Chapter 8 ring ruins

If he doesn't dream of you anymore... , VI In that dark night, no one saw him go ashore, no one saw the bamboo boat sinking into the sacred swamp.But after a few days it was known that this taciturn man came from the south, that his home was one of the countless villages up the river, in the wilderness beyond the hills, where the old Persian language had not yet been influenced by Greek, and the leprosy Illness is also uncommon.What is certain is that the gray man kissed the muck, climbed up the steep bank, did not care to avoid the sharp-edged thatch that scratched him all over, and crawled dazed and bloody to the center The ring place of Shihu or Shima.This former ocher-red, now gray site is the remains of a burnt temple, ravaged by miasma and smog, whose gods are no longer worshipped.The stranger lay under the plinth.The sun rising overhead woke him up.He was not surprised to find that the wound had ceased to bleed; he closed his pale eyelids and slept, not from fatigue but from a will, and he knew that the temple was the place to which his invincible will yearned; A proper temple, burnt and abandoned, but the sprawling trees had failed to bury it; he knew the next task was to sleep and dream.In the middle of the night, he was awakened by the shrieking birdsong.Scattered footprints of bare feet, some figs, and a pitcher on the ground showed that the natives had come to visit him secretly, but they dared not disturb him, beseeching his protection, or fearing his magic.A shudder struck him, and he took refuge in a grave among the ruined walls, and covered it with some unknown leaves.

The purpose which had led him here, though extraordinary, was not impossible.He wants to dream of a person: to dream of that person without hesitation, to make it a reality.This magical idea took possession of his whole mind; if anyone asked him what his name was or what he had been through, he would be at a loss as to what to say.A dilapidated temple suffices for him, since that is the smallest part of the visible world; so is the presence of woodcutters nearby, since those are responsible for his frugal living needs.The rice and fruit they offered was enough to sustain his body, which was dedicated to sleeping and dreaming.

Those dreams were chaotic at first; after a while, they became somewhat dialectical.Outsiders dream that they are in the middle of a circular amphitheater, which resembles a burnt temple: the steps are filled with black and silent students; the faces of the students are centuries old, hanging high In the clouds, but still legible.He taught them anatomy, cosmology, magic.All the faces are attentively listening to the class and trying to give decent answers. They seem to know the importance of the exam. Passing the exam will let them get rid of the ostentatious situation and enter the real world.The man was thinking about the phantom answers no matter in his dreams or when he was awake, and he would not let go of a student who tried to get away with it.At the same time, discover the material that can be cultivated from some confusion.He is looking for souls worthy of participation in the universe.

After nine or ten nights, he found with some sadness that no great expectations could be placed on those students who passively accepted his teachings;The former, though lovable and worthy of attention, are not characters; the latter are a little better than they are.One afternoon (the afternoon was now also used for dreaming, and he slept all day except for an hour or two of waking in the morning), he shut down the imaginary vast academy permanently except for one student.The boy was silent, brooding, sometimes disobedient, with a gaunt face resembling his teacher's.The sudden dismissal of his fellow students did not disturb him for long; after a few individual lessons his progress surprised the teacher.However, disaster struck.One day, the man seemed to wake up from the sticky desert, and found that the hazy twilight was suddenly no different from the morning light, and he knew that he was not dreaming.That night and the next day he was cornered by unbearable sobriety.He thought of exploring the woods, to wear him out; but in the hemlock he had only brief and vague dreams, and fleeting and fragmented impressions, which were of no use to him.He wanted to reconvene the students, but as soon as he said a few words of persuasion, the college changed shape and disappeared.During that almost endless lucidity, he burst into tears with rage.

He knew that even with all the mysteries of the upper and lower planes cleared, shaping the chaotic dream-material into shape was the hardest job a man could do: harder than weaving rope out of sand or casting money out of invisible wind. many.He understands that initial failure is inevitable.He vowed to unlearn the great delusion that had led him in the first place and find another way to work.It took him a month to recover the strength wasted by his delirium before implementing that method.He didn't think about dreaming at all in advance, and he could almost have a reasonable amount of sleep every day.During this period, he rarely dreamed, and even when he did, he didn't pay attention to the scenes in his dreams.He will not resume work until the moon is at its fullest.Meanwhile, he bathed in the river in the afternoon, worshiped the gods of the stars, pronounced a powerful name in standard pronunciation, and fell asleep.Almost immediately he dreamed of a beating heart.

He dreamed of a dark, faceless and sexless body with an active, fiery, secret heart about the size of a fist, garnet-red; on fourteen moonlit nights he dreamed it with infinite affection.Every night, he inspected it with greater certainty.He does not touch: he confines himself to confirming, observing, perhaps correcting it with his eyes.He perceives, experiences from various distances, from various angles.On the fourteenth night, he gently touched the pulmonary artery with his index finger, and then touched the entire heart from the outside to the inside.He was satisfied with the results of the inspection.One night, he deliberately did not dream: then he picked up the heart, called the name of a planet, and began to figure out the shape of another major organ.Within a year, he had reached the skeleton and eyelids.Countless hairs are perhaps the most difficult job.In his dream, he simulated a complete person, a boy, but the boy couldn't stand up, speak, or open his eyes.Night after night, he dreamed that the boy was sleeping.

According to the Gnostic theory of the origin of the universe, the Creator molded a red Adam who couldn't stand up; the dream Adam that the magician spent so many nights molded was as clumsy, rough, and primitive as the Adam made of clay. .One afternoon, the man nearly destroyed the entire project in a fit of rage, only to regret it later. (In fact, it would be better to destroy it.) He consulted the gods on the ground and in the river, and prostrated himself at the feet of the statue that might be a tiger or a horse, begging for help from the uncertain.That evening he dreamed of the statue, dreaming that it was alive and quivering: not an indescribable mongrel of a tiger and a horse, but the nature of both animals, at the same time a bull, a rose, a storm.The multiplicity of gods told him that its earthly name was Fire, and that it had been enshrined and worshiped in that ring temple (and others like it) and that it made the phantasms he dreamed marvelous. The earth became alive, so that all creatures, except the "fire" itself and the dreamer, thought it was a man of flesh and blood.It ordered him, once he had taught the man the rituals, to send him down the river to be worshiped at the ruined temple with the remains of the pyramids.In the dream of the dreamer, the dreamed wakes up.

The magician carried out the order.It took him some time (it turned out to be two years) to reveal to the boy the mysteries of the universe and the rituals of worshiping fire.He didn't want to break up with the boy from the bottom of his heart.He used the excuse of teaching needs to extend the time spent dreaming every day.At the same time, he reshaped the teenager who may still be flawed.Sometimes he had the uneasy feeling that all that had happened... On the whole he was living happily; as soon as he closed his eyes he thought: Now I'm going to be with my son.Occasionally I also think: the son I created is waiting for me, if I don’t go, he won’t be able to live.

He gradually familiarized the boy with reality.Once, he ordered the boy to plant a flag on the top of a distant mountain.The next day, the flag was flying on the top of the mountain as expected.He made other similar experiments, each more daring.He felt a little sad that his son was coming soon—maybe he couldn't wait.That night, he kissed the boy for the first time, and sent him across the thorny forest and swamp to another deserted temple down the river.Before this, (in order never to let him know that he was a phantom, and to make him think he was exactly like everyone else), he had made the boy completely forget all these years of study.

His triumph and serenity are full of weariness.Every morning and evening, he kneels in front of that stone statue, perhaps in his imagination, he sees his unrealistic son performing the same ritual in other circular ruins down the river; like that.He vaguely felt the sound and shape of the universe: the absent son drawing nourishment from his fading soul.The purpose of his life had been fulfilled; he had been in a kind of ecstasy.After a time (some narrators measure it in years, others in five years), two boatmen woke him up in the middle of the night: he could not see their face, but heard them say that in a temple in the north there was a man with magic skills who would not be burned if he stepped on the fire.The magician suddenly remembered what the god had said, and he remembered that only fire knew that his son was a phantom.The incident, which at first comforted him, then troubled him immensely.He worried that his son would think of that unusual feature and find himself a phantom.How depressing, how confusing, to be not a person but the projection of another's dream!Fathers are concerned with the offspring they bear in times of bewilderment or happiness; the future of the son whom the magician has spent a thousand and one secret nights, piecemeal and piecemeal, certainly haunts him.

The end of his thinking came very suddenly, but it was not without warning.First (after a long drought) a cloud floated lightly like a bird over a distant hilltop; then the southern sky turned pink like a leopard's gums; then the smoke rusted the metal at night; finally the beast Frightened and fled.What happened hundreds of years ago is happening again.The ruins of the temple of the god of fire were burned again.On a birdless dawn, the magician saw the fire sweeping towards the center of the ruined building.For a moment, he wanted to jump into the water to escape, and then he thought that death came to end his old age and relieve him of hard work.He walked towards the flames.Instead of devouring his flesh, the flames soothed and engulfed him.He knew with relief, with shame, with horror, that he himself was a phantom, a phantom in another's dream. The above is translated from "Fiction Collection"