The Totems of Abydos Read Free Page A

mysterious cognitive alchemy, the being of the pebble or the branch, or its explanation, or its code or key, what told what it was and why it was so.
    That very night, still shuddering from the dream, drenched with sweat, shivering in his blanket, Horemheb rose up and, heedless of the stealthy ones, hastened to the platform. He had realized that the secret he sought lay not in the bright court of the village, to be found in the light of day, within the fence, but outside the village, beyond those frail palings, through the forest, away from the village, in the darkness. That was the first time he had gone to the platform at night. He had come back alone in the morning from the platform. He had been noticeably different then from what he been the day before. He sat alone in his hut for three days, seeing no one and not eating. On the third day he taken his scarp and gouged out his own eyes. This, as I have indicated, occurred long ago. Indeed, as I have indicated, there are none alive today who remember it, other than Horemheb himself. He did not explain why he had done what he did, nor was he asked. The brethren are a tactful folk and the endemic courtesy which is custom, if not law, with them mitigates against the impropriety of inquiring too deeply into matters which might prove sensitive. They assumed, doubtless, that Horemheb had had his reasons for his act, reasons which must be, in his own mind at least, sufficient for its accomplishment, reasons it might not be wise to inquire into. They did determine that he had gone to the platform at night, however, which is not customary, though it is not unlawful, for the brethren. Perhaps he should not have done that. Who knew what he had seen there? It was conjectured it must have been unpleasant. The brethren were content to let Horemheb bear the weight of this secret, if it were one. Better he than they. Now, of course, all accepted the fact that Horemheb was blind, and old, and foolish. Still he had seen something that they had not seen. But perhaps it was better that it not have been seen.
    Horemheb, of course, never told anyone what he had seen. From this one might have supposed that perhaps he had learned the secret, or that he had apprehended the truth, or that he had discovered the memory, or the thing like a memory, which lay like a stone and a fountain within the brethren. But this was not so. If he had learned these things, or recollected them, or whatever, he would not have returned later to the platform. You see, to the contrary, at the platform that night, he had not really learned the secret; he had not there, before the platform, understood the memory, the half-suspected memory, which might not even exist; no, he had not there, at the platform, perceived the truth at last, something which might have redeemed himself and the brethren, which might have made it all worthwhile, or, if not that, at least intelligible; no, no coin was obtained there of inestimable worth, or even one of paltry value, nor even a truth which might in its glory or hideousness have blasted him. Rather it was something else he saw there, something which he had not expected and which frightened him. It was only after he had returned home and thought and thought, and twice dreamed, that he suspected the meaning of what he saw, not that he knew that meaning, or understood it, but only that he suspected it. What he had seen there, he became certain, although it was not in itself the secret, not in itself the truth, or the memory, was something which nonetheless appertained to the secret, something which was not the truth or the memory but which might not be entirely unrelated to the truth, or to the memory, something which had something to do with all three, or one, as the case might be, or else it was something which might, in some terrible way, itself know the secret, the truth, the memory. After Horemheb had inflicted such indignity and pain upon himself, he did not return for revolutions to