GLORY OF ABIDING

Silence comes to rest softly in the scented golden air as the thick sweet opium smoke moves from his lungs to his heart. The Prince looks about him without moving his head. Ah yes, there is his brother, and there two male cousins, and an uncle or so, wreathed in smoke, almost passed out on their gilded divans which seem to float like little gilded funeral barges on the polished teak floor. Ah, looking just like this, when the time comes, will they be borne away to other realms.

But he, he does not lie down for he is the ruler. He sits and does not move. A gecko, overwhelmed by the narcotic smoke falls from the ceiling and lands on the floor with a slapping plop. Languidly, a servant moves to pick it up. How gently she moves, bending her knees and the line of golden silk on her skirt's border suddenly taut, a line like the prow of a ship. Ah, she stands and it is gone.

He does not know what his stuporous if beloved relatives see in their dreams. But he knows that in his dream, he sees them. Is it not said that he is the living form of Vishnu, the preserver. And indeed, he must admit it is so. Opium or not opium; spicy food or not food, intrigue or no intrigue, pungent rice wine or not rice wine, soft skinned lovers or no lovers, lackeys or no lackeys, his world is the dream of a god. And while it swirls around him like so much smoke, he does not move. The thought does not occur.

Rarely does he speak. The smallest gestures suffice. For it is his function to look on this world, and by looking on it, convey blessings. It is his function, not to move and to be seen in all his impossibly elaborate splendor not to move. It is enough that he is among them.

Tomorrow he will be carried by 80 warriors on a golden palanquin beneath a huge vermilion parasol. He will be seated on a throne sixty feet high to watch the funeral of his uncle, dead of plague, a lecherous cowardly man who schemed and plotted with many a foreign envoy to sit on this very throne. He will not even blink.

Horns and drums will fill the air amid towers of incense. Tens of thousands, shouting, laughing, weeping will throng every inch of the city. Priests will go into trances or pretend to. Three of the uncles wives will throw themselves into the cremation fire. Then there will be a feast. Lithe dancers in gold will perform sacred dances. These will be the dances revealed to his great ancestor who slept with a goddess and was shown the cycle of the dance which unfolded the seasons and the hours.

Throughout the day, spies masquerading as servants, wives, guards, priests, advisors will whisper to him. The priests, the Han schemers, the visitors, the military, traders, inventors, his relatives, Ah yes, always gossip there and he will hear it all. Whatever is developed or grown in his kingdom, whatever is brought into it or taken out of it, whatever kinds of power are coveted: everything will be known. This chatter forms a web of channels covering the entire realm.

He will need to act in some cases. And from his whispered commands and slightly lifted finger blessings will flow down like water from a mountain stream and irrigate the land. For just as he eats, and sleeps, and drinks and makes love, he commands, for he is indeed among them.

But for now, there is no need of anything, and he watches the motes of dust dancing like innumerable islands in the sea of molten light reflected off the polished floor. And as he does not move his gaze or his attention, in each of those glittering specks hovering in the air, he sees the palace of another god, clear and radiant. Some are blue, some silver, some copper colored, some red, more colors than an infinity of rainbows dancing in the light. In each, the god of that color sits unmoving with consorts and attendants all around him. And before him, tiny performers manipulate their puppets for his entertainment. And these puppets are all the beings of all the universes in existence. There are as many such realms, each with its god, palace, retinue and subjects as all the atoms in an ocean of galaxies in all of time.

A smile in his mind. No one but a god who rules can know or contemplate the profound peace of this vision. This is the smile he shares with the infinity of gods.