The Merchant

The merchant was clothed quite simply and was covered warm with a brown coat. He had sharp features. He seemed to be middle-aged. He traveled alone. Behind him, a horse that carried his belongings trudged along.

The town he traveled through at the moment seemed to be quite empty. It was late afternoon, bit all he could hear was the chirping of the birds. The town seemed to be asleep. The only sign that people actually lived here was the occasional teashop which had the shopkeeper and one or two customers within then.

The merchant entered one of the teashops. It was quite small, with a maximum capacity of perhaps ten. Beside him, there was another man reading a book, and the shopkeeper, who looked expectantly at him.

"What would you want, sir?" The owner, a stout man of fifty or so, asked him.

"Just a tea," the merchant replied.

The shopkeeper looked at the horse tied outside the shop. "You come from afar?"

The merchant nodded.

He got his tea in a minute, and he began to muse on various things.

Presently he took out a small notebook from his coat and began writing.

It's quite a cold day. I still haven't found any suitable lodging. If I don't find one before sundown, I'll have to pitch a tent and sleep in one of the fields in these parts. Not that I'm uncomfortable with that.... I'm really used to that now, what with the whole of last year being spent in incessant travelling. What else.... Bad memories are like vultures.... They try to prey on you even when you're only half-dead. Whatever. The people in these parts seem to be silent. It's as if everyone is sleeping. I wonder what's to do them. Perhaps they had some celebration yesterday and have decided to take a lavish rest today. I don't know.

The tea here is horrible. I just drank half of it and I've had enough.

I'm leaving this shop.

The merchant rose up and paid the shopkeeper. 

Past the teashops, past the houses, past the fields, past the tall trees on his horse he rode.

At the town square an old,  bearded man stopped him. 

"What is your name?" The bearded man asked.

The merchant told him.

"From where do you come from?"

The merchant told him.

"Have you found a place to spend the night?"

"No," the merchant answered.

"Then you can rest with your horse in my fields."

It was an unexpected gift, and the merchant gladly took it.

At sunset the merchant sat by a tree in the field. The horse was tied to the same tree. There goes another day, he thought. I feel so flustered. I feel restless.... As if I want to do something but I just can't. And what is it that I want do? Write an epic novel or a grandiose poem of tens of thousands of pages? Or read one?

Is God watching me as I think here in this sunset? 

I am tired of being pushed around and being hemmed in on all sides by clouds. What am I to do? All this seems to lack meaning. Here am I in the loneliness of the sunset, basking in solitude. With no one to help me, with no one to ferry me to the sunrise where all things are new. What a world where no one cares, no one helps the other. Ensconced and cocooned in bubbles of selfishness, bubbles so fragile that if breathed upon they break, here we are, utterly distanced from the other. Bleak pilgrimage that forces us forward, on and on, though we resist. Only an apparition of God, He who promised to accompany till the consummation of the universe, will set us free. He who finds God finds life. For God alone is fire, all else is smoke.  All I want is to break past the fetters that hold me back.

And on and on and on and on he mused, till the rising of the new sun.