THRICE TOLD TALE
 

H. M. Pouria

February 2006

Solipsism and Sophistry, apocrypha and mendacity, Illusion and reverie, foolish prejudice and baseless pride, dull imagination and keen ignorance, all conspired in the composition of a delirious and incoherent tale some years ago.
But should one be inclined to the belief that the savage urges that bridle and drive a scribbling hand to the point of despondency and exhaustion, carry with them a surreptitious element of wisdom, to which neither the fatigued hand nor the impoverished mind is privy, and to the belief that revelation is either the lot of all men or that of none, one may perhaps merit those now forgotten and discarded sentences with a thing or two bearing the semblance of the stuff of genuine premonition, if not plain prophesy.
As for all tales, love was the genesis of this tale, hope its diluted blood, exile its life, death its destination. Employing all manners of forgery, exploiting a certain equivocation in the old tongue of birds and roses, owning the appellation and scaffoldings of an ancient text, inventing another one altogether, the tale was an, and about an, epistle never to be delivered to a beloved, whom destiny had severed the hopeless poet from and would not allow to unite with ever again. But this prophesy, made in the final page of the letter (or book) – there it read that of the letter, this, that, no traces had remained – having not yet climbed to the peaks of certitude, did not hinder the poor man from attempting to deliver the letter none the less.
There was, as always, no address, no real name, and no deliverance. That, as this, was pure folly and madness. To be sure, the epistle was consigned to the wide world, but as if on the feeble and flighty shoulders of that famous breeze of the Persians, blowing empty-handed from the east to the west.

A Blind librarian once wrote: A man’s destiny is no better and no worse than the next. But every man must learn to revere the destiny he bears within himself. Of this greatest piece of all wisdom, the unripe poet and the flawed hero of The Letter of the Beheaded –for such was the purloined title – reminds himself and a troubled man, whom he meets, under unexpected circumstances and a few short weeks before a fateful departure, in an unnamed small town in the American Midwest. The quoted sentence, hurriedly copied down on a haphazard piece of paper, proves, in due time, more than a consolation to both men, albeit in a fever-struck nightmare. But for now, let this be, of the story of these two, enough said. Let it also suffice to say here, that that citation remains the truest element of this or that tale.
But who was the old poet, the blind librarian? Was he not the conclusive proof that sorrow and anguish is the lot of the gentlest and brightest of our race? Was he not he whose words had arrested our young man’s fancy once upon an immemorial time? What wonder then, that he appeared to him, in disguised countenance, in another age altogether, as the owner of an antique bookstore in the gloomy city of Berlin, wherein he (the youngster) had, on one early exile day, ventured a random purchase? No prophesy, no premonition, that the sightless man, who had awaited long for this encounter – as the feverish tale claimed – recognized his client, as if at the briefest glance, sallied toward him with sudden and odd inquiries, divined his origins, charged him for betraying his heritage, revealed to him lost and found books, told him of the wonders of New Day, commanded him to call his hero, the hero of the letter, by a certain name. To all of which the young man demurely relented. And let there be hope, said the librarian, said the tale, for without that, what is a man if not utterly hopeless?
But by way of accounting for another foreboding ( dark and horrifying), expressed in the letter, let us recall that in the same American Midwestern town, from which our man departed and to which he shall not find his return, there is a library, named like a famous flower of the valley, which is home to an exquisite collection of rare books and manuscripts. At around the time of the man’s departure, a former teacher of his, an avid bibliophile, a seasoned collector and a translator of several world classics, was appointed the director of this library. Some time after the completion of The letter, having tried all he could and lost but all hope that his composition be put to print by vogue-masters and business mobsters, it occurred to our man to solicit the help of his old teacher. The manuscript accompanied with a pleading message was promptly sent across the great ocean. To which, of course, arrived no answer whatsoever, nor to the subsequent heart-rending requests. Baffled by the incomprehensible silence our poet inquired from some mutual acquaintances of the fate of his manuscript and the state of his teacher. And lo, the reply arrived, the librarian had been diagnosed with a disease which would condemn him, in a short time, this is true, to absolute blindness. But let this too be enough said of blind men of letters, whose stories are told and retold from the times of earliest journeys back home from forsaken islands. Look homeward angel all you wish, a voice reverberates, for you cannot, as a forgotten native wrote before his untimely death, go home again. Slowly, quietly, patiently then, the letter transfigured into the dust it had collected, the memory faded, the hope weakened and ceased, the eyes fell blind on the crowded page, the prophesies reached their true fulfillment.

But was there any more premonition in the letter, is there anything left to the tale? There was, there is. And two angelic and discriminating eyes, which are not yet inclined to read the geography of a soul in the charts of a black, gray and white face, shall one day decipher that for themselves.

An ancient oracle describes the inquirer as a man, who has washed his hands, but has not offered his sacrifice yet. A young merchant, busy earning his modest livelihood, is accosted on the eve of a glorious day and amid the subdued songs of drums and trumpets, by an old beggar with the appearances of the dervishes of an old faith. He admonishes the incredulous young man to leave his occupation, to undertake a journey without guidance or direction, to search for an old and neglected text, to read and learn it with heart and finally to recount it in new letters, words and phrases. That task accomplished, that sacrifice made, that epistle properly sent and received, the dervishes promises, the seeker will be rewarded manifold, with a joy at the core of his longing soul, with a love cherished for as long as there is time and as far as the space extends, with a flower bloomed and flourished in the loftiest heaven. Does she not see his darkness in his name, he will ask her upon their union. You are a forest and a night of dark trees, she will answer, and he who is not afraid of darkness shall find rose-bowers under your cypresses.