The Sixth Key(3)

‘Puzzles are my living,’ I told him.

He leant in to poke at the fire a moment. ‘Have you read Jorge Luis Borges?’

‘Yes . . . but that was years ago.’

He sat back again and crossed his legs, elegant and cool, as far from my image of a Franciscan monk as you could get.

‘Borges’ “Library of Babel” is one of my favourite short stories,’ he said. ‘I love his idea of a universe that consists of endless interlocking galleries, in which are kept all the books ever written, and even those likely to be written. Books whose content and order is random and meaningless.’

I thought about it a moment. ‘Do you think Borges was trying to convey the opposing ideas of chaos and order, or the futility of accumulating knowledge?’

He smiled. ‘Perhaps both, perhaps neither? It might just be the learned Arab coming out in him.’

‘But I thought he was Argentinian?’

There was an awkward silence.

‘I am speaking of one of his previous lives.’

My disquiet must have been palpable. I realised he was playing a game and that everything he was saying had been calculated to make me feel slightly uncomfortable. I decided that I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction.

‘I see.’

He wasn’t put off. ‘Take “The Book of Sand”, for instance,’ he said. ‘An infinite book that changes every time you look into it. Then again, there is “The Garden of Forking Paths”, where one confronts several alternatives and these create several possible futures, which are again full of alternatives, and these proliferate and fork to make more futures, endlessly.’ He sat forwards. ‘Do you think Borges understood the idea of karma and destiny?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Well, he certainly managed to illustrate, quite perfectly, the experience of crossing the threshold.’

‘What threshold do you mean?’

‘The threshold that separates life from death, time from space; where the past and the future converge in the present; where the dead exist.’

My smile must have looked increasingly foolish. ‘I suppose you are going to tell me how one crosses the threshold? Is that the solution to the riddle – initiation?’

He looked at me without humour, clearly annoyed. ‘To taste a good brandy one must sip slowly, savouring the complex flavours on the tongue! A man who drinks it down in one gulp tastes nothing and burns his throat. Isn’t that so?’

I nodded pensively. He was right – I was being precipitous. Still, his tone had been harsh

He looked a little repentant. ‘I do apologise. I’ve been away from society for too long, I’m afraid. I don’t mean to be ill-mannered.’ He paused, thinking a moment, or perhaps he was just giving me time to forgive his shortness. ‘Yes, all initiations are a form of death. One’s consciousness of the world dies and one enters the realm of the spirit, the realm of the dead, as you have intimated. But do you know this: that every time one goes to sleep one also enters the realm of the dead, leaving behind one’s personality to enter a labyrinth, a hall of mirrors, a universe of galleries, wherein lies a record of all the personalities that one has been through the aeons?’ He watched me, measuring the effect of his words. ‘Tell me, what do you think has brought you here?’

‘You invited me.’

‘No,’ he said with a curt tone that once again caught me by surprise. ‘You invited yourself!’

‘If this were so, then it would mean that I am you.’

He considered it. ‘Do you find me familiar?’

I looked at him. ‘Are you asking me if I feel a sense of déjà vu?’

‘Not as it’s understood in the usual sense. Do you think that my sitting here and your sitting there, the fire, the lagoon, this evening, this old monastery, this library, this moment, could have been created by you?’

I didn’t know what to say.

‘Think of how meticulous you are in creating the milieu of your books, down to the smallest detail. Now imagine you could do the same thing in the realm of death; that you could create what would surround you in your next life; this would make you the writer of your own story.’

‘You’re referring to reincarnation?’

‘Yes. You are here at this point because centuries ago you did something which made this moment possible, and this moment will lead to another moment, and so on. Like the “Garden of Forking Paths” – every decision creates a fork in the path of your futures.’

He paused, giving me time to digest his philosophy. ‘Think of it in ordinary terms: suppose someone calls you and this makes you late and you miss a train that catches fire, in which many people are killed. What do you do?’