The Wizard is worried

When Udlotwin called on me the other day he looked so distraught and haggard that I barely recognized him. I'd never seen him like that before.

I should explain that Udlotwin (that's not the name most people know him by, of course) is a wizard. We'd been friends for years. I've often wondered why he took to me, since he told me very early on that I had no gift for magic whatsoever. Perhaps that might be why he liked me: other people might have pestered him to teach them some magic, or at least demonstrate some; by I accepted what he said and never bothered him further on the subject.
   He slumped into a chair and begged for a glass of water. When he'd drunk this, and was looking a little better, I obviously asked him what the trouble was.
   "Did you ever meet Geoffrey Dakin?" he asked me.
   "No,but I seem to remember your telling me about him. He wanted to become a magician, you said".
   "Yes, he did. And he had some of the necessary ability; just a little. That was the trouble: he'd have done better to keep well away. That's what I advised him, but he didn't listen. When I heard he'd died suddenly, with no obvious physical symptoms, I immediately suspected the worst. I managed to get into his flat,and my worst fears were confirmed".
   "Why, what did you find?"
   "Enough to show me that he'd being trying out some very risky ideas; fortunately without any success. But then I found something really important. To a layman it might have seemed no more than a simple wooden fruit-bowl; but I knew what it was: a Horn of Plenty. I wondered where on earth he could have got it".
   "What's a Horn of Plenty?"
   "A famous magical device! Things that are placed inside it multiply, and go on multiplying".
   "You mean if I put some money in, more and more money would come out?"
   "That's just what a layman would think, and probably what poor Geoffrey did think. But there's much more to it than that. A Horn of Plenty is basically a machine, and it works just like any other machine. It won't function without an input of energy; but it's a special kind of energy, which it takes from the magician. Even I would find it exhausting. You, as it happens, don't possess any of this energy. Geoffrey had some, but not nearly enough for this task. I guessed that was what killed him - though of course it might have been something different; something much more sinister. I won't go into that".
   "So what did you do?"
   "I took the Horn away. I couldn't leave it lying about: you never know who might get their hands on it. But just carrying it for any length of time would tire me out. I needed somewhere safe to hide it. So I cast around until I located a Doorway".
   "A Doorway? What's that?"
   "It's an entrance to a different world: a different universe. It'd be easiest for you to understand if you think in terms of multiple dimensions. This particular Doorway appeared to be just a hollow tree. I thought it might be safe to hide the Horn there. So I opened the Doorway".
   "And what did you find there?"
   "Initially, nothing much. A great heap of stones was completely blocking the other side. But I sensed that something, or someone, was there. And at that same moment it sensed me. A picture formed in my brain of a monstrous being, something like an enormous gorilla, but with a face like no creature of this world, ferociously shaking the bars of a cage. And its voice was yelling at me. "Let me out!" it shouted, "Let me out!" And it knew I had the power to release it, and I knew that was what must be prevented at all costs.
   "It was so overwhelming that I utterly lost control of my mind. I collapsed. I've no idea what happened next. When I recovered consciousness, I found myself lying on the grass in a strange park I'd never seem before. A well-meaning passer-by asked me if I was all right, and helped me to my feet. I was so weak I could hardly stand. And the Horn of Plenty was gone.
   "What had happened? Had I dropped it somewhere? Worst of all, had I perhaps left it beyond the Doorway, where that ..... that THING ...... could get hold of it?

"What am I going to do now?"

Puzzles

I came away from the auction with a small box of Chinese bric-a-brac, which I had bid for because I liked the look of a piece of jade which formed one of the items. When I got it home, however, the jade turned out on closer inspection to be obviously modern, and not even very good quality at that; and I was relieved I hadn’t bid more. 
   Most of the other items in the box were frankly rubbish, but one or two attracted a second glance, if only to try to convince myself that my money hadn‘t been completely wasted. There was a carving in dark wood, beneath a glass dome smaller than a child’s fist, consisting of a man in a robe seated at a table. There was a teapot and a cup detached from the main carving and lying loose: probably the carving had been broken, but somehow it reminded me of those cheap little toys where you have to manoeuvre ball-bearings through a maze, or into slots in a picture. I even attempted to shake the dome to get these objects back onto the table, but failed miserably and gave up after a few goes. 
   At the bottom of the box was a medallion the size of a coin, on a chain. There were characters I couldn’t read on one side of it, and it surprised me, because I didn’t think it was the sort of thing the Chinese went in for. I suspected it wasn’t really Chinese at all, and I certainly didn’t find it at all attractive, but in an idle moment I hung it round my neck.
   For some reason, I suddenly felt an overwhelming desire to return to the game, or whatever it was, under the glass dome. I shook it, and it took very little time or effort to get the cup and teapot into their right places on the table; but somehow they weren’t tiny any more: the whole carving had expanded until it was life-size, and I was right there beside it, watching. And the man in the robe was alive and moving. I watched as he poured himself a cup of tea, and then picked it up to drink it. And I realised that he mustn’t drink it, because the tea was poisoned; and I tried to shout at him not to, but no sound came out.The poison must have been very potent, because he collapsed almost immediately. And he realised what had happened to him, because he was able to lift his head from the table to look directly up at me, and his look said,
“YOU DID IT!”

Fear

I found myself on the outskirts of a large burial-ground. The light was murky. Some distance away, with her back to me, a young girl in a red dress was laying flowers on a grave. Closer to me, but somehow much less distinct, was another figure, who seemed to be a woman in beige, who was watching the girl. I was seized with a terrible fear that they would notice me and turn round, and I would find they had the faces of werewolves; or even worse, they would have no faces at all. I decided to tiptoe quietly away. The figures did not move, and I realised the scene was only a picture. But then I discovered I could not move either, and that I was part of the picture too.

The Grail

When I heard a rumour that one of the knights who undertook the quest for the Holy Grail was still living, I felt I could not rest until I had spoken with him. Many had heard the story, but few had any notion of where he lived, and even his name seemed to be in dispute. It was only after many tedious journeyings I discovered him. His name was Bors, and he lived a solitary hermit in a desolate forest. He was now an extremely old man, and it was immediately clear that for many years he had cared nothing for his appearance or the condition of his clothes. For a long time he met my queries with immovable silence, but at length, either out of pity or wearied by my endless importunities, he began to talk, like one who had almost forgotten the use of his mother-tongue or the sound of his own voice.

He began to tell the long story of how the company of knights set forth to find the Grail, through dark and trackless forests and over perilous mountains, how they battled monsters and giants, how they endured endless traps and temptations laid before them by devils, how the faint-hearted abandoned the quest as one year followed another, though the valiant few pressed onwards, sustained by the vision ……  But all these stories I had already heard, so I cut short his account with impatient questions.

What did your companions propose to do with the Grail when they found it? This question for the first time appeared to animate him.

- You do not DO anything with the Grail. It is not for USE. The Grail IS, and always will be: that is all. It exists, beyond all time and all space. Nothing more is required. He who has seen the Grail has beheld all the secrets of the universe: of life, of death, and of the life to come.

And these secrets are?

- They cannot be expressed in words.

I felt that little was being learnt, so I moved to a new line of questioning.

How did you find it?

- Not through any effort or merit of ours. The Grail is not to be ferreted out or dug for, like some sack of buried gold. It may permit itself to be found. Only one who is wholly without sin can find the Grail. He must not only be pure and undefiled in his actions, but in his words too, and even in his thoughts. As a sinful man, I could not come near it, but as an act of grace far beyond my deserts, I was permitted to glimpse it, from a distance, for an instant. That momentary vision I have held in my mind ever since, and I desire nothing but to continue to meditate upon it.

What did the Grail look like?

- It is beyond any description.

But it must have had a shape: a colour?

- It has all colours, many of which human eyes cannot perceive, and at the same time it has no colour. It is not confined in a single fixed shape, as mortal objects are: it embodies in itself all the shapes that ever are, or were, or could be.

By this time, I was beginning to wonder whether my journey had been wasted. Either he was simply a fraud, or he was a deluded old man lost in a dense fog of impenetrable mysticism, and unable to convey any useful information. In anger I said, I do not believe you found the Grail at all: in fact, I begin to doubt whether the Grail even exists.

- No matter, he said, for I know I saw the Grail. That is sufficient. I am at peace.

My Grandmother's Clock

It sits on my mantelpiece
My grandmother's clock
And I should very much like
To ask the clock what it knows
Of my grandmother and her time.

But we all know that it's a mere
Affectation of literature
To ask a clock what it knows
For the face of the clock is eyeless
The hands of the clock do not feel
It tells the hours unknowing
And it speaks, but says nothing but "tick"
And although it stopped when she died
(At a great age, in her own home)
This fact is wholly without
Any metaphysical cause
(There was no-one to wind it up)

So it sits on my mantelpiece
My grandmother's clock
And a hundred years from now
It will sit on someone else's
And its eyeless face will look on
A world I shall never see
And its unfeeling hands will tell
Hours I can never know

And still it says nothing but "tick".

A Fancy-Dress Party

No, I won’t be coming to your Christmas party. It’s nothing to do with you, of course; and you know I’m not a Scrooge person. I like Christmas. No, it’s just that you specified it was going to be fancy dress; and you see, there’s just no way I could ever go to a fancy dress party. They terrify me; especially at Christmas. If you’ve got a moment, I’ll explain why, and I hope you’ll understand.

Do you remember when I used to teach at the school in Oldbury? And then I left quite suddenly, and I didn’t tell anyone why. I expect you assumed I’d got into some kind of trouble; but I hadn’t; and it’s all connected with why I won’t come to your party this Christmas. I’ve never told anyone about this before.

You see, one of the traditions at Oldbury school was that on the last day of term in December, when we’d broken up and all the boys had gone home, we had a final staff meeting where we all wore fancy dress and the headmaster gave out various silly prizes for how good our costumes were. And of course the boys got to know about it, and so another tradition was that some boys would always try to gatecrash our little do, dressed up of course so we wouldn’t recognise them. And I believe it was a matter of great prestige if any of them got through the meeting without being discovered.

So at this particular occasion we all trickled into the staff room in a variety of costumes, mostly home-made but a few hired for the occasion, and we looked around at each other wondering if there were any of the boys present. What about the person in the gorilla suit? Or the one rather feebly got up as a ghost, with eye-holes cut in an old bed sheet? Or the one dressed for a Venetian carnival, complete with swirling cloak, tricorn hat, rapier, and one of those black and white masks with a huge nose? Then Henry came in.

Now Henry had only joined us in September: just a temporary appointment to cover an unexpected vacancy. He was a strange, secretive sort of fellow, who kept himself very much to himself and none of us really got to know him at all. He lived in cheap lodgings near the school, and never appeared at the pub or at any social events. Heaven knows what the boys made of him; probably had fantasies that he was a wanted criminal in hiding, or something like that; but he had a very unpredictable temper, so they didn’t  dare tease him too much. For all we knew, they could have been right. I didn’t find out the truth till this time I’m talking about, and very disturbing it was too.

So Henry came into our meeting. He’d attempted fancy dress himself, but he hadn’t been very imaginative, and I recognised him straight away. All he’d done was to wear a kind of nightdress and stick a tea towel on his head and a Saddam Hussain moustache on his face. Nobody would really have taken him for an Arab in a million years: he simply looked ridiculous. And when he came in, he spotted the man in the Venetian mask, and I’d swear he went absolutely white, and swayed as if he was going to faint. I heard him mutter “My God!”, and he literally fled from the room. Now at the time I supposed he’d just suddenly felt ill or something, and then the meeting began and I forgot about him. And the headmaster gave out the silly prizes as usual, and I thought the Venetian man might win something, but he didn’t seem to be there any more. I presumed it must have been one of the boys, who’d skedaddled when he thought he might be unmasked.

In fact, the whole thing slipped from my mind, what with the general relief of term ending, but that evening I got a phone call from Henry’s landlady. I don’t know why she called me, or how she got my number. Would I come round quickly, please: Henry had been taken ill and was in a very bad way. So of course I went, and there he was all in a heap on the floor, though there wasn’t any blood. I only knew basic first aid, but I did what I could until the doctor turned up, and he took one look at Henry and summoned an emergency ambulance to cart him off to hospital: he’d had a heart attack, and it was touch and go whether he’d survive. Actually, the doctor told me that if I hadn’t come on the scene so quick, Henry would be dead. But survive he did; and when I thought he might be well enough to receive visitors I went to see him in hospital, since the poor chap didn’t have anyone else to turn to. The nurse wasn’t particularly keen to let me in. “He’s still very weak”, she said, “and very nervous about the lest little thing. Do take great care that you don’t disturb him”. And I could see what she meant when she opened the curtains around his bed and immediately said, “It’s all right Henry! It’s only me, and I’ve brought Bill from the school to see you. Just you lie back and don’t fret!”

He looked terrible. And when the nurse had gone, the first thing he said to me was, “Did you see him? The man in the mask? Did you see him?”
“Yes”
“Really and truly see him? Because other people don’t, you know. I’m the only one who sees him”
“Yes, I saw him all right. He had a hat, and a long black cloak and a sword”
Henry was quiet for a long time, and then he said, “Well, at least that proves I’m not mad, and I suppose that’s something”. And he told me this absolutely weird story, which normally I wouldn’t have believed for an instant.

“It happened when I was in Venice on holiday”, he said, “and one evening I was in that grand piazza outside St. Mark’s. It was pretty crowded; all sorts of people milling about, with one or two even in the traditional carnival costume, hat and cloak and mask; I assumed as some kind of tourist trap. I went up to one of these to have a close look, but there was a great mass of people swirling around, with the result that I got pushed from behind and bumped into him. And I really can’t describe how scary that was, because it was just like coming up against clothes swinging on a washing line. I mean, I bumped into his cloak and there was nothing inside it, just emptiness. I barged right into him, until my face was up against his mask, and there were no eyes looking out from it, just blackness. I can’t describe how horrible it was. But when I backed off, he moved, and he started to draw his rapier, and I knew he intended to kill me. I fled in panic, and left the city that same night.

“I thought that would be the end of it; and maybe it was only some kind of nightmare, but I found out it wasn’t. Ever since then he’s been following me. I’ve had to keep moving. I don’t know how he travels, or how he finds me; and I think he’s quite slow, because sometimes it’s weeks before he catches up with me. Sometimes I can see him, though not many other people can, and at other times I just sense his presence. It’s taken him since September to find me here, and for a while I even imagined I’d escaped him forever. Then I saw him at that party. I rushed back here to grab my stuff and run, but he somehow followed me and cornered me in my room, and then he drew his sword …….. I think it must have been as insubstantial as he is, because they tell me I had no sign of a wound, but I felt the most awful pain in my chest, and then I didn’t know anything till I woke up in hospital here.
   But I can’t stay here. He’ll know I’m not dead, and he’ll come looking for me again. As soon as I can walk, I’ll have to get out or here and find somewhere else to hide - though sometimes I wonder what the point is; he’s bound to get me in the end; I might as well let him do it now”.

Henry’s voice began to rise in despair. “It’s all so unfair! What did I ever do to him? I didn’t bump into him on purpose. And he won’t even let me apologise. What can I do? What can I do?”

At this stage the nurse, overhearing Henry’s sobs, came in and told me I’d better leave. I suppose she gave him some kind of sedative. Anyway, I came home. And that was the last I ever saw of Henry, because the next day my wife and I had to go away somewhere, and by the time we got back Henry had discharged himself from hospital and disappeared. He never contacted any of us again. I often wonder what happened to him. Is he still alive? Did the masked man finally get him? Or was he actually paranoid, with the masked figure just some stupid 6th-former showing off, and the rest of the story just a product of Henry’s diseased imagination? That would be the most rational explanation, of course, and I’d like to believe it.

Now you might say; that’s all very well, but so what? What’s that got to do with refusing to come to a Christmas party? Well, I’d have to admit, I’m still scared. Henry said you’d generally sense the man rather than actually see him; and once or twice I fancy I’ve sensed him. I’m not going to describe it, but it wasn‘t a pleasant feeling at all, I can tell you. You’ll say it’s just my own imagination being too active, but there you are: I thought I could sense his presence. At such times, I wonder if he blames me for saving Henry’s life, so I’m next on his list, or whether he’s lost track of Henry and thinks I can lead him to him. Afterwards I can try to laugh it all off, because I’ve never actually seen him and nothing nasty’s happened so far. But suppose I do actually see him: what then? And if at your party someone comes in Venetian costume, I think it would be my turn for a heart attack. So I hope you’ll understand why I’m staying at home.

Pagan Philosophy

A poem about the Caucasus, with reference to recent events there

The people are like their mountains
beautiful, wild, untameable,
hard, crushing any weakness,
implacable in revenge on outsiders
who show them no respect

Silly people in the cities
may speak of dying for a cause
but a serious man knows
that for your cause to triumph
you must kill

In the end we all die.
What matters is how we die
and what better way to die
than in defence of your home
surrounded by the bodies of your enemies?

The only true immortality
is to live in legend
when your children's children
tell stories of your mighty deeds.

The mountains and their people
once inspired Pushkin and Lermontov and Tolstoy
and now they inspire Vladimir Putin
- a serious man.

pgs