For him, and to him, I gave the form he would have until his death.
He could not rise from his chair, of course. He fell forward onto his desk. His huge arching tail with its fearsome stinger curled behind him impressively, swaying there.
When I left, I heard the scuttling of his feet, as if he were trying to learn to walk with his new set of legs. Perhaps he was grateful that I was leaving his office in such a splendor of cleanliness. Or perhaps he knew the repugnance that would rise in all who would see him, in the hours before he was slaughtered and exhibited.
At least he was moved to say goodbye. I assume this was because he recognized that he looked better than ever.
I LET THE snakes go in the desert. They, in fact, were beautiful, once in their homeland. They will live and recover, thrive and evolve through the many worlds.
The doctor who abused them will, after his death, have to confront the snakes he imprisoned and everyone he tormented and killed. Then he will die for all time.
I did, by the way, make enough money to start my university studies. And in my current work in the medical arts, I have no real use for my magical capacities. Just yet.
In southern Tunisia, at the edge of the Sahara, near the town of Ksar Ghilane, there is an old Roman fort, which looks out over the sands. It marks the end of an empire. In that ruined turret of stone, near dusk, in the light breeze, I heard this story from a Persian traveler who hoped someday to return home. She knew by heart long passages from Omar Khayyam and Hafiz.
THE JACKAL AND THE BUTTERFLY
There are those who think the jackal is mean-spirited and lazy, capering irresponsibly over the dunes of unknown deserts to eat the remains of other animals. The jackal herself, though, is known to feel this opinion unjust, since by her opinion she is just giving herself to her assigned role in the theater of nature; and so, she says, we may judge her only if we know the play as a whole.
One day a desert traveler and a jackal were discussing this matter, when it was resolved by a butterfly. The conversation went like this:
“Now, jackal,” said the fascinated traveler, “you must admit that you do not represent for us any ideal of character. In fact, even to think of you impairs the dignity of any of us who hope to refine our intelligence, to develop in ourselves capacities of openness and honesty. You live by tooth and muscle, stealth and trickery, scavenging and appetite. Such is your destiny. And so must we part ways.”
“Wait just a minute,” said the jackal in her hasty, scurrilous way. “I may have the qualities you mentioned. But they are in truth advantages; and you must consider whether they might be useful beyond your slothful imaginings. What if it is my destiny today to serve you and your kind? Is it not possible that I need my teeth to dispose of the dead, the better to do service to the curious and lively among you? I needed muscles to speed me to your side and to hold you here, fascinated by the poise and grace of my movement. I needed stealth in my approach to the angel of Death, since I have taken upon myself the task of outwitting him on your behalf.”
“You talk just like a jackal,” said our traveler. “You twist your words with strange wit, and your rhetoric, your speed, your intentions, they are all at the mercy of your jackal’s nature. You understand the qualities of a person and then use that understanding to take advantage of him. You saw, for instance, that I was curious about you, and that I liked to talk, and so have you lured me into conversation.”
“And you,” said the jackal, “contort your words with the logic of a human, who, in his human way, sees everything in relation to himself, and to his ideas of what the world is like. You think you know what a virtue is, what a fault is: you presume, first of all, that they are qualities belonging to humans, rather than belonging to the world. You think the world is about you. But in fact, none of us moves according to our own script. We must change our role according to events—according to the propositions the world makes to us every minute. Now, will you continue on with me?”
There was an ominous rumble up ahead, and the jackal looked steadily at her interlocutor.
“What on earth was that?” said our alarmed traveler.
“A landslide,” said the jackal. “Will you come with me?”
“Why should I?” asked the traveler suspiciously.
“Because without my company you will be lonely,” said the jackal. “All your companions were killed by the tonnage of rocks that has fallen upon them. This accident would not have happened but for one of your fellow travelers, who went scrambling up an unstable hillside after an extraordinary butterfly. Butterflies, as all you humans know, represent lightness of spirit, beauty, grace, and liberation.”
And, as the two of them went together along the road, the traveler saw that the jackal had spoken the truth. In despair of his dead companions, he screamed, “Why didn’t you warn us?”
“I tried. For I saw the butterfly, and the hillside; and I knew the danger. I spoke in your language, appealing to everyone in your group as they passed. But you were the only one who would stop to answer me. All the others saw no use in talking with a disreputable jackal, when they could pursue instead an unforgettably beautiful butterfly.”
“My dead friends!” exclaimed our poor traveler.
“Do not worry,” said the jackal, “I have use for them.”
“And what is that?”
“I am going to eat them,” said the jackal.
“Just like a jackal,” said the man in disgust.
“Of course,” said the animal. “I could not save them, as I was able to save you, because of your generous and honest curiosity. But I am sure that, now dead, and therefore wiser than previously, their spirits would be glad of their bodies nourishing the jackal.”
“What is the worth of any learning?” asked our friend in his bitterness and sorrow.
“Besides,” the jackal went on happily, “given the human weakness for ignorant admiration, and with all those butterflies fluttering around in the world, being splendid and free, it is important I be well fed, and follow my subtle and disreputable ways. That way, at least some of you will have a chance to find salvation.”
Told by another investment banker in London, a woman of almost mythic competence and courtesy. Before she told me this story, she had been describing in the most searching and serious detail her readings of the early stories of Kafka and her interest in the Sufi saint Bahaudin Naqshband.
I told her that I could hardly believe some of the work she described in her story, and she answered: “No one, no one at all, cares if you believe. But you should consider whether you can watch, and listen, and develop the patience to study our lives. If you can learn what we do, you just might have your chance.”
A BUSINESS LIFE, A SOCIAL LIFE
Once upon a time a well-known, prosperous woman awoke to discover, alarmingly, that she had a rare skin disease. The skin on her right hand had become completely transparent. For a moment she felt a horror at the exposed complication of blood vessels, the crisscrossed luminous padding of muscles, the mysterious nerves, the tracery of finely fitting bones. But as she watched, that horror evaporated beneath the natural sunlight of her amazement.
This woman, our friend, had that very morning to affix her signature to documents, comprising the formal agreement of a long-negotiated financial matter. But when she took up a pen to sign, she was struck by the musical shiftings, the painted and precise alteration of bone, muscle, and nerve, and she could not concentrate on her task. In fact, no one else could either, for the business colleagues of our friend had been overmastered by their own fascination. It was as if a treasure chest had been opened, and all the jewels knew one another, and had for millenniums been looking forward to this performance together in the light.
None of the colleagues present could resist asking for some special trick of the hand. One wanted to see our friend pick up a paper weight and put it down again. The kaleidoscopic effects of this trick alone were such that it had to be repeated several times.
Another trick was the drumming of fingers on the tabletop, which created a shifting of colors, as though the light had been invigorated by prisms. Someone else wanted to see a slow-motion snapping of the fingers, a spectacular trick that made it look like a tropical storm at sunrise was forming in our friend’s newfound palm.
The favorite trick of all was the slow unfolding of the fist into the fully opened hand. And of course they all hoped they would be able to see her fingertips move across the keyboard of a piano.
After a few weeks of tricks, and much conversation with her colleagues, our friend remarked that everyone’s hand had the same qualities, and that the fact of hands is not less wondrous, for being concealed. She noted as well that if we conceive of the earth itself as a hand holding all our lives, and having greater resources for wonder than our own mere bones and veins, that it may very well be worthwhile to look more carefully and patiently at our own planet. It, of course, was not covered, except by the crude and rough skin of human conception.
Everyone agreed that the analogy was an important one, and they made a pact to take the rest of their lives to find out what the world really was like. It was the obvious and necessary thing to do. That was seven years ago.
Some of her friends now do various kinds of work, all of it having to do with the real, often invisible world that we all talk about occasionally, before we return to our pressing individual affairs. If I might describe one of the most improbable and complex of these labors: one of them, using techniques she has refined over many contemplative years, melts down opals and combines them with the fluid song of certain meadowlarks. To this brew she adds a clear solution made of small portions from each of the headwaters of many rivers and a liquor made from traditional distillations of twilight; and then she gently paints the resulting mixture on the hearts of young girls. It sends them off in the direction of incandescent adventures.
Another of them is a teacher. He teaches children how to watch, on windy afternoons, the strong patterns of flashing along the broad lines of cottonwoods, so that they might be better able to recognize the bright pathways in their own lives.
Another of the friends has taken on a job of courier of moonlight, and in the middle of the day delivers satchels to certain people. She does this for those who know how to use moonlight to lend to their work, their ideas, and their language certain lunar qualities: softness; suggestiveness; lucent, lovely variability; and power—for example, the ability to make whole oceans move.
The others have different jobs. We could describe them, but you have yourself been witness to what they do; they all collaborate, and their accomplishments are everywhere.
You may ask, in the meantime, what work is being done by our friend, who started all this philosophical tomfoolery. She has the simplest work of all—just going about her business and shaking hands with everyone she sees. After all, she has bonds to sell, companies to analyze, economists to bedevil. Shaking hands seems like a traditional part of daily etiquette, until people see the hand they have in theirs. As a matter of fact, it is part of daily etiquette; our friend always was a convivial and mannerly woman, and it is natural to her to conceive that the most commonplace courtesy, honestly undertaken, might lead us directly to an extraordinary new life. It all goes to show something that she had often thought—that the mundane may be inevitably a matter of spirit; and that, in all our conduct, what is most in harmony with miracle is good manners.
This ornate and outlandish story was told to me in Utah, where they have the roughest bars. The woman tending bar had a front tooth missing, and on her hip a mysterious, beautiful tattoo, octagonal in shape. When I looked at her, she could hold my gaze, even from the far end of the bar, and even as she was mixing a drink.
I wondered later if she used hallucinogenic drugs. But she told me that she lived a life of absolute sobriety, so as to have the best chance to participate intelligently in the world we had made together, which was a kind of collective hallucination.
IN PRAISE OF FEMALE BARTENDERS
Our friend, a sampler of spirits, was sitting at a bar. He noticed that one of the bottles in the rack was empty. This empty bottle, however, still had a pouring spout and was placed in company with the whiskey, rum, and other spirits frequently used. When the bartender was asked why an empty bottle merited such treatment, she answered that the bottle contained the bar’s home brew, the only bottle of that unique beverage ever prepared.
Our friend in his amusement asked for a straight shot of the brew. To his surprise, the bartender, in her meticulous way, tipped the empty and worn bottle over a shot glass and poured nothing into it. Our friend paid, and then, not knowing what else to do, lifted the glass to his lips and drank the liquor it did not contain, tasted the spirit he had not perceived, swallowed notions he had not expected, and felt himself ready to enter wholeheartedly into a life he had hardly dared hope for.
All around, he could perceive the earthly powers he always had dreamed about; and, comically enough, these powers now approached him, addressed him, and welcomed his questions. The change was simple to describe: what had seemed to be separate forms of life or matter, alien, distant, and aloof—say, for example, plants, weather, or rocks—these very forms now became close, friendly, and helpful.
To state it even more simply: everything took on its own true life. The parts played in our history and destiny by the things of earth, he could understand. Everything showed itself to him; and he to them. And the bartender grinned.
First, the two men next to him at the bar revealed to him that they were not men at all, but rather two date-palm trees that had taken on human form. And why would they have done so? So they could discuss with him secrets of life known to palm trees, such as how to be dignified and life-giving among sand dunes in harsh and deadly climates. In addition, as the conversation drifted on, they clarified for him how palm fronds in the desert, on midnight of the spring equinox when there is a full moon, will glisten in a way to direct your gaze to a certain evening star. If you watched this star calmly all evening, and if you were honest, you would be able from then on to prophesy.
This was surprising news. But more was to come—an energetic woman burst into the bar: she turned out, really against all the odds, to be, though he could hardly believe it, a volcano. She bought him another drink and told him stories, including some funny ones about men who had not thought her formidable and nearly had to suffer incineration. As their musings took on more confidence, she tutored him helpfully on how he might reach deep into the earth to encounter molten currents, so to bring into use common materials that, set out in the open air, give light.
A sunflower taught him how his life could move in easy and gradual concert with the hours of the day. And, as our friend began to drink more heavily, a cyclone (she had a muscular form and startling white hair) turned up and was very glad to meet him, and spoke at length to him. In fact, a sympathy and a hopefulness moved between them, and such was the vigor and depth of their exchange that when the cyclone took the hand of our friend, there was in that handshake of newfound friendship a concentrated, glittering circulation of power.
Our friend, as we may well imagine, continued to drink. And he saw how all the varieties of life might, if we would seek to be useful, come closer to us. To his considerable astonishment, a shark, dressed in a rather natty suit, stopped in, and showed him how to streamline his thoughts so that their swiftness of movement had always a fierce, attentive grace. Finally, at the end of the day, someone put in his hand some freshly cut sugarcane, and as he closed his fingers upon it he learned how to make his bones like sugarcane, so that the marrow sweetened his blood, and he could walk forth onto the road that led to the lover he would then be ready to embrace. And he felt that he might have some chance to be worthy of such embraces.
When our friend was able to pause amid the common and happy shenanigans of this education, he recalled how all this had started with a certain beverage. He inquired of the bartender what processes were u
sed in brewing such a spirit, and what rules of etiquette pertained to its consumption. She replied that any honest request for the beverage would bring a sufficient quantity into existence. Most people simply were not willing to seek the brew, in such a way that it could be found. For example, they did not usually believe it might be found in their homely neighborhood bar. But it happens to be the case that it is the function of bars everywhere, she said, to provide a home brew. All the other spirits are stocked simply to give us a taste for the real thing.
Now, said the bartender, the empty vessel represents of course the customer himself; and he must recognize this, and drink deeply. A customer, however, who thinks himself full will not notice the empty bottle; and so he takes some other drink. Many bartenders, unbelievably, have not even heard of the home brew; and so they see no vessel full of world-spirit, but only an empty bottle to be chucked into the rubbish bin.
“A desperate situation,” said our friend.
“Indeed,” said the bartender, as she winked at him. “The only consolation is that so many people are being driven to drink.”
Anisetta attended Amherst College in Massachusetts. Sometimes, in her dreams, Emily Dickinson would appear and kiss her on the nose. A young man gave me this account with the most carnal and spiritous enthusiasm, and then wept with his eyes open.
This is one of the few stories in this collection I heard from a man; I include it because it is about a woman whose role in his life was transformative and unforgettable.
THE THANK-YOU NOTES
Our friend Anisetta was raised to write thank-you notes: no kindness, no hospitality, no gift was received by our intrepid young woman but was acknowledged promptly by a note checkered with suitable effusions.
As Anisetta grew older and made her way in the world, she noticed the things we all notice: that society was a holocaust of broken promises; that hatred ran here and there like molten rock, blowing off steam through volcanoes and people; and that ignorance, always in a devouring mood, was nourished only by human souls. She noticed also that, despite everything, we all have a chance: with a little wariness, with some no-nonsense striding into the midst of things, with the will to send phrases like falcons to circle her adversaries, with the natural momentum of heaven given to women, and with unladylike cantankerous maneuvering and a good education: with these things, a woman could find her way into the midmost of the world—there to have her celebrations.
The Hot Climate of Promises and Grace Page 7
