The deportment of the elders always contained something of the marvellous. Every elder was a wonder; and because every elder participated in some function in the world, the world never ceased to be a wonder. Each person who came to the house brought a fragment of the glorious stage of the living world, and gaiety rather than melancholy informed the spectacle. The world protected you. The living anticipation of the imagination and the wonders and marvels of the story books would continue beyond the time of grey hair and shiny pates; this is how you would outdo the elders and excel over them. There was much to be learned in the remaining years in school and upon the further steps up the ladder of enlightenment. Everything was going to be smooth.
A certain event might sometimes cause a shock but not such a shock as to jolt lives out of the circle of order and satisfaction. The quack across the bridge went on making money with the coloured emollients in his little jars and no one really bothered too much. The doctor’s daughter expressed a preference for the boy she had met once at a shop rather than for the one sanctioned by her parents, and no really did bat an eyelid more than once. The philosopher dwelled on the eternal soul in relation to the Immanent Reality, and everybody remembered to modify his or her prayer by a single sentence at the next ceremony of godly worship.
Since all ordinary lives that lived in households seemed to move in circles that beat a very languid path forward, there appeared nothing much within those circles that had the makings of dreams, dilemmas, rebellions, tragedies, passions, triumphs and nostalgia. Suffering, bereavement and death did abound within but they apparently followed a familiar pattern and were before long expectedly overcome by at least a semblance of reassuring calm to the observer.
But the calm on the surface and the reassurance it gives may be upset gravely not just by a thrown stone but also by turbulence quite under the surface. The disturbance may proceed from a gentleman who is unreasonably discontented with the calm and assurance of the world. His is the kind of unease that cannot be met singly but must be suppressed in the public contentment of talk and routine. Those who stand up to question the routine recall to others that a disquiet is present within the latter’s own selves. The doubters must be dismissed as not really belonging in the proper sphere of living, else why should they be discontented?
As we would know years later, the questioners persist and a day comes when one of them may turn an entire town upside down. It is another matter whether he succeeds in his aims or not. The deeds of this pertinacious man set an indelible stamp on the people as they still follow their routine. In a Book maintained somewhere, the iconoclast’s feat is an indubitable achievement. To us, the world was once wonderful in a certain time in every which way. Was it all that wrong to think it wonderful with the fascination that our eyes saw?
Brilliantly evocative. Reminiscent of The Enigma of Arrival, but the writer has a voice all his own.