Chapter VI: The Vision of Oûman Mitsa̤

Summer was merging into autumn and the red and gold of the Indalûfa̤s and Asmona̤s (shrubs of large growth and fine foliage with insignificant blooms, yet very fragrant) glowed amid the yet unchanged greenery of other shrubs like masses of ruddy or golden flames.

Aloft, amid the great crests of the towering Bûdas trees, birds of varied plumage and song fluttered to and fro, enlivening with harsh or sweeter notes the solitude surrounding Amâtûta̤, a not very extensive but beautifully picturesque estate situated at no great distance from Koidassa̤, the estate of the Nyassa̤s.

The lands of Amâtûta̤ were low lying, and near their centre was, and indeed yet is, a spacious and substantial edifice of gray stone of a style of architecture partaking of both the antique and the modern, whose massive, time-defying walls were pierced by numerous windows, many of which were draped with a wealth of climbing, flowering vines, whose rootlets, finding foothold on walls and towers, distributed their luxuriant leafage in graceful wreaths and coronets of verdure and bloom.

The interior of the residence was in strong contrast with its severely plain exterior. From entrance to exit its halls and apartments were extremely ornate and exquisitely beautiful. All that wealth and refined taste could suggest found expression in its priceless art treasures and sumptuous furnishings; but in neither halls nor apartments was a sound of voice or of footfall.

Nearby this residence were the homes of the families who cultivated the lands of the estate and, when necessary, performed such domestic duties as the proprietor of Amâtûta̤ desired.

Towards the close of a warm, languorous day whose hazy breath overspread as with a silvery veil the uplands lying about Amâtûta̤,—a day of a season which ever begets melancholy and tender memories of joys or sorrows gone never to return; memories through which one recalls faces and forms of beloved and lost ones; memories in which linger voices like strains of dying music; voices which, alas, will be heard nevermore—on such a day as this, when the slanting, golden beams of Andûmana̤'s abode were piercing dusky recesses and darkened nooks and tinging with a radiant glory the Towers of Amâtûta̤ and the green sward of the broad valley across the lengthening shadows of the lofty Bûdas trees, noiselessly came one whose presence in this spot and whose appearance anywhere would have excited the admiration and curious interest of even an incurious person.

As he slowly approached the entrance of the residence he glanced about him with the air of one acquainted with his surroundings. Nothing seemed to escape the piercing scrutiny of eyes overshadowed by a grandly imperious brow from which flowed such a wealth of silvery-waved hair that scarcely did his gemmed silver fillet confine its luxuriance. In contrast with his silvery-hued hair, his dark, strikingly handsome face seemed of a deeper tint than others of the Tset-senna, the race of which he was a member and which is known as one of the most powerful races of Ento.

After a brief but critical survey of the grounds and exterior of the residence, this personage ascended the imposing flight of steps leading to the front entrance, when again he paused and looked afar over the broad expanse of the valley and upon the rising slopes of the uplands. As his gaze wandered eastward, into his eyes and face grew an expression of extreme pathos and sadness. Suddenly he turned and, pressed a metallic knob embedded in the massive framework of the great arched doorway. Noiselessly the doors moved into either side of the wall, and as he entered they as noiselessly closed behind him.

Standing in the spacious hallway, he glanced through the gloom into the great apartments on either hand; then his eyes followed the grandly designed staircase, winding upward, until the pattern of the beautiful mosaic of the steps was lost in the hovering twilight of the domed ceiling. Under his breath he whispered, "Never again will her dear feet ascend or my eyes follow with adoring love her matchless form. Never." Then, as though with a certain shrinking reluctance, he turned towards a draped recess in the wall and for a time stood before it with bowed head and folded arms, his tremulous lips moving as though in prayer or in self-communion; but no word or sound disturbed the profound stillness.

After a little he approached the recess, and slowly, hesitatingly drew aside the heavy silken drapery revealing the statuesque loveliness of a superb female form bearing in her shapely arms a mass of Rodel blooms and wearing on her beautifully curved lips a smile of adorable sweetness. Before this white vision of beauty the man sank to his knees with a moan so pitiful that it seemed to echo and re-echo through the lonely apartments and then to die away as dies the expiring breath of one going into the dread silence of death.

Dia̤fon ēvoiha̤ descended into the realm of the Supreme One, and only its radiant afterglow decked with crimson and gold the drapery of the portals of Astranola̤. Yet silent and motionless the man remained. About him fell the shadows of departing day, and twilight deepened into darkness. Still he neither moved nor uttered a sound.

Now a marvelous thing occurred, of which this man, Oûman Mitsa̤, left a carefully written record. On the death-like stillness about him fell soft, faint notes as of music from afar. Now they smote the air about him: anon they floated away and ceased, only to return again with such distinctness that the atmosphere seemed vibrant with melodious sound. Then a strange, penetrating radiance lighted the recess, revealing the white sculptured form and drapery of the beautiful statue, which to his excited imagination appeared wondrously lifelike.

Into his face grew an expression of ecstatic adoration, and, as his tearful eyes gazed upon the illumined image of his dead wife, in broken accents he cried: "O merciful, O pitiful gods, I am as one bereft of judgment! In yonder lifeless image of my lost Zoûlēne I again seem to behold her loving smile; nay, more, to again hear the very tones of her gentle voice murmuring, 'My beloved, my beloved.' Ah, this is madness! The dead live not again; and it is that ye commiserate my loneliness and unceasing longing for my adored, dead companion that ye accord to me this wondrous marvel of recalling, if but for a brief moment, a semblance of the woman who was my wife, my beautiful, my ever lamented Zoûlēne!"

Ere he ceased his broken utterances the radiance died away, leaving the low prostrate man in complete darkness and silence. After a considerable lapse of time he gradually aroused from the lethargic state into which he had fallen, and, rising to his feet, he touched an electric appliance which instantly flooded the great halls and apartments with brilliant light. Sinking upon a couch he mused upon the strange scene which he had just witnessed, and which, I may say, was but one of several similar experiences which during ensuing years came to him.

As he mused, into his thoughts came unbidden questions, so persistent, so contrary to the teachings of our holy religion, that at last in utter bewilderment he prayed, "O ye Deific Ones, who have shown such a wondrous expression of your love for me, who am so unworthy; I beseech you to bear to Andûmana̤, the Supreme One, my earnest entreaty that my understanding may so increase that I may be able to comprehend questions ever persistently coming from I know not where and tormenting me with ceaseless unrest. It is not for me, who am woefully ignorant, to question thee as to the hidden meanings of thy will; but in deepest humility I pray that through thy compassionate love thy children may be made to see with clearer eyes, and with finer comprehension to understand the meaning of the existence thou has bestowed upon us. As I near the Silence I shrink back in terror from the thought that all that I am must be resolved into nothingness! I would not be irreverent, O Thou Almighty, thou Supreme One, but ever am I dreaming of a time when through thy love for thy children thou mayst create them immortal. Though my lost Zoûlēne and I shall never know the glory of perpetual existence, that it may sometime be vouchsafed to those thou mayst yet create, is the fervent prayer of thy unhappy son, who, if it might please thee, gladly would pass through the sacrificial flames, if thus so great a good might come to thy children of Ento!”

Unable to longer endure the trend of thought into which his recent experience had led him, he hastily arose from the couch, and with slow hesitating steps passed from room to room, his shrinking glances encountering on every hand well remembered objects, which somehow seemed to have acquired the unfamiliarity of faces not seen for years. His sensations were those of one in a half waking state, where the real and the unreal were strangely commingled. He was not able to at once realize that, during the four years that had elapsed since he had fled distractedly from scenes he could no longer endure, for him alone the faces of all familiar things had changed: this was a truth that he comprehended later.

Four years ago his hair was as dusky as the plumage of the harsh voiced Raucca (a large, black bird). Now, as he moved opposite a portrait of himself, painted a short time previous to the death of his wife, he started with an exclamation of extreme surprise and consternation; and, as he stared at it in confusion and perplexity, he passed his hands over his face and hair, murmuring, "Am I so changed, so changed? Alas, it is I, and not these inanimate objects, which doubtless are as I left them, that have changed!"

Long he gazed at the portrait; then with a heavy sigh he passed on until he traversed the entire lower floor and stood irresolutely at the foot of the staircase, which, after a little, he ascended to the spacious landing, where for a moment he stood looking about him with the same shrinking glances that characterized his manner while surveying the lower floor. Then he wandered from one apartment to another until he approached a closed door at the front of the residence, where he tremblingly paused and seemed inclined to turn away. As though urged by a sudden impulse, he almost impetuously unclosed the door and entered the brightly illumined, daintily furnished apartments of his dead Zoûlēne.

With closely clasped hands he stood for a time within the threshhold of the open door, his breath coming and going in deep quivering sighs, his thoughts in a mad tumult of conflicting emotions. Four years had elapsed since he had stood within this room, which was hallowed by association with the beautiful, the adorable woman whose love had made his life so full of contentment that he would not have exchanged it for the blissful existence of the Deific Ones.

Zoûlēne had come to him when he was nearing the noon of his days, when well earned honors and wealth had placed him among the foremost of Ento's distinguished sons. What Dia̤fon ēvoiha̤ is to Ento, Zoûlēne had been to him; for with the warmth and effulgence of her immeasurable love she had made his life radiant with joy. In return, no day was long enough in which to adore her; no night was welcome, for in sleep they were as though they were not. When days had dawned he had looked into her face and found there the fruition of all his desires; when noon arrived, the radiance of Dia̤fon ēvoiha̤ was reflected in the glory of her empurple eyes, and all she looked upon was made divine; when darkness drew its veil across the face of night, she had rested in his sheltering arms, enkindling in his heart a flame so worshipful, so deathless, that when she was called into the Silence he was for a time bereft of sense and consciousness; and when finally he realized that he yet lived, the urned ashes of his wife and their still-born child were all that remained of the light and joy of his life.

Like an inflowing wave these bitter sweet memories swept over his senses, and with bowed head and closed eyes he stood panting like an exhausted swimmer. This paroxysm of emotion passed; and when he regained a degree of composure he turned, softly closed the door, and went towards a beautiful cabinet, which he opened with trembling hands. As he gazed upon its contents, he sorrowfully recalled memories hallowed by loving words, a kiss, or a fond caress. “In this casket,” he mused, “are the gems she wore on our marriage day, and their pearly whiteness is not purer than was her fair face when it rested on my breast. In these blood red stones again I see the carmine of her lips, which were as lovely as the half-blown carmine buds of the queenly Flûŋna̤ (resembles the rose; colors: white, pink and crimson); and in her wondrously beautiful eyes was the luminous, purplish blue of these Rûtzas (sapphires), which it pleased me to see her wear on neck and arms, where they gleamed like bits of Astranola̤'s sacred walls.”

Into these unhappy memories suddenly, strangely dissimilar thoughts intruded themselves, so suddenly and vividly indeed that he started and looked about him with an inquiring air, as though some one had spoken to him. “Ah! How fanciful I have grown,” he said. “My ever-present sorrow renders me so susceptible to the distress of others that, as note responds to kindred note, so responds my heavy thoughts to those of dear friends whose lives, like my own, are blighted until the ending of their days.”

Lifting the Rûtzas from their silken receptacle, he turned them this way and that, their glowing hearts gleaming like imprisoned fire. As he watched their changing tones of purplish blue, he murmured: “The color of her lovely eyes; yes, they are the color of Zoûlēne’s eyes and of Frona̤'s, the daughter of her kinswoman, Ava̤nna̤ Nyassa̤. As I this day looked into Ava̤nna̤'s haggard face and listened to a story that chilled my blood I thanked the gods that our child had been called with thee Zoûlēne into the Silence. So incensed was I by Ava̤nna̤'s recital that I entreated the just gods to implore Andûmana̤ to cause the high priest to undo the wrong he has committed, or to avenge the immeasurable wretchedness of the parents who only exist in the hope of once more seeing the faces of their adored children. By thy sacred memory and that of our child, my dead Zoûlēne, I have vowed to do my utmost to unravel what I deem a wrong and a mystery. May the Deific Ones aid me in my endeavor!"

As these thoughts surged through Oûman Mitsa̤'s mind and fell unconsciously in broken sentences from his lips, he closed the cabinet and moved about with a certain timid hesitancy, as though he felt that he was intruding upon the sacred privacy of some holy one.

Now his faltering steps approached the entrance to the adjoining room, the sleeping apartment of her who only lived to smile upon the face of their newly born babe and into the eyes of the adoring husband and father. How vividly all came back to him!

Suddenly she had paled into the whiteness of the snowy pillow supporting her golden-haired head, and into her wide open eyes came an expression of awful fear. A moment later Zoûlēne was embraced by the Silence. With terror stricken cries he took her into his strong loving arms, imploring her to breathe, to speak. But neither breath nor speech came for all his wild imploring; but on the sweet lips a smile was dawning, the strange, mysterious smile of death. In a mad frenzy he cried to the dread God of the Silence to take him and spare Zoûlēne and the child: for reply, the beloved forms grew cold and rigid in the embrace of the implacable destroyer who spares neither youth nor age, nor breaking hearts.

As his shrinking glances wandered over the great silent apartment, he remembered how the terror, the horror, the agony of it all like an overwhelming flood had rushed upon his senses; and how, reeling like one intoxicated, he had reached out his arms, staggered towards her couch, and fell on his knees with his face on her pillow, where with sobbing cries he wept such tears of anguish as must have moved the pity of the gods who in their mercy overpowered his senses with sleep.

The night wore on, and in the gray of dawn he moved uneasily. A moaning sigh broke the stillness of the room, startling him into partial consciousness. Raising his head, he brushed away from his face a mass of snowy hair and stared about him with a dazed questioning in his dark sombrous eyes. Suddenly a realization of the situation rushed upon his awakened senses. Wearily he arose, smoothed the disordered pillow, stooped and kissed it, and, going to a window, drew aside the heavy drapery and opened the casement, letting in the cool, moist morning air and the golden radiance of Andûmana̤'s rising abode, which already had set the clouds aflame with the glory of its life giving beams.

Motionless, he stood gazing upon the changing tints of the slowly drifting clouds veiling the habitations of the Deific Ones, upon the waving crests of the lofty Bûdas trees, whose rustling seemed to fill the air with whisperings of some unseen mystery; upon the tranquil beauty of the vale through which flowed a sparkling stream fringed with shrubbery and a glow of autumn blooms; upon a white marble group which Zoûlēne and he, in their early wedded days, had designed, and from whose upreaching hands a silvery jet of water was falling in mist-like spray into a great basin, over whose white rim a wealth of foliage and flowers trailed and drooped to the surface of the water, which was stirred into ripples by the flashing forms of red and golden Stēfa̤s (fish).

As his heavy eyes wandered aimlessly from object to object, he was conscious that the air was vocal with the music of birds, whose grave or gay plumage was flashing amid the leafage of the Bûdas trees and undergrowing shrubbery or were darting downward to sip the water of the fountain. With a heavy sigh he remembered—ah! yes, he remembered—how in the dawns of bygone days Zoûlēne and he had stood by this window to watch the awakening of the beautiful world in which their creator had placed them and how, as the beams of his shining abode rose above the uplands, they had prayed that together they might share the joys of many days ere he should permit Death to call them back into the Silence. And then—and then . . . Not daring to further pursue this train of thought, he closed the window, and, perceiving that the house was still illumined, he extinguished the lights, and walked slowly towards the further room of the suite where was an exquisitely beautiful altar whereat Zoûlēne and he had offered their devotions to Andûmana̤ and the Deific Ones, and whereon they had laid the beautiful symbolic, red and golden blooms of the Tsonia̤ (red, lily-shaped blooms) and Valsēta̤ (small, yellow blooms). Ere forsaking his desolated home he had given instructions that Zoûlēne’s apartments should, until his return, remain undisturbed: so there on the altar were the faded, crumbling blooms that he and she had offered on the morning of the day which had brought birth, death and unspeakable sorrow into his life.

Gathering up the unsightly, scentless things, he placed them in the altar urn, and for some moments stood as though he would offer a prayer; but in these moments a strange mood took possession of him and under his breath he muttered rebelliously: What shall I pray for? Not for Zoûlēne and our child: they are but a pitiful memory. Not for myself, for erelong I shall be as they are, a handful of ashes—naught but a handful of ashes. Shall I pray for pardon for the madly rebellious thoughts which set my brain aflame and fill my heart with bitterness and intolerable anguish? What matters it whether I implore or adore Andûmana̤ and his messengers, whose ways are the ways of gods and whose will no prayer of mine may swerve to the right or to the left.

"I am but one of myriads of created things, created for what purpose I know not. Were I infinite I would not create, only that I might destroy. No! Through the infinity of my love and power I would create only that which would reflect the glory of my measureless love and which should be as immortal as myself. Alas! I am very finite, and I do not in the least comprehend the strange, unfathomable mystery of existence. I am as an imprisoned creature ever struggling for freedom, and the bonds which hold me fast lacerate and cut into the fibers of my very being. But I cannot escape; save in one way, I cannot escape. Andûmana̤, thou Supreme One, I am as nothing in thy hands; but through the anguish of my tortured mind, which thou hast given me, I dare to question thee. Why dost thou not give to thy children the one boon worthy of Thy Infinity: the boon of an existence as deathless as thine own?"

Assuredly, only one of a desperately unbalanced mind would have uttered such impious words; but in Oûman Mitsa̤'s grievous sorrow one finds some excuse, or at least an explanation of his distraught emotions; and doubtless it was thus that the Deific Ones regarded his strangely confused thoughts and utterances, for he was not smitten dead before the altar, or in any manner punished for his irreverent expressions which we know were extremely censurable.

It would seem that he anticipated some sort of retributive punishment, for after this amazing outburst, in reverent and submissive tones, he prayed: "Thou who knowest all things knowest my thoughts. Do with me as it may please thee, for whether I may yet a while live or instantly may go into the Silence, I care not. I am Thy child out of Thyself: Thou hast created me. I am life of Thy life, and sometimes in my mind there is a thought that at death I may return to Thee, Who will not destroy a part of Thyself. If I sin in questioning the accepted interpretations of Thy holy writings, I pray Thee be patient with me, who desire to be righteous in all my thoughts and deeds. Thou knowest that in these later days many of the high priests serving in Thy temples have grown arrogant and exacting to an oppressive degree; and I offer Thee my grateful praise that in the latest revelation of Thy love Thou hast rebuked those whose misguided zeal and unrighteous self-seeking incited in them a desire to render Thy children entirely subservient to their perverted will, even needlessly depriving parents of their dearest possession, the children Thou didst give into their keeping. For this inexpressibly beneficent revelation of Thy will, I, one of the humblest of Thy children, adore Thee, and offer for Thy service all that I have and am. I entreat Thee, O Thou Mighty One, that Thou mayst so direct my ways that the remaining days of my life may be devoted to righting the wrongs of those who are oppressed and assisting the weakness of those unable to sustain themselves; for thus, in serving Thy children, I shall serve Thee."

Then, with lowly bowed head, he fervently murmured: "Ra̤û, Ra̤û, Ra̤û," and turning from the altar passed from the room and to the lower floor to summon the keeper and attendants, who in amazement and some trepidation hastened to welcome and to receive instructions from the long absent and beloved Oûman Mitsa̤.