Chapter 29 God's word

The stone prison is very deep; it is almost a perfect hemisphere, and the floor is also made of stone. The area is slightly smaller than the largest section of the sphere, thus deepening the sense of depression and emptiness.In the middle of the hemisphere there is a wall; high though it is, it has not yet reached the dome; on one side of the wall is I, Tsinakan, the shaman of the Pyramid of Cahoron that Pedro de Alvarado burned; On the other side was a jaguar, pacing quietly and unhurriedly, killing the time and space of captivity.There is a long window with iron bars near the ground in the central partition wall.At noon, when the sun was shining directly, a door opened on the top of the cell, and a long-forgotten jailer played with an iron block, and hung jugs and pieces of meat for us by ropes.The light streamed into the dome; at that moment I could see the jaguar.

I can't remember how many years I have been lying in the dark; I used to be young enough to walk around in prison, but now I am not far from death, waiting for the fate arranged by Shinto for me.In the past, I used tunnel stones to make Cortez conquer the Mexican capital Tenochtitlan and went to fight in other places. I entrusted Alvarado to stay behind. He was defeated and was forced to withdraw from the capital.His long knife gouged out the victim's chest, and now he has lost his mana, and he can't do it even when he gets up from the dusty ground. On the eve of the burning of the pyramids, those who came down from the tall horses burned me with red-hot metal and forced me to tell me where the treasure was buried.They smashed the statue of the god in front of me, but the god did not abandon me. Although I was tortured, I still didn't say a word.They bruised me all over my body, and I was inhuman. When I woke up, I was already lying in this stone prison, and I couldn't get out alive.

I had to do something, find a way to pass the time, so in the dark I tried to recall everything I knew.I stayed up all night trying to recall the sequence and number of stone veins, or the shape of a medicinal tree.I used this method to resist the years and gradually recovered my original skills.One night I felt myself approaching a clear memory; the traveler feels the thrill in his blood before he sees the sea.Hours later, I began to gaze into memory; it was one of God's traditions.God foresaw many calamities and destructions at the end of heaven and earth, so he wrote a magical sentence on the first day of chaos that would prevent misfortune.The reason why he wrote it down is to let it be handed down to the most distant descendants so that it will not be wiped out.No one knows where he wrote it, or in what letters, but we know that the words have always existed in secret, to be seen by a chosen one.I think we have been in the end of the world, and I, as the last priest of the gods, will have the privilege of intuiting those words.The fact that I am in a stone prison does not deter me from this hope; perhaps I have seen Caholon's inscription a thousand times, and just do not understand it.

The thought lifted my spirits, and then made me feel almost dizzy.There are ancient, indestructible, eternal forms in the world; any of these may be the symbol sought.A mountain, a river, an empire, the shape of a star could be the word of God.But in the course of the centuries, mountains are leveled, rivers are often diverted, empires are changed and destroyed, and the stars change shape.The sky also changes.Mountains and stars are individuals, and individuals will decay.I look for something more gritty, less damaged.I think of the generations of grain, of pasture, of birds, and of man.Maybe there's magic registered on my face, maybe I'm what I'm looking for.When I was thinking hard, it suddenly occurred to me that the jaguar is one of the characteristics of God.

Immediately my heart was filled with reverence.I imagined the first morning of the first chaos, and imagined my god sending messages to the bright furs of the tigers and leopards, mating and multiplying in caves, reeds, and islands, so that they could be with the last of human coexistence.I imagined the webs and labyrinths of heat of the tiger and leopard, terrorizing the steppes and herds, in order to preserve a pattern.There was a jaguar on the other side of the dungeon; and at close quarters I found my suspicions confirmed, and I had a secret boon. I have spent long years studying the sequence and shape of the patterns.There is only a moment of light in each dark day, but little by little I remember the shape of the black pattern on the yellow fur.Some patterns consist of spots; others form bars on the inside of the legs; still others repeat the circular pattern.Maybe they represent the same sound or the same word.Many patterns have red edges.

I'm exhausted from work.More than once I yelled at the vault that it was impossible to decipher that text.The specific enigma that haunted me gradually lost its mystery, and what bothered me more was the enigma of the generality of a word written by God.I asked myself, what kind of sentences would an absolute mind write?I think that, even in human language, there is no proposition that does not involve the whole universe; to say the word "tiger" is to say the tiger that gave birth to it, the deer and tortoise that it devoured, the meadow that the deer feeds on, the mother of the meadow. Earth, give the earth a bright sky.I think that in the language of God, any word expounds an infinite series of facts, and the way of expounding is not implicit, but straightforward; not step-by-step, but straight to the point.Over time, I feel that the concept of a word from God is a bit childish or profane.I think God should speak only one word, and that word should be all inclusive.No word uttered by God can be less than the universe, less than the sum of time.This word is equal to a language and everything that a language contains, and people's arrogant and poor words, such as whole, world, universe, etc., are the shadow or appearance of this word.

A day or a night - in my days and nights, what difference does day or night make? ——I dreamed that there was a grain of sand on the ground of the stone prison.I fell asleep again indifferently; dreaming that I woke up, there were two grains of sand on the ground.I fell asleep again; dreamed that the number of grains of sand was three.In this way the sand multiplied and filled the stone prison, and I died under the hemispherical pile of sand.I knew I was dreaming: I did everything I could to wake myself up.It was no use waking up; the countless grains of sand weighed down my breath.Someone said to me: Your waking up is not returning to a sleepless state, but returning to a previous dream.A dream within a dream, to infinity, just like the number of grains of sand.There is no end to the way you will go back, and by the time you really wake up, you will be dead.

I think I'm screwed.The sand crushed my mouth, but I cried out: the sand of my dreams could not kill me, nor the dreams of dreams.A bright light wakes me up.There is a ring of light in the darkness above.I saw the face and hands of the jailer, the tackle, the rope, the meat and the pitcher. Man gradually becomes one with his situation; in the long run, man is his situation.I am not so much a man of providence or an avenger, not so much a priest of the gods, as a helpless prisoner.Every time I awoke from the labyrinth of endless dreams, it was as if I were coming home to the grim stone prison.I bless the damp in the prison, the tiger, the hole of light, my aching old bones, the darkness and the stone.

Then something happened that I can neither forget nor say.My union with God, with the universe (I don't know if there is a difference between these two words) took place.The feeling of ecstasy cannot repeat its symbols; one sees God in a light, another in a sword or a rose.What I saw was a very high wheel, not in front of me, in front of me, on my side, but everywhere at the same time.That wheel is water, but it is also fire, and although it has an edge, it is endless.It is made up of all things that are future, present, and past, and I am one thread of this vast fabric, and Pedro de Alvarado, who tortured me, is another thread.All causes and effects are here, and I understand everything when I see that wheel.Ah, the happiness of understanding far exceeds imagination or feeling!I saw the universe and the hidden intentions of the universe.I saw the origin of all things written in the Holy Book.I saw the mountains gushing out of the water, the first wooden men, the big urns that came over people, and the dogs that tore people's faces apart.I saw the faceless god behind the gods.I saw the infinite process of forming happiness, and when I understood everything, I also understood the meaning of the tiger-striped writing.

It is a formula made up of fourteen groups of accidental (seemingly accidental) words, as long as I say the formula aloud, I can do anything.I can destroy this dungeon just by saying it, let the day enter my night, I can be young again, I can live forever, I can let the tiger tear Alvarado in pieces, I can stab the Spaniard in the chest with the holy knife, Rebuild the pyramids, rebuild the empire.With forty letters and fourteen characters, I, Tsinakan, can rule the country that Moktesuma once ruled.But I know I'll never be able to say the words because I can't remember Tsinakan. Let the mystery written on the tiger skin die with me.He who has seen the universe, who has seen the clear intentions of the universe, does not think of a man and his insignificant happiness and misfortune, even though that man is himself.That person had been him, but it didn't matter now.He is nothing now, so what does that other person's fate, that other person's country mean to him?Therefore, I don't read that mantra; therefore, I lie in the dark and let the years forget me.

For Emma Riso Platello