Child of Fortune (44 page)

Be that as it may, what we had experienced had demonstrated that there could be more to the Bloomenveldt's blandishments than crude appeal to simple mammalian tropisms, for the violet flower, certainement, produced an intense state of erotic arousal in which the spiritual dimension was not absent, as if somehow there was indeed a floral intelligence at work on the Bloomenveldt whose biochemical sapience was capable of the subtlety necessary to touch the human heart.

Mayhap we would have been able to put it all down to chance conjunction between Belshazaar's floral biochemistry and a randomly evolved human congruence therewith in certain isolated cerebral centers had we not soon thereafter encountered another mode of human and floral chemical convergence which affected what one would have thought were entirely spiritual levels of human sapience.

Consciously or not, whether simply carrying forth our original plan or being drawn deeper into the Bloomenveldt by the natural order of things, we drifted slowly westward during the next two days. Here we continued to find small groups of humans in thrall to what we had bizarrely enough begun to dismiss as quotidian blooms, and here too dyads blissfully bewitched by the flower of violet passion were also in evidence.

But now for the first time we encountered solitary humans in psychotropic communion with their own flower.

The upright petals of the flower in question were always blue, though the tint thereof might vary, and the stamen consisted of a large flat mound covered with fist-sized grains of soft white pollen. Upon this pallet the human devotee sat motionless with nourishment ready at hand gazing wide- eyed not at the glories and wonders of the Bloomenveldt but at entirely subjective vistas within.

Male and female, they were all in those terminal years of their lifespan when the hair grays and thins, and the skin dries into parchment, and the vital energies may no longer be reignited by the Healers' arts. But if their bodies were dismaying reminders of ultimate mortality, the spirits which peered inward in their limpid empty eyes, were, if the same are truly mirrors of the soul as the poets contend, in blissful transcendence of the limits of temporal linearity, at least from their own point of view.

Even such callow mystic libertines as we could not summon up the crudeness to attempt to rouse such living buddhas to discourse by insistent hectorings, nor would such a stratagem likely have succeeded, for all such hermits that we were to encounter in the next two days moved only their hands to convey the occasional pollen grain to their mouths, and otherwise might have been temple icons of stone for all the awareness of or interest in the external realm they betrayed.

Whether such buddhas were drawn to the lotus, or whether the flowers were capable of granting ultimate enlightenment to ordinary human dross, or whether for that matter, these living icons in fact contained the spirits of which they spoke at all, we could in truth know not, for total vegetative nonsentience for all I knew could produce the same visual effect as transcendence of maya's veil. And indeed certain cynical wits have been known to contend that the mental states themselves are much the same.

"It would seem there is only one method of discerning whether these ancients are enlightened beings whose spirits soar in realms of grandeur beyond maya's tawdry veils or whether their sapience has been extinguished leaving only vacuous protoplasmic shells behind," Guy opined the night of the second day among the babas of the Bloomenveldt.

"Namely?"

"Namely to inhale the lotus breath ourselves and learn whether we become bodhis or zombies ..."

"Guy! Surely not even you would lay such a wager!"

"Of course I spoke in jest," he said, laughing rather unconvincingly and hugging me to him. "Still, if one knew matters were what they seem, what reason would there be to dally with lesser amusements endlessly if the ultimate were truly available for a mere breath of perfume?"

"This for one" I declared pettishly, thumbing on the Touch and pulling on his lingam, for while Guy's mood was hardly one which aroused me to erotic passion, I knew no other more immediately puissant means of changing this unwholesome subject.

***

But as it turned out, on the afternoon of the next day we came upon a baba of the Bloomenveldt who at last deigned to address us.

Bathed in a golden beam of sunlight streaming through a break in the foliage behind as if the whole scene had been deliberately lit with thespic intent, was a great fan of petals whose hue was a blue that was almost black, the hue of that region of a planetary atmosphere where sky becomes space, or of that celestial moment between sunset and night. Upon the flat stamen covered with white pollen sat a naked man with hair and beard of the same color, his legs folded under him in the classic lotus posture, his back to the floral halo like a figure out of primeval temple art, and his lips creased in a beatific smile.

But, far from being lost in internal vistas, his great brown eyes tracked us as we approached with a clarity and sentience impossible to deny.

Nor, it seemed, could our eyes break their lock on his, as, without consultation, Guy and I strode hand in hand toward this baba and seated ourselves before him like dutiful acolytes before their guru. Mayhap it was the ambiance which so compelled us, mayhap there was true power in this ancient's eyes, or mayhap we both had the same thought, namely that since this hermit so manifestly acknowledged our existence, such an approach might at last induce one of these sphinxes to speak.

"Speak to us, bitte, baba," I said in a firm but respectful voice, "and show us that someone at least is at home beyond that sage facade."

The smile broadened into something more like a grin. "I have never been more at home behind my eyes," said a calm, clear voice.

"You speak!"

"Why then do the other hermits remain silent?"

"Only they may tell you, kind, and they choose silence."

"But you do speak to us," I said. "Why are you different?"

"Are not all humans different, each from the other?" the baba said. "In the worlds of men, I was a dedicated pedagog, so mayhap before my final flower do I choose to speak to young spirits in the manner of a loquacious bodhisattva ...

"If this is so, why do you sit passively awaiting death, rather than return to the worlds of men and go up and out doing noble deeds like a true bodhisattva?"

The old man's eyes widened, and his permanent smile strayed for a moment from beatitude to the mundanely specific, to wit that of his former pedagogical self happening suddenly on an unexpectedly sharp student.

"In the worlds of men, I would expire raging against the dying of the light," he said. "Only within the celestial sphere of my perfect flower may I know my final moment in the Tao."

"Hola! Then this is indeed the perfect lotus of ultimate enlightenment!" Guy exclaimed, fingering his filter mask in a most unsettling manner.

"Many flowers grow on the Bloomenveldt. Here each of us may find the flower of their perfection."

"Mayhap this is mine ..." Guy said breathlessly, and made to remove it.

But before I could move to stop him, the old man stayed him with a sudden instant upraising of his hand, a puissant gesture indeed in light of his previous utter immobility. And when he then spoke, the tranquil certitude of the bodhi was married to the authority of the teacher.

"Seek first your own full blossoming, young spirit, before you contemplate this final flower!"

"Well spoken, well spoken indeed!" I was moved to enthusiastically declare.

And at this, by signs so subtle as to be perceivable only en gestalt, the spirit animating the withering body evinced a preparation to withdraw from further worldly discourse.

"Wait!" said Guy. "At least tell me then how I am to know the flower of my own perfection!"

"Let the Perfume of Paradise come unto thee, Mohammed."

"Vraiment, of course, we can only find our way by losing it, ne?" Guy exclaimed. "We must breathe in the spirit of this enchanted forest, we must seek our destiny bravely unmasked, that is what he is telling us, Sunshine!"

"This koan affords me no such unequivocal satori," I told him sourly.

"Merde, tell this groundling in words she may comprehend, bitte!" he demanded quite boorishly of the silent bodhi.

But the old man quite ignored this unseemly cajolement. His spirit had long since departed to the untrammeled contemplation of regions within. No effort of ours could conjure it to speak again.

Chapter 18

Guy, on the other hand, was far from being at a loss for words.

"Look at the Bloomenveldt, Sunshine"' he proclaimed after we had withdrawn a decent distance, and I humored him to the extent of staring out across the endless rolling vista of foliage and flowers. "Can your eyes tell one part of it from another? Regard the sounds of the Bloomenveldt! Can you discern anything more informative than the whispering of the wind through the treetops or the chittering of unseen fauna?"

"Bien, the cogency of your discourse has convinced me that it all looks and sounds the same ..." I said sourly.

"But we know it is not all the same, do we not? Is it not quite obvious?"

"Isn't what quite obvious?"

"Merde, that you cannot use your eyes and ears to track down the inner mysteries of the Bloomenveldt, of course," Guy exclaimed as if addressing a dimwit. "you must use your nose to follow that which rides upon the wind! Surely you can see that?"

"I am not an imbecile, Guy!" I snapped back pettishly ... But can't you see that we would like as not lose our way therein if we attempted to doff our masks and follow a floral piper?"

"But you yourself have said we can always find the coast by following the sunrise," Guy pointed out slyly. "There will be little danger if we adhere to the terms of our traveling treaty. One of us to be the psychonaut, and the other the ground control. Remember! It was your idea, ne?"

"My idea? It was never my notion to travel unmasked, only to insure that one of us always retain reason if we paused now and again to sample the perfume of a flower!"

Guy stared angrily at me.

"What do you suggest then, that we give over our quest just when we have finally caught the scent of our quarry?"

I regarded him with no less pique, but when it came to formulating a cogent rejoinder, my wits failed me.

"Does the silence of the sphinx signal assent?" he persisted sarcastically. "Vraiment, enough, I take your silence for assent, whether that is your intent or not!" And so saying, before I could protest, he doffed his filter mask, took a deep breath, and regarded me triumphantly. "Voila, the intrepid psychonaut!, he declared. "Come, Sunshine, surely by your own lights, you cannot allow me to proceed without a ground control?"

And with that, he bounded off to the west, leaving me no choice but to follow him, muttering futile imprecations under my breath.

***

For the rest of the afternoon, Guy never paused long enough for me to hector him, but led us on a ragged zig-zag course generally westward, which is to say the direction logic had been taking us in the first place, before he decided to allow the backbrain to follow where the nose might lead it. And while I found his puissance as a tracker less than overwhelming, and his cavalier unilateralism boorish in the extreme, at length I was forced to admit that I could discern no obvious sign of danger.

Guy would drift down onto a leaf and kick off in his next leap apparently without conscious thought, though the direction of our vector would almost always alter slightly. In this manner, with Guy at the helm, did we proceed westward, like a sailboat tacking across unfelt breezes.

As the afternoon wore on, my anger attenuated as my curiosity began to come to the fore. What arcane scent was my foolhardy psychonaut following? What visions were wafting through his brain on the pheromonic wind? Or were we tacking this way and that to no coherent purpose?

Vraiment, if truth be told, by the time night began to fall, and prudence constrained even Guy to seek out a leaf well clear of any floral influences, my curiosity had taken on a certain envious tinge, for while I was not an imbecile, had I not readily enough owned to being a mystic libertine? Which is to say that I had never been one to stop short of orgasm in the throes of tantric bliss, nor, even in Nouvelle Orlean, had I been much for allowing even the most venturesome of swains to boast that they could go where I dare not follow.

As soon as we had broken out our concentrates, therefore, I quite forgot the ireful tirade I had been rehearsing to myself during the hot-blooded afternoon's journey, in favor of satisfying the curiosity which had come on with the glorious soul-stirring colors of the Bloomenveldt sunset.