Even so, I remembered the prophetic counsel of the venerable master who granted me custody of the hide texts and who appointed me ruler over the desert. Thus I was forced to come to terms with my destiny and to take charge of things myself this time. The fact is that my motive in assuming power was not a sense of obligation but as a way of dispelling my loneliness and annihilating my ennui. Why shouldn’t I have some fun?
I observed what was around me. I observed what was inside me. I saw that this game required rules. So I decided to begin by selecting for my sessions an entourage to console me for the loss of the college of sages. I was obliged to search the leather texts to find support for this in the prophetic aphorisms entrusted to me by the sages. Relying on these, I saw the importance of doing things in threes. I went to the cave of the ancestors in the southern cliff face and sequestered myself there for a time before returning to my oasis with a vision. I seated my consort beside me and ordered the vassals to bring me the nobles of the tribes. I told them that the Law in its dicta had praised the Trinitarian approach and that I proposed to select from each community a man who would not begrudge me his advice, should I request his counsel, and who would serve as my companion in my daily life, should stifling loneliness afflict me. They murmured their approval. I wasted no time in surrounding myself with this group and then immediately asked them, “Will the lords of the people confirm that we will not be blamed for having fun?”
They were quick to protest in unison, “Of course not, master. Absolutely not!”
“I shall shower my wealth on anyone who can show me how to dispel worry from our world except through entertainment.”
The group straightaway shouted to one another, “The sages of our tribes buried their heads in prophecies till their eyesight blurred and discovered no other truth in this world than entertainment.”
“But you, lords of the people, know better than the other folk the maxim that in our world the law governs everything, including entertainment.”
“Of course, our master: entertainment too is governed by the will of the law.”
“The era of the lords of the law has passed, and a void hangs over our oasis. Their reality, however, did not reside in their bodies, which have passed away, but in their wise sayings, which they have bequeathed to us.”
At this point a voice brazenly raised a question that I thought reeked of veiled insolence: “Does it make sense, my master, to claim the sages advocated jesting?”
The man beside him, however, saved me the trouble of rebutting him, for he said, “We will perish, master, of boredom, if we don’t rule in favor of entertainment. A child must be an infant to lack the ability to play. My goat gave birth to a melancholy kid that acted weird. He wouldn’t frolic with the other kids or respond to his mother’s nudges. He spent the whole day staring into space and stayed up all night examining the stars. I saw a sorrow in his eyes I could compare only to that in the eyes of wanderers, exiles, and sages. I was sure some jinni’s spawn was dwelling in this kid’s body. It appears I guessed right, because the sorrowful look in this wretch’s eyes increased to a point that augured ill. Do you know what happened next? One day I saw him climb a boulder on the cliff face and then cast himself into the abyss. He perished, my master, just as any creature that loses the ability to have fun perishes.”
A murmur spread through the assembly. One man shouted, “Your kid was a man, not a beast or a jinni!”
I gestured for them to be still, and they hushed. I studied a piece of text in my lap before observing, “The sages advocated a threefold approach. To reinforce the footers of the sacred building, there must be three pillars.”
This metaphorical reference was too abstruse for the crowd, and people looked apprehensive. I tried to elucidate the allusion: “Our master Ragh is overhead, on earth there are creatures, and in the souls of the people there is wisdom.” I concluded, “The fourth pillar of the building, however, is a blunder. Beware!”
Voices repeated after me, “The fourth pillar is a blunder.”
“In wombs, the sperm is restless and the fetuses develop, waiting for the hour of birth, which no one knows for certain. All the same, I have thought that waiting will slay us with loneliness. This is why I thought I would choose from each of your tribes a man who would take a place beside me in the council to act as the nucleus of the future clan, until the sperm develops out of sight and the embryos are delivered from the wombs.”
They repeated with all the intoxication of singers touched by ecstatic longing, “Until the sperm develops out of sight and the embryos are delivered from the wombs.”
“But don’t get so carried away that you forget the whole thing is in jest.”
“The whole thing is in jest.”
“I don’t want you to neglect your carnal self or to err by arrogating to yourselves the role of the secret being waiting in the womb. Act, rather, with an understanding that you divert yourselves in order to forget.”
At that point, one of the nobles approached and whispered to me, as if confiding a secret, “But what is it, my master, that you want us to forget by jesting?”
The wretch infuriated me with his question, but I enjoyed my response to him: “You’ll kill yourselves, if you don’t forget you’re alive. You’ll share the fate of the kid that your companion described, if you don’t amuse yourselves.”
Anxiety reigned once again, so I chanted this appeaclass="underline" “The text from the spirit world, O people of Targa, says that the offspring of Ragh will be the tribe’s head. So, have you chosen for me from among yourselves a child of Ragh to be his deputy on earth?”
Silence was universal. People exchanged surreptitious glances, nudged each other, and whispered to one another. Their consultation produced this response, “Do we dare, our master, select a creature to be Ragh’s vice-regent on earth when our assembly is headed by the descendant of Ragh chosen by the spirit world to be Ragh’s authentic deputy, not his counterfeit deputy?”
“I am grateful for your confidence but fear that for me to remain with you will constitute an abuse of the texts and an infraction of the law of entertainment.”
The lady of my house and priestess of the temple cast me a disapproving look. Apparently one of the men seated nearby saw that look, for he took the offensive: “Doesn’t our master fear the spirit world will be provoked by his reluctance to assume the sovereignty that was his destiny from the start?”
“Will it harm this sovereignty if the nation goes a bit overboard in combating alienation through their jests?”
“I once heard a clever man predict a grievous end, master, for nations that dare to mix earnestness with jest.”
“If you can tell me the truth about earnestness, I’ll give you half my kingdom. If you can tell me the truth about jesting, I’ll give you the other half.”
At this point the lady seated beside me intervened for the first time: “We do not control our destinies; our destinies control us. We may wager what our hands possess but have no right to wager what possesses us. Our master may throw into play everything he possesses. Our master, however, has no right to throw into play the hand that controls him.”
“To what hand do you refer, mistress?”
“The hand of destiny, the hand that threw you into the arena of this oasis, placing it before you, the hand that installed you not only as head of Targa but also as its guardian.”
“But what can a sovereign do when his breast is mangled by melancholy and his heart tempted by wandering?”
She ignored my question, however, and delivered another prophecy to the assembly: “Sovereignty, our master, is what holds sway over us. We aren’t sovereign over sovereignty.”