INT.
So, you had been inspired by the French Situationists? You were inspired by the ’68 riots? That’s what got you into trouble at first in Sakai and led you to return home?
KAKUZO
Do you know the fable of the stonecutter?
INT.
No.
KAKUZO
It is an old fable, Persian, I think. I had read it around that time, and it made me feel, somehow — as though certain things might be possible. I felt that things I had thought should be classed impossible were truly possible, with the very greatest effort.
INT.
What is the fable?
KAKUZO
A king is out riding with his nobles, all ahorse the very best steeds that can be had. They are riding out beyond the city where the king lives. They pass through fields and down road after road. The horse the king is riding is a fine new horse, such a horse as he has never possessed, and so he gives it its head, and the horse carries him farther than he has ever gone. The king and his nobles ride so far and so fast that they become bewildered, but their blood is in their faces and their hearts are beating so tremendously that they want only to course on and on. A wind is blowing and the weather is spinning in the air, clouds turning like looms. The horses trail to a stop, and the company is on a road before a lowly dwelling. It is a stonecutter’s hut. The king dismounts, and goes to the door. He knocks and the door is answered by an old man with pale cruel hands of sinew and bone. The old man welcomes the company and receives them into his hut. Strangely enough, there is a place for everyone. The table is large enough for all. Each lord sits at table, shoulder to shoulder, and the king sits at one end. The stonecutter sits at the other. I will feed you, said the stonecutter, but it will not be anything like what you eat. The nobles groused, saying they would like this or that, saying is there this or that, but the stonecutter looked at them and they looked at his hands, and they fell silent. The king spoke, saying, they were come like beggars, and were glad to be received at all. Such a thing a king had never said. So, the stonecutter went into his larder and brought out a goose that resembled a girl. He brought out a deer that resembled a boy. He brought out bread like the hair of a hundred court ladies, threaded into rope. He brought out honey like the blood of goats. Do not eat this food, the lords said, but the king laughed. The stonecutter watched them speaking, and the king laughed, saying, where you are brought by a swift steed is a place for courage. But the lords said beneath their breath, some steeds are too swift. Then the plates were filled, heaped nearly to the ceiling and passed around, and always the king chose first, and he filled his plate and ate of it, and filled it and ate of it and filled it and ate of it. Never had he tasted such food. And soon they were all fast asleep, and the stonecutter rose from the table. That is the end of the first part.
INT.
What is the second part?
KAKUZO
Do you want to hear it?
INT.
I do.
KAKUZO
The king wakes the next day, and he finds that he is the stonecutter. He sees no lords in his house. There are no horses in his field. There are only the remains of an enormous feast, which ended sometime in the night. He looks down at his hands and he sees how terrifying they are, sees the white bone, the sinew, that which the stone may not resist. But he is a king. He sets out on the road toward his kingdom, and follows the trail of the horses’ hooves. For nineteen days he walks. It takes him nineteen days to travel what on the fastest horses took a single flight of restless speed. Still he perseveres, and on the nineteenth day, he reaches the gates of his city. He presents himself there, and the guards will not let him in. Have you nothing to sell, they ask. Have you no money with which to buy? For what reason do you want to enter this fine city? Do you not know, they asked. Do you not know that this is the richest and wealthiest city in the world? And some fear in his heart keeps the king from revealing himself. I will see, he says, how the land lies. And he goes a short distance into a desolate field, and he finds a stone. He sits by the stone and passes his hands over it. He passes his hands over it again and again, and he knows then things that the stonecutter knows and he breaks the stone and seals it and breaks it and seals it and tears at it as if at a cloth. When he has done, he has made a puzzle of the thinnest weave, a puzzle in stone. He puts it beneath his ragged cloak, and goes back to the gates. There he waits until morning, and when the first guard to wake looks out at the sun, he is there.
You again. Have you nothing to sell? Have you the means to buy? The king lifts the cloak to show the stone puzzle, and the guard’s eyes follow the impossible lines and turns and corners. Round about they go, round about and around and they fall into nothing, into nowhere. Again he tries, again, he can reach nowhere with the puzzle, with his eyes on the puzzle. Very well, he says. You are welcome to the city, and he opens the gate. The king covers his puzzle, and goes then upon the streets of his own city. Never has he seen it so well. The merchants are opening their stalls in the squares and streets. Animals are being fed, watered, slaughtered, skinned, ground, groomed, their manes tied with ribbons. He finds his familiar way to the castle. There is another gate. I will see the king, he says. Anyone has a right, says the guard, to see the king. But it may be the end of you. The guard brushes the king’s hood back and looks upon his face. But he does not see anyone he knows. He has not seen this person before. Good fortune to you, he says, and opens the gate.
Then the king is upon the courtyard of his own castle. He goes along the passages as a claimant, with the others who have things to ask. They are endless in number, it seems, and they are admitted, all at once, to an interior chamber where the king will appear and speak to them. The king himself is astonished. He has never spoken to claimants. He has never seen this room. But an hour passes and another, and a counselor comes out and sits in a high chair. I am the king, he says. I know you, thinks the king. You are but a counselor. And so the king makes himself the last of all those there, and waits, and when they have all spoken to the counselor, and when they have all gone away, he presents himself, saying, I have something to say to the king, but you are not the king. I am not the king, agrees the counselor, stepping down off the high chair, but we will go to him now. So, they go down more hallways and cross more courts, the counselor, the king, and the guards, and they enter another chamber, where another counselor, yet higher, sits. I have known these men all my life, thinks the king, and never did I know … but already he is brought forward. Here is the king, they say to him. Tell him what you will. You are not the king, he says. I have come to see the king. And so they draw back the cloth at the back of the room, the heavy, rich, banded cloth, and there is another passage, and they go down it, the king, the first counselor, the second counselor, and the guards, and they reach a place where the guards can go no farther, and the counselors lead the king on, one on each side. His clothes are so filthy, his face so etched with weather and sun, that they can scarcely bear to be beside him, yet they pass on together. Into the final chamber they go. There sits the king, and he knows himself. He has seen that face, so often! To him he goes, and when the king on his throne perceives the stonecutter’s robes, when he perceives the stonecutter’s hands, when he perceives that the stonecutter has passed all obstacles to come before him, he opens his eyes wide as any owl, and calls out. Who has let this man in? To the counselors, there is a lowly stonecutter, standing before their king. And this is what they see. The king holds out his hands and the stonecutter opens his robe and holds out his impossible puzzle, this fashioning of stone and light. The king receives it into his hands and there he makes it again the stone it was, and he sets it beside him, as it had sat in the field.