by Rani Manicka
He was filled with an infinite love; it encompassed everything. There was nothing to rival it on Earth. The warmth and familiarity of home. He began to laugh with the joyous ecstasy. Then suddenly, without any warning, he was in the belly of something inconsolably sad, a vast, vast void of human sadness - all the pain and hurt, the lost hope, the unanswered prayers, the betrayals; all became his. It filled every cell in his body until he felt as if he would tear apart with the pain of the human race. Intolerable. He began to scream.
Instantly the drop exited his forehead and he fell weakly to the ground. He understood why her energy was encased in a capsule and the reason that only a minute part of her had come to touch him. His physical structure had no capacity to hold the intensity of her vast energy. He would have burst with it.
‘That is what I am and what you really are. What you were before and what you will return to when you leave your human form… But without the pain.’
‘What am I doing on Earth?’
‘What everyone else is. Learning how to use energy. Most think that the secret to using energy is to create something. The real magic is when you learn to use energy to turn something into nothing.’
‘Something into nothing?’ Black repeated.
‘Something into nothing. We’ll be waiting for you.’
She left as she had arrived. Without fanfare. One moment he was standing in that vast space and the next he was left in his tiny bedroom with nothing to show for it - he glanced at the clock 3.29 a.m. - not even lost time. He stumbled to his bed and fell upon it. Already his limbs were beginning to stiffen. As best he could, he maneuvered himself until he was lying flat on his back, in the same position he had been put into all his life.
What rough beast,
its hour come round at last,
Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?
- William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)
The wheelchair moved soundlessly on the thick carpets that lined the long, wide corridor that led to the lift. As the wheelchair passed the top of the stairs Kite looked down the curving staircase made of Burmese hardwood, and for some unfathomable reason thought of the men who had carved it, their forearms as sinewy and hard as the wood they worked with. He felt himself become very still.
Their poverty; he felt it. For the first time in his cold, remorseless life he felt something. An odd and burdensome thing. Never had he known empathy, sympathy, or even a conscience… Now he tasted the grinding virtuousness of their lives, so fascinatingly different from the grandeur and opulence of his. Then came unwanted viewpoints; officially he reigned with an iron hand, but wasn’t he well ruled too? Every move overseen by frighteningly powerful principalities that required blood and sacrifice each step of the way? Was he really any more than the brown-skinned men?
He frowned. What extraordinary thoughts to have come over him. Of course he was more. They were inferior - vermin, in fact. Whereas he was of superior stock with superior qualities, born to rule. Their right to rule was in their blood. Genetically predisposed to leadership, his family had cunningly rejected the notion of deposable Kings or presidents and had secretly ruled humanity from behind the scenes. Generation after generation, going back as far as memory or history could account for, since the very birth of civilization, they had been the bankers. Unexpectedly, an image of the boy came into his mind. He frowned, felt uneasy. He had wanted the boy eliminated, but the old ones had spoken through the mother of darkness and ordered the boy to be released unharmed.
He forced his mind away from the unfamiliar, unwelcome moments of introspection and touched the button that operated the doors of the lift. They swished open smoothly, but as the wheels of his chair reached the entrance the chair came to a sudden stop. He stabbed the start button. Nothing happened. He hit it again. No reaction.
Impatiently he tried the reverse button and the chair began to roll back soundlessly. He slammed his fist on the stop button, but the chair continued to roll steadily back. Angrily, he hit the stop button repeatedly, to no effect. He closed his eyes in frustration. STOP. NOW. That worked. The chair suddenly stalled and stopped. He opened his eyes. It had stopped at the top of the stairs.
Why? The first twinge of fear, a subtle warning at the base of his spine. He tried to inch forward, but the computer system refused to respond. He depressed the button that would summon one of the servants, but the button failed to light up. There was something wrong with the entire circuitry.
‘George,’ he called, his voice booming and hollow in the huge, empty space. He waited. There were no footsteps or answering voice. It was so eerily quiet, he felt the hair at the back of his neck rise.
‘George!’ he screamed. There was no hiding the panic in his voice now. He heard a whirling noise come from the wheelchair. His eyes swooped down to watch it as if it was a dangerous snake. The wheelchair began to move. For a moment he was so surprised he did nothing. In disbelief, he watched the wheelchair make small, tight movements. It was turning, it was making him face the staircase. The pain. Be careful of the pain. Then his brain kicked in. He should get out of the chair quickly.
He could still use his legs. He hit his legs. Hard. There was pain. Thank God. There must be use. He put both hands under his right knee to lift his leg out of the metal rest, and suddenly he was overcome with the urgent need to push the forward button. His hand, yes his own hand, moved and slammed down on the button. The wheelchair responded immediately. It shot into the air. He was so frightened he tried to hang onto it, but it hit the banister and went its separate way. He was hitting stairs. Hard. Crashing into the wood that the carvers had spent their sweat and toil upon. He put his hands out in a last-ditch attempt to stop the momentum. His white, weak hands desperately grabbing for the banister. But too much momentum to stop.
Burmese men with wood-like limbs had carved them, too smooth, purposely. The poles he grasped slipped through his hands like water. This was their revenge. He saw them clearly. Their worn, sad faces. It was money they wanted, and it was money he had withheld from them. Money! He had so much. Why did he do it? He feared their worn faces. He was tumbling down, down, down the wonderfully polished stairs. The maids, on their hands and knees. Polishing. Polishing, every day. For slave wages. His wife was at the opera. His lovers were with the men they truly fancied, his children spread around the world taking care of his empire and here he was, hurtling to his death, alone. He landed. Badly.
Oh, agony. His legs were twisted underneath him, broken.
But he was not dead. He was one of the chosen ones. He laid his head on a smooth stair and noticed something strange. Dry rain. What the hell?
There was a fantastic display of light. A being was materializing. He was white with straight, black hair and dressed in resplendent purple robes. He hovered a few inches above the ground. Winged and magnificent. Awestruck, Kite called out the chant for the ceremony to call the old ones.
‘I call you Master and Creator. I rejoice, I mock, I praise your name. Open the gates! Ygnaii Thoth! Open the gates! Claim me as your own.’
The light became so blindingly bright that he had to shade his eyes. The river of light engulfed him. Oddly the first thing he experienced was great love. He felt all the love, the authority, and the knowledge of his master flow into him until he was vibrating like a tuning fork. Nothing could decay here. There was no logic or reasoning, but overwhelming beauty. The pleasure was intense. He opened his mouth and spoke the most beautiful language. His awareness of time had ceased to exist; he was experiencing eternity.
God opened his great wings. They shimmered exquisitely with white light. The old one smiled at him and opened his hands in welcome. Kite reached out eagerly with both hands. His Lord had kept his promise and come for him. He felt himself leave his crippled body and enter the warm, radiant arms of his Dark Lord. In that moment of exquisite pleasure and beauty Kite’s eye fell upon an odd thing. He saw the fine, rich robes of his Lord trailing blood. And suddenly everything changed. He was falling in
to the cold, black abyss of eternity. The sides were carved with faces, hanging upside down and screaming silently. All as shocked and horrified as he was.
The principalities had lied!
‘I repent, I repent,’ he cried out, but there was no escape from the abyss.
You have been walking the ocean’s edge, holding up your robes to keep them dry. You must dive naked under, and deeper under, a thousand times deeper!
- Rumi
Bumi was hurrying down the street thinking of the boy. It was five days ago that the miracle had happened, when he had walked and spoken. But in the morning he had been changed beyond recognition. She had quit her job to sit beside him. Lady Carrington was clearly irritated that she had not been given what she called ‘fair notice’.
‘Won’t you at least finish the month?’ she had asked tightly.
‘My son is very sick and there is no one else to care for him.’
‘I didn’t know you had a son,’ she said, losing her posh accent.
Bumi had raised her eyes to her employer’s narrow, suspicious face. ‘I do.’
‘Well, if you leave like this, you do realize that you won’t get paid for the days you have worked this month?’
‘That’s all right. You probably need it more than me, anyway,’ Bumi had retorted, and left the great Lady’s fine apartment. The Lord had called later to apologize and to say that he would be putting some money into her account, but Bumi could hardly care. The money mattered not one bit to her. All her money had been for the boy and now it was of no use.
Although his body was wasting away, every time she had tried to feed him, she had heard his voice clearly in her head saying, ‘No.’ All she could do was wet his lips with some water. When she cleaned him, she realized that his body had stopped producing waste of any kind. But in her dreams he came to her and told of a great being who had come to him and taught him things. ‘The body is afraid of death because it thinks the world is all there is. You must not listen to the fear of the body. When the time comes just let go.’
She had only left the house to buy some groceries, milk for her tea, eggs, a loaf of bread and some cheese. She had been gone less than fifteen minutes. So it was a shock to see the magnificent rainbow that stretched across the sky and seemed to end on her house. She stopped, the blood in her veins suddenly cold. The last time she had seen such a rainbow she had found him. Then the fireworks began, an astounding display of multicolored lights directly over her house. She dropped her groceries and ran. She was panting hard and very frightened by the time she pushed open the boy’s door. The room was lit only by a dim bedside lamp. He no longer wanted the TV. His eyes turned to her. He was so frail. So shrunken.
It’s time, he said in her head.
‘Remember what the great being taught you,’ she urged.
I have forgotten everything, but anyway there is nothing to remember. It’s all an illusion.
She took his shriveled, still hand in hers.
Don’t be scared, he said in her head.
‘I’m not. I’m just going to miss you so much. I don’t know that I will be able to bear it. I will be so alone without you.’
You will not be alone, Mother.
‘I love you.’
Remember, now, not to come into this room for the next five days.
She covered her forehead with one hand and sobbed softly.
Promise me you won’t, no matter what.
‘I promise.’
We will meet again soon.
She didn’t answer, but laid her fingertips on the delicate skin on the inside of his wrist, and felt for the weak ripples. She felt them travel from his skin into hers, into her blood and tissue and bones and become a part of her. When she had absorbed his last heartbeat, she lowered herself into the chair by his side and watched his cooling body. Her vigil lasted all through the night until the raw, cold daylight filtered in. Even then she sat with her sorrow watching a weak patch of light move along the floor onto the boy’s bed. A butterfly flew in through the window and landed in the light. It was the most brightly colored butterfly she had ever seen. Her eyes welled with tears. The beads in his hair. The multicolored beads.
‘Oh, Black,’ she whispered brokenly. How will I ever manage without you?’
The butterfly lifted itself off the bed and alighted on her hand. Slowly, she lifted her hand and brought the butterfly close to her face. It flapped its wings twice, but remained on her hand. She looked at its beautiful wings and remembered the moth infestation from three days ago, when twenty or thirty moths had flown in through the boy’s window. They had fluttered around the lighted bulbs, alighted on the curtains, and eventually landed on the boy, his bed, the floor. Now she knew. The moths had foretold his death. She had been so afraid of the crows, and it was the moths that had come to show him the way to the light.
She watched the patch of sunlight move upward toward the boy’s hands, but it reached no higher than the middle of his duvet. And she felt a great sorrow swamp her. Her body felt hollow with it. The boy had not felt the sun on his skin. How he must have longed for its warmth. How could she never have thought to push his bed a little closer to the window? Careless. Careless. That small insignificant fact would torment her for the rest of her life. That she had been remiss in her love.
Then she remembered his words. ‘The goal is to remain in a state of awe, like a child. No matter what happens, be in awe that it happened to you. Your pain must not seem less wondrous than your joy.’
She looked at the butterfly, the miracle that it was, and felt awe at the vast pain inside her. The boy had prepared her carefully. She understood instinctively that, on some level that she had no knowledge of, he had shown her a staggering, almost inconceivable act of generosity and love. And the butterfly had come to tell her that he was finally free. He was no longer a prisoner in his frozen, curled body.
‘Go ahead, my darling boy,’ she sobbed. ‘You fly free now. I’ll see you very soon.’
And at those words the butterfly left her hand and flew out of the window into the bright sunshine. She stayed for a bit more and kissed his still face one last time. Then she stood looking down at her love and would have tarried longer, but for a voice inside her head, not the boy’s, but kindly nevertheless.
Leave now. Leave him be.
She backed away slowly. Even then she didn’t want to leave him. But in her head she could hear the voice urging her to close the curtains and close the door after her. She went and closed the curtains and the sobbing began in earnest. She pressed the curtain to her face and cried uselessly for him. Come back. Come back. There is nothing without you.
Go now. Go now, urged the voice.
She lurched to the door.
Close the door, the voice reminded.
She closed the door behind her.
Five strange days passed. She saw flashes of brilliant light through the bottom of the door. Every day she went and stood at the door. Sometimes she sniffed the air for signs of decomposition, but there were none. Once she even touched the doorknob but it never crossed her mind to disobey the boy or the voice. She sat on her bed and made her plans. On the sixth day she would open the door. Then she would go to the police. There would be questions, but she didn’t care anymore. She had a little savings. Enough to cremate the boy; then they could deport her. She was ready to return home.
On the sixth day she opened the door and frowned. Then she advanced into the room and stood over the bed. ‘Can’t be,’ she whispered to herself, and looked toward the window. She went to it. It was locked. She dashed back to the bed and ripped the duvet off and stared in disbelief at the bed.
There was nothing in it but some nails, where his fingers and toes had been. And not even a full set. She sank to the bed. She had only heard of it spoken of by the holy men of her village, more myth than fact. But the boy had pulled it off. She began to laugh. Amazing. He had distilled matter into energy. He had attained the rainbow body. He had turned something in
to nothing.
He had become pure light.
Evening was closing in. Bumi shut her front door behind her and walked down the street. A crow sat on someone’s roof and called. “Aaarrrk.’ She pulled her coat closer into her body and looked ahead. A gust of wind was carrying a paper in its midst. Without thinking she raised her hand and it sailed directly into her palm. She closed her hand around it. The sudden gust died down. She opened her fist and looked curiously at the paper.
We do not forgive. We do not forget.
Expect us - always.
- Anonymous motto
Schooner Klaus awakened in a beautiful old palazzo. It was not a hotel as such. It was for Insiders. For a moment he simply absorbed the incredible opulence of his surroundings, the tall windows, the marble, the gold trimmings, the faded silk, the antique velvet, the priceless art, the fantastic detail, the carvings. Finally he sat up and looked out of the window. It was going to be a beautiful day. There were pigeons on the balcony. He smiled to think of his audience with Fish. What an honor. Breakfast. He could have asked for anything but this morning he wanted only fresh croissants and jam, peach jam. He stood up and rang a tasseled bell pull. Almost instantly there was a discreet knock on the door. His eyebrows rose. Wow! Had the guy been standing outside the whole time? Better than efficient.
‘Come,’ he called. A waiter dressed as a manservant of times gone by entered.
‘Buon giorno, Dottore Klaus.’
Schooner Klaus gave his order in English. The man bowed and left. Europeans. They had their uses.
He climbed out of the great bed and found himself walking to the bathroom. More marble and old world elegance. But. Something odd. Why was he going to the bathroom? Schooner Klaus tried to stop walking and found he couldn’t. His legs would not obey. In the bathroom he found himself going to the bath. He felt confused. He did not desire a bath. But he turned on the taps. Waited until it was full. Turned them off. Then he found himself reaching for his wallet. He gazed at his own hands without comprehension. His hands opened the wallet and from inside a side pocket produced a little packet.
