C.D. HUMPHERYS
COPYRIGHT BY CHRISTOPHER HUMPHERYS
THE EMPEROR OF SILENCE
The Emperor of Silence
It was the soft echo of his foot steps against the harsh, white walls that surprised him. He had not expected such a silence in the middle of this busy city. The silence was astounding! Like nothing he had ever experienced before. It was like nothing he had ever heard before. Was it possible to hear silence? Before him was evidence to support the obvious answer to this question. He had never considered silence like this as he had never known anything like it; even in his own mind it was not so quiet.
This silence, his silence abruptly brought forth the reality of his existence. HIs world was chaotic, noisy, confused and completely intrusive. It stunk of sweat and urine; of cooking meat from the street vendors and of the exhaust from the cars and buses, trucks and the motorcycles. It smelled of petrol and shit and and of the rotting dead animals at the side of the roads. Yet too, it existed with the sweet aromas of flowers and trees and the many perfumes of woman and men. The intermingling of odors of the curry house and the bakery next door along with the confectionary shops and the vast array of restaurants almost cancelled out the underlying stench.
His world was full of the wonderful chaos of noise mixed together with the finest filaments of sound from the lightest of breaths, to the wail of the newborn baby, to the sounds of tires screeching followed by the thunder of a gunshot and weeping and sirens and people screaming in the streets. The world around him was encapsulated in noise and it had grown deaf to itself and its horrid, fetid existence.
Music played against the backdrop of people’s lives as individual soundtracks. Blues mixed with Rock & Roll swirled with the sad tunes of country music along side the happier jazzy notes and they all blended into one awful outpouring of blaring, deafening sound blasting in his ears even in the quiet hours of night.
People. He grouped them into two categories. Some people sang, some whistled and others simply hummed. There were those who did not sing but instead danced. They stomped up and down the walkways, skipping in step with the beats of their own hearts and the beat of the cities around them. For those who did not sing or dance fell to the side of the first group he had labeled The Applauders whom applauded the accomplishments of the singers and dancers and raised them up on the pedestals and transformed them into demi-gods.
Or they stumbled to the other side, the second group, the gossipers, the complainers The Critics, as he called them. They raised their voices in complaint and criticism of everything the applauders applauded. And though he considered them as two separate factions running against one another in the game to win the world, they sometimes, to his great surprise, joined forces. His logical mind whispered to him that it was merely accidental when they fought the same fight, but he wondered if it was all a giant conspiracy to simply confuse the world. Why? ‘Because, confusion destroys walls. Walls are defenses. When the walls are downed, the defenses are down and when the defenses are down, victory is had.’ It was the voice of his grandfather.
Which side did he fall? He could not say. Neither, he supposed. He was an army of one in the Sea of Noise.
The sound of the world was uncomfortable and unbearably loud to his ears. He travelled across the city delivering parcels, passing the Critics and the Applauders, the Singers and the Dancers, the Hummers, the Whistlers and all of the static in-between. Every moment of his waking life he could smell their smells, tastes them on his tongue and his eyes, if they could would have screamed at him from the blistering melding of colours all around.
He prayed for reprieve. He moved smoothly between each of the people he had grown to hate so much, barely touching them, speaking only when necessary. He watched the skies and longed for the fire to come down from the heavens to silence the world at long last.
Day after day, week after week, year after year the noise grew and grew and thickened and solidified. It became a wall surrounding the world; a shell deflecting the silence. It seemed to him, an invincible entity, eternal and ever growing more and more powerful. Was there escape? Would the noise cease when he was dead? Doubt destroyed even this hopeful thought as he reckoned even in death this Gargantuan Entity of Sound would infiltrate the peace of even eternal sleep.
So, when he walked into the large, pristine white room, to a silence he could never have begun to imagine, it took him by surprise and stopped him dead in his tracks. Paradise had been found and he closed his eyes for just a moment to soak up as much of it as he could. What was this place? The room was enormous and bare of furnishing and the walls were bald of paintings or any other distraction. There were no windows but it shown brilliantly as though the sun shined from every direction. It was almost blinding yet pain seemed non-existent. The entire room was absent any colour but white.
His black shirt and dark trousers stood out starkly in this wonderfully beautiful room. He did not, could not move from the spot he stood. The room gave the impression of ever expanding, his mind reasoned this was due to having nothing to put scale to it, yet a whisper deep inside his thoughts told him the room went on forever.
“Hello?” he said. He was astounded by the clarity and volume of his own voice. He had never hear it like this before. The word hung in the air, echoing ever so slightly into the distance. “Hello?” he tried again, quieter.
Silence was his only answer. No one was here but him. He was completely alone in this heavenly place and he stood there for a few moments longer, closing his eyes letting the utter quiet wash over him. It felt light, refreshing and even just the slightest bit frightening.
Moments, or maybe years passed as he stood there like this, relishing the simple nothingness all around him and then he remembered he had come to deliver the package. He still held it under his arm. Its dirty brown wrapping smudged and crinkled, gritty with dirt and oil, taped with filthy packing tape and labeled with a grimy yellowed address sticker sat like a corrupt stain on an otherwise perfect backdrop of purity and perfection.
As quietly as he could, he turned to face the door again. The smallest of squeaks escaped from beneath his grubby shoe and he cringed as he began to walk and could hear the shuffling sounds of his shoes across that perfect floor. They echoed too loudly and when he reached the door and reached hesitantly for the knob he stopped again, his arm frozen midway to the handle and once more he closed his eyes to soak up these last few moments. His moments. For those last few moments, with a smile across his face, he was The Emperor of Silence. These magnificent moments would be his for all eternity.
With a deep sigh, he quickly opened the door and stepped outside. With his eyes still closed he pulled the silence with him as far as he could before closing the door behind him. The shock of the being back in the world again made him stumble and his legs became shaky and almost gave way causing him to wobble. He nearly fell into the street. Thousands of people suddenly appeared all around him, shuffling and pushing at each other. Their voices blended into one constant rumble of tumultuous commotion, louder even than before and the smells rose up into his nose, striking him as a violent blow and it was then that he realised that the room also had had a complete absence of odour. Now the smells invaded his nostrils like tendrils of sickening putrid creatures and he felt that he would retch. Even the air had taken a texture. Raising his hand before him he believed he could actually see the air sticking to his skin. It was oily and blue and reflected the light in a rainbow kaleidoscope enveloping everything. It bore down on him and he felt the weight of the filth upon him and he was heavy from it! His feet dragged through the muck of it and pulled shapeless chunks of it along with each step. The detritus of the world
s noise hung from him as a long heavy coat and dragged heavily on the ground behind him.
He turned away from it all and sought the shelter of the beautiful room of silence once again. He longed to escape this Hellish scene if only for a moment again. Stumbling to the doorstep, his hand hovered shakily over the door knob, his breathing was a rasp lost in the air. How long did he stand there he could not have said. An eternity possibly; as the world sped by around him the motionless statue locked forever in time longing to enter once more the splendid room of everlasting silence. He closed his eyes and with great effort, withdrew his hand and turned and walked away. He told himself to be grateful for the few moments he had had and not to be selfish and greedy. Each step was agonising and the roar of the world bellowed loudly in his ears, pounding within his skull whilst the stench of it stuck in his throat and he gagged at its taste.
Stopping in the middle of the road, he turned and looked back longingly at this newly discovered oasis. He sprinted back to its holy gate and grabbed the door knob and despite the heat all around it was cool under his hand. As before he