A CHAMBER FOR THE SOUL
The Greek pedagogue could not help
but wonder about the intelligence of the young king. In no more than ten
days, the thirteen-year-old boy, with the help of the law of an oblique
eclipse, calculated that a moon-sun year contains fifty-nine small years of
three-hundred-sixty-five days each, with an annual error of half an hour!
The teacher was astonished when he compared the result with the Aenopidus
calendar: the identical numbers told him he had a genius in front of him.
In the second month the young man dealt with trisection of an
angle, and he was excelling in algebra and arithmetic. He thirstily
devoured the Elements of Euclid and dreamt that one day he would manage to
solve the problem of squaring a circle. In the beginning of the third
month, just when the pedagogue was getting ready to start teaching the
small king ethics as well, a scandal occurred. The servants said excitedly
that Alexander had struck the teacher, because he had corrected him when he
was solving a geometry problem. Both the army and the guards whispered
about the grave event, and finally the news came to the emperor’s ears. He
immediately ordered that the pedagogue be summoned.
* * *
"I want you to tell me the truth!"
the emperor raged. "I don't want you to go easy on him, because I know his
blood: his blood is my blood! I know that he is as quick as a flash of
lightning, but that he is blinded by himself and might even kill out of his
vanity! But I want to know: why did he strike you, teacher?"
The teacher was quiet, his eyes to the ground. He smoothed
his short beard and deliberated over his words. Finally he said: "He is a
genius, your highness. And there is no salvation for him. One day, whenever
it is, his intemperance will wish for the world as well; and then he will
subdue it. But his soul will suffer, because it is fragile, like Egyptian
glass, and it will not be able to bear the granite of his greed."
The Great Philip looked silently at the famous middle-aged
philosopher. He sat on his throne pensively, in rich clothes and with
glittering rings on his fingers, a finger over his blind eye. Finally, he
snapped his fingers and said calmly: "But why did he hit you?"
The teacher hesitated. He raised his eyes, and they
benevolently opened the soul of the emperor like the sky breaking up a
storm. "We were sitting today, in the morning, in the library, and I tested
his genius, my lord. I asked him about a problem in science I had taught
him nothing about. He found the solution, but at the last movement, when he
was supposed to create a tangent with a calm hand, and thus reach the
solution, as if too happy with his success, his hand shook and he missed
the point where the line was supposed to end. I saw that he knew the
solution. I would wager my life on that. But his greed and haste in
reaching the goal, his fiery desire to be praised, kept him from success;
then he turned pale and most calmly asked me whether the solution was
correct, though he himself knew that it was not. I told him that he was in
error, and he struck me. Then, with tears in his eyes, he ran out of the
library. That is what occurred."
The Emperor fell into a dark mood. He turned sour, and for a
moment he looked hopeless. Then, he said in broken voice: "I knew that he
was too smart, that he would abuse his power to conceal his weaknesses."
"But merciful lord!" the teacher exclaimed. "I'm begging you not to take it
for evil; it is my fault, for I did not begin teaching ethics on time. He
still does not know that virtue stands in the middle ground between too
much and too little. He is wise, intelligent, but greedy, stubborn, and
immoderate. It is my fault, my lord!"
The Great Philip looked terrible. He was as resolute as a
lifted sword. Then he said: "It's over. It's too late for you to teach him
moderation. He is already a conqueror."
And then he bid farewell to the sage and ordered that his
trunks be packed, that a convoy be loaded and that he be provided an
escort.
* * *
In the morning, as the loaded horses
slowly left the city gates, the young king ran from somewhere, and, running
up to the horse of the wise man, offered his hand to his teacher. Their
hands joined in a warm clasp, and the pedagogue stopped his mount. He
patted the young boy’s thick locks, looking at him humbly and meekly, as
large tears streamed down the rosy cheeks, on the prematurely aged child's
face. "I don't want you to go, teacher!" the little king cried. "I hurt
you, but I don't want you to go." "It is all right," the philosopher said.
"I have to go. You are young, and your senses deceive you, but you have
time."
The stern gaze of the emperor followed them from a window of
the tower. At one moment, with a sudden movement of his defiant head, the
teacher signaled him to go. He prodded his horse, but behind him he heard:
"I want you to give me a problem that I can't solve, teacher." The teacher
turned, leaning in his saddle. He reached for the boy’s curly hair, and,
kissing him on the forehead, whispered: "Your soul is greedy, my son. You
are not moderate in your wishes, in your power and knowledge. Do not ask me
to do it." "But, I'm begging you, lord of wisdom! Give me a problem that I
can't solve."
The teacher furrowed his brow and said: "Good. Acknowledge,
then, your own soul. Erect a chamber, closed on all sides, but you must use
just one wall in the construction; that wall should never end, and the
chamber should have as many windows as it has walls. When you build it, you
will see that you are that chamber. Then you can boast that you have known
yourself."
Then Aristotle nudged his horse after the convoy. At the city
gate the hardy silhouette of the little king was visible, until the guards
closed the gates. He had no more tears in his eyes.
* * *
A hot night, thirty years later, as
the military advisers begged the already sick Alexander to forsake his
campaign on the Caucasus, in Arabia and on the Mediterranean, telling him
that he had already achieved everything a mortal king could achieve, and
that if an eighteen-year-old man departed from one end of his empire,
walking, he would reach the other end as a sixty-year-old man. The king
lost consciousness and fell to the ground. When he revived, he ordered one
of his military advisers to prepare the army for a campaign, and he
authorized him to lead the military operations. Then he ordered that the
best surveyor be brought to him, also the best builder, and the fastest
messenger in the empire. He gave the surveyor and the builder a sketch for
a strange construction and ordered them to start working immediately; he
handed a letter to the messenger.
Three months later, deep in the night, at the gates of the
Lycée in Athens, a night traveler knocked. He gave a letter to a
white-haired old man and disappeared into the darkness, galloping off on
his already weary horse.
A strange gleam came to the old man's eyes. The message was:
"Bring a soul for my greed." The next day the old man left for Rome, to the
street of those skilled in glass.
* * *
Alexander lay on his deathbed in the
round chamber that the building supervisor and the surveyor had constructed
in just three months. He had ordered that nobody was to visit him, and he
took food only a day. He breathed heavily; only his large eyes said that
once he was a man with the power and persistence of a beast.
Outside, the subjects gathered and cried almost silently,
afraid of being overheard by the emperor. They could not stop wondering
about the high, ugly round tower with only one small window, without glass,
that had risen out of an unintelligible desire of their master. However, no
one knew that it was the solution to the riddle that cannot be solved.
The day before they had heard that a foreigner came from far
away with precious cargo and that he had asked to see the emperor
immediately. He was old, with a long white beard, but soiled and haggard
from the long journey. In his hands he carried a small but heavy case,
wrapped in silk. He entered the tower and put down the case.
Inside, in the center on his deathbed, lay the student. He
gazed at the old man for a long time, with an unexpected fire in his dark
eyes. "Here," he finally said. "Everything is here: the chamber really has
but one wall, and still it is closed on all sides. The wall cannot be paced
from end to end, for a circle has no beginning and no end, just like
intemperance. But in that wall you cannot place a true window. That window,
that glass, is my soul; the first time you try to bend it, it will shatter
and fall to pieces under the greedy circle of granite. And I will die when
you try to insert the glass to complete the structure."
"All that is good, Alexander!" the old man said. "It is good.
You have solved the puzzle that I thought you could not solve. But you did
not comprehend the message of the riddle: you were thinking of the
solution, and you were not thinking of what the question was asking."
Alexander swallowed dryly. Then he said in broken phrases: "I
know. The message of the riddle says: do not solve riddles that you want to
remain unsolved." Then he added: "Please complete the structure. Insert the
window. A chamber without a window is a body without a soul."
The old man slowly bent over and opened the case. "I brought
glass precisely for this chamber, Alexander. New rounded, cast glass, the
latest innovation of the skilled glassmakers of Rome. It was in accordance
with the dimensions of your soul; it celebrates the beginning of a new age,
the age of the Greedy. See, Alexander, how it is bent, as taut as an arrow
on a stretched bow."
And as the old man spoke, suddenly, as happens with glass and
souls, without being touched, the half-cylinder of glass shattered into
thousands of little pieces, with all the power of the captivated passion of
the glassmakers. With his jaws, bones, and soul shuddering, Aristotle
turned slowly toward the bed.
The corpse of his student lay there.
Immediately afterwards, the misfortunate subjects rushed into
the chamber of intemperance, weeping over their dead king. With wonder in
their eyes, they looked at the broken glass before the feet of the
stranger.
One of them asked: "What is this?"
"His soul," the stranger said.
Then, observed by the confused subjects, he gathered up the
pieces--the final remains of the Great Ruler’s soul--placed them in the
case, and went out.
