Christ the Lord - Anne Rice [63]
I saw them all, and I saw them particularly—the smooth innocence of the very old, eyes gleaming beneath the heavy folds of skin; the sudden break from weariness in those in their prime, who stood poised between condemnation and wonder; the frank excitement of the children who begged for their parents to explain to them what had happened—and interwoven with all, the busy, the concerned, the worn, the confused, each and every one touching another.
Never had I beheld them all in this way, each anchored to concern yet wedded to the one to the left and the one to the right, and all tossing as if not in sand but by the sea on rolling waves.
I turned and looked down at John, who'd turned to stare up at me. He opened his mouth to speak but said nothing.
I turned away from him. For one second the sunshine sparkling in the stiff branches of a shifting tree held me frozen. If trees and blowing grass could talk, they were talking to me.
And they were talking of silence.
On and on I walked, my mind filled only with the sound of my own feet, moving through reeds and marsh and then to the rocky dry ground, and on and on, my sandals slapping the road, and then the bare earth where there was no road.
I had now to be alone, to go where no one could find me or question me. Not now. I had to seek the solitude that all my life had been denied me.
I had to seek it beyond hamlet or town or camp. I had to seek it where there was nothing but the burnt sand, and the searing wind, and the highest cliffs of the land. I had to seek it as if it was nowhere and as if it contained nothing—when in fact it was the palm of the hand that held me.
21
VOICES. THEY WOULDN'T STOP.
I'd passed the last little settlement days ago. I'd drunk my last deep draught of water there.
I didn't know where I was now, only that it was cold, and the only true sound was the wind howling as it swept down into the wadi. I clung to the cliff and made my way upwards. The light was dying fast. That's why it was so cold.
And the voices wouldn't stop, all the arguments, all the calculations, all the predications, all the pondering, and on and on, and on.
The wearier I became the louder they became.
In a small cave I lay, out of the bite of the wind, and drew my robe tightly around me. The thirst was gone. The hunger was gone. So that meant it had been many days because they'd hurt for many days and that much was now finished. Light-headed, empty, I craved all things and no one thing. My lips split and the skin flaked from them. My hands were burnt red; my eyes ached whether opened or closed.
But the voices would not stop, and slowly, rolling over on my back, I looked beyond the entrance of the cave at the stars—just as I'd always done, musing at the sheer cloudless clarity of it over the sandy wastes, the thing we call magnificence.
And then the remembering came, driving away the random voices of censure, the remembering . . . of every single solitary thing I'd ever done in this, my earthly existence.
It was not a sequence. It did not have the order of words written on parchment from one side of the column to the other, and then back again and again and again. Yet it was unfolding.
And sparkling in the density were the moments of pain—of loss, of fear, of sudden regret, of grief, of discomforting and tormented amazement.
Pain, like the stars themselves, each moment with its own infinitesimal shape and magnitude. All of those memories drew themselves around me as if composing a great garment that was my life, a garment that wrapped itself around and around and over and under until it encased me like my skin, completely.
Sometime before morning, I understood something. That I could without the slightest effort hold any and all of these moments in my mind; that they coexisted, these varied and tiny and countless agonies. Little agonies.