The Journey to Eternity · A serialized book by Nurit Rozenblat
↑ Book index · עברית · ← Chapter Fourteen — The Memory That Is Not Mine · Chapter Sixteen — Two Women, One Life →
Chapter Fifteen — The Library of Forgotten Things
For a long time I sat facing the window.
The city went on existing around me. Lights moved between the branches, consciousnesses passed by the balconies, and in the distance a quiet melody could be heard. I did not know who was playing it, or whether there was any instrument there at all.
I thought about the face I had seen in the empty window.
My face.
Not as I had imagined it after I left my body, but as it had been in the human world, with the fine wrinkles around the eyes and the familiar expression of a woman trying to understand something that did not add up for her.
Her words would not leave me alone.
You remember what happened to me.
I tried to recall the moment I bit into the fruit.
The sweet taste, the warmth spreading through me, the feeling that the ground was receding from me. I had seen my body remain beside the tree, still and motionless.
I was sure I had seen it from outside.
But had I checked whether it was still alive?
No.
Had I known what was happening inside it?
I had not.
I had assumed it had been left empty because I was no longer in it.
Now I was not even sure of that.
I rose from the chair.
I decided to go back to the tree.
I found Liara in a small garden behind one of the towers. She was standing by a pool in which white flowers opened and closed in a slow rhythm.
"I need to reach my body," I said.
She did not ask why.
"Did something happen?"
I told her about the window, about the face, and about the words I had not heard with my ears and yet had understood.
Liara listened intently.
"Do you think someone entered your body?"
"I don't know what to think. But I want to check."
She looked at me for a while.
"We can go back to the tree. Before that, I want you to see something."
"What?"
"A place where testimonies about transitions between body and consciousness are kept. Perhaps we will find a description there of a similar case."
"Where is this place?"
"At the edge of the city. It is called the Library of Forgotten Things."
The name stirred a strange feeling in me.
"How can something forgotten be kept?"
"Sometimes it is forgotten only by the one who experienced it."
The library stood where the houses ended and thick, bare branches began.
It did not look like a library.
From outside it looked like a round building of pale stone, with no windows, a single narrow opening leading into it. Above the entrance were carved signs I did not recognize. Some of them changed while I was looking at them.
Inside the building there was a deep silence.
There were no shelves laden with books and no reading tables. Instead, thousands of thin pillars rose from the floor, and each one carried at its tip a drop of light.
The pillars stretched to a distance I could not estimate.
Quiet figures moved between them.
One of them approached us.
She looked like a very old woman, with a long face and white hair gathered behind her head. Her eyes were dark, almost black, and tiny points of light moved within them.
"Liara," she said. "It has been a long time."
"Hello, Nema."
The woman looked at me.
"Is this the new guest from the human world?"
"Yes. She is looking for testimonies about a separation between body and consciousness."
Nema was in no hurry to answer.
"Most who come here are looking for what they lost," she said at last. "Few are willing to discover that the thing they lost is not what they thought."
I looked at her.
"I prefer to know."
She smiled faintly.
"Everyone says that at the entrance."
Nema led us between the pillars.
As we advanced, I noticed that every drop of light was different. Some blazed with intensity, others were almost entirely dark. In one of them I saw a movement of water. In another, the face of a being I did not know appeared for a moment.
"Are these memories?" I asked.
"Some of them. Others are descriptions, testimonies, thoughts given over for preservation, and sometimes only the speculations of one who tried to understand an event."
"How does one know what is true?"
"We try not to confuse the different things."
She stopped beside a pillar on which rested a blue drop.
"Look."
I saw a young man standing on the bank of a river. He bent down, picked up a stone and threw it into the water.
The vision vanished.
"What did you see?" asked Nema.
I told her.
She touched the neighboring pillar.
This time I saw the same river, but the man stood at a distance and picked up nothing.
"Two testimonies about the same moment," she said. "One is the man's, the other that of the one who watched him."
"Perhaps one of them did not pay attention."
"Possibly. But both were certain of their memory."
She went on walking.
"Here we do not decide which memory is real merely because it is clearer. Sometimes the clearest memory of all is precisely the one that has undergone the greatest number of changes."
I thought of my dream.
Of the silver leaf.
Of the face that had appeared behind the window.
Everything was astonishingly clear.
And suddenly clarity itself looked suspicious to me.
We reached an area where the pillars were wider and darker.
"Here testimonies about transitions between forms of existence are kept," said Nema.
She pointed to a drop the color of amber.
Inside it I saw a woman lying on a stone surface. Above her hovered a transparent figure, very similar to her.
For a moment I thought I was looking at myself.
But her face was different.
The transparent figure moved away from the body.
The body remained motionless.
After some time, its eyes opened.
I recoiled.
The woman rose slowly and sat up.
"Who woke up inside her?" I asked.
"That is the question for which this testimony is kept here."
Nema touched the pillar.
Signs appeared around the drop, and Liara explained their meaning to me.
The woman who had returned to consciousness claimed she was the same woman she had been before the transition. But the consciousness that had separated from her claimed that she, too, was the same woman.
Both of them remembered the same past.
Both of them recognized the same people.
Both of them felt that the lives preceding the separation belonged to them.
"What happened to them?" I asked.
"They tried to understand each other over many years."
"And which of them was the real one?"
Nema looked at me.
"Does the fact that one of them continued in the body make her more real?"
I did not answer.
"And if both of them had the same memories up to the moment of separation," she continued, "perhaps the question is not which of them is real, but how two different consciousnesses can continue from a shared past."
I felt her words unsettle something deep inside me.
All my life I had thought there was only one me.
Even when I had changed my mind, even when I had undergone experiences that changed me, I still felt I was the same woman.
But if a consciousness can separate from a body, and the body can go on living with another consciousness that carries the same memories, which of them would be me?
"Does this happen often?"
"No," replied Nema. "And the testimonies are not enough to determine what happened in each case. Some describe a division, others describe a copying of memories. There are also cases that later turned out to be a deception."
I looked again at the woman who had woken.
She looked terrified.
There was nothing threatening about her.
She had simply opened her eyes in a world she knew, without knowing that someone else was claiming the same life.
Suddenly I thought of my children.
If I returned to them, and they met two women who remembered raising them, which of them would be their mother?
I could not bear the thought.
Nema led us to a small room at the side of the library.
At its center stood a round table, and on it rested a transparent bowl containing white light.
"I want to check whether there is a testimony connected to your transition," she said.
I looked at Liara.
"Is it safe?"
"She will not enter your thoughts," she replied. "The check will be done only according to what you choose to give over."
Nema placed her hand above the bowl.
"I need one detail that you remember clearly from the moment you parted from your body."
I thought of the fruit.
Of its taste.
Of the moment I saw myself lying beside the tree.
"I saw my hand resting on the ground," I said. "There was a piece of golden bark on it."
The light in the bowl moved.
Small circles appeared within it, expanding and disappearing.
Nema watched them.
"There is a testimony about a separation that took place beside the Tree of Eternity. It is very new."
"Mine?"
"Possibly."
She touched the bowl.
Before my eyes the tree appeared.
I knew every detail of it.
The immense roots.
The light moving between the leaves.
The place where my body had lain.
I came closer.
I saw myself.
My eyes were closed, my hair was spread over the ground, and my right hand rested beside a bitten fruit.
I felt as if time had stopped.
This was the first time I had seen my body since I left it.
But something was different.
My chest was moving.
At first I thought the vision was deceiving me.
I focused.
I saw it again.
A small movement.
A breath.
"She is alive," I whispered.
Liara came closer to me.
Nema did not answer.
The vision continued.
Time passed that I could not measure.
And then my fingers moved.
Not much.
Only a slight movement, almost imperceptible.
But I saw it.
"That is my body," I said. "It is still alive."
Nema looked at the signs appearing around the bowl.
"The testimony was created from an observation of the place. It does not describe what is happening inside the body."
"But it is breathing."
"Yes."
I felt an immense relief, and immediately after it, fear.
If my body was alive, why had I not felt it?
And if it went on living without me, was there someone in it?
I asked to see the rest of the testimony.
Nema hesitated.
"There is a part that does not open in the usual way."
"What do you mean?"
"Someone restricted access to it."
I looked at her.
"Who?"
"There is no name here."
The light in the bowl changed.
For a moment a sign appeared on its surface.
A silver leaf.
A thin line crossing it in two.
Liara recoiled.
"That sign..."
"I know it," I said.
Nema came closer to the bowl.
"Interesting."
She passed her hand over the light.
The sign disappeared.
"The restriction is not new," she said. "It is connected to a very ancient system of preserving testimonies."
"But my testimony is new."
"True."
We were silent.
And then I understood.
"Someone knew in advance that my transition would take place."
Nema did not confirm my words.
"That is one possibility. Another possibility is that an old mechanism identifies transitions of a certain kind and restricts them automatically."
I looked at the bowl.
I wanted to know who stood behind the sign.
I wanted to know whether someone had planned my journey even before I was born.
And most of all I wanted to know what was happening now in my body.
"I am going back to the tree," I said.
Nema did not try to stop me.
But before we left she asked me to wait.
She went to one of the walls and touched a small point I had not noticed before.
The wall opened.
Behind it was a narrow room with a small number of pillars.
They looked different from the others.
The light within them was weak, almost extinguished.
"These are testimonies that were separated from the general collection," she said.
"Why?"
"Because at some point it became clear that viewing them might change the memories of whoever looks at them."
She led us to one pillar.
Inside it a room with two windows could be seen.
I stopped.
I knew it.
"This is the room I saw in the dream."
Nema looked at me.
"This room appears in many testimonies from an ancient time."
I came closer.
There were two windows in it.
Outside one of them a black sea could be seen.
The second was empty.
Two figures stood on the floor.
I could not see their faces.
One of them was holding a silver leaf.
She held it out to the other.
The vision changed.
Now the second figure was holding the leaf.
She held it back.
And then it changed again.
The two figures stood facing each other, but the leaf was in neither of their hands.
It hovered between them.
"Are these three different testimonies?" I asked.
"No," replied Nema.
I looked at her.
"This is one testimony."
I felt a chill.
"How can one testimony show three different things?"
"Because it does not preserve an event as seen from outside. It preserves an experience that was passed between consciousnesses."
Liara came closer.
"You mean they shared a memory?"
Nema nodded.
"Before the great attempts to unite consciousnesses began, there were smaller attempts to share experiences. At times the connection was so deep that the consciousnesses could no longer distinguish which of them had experienced the event first."
I looked at the room.
Suddenly I understood why my memories and Eliya's did not match.
Perhaps both of us remembered the same moment.
But not necessarily from the same point of view.
And perhaps we were not even the two figures we had seen.
"Who gave this testimony?" I asked.
Nema was silent.
She looked at the signs at the base of the pillar.
"That is the troubling part."
I felt the tension rising.
"What is written there?"
"The testimony was given by three consciousnesses."
I thought of the third shadow I had seen in the dream.
"Who was the third?"
Nema shook her head.
"Her name was removed from the record."
I looked at the room again.
The two figures stood facing each other.
The silver leaf hovered between them.
And then a movement appeared behind the empty window.
A third figure.
She did not enter the room.
She stood beyond the window, in a place I could not see.
But this time I noticed something I had not seen before.
The third figure was not holding the leaf.
She was holding something else.
A small key.
Not a metal key as I knew from the human world, but a thin form of light, with three arms.
The figure raised it.
At the moment she did so, the two figures in the room froze.
The silver leaf fell to the floor.
And the empty window filled with light.
For a moment I heard a voice.
If you remember everything, you will become one again.
The vision vanished.
I remained standing before the pillar.
"What was that?" I whispered.
Nema looked troubled.
"I did not hear the words."
I repeated them.
Liara looked at me.
"That sounds like a warning."
"Or a threat," I said.
Nema touched the pillar once more, but the light within it went out.
"The testimony has closed."
"Who closed it?"
"I don't know."
For the first time since we entered the library, I saw fear in her eyes.
We left the narrow room.
Nema closed the wall behind us and led us back to the main hall.
"I ask that you not try to reconstruct this vision on your own," she said.
"Why?"
"Because we do not know whether the voice you heard belongs to the original testimony or to something trying to reach you through it."
I looked at her.
"Do you think someone is using memories to influence me?"
"I think it is a possibility we must take into account."
Liara looked lost in thought.
"And what about her body?"
Nema looked at me.
"The testimony shows that it is still alive. But to know what is happening in it, you will have to reach it."
I felt that the decision had already been made inside me.
"Then I am going."
Nema nodded.
"Before you leave, there is one thing I want you to understand."
She pointed to the thousands of pillars filling the library.
"For a long time consciousnesses came here believing that if they found the right memory, they would discover who they truly are. But identity is not only what was. It is also what is done after we know."
I looked at her.
"And if I don't know what was?"
"Then you will have to choose even without knowing everything."
We left the library onto the wide branches of the tree.
The city looked farther away than I remembered.
Perhaps because my thoughts were elsewhere.
Liara stood beside me.
"I will come with you."
I looked at her.
"You don't have to."
"I know."
I smiled faintly.
For a moment I thought of the friendship that had formed between us in such a short time.
It was not based on ancient memories.
Not on promises given before I was born.
Only on the things we had experienced together since I arrived in the city.
And that connection felt no less real than any other connection I had known.
I moved after her.
We passed between immense branches, through layers of light and spaces in which consciousnesses I did not know moved.
The closer we came to the place where the Tree of Eternity stood, the more I began to feel something familiar.
Not a memory.
A pull.
As if part of me was still connected to that place.
And then I saw the tree.
Its roots spread across the ground, its branches rose into a space whose end I could not see, and golden light moved between its leaves.
I approached slowly.
The place where I had lain was exactly as I remembered.
The ground.
The great root.
The bitten fruit.
And my body.
It lay on its side, its face turned slightly toward the tree.
My hair was spread over the ground.
My right hand rested beside the fruit.
I came closer still.
I saw the chest rising and falling.
A breath.
Slow.
But existing.
Liara stood at a distance and did not disturb me.
I knelt beside my body.
I did not really kneel, of course. I no longer had knees or muscles. But my consciousness still knew what that movement looked like, and so I experienced it.
I looked at my face.
It looked peaceful.
There was no fear in it.
No pain.
Only a deep quiet.
I stretched my hand toward my cheek.
I felt no touch.
The hand passed through the skin.
I tried again.
Nothing.
For a moment I felt a sorrow I had not expected.
This was the body that had carried me all my life.
The body that had felt heat and cold, hunger and satiety, fatigue and pleasure.
The body that had embraced my children.
The body through which I had known the world.
And now it lay before me, and I could not even touch it.
"I am here," I whispered.
I did not know whether I was speaking to the body or to myself.
The breathing continued.
I looked at the eyelids.
They trembled slightly.
I came closer.
"Can you hear me?"
Liara took one step forward.
"Be careful. Don't try to enter before we know what is happening."
I nodded.
I remembered the girl I had heard from inside Sahar's artifact.
The way I had answered her without allowing her consciousness to mingle with mine.
I tried to do the same thing.
Not to enter.
Only to listen.
At first I felt nothing.
And then a faint feeling appeared.
Like a distant pulse.
It was not a thought.
Not a voice.
Only a presence.
I focused on it.
For a moment it seemed to me that I could feel the body's heartbeat.
And then, deeper, something else appeared.
Fear.
Not my fear.
A small, confused fear, of one who wakes in a place she does not know.
I drew back a little.
"Liara, there is something there."
She came closer.
"Are you sure?"
"I can feel fear."
Liara looked at the body.
"It may be a reaction of the body itself. There may be a consciousness in it. We do not know yet."
I looked at my face again.
The eyelids trembled.
And then they opened.
I saw my eyes.
The same eyes through which I had looked at the world all my life.
But the gaze in them was different.
It moved around, confused, as if trying to understand where it was.
And then it stopped on me.
I felt the whole space grow still.
My body looked at me.
Not through a memory.
Not from within a testimony.
Here.
Now.
Its lips parted slightly.
The voice that came out of them was faint, hoarse, almost inaudible.
"You..."
I came closer.
"I am here."
The eyes filled with fear.
The body tried to rise, but could not.
And then I heard my human voice say:
"Why did you leave me here?"
I did not know how to answer.
Because for the first time since I left my body, I understood that the separation had not necessarily been the end of something.
It may have been the beginning of two different lives.
And the woman lying before me was not asking who I had been before I was born.
She was asking why I had left her.
I stood before her, without a body, without an answer.
And for the first time since I chose a life of eternity, I was afraid that perhaps, in order to continue my journey, I had left behind someone who had not agreed to part.
End of Chapter Fifteen
↑ Book index · עברית · ← Chapter Fourteen — The Memory That Is Not Mine · Chapter Sixteen — Two Women, One Life →
