The Plato Papers (11 page)

38

Ornatus:
Come closer, Myander. Sit by me. I see that you have been crying.

Myander:
You know why, father. I have been told that I must move to another part of the city.

Ornatus:
All children of a certain age move on. It is the custom. It gives you further cause to worship and to understand.

Myander:
But why is it necessary to move at all? I have seen citizens, in the market and in the streets, who have stood in one place always.

Ornatus:
They suffer from sickness. They are to be pitied, not condemned. They believe that our dimensions are illusory and so they refuse to make even the smallest movement.

Myander:
Plato says that we resemble them because we rarely walk beyond the walls.

Ornatus:
Plato says many things, Myander. Not all of them are right. We do not move beyond the city because there is no reason to do so. This is our companionship. The light around us is the light of human care. It is life itself. Why wander beyond our bounds, where we could only grow weary?

Myander:
Yet Plato—

Ornatus:
Oh. Once more.

Myander:
Plato says that we must learn to doubt and to question all these things. I was listening to him by the bishop’s gate.

When I was a child, as you are, I was taken to see the
lambs on the green of Lambeth. ‘Look, Plato,’ my instructor said to me, ‘look how they frisk and gambol.’
‘Why?’ I asked. ‘Because that is what lambs have always done. They know they have been chosen to fulfil
their form, and they rejoice. And that is what you
must do, little Plato.’ Did I agree or disagree? What
do you think? I am short, like you. I admit it. How can
I deny it, when I have to stand back and look up at the
citizens? You can laugh, if you wish. I do, often. It fills
me with joy to know that I am different. When I was a
child my mother told me never to accept the opinions
of others without examining them carefully. ‘You are
small,’ she said to me, ‘because you have been chosen to see everything from a different vantage.’ So I
learned to study myself rather than study the lessons
that others wished to teach me. I wanted to find the
truth that was true for me alone. Do you understand
me? Here is an ancient coin. If you come close, you will
see it.

Then he put it in his left palm and moved his hands one over the other.

Is it still there, where I placed it? Of course? No. It has
gone. It is in my right hand. And children are supposed
to be so observant! This is my only suggestion to you.
There are no certainties. So take nothing for granted.
Question your instructors. Ask them this: ‘How can I
be sure what existence
I
have been chosen for?’

Ornatus:
So that is how he speaks to you.

Myander:
He does not treat us as children. He argues with us.

Why is sleep supposed to be a holy thing? Because it
is a form of worship. But then why do I sleep only
fitfully?

And then he contradicts us.

To wait, and to do nothing, is a form of worship. Is
that what you were taught? But what if worship were
a form of waiting? Waiting for what?

Sometimes he even mocks us.

So you have heard of the city of the unborn. But you
do not know where it is. It is the city from which we
all have come, but its location does not interest you. It
might disturb the deep peace of your being. Is that the
phrase? Yes? The deep peace of being. But I tell you
this. In the house of birth, just outside the walls, the
newborn scream and struggle as they are brought into
our world. Tell me, why is this?

Ornatus:
There is no need to listen to him, Myander. Even better, try to avoid him. I have been told something. I have learned that he is placed on trial.

Myander:
So much the worse for us.

39

Do you understand now how you have disturbed the citizens?

Never once have I described my journey to the children. I have simply invited them to ask questions and to discuss the answers among themselves.

You mention your famous journey once again. May we
then be permitted to ask our own questions? What if you had
stood before the citizens of Mouldwarp and informed them
that they were living in a dark and shrunken world? That
they were imprisoned within a cave. Do you think they would
have applauded you and offered you thanks? Do you imagine
that they would have been grateful for this knowledge? No.
They would have scorned you as a simpleton, or condemned
you as a deluder.

As you do.

We do not consider you to be foolish and we have not yet
condemned you. If it is a matter of delusion, perhaps it is only
self-delusion.

You mean that I have lost my wits. Thank you.

No. You protest too much. In certain respects we sympathise with you.

I do not require sympathy. I do not believe that I need it. I only ask to be judged with fairness. It has been suggested that I invented my journey to Mouldwarp in order to gain credit for myself. What credit? I now stand before you as a man about to be condemned. It was put to me that all was fantasy, designed to prove my own speculations about our ancestors. Could anyone have invented the world I have described?

To imagine a world within our world—a world beneath
our world. It is impossible.

Yet I have explained to you my horror within the cave and I have admitted my confusion. I had expected them to worship the stars they had created, but they scarcely noticed them. I had expected them to be afraid of the dark that time had formed, but instead they filled it with lights. I had believed them to be celebrants of power, but they simply chattered to one another, hour by hour, about nothing in particular. How could I possibly have dreamed of this? When I spoke to their souls, the unhappy voices were a revelation; they asked me questions, but I dared not answer in case I spread terror among them. Why should I invent such things, only to be greeted with laughter by you all? I tell you, I have seen a real world.

You say that they were constrained by this—time—
which did not even exist. So they were enslaved to a concept
which they themselves had invented? Do you expect us to believe this?

I—

You say that they did not worship their stars. So what god
did they reverence?

It is not a question of—

They had no god. The people of Mouldwarp believed that
they lived in a material world. Is that so?

It is so.

Knowing that material is finite, then, they decided to conquer rather than to worship time and the stars. They proclaimed their liberty, and yet they were slaves of instinct and
suggestion. They declared their freedom of speech and freedom of belief, and yet they were never really free. All this we
deduce from your own account.

You speak of slavish instinct, but I saw energy and exhilaration. Perhaps you are correct in believing that they wished to conquer their material world, but this afforded them a sense of progress.

But why, then, did they have no sense of the sacred?

They did not need it! They were truly free, since they believed that they were in control of their own destinies. Think of your own lives now. They are empty, precisely because you wish them to be without meaning. You believe that there is no meaning.

That is false. We know that we are the meaning. This session is now ended. Let the bells ring out.

40

Madrigal:
Did you attend the session?

Sidonia:
Of course. It was entertaining. Plato and the guardians stood opposite each other on the hills, while we sat between them on the banks of the Fleet.

Madrigal:
Ornatus told me that he could hear the voices of the guardians from the bridge. They sounded, to him, very vibrant. Very expressive. He could also hear the citizens murmuring.

Sidonia:
Some of them were tired. I had brought my own resting place, because I knew that it was going to be a long affair. As one citizen said, we might have entered another new age before it was finished. Even Plato laughed at that.

Madrigal:
But surely Plato is talking nonsense? There is no above or below. No outward or inward. Nothing that exists is hidden from human sight.

Sidonia:
Apparently not. But Plato has always defied our expectations.

Madrigal:
And how could he have ventured into this underground world of Mouldwarp if it only existed in three or four dimensions?

Sidonia:
He would certainly feel the pinch. Why are you laughing?

Madrigal:
Did you hear the funny story from Sparkler?

Sidonia:
What story?

Madrigal:
He was going towards the temple to be healed, when Plato stopped him. Do you know what he said? ‘Better that you should explore your illness and learn from your suffering, Sparkler, rather than desire to be cured.’

Sidonia:
I suppose Sparkler had something to say about that?

Madrigal:
Oh yes. ‘Plato,’ he said, ‘you may think you are a very clever person. You have always been clever, ever since we first met at the ceremony of naming. But sometimes, I believe, you know nothing.’

Sidonia:
And Plato?

Madrigal:
He danced.

Sidonia:
What?

Madrigal:
He danced upon the earth. And then he replied with some kind of chant. ‘Sparkler,’ he sang, ‘your light still sparkles but you do not see. I am clever
because
I know nothing.’

Sidonia:
What an extraordinary statement! And yet, in Plato’s case, I have become accustomed to the extraordinary.

41

Sidonia:
I am concerned for you. You seem lost to us.

Plato:
Does it matter?

Sidonia:
But in your arguments you miss so much. Our world is gentler than you admit. Do you know, for example, what I do when I am alone? I float in a dream of my own and, sometimes, the angels join me.

Plato:
Do you speak to them?

Sidonia:
No. They whisper to me, but I can never understand them.

Plato:
They have been with us since the beginning of the world and still they can only whisper.

Sidonia:
Sometimes I hear them in music.

Plato:
And in the voices of children.

Sidonia:
But why are they here?

Plato:
There is no other place for them. Yet at the same time they exist everywhere. This is what I am now beginning to understand—

Sidonia:
I was conversing with Madrigal—

Plato:
Madrigal is very wise, but he is impatient for the truth. He does not listen. Sparkler and Ornatus are the same. Yet that is not so strange. The parishioners of Newgate are known for their bad temper, and those of St Giles for their charity. So in turn the citizens of our parish may be known for their impatience.

Sidonia:
The impatient inhabitants of Pie Corner? An interesting theory. That was what I was telling Madrigal. From you, Plato, he must expect the unusual.

Plato:
There sounds the bell for the next session. I hope that I can satisfy him.