The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz

33

When Boaz-Jachin heard the roar it came to him that there was in the world only one place. That place was time. The lion was in it and he was in it. He knew now that he must have known it when he shouted into the darkness and the ferry’s white wake spreading astern. He must have known it always, from the time he had first seen the frowning face of the dying lion biting the wheel. He had made his feeble attempt at maintaining the fiction of ordinary reality, had placed the advertisement in the trade weekly. But it was towards the lion that he had been moving the emptiness in him these many miles. And it was the lion’s call that he had waited for here in this city.

He put his guitar in the case, picked it up, and walked in the direction of the sound, listening past the footsteps, voices, trains and echoes. Again the roar. It came from a particular direction and seemed to be in him at the same time. No one else seemed to hear it, no one paused to listen or to look at him as if the sound were emanating from him. Listening and seeing nothing he followed through the corridors, up the stairway and the escalator to the street, smelling hot sun, dry wind and the tawny plains.

Past the traffic, past the buses, lorries, cars, footsteps, voices, aeroplanes overhead, boats on the river he listened, walking slowly. Everything that is lost is found again, he thought. The father must live so that the father can die. In him were all the faces, all the voices since he had first looked at the motionless stone in which the dying lion bit the wheel, all the skies and days, the ocean that had brought him to the time in which the lion was and he was. He walked, and in his mind he sang his wordless song.

West he followed the roar, seeing nothing, and south towards the river and its bridges. Found again, lost again, he thought. The father must live. Time flowed through him. Being was. Balanced he flowed with time and being, following the lion, his face cleaving the air, his mind singing wordlessly.

Alone among those he walked with on the streets he listened to the roar that led him on, came to the embankment. Spanned by its bridges the river flowed beneath the sky. Boaz-Jachin did not hear the roaring again. He sat down on a bench facing the river, took out his guitar and played lion-music softly.

The day faded, the moon appeared in the sky and in the river. Boaz-Jachin played his guitar, waiting.