In The Land Of The Dead (© Biswapriya Purkayastha)
Page 2 "But one might flow along with it, and let it carry one
along," I replied. And even as I spoke, I saw boats drifting on the black
water, which came to the shore, each laden with the ghosts of the dead. They
left the boats and drifted away to find a rock or a ridge to wait out the rest
of eternity. And the boats drifted on downstream, empty. "One could take one of those boats and let it carry one
along," I said. "The river takes the boats down to the Great Cave, whose
mouth is a monster’s jaws," the ghost replied. "If you should take a boat, the current
will catch hold of you and bear you along, for the boats have no oars nor
rudder, nor any other way to steer. Then the river will carry you into the
monster’s jaws, the teeth will destroy the boat and throw you into the water;
and you will be lost evermore." "I am lost already," I said. "There is nothing worse that
can happen to me, than I am going through now. I will take a boat, and let it
bear me where it will." "Then you will be as those who have gone before," the ghost
sighed. "So others have gone before?" I asked. "Yes, and they have never returned. The river took them into
the monster’s jaws, and they were heard from nevermore." "If I am lost, there’s nothing to be done about it. But if I
am not, there may be wonders yet to see, and things I can only dream about." "Then, come back," sighed the ghost like the wail of winds
over the frozen wastes. "Come back, and tell me what you find, and what wonders
you see. Come back, and let me know." But I paid it no further heed, and drifted down from the
ridge to the bank of the river. Fortuitously a boat arrived just then, small, bearing
just three ghosts. And as soon as they had disembarked, the boat began to drift
out again into the current. But I had already climbed aboard it, and let it carry me
along. I could not do otherwise, for it had no oars or rudder, or indeed any
other way to steer. The current caught the boat, and bore it along past the
ghost-crowded banks and the gloomy mountains, until at last it brought me to
the entrance of the cave, which was a monster’s mouth set with immense teeth. And
then I would have perhaps wished to try to escape the way I had come, but for
the anguish that still burned inside me, so that I preferred destruction in the
monster’s jaws to an eternal wait among the lightless wastes, And the current bore the boat into the monster’s teeth, and
they crushed and splintered the boat, and threw me into the water, so that I
thought I should surely be destroyed. But the water bore me up, carried over
the monster’s jaws, and the dark flow bore me down the cave. And then all around me was darkness – darkness so profound
that it went through my very being, darkness that seemed to consume me, and a
silence that transcended death, for all that I was a ghost. Through that
darkness and silence the black river bore me along, until I truly began to
believe that I had merely traded one eternal wait for another and infinitely
worse one. But then the darkness began to lift with a sullen red glow,
which began to pervade the cave; and in the glow I saw that I was passing
between banks which were crowded with ruins – the ruins of mud huts and
great cities, of forts and churches, of slender high-arched bridges of marble
and squat watchtowers of granite. And I saw the villages sprout from the mud,
grow and change, cottages crushed under the weight of palaces and mansions; and
they, in turn, crumbled away, until there were only ruins once more. And overhead, along the roof of the cave, I saw great and
angry suns, flaring blue-white with fury, which were born, flared a moment, and
then became sullen red with age; until they burned to a cinder, and left only
the ruins of planets, swinging endlessly through the stellar night. Around me now, in the river, things swam; things with the
faces of crocodiles and the bodies of worms or eels, things with razor fins and
other, nameless limbs, which writhed and squirmed in the black water. And they
saw me, but their teeth could do me no harm, for I was but a ghost. [ Continue to page 3 ] |