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Last of three parts
Often from his window, before going to bed the
boy would play some lullaby’s on his flute for the little trees.
He could see the outline of the trees, swaying gently to his music
until they fell asleep. He often thought of them in his waking hours
and when he slept he took them along with him on a raft, floating on
an ocean of dreams.
The Ocean of Dreams
One day, the little boy could not stand. As he
lay in bed, everything about him rotated. When he looked at his feet
they seemed miles away. He felt as though his limbs had been
stretched like dough and they were light. He could not focus his
sight on anything. He could hear nothing but a continuous buzzing.
He could not lift his head because it felt as though it was half
filled with water. When he turned to one side, the water flowed to
that side and the weight held his head to that position.
He ate lying on his side. He chewed his food
slowly so as not to shake the water in his head. Swallowing liquids
was more tricky. He had to suck in the liquid with a straw and gulp
it before it dribbled out of the corner of his mouth where the straw
stuck in. All the time he kept thinking of his trees. He wanted to
crawl out of bed and clamber up the window ledge to look at his
trees but his head was too heavy to lift and when he moved
everything swirled. He kept, thinking, they must be thirsty, they
must be hungry. He wanted to tell his mother that his trees needed
to be fed and watered, but when he spoke his words came slowly and
sounded as though they were pushing through bubbles in the water.
His sleep was crammed with various dreams, all
occurring at the same time in different corners of his head, like
several magic lanterns turning round and round. He felt his head
filling with water that soon spread like an ocean, and in the
distant horizon were dark islands that resembled forests. There was
a boat, with two people plying their oars, just plying their oars,
not going anywhere in particular.
He did not know how long he had been in bed, or
in this condition. It might have been days, or weeks. Time seemed to
have become longer or shorter, like a stretchable loop or a rubber
band, with no beginning or end. And he carried an ocean in his head.
A doctor came. He knew it was a doctor for he
took his pulse, stuck a listening device on his chest to hear his
breathing, opened his mouth, pulled up his eyelids and shone a
little torch on his pupils. The doctor asked him questions and he
answered back but he felt as though they were talking through a wall
of water. When the doctor had left, he felt his head getting bigger.
All the time he kept thinking of his trees, saying to himself, they
must be fed and watered, and cleared of dry leaves.
Then they took the boy away and put him in a
white room that was as bright as cloudless summer day when you could
see the air vibrate. His head was getting heavier and the ocean it
carried was getting restless, moving from side to side, lapping the
sides of his skull. He tried to remain still. He was feeling
seasick.
He had felt like this once on a small cruise
ship that was being rocked by waves this way and that. His mother
took his head and pressed her palm on his face, and he was becalmed.
He could hear people going in and out of the
room, talking in whispers, but their voices seemed distant. It was
like hearing them through a labyrinth, a deep cavern underwater.
Then he felt his mother’s palms on his cheeks. They were warm and
full of love and instantly stilled the waters in his head.
He was alone. It was night. It was quiet, except
for the mellow sound of waves. He could not sleep. He could feel his
head expanding and he was afraid he would soon fall off the bed. He
could feel the ocean in his head becoming larger; its surface being
blown by soft evening breezes. A crescent moon appeared in the sky
cradling a clutch of stars while others began to appear in the dark.
The waters were rising but he did not struggle
because it felt warm and comforting. The waters kept going up, and
up, until he could not longer see the stars and he was completely
submerged. It was dark, darker than a million nights. He felt
suspended in a limitless void. He could hear the seamless inhalation
and exhalation of a great, endless breath and in the distance the
song of the gander.
Then he felt the waters slowly coming down and
he was beginning to surface. His head no longer felt heavy. He
opened his eyes. He could see clearly again. He touched his head,
his arms—they were back to normal.
He was floating on a vast ocean and there on the
horizon were the two boatmen in his dream coming toward him, nearer
and nearer, their oars splashing in the water. They fished him out
and wrapped him in a blanket. One of them wore a hood so that all he
could see was the outline of his face. The other one facing him was
bareheaded and he seemed to emanate a glow around his head. He could
see his face clearly. His eyes looked at and through him and he
smiled tenderly. They did not speak. He wanted to thank them but the
bareheaded one just kept smiling at him. Words were superfluous.
Millions of stars flickered in the sky. Some
were surrounded by a bluish haze, others glowed like coals, red, yet
others had a burnt golden like the sun. They were all tranquilly
turning in their appointed orbits. He could recognize some of them
from the book of stars given to him by his mother. At school they
had plotted the position of the constellations on the hemispheres.
But tonight he could see all of them clearly without the aid of
binoculars.
He looked up, and saw directly above him the
constellations of flight. Cygnus, the graceful swan—with the star
Deneb at its head and at its foot the double blue and white star
Albireo—spread its white wings. The Milky Way trailing its
galactic dust, clouds and gases , passed over the swan flying in its
rich air. Downwards to the southeast, Aquila, the eagle, illumined
by its brightest star, Altair, hovered above the cluster of stars
called the wild ducks, ready to swoop down.
To the right of the Cygnus: the constellation of
music, Lyra, whose taut strings waited to be plucked by some
celestial musician. Its giant star Vega, sparkled brightly. Lower
down on the horizon, Scorpius, opened its pincers and extended the
deadly sting on its tail, its body formed by Antares, a richly
colored star—the reddest of all bright stars.
Sagittarius, the archer flexed his bowstring
aiming its arrow towards Aquila. Ophiuchus, continued his struggle
with the serpent coiled around his body and in a mighty pull
detached the head. In another corner of the sky, Hercules lifted his
mighty cudgel over Hydra the water snake. Hercules, is lit by a
globular cluster of stars, composed of millions of suns—red stars
that have reached their maturity and about to explode.
Further south of Saggitarius is the
constellation southern cross, crux, of the orange and blue stars.
Beside it lies the horned constellation of Centaurus—with its
brightest star Alpha Centauri, shining like a giant orange suspended
in space.
Then, as if tired of this symmetry, one star, in
a mischievous rebellion, suddenly fell from its perch and shot
across the sky, etching a shining trail in the dark. The others
seemed to have caught this spirit, and followed falling in several
directions. Others keeled over while remaining in their orbits. Some
careened and swirled like eddies. Others hurtled in the melee like
giant boomerangs. Some formed spirals. Some became arrows shooting
in all directions. Others simply burst like overripe fruits that
could no longer contain their juices; or flowers spewing out
millions of pollens of light. Galactic spirals hummed like topspins.
Stellar whirlpools churned. Orange, blue and purple nebulae floated
like leis on the cosmic sea.
Yes, it was as Lila had told him many times. She
was right to keep awake all night. The whole cosmos had gone mad in
a glorious chaos of light. New constellations arose in their
millions only to dissolve in a continuous flux. Universes emerged
and vanished in the twinkling of an eye.
As though the signals sent across space were
received on earth, the events in the sky were now being repeated on
the surface of the ocean. Volcanoes exploded simultaneously from the
ocean’s abyssal depths. Giant mushrooms of light surged up and
spread their tops on the surface of the ocean like starbursts.
The ocean was a giant heart, incessantly
beating, dispersing jets of light with its systole and diastole.
Phosphorescent worms slithered everywhere. Schools of lucent fish
shaped themselves into lenticules, spirals and double helixes.
Starfishes, electric eels, Venus flowerbaskets and giant medusas
joined in this brilliant watery display.
This is something Lila and the little trees
would love to see, he thought. He felt the need to tell them, to
share with them the wonders of this night. And amidst this explosion
of light, he could see the radiant face of the bareheaded boatman,
smiling at him with so much tenderness.
The boy was in the still center of a whirlpool
of light.
Happiness surged toward him in gigantic waves,
washing over him. pulling him in their undertow and tossing him from
one high crest to a higher crest. His heart pounded louder than the
thundering roar of the waves and he swooned with the rising and
falling of each swell. He felt an intense longing to share this
happiness with Lila, who had intimated these events to him, with
wise Karuna, and gentle Kashiwagi, with abrupt Roughie, and Hanshan,
and Maya and all his trees. He kept thinking “If only they were
here with me, if only they were here.”
Then as furtively as it happened, the sky and
the sea become pacific once more. A few meteors streaked across the
sky, but the stars were back in their appointed places, quietly
glowing as they had done for eons beyond time. Now only Orion, the
hunter rising, dominated the sky—the star Betelgeux at his
shoulder, orange-red, swelling and shrinking—holding up his shield
against the stampeding Taurus. Rigel at the hunters foot, shone
brilliantly white. The river Eridanus, sleepily snaked its way
across the cosmic landscape, disappearing into the haze of the Milky
Way and back into its origins.
They were rowing toward a massive bank of
darkness that blotted one side of the horizon. A school of
incandescent fish accompanied them as they rowed. Sometimes the fish
swam in front of the boat, taking a V formation like the tip of an
arrow. At times they would go to one side, as if urging the boatmen
to follow, guiding them towards land. Just before they reached the
shore, the fish veered towards another direction and plunged into
the deep as swiftly as they appeared.
When they reached the shore the bareheaded
boatman carried him to the beach and waded back to the boat. The
hooded boatman then rowed out to sea, slowly, gently until they
vanished in the dark vastness of the ocean, among the stars that
garlanded the horizon.
The little boy did not feel lonely. He walked
inland and went to where the wind and tide had swept the sand into a
dune, that was now being fixed into a hillock by the tenacious roots
of sedge and marram grass. He found a little cavity on one side of
the dune and there he lay his head to go to sleep. He now felt
tired. It was as though so much happiness had exhausted him. The
soft, languid, sound of the waves lazily sifting and shuffling the
grains of sand lulled him into a very deep sleep without any dreams.
He awoke to the warmth of palms, like those of
his mother’s, on his cheeks. When he opened his eyes, the sky had
started becoming light, touching everything—his face, his arms,
the sand, and the surface of the sea—with warm, pink and golden
hues.
He could now hear the cawing of various animals,
the sharp screeching of the seagulls, and the splash of flying fish
landing on the waters. He looked up and a saw vast greenery of
trees. A great wind came in from the sea and ran its fingers through
their leaves, ruffling them and sending a shiver down their branches
to their trunks. The leaves shimmered and scintillated with
reflected light from the sky, like the millions of stars the night
before. His heart was full of expectancy. It beat faster in
anticipation of something he could not name. His steps quickened
with eagerness to reach the woods.
He walked towards the forest as if towards home.
When he reached the edge where sand gave way to soil, and
flourishing shrubs led to the woods, there, under the canopy of the
first line of tall trees, were Lila and Karuna, Kaswhiwagi and Naga,
Ado and Ava, Hanshan and Maya, all waiting for him and waving their
tiny branches and leaves drenched with dew, on this warm, luminous,
dawn of a new beginning.
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