. In sacred bouquets a lotus flower represented the symbol ankh, life.
So yes, the lily was indeed a symbol of rebirth. And it was also a symbol of love and sexuality.
He had looked into Merit's deep blue eyes and spoken the words of the Egyptian nineteenth Dynasty love poem, almost choking in the feeling of love humming in his body:
And I will say to Ptah, Lord of Truth:
"Give me my fair one tonight."
The river is like wine.
The god Ptah is its tuft of reeds,
The goddess Sekhmet is its bouquet of flowers,
The goddess Yadyt is its water lily bud,
The god Nefertem is its opened water lily.
My love will be happy!
The dawn illuminates her beauty.
"Love and rebirth," Merit had nodded, "then you understand that bringing the lily means that the other one still lives, and has moved on to the spiritual rea
lms. And to the one left behind the lily will represent being reborn into a new physical life, a message of moving on. I do not believe in mourning for the rest of your life... that you would be irrevocably injured, and unable to leave the past. That is a waste of the precious gift of living. There must be a way of letting go, and moving on, and still feel the connection between the souls."
They had invited the necessary witnesses and made their solemn promises to each other according to law.
He remembered her words so well. And right now he could not believe he would ever stop mourning. The pain was just as strong as it had been, when they had searched for her.
She had disappeared in Egypt. Not a trace of her had been found. No one knew how she died, but eventually everyone had believed she was dead. His beautiful wife, Merit. Even her name meant "loved one" in ancient Egyptian language. How her adoptive parents had chosen this name for her in a Lutheran country, he never knew.
But here he was now, keeping his word for her, saying his goodbyes. He realized he had to let go. His other half was gone for good, and because of Merit's wish, it was his duty to live on, even if carrying the deep sorrow for the rest of his life.
Elijah raised his hand and reached upwards, to place the flower on Merit's secret hiding place, as a promise to move on with his life. He was tall so it was easy for him to reach to the ledge.
His hand touched something. He froze on the spot, and then withdrew his hand, dropping his own lily on the floor. He reached back, hastily grabbed what he had felt and took it out.
A fresh lily with a blue ribbon. There was something tied to the ribbon. He stared at it and his hands began to shake. A ring. A smooth golden ring with one deep blue sapphire in it. He raised in to the light and looked inside, already knowing what he would find.
Their names were clearly written. First Merit, then Elijah. And between the names there were three hieroglyphs. There was a snake, a cobra, on top with its tail hanging down forming a frame on one side of the other two signs. Underneath the snake was first half a sphere - like sun rising from the horizon - and under that a slightly rounded flat rectangle, like a thick underlining. He knew what they spelled. D.t - eternity. Merit and Elijah forever.
