Russell Hoban - Pilgermann

Firouz of course remained attentive to our activities. Seeing people give money to Bembel Rudzuk and seeing the money then mortared into the tiles he said to Bembel Rudzuk, ‘What is this commerce that you do with your geomancy? What do you give for this money that you take?’

Bembel Rudzuk said, ‘It is not a commerce of my choosing but I don’t know how to stop it; to refuse this money that is offered gratefully to Allah would be to deny the giver a part in the pattern.’

‘Will you accept money from me as well?’ said Firouz.

‘For what?’ said Bembel Rudzuk. ‘What have you had from this pattern?’ He didn’t say the pattern’s name, we only used that between us. To everyone else it was simply ‘the pattern’.

‘One night I stood at the top of your tower,’ said Firouz, ‘and there came to me a thought of great profundity.’

I didn’t like to think of Firouz at the top of our tower, I didn’t like to think of any thought that might have come to him there. Clearly Bembel Rudzuk didn’t want to take the money, he didn’t want to accept Firouz into the membership of Hidden Lion but he didn’t feel easy about saying no. ‘Your profound thought,’ he said to Firouz, ‘surely it would have come to you anywhere.’

‘Indeed not,’ said Firouz; ‘it came to me while I was contemplating the inwardness and outwardness of this particular pattern; I am convinced that it could not have come to me anywhere else. You have taken money from anyone who has offered it to you, I have seen you do it. Am I alone to be excluded from this multiplicity of people who have become unified with your pattern?’

‘No,’ said Bembel Rudzuk miserably, ‘I have no wish to exclude you.’

Firouz took Bembel Rudzuk’s hand and pressed a piece of gold into it. ‘You see how I value this,’ he said. ‘To have my own tile in this great pattern! Tell me, what is the name of it?’

‘The name of what?’ said Bembel Rudzuk.

‘The name of this pattern,’ said Firouz. ‘This design that is so mystical in the simplicity of its complexity, surely it has a name?’

‘Ah!’ said Bembel Rudzuk, ‘who am I to put a name to a pattern? Let each person who looks at it think of it with or without a name as Allah wills.’

‘Your humility is overwhelming,’ said Firouz. ‘It flattens me utterly. And yet, modest as you are, probably when you think of this pattern you think of it with a name.’

Bembel Rudzuk shrugged. ‘Mostly I don’t think of it, I simply become absorbed in it thoughtlessly.’

‘Ah!’ said Firouz. ‘Thoughtless absorption! Yes, yes, I understand that absolutely: one simply becomes one with the everything, one is free for a time from the burden of one’s self. What bliss! And yet, and yet — returning to the world and its burdens one puts names to things. So it is that I have lost myself in this pattern, but returning to the world I look at this abstraction with which I have merged; I turn my head this way and that way, I see twisting serpents, moving pyramids; suddenly there leaps forward the face of a lion, then it is gone again. “Ah!” say I, “I have been with Hidden Lion!’” With that he did his regular heel-turn and walked turningly away, but stopped after only a few steps and turned back towards us. ‘I was forgetting to ask,’ he said, ‘what name of Allah you’ll be writing on the underside of my tile.’

‘The Watchful,’ said Bembel Rudzuk, ‘He who observes all creatures, and every action is under His control.’

‘Why that one?’ said Firouz. ‘Why that particular one for me?’

‘It came into my mind when you asked, so I assume that it was put there by Allah,’ said Bembel Rudzuk.

‘“Every action is under His control,”’ said Firouz. ‘How can that be, really? Think of the dreadful things that are done in this world every day.’

‘The child is under the control of the parents, is it not,’ said Bembel Rudzuk; ‘yet must the child creep on its hands and knees before it can walk, and when it first walks it can go only a step or two before it falls.’

‘True, true,’ said Firouz. ‘That’s all we are: little children creeping on our hands and knees. The parent, however, doesn’t punish the child for falling, while Allah The Watchful will surely punish the sinner, will he not?’

‘The child who falls when learning to walk has not the choice,’ said Bembel Rudzuk, ‘but the sinner has.’

‘That what was the use of bringing the child into it at all?’ said Firouz. ‘It’s a useless analogy, it’s no help whatever.’

‘It’s a perfectly useful analogy,’ said Bembel Rudzuk: ‘the consequence of not being able to walk is to fall and the consequence of not being able to maintain moral balance is also to fall. How could it be otherwise?’

‘To be in a fallen state,’ said Firouz, ‘that isn’t so dreadful; all sorts of fallen people ride about on good horses wearing fine clothes and who can tell the difference? I’m thinking about later, I’m thinking about the Fire where one burns and burns and is given molten brass to drink. Do you think that’s really how it is?’

‘I think that the Fire is in the soul of each of us,’ said Bembel Rudzuk: ‘those of us consigned to the Fire burn every day and every night.’

‘You don’t burn though, do you?’ said Firouz. ‘You’re cool and easy, your soul dwells in the Garden of its self-delight.’

‘Where my soul dwells is between Allah and me, not between, you and me,’ said Bembel Rudzuk.

‘You’re so comfortable!’ said Firouz. ‘You’re so easy, you’re like a cat that purrs before a dish of the milk of your own wisdom that is so delicious to you.’

‘I am as Allah made me,’ said Bembel Rudzuk, ‘and certainly I never asked you to drink from that dish.’

‘Always a clever answer,’ said Firouz. He turned to me. ‘And you,’ he said, ‘what name of Allah would you write on the tile?’

‘God for me is nameless,’ I said.

‘Ah!’ said Firouz. ‘Profundity! How could I have expected otherwise!’ Again he executed his heel-turn and I thought that we had perhaps seen the last of him for that day but no, here he was turning yet again to speak to us once more.

‘How many tiles will there be in Hidden Lion when it is complete?’ he said.

‘I don’t know,’ said Bembel Rudzuk. ‘We haven’t calculated that.’

‘How many tiles are there in it so far?’ said Firouz.

‘We have not counted,’ said Bembel Rudzuk. ‘Allah is The Reckoner.’

‘Of course,’ said Firouz. ‘This is part of the milk of your wisdom, is it not. And yet if the Governor should impose a tax on paving-tiles then you with all your piety would have to do some reckoning.’

The workmen were just then unloading a camel and two of them now approached the advancing edge of the pattern with a four-handled basket full of tiles. Firouz walked turningly towards them with his features composed in an official expression as if he were going to confiscate the tiles. The workmen stopped in their tracks and looked at him with fear and uncertainty.

It was at that moment that the Governor Yaghi-Siyan appeared, riding a horse and flanked by six of his bodyguard. At the edge of the stone square he dismounted and approached us. When he came to the outermost edge of Hidden Lion he ostentatiously took off his shoes and walked barefoot across the tiles to us. Bembel Rudzuk and I took off our shoes as well and made him a little bow. Firouz whirled round to face the Governor and seeing us all barefoot hurried to take off his shoes. He flung out a hand to steady himself against the basket that the two workmen were still holding between them; perhaps he leant on it too heavily or perhaps the workmen, already nervous and fearful of him, were startled by his sudden movement and let go of the basket — in any case it fell with its heavy load of tiles and there was a howl of pain from Firouz who had somehow contrived to have his foot under it.