In the Great Hall

Wednesday, September 13, 2006

The Bitter River


Today the rain poured over the panes of glass in the library. It was lonely even out there, few people were at their various places. Through the grey windows I watched the pools grow larger around the flower beds in the turnabout. I was delaying my return to the filming room. Soon I found myself here anyway, a stack of yellow papers in front of me, old airgrams. Lying next to them a newspaper, brown from age, reeking of dust. I can taste it in my mouth. The tips of my index finger and thumb are silver from flitting through the brittle pages. I rub them together and watch tiny filaments glint in the light as they cascade to the floor. I listen to the hum of the ventilation system, as always, a blanket of white noise behind everything. I close my eyes and sink slowly underneath. I open them. Hanging above my desk on the post-board is a photocopy of an ancient map of the world, a disc with seven points surrounding it. It has been here since before I came to the job, fastened with two green tacks. Babylon is the center of the world on this map, and there is Assyria, Urartu, and Habban. Surrounding these lands is a body of water named "The Bitter River". Unlike the Greek's, this encircling ocean is not the boundary of the known world. There are islands beyond the Bitter River, represented by triangles set like the points of a star. One of these islands is named "Where Birds Cannot Reach". Another is called "The Light That Is Brighter Than the Sunset or Stars", another, "Where One Sees Nothing", and one "Where Morning Dawns". On the western most point, a horned bull is shown attacking a trespasser. Another island is entirely black. And from the four corners blow the four winds.

What good is everything I know? How far has man come, now that he has proven to himself that the Earth is not flat, that we are not locked in by an ocean of water, that we spin around a sun which spins around a point which we can barely imagine? Were these ancient men not as sure? And which world would I choose, each given objective consideration? Ah, this map, which stares back at me with two green tacks like my green eyes. I want to just move them down and make a face of it.

Instead I walk back out into the library. There are even fewer people now that the day has passed. It is still raining. I walk up and press closely to the glass wall, hundreds of square windows coursing with water. I look out into the vast city and imagine the rain rising through all of its streets. I see it happening slowly, almost imperceptibly. I see everything rising, floating about, sweeping away in a tremendous tide to the Bitter River. Debris and screaming people are swept by. Some grasp toward ledges and trees, others hold tight to pieces of flotsam, caught in the current. And the buildings one by one begin to give. And out in the distance, where the contour of the land rises to the sky, I see mountains crumbling into a magnificent sea, beneath a terrible glow on the horizon. All of the terror, all of the agony, along with every last human hope being sucked into the whirlpool beyond the Bitter River. All but for us here in the Great Hall. We were spared. But look, now the library is empty. I am alone on the last vestige of land, Babylon, and I am seeking out the departed Gods. They have gone across the river to become divine animals on the seven islands. The silence now is unimaginable. I feel no tears come to my eyes at the loss of the world. I wonder not where all the people in the Great Hall have disappeared to. I pull a vacant seat to the wall and sit back, propping my feet against the glass. I set my eyes on the skyline, now clear and blazing with sunset. My mind is wandering, I am going to the island where birds cannot reach.