There emerged from the shadows of the trees a finely clad man, fiddling with his hat as he fluidly sung a song in an Eastern language. He seemed to be returning from a walk in the forest, and carrying with him that mood that one experiences after walking through the woods, quietly contemplating all kinds of matters, in a transient detached mood observing and remarking upon the events of life. The earth had revolved in her fashion to slowly plunge the small town into that gloomiest of seasons, when perpetually cold and cloudy days are interrupted regularly by rainy hours that prevent one from comfortably venturing outside. Orange leaves lay strewn on the damp forest floor, as the trees slowly began to drain color and eventually turned naked.
Herr Satana had of late inhabited warmer climes, where winter had a mere cooling effect, pleasing in its disparity from summer, but not aggravating life in any manner. Fate had effected this sojourn into this smallest of towns in Deutschland, which lay nestled in vast swathes of fir and spruce forest on the south-west border with France. After many a lukewarm season, he now embraced the starkly cold winter with an uncertain desire. Almost imperceptibly, the cold started to warm his body. He would stand outside, letting the wind smother his face, and pretend indifference to it. There was an obvious pleasure he took in it, which stemmed from his easy acclimatisation to the foreign weather. And he was not alone in his appreciation of this season, he saw the natives rejoicing, even revelling in the turn of the clime. He fell into this mood with them, and on such a cold and leisurely day, we meet him returning from a stroll in the forest.
Satana walked down a few lanes, turned a corner, and then began moving down the main avenue to the university library. The main purpose of his stay was the translation of the German books of a certain poet from his country, Herr Jakata, who had lived and produced a substantial amount of poetry and prose in the twenty years of his youth he had spent in Germany. He had obtained a technical education in a Berlin University, his education sponsored by a rich guardian back home. Following up his four years of study with an year of ambitious labor in the automobile industry, he was set to become a successful, rich and esteemed professional. Thereupon he turned around and proceeded to publish articles in technical magazines, and then scholarly accounts of the changing world economy, and sometimes radical interpretations of the Western political landscape.
Unhappy with an almost utter failure to gather favour from the public for his opinions, Jakata had removed himself from Berlin, bought a house with his small inheritance in the small town we now find our protagonist in, and began writing, startlingly for a man of his pedigree, poetry. In the first three years, he established his name by publishing a collection of poems, followed by a collection of short stories, all in German. The literary critics were impressed by these works of elegant erudition and imagination, his words carried an effervescent mixture of cynical humour, poignant tragedy, and eternal romance with life. The lyrical quality to his prose could be perceived by both the plain speaking and the intellectual thinker.
Jakata, inheritor of a rich legacy from his Buddhist lineage, was as yet still unimpressed. Over the next twelve years, he became obsessed with a certain idea. He wanted to describe a hitherto unknown world, which, he claimed, was akin to the Shambhala described in Buddhist legends, in that all the high and holy lived there, but it would have no King, no Democracy, but a lively culture of debate and intrinsic value, an integrated community evolved over millenia into an ideal social fabric. And in this world, he would throw his young protagonist, and show the people on Earth that heavenly world through his eyes.
This idea, first and foremost literary in spirit, turned into an enquiry, into an ever increasing number of anthropomorphic, as well as scientific matters, and it became more and more spiritual as time passed. In a series of short stories, he began to describe the other world. There were only a few readers who cared for them, they were treated as the unimportant writings of a reputed author by the layman, and the literary world almost completely ignored them, calling them convoluted and pompous absurdities.
But Jakata was undeterred, and he persisted in his work, his obsession even increasing. By the time he was forty, he had exhausted himself, he believed he had described everything of his imaginary Shambhala and had nothing more left to give. One fine summer day, he walked out of his home, took a flight to his country, went into a high and remote monastery in the Himalayas, and was never heard of again.
In his house were found three manuscripts, unpublished, which constituted the bulk of his writings on the other world. They found their hands into the literary faculty of the University in the small town, where he had also held a position, who promptly published them. These again went unnoticed, the German audience did not care for an Eastern foreigner talking in alien riddles. There were also found numerous journals, which the faculty did not publish and merely put away on a bookshelf in the library.
Herr Jakata had come to Germany just after the second World War, lived in Europe for two decades, primarily in the quaint German town of NeunGarten, and there he wrote his last words, as far as we shall ever know. It had been five decades since these events, and now at last, a University from his small country had decided to preserve his memory, and began by translating his works into their own language, as well as English. Herr Satana, a young professor who spoke English and German with ease and had translated some works already, was charged with this task.
Presently Satana ambled up the steps of the University Library, a modern building built in the austere minimalistic German style, a four storey complex with a lavish square-shaped hollow in the centre, two wings and two corridors joining them completing the geometry. There were few windows, and most of the light inside was generated from yellow coloured fluorescent lamps. Satana wandered over to the section where Herr Jakata’s diaries lay, there were thirty of them that lay arranged sequentially on the third shelf from the bottom of a rack ( where lay nonfictional works of literature, author names from Jak – Jap ). He grabbed journal number thirteen, and went over to his office.
His office was no more than a section of the library set apart for him. The Librarian had amicably acquiesced to his demand that the right wing of the fourth floor be cordoned off to the rest of the public from 6-12 PM on Mondays and Wednesdays. This was not an exorbitant demand as this section of the library contained a miscellaneous assortment of unpopular books, whose chief characteristic was that they did not fit into any particular category.
For instance, there were compilations of poetry produced by prisoners on death row. There were, also, stories written by the inmates of insane asylums. Amidst all this were also detailed notes taken down by people emerging from complete memory loss. A few shelves contained transcriptions of everyday conversation- books whose pages were littered by the gossip of housemaids, housewives, construction workers, engineers, dentists, and gardeners. There were also some curious technical notebooks describing misguided scientific explorations. Satana had been most intrigued by this queer section of the library. Naturally, Jakata’s diaries also lay in this corner of the library. Satana had requested Fraulein Helen, the young Librarian, to work from there.
He found the twelve hours per week devoted to the task of translation as an ideal balance. Being generously funded has its advantages; Professors don’t need to work hard. A leisurely stay in a foreign country is a tonic for the mind, Satana had concluded long ago; this translation job was close to an ideal sabbatical. Brushing away thoughts of the forest still lingering on in his mind, he took to the task for tonight.
Twelve of Jakata’s journals lay on the far right edge of the table, accompanied by a sister pile containing his own English translations, just reachable by hand. He opened the thirteenth one, written at a time when Jakata was far from even halfway finishing the Shambhala project he had audaciously begun five years earlier. After reading a few pages, he conjured an image of Jakata’s frame of mind at the moment they were written, linked it to all he already knew about the man’s life, held a dull blue pen with his left hand twisted inwards, and began to write in English into a fresh new notebook.
<–
Jan 29, 1955
Ah, yesterday’s interview shall be my last, I think. I swear at one occasion that man, Heinrich, no Herzog I think was his name, was starting to sweat. I don’t know if I did it intentionally, but something inside me spurred me on, and the tape recorder was running, and I let all my secrets slip. ‘You have alluded to yourself as the Prophet of the New Age, that your readers get from you an alchemical experience which turns them on to a hidden music only you can hear. What is the source of this music, could you please elaborate ?’, I found myself thus addressed.
‘A fine question, dear Werner. I am, you see, an unhinged man, and therein lies the source of my magic. I should rephrase. The way I live and perceive reality is at odds with reality itself, consider for a moment, does observing a deceptive bird shaped silhouette in the branch of a tree mean anything to you ? I imagine a sane man would rub his eyes to collapse this hallucination, but I would look at it and believe that a bird with outstretched wings does approach and alight on the branch and fits exactly into the fragile silhouette projected upon my eye, and this happens at a point of time when I may not even be there to observe it !’
‘Oh, if you can believe it, I imagined that one day I would be interviewed by a remarkable man who would ask me the perfect questions, and hasn’t that come true now, Werner ? Let me tell you the truth. I do not consider myself a writer, I do not even consider myself a human being, I believe that I am a ghost, with the power to bend reality through my phantasms, and yet not be affected in any way by reality. A co-creator of the Universe, if you will, who notices subtle rhythms in the chaos of humanity, and amplifies those he prefers, dampens those he despises, and watches all of them dance, all of you, the puppets. Would you deny it, Werner, that you are a puppet, come on now ? Haha, look at you, no, I’m just joking, of course. But, well, I do consider myself to be privileged to have an extra sense, a prophetic eye. I don’t know why they chose me, but they did.’, I answered grandiloquently.
‘They ? Do you mean your readers ? The select few, may I add, for is it not true that your audience is scarcely more than a few thousand ? I myself admire your work, but I can understand why it isn’t mainstream. But still, I am confused, what do you mean when you say that your readers chose you ?’, he asked oh so indulgently. How could I resist ?
‘Well, Werner, you misunderstand. My readers, happy as I am to learn that they even number a few thousand, have not endowed me with the third eye. That has been the work of paranormal forces, a most intriguing aspect of this Universe that few people know of. They operate in a very different way from what popular lore has led us to believe, but traces of them can still be found in the oracles and seers in Eastern and Latin American religions.’
‘I was introduced to them by an old French woman who was an expert in the art of lucid dreaming, had read all the books, had meditated in a cave on the remote south western Portuguese coast for four years to train herself. My first encounter with them was while sleeping on a massive boulder on the rocky shores of the Andalusian Sea. The waves of the sea were rocking me to sleep, and the starry sky turned a golden yellow purple, and two deers with black eyes like rabbit holes flitted across the canvas. Oh I had never seen anything like it. I was still half awake, and turned my body to face the beach, and what do I see with half open eyes ?’, here Herzog began leaning in very close,
‘A tall slender man wearing only a small cloth to cover his groin, holding a staff in his right hand, marching towards me, singing in a sonorous voice, an alien voice that I had never heard before which set my hair on end. The closest I can come to describing it is the Opera, or the Tibetan chants, and even that is a bad approximation.’, Herzog’s face was contorted with a mixture of perplexity and awe, ‘My whole body is gripped by a fear, I know I am in danger, and I try to move, but I can’t ! I am trapped inside my body ! The man is a mere ten feet away from me, when a woman, robed in tribal colors, most reminiscent of American Indians, appears close to my shoulder. She had a fair face, but on her right cheek was a red colored patch, where resided another face ! And she says to me, in a lingering whisper, like words slipping from a snake’s tongue, ‘Don’t Die.’
Herzog stared at me like a little child for a full minute as I puffed on my cigar. Taking pity on him, I continued, ‘And then, I moved, the dream broke, and the beach became devoid of supernatural spirits. The next day, I wrote a letter to the French woman regarding my experience. She wrote back, ‘It was a visit from the grand old lady so and so, you should consider yourself very fortunate. Treat this dream with the highest respect.’ And so I did. I haven’t died now, have I ? Hahaha ! May I live many more years, amen !’ I raised my wine glass, Herzog politely raised his in deference, and we drank.
This was the point of time when Herzog thought it would be best to wrap up the interview and head back home. He made his next few queries delicately, switching to less open ended questions, to which I gave laconic replies, which he found very satisfactory. Eventually, he asked, ‘And finally, when can your readers hope to get their hands on the finished version of the Shambhala project ?’. In a content tone, I replied, ‘Fermentation of wine is a slow process. I would say another ten years, and it’ll be done’. Very well, and that was that. May that interview see the light of day. Or not. Does it matter ?
<–
Helen appeared at Satana’s shoulder, ruffled his hair, bent her head low and whispered in his ear, ‘We’re late for the Opera.’ He turned and kissed her softly, ‘I’m done. Let’s go.’ They went down, grabbed their coats and hats, and walked out arm in arm to the Nazi theatre in the center of Neungarten. A red banner on the front of the facade announced the name of the opera, ‘Mein Sehnen Mein Wähnen’.
They climbed up the stairs, went through the tall oak doors, and took their seats next to each other. But for the chasm of the aisle, there was nothing separating them. Herr Satana felt a sudden subconscious impulse to check whether this was a dream, he looked around and took in the fine details, no it wasn’t. Ah must we ever die ?, he mused. The voices of the actors and the orchestra music in the background smoothly guided his inner monologue, and it struck him, he had forgotten the feeling of being lost. Too much education, too many books, too much conversation, too much travel, it had ruined the magic. What he wouldn’t give to become ignorant again.
He got up in the middle of the Opera, and started walking towards the exit. A few heads turned, it was dark, Helen was absorbed, he quickly pulled himself out into the open air. Something was stifling him from within, the world had become too concrete, the kingdom of dreams had faded away. Jakata was a ramblin mystic, this was the real world, too inert, too well ordered, too grim. He felt his lifeforce seeping through him, was it happening, oh yes it was, he emerged as a phantom from his body and rose high into the sky, turned around and looked at himself, a mere puppet.
