Redemption, his voice thundered, on down through the ages or, his voice fell down to a whisper, wealth beyond dreams of avarice, sudden undreamed of wealth. The last temptation, he said in a voice soft as a sigh. But I don’t think anyone heard him say that except I. The Last Temptation. My blood chilled. I froze in the lee of the wall. I’m not right in the head everyone knows that, maybe I didn’t hear him a’right. But I knew that I had. Listless wings lay unmoving on my back. Old angels, I thought, with nowhere to go, lost wandering ghosts, the desert is full of both.
A thin, cold wind hissed across the old market place, lifting dust, spuming away in smoky streamers. The sun was a pale, white smudge in a hard, brittle blue sky. Primitive light ached the eyes, the morning air, raw and chill. Somewhere a dog howled. Elsewhere in the village I could hear voices raised in anger, the unruly sound sawing through the air like a rusty blade scraping glass screechy and irritable.
Two round dark eyes peered at me through a grimy, unshuttered window, pulling back into the deeper gloom of the house when I glanced that way. The once proud and prosperous village was slowly crumbling to dust abandoned by the holy men who brought about its ruin, the villagers apathetic and listless. The busy industry of its former years no more than an old man’s story.
There was life but no life worth having. Once there was trade and commerce, plenty of food, laughter and song until the holy men forbade our trade with unbelievers, forbade our laughter and song. Without trade we dwindled without laughter and song we dried up inside and when the holy men accomplished our ruin they abandoned us but for one of their kind who punished the smallest infraction of his holy law. To speak out, to protest was to die. Freedom of speech wasn’t even an idea. Besides if everyone was free to say what they want they would tell the holy man to go away and leave them in peace to regain their prosperity, to laugh and to sing. The villagers are not free to laugh and sing but I am, and I can say pretty much anything I want because I’m not right in the head. I’m the village idiot, the crazy man everyone knows that, so the holy man can’t touch me, as long as I don’t actually do anything wrong in a physical sense you understand, or come right out and deny god or attack the holy man verbally. That’s about how it is with me, crazy like a fox in a village of rabbits.
I watched him come in from the desert, the cold wind fluttering his robe. I had seen him before, a long time ago when I wasn’t as crazy as I am now. The market place was bustling then, full of traders from far away places selling aromatic oils, pearls and silver. Exotic spices, ingots of iron, bales of coloured wool, watered silk and shoes of leather. There were camel traders and horse dealers offering small, fleet mares in exchange for fat gold coins.
He stood on a small raised platform of wood the way the old story tellers used to do then they wanted to attract the crowd’s attention before launching into some fabulous tale of magic and hero’s enchantment and heroines, dragons and swords. But the holy man spoke against the stranger and before he could even speak a crowd of young men stoned him. I watched him limp away bleeding and broken. I watched until the desert swallowed him up. Now here he is again and I wondered why? Why now when the village and its people were little more than fading shadows living out life midst a huddle of crumbling mud brick and dust that any day soon a good brisk wind might just come along and blow it all away dumping the people who knows where and leaving behind what was there in the beginning, dust and sand and a few scraggy bunches of wild grass and maybe an acacia tree.
I stood and watched him come in from the desert and wondered if it was time for me to stop being crazy. I stood, I watched and I listened.
The odd thing was the holy man did not speak against him; the odd thing was no one stoned him or tried to drive him away.
He wore a faded, ragged blue robe, a man in his middle years. Lean faced with wide, burning eyes: and yet, I thought, they are not the eyes of a fanatic, not the eyes of the zealot or the sun mad; rather, I thought, his eyes reflect the fire of intense focus. Burning eyes with a sadness about them and that almost mystical look that comes from seeking, from ever gazing toward distant horizons, flesh darkened by the rays of the blazing sun shining down on some ancient forgotten shore bounding the cresting blue and gold of the foreign sea, wavelets foaming green over the white sand. I though of redemption but knew not why I should. The word formed in my mind, shimmering pale translucent blue above a dark abyss that seemed to cleave me through. I shook and trembled, sweat beaded my brow. The cold wind hissed lifting dust pluming away like smoke. The bleached sun glared the hard blue sky brittle as glass. The air before my eyes seemed to waver and shimmer the way summer heat haze seems to dance and spin above the stony desert floor. I heard his voice like a low sweet murmur flowing through me. I saw him smile and sensed its warmth like soft spring sunshine, lifting my spirit filling the windy hollow in my soul with warmth and the colour of the evening sky in sunset and I watched his words fall like rain on the parched land. I felt the weight of my body pressing down lightly on the bones of my feet. I soared giddy and weightless, constrained and yet free in the blue in the word above the abyss. You don’t come to redemption twice, it comes but once in a single life and if you don’t catch it, if you let it pass by no one knows where or when you may meet it again this life or the next no one can say. The cold wind hissed lifting sand, leaves of summer whisper in the grass, the sand of the desert sighs and like a ghost of beauty passing by I sang the redemptive song in the pale shimmering blue in the word above the abyss.
I shook and shivered and watched words fall like rain on the parched land of my soul.
No one noticed me. No one ever does. I stand in the lee of a crumbling mud wall watching the villagers straggle in to the old deserted market square. They come in ones and twos sullen faced unspeaking, lethargically shuffling along, drab stained robes fluttering in the wind. I wondered why they came at all; I wondered what unheard summons they answered. Or could it be that perhaps like I, they answer the word, they follow its sound, they follow the hope in the attainment, the voice that guides, the hand that uplifts the weary, the joy of warmth in the cold, the shining lamp in the storm, and the promise of brightness illuminating the dark. And when all the villagers were assembled even unto the children, of which there were precious few ----------- .
A small, scurrying wind stalked through the crowd. The white sun glared. Coarse, groaning light painted the people, leaching colour from flesh, heightening the drabness of the robes they wore, the wind winding the cloth around them like soiled cerements. Thin washed out light, cold and edgy, lending the market place the look of a roofless cavern of bones. The village was once a famous place but no more. It stood on the edge of a vast emptiness, a nowhere place of old angels, lost ghosts and fallen dreams. A skittering place where sometimes the dead did not stay buried, a place where death breathed uneasy, a place where the breath of the living rattled in their throats. When the holy men came, when they forbade laughter and song, books and learning, they opened the door, and something that has no name but is known by many, slipped in and through the mouth of the holy men took everything away. I can think these thoughts because I’m not right in the head. I see what others do not, the shadows that slip here and there in the light of the day because that’s what a crazy man might see. I can say what I like, no one listens to a crazy man, no one sees me standing in the lee of a crumbling wall. Why do I stay, I have nowhere else to go. I’m like a singularity in this place waiting for a redemptive sign.
The man in the faded blue robe can see me, his dark luminous eyes searched me out, I think maybe he can see everything even the word that shimmers in my head unto the dark abyss that cleaves me through.
The holy man did not come to hear what the stranger had to say but everyone else was there even the shades of the dead, the boneyard people who like to wander by the light of the moon especially when it hangs low and pale in the black sky. I sometimes think the eyes at the window can see me but every time I glance that way the eyes pull back into the gloom of the room.
The stranger is about to speak, that’s odd, he doesn’t seem to have aged a single day since last I saw him stumbling away into the desert torn and bloody and that was a long time ago. But I’m not right in the head and time doesn’t mean much to me so maybe a long time ago is only, was only, a little bit of time ago like a piece of light passing by. The word in my head, I can see it now. I know what it means what it portends, I don’t have to be crazy anymore, I don’t have to pretend, hallelujah, I can be myself.
There’s something about the stranger in the faded blue robe, something in the way he stands, something in the way he looks at you as though his eyes pierce you through. There’s something different about him though I can’t for the life of me say exactly what. The tattered hem of his robe flapped and lifted on the wind, a cold day, a screechy day of nails on glass. Dust billowed; harsh thin light ached the eyes. Long dark hair with white streaks running through it fell to his shoulders and damn, he had a mouthful of good strong teeth where I was expecting to see nothing but rotting black stumps like the rest of us. The wind hissed lifting dust, the cold air savaged throat and lungs. The weight of my body pressed down on my feet. The word trembled in my head. The abyss cleaved me through. Exhausted sunlight washed over him turning the white streaks in his hair to gleaming silver ribbons. He said ----- .
One grave is much the same as another. One life, however, is different. One life, he said, is different to another. A thin smile creased his face. They all come here, don’t you know, they all come to the desert, the Anchorites the Apotacities the Cenobites, Stylites Visionites and more. They come to the desert in torment looking for god looking for salvation, redemption in the sand. They live in squalour and die in their own filth. They stare into the sun and go blind; they sit in the sun and go mad. They think themselves to be holy men, the mouthpiece of god, wailing prophets in the redemptive sigh weeping over the grave wherein they lay. One grave is much the same as another he said with a small tight smile, death is death in whatever guise.
The villagers stood quiet and still, blank, uncomprehending looks stamped on their faces. In the lee of the wall I watched and listened. Redemption, I thought, is it possible, can such be real or is it no more than a wishful thought, a conclusive condition at the end of life. The warmless rays of the sun shivered me through; the word trembled in my head. The cold wind hissed. The white sun of winter glared in the brittle blue sky. The stranger seemed impervious to the dry, cold air, the raw chill of the whistling wind. He said------
The desert is not redemptive. The desert is not god’s hiding place. The desert is where old worn out angels weep, a place of bewildered ghosts. The stranger paused, and then said, perhaps I lie, perhaps I deceive to hide what is to be found here, the Redemption Legacy, he breathed out softly, the Redemption Legacy a peculiar gift left behind by Shadakancar, he who came down from the Evening Star, before Ur rose from the sands, before Babylon was a name, before El Hanan slew Gittite, before David traduced Uriah thereby justifying his abduction of Bathsheba, even then the legend of Shadakancar was old. Even then the Book of Shadakancar, the Redemption Legacy was sought by many. The Assyrians did not find it the Hittities did not find it, only the Egyptian Osiris found the precious, strangely elusive book. It was he who named it the Book of Awakening, of coming forth by day, but Osiris lost the book, it was never seen or heard of again, only the corrupted memory of it remained; a haunting trace in the mind of humankind, a revenant echo in the scriptural books of the world.
The crowd stirred, shifting restlessly. The stranger smiled mirthlessly, I will give unto you the secret in the heart of the book, but be warned, he said, sometimes redemption might just turn out to be a murderously sharp double edged blade.
The blue robed stranger said loudly, Redemption.
The wind fell flat and still. The crowd gasped. Somewhere in the huddle of decaying buildings bordering the market place the holy man shrieked. The word rang in the silence like an urgent bell. A flicker of pale translucent blue light shiver shifted through the sudden stillness as though the small universe of the village held its breath. The sun flared like a solitary white star in the black; redemption.
My heart raced, thudding like a metal smith’s hammer against it’s constraint of bone. Thin, exhausted blood boiled and bloomed in my flesh, my throat dry and parched as a saltpan. Hope surged through me like a sudden song uplifting the senses. Could it be, I thought shakily, I wanted to believe but dare I believe.
At last, I exalted silently, in this drear place, at last ------- .
Beneath my robe a slight movement on my back thrilled me through. My heart leapt. The word above the dark abyss that cleaved me through, shimmered and sang, the choral sound filled my head, the bone of my skull rang. For the first time in as long as I could remember drooping, lusterless wings stirred, scraping and creaking like old dry hinges. Was it possible, dare I hope, I thought and thought again, redemption.
But the stranger said with a long winter smile that pulled his flesh tight, self redemption is the hardest task of all.
I had thought the stranger to be a gentle, forgiving man but now I wasn’t so sure. But then we all have two sides don’t we, light and dark the very fabric of our nature. Tired worn out wings stirred. The wind hissed lifting sand. I stood in the lee of an old crumbling mud brick wall. The word like a chorus in my head. Tired worn out angels, lost wandering ghosts. Tired, wasted wings stirred. The cold wind let loose its breath. I stood in the lee of a crumbling brick wall. I stood in the cold wind, dust lifting, sifting through the thin weave of my robe. I thought about old angels and lost, wandering ghosts and heard the stranger say ---- .
Easier by far, he said, to attain sainthood than to forgive yourself; to stand, he said, redeemed in one’s own eyes the very tabernacle of forgiveness. His voice echoed eerily around the marketplace. People stirred restlessly. Bits and pieces of light flared in their eyes. A sudden bloom of colour stained grey flesh. Hope rushed in where before there was none. A shiver shift flicker of pale blue light graced the cold, dry air and then it was gone as though it had never been.
Redemption, he said, is a choice made not given.
The crowd shivered in their rags, children looked on, round eyed and curious. Somewhere a dog howled. Somewhere something wailed in the wind. Somewhere a holy man shrieked. Choice, he said, of which there are two; and isn’t there always two, he said with a sly, throaty chuckle, light and dark, right and wrong, love and hate, prejudice and compassion, bigotry and empathy, pride and avarice and don’t they all shine like welcoming lamps when you don’t know yourself. Repentance, he said, is not the key redemption is not the lock it fits. Don’t you know no one works or lives alone, no one finds much meaning in life in the absence of interaction with self and by extension others, else you be a vanity, a glamour unto yourself. There is no truth, he said, if you cannot find the truth in you, why then should you expect to recognize the truth of anything. A single illuminating moment may change you forever, but can you stand the light, dare you face its brilliance knowing it may show you to be less than you pretend to be, less than your words claim you to be, and yet do we not all yearn for more, do we not all strive in our own small way to reach out towards something, something forgiving something redeeming something greater than self, something we have no name for but name it anyway according to our own interpretation of what we think it should be called. This then is your choice this is what is offered to you. The villagers held their breath, hope and an urgent sense of expectancy etched their faces. Light danced and spun in their eyes and I, no less eager than they, to learn what the stranger offered.
Redemption, his voice thundered, on down through the ages or, his voice fell down to a whisper, wealth beyond dreams of avarice, sudden undreamed of wealth. The last temptation, he said in a voice soft as a sigh. But I don’t think anyone heard him say that except I. The Last Temptation. My blood chilled. I froze in the lee of the wall. I’m not right in the head everyone knows that, maybe I didn’t hear him a’right. But I knew that I had. Listless wings lay unmoving on my back. Old angels, I thought, with nowhere to go, lost wandering ghosts, the desert is full of both.
The villagers chose wealth, and it was as sudden as it was the largest single depository of wealth on earth. Liquid gold, thick, black liquid gold. He said be warned, it will not last beyond a few generations and when there is nothing left when you have squandered your wealth with no thought given to using the least of it to secure the future of your children I will meet you here in the dust and the heat in the cold winter wind of the desert, in the arid desolation you made but I’ll not speak of redemption, your choice will be all used up. I’ll speak to you of tired worn out angels and old wandering ghosts with nowhere to go. But I don’t expect you’ll want to hear that, I expect you’ll be deaf in your dreams of wealth that used to be, that could have ---- ? ---- if only.
Redemption is what is left when there is nothing left, when it has all gone away, when choice and different are trodden underfoot and blow away like dust on a cold and empty wind with not even a cry or a sob or a wail in its breath. He said all that when the villagers in one voice chose wealth and heard not a single word and if they had would they have heeded the warning do you think, or thought it couldn’t possibly happen anyway, we are too smart for that, is what they probably would say. I stood in the lee of an old crumbling wall and wept.
The village is a city now. A huge teeming place of stone and glass, but the holy men moved in and what laughter and song there might have been fled.
One day it will all be gone. One day it will be a village again. A nowhere place where tired angels and old ghosts meet waiting for the return of a legendary blue robed stranger. He will return, they will say, when the yellow moon hangs low, when the warm wind dusts the blue sky, when the solitary star shines in the black.
I am still here standing in the lee of an old crumbling brick wall. I didn’t choose wealth it was chosen for me, but I didn’t say no. I could move away but somewhere down the line I decided to stay.
The odd thing is I found redemption or maybe redemption found me, I can’t rightly say, but it wasn’t exactly what I was looking for, it wasn’t quite what I expected you might say. Maybe redemption isn’t what you expect it to be, maybe it fits like a glove you tailor yourself.
I’m not right in the head so don’t expect me to know. I just hope it doesn’t snow because there ain’t much shelter in the lee of a wall don’t you know.
Redemption, I thought with a sigh, you just don’t want to miss it when it stops by; and I can say, you don’t want to let others choose for you, just be yourself win, lose, or draw, do what’s right when you know yourself and you’ll get there in the end, the illumed moment so to speak when you forgive self and maybe by extension others, or not if that is what you decide to do. Redemption can be a tricky temptation. But what do I know, old wings don’t grow standing in the lee of a wall and I’m not right in the head everybody knows that. Maybe I’ll stop being crazy one day when the stranger comes back.
