Finally, there is the so-called Tree of Enlightenment, which floats in the center of the garden, its branches extending out like vines to form a spherical lattice. Oddly, as the tendrils extend outward, their contours fade away into nothingness. But at the heart of the tree, the branches hang low with fruits the size of apples. The fruits come in five colors: red, blue, yellow, black, and green.
“These can be eaten raw. Would you like to try one?” asks the Lord.
K nods, picking out one of the red fruits to take a bite out of it. Its flavor has an acidic tinge. Its texture is akin to chewing beef.
“Delicious?”
K isn’t quite sure how to answer.
The Lord also picks a fully ripe fruit from the branches.
“The fruits are certainly a bit peculiar at first,” he says. “But once you acquire a taste for them, they can be quite addictive. Quite a few people have become prisoners of their flavor, making it rather difficult to ever leave Loulan again.”
“Am I right that this tree has no trunk or roots at all?” K asks.
“Well, you see, it actually has roots. We just can’t see them.”
“Meaning what exactly?”
“The roots of the Tree of Enlightenment are invisible to the naked eye. But it’s not that they don’t exist.”
K still doesn’t get it. So, even knowing how silly his question will sound, he asks it anyway.
“So, do you mean that the roots are transparent?”
The Lord seems happy enough to entertain his queries.
“No, that’s not it. Its roots extend into another universe.”
“Oh? Another universe?”
“Exactly. Let me put it this way. Thinking about it in the terms of the structures of time-space continuum, you might say that the tree absorbs the nutrients it needs from a parallel world in an adjacent dimension.”
The nonchalant expression on the Lord’s face tells K that all this is perfectly mundane to him.
“This reminds me, there’s something else here even more interesting. Would you like to see it?”
K’s curiosity has been piqued.
“Sure, why not?”
“Well then, follow me this way.”
The Lord sets a ladder down on one side of the floating garden, preparing to climb up its steps. However, the opposite end of the ladder floats in empty space.
“Come, come. There’s nothing to worry about. You won’t fall. The space up top has already conformed to the ladder.”
The Lord’s words confound K, but he does not seem to notice and begins climbing up the ladder before K can even respond.
K follows him to the top. Just as the Lord said, an invisible platform awaits up there. And so he ends up standing side by side with the Lord, as if floating in midair.
The Lord points his finger toward one corner of the garden.
“Look over there,” he says.
K does so, seeing what looks like a crack on the wall. Then, the crack opens up, revealing some other place within it. What is he seeing? Another dimension?
Suddenly, something from inside this other world catches K’s gaze. A strange creature, a huge shambling mass that’s gray in color. K quickly pulls his eyes away from the crack.
“Whoa!” K lets out a little yelp as a wave of nausea sweeps over him. “What the hell was that?”
“Well, to be perfectly honest with you, we’re not altogether certain ourselves just what that thing is.”
“Is that thing a plant too?”
“Possibly.”
“It looks like some kind of alga to me.”
“I can see that. Yes, it may just be a kind of alga inhabiting an ocean in the fourth dimension.”
K cannot quite shake off his jitters as he peers through the dimensional crack once more. The sheer size of the thing is simply beyond any comprehension. The creature waves several—no, countless—feelers of some sort that extend outward from its body. Just like the roots of the Tree of Enlightenment, the creature’s feelers reach out in every direction, vanishing into other dimensions.
“We call that creature a ‘Temporal Vine.’ As you surmised earlier, we’re not quite certain whether we should classify it as a plant or an animal in this world. What we are certain about though is that it feeds itself by absorbing time as a form of nutrition.”
The Lord continues his explanation. But he peppers his words with so much specialized terminology—“temporal metabolism” and whatnot—unfamiliar to K that he can barely keep up. As far as he can figure out, the mechanics of its metabolism are perhaps somewhat similar to the photosynthesis of plants on Earth. In the end, the important thing to remember is that the space creature lives by consuming time itself, causing all manner of vexing problems wherever it goes.
“That’s why we have to keep it fenced in like this. Otherwise, things get, shall we say, rather complicated.”
“I can only imagine,” K says, nodding in agreement as he hopes never to encounter such a thing again.
“This one here is the last of its kind. But there used to be many more around in Loulan back in the day. It was quite a task to wipe almost all of them out.”
Finally, the two return to the laboratory. Upon their return, they are met by the castle steward, who tells them that the dinner is now ready.
6
To K’s chagrin, he learns that having a meal in Loulan does not have the usual meaning of having a meal. You do not, in fact, consume food here. You simply go through the motions of consuming food, mimicking the gestures and acts of eating in a highly formal and ritualized way, hence imbuing the mood at the dinner table with much symbolism.
The plates, bowls, and glasses set on the table before K and the Lord are all empty. Still, when they take their spoons and ladle the soup to their lips, the slight sounds of sipping are discernible. Other sounds—forks plunging into their steaks, knives cutting through meat, chewing—shortly make themselves heard as well. Alongside it all are the splashing sounds of an invisible wine pouring into their glasses. Finally, at the end of the meal, the crunching noises of their bites into the crispy flesh of invisible apples fill the air.
At first, it all bewilders K. But when, emulating the Lord’s actions, he follows along with the ritual of a meal, oddly enough, he finds himself feeling satiated in the end. When K thinks on it more after their dinner, the whole thing reminds him of something similar he had heard about, an old custom of setting a meal for an absent person.
Afterwards, the Lord brings K to an exquisite room with rows and rows of fine leather-bound books lining every inch of its walls. With the Lord’s permission, K pulls out one of the books from the shelves. Quickly flipping through the pages, he discovers that every single page of the book is blank. Incredulous, K turns to the Lord.
“All the books are like that,” the Lord tells him.
“Oh, I get it, all these books are just for appearance, right?” K says.
The Lord responds with a quiet glare, shaking his head from side to side.
“These are memory books. Shall I show you how to properly read them?”
The Lord snatches a volume of an encyclopedia from its shelf. He heads over to a fine leather recliner, crossing his legs as he sits down. He flips open the book, letting his eyes trace lines across the blank pages as he sinks his back into the chair. After he finishes reading a few pages, he smiles, looking back up at K.
“You see? Just now, I was reading the R volume of the encyclopedia. Now, this is the first time I have read this. But I’m still able to read it back from my memory.
K remains silent as he listens to the Lord continue with his explanation.
“Everyone has a book within their memory. In your case, I wonder what sort of book that would be? An exquisite novel? A superb philosophical treatise? In my case, though, it’s this—an encyclopedia.”
Having listened to this explanation, K follows the Lord’s lead, taking out another book and opening it to its first page. He begins to go throu
gh the motions of reading it. It takes some effort for him to clear his head, but with some focus, he slowly learns to put his mind to it, becoming quite absorbed in his reading.
He must have already gone over a dozen pages or so by the time the steward returns to announce that K’s room is now ready.
“As you’ve just heard, your room is ready. Please make yourself at home. You will soon be departing from Loulan to travel through the rift in space, but in the meantime you are quite welcome to stay in my castle.”
K expresses his gratitude to the Lord for his kindness and hospitality.
“Thank you very much,” he says. “Speaking of my travel plans, I have my orders here, but by any chance do you know when exactly my ship will depart on the Sacred Route?”
The Lord smiles.
“You refer to the ship the Emissary returning from beyond to pick you up? Let’s see, I wonder when it will return to Loulan. The truth is that no one really knows. It could be tomorrow. Or it could be a long time from now. It’s such a capricious thing. Those here in Loulan have all been going about their daily lives waiting for the ship to arrive.”
Such cryptic words exceed K’s full comprehension. Nonetheless, for him, what matters at this moment is the knowledge that his ship will indeed arrive someday.
“In that case, I accept your invitation to stay here until then,” K says.
The Lord gives K a long meaningful look.
“Excellent,” he says as he returns his book to the shelf. “In that case, it looks like I’ll need to assign someone to you while you’re here.”
What is he talking about?
Again, the meaning of his words escapes K.
“You will, after all, need someone to take care of your needs during your stay here. There are plenty of choices. Do you have a type?”
“I’m sorry?”
Is the Lord talking about assigning a servant to attend to him? So what does he mean by “type” then? What does that have to do with anything?
Enjoying K’s bewilderment, the Lord turns to the steward standing to one side.
“Who would you choose in his place?”
The steward’s gaze fixes on K, as if trying to appraise his value.
“I wonder. How about Serena?”
“Good choice. I wonder if she might not be too giggly though.”
“Ellen, then, perhaps?”
“I think I may have overdone the snobbishness on her. What about Amalia? I think she’s quite lovely. Perfect for him, don’t you think?”
The steward tilts his head in curiosity.
“Amalia? Yes, that is an excellent idea. I will immediately make the appropriate preparations and bring her to the guest room.”
The steward gives the Lord a deep bow, making a clumsy creaking noise as he exits the room.
K stays in the Lord’s parlor for some time after, enjoying his conversation with a man whose breadth of knowledge so thoroughly impresses K.
“You see,” the Lord says. “It’s not merely a matter of my age. Let’s see, when I was about your age—wait, when was that again? It was such a long time ago I can no longer remember. Anyway, even then, I burned with a passion for grasping every single piece of knowledge about outer space that I could get hold of. But a man’s life is regrettably only limited. So before anything else, I needed to learn the secrets of immortality, and as a result of all my research, I was lucky enough to end up on Loulan and discover this Tree of Enlightenment.”
“Just how old are you, anyway?” K asks with some hesitation.
A hint of melancholy seeps out of the Lord’s next words.
“Well, all I can say is that I am old enough to no longer remember my age.”
If this man founded the city of Loulan, he must have been born before the year 886 of the Igituran Era, which was when the Loulan Space Route was first developed upon the discovery of the planet with its famous black sun.
“Would you say around 250 years old?” K asks.
The Lord shakes his head.
“300 years old, then?”
“No, it has to be more than that.”
“400?”
“No. I have a distinct recollection of being at the courthouse when the heresy trials took place. This would have been around the time of the debates surrounding the interpretation of The Garden of Earthly Delights.”
But the heresy trials took place in the year 567. This was well before the great leap forward marked by the development of faster-than-light drives. Only after these technologies were in place could the long-distance trek through space to Loulan even become possible.
“That can’t be right,” K mutters under his breath.
“Indeed,” the Lord says in acknowledgment. “Your skepticism does not surprise me. I myself no longer really understand what I am anymore. You see, when you live for some hundreds of years like I have, your brain starts to dull, you start to lose older bits of memory. It can be a real problem sometimes.”
The Lord adopts the stance of someone deep in thought. However, it is obviously a mere pose, a gesture for the sake of appearance. Regardless, he insists with absolute certainty that his discovery of the Tree of Enlightenment in Loulan happened in the years prior to the execution of the heretic Darko Dachilko. In fact, he was there to witness the execution.
“That’s right. I somehow returned to Earth from Loulan. I was there to witness that man’s head shoot up high into the air and disappear in a spray of blood.”
This event took place in the year 313 of the Igituran Era.
“That’s almost seven centuries ago,” K murmurs.
“Indeed. A long, long time ago.”
The Lord speaks these words as if he is talking about someone else.
“I heard that every single one of those present at the execution subsequently died facing the wrath of Darko Dachilko’s ghost.”
“Oh, really?” The Lord displays an exaggerated expression of surprise, making it sound like this was the first time he had ever heard of such a preposterous story.
7
Distinctions between day and night have no meaning in Loulan. All there is to tell time is a single large hourglass sitting in the Lord’s parlor. But the golden sand of the hourglass remains still at the bottom end of the clock, not having seen much use for a very long time. A large horned owl perches atop it, watching all with glimmering catlike eyes.
The Lord lets out a yawn, and before K knows it, he has already fallen into a deep slumber while still seated in his reclining chair. A glance at his sleeping face reveals a childlike innocence. A smile forms on K’s face as he places a throw blanket over him.
Deciding that it is time for him to rest as well, K steps out into the dark hallway. Only a small bit of light spills out from one corner. K feels his way toward the light, finding his way to a room with the door slightly ajar.
Hearing a noise inside the room, K peers in to find the castle steward.
“Could you tell me which of these is my room? Is it this one?”
“Yes, sir. But could you please wait for just a moment? The room will be ready shortly.”
K notices that the steward has brought into the room a chest full of dresses, which he takes out of the open chest to hang in the closet. So many dresses, each one of them cut in a revealing fashion. When he is done with the dresses, he proceeds to fold other items, underwear of every color, shoes, accessories.
Even as he finds it all rather strange, K remains silent, simply letting the steward carry on with his work. In the meantime, he studies the two-room suite. Circular bed at the far end. Ceiling that’s somewhat on the low side. Walls painted in a dark-red hue. Multiple mirrors mounted here and there. Floors carpeted with black animal fur. Antique furnishings. The Lord’s taste in decor is much too ostentatious for K.
The steward finally finishes his work. He hastily hauls the now empty chest back out to the hallway, only to bring in another chest, this one much larger and covered in leather. He sets it down lengthwise
onto the floor of the room. Searching his pockets, he scrounges up the key to the chest. It suddenly dawns on K that this very old chest has the exact size and shape of a casket.
The steward slides the key into the lock, opening it with a single click. Crouching down, he lifts the lid of the casket up, revealing within it a woman with blonde hair and wide-open blue eyes emptily staring at the ceiling.
“What do you think, sir?” The steward asks K. “This is Amalia.”
Was this woman, this mechanical doll, what the Lord and the steward were discussing earlier?
K finds it difficult to conceal his confusion.
“Is she to your liking, sir?”
In the face of the steward’s subdued voice, K remains silent, gripped with the feeling of facing some kind of diabolical ritual, some kind of spell the steward is casting on him.
The steward presents a frozen glare to K.
“Does she not remind you of someone you know?”
There is no denying the resemblance.
“Please do not worry, sir. We are not on Earth. Indulge in the worst sins as much as you wish. No one will come after you here.”
A dim light radiates from deep within the steward’s eyes.
“How do you know such things?”
The steward’s response is as cool and collected, as full of mystery as ever.
“I know everything about you.”
Indolence has fully consumed K’s life since that evening when he first met Amalia. Day in and day out, he does nothing else other than hide himself away in the castle. Somehow, he has fallen in love with this mechanical doll.
And yet loneliness tinges this love, a self-love little more than mere empty onanism.
In the end, no heart beats in her chest, no soul breathes life into her body.
The first few days are full of anguish for K. All the guilt he has hidden away returns to face him, haunting him. All because Amalia so reminds him of a woman he killed a long time ago, from another life.
The Sacred Era: A Novel (Parallel Futures) Page 18
