The Dream of Eternal Joy

My father was but a humble farmer, and I knew nothing of my mother. I never took to farming, but the little reading and writing I was taught at the parish school quickly gave me a voracious taste for literature, extending my view of the world far beyond what I perceived anyone around me knew.

It was a fateful coincidence then, that I was the one to discover a grimoire buried underneath the cellar, the distinct shape of which stuck out at me from the earth below as I was fixing the floorboards one day. My father advised me to dispose of the horrid thing, but I clung to it and investigated what mysteries it had to offer. The peculiar science I discovered therein was one that I’d never been acquainted with – that of venturing into an occult world beyond by means of dreams.

I eagerly undertook the practice of rituals illustrated in the book and discovered not only that the dreams I began seeing had acquired inexplicable lucidity, but that certain items acquired by me in dreams would end up appearing alongside me when I woke up.

‘You are a newcomer in this world,’ a giggling baby told me, the sun racing through the sky above us time and time again, ‘enjoy your stay but beware – in this world there are many joys to be had. But for every joy – an equal pain. So beware,’ he laughed and floated into the distance like an inflated balloon. 

Whenever I met that baby I would ask him to tell me more about the world which he inhabited, but every answer only evoked more questions. On one such night I said:

‘What sort of joys are there here? And what sort of pains are there here?’

‘I would not know, for I am like you, a pure babe. There is one man that knows – he is known by the name “Telemachus".’

‘Where can I meet him?’

‘Deeper. Deeper underground. But oh, beware,’ he winked at me, ‘Telemachus knows all about both. To know one is to know the other.’

So I began to dig. Night after night, I would arrive to that same place and shovel, going methodically further and further, just like digging a ditch or a foundation for a barn.

Eventually, the earth beneath my shovel gave in and collapsed into a hallway of black granite. It was lit by touches stretching down an extensive corridor, from which I heard a happy melody playing to the beat of clapping hands and laughing voices. Covered in dirt from head to toe, but at the very peak of my excitement, I rushed towards the sounds. 

As I proceeded, the voices suddenly faded and I was presented by a large granite door with iron rings. In a frenzy, I pulled the rings and rushed inside and froze.

Before me was a man, kneeling with his arms chained to the wall and his hairy, bearded head obscured by darkness. There was coldness and silence in that room.

‘Hmm,’ the man lifted his sparkling eyes, ‘now what would you be?’

‘My name is Johannes,’ I blurted, ‘sir, are you Telemachus?’

‘I am.’

‘Sir, the baby told me that you know something about the joys and pains of this world.’

There was a silence, and then the man burst out laughing. 

‘Yes, young man, I know everything there is to know about them.’

‘Could you tell me about them?’

‘Young man,’ he glared up at me, ‘I know all there is to know about the pains and pleasures of this world. Allow me to enlighten you: The pain you feel at the moment is the pain of curiosity. The pain you will come to know if you continue digging deeper will be of such incomparable profundity that your little mind may not survive it. Why would I destroy a beautiful thing? Youthful innocence in full flower.’

Taken aback by his words, I deliberated a moment and then asked:

‘Sir, could you at least explain to me? I won’t dig deeper if you tell me not to, but I just want to know why.’

‘It is in wanting to know “why” that all of your pain is contained. It isn’t as much about digging. Has your father not read the Bible to you? Do you not remember the tale of the tree of knowledge? Knowledge precedes all sin. Knowledge of great pleasure precedes all great pain. Go no further. Close this door and fill in that hole with dirt. Throw away that filthy book. Live the life of men in the outside world, like your father, like the boys at the parish school, like all decent people.’

‘Why are you chained in here?’ I uttered.

‘Me? I was put here by the gods of this world.’

‘Why did they put you down here?’

‘To protect the world from me.’

‘What harm can you do the world?’

‘I can defile it, destroy it, entirely.’

‘Why would you do that?’

‘Because I have known great pleasure, youth. And once you have known it,’ he choked, ‘nothing! nothing compares. This world becomes an encumbrance. Nothing but a cage. An encumbrance to the acquisition of that great joy. And one who is denied such great joy, youth, how can he not hate this world and not seek to destroy it?’

‘Do you want to be free?’

‘I do, but I shouldn’t be. This is the fate of one like myself.’

I could get nothing more from that pathetic man, as he began sobbing before me, and, fulfilling his request, I closed the door and left. 

My excitement having subsided, I began to wonder about his words, and tried to understand them deeper. 

The following night, I decided I still had questions, but by the time I arrived at the place where I’d dug the hole, it was all gone. 

Tortured by curiosity, I set about digging once more, and dug and dug persistently, night after night, seeking to reveal the accursed corridor again, but, having gone much deeper than before, I realised that the corridor had simply disappeared.

Nonetheless I dug, until one night I finally perceived the earth slacken beneath my shovel, and I tumbled down into yet another corridor, this time of a grainy pink granite. I expected to behold Telemachus again, but in place of his sombre chamber I discovered a royally-decorated room with all sorts of embellishments, silks, silvers, and golds. Upon an elevation I saw a giant chalice filled with a liquid, pure as mountain water, with words engraved on the wall above: ‘DRINK’.

‘Like Alice in Wonderland,’ I mused as I took the chalice into my hands and drank.

Through my mind raced tunnels of tunnels of colourful geometries, the very substance of my body was lifted above the earth and in every fibre of my being I felt at once such indescribable joy, bursting, exploding, mixing with the colours of sunny days and rainy evenings, the sights and sounds of beloved lands and faces, as well as feelings before unknown to me – the expressions and appearances of people I had never seen, foods I had never tasted, possessions I had never had – everything around me swirled and for a sheer moment in time I entirely ceased to be.

When I woke up in my bedroom, something was different about me. As I lifted my body from the bed, I felt a horrible pain strike through me like a lance. I was at once assailed by all manner of feeling, yearning, and longing. I felt completely sick.

It was my time to milk the goats, but I was incapacitated. I sat on my bed and stared at the logs before me. 

I do not know how long I sat until I heard the voice of my father:

‘Johannes!’ he called with concern, ‘Johannes! The goats! The goats ‘aven’t been milked!’ 

He rushed into my room and beheld me sitting on my bed.

‘What’s wrong with ye, lad? Them goats ‘ave to be milked, son.’ 

But I could not speak. Even to move my mouth seemed an awful chore. The obedience I’d once known towards him was gone. I now had perspective. Just how little my father, and his stupid goats, and this stupid farm and log cabin mattered. What did it matter if people thought me a bad son? What did it matter if my father shouted at me or was disappointed in me, or brought up the memory of my mother? What did she matter either? Everything paled in comparison to what I had come to know. Nothing came even close. Even remotely close. And nothing was substantial enough to drown out that newfound yearning bursting out from within me, from every inch of my skin and every recess of my mind.

‘Old oaf!’ I finally shouted in response to his irritating exhortations and watched the old man’s face turn pale. I stood up from my bed and, trying to ignore the pain within me, pushed him out and slammed the door.

I could recount here the disgraceful conditions under which I eventually fled from my father’s farm; the experiments I conducted in my dreams in search of more of that mysterious liquid; the expeditions I undertook into the great cities of the world in search of information on the dreams and the liquid; the abject dearth of knowledge I found; the grinding, gruelling pain of the day-to-day, coming in on me in waves and only occasionally subsiding to give me a breath of fresh air… But what would be the point of it all?

Eventually, I stumbled upon a scholar in the city of Baghdad who I knew had a manuscript containing a diagram that was purported to hold vital information concerning the mysterious liquid and the world of dreams. Cornering him in an alleyway one night, I threatened him with a dagger to reveal the diagram to me. Horrified and clearly himself unaware of the profound significance of the document, he acquiesced to my demands. We took a five minute walk down the street, my weapon pressed close against his back, until finally reaching an unassuming door leading into a cluttered living room. After rummaging intolerably long through piles of bric-a-brac, he handed me the item I had gone to such lengths to acquire.

Expectant to the point of giddiness, I unrolled the papyrus. My brow rose and my mouth opened in shock and horror. The diagram consisted of nothing more than a giant Arabian symbol for ‘0’. 

I fled the house, forgetting at once the man and the dagger, and everything in the world. I found a narrow passage behind a mosque and lay down, trying to fall to sleep as fast as I could.

Awaking in the world, I saw the sun once more, now completely static at the zenith of the pulsating sky. Grabbing a shovel, I rushed to the usual place, and, just as I pushed it into the soil it gave in and collapsed right into the black granite corridor I had seen thirty years prior. 

Sweating, gasping for air, I ran to the giant door and pulled the iron rings. 

In the room sat kneeling Telemachus, as though he hadn’t moved in all those three decades.

‘Ah, it’s you,’ he sighed, ‘I figured you would join me.’

He nodded his head towards the opposite corner of the cell:

‘Those are for you.’

There was a pair of chains with shackles hanging from the wall. I hesitated for a moment and felt the delicious scent once more kiss the air around my lips. The mysterious ambrosia was calling me again. But I’d realised the truth, and here it was.

I put my hands into the shackles and heard at once them snap into locked position and watched the door, now before me, slowly close.