‘You see even your dear pagan believed in invisible things!’
‘Yes. But because we cannot see a thing, Eisik, does not make it invisible,’ my master corrected. ‘Perhaps if we had smaller eyes, or indeed larger ones, we might see the eternal element that underlies everything.’
‘You mean eyes that are able to perceive the spirit,’ Eisik ended, triumphant.
‘Yes that is what I mean, however I did not say that to know a part is to know the whole, I meant that it may be the sign that points to an idea which surfaces in one’s mind as an image which in its purest state may lead one to the full reality of a thing, whether it is something spiritual or material . . . but that is another matter, and we diverge further and further, as we are apt to do when discussing the blessed laws of physics . . . However, in this case when a whole consists of a substance divided into parts and we have learnt some of the parts we can then surmise the substance, ergo, one chamber of the labyrinth may help us to construct the rest. Now, let us proceed and have no more of this talk!’ my master ended the conversation abruptly. Perhaps he too had become confounded?
‘By God, I long for an apple,’ he said.
‘So if this tunnel is finite,’ I said, trying to use his logic, ‘it stands to reason that we must one day reach the end, and so find our way out, master, is that not so?’
He smiled, and I was heartened, ‘Just as surely as these tunnels have a quality,’ he said, ‘they also have a quantity. Just as they have a beginning, they have an end! Whether we find this end, or wander about until our death, is another matter. This unfortunately is the logic of labyrinths which is all together different from any other kind of logic.’
Eisik moaned. I was fast becoming suspicious of logic. However I must not dull your mind, dear reader, with the discourses that ensued as my master helped me to begin constructing a plan of the tunnel and chamber. I will continue, rather, by telling how some time later, after we retrieved my little gem, seeing that it had not broken, we left a rock in the way of the door, so that it could not close, and found ourselves back where I had so gracelessly landed.
Seeking the way in a downward slope, not knowing what lay before us, I began to feel exceedingly cold and tired and it was in this mood that I recalled the reading in the warming room the previous evening.
‘A man should keep himself in every hour from the sins of the heart, of the tongue, of the eyes, of the hands and of the feet! He should cast aside his own will and the desires of the flesh; he should think that God is looking down on him from heaven at all times, and that his acts are seen by God and reported to him hourly by his angels.’
Those words now pierced my heart profoundly, as though they had been somehow intended for me. But I knew that this was illogical. The service had been prior to my dream and how could Brother Setubar have foreseen my misfortune? It was impossible. And yet I also reminded myself that I had not as yet confessed my indiscretion. My master did not have the power to give me absolution as laid down in the rule by St Bernard. Only under extreme circumstances, such as in times of war, or the absence of a priest, could a Templar confess his sin to another. I wondered if my master considered this a time of war where secrecy must prevail? I felt a deep and powerful guilt seize me, and still I could not forget the beautiful girl in my dream whose voluptuous limbs entwined with mine in a sin most foul, and yet most sweet. Can a man take fire in his bosom and his clothes not be burnt? Reason, my master so often told me, is the natural revelation of truth, so I tried to use its power to release me from my sorrow. Is a monk deemed worthy if he abstains only from physical love I asked myself as we walked the long, narrow passage, or is love of the mind as sinful as its twin? If God was omnipotent, as the Apostles inform us, and resides in our every thought, He must also reside in our dreams! If this is so, I sighed dismally, He must not be well pleased with me. And yet, how can one be held responsible for the ruminations of one’s mind? Are not dreams independent of the will? And then I immediately concluded that if my dreams were truly prophetic, as they had been up until that moment, I would experience in my waking moments what I had dreamt, and so, as a result, I would commit my sin twice! I told myself perhaps one’s life of dreams is not prophetic at all, but merely the product of one’s waking life, in which case all I had to do to redeem myself was confess, but what a confession it would be! I shuddered, for the passage deep in the ground was a reflection of my own sad soul, and I wondered if even with numerous formulas handed down by the wise fathers a monk finds himself unable to control evil lusts, what other recourse is there left to him?