Awakening

Awakening

He was standing there, silent, petrified, feeling pain that was not strange to him. Pain and punishment. He was begging not to be taken, because he had found himself. He was staring at the key, with broken heart and tearful eyes. It looked as if he wanted to apologize to it.
The entire image, with its sad appearance, started to break off. The wind calmed, everything died down; there was no sign of life. It seemed as if the had been almost forgotten. Hidden words, vague silhouettes, silence.
The warrior was totally terrified. Everything he had on him and within himself was an expression of agony, disapproval, fear, uncertainty. And the passion? ‘Where are you hiding, Judah, why don’t you take your most devoted follower with you now?’ However, the warrior knew that it had been there, but it didn’t want to grant it to him when he needed it the most.
The hand that he had almost forgotten was an object of his observation. He was simply observing it – being completely incapable of doing anything. In fact, he had no wish of doing anything at all. He was aware that that was the way things were; A sign and dogma.
The bloody points of his fingers touched the edges of the prayer-book. How was it possible the pores to know that the prayer-book would open even without a key? Had the centuries told them so? It might have had happened, but the secret was kept by the warrior himself. It was his secret, hidden and taken care of. Kept, not presented to anyone. Yet, prepared and ready.
The eyes of the warrior were left breathless, inexplicable shine broke through the very first words; the unheard music dinned over the pictures that were lying among the pages of the prayer-book. It was as if the eyes managed to swallow the first page they had looked at, and now and then, they had a wish and strength to pull the warrior in and take him there. He was confused again. What was the thing he should do without hurting the prayer-book? What should he do in order to get to know its content the best? What was the thing he should do to turn back the time and appeared as the first follower of that religion? – He didn’t even know what kind of religion it was.
The prayer-book, with all its brightness and primordial appearance had already shown him that his religion was the most silent, the purest and the most sincere one. The warrior knew what kind of person he was. He was aware that his anxiety was always a reflection of something – a battle to survive or to belong to someone.
With the deepest respect known to his soul, the warrior swallowed with his eyes even the smallest traces from the past, united with the paths the prayer-book had passed by. He saw an image. No, it wasn’t an image. It was a piece of the creation. Many mortals, an altar, a breath-taking baldachin; the faces revealed respect and envy. Anticipation. Were the warrior’s eyes witnesses of somebody’s birth, resurrection? It was an introduction to something new, resurrection of something old, a quest for the eternal. What he was thinking of were the many religions and legends he had heard of and felt while fighting all over the worlds. But, as all the others, he also had the right to his own interpretation, and faith-of his own.
The whole image was in a gold framework which had ornaments on its edges, some of them being unknown shields that had belonged to knights who might have been killed or to kingdoms that might have been destroyed. The years were not legible, and the warrior’s intention to find out what was the year the prayer-book dated back, was in vain. However, it was visible that it originated from a kingdom that might have been forgotten, because the symbols and the letters were something that the warrior could not understand.
There appeared the sadness again. What the fear brought him was pain. ‘Why?’-he asked himself. The numerous scars were screaming, and those were the reason why the warrior had been incapable of forgetting his own existence. Yes, the truth was that everything in him had something to say to him. However, he kept on reading.
Each page was a story of its own. There was a picture, framed with precious stones, yet the words were strange to him. The warrior, himself, created a myth about the life of the prayer-book, exclusively by looking at the picture. There were stories about assemblies, sorrows, joyful events, speeches, prayers, desires, opened hands, weak looks, requests, and a lot of believers; in different apparels, telling how the prayer-book was intended for all those who would fall ill. There were mosaics of altars, totems built in sad scenery, sacrifice offerings.
Who was the one who had created the prayer-book that deeply? Where had the first idea about it derived from? Who was the one who had written it and where had he done it; whose had been the hands that had touched it in order to give it a soul? – The more he was getting familiar with the prayer book the greater was the number of questions that were springing out in his outcast soul. However, their answers were echoing on the walls, and they were breathless when reaching the warrior. There was no explanation.
But the warrior continued. He wanted essence, a sparkle of existence, a monumental force he had been waiting for, for centuries and millenniums.
Enchanted by the hugeness of the unspoken, the warrior didn’t notice at all that there had the night fell down. However, he didn’t feel tired, the sleep was somewhere far, far away, and the warrior kept on absorbing the prayer-book and its ornaments as if he wanted to get into the very soul of it.
He decided that out of his ragged, but priceless apparels he would make the prayer-book a cradle – the one of its kind and unique. He started to search over the caves in which he shattered himself, looking for some pieces of his own, for the purpose of making the cradle richer, unique, breath-taking. It was little that he found, almost nothing, for the time did not allow him to be in possession of his own. He was also wandering in this afterlife, if it was possible to name this misery of his as life.
Nevertheless, the warrior decided that cradle would be his awoken corpse that started to look like a soul since the moment he had touched the prayer-book.
He wanted to become its follower, the one and only, and not to curse it and lose it on the roads and abysses. He started to connect the symbols and the signs that had been written in the prayer-book, and to make prayers and legends. Prayers became his alphabet and his speech, legends became his history. He used each moment to talk to the prayer-book, continuously repeating the prayers, as if there was someone next to him. No, there wasn’t, there was no one next to him, but there was someone there within him. There was existence.
It was with ease that his inflexible fingers started going over the pictures in the prayer-book, taking him there, to the legend that provided him with a vision about the prayer-book. He started to laugh, to create, to have. In the time between two prayers, what he was doing was narrating to the prayer-book parts of his odyssey, the one that took him to the heights of being a nobleman and that very one that managed to take him to the lows being a jester. However, the warrior was proud of his truth and his honesty. Times and times again he looked in the sky in order to thank the winds for granting him the prayer-book. There was no reply. And, he didn’t need it. He was alone, possessed by himself-every time and everywhere. The only thing he was doing was giving and granting.
The prayer-book turned into obsession – passion for more. He was repeating each and every word and picture of it, over and over again. He managed to return its brightness, and give it its existence.
Yes, the warrior knew that it had been somewhere and at some point in time the prayer-book had had its altar, a believer or believers, that somewhere and at some point in time it existed. Its covers regained their face, its pictures and mosaics became alive again, and the illegible alphabet was something that he had time for.
What the warrior feared was giving wrong interpretation of this alphabet, something that could again lead to destruction, non-existence. The time was passing by both the warrior and the prayer-book, and there were moments when it gave a glance at them; however it let them remain pure as they were, because the warrior knew that the time had already crowned them…
Every night the warrior organized a dance, in the honour of the prayer-book, praising its existence. There were tears running down his face full of scars, some of them falling out of joy and passion whereas others falling out of pain that the warrior started to chase it away from him.

AuthorAleksandar Lazov
2018-08-21T17:23:00+00:00 December 29th, 2008|Categories: Prose, Literature, Blesok no. 63|0 Comments