Tainaron: Mail From Another City (23 page)

566  

'I thought you already knew,' said the Rhinoceros Beetle, suddenly standing still.

567  

'I do not know anything,' I said, fearing the worst. 'Has something happened to Longhorn?'

568  

I felt like shaking the Rhinoceros Beetle, who remained motionless, but he was too wide. I thought I understood.

569  

'Ah, he is already asleep,' I said, and was very offended. It was not polite to retire for the winter without even saying goodnight.

570  

'He is in his pupal cell,' said the Rhinoceros Beetle, becoming even more massive than before.

571  

This information came as a shock to me. For the sake of the Rhinoceros Beetle, I managed, with difficulty, to restrain myself, for I would have liked to have cursed him: 'Damned longhorn beetle! How dare you!'

572  

The Rhinoceros Beetle left, but I went on standing in the doorway. I should never meet Longhorn again; not the Longhorn who had for so long been my patient guide in this strange city. If he were to return and step before me, I did not know who or what he would then be, or even when it would happen, for everything here has its own time and particular moment, unknown to others.

573  

I should never again be able to turn to him, but when he nevertheless stepped before me, into the place where the Rhinoceros Beetle had just been standing, stood there and began to grow as the dead grow.

574  

Then I saw that I had never known him and that I had never even wanted to know him. And as he grew, he became thinner and more indistinct; his form slipped into the darkness of the stairwell and he no longer had shape or mass.

575  

But his eyes, his eyes remained, and his gaze, which is as black and piercing as it ever was, and as impenetrable. And when I look into the darkness of his eyes they gradually begin to sparkle like double stars, like the planets on which the sun shines and on which there are seas and continents, roads, valleys and waterfalls and great forests where many can live and sing.

576  

Then I went inside and closed the door, a little less sad. For it was, after all, now clear that although I had lived beside him from the beginning to the end, not just one life but two or three, I would never have learned to know him. His outline, which I had once drawn around him, in order to be able to show him and name him, had now disappeared. It liberated the great stranger who was a much realer Longhorn than the person I once knew, small and separate.

577  

Such is my farewell to Longhorn today, date as postmark, in the city of Tainaron.

  
578

Passing bells - the twenty-ninth letter

579  

What a rumbling! Over all of Tainaron it spread, echoing from wall to wall, shaking the window-panes and resonating in my own chest. When I pressed my fingers against the table, I could even feel the sound of the ore bells in my fingertips. And my toes, the soles of my feet, my elbows heard it, for the floor, all the soil of Tainaron quivered and resounded.

580  

The prince had died, and now in all the churches, cathedrals and temples of the city, the many of them that there were, passing bells were being rung. They roared from morning to night as if to restore to the deceased the respect which no one had accorded to him before his death.

581  

'What happened to the prince?' I asked the Rhinoceros Beetle. For the cause of his death had not been divulged on the news.

582  

'Him? He just died,' the Rhinoceros Beetle answered, turning his slow gaze upon me. 'It was high time. He was an old man.'

583  

'But was it not almost too fitting a time?'

584  

I had seen, in the heart tower, what I had seen: the thin, expectant form of the prince, huddled on a simple chair which had been set in the middle of the floor without the company of adjutants or even the most lowly guardsman. His cloak was surrounded, like another cloak, by the aura of his fast approaching end. And it was not a natural end.

585  

'Did it not happen very suddenly?'

586  

'No more suddenly than anything else,' the Rhinoceros Beetle growled, even more dully than usual.

587  

Slow-blooded, simple-minded creature! How could Longhorn ever have imagined that the Rhinoceros Beetle could have replaced him as my guide to Tainaron?

588  

'I should like to know what will happen next,' I said.

589  

'Now power will change hands,' the Rhinoceros Beetle said.

590  

'Yes, of course,' I said impatiently. I knew that, of course, but I wanted to find out what it would mean in practice and what kind of leadership Tainaron would now receive. But as I looked at the Rhinoceros Beetle I realised that it was not worth pursuing the subject. I could already see that nothing could have interested him less.

591  

At that moment he glanced at me askance, and behind the membrane that covered his black eyes there flashed something - like amusement. Was the Rhinoceros Beetle really capable of being amused by something? For a moment I felt I might have been mistaken in regard to him, as if his dullness might veil completely different characteristics which he hid for who knew what reason. I tried to find the light again, but his gaze extinguished, as normal. Perhaps the fleeting impression was caused merely by the lighting or by my own state of mind.

592  

'Will you go to a memorial service in one of the temples? What religion do you belong to?' I found myself asking, for I wished to change the subject, which had proved fruitless.

593  

'Each in turn,' he said. 'Naturally.'

594  

'Each in turn? Surely that is not possible,' I said, stunned. And 'naturally' - surely that was too much.

595  

'Why not?' he said, chewing something in his massive jaws. 'One must be impartial. At the moment I belong to the temple of the highest knowledge. Next month I shall move to - oh, I do not think I can remember the name of the parish.'

596  

'But if where you are now has the highest knowledge, why is it worth moving to another parish?'

597