Náwu zuló tsí takúrú ké níyú/Násu rú kúta tsíló zu mo líyú.
To heal the soul of subtle hurt,/Pray take the cup and slow invert.
Ecce nunc in pulvere dormiam; et si mane me quæsieris, non subsistam.Liber Job vii, 21.
Man is an exception, whatever else he is. If he is not the image of God, then he is a disease of the dust.G.K. Chesterton, “Wine When It Is Red” (1908).
In the white dust the wind had once written with many fingers, but only the golden iris of the sun, glaring from the blue zenith of heaven, could read its city-wide palimpsest. Now even the wind came hither no more, dying somewhere in the sun-murdered leagues that ringed the city off from intrusion at the desert’s heart. The dust was thick on the road he traveled, softening the tumbled heaps of palace and palæstra, temple and tavern, that lay to left and right, and stirring sluggishly around the feet of his exhausted camel.
He came to a fountain, its five-sided marble bowl dust-choked to overflowing, and a fugitive gleam of gold caught his eye from a long, low heap of dust that radiated beneath its rim. He halted his camel with a click of his tongue and it groaningly lay for him to dismount, his joints creaking beneath his dust-stained robes. He investigated the heap, sweeping dust away with his goad to discover a skeleton holding forward in one thin white hand, as though in its last extremity, a cup of pentagonally rimmed gold.
He left skeleton and cup to lie and remounted his camel. Soon he came to another fountain, and another long, low heap of dust; and then another, with two heaps of dust radiating beneath its rim; and a third, with three; and a fourth, with five; and a fifth, with eight. But now the five-sided white tower was in sight, rising above the ruins of the dust-whelmed city, and he urged his camel forward, no longer troubling to count the heaps that lay around the subsequent fountains, for he knew what they would number.
When he came to the tower he discovered it lay at the end of five roads, each of the other four seemingly identical to the one he had just traveled, with a long line of fountains stretching down each. He dismounted and walked around the tower, wondering at the pattern of broad stylized leaves incused in its grey-veined marble. A minute hillock in the dust caught his eye, and he stooped and brushed dust away to discover a huge green gem lying at the foot of one side of the tower. When he lifted it forth, he found that it was carved in the shape of a dodecahedron, each pentagonal face bearing a hieroglyph of the city’s zodiac.
When he held it to the sun the hieroglyphs gleamed with extra fire, and he noted variations in the form of each, as though they had been composed uncountable millennia before, when the heavens themselves were altered. He laid the gem back to the dust and resumed his circuit of the tower, noting further hillocks at the foot of each side, where lay, he knew, further gems carved as dodecahedra. He came again to the side where his camel stood, its long lashes half-closed over its thirst-dulled eyes, and delved in his saddle-bag for the key he had brought. He had to make three circuits of the tower to discover the key-hole, mistaking it on circuits one and two, he realized, for a flaw in the marble. The key turned silently and a cleft of shadow opened before him.
He entered the tower and climbed the left-hand spiral that led to its flat roof, counting the steps in a shade-heightened daze of weariness and thirst, the flap of his robes and click of his sandals echoing endlessly above and below him. There were two-hundred-and-thirty-three steps, but when he reached the roof he found the sun declining in the west, as though he had climbed for hours. The roof was pentagonal and unrailed, and quite bare of dust, as though swept regularly clean. He crossed it to the five-sided pillar that rose in its center, where the inverted amethyst cup awaited him of which the scroll had spoken. There was a line of verse inscribed in silver on its rim in the ancient syllabary of the city. He walked around the pillar, reading the words off the rim, for they seemed intended to be read when the cup was inverted:
He lifted the cup and slowly righted it, watching a heart of wine swell inside it, flaring sanguineously in the setting sun. The scent of sugared spices met his nostrils simultaneous with cries from the city beneath him, and he carried the refilled cup to the edge of the roof and looked out over the re-awoken fountains and the gaily dressed revellers who crowded their rims, dipping golden cups into the wine that spurted and splashed within. He smiled and raised the cup to his lips, closing his eyes to draw in its scent and murmur the verse written upon it before he drank.
Náwu zuló tsí takúrú ké níyú/Násu rú kúta tsíló zu mo líyú.
To heal the soul of subtle hurt,/Pray take the cup and slow invert.
But the wine’s fumes troubled his brain and his memory failed him midway through the second line. He opened his eyes and lifted the cup away, meaning to read the verse again upside-down. Strangely, however, the verse could be read as it was, and retained clear meaning as he turned the cup.
An esurient croak sounded from beneath him, low and gelatinous through the splashing of the fountains and the light laughter of the revelers, and he looked down to see the giant toad that was crouched at the foot of the tower, front paws fitted already into the incused pattern by which it would climb to him. Horror curdled in his belly as he completed a circuit of the roof, peering down each side to see a giant toad crouched at its foot, unblinkingly meeting his gaze with eyes of crystalline, cat-iris’d gold.
Yólí mo rúkú ta tsíló zu shíná/Yóní ké zu Lótsí takúrú hwíná.
Raise high the cup and drain it well/To drag the soul to dusty Hell.
He carried the cup back to the pillar and re-inverted it, watching the red heart of wine shrink to nothing without spilth. As he set it back to the top of the pillar, silence swallowed the revelry around him and from the foot of the tower he heard the faint thuds of the five dodecahedral gems falling from the skulls of the five disencorporated toads.