What is a Riddle? It is not merely a word game, or a puzzle, or a even, truly, a question. It is a series of locks which open only onto each other, in a great circle that leads back to a Truth—and this is the secret I tell you now on the great wall of Thebes: the Truth is always in the Question, never in the answer. All conceivable truths are in a single question. If I ask a boy-child to tell me my name, I have already told him the ancient truth that a name holds power. I have told him that I am more than a monster, for I possess a name. I have told him that in names lies the path to freedom, not only of the body, but of the ineffable Self. All this I have told him, before I ever demanded such a simple repayment as an answer, if only he could listen. There is not nearly so much gold in the answer, which is nothing more than a word.
What is a Riddle?
It is a box full of satisfactions. It never fails the questioner or the respondent. When it is opened, there is a soft intake of breath, when it remains closed, breath itself is stopped.
And on this box is written:
This is the Book of Dreams.
Burrowing Beetles Wall Up Their Doors With Earth
I am afraid to open it. A closed book is beautiful, because anything can be written in it, and so everything is. All the stories that ever were—love, honor, death, lust, wisdom—every word written is contained inside it as long as the I-that-is-Ayako does not reach forward to open the cover and reveal what is actually written there. It can only be disappointing. Perhaps that is why it bulges, so full of what it could be. The curve of potential, like a pregnant woman’s belly.
An open book is ugly, it is splayed open like a whore. It can only be what it is.
I am afraid of it, I do not want to touch it. It does not fill me with light lik
e the Stone or the goat’s milk. What do I need with a book of dreams when dreams people my body as though I were a capital-city?
Waters Dry Up
River is worried. He sees that my dream-tears continue, falling with more speed, pooling around my shoulders in a salty ring. River is usually the first to understand. He will not tell Mountain until he is sure he cannot punish me alone. He set the sun on me to dry them, but the tears are alive now, they run their course like the mewling children of River do, heedless and wild. They come and come and come.
Within myself, I am smiling.
He himself tries to wash them away, frothing under their weight, blue on blue. But they sink within him and he cannot move to stop up my eyes like wine bottles. I am heavier, heavier by far. My salts scald and bruise him—I am warmed by his screams.
He sets the wind to dry them, but they can only soak up the thick waters, and send them earthward again as rain. The dams begin to swell up with my sorrows, the sea is black and deep. Great storms erupt on the hipbones of Mountain, drenching his gray skin with borrowed tears.
He set the glaciers on me to freeze them, but they are hot and thick, rolling over my body in a great gray slough, over my dark-treed belly, the skin of boughs that covers my secret womb, and on this skin is written in the sap and tears:
This is the Book of Dreams.
Wild Geese Come as Guests
I dream I have found the last of him. In the deep river currents where no reeds grow it floated like an abandoned cradle. I am ready now, to take the river into me. I do not want to, but now there can be no more delays, and I can see the colors of the water changing. I am draped in his body—intestines, blood, leg, clavicle, cheek, eyes, jaw, scalp, hands, skin, spleen, heart, skull. I am dressed for the ball, for a second wedding, for the insensate ritual of taking my dream-husband’s corpse into myself.
I know what is coming, what the river will leave in me like sandy deposits in the delta. I am resigned, I want it done. I want to leave it on the banks and never think on it again. The hawk-headed child looms large in my vision. I can feel its feathers already prickling the walls of my womb.
I stifle revulsion as I clean the last of the dream-husband’s organs in the cool river, which has inundated the valley and given life to the amaranth crops. I am the body of the sky, and I will give birth to light from light. I cannot tell if it is still a dream. If the child I will take from his mute body will be a dream-son or if he will be real. I am the amaranth, and I am the river.
I hold the last of him in my hands, mottled gray and shot with hardened blood. And on its length is written:
This is the Book of Dreams.
Sparrows Dive Into the Water Becoming Clams
Metamorphosis. It is a long line of bellies, chained together flesh-wise, circling each other in a blood-black smear. A book is a belly, too. It is full of dark, nameless things decaying into each other, dissolving in acid, jostling for position. Kingfishers dive into the water and become women; women dive into the earth and become books.
What woman was this book before it grew its leather wings? I do not want to disturb her, to open her and pry out her secrets with a knife.
I was breathing heavily, trying to escape the book without moving. Perhaps peace lay in it, perhaps not. I did not want to know. I wanted my bean patch and my first floor. I wanted River and Mountain sleeping beside me in the dark.
I knew then I would not open it. I knew my story, I did not need the book. I would not harm it, its capacity for infinite wisdom, by reading what was truly there. I was not sure, I reasoned, that I could read any longer.
But I could not stop looking at it, the vulgarity of its bulging cover. I wanted it, like a barren woman wants a child. I would leave it, let it remain quiet and alone, as I have been for so long. Let the scholars in Kyoto pour over pages until their eyes dribble onto their cheeks. I took my lessons from Gate and Moth, Goat and River, and Mountain, above all my patron Mountain, who held me in his arms and whispered lullabies.
I stood before the book. I was the anatomy of a no. All of me cried out in rejection of the black heart of the dream-pagoda.