Kalanos,
who had been with us since India and who had been with Nearchus on
the sea voyage, now rejoined us. He was growing frail, and I worried
to see him losing his appetite. He said it was old age.
‘Old
people don’t sleep, and they don’t eat,’ he said, waving the
bowl of lentils away. ‘We’re turning back into the dust that we
came from.’ He chuckled; to him death was just another door he
would enter.
I told him
not to be silly, that he was still a young, handsome man yet, and to
eat his soup, please.
He peered
at me from under his brows, his black eyes half-mocking, half-sad.
‘You will never learn to accept fate.’ He sighed. ‘For you,
life is a battle to be won, not a river to carry you peacefully
along. I have tried to tell you this for months. Why will you not
listen? When will you learn? We all have to meet our fate.’
I frowned
and stared at the steaming bowl of soup, then sighed and ate it
myself. ‘What if …’ I began slowly. ‘What if you knew
the future? Would it still be fate? If you could change something,
would that mean that fate doesn’t exist?’
Kalanos
narrowed his eyes. He had the shrewdest stare. He brought to mind the
canny gaze of Alexander sometimes, and he’d
gotten that look from Aristotle. ‘You cannot cheat fate,’ he
said. ‘What changes you think you have wrought would in fact
already be written in the great book of fate. Nothing can be changed.
Everything has been ordered since the beginning.’
‘But what
if I told you I knew what was going to happen?’ I cried.
Kalanos
smiled gently. ‘You think you do, child, but it’s like seeing the
rapids in the river. You know what rapids are and what they look
like, but you’ve never really been in rapids. You know you’re on
a river, and perhaps you’ve seen the whole river in a dream, but it
will never be the same until you actually navigate upon it. You will
see the people, the boats and the fish that the dream cannot show
you. You will feel things that knowledge itself cannot make you
feel.’
I shook my
head stubbornly. ‘It’s not like that at all,’ I said. My eyes
were burning. I was in front of an insurmountable wall of belief, and
I couldn’t get past it. What I wanted to know I couldn’t ask
outright.
‘But it
is, and you will see, some day. You must learn to live one day at a
time as it comes to you. You must greet each sunrise as a new
miracle, and live each instant of each new day as if it will be your
last one. Only then can you go forward. Only then can you begin to
accept. Once you do, you will find that everything is as easy as
breathing. Even dying. From one world to the next, you must learn to
go as easily between breathing in and breathing out. Do you remember
our breathing lessons?’ He leaned forward anxiously. These lessons
had been among the first he’d taught us, sitting cross-legged on
the rug, taking smooth, deep breaths. Alexander’s asthma had
improved dramatically since he’d learned to breathe.
‘I
remember,’ I said bleakly. Two tears rolled down my cheeks and fell
with audible plops into my soup.
‘Lentils
not salty enough?’ he asked, his eyes twinkling.
‘I want
to save those I love,’ I said. ‘It has nothing to do with me. I
could let myself go downriver, but I couldn’t go and leave those I
love behind.’
Kalanos
patted my hand. ‘You’re such a new soul.’
I laughed
shakily. I was younger than he by a good three thousand years. My
soup got saltier as the tears fell faster.
‘I love
too,’ he said. ‘But I have learned to let go. That is the final
lesson. You are still too young. No one can ever teach you. It has to
be learned alone. When you have learned to let go, then you will be
free and you will see that everything that ever held you back from
the river’s flow hurt you, and everything that let you go forward
was beneficial. Love can be both. Will you listen to an old man who
has come to the end of his journey?’
‘Of
course,’ I said.
‘Let go.
Don’t try to change what cannot be changed. You will just be
swimming against the current and you could drown. Who will look after
Chiron when you are gone? I told you once before, gold and silver are
not the riches of the earth – the real treasures are
children.’
I thought
of Paul and my sobs redoubled. Kalanos shook his head pityingly. I
was a backward, recalcitrant pupil but his patience knew no limits.
‘Child, child. Dry your tears. Perhaps I am wrong. Real knowledge
is believing that you know nothing.’
I looked up
at him and tried to smile. ‘Well, that’s a relief,’ I said.
He shook
his head some more. ‘Ah, I can see that you will do what you
believe is right. Didn’t you hear me?’
‘I did.’
I leaned over and kissed his cheek.
‘Hey!’
He rubbed his cheek, glaring at me. ‘You’re not supposed to kiss
holy men! ’His eyes were twinkling though.
‘That’s
my present to you,’ I said. ‘It’s the only thing I have to give
to you.’
‘That’s
what you think,’ he said. He took my hand, kissed the inside of my
palm and folded my fingers over it. ‘You keep that. That’s the
only thing I will give you. You can take it with you downriver, and
it will not weigh you down.’
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