Lacuna

Heryshaf walked out of the yard and saw another large bird.

He looked just like Jonnie, except he was not quite as colourful and, Heryshaf thought, not quite as attractive.

The second peacock looked at him and winked.

“Hi.”

“Hi,” said the peacock. “Jeff's the name!”

“I'm Heryshaf.”

Heryshaf glanced back towards Jonnie.

“Your friend is very arrogant.”

“Yes indeed,” said Jeff. “I used to think like that.”

“What changed?”

“I met a jellyfish.”

Heryshaf looked at him.

“You met a jellyfish?”

“Yes.”

“What did he say?”

“Not much. Just that when he looked inside himself, he didn't see anything.”

Jeff considered this.

“He was quite depressed about it, actually.”

Heryshaf laughed.

“But he made me think about myself in a different way,” Jeff continued. “I sat down and had a long and serious word with myself. I questioned all the great things I thought about myself and all the things I had achieved.”

“And?”

“I realised none of them amounted to me.”

Heryshaf stopped smiling.

“I realised I was walking around in a daze. In truth, it seemed that everyone I knew was in a kind of sleep.”

“Sleep?”

“Yes indeed. Everyone is born and carries out their entire lives in this sleep. Gets married, has children and dies in the sleep.”

Heryshaf thought of his flock.

Heads down.

Eating.

Following.

“And being asleep,” Jeff continued, “they can never really do anything, for the thing does itself — with the creature's help.”

Heryshaf looked at him.

He had heard something like that before.

He had also begun to see it.

The thorn had gone, but the anger had continued without it. He had watched thoughts arrive already carrying their own reasons. He had caught himself believing himself simply because the thought had appeared inside his own head.

“What does that have to do with the jellyfish?”

“Everything.”

Jeff sat down.

“Everyone you meet is really a big bag into which many experiences have been thrown. Books. Conversations. Memories. Achievements. Things other creatures have told them. Things that have happened to them. Things they have copied without knowing they were copying.”

“That doesn't sound very flattering.”

“It wasn't meant to.”

Jeff looked at his tail.

“The trouble is, the bag calls itself me.”

“And what's wrong with that?”

“I looked inside mine.”

“What did you find?”

“A big bag of contradictions and false personalities, each one thinking he was better than the rest.”

Jeff was quiet.

“All is a result of what has come before. Something happens, and something in us reacts. Then something else happens, and something else reacts. We call the whole procession me.”

Heryshaf frowned.

“And if we never see it?”

Jeff looked at him.

“Then, with him it is done.”

Heryshaf didn't entirely understand the phrase.

He didn't entirely like it either.

“When I looked inside,” Jeff continued, “I could not find any consistency inside myself.”

He paused.

“I found I was empty.”

For a moment neither of them spoke.

Jeff turned his magnificent tail towards Heryshaf.

“Do you see the eyes on my tail?”

“Yes.”

“I realised that they were an analogy for my different personalities. The different eyes with which I perceived the world.”

“What do you mean?”

“Have you ever woken up one day and felt happy, and the very next day got out of bed and felt terrible?”

“Yes, I suppose.”

“Do you speak to your friends in one way, your mother in another, and someone you are frightened of in another?”

Heryshaf thought about it.

“Yes.”

“And you've never found that odd?”

“Not until you mentioned it.”

Jeff smiled.

“Yesterday's Heryshaf promises to do something. Today's Heryshaf doesn't feel like doing it. Tomorrow's Heryshaf wonders why he ever promised.”

Heryshaf frowned.

“Which one is Heryshaf?”

“All of them.”

“That's what Jonnie said.”

“Did he?”

“Yes.”

“Then perhaps even Jonnie is right occasionally.”

Heryshaf looked back towards the yard.

Jonnie's tail was visible above the fence.

It had opened again.

“The problem,” said Jeff, “isn't that you behave differently in different situations. Sometimes you should. The problem is that each time you change, you believe completely in the Heryshaf you happen to be at that moment.”

“Who are you?” Jeff asked suddenly.

“I'm Heryshaf the sheep, son of Storig.”

“No. Who are you?”

“I just told you.”

“What do you stand for? Give me something that you believe in.”

Heryshaf thought for a moment.

“I believe in me.”

“Good. And tomorrow?”

“What?”

“Tomorrow you might say honesty. Another day courage. A year ago perhaps you would have said God, or family.”

Jeff tilted his head.

“Which answer is yours?”

“They all are.”

“Again.”

Heryshaf was becoming irritated.

Jeff noticed.

“There's another one.”

“Another what?”

“Eye.”

Heryshaf almost told him not to be ridiculous.

Then he caught himself wanting to.

The irritation was real.

So was the sheep who, only moments earlier, had been curious.

Both had called themselves Heryshaf.

The irritation faded a little.

Jeff smiled.

“Now you're getting it.”

“But if I'm not always in control of myself,” said Heryshaf, “who is?”

“One of your many sets of eyes.”

Jeff opened his tail.

“One moment, one set is looking. A moment later another takes its place. Each set is selfish and wants complete control while it is there.”

“And I don't notice?”

“Usually not. Because every one of them uses the same name.”

“Heryshaf.”

“Exactly.”

Heryshaf stared at the great coloured eyes.

“Why do they change?”

“Everything changes them. Who you are with. Where you are. What has just happened. Whether you're hungry. Whether someone has praised you. Whether someone has insulted you.”

Heryshaf remembered Ordok.

Then his mother.

Then the thorn.

Then Jonnie.

He had not been the same sheep with any of them.

Yet at every moment he had felt completely certain that he was.

“How do you know all this?”

“God gave me this beautiful tail covered with pictures of all my different eyes so I could see them clearly.”

“Convenient.”

“Extremely.”

Jeff turned his tail towards the sun.

“At first I tried to decide which eye was the real one.”

“And?”

“Every eye said it was.”

Heryshaf laughed.

“So I stopped asking them.”

“Then how do you know which one is you?”

“I don't.”

That answer surprised him.

Jeff looked back at his tail.

“But I can sometimes see them.”

Heryshaf waited.

“When I notice one of them taking over, something strange happens. For a moment I am not completely inside it anymore. I remember myself.”

Heryshaf felt suddenly alert.

He remembered standing beside the river, watching his anger.

“As though you're watching yourself?”

“Yes.”

His uncle's voice returned to him.

Observe yourself.

“And what is doing the watching?” Heryshaf asked.

Jeff smiled.

“That is a much better question.”

“And what's the answer?”

“I don't know.”

Heryshaf stared at him.

“You've been doing this for years and you don't know?”

“I don't know what it is,” said Jeff. “But I know that it has changed.”

“How?”

“When I first began, I could barely find it. I would remember myself for a moment and then lose it again. One of the other eyes would take over and I would forget that I had ever been watching.”

Jeff folded his tail.

“But the more I observed myself, the easier it became to return to that place. And the more I returned to it, the stronger it became.”

“Stronger?”

“More constant.”

Jeff thought for a moment.

“More real.”

Heryshaf said nothing.

“I began to find a constant place,” Jeff continued. “An inner observer growing in strength. It could see the other eyes without becoming any one of them. And the clearer I saw them, the less power they seemed to have.”

“So you're making another eye?”

“Perhaps.”

“A better one?”

Jeff smiled.

“I used to think so. Now I think it may be something finer than an eye.”

“Finer?”

“An eye looks out at the world. This seems able to look both ways.”

“Both ways?”

“Out at what is happening, and in at the creature it is happening to.”

Heryshaf considered this.

“And if it keeps getting stronger?”

Jeff was quiet for a moment.

“I don't know.”

“What do you think?”

Jeff looked at the fading eyes upon his tail.

“I think one day it may need less of me than I need of it.”

Heryshaf stood very still.

Then he thought of his father's words.

“Life is only as real as I am.”

Jeff nodded.

“Your father was a very wise ram.”

“And has it changed you?”

Jeff looked back at his tail.

“The clearer I see the false eyes, the less power they seem to have. If you had met me six years ago there were many more eyes on my tail.”

Heryshaf looked carefully.

“What happened to them?”

“They disappeared.”

“Really?”

“It seems that as I conquer my internal eyes I become less attractive to onlookers.”

Jeff sighed.

“Kind of boring.”

Heryshaf laughed.

“As I grow older, perhaps there will be no beautiful eyes left on my tail and I will look like all the other birds.”

“That bothers you?”

“Of course.”

Jeff paused.

“I'm working on that one.”

For a while neither spoke.

Then Jeff said, “If you permit me, let me leave you with something.”

Heryshaf nodded.

“Always try to catch yourself out in the act.”

“In the act of what?”

“Anything.”

Jeff shrugged.

“If you have an impulse to speak up, notice it before the words come out. If you have a drive to jump up and fix everyone's problems all the time, consider why. If you get irritated with others, see whether you can catch the irritation before it becomes everything.”

He looked directly at Heryshaf.

“Notice how your mind is not always here, in the present. Notice that it takes you away on flights of fancy whenever you are bored or angry.”

“What do I do when I catch it?”

“Don't immediately try to change it.”

“Then what should I do?”

“See it.”

“That's all?”

“Try it first.”

Heryshaf nodded.

He turned to leave, then stopped.

“Jeff?”

“Yes?”

“If all those eyes aren't you, and you don't know what the thing watching them is...”

“Yes?”

“Then what are you?”

Jeff looked at his tail.

Then at Heryshaf.

“I'll tell you when I find out.”

Heryshaf smiled and walked away.

Behind him, Jeff caught sight of his reflection in a water trough and immediately adjusted one of his feathers.

He noticed himself doing it.

For a moment he looked annoyed.

Then he laughed.