The Journey to Eternity · A Philosophical Novel by Nurit Rozenblat

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Chapter Six — The Place I Had Not Been

The four sounds continued to echo within me.

Three short ones and one long.

They were not heard in my ears, and yet they were clearer than any sound I had ever heard. I tried to listen to them again, but the more I strained, the weaker they became.

At last I let them go.

Only then did I notice the place to which I had arrived.

A wide valley spread before me, surrounded by soft hills whose color changed from green to blue according to the angle from which I observed them. Tall trees grew along a clear river, and on their branches were thin leaves that moved in a wind I did not feel.

The light was soft, almost golden, but I could not find the sun.

I looked up.

In the bright sky hovered a moon almost completely transparent. I could see the clouds pass through it, as if it were not a solid body but only a memory of a form.

I tried to rise in order to approach it, but the higher I climbed, the further the hills receded beneath me, while the moon remained at exactly the same distance.

I stopped.

Perhaps distance here does not work as I knew it.

I looked at the valley again.

For the first time since I left the grove, I felt like walking.

I could reach any place by thought, and I could fly, but I wanted to discover what lies beyond the next bend without seeing it in advance.

I descended to the ground.

My feet touched the soft grass. I did not feel my weight resting on them, but I could sense the delicate texture of the leaves.

I folded my wings, and they vanished behind my back.

I began to walk.

⸻

The path passed between trees with pale, almost pearly trunks. On their branches grew small flowers that resembled closed bells.

When I approached one of them, it opened.

Within it appeared a blue light.

I recoiled slightly.

The flower closed.

I approached again, and it opened anew.

I smiled.

I continued along the branch, and everywhere I stopped another flower opened, once in a pink light, once in gold and once in deep green.

Within a few moments the whole tree looked as if hundreds of small lamps had been lit upon it.

I wanted to see them all open together.

I imagined the branches covered with glowing flowers.

Nothing happened.

I tried again, this time concentrating with all my strength.

The tree remained as it was.

And then a small flower I had not noticed before opened, as if by a decision of its own.

I laughed.

Since I had bitten into the fruit I had discovered I was able to change the form of my appearance, to create wings and to pass from place to place without effort. For moments it seemed to me that everything could respond to my thought.

But this tree existed without me as well.

The flowers opened in their own way, and not when I commanded them.

I was glad to discover there are still things that do not depend on me.

⸻

The path led to the river.

The water was so clear that I could see the small stones on its bed. Between them moved tiny transparent creatures, with tails that looked like threads of light.

I bent down to look at them.

One of the creatures stopped before me, turned slowly, as if it too were examining me, and then vanished among the stones.

I looked at the current.

Something in the water's movement looked strange.

Small leaves drifted to the right, but thin branches moved precisely to the left.

At first I thought there were two different currents. But then I saw a single leaf move right and left at one and the same time.

I followed it with my gaze.

I could not understand how that was possible.

I extended a hand to the water. It was pleasant to the touch, neither cold nor warm.

On the other bank grew low trees with copper-colored fruit. Behind them rose hills, and on one of them I noticed a small structure that resembled a house without a roof.

I wanted to reach it.

I entered the water.

It wrapped my feet and my knees, but I felt no resistance of a current.

In the middle of the river I noticed a shadow moving on the bank.

It passed between the trees as if someone were walking there.

I raised my gaze.

I saw no one.

The shadow continued to move, lengthened, and then vanished behind a wide trunk.

I stood in the water another moment, trying to understand what I had seen.

It was strange to notice a shadow without finding the thing that casts it.

I continued to the other bank.

Beyond the river's bend I heard a gentle sound of falling water.

I followed it.

⸻

The lake was revealed before me almost all at once.

It was round, surrounded by tall trees and pale, smooth stones. Its surface was so still that it looked like a dark mirror placed within the valley.

I approached its edge.

I expected to see the sky reflected in the water.

Instead I saw a room.

I stopped.

The room was simple. Pale walls, an open window, a white curtain moving in the wind, and a wooden table on which a book had been placed.

I looked behind me.

The valley was still there.

I raised my gaze.

Above me were the bright sky and the transparent moon.

I looked at the water again.

The room had not changed.

I knelt on my knees.

I extended a hand to the lake's surface.

The moment my fingers touched it, the image came closer.

I could see the book's pages.

They were open, but the writing on them was not clear. Every time I tried to focus on a particular word, the letters changed.

I moved my hand.

The image receded.

I tried again, with a slower movement.

The room came closer.

I understood I could change the distance from which I see it.

I moved my hand to the side.

The image changed.

In place of the room appeared a wide seashore, pale sand and dark rocks standing within the water. The waves moved with a strange slowness, as if time there runs differently.

I moved my hand again.

The shore vanished.

In its place appeared a garden.

Tall trees, a stone path and white flowers.

At the end of the path stood a woman.

She was far away, and her back was turned to me.

I came closer to the water's surface.

The woman began to turn.

I felt an intense curiosity.

I wanted to see her face.

But precisely when she began to turn her head, the image blurred.

"Wait," I whispered.

The water blackened.

The woman vanished.

I remained looking at the empty lake.

I did not know who she was.

Nor did I know why I wanted so much to see her face.

Perhaps because the garden looked familiar.

And perhaps only because the figure vanished before I managed to understand what I was seeing.

⸻

I sat on one of the stones.

The lake was still.

I thought about the room, the shore and the garden.

It did not seem that the lake reflected the valley around it. It showed other places, but I did not know whether they were far, near, or existing in a way I was not yet able to understand.

I recalled the sensation I had experienced when I passed through the layer of light and left the grove behind me.

Then I had felt that I was not passing through a barrier, but ceasing to ignore something that had been there all along.

Perhaps here too.

Perhaps the water does not create these places.

Perhaps it only makes it possible to see them.

I looked at the lake again.

I tried to recall the first room.

The open window.

The white curtain.

The book on the table.

I extended a hand to the water, but this time dozens of small images appeared in it, side by side.

They changed rapidly.

I saw snow-covered mountains, a red desert, a lit city, trees that grew out of water and a round structure that looked suspended in the sky.

I did not manage to focus on any of them.

The images vanished.

I recoiled backward.

I felt as if the lake was showing me too many things at once.

I closed my eyes.

I stopped trying to see.

I only listened.

And then I heard them.

Three short sounds.

And one long.

⸻

I opened my eyes.

The lake was still.

The sounds did not come from it.

They appeared within me, exactly as they had appeared in the expanse of consciousnesses.

I listened.

This time I did not try to recall from where I know them.

I only let them be heard.

Three short ones.

And one long.

I tried to repeat the sequence.

I managed to create the first three sounds.

When I reached the fourth, it stopped again.

I tried once more.

The same result.

I did not understand why I am able to hear it, but not to create it myself.

And then I recalled the great melody I had heard before, and the way each consciousness added its own sound to it.

Perhaps I do not need to try to reconstruct the sound.

Perhaps I need to listen to it.

I closed my eyes again.

I let my thoughts grow calm.

I did not try to produce anything.

I only waited.

After some time the sequence appeared again.

Three short sounds.

This time, when the fourth came, I did not try to repeat it.

I let it continue.

It widened within me, deep and clear, until I felt as if it does not end at a particular point.

And then something changed.

The lake began to glow.

⸻

At first a small circle of light appeared at its center.

It widened slowly, until it reached almost to the water's edge.

Within it the image of the room appeared again.

The open window.

The white curtain.

The table and the book.

This time the image was stable.

I approached carefully.

The curtain moved in the wind.

I could see the changing shadows on the wall and the book's pages lifting slightly at their edges.

The room looked so real that I almost expected to hear the wind.

I extended a hand.

My fingers touched the light.

I did not feel water.

I did not feel cold or heat.

My hand vanished into the image.

I stopped.

I looked at my arm.

Up to the wrist it was still before me, but the fingers were no longer visible.

I drew my hand back.

It appeared again in its entirety.

I looked at the lake in amazement.

I tried once more.

This time I inserted my whole hand.

There was no resistance.

I felt I was touching something, but I did not know how to define what. It was not a sensation of passing through a liquid, nor of passing through air.

As if the boundary between the place where I stood and the room I saw had become so thin that it was no longer clear where one of them ends and the other begins.

I took my hand out.

I looked at the room.

I did not know whether I could enter it.

Nor did I know whether it exists as I see it.

Perhaps it is an image of a distant place.

Perhaps a memory.

Perhaps a possibility.

I recalled the words of the Entity of Possibility, about things that continue to exist in ways I do not know.

For a moment I wondered whether I stood before one of those ways.

But I had no proof of that.

Only a still lake, a room I had never seen, and four sounds whose origin I did not know.

⸻

I stood up.

I looked around me once more.

The valley was beautiful.

I could continue walking in it, exploring the strange river, the lit trees and the shadows that moved with no one to cast them.

I knew there were many more things to discover there.

But something in the room beyond the water drew me.

I felt no fear.

Nor was there in me a feeling that someone was calling me.

I simply wanted to know what is there.

I spread my wings.

They appeared behind my back, silver and wide.

I approached the lake's edge.

The curtain still moved.

The book's pages still lifted slightly.

Everything looked so ordinary.

Precisely that ordinariness intrigued me more than all the strange things I had seen in the valley.

I extended a hand.

The light wrapped my fingers.

This time I did not draw it back.

I inserted my whole arm.

And then I advanced.

I did not feel that I was entering water.

I felt the expanse around me change its form.

The trees vanished from my field of vision.

The lake receded, or perhaps I receded from it.

For a moment I saw the room from all directions at one and the same time — the window from outside and from inside, the table from above and from below, the book open and closed.

The image was so strange that I could not determine what I was seeing first.

And then everything settled.

I stood inside the room.

My wings had vanished.

Before me was the open window.

The white curtain moved in the wind.

On the table lay the book.

I approached it.

This time the letters on the pages were clear.

They were written in a language I knew.

I extended a hand to the book.

Before I managed to touch it, a gentle sound of a door opening was heard behind me.

I turned around.

The door was half open.

Beyond it stood a long corridor.

And at its far end I noticed a woman.

She stood with her back turned to me, exactly like the figure I had seen earlier within the lake.

I did not move.

The woman began to turn.

For a moment I thought I would finally see her face.

But then the four sounds were heard again.

Three short ones.

And one long.

The woman stopped.

So did I.

The last sound continued to echo in the room, though I saw nothing that could have created it.

And then the woman turned her head slightly, as if she too were trying to understand from where the sound had come.

She looked toward me.

I could not see her face clearly, but I had a strange feeling I had once stood before that gaze.

The woman said nothing.

For a long moment we looked at one another.

And then she extended her hand toward one of the doors in the corridor.

The door opened by itself.

Behind it a soft light was revealed, and within it I saw something I did not expect to see.

The same room in which I stood.

The same window.

The same white curtain.

The same open book on the table.

Only one thing was different.

In the room beyond the door stood a woman beside the table.

She was dressed exactly like me.

And when she raised her head, I saw my face.

End of Chapter Six

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