Shadow of Ararat

THE SCHOOL OF PTHAMES

H

Dwyrin squatted in the last row of boys in the dim room, his back against a plastered wall. He smirked to himself, watching Kyllun and Patroclus out of the corner of his eye. They had come in late, heads together, and had not noticed him among the other boys.

“Attend me,” came a curt voice, cutting across the murmur of the boys talking among themselves. “Today we will consider the ways of seeing.”

Dwyrin looked up, his hands palm down on his knees. Master Fenops stood in a clear space before the score of boys. He was their instructor in the matter of simple thaumaturgy. His deep voice was out of proportion to his body, which was thin and shriveled with age. Bushy white eyebrows crawled over deepset eyes. Dwyrin paid him close attention, for this was the one thing that brought him joy in this dusty old place.

“Yesterday I discussed the nature of this base matter that is all around us.” The teacher stamped a sandaled foot on the packed-earth floor. “I said that it was impermanent, having only the appearance of solidity. You did not believe me, that I saw in each and every face!”

Fenops smiled, briefly showing broad white teeth in beetle-dark gums. “Today I will provide you with a demonstration of the porosity of matter.

“But first, let us consider the nature of man and the nature of animals. What sets a man apart from an animal?”

Fenops’ old eyes swept across the boys, seeing their disinterest, their boredom, their incomprehension. He clicked his teeth together sourly and continued.

“You.” His gnarled finger stabbed out at one of the boys in the first row. “What sets you apart from a dog?”

The boy, a lank-haired Syrian, stared around him at his fellows, then answered in a truculent voice: “I walk on two legs! I can speak. I know of the gods.”

Fenops nodded.

“An ape can go on two legs,” he said. “Cats speak, if you know how to listen. The gods… enough said of the gods. This answer is passable, but it is not the true difference between men and animals.”

Dwyrin sat up a little straighter, trying to see over the heads of the other students.

“The thing that truly sets you, a man, a human being, apart from the animal is your mind. Not solely that you use a tool, or can spark fire, no-you have a mind that can see the world.”

Fenops rubbed his forehead and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Understand that the eye, the tongue, the hand are organs of flesh and blood. They are physical! They touch, taste, and see things that are material. The eye, in particular, cannot see all that we can touch, or hear, or taste. These organ”-he spread his flat-fingered hands wide and turned, showing his palms to the class-“are limited. They do not relay to the mind all that there is to see, or hear, or taste.”

Fenops stopped, his face pensive, and studied the faces of the boys in front of him.

“A barbarian with some small wit about him once said that the world that we human beings see is the reflection of another world, a world of perfect forms. He used an analogy of a cave, where the physicality that we feel or see was created by the shadows, or reflections, of these pure forms. His postulation was incorrect, but it was a fair attempt to describe the true world.”

Fenops stopped pacing, standing again in front of the Syrian boy. “Stand, my friend. I will demonstrate porosity and impermanence to you and your classmates.“

The Syrian boy stood, towering over the teacher. Fenops smiled up at him, taking the boy’s right wrist between his fingers. He raised it up, spreading the fingers apart.

“Here is the hand,” said Fenops, his voice filled with curiosity. “Through it we feel the solidity of the world. See, it is self-evident that the world around us is solid.” He poked his finger into the palm of the boy’s hand, pressing hard.

“His hand is solid, my hand is solid. They are material, they have shape, size, weight, dimension. All this could not be clearer!”

Fenops turned to the boys and spread his own hand, fingers wide apart. “But, I tell you, and I will show you, that this is not the truth of the matter. In truth, there is no solidity around you. The world and everything in it is composed of patterns, of shapes, of forms. And these patterns are insubstantial. We exist among great emptiness. When you can truly see, you will see an abyss of light filled with nothing. Even the patterns and forms are insubstantial. See?”

The wizened little man turned and placed his hand on the Syrian’s back. For a moment he bowed his head and the air in the room seemed to change, becoming colder. Then Fenops smiled, his eyes distant, and pushed his hand forward, out of the boy’s chest.

Dwyrin stopped breathing, seeing the old man’s fingers sliding out of the thin cotton shirt that covered the Syrian’s chest. The palm followed, then his forearm. Fenops peered over the boy’s shoulder, his eyes bright as a raven’s, and then the old master stepped through the boy.

In the front row, one of the Roman boys fainted dead away. The Syrian boy stood stock still as the instructor passed through him and then stood, whole and hale, before -the assembled boys.

“The spaces between the patterns that make up this boy are so vast that if my own are properly aligned, I can pass through him. He is emptiness, as are we all. A fragile vessel filled only with the will.“

Fenops shook out his hands and arms, kinking his shoulders up and then down again. The Syrian boy, trembling, scuttled back to his place in the front row. The old man rubbed his hands together briskly. A tremendous smile flickered on his face. “So! How does one actually see the world as it truly is? Among our order, we use a technique of the mind called the First Opening of Hermes…”

A week after the incident of the oranges, Master Ahmet was summoned into the scriptorium by a great outburst of shouting. Pushing though the cluster of boys at the door to that ancient and musty room, he found the junior boys’ class in a welter of confusion. Large bees, quite angry ones, were buzzing about the room. The Cilician boy, Kyllun, was receiving the worst of their attentions as he rolled about screaming under a table. Ahmet scowled, and his thin face, normally a dusky olive, turned a remarkable dark red. The boys near him, by the door, caught a glimpse of this and fled with unseemly haste, drawing startled shouts from two monks in the corridor.

Ahmet made two sharp passes in the air with his hand, and the bees quieted, turning in their angry hunt, to swarm and then pass with an audible buzz out the door and into the open air of the great court. Ahmet watched them from the doorway as they spiraled up into the clear blue sky and then turned south before flying over the red tile roof of the main building. The two monks paused in their decade-old argument over the physicality of the gods and looked in astonishment upon Ahmet. The master smiled tightly and bowed to them before closing the heavy cedar doors of the scriptorium.

The boys stood in a short, irregular row between two of the great heavy tables, sweating despite the cool air in the thick-walled room. He turned to the lesser of the two tables. It was strewn with ink pots, quills, decorative paints, sheets of papyrus, and parchment. Under it, lodged against one of the heavy carved feet, was a dented bronze scroll tube. Ahmet picked it up. He shook it slightly, and a narrow chunk of honeycomb fell out onto the tabletop. He ran his finger around the inside of the tube and tasted it.

Then, stilling a smile that had briefly formed, he turned to.the five boys who stood before him. All, he noted, were now anointed with red sting marks, the Cilician, Kyllun, worst, but the flame-haired Hibernian, Dwyrin, and the Sicilian, Patroclus, had not escaped without incident. The other two, both Greeks, were sporting only two stings apiece. Ahmet gave all five his best scowling glare and all five paled.

“Sophos, Andrades; go and fetch the physician.”

The Greek boys slipped away like shadows. Ahmet studied the remaining three closely. Kyllun looked positively ill, Patroclus and Dwyrin were eyeing each other warily out of the corners of their eyes. Ahmet sighed. It was like this every year.

“The punishment,” he said slowly, gaining their complete attention, “for disturbing the studies of your fellow students and for destroying the property of the school”-he tapped the dented scroll case against the edge of the table-“is rather severe.” He smiled. “All three of you will suffer it to the fullest extent.” He smiled again. All three boys began to look a little faint.

“Ah,” Ahmet said, looking to the door, “the physician.” He waited with fine patience until the various bites and stings had been salved and anointed, then he took the three boys out of the scriptorium and down the hall.

It was four days before Dwyrin could sit down without wincing, and the laughter and snide remarks of the other boys was worse. Ahmet had taken them into the main dining hall during the evening meal and had them stripped, then he had given each of them a fierce switching until they were bawling like babies. This before the monks, their teachers, and the junior and senior boys. Patroclus, in particular, had taken it badly, Dwyrin thought, and now refused to so much as look at Dwyrin. Kyllun was more subdued, but his desire to beat Dwyrin into a bloody pulp was evident.

The three were denied evening free time, and Dwyrin continued to labor in the kitchens washing the dishes. Days dragged slowly along, and Patroclus and Kyllun began to spend their time together at meals and during studies. Dwyrin paid them no mind, for Master Ahmet was watching him like a hawk, and he felt himself repaid in full by the sight on Kyllun’s face when the black bees had boiled out of the scroll tube in a dark angry cloud. Dwyrin studied and even improved at his lessons and pleased his teachers. Dwyrin noted that Kyllun, despite hours hunched over the moldy scrolls and ancient tomes that were the focus of their studies, did perhaps worse than before. Patroclus improved, bending his efforts to besting Dwyrin. Master Ahmet remained watchful, giving none of them time to explore further mischief.