The Anemone Bowl: (Including the Poem “Child”)

By Geoff Olton

The tale of an afterlife.

 

“If the inability to see other than that which you wish to see can be considered a kind of heaven, then presumably the inability to escape self-knowledge must be one version of hell.”

 

The ill-fated consequences of happenstance: Born into an English country village community in the 1950s, a young boy is led, through a series of events over which he in effect has little or no control, to take the life of a neighbour’s child, and subsequently his own. And this is the tale, if there can be any, of the subsequent accounting.

The book itself is set in an ever-mutating afterlife that also provides an interim existence before rebirth – an illusory world where, of necessity, it is in large part conveniently repressed memories that hold sway, and where for Eric (if we can suppose that to be his name), each step forward is also leading (with some level of perversity) to the truths of his own personal past transgressions.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Jan 6, 2023
• ISBN: 9781398442177

Geoff Olton

Born on the outskirts of Manchester, Northern England, in 1946, Geoff Olton attended St Peter’s College, Oxford, majoring in mathematics. After failing final examinations, he spent one year teaching English to Saudi Arabian Air Force cadets before moving to Kobe, Japan, where he has since lived for 50 years working in teaching, interpretation and translation. Writing includes a memoir, The Way We Are, published by Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd (2022), and also a (as yet unpublished) 5,000-page analysis of the spoken English language in its relationship to Japanese and similarly grouped languages.

Book preview

About the Author

Born on the outskirts of Manchester, Northern England, in 1946, Geoff Olton attended St Peter’s College, Oxford, majoring in mathematics. After failing final examinations, he spent one year teaching English to Saudi Arabian Air Force cadets before moving to Kobe, Japan, where he has since lived for 50 years working in teaching, interpretation and translation.

Writing includes a memoir, The Way We Are, published by Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd (2022), and also a (as yet unpublished) 5,000-page analysis of the spoken English language in its relationship to Japanese and similarly grouped languages.

Dedication

For Estelle.

Copyright Information ©

Geoff Olton 2023

The right of Geoff Olton to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781398442146 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781398442153 (Hardback)

ISBN 9781398442177 (ePub e-book)

ISBN 9781398442160 (Audiobook)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published 2023

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd®

1 Canada Square

Canary Wharf

London

E14 5AA

Acknowledgement

To all who have made the publication of this book possible, with thanks.

Foreword

The story:

A young man, Eric, dies and then enters an interim (neither heaven, nor hell) existence with initially no memory of his previous life before being reborn. (This is very loosely based on reincarnation as presented in Buddhism with the afterlife described being purely one of my imagination.) The story is centered on the interim period, with flashbacks to his life as a child and the period he is growing up, until the point where he discovers how and why he actually died. In addition to being a journey of discovery and learning, the story is also one of an accounting for past transgressions (the taking of responsibility for hurts inflicted), and the relationship between Eric and Stella is intended as a rather different type of love story of the nature described in The Pool of Time – a fairy tale told to Eric and his younger brother Clive by their Uncle Duncan – and one that would extend through an untold number of reincarnations.

Life in the village: Living with conveniently repressed memories.

The characters in the village Eric reaches after crossing the mountains in the afterlife in total represent how the blanks in a person’s life, the parts that a person hides from himself or herself, that they are not willing to face up to, or facts that they are simply not aware of affect them, and how these gaps are handled. All have, as is the case with Eric, parts of their previous existence that they cannot recall, and all are, in the true sense of the word, ‘lost spirits’, who can be helped only to the degree that they are capable of recognizing their own inadequacies.

Natural phenomena:

The descriptions in the afterlife of the buzzards (Prologue), the piled feathers, giant toad, 40-foot-high spiders’ webs, moths that vanish, the grub being sucked dry by rows of parasitic insects, the rainbow appearing between clouds, etc., are all noting natural phenomena actually observed in the mountains here, and the loss of Eric’s eyebrows and hair comes from personal experience at the time of fighting a neighborhood fire during the 1995 Kobe Earthquake.

Scenes taken from personal dreams:

Eric’s experiences in the Bowl are in fact one long dream, as are the scene of the ravine collapsing (the Crossing) and the ballet that Eric sees shortly after this. The cat’s leap on the footbridge, bringing out the goat in the frame, the events described as occurring within The Pool of Time, the description of Lady Maureen seen in the final section in the bar when Eric’s world collapses around him, and the stairs leading to nowhere in the final section also came from dreams.

The poem Child:

This covers as much as possible all aspects of what we are as human beings, and everything that is being said is intended to complement what is being expressed in other words and forms throughout the story. Though much that is noted is, upon reading, quite obvious, the aim here is also to some degree to provoke the reader to thought, and possibly for younger people to enable them to develop a truer grasp of who they are, or rather (life being no more or less than what you choose to settle for) their potential or possibilities.

Although the poem appears at the end of The Way We Are, it was initially written to be included in the novel, and for that reason has been left here intact.

Child

Child.

You are what you see: Open your eyes and see what you are.

You are what you hear: Listen to your inner voice.

You are what you taste: Savour the moment.

You are what you smell: A rare perfume.

You are what you touch: Touch all with care.

Child.

What is the greater ignorance: to know or not to know?

What is the greater crime: to deceive others or to deceive yourself?

Child.

What is the greater trial: to learn to love through pain, or the pain of love?

What is the greater joy: to be served or to serve?

Which is the easier: to apologise for one’s wrongs or to be the bearer of a forgiving heart?

Child.

You are as you speak: Speak so as to be heard.

You are as you breathe: Breathe deeply of life.

You are as you move: Move with grace.

You are as others perceive you: Bear yourself with humble pride.

You are as you create: Be as you are created.

Child.

You are as you dream.

(And if this is so, you may ponder whereupon dreams come: What influence creates, what brief encounters set one on one’s path? What is it that catches the eyecatches at the heartthat others do not see?)

Prologue

The large bird, its wings arched forward heavily, dropped in low above the path and then disappeared from view. The sudden rupture of the silence brought up a short cry from the youth’s throat. Moving forward, he found himself at the entrance to a steep cutting, as you would find along the edge of a cliff leading down to a wild coastline. His nostrils instinctively reached out for what might have been the smell of the sea.

Immediately below him, ten or twelve young birds, kites or buzzards, were cavorting; swooping and diving along its narrow sides. They did not appear to be hunting. At least, none made any attempt to actually touch the ground. Rather, with the exuberance of children who have discovered the joys of swings and slides at a playground, they were skimming over the stubby brush, sweeping in on bowls of air and plunging down at the rocks—only banking away as they had to, at the very final moment. Some two or three hundred feet below, where the valley opened up slightly, a sharp draft effortlessly lifted them back up into the reaches above the gap, readying them for a new descent.

The youth had walked this far down the hill with the half-aim of following the path he was on to wherever it might lead him, but now he felt a returning wariness. The fine mist, which had appeared to be clearing somewhat as he had walked in its direction, began to fold in again, gradually obscuring the birds from his view. He turned and retraced the short walk he had taken to get here.

Chapter 1

First Walk

Eric stood at the foot of a large hillock looking up at the pavilion. The grassy inclines appeared unbroken except for a small group of rocks some way up the hill and to the left of the path on which he was standing. A quick glance around indicated that he was here by himself. Ahead of him, there was the hill and the pavilion perched way up at its summit, and behind him there was nothing to be seen but a fine mist encroaching its way up the valley. After a moment of hesitation, he began to walk lightly up the slope.

The only sound that reached his ears was the soft rhythm of his sandals as they brushed against the grass. An initial sense of unease, which he for some reason associated with the mist, quickly passed. The path meandered somewhat, splitting off here and there, but with what he assumed to be the main trail clearly leading upwards.

It had not immediately occurred to him to question why he was here, but as he walked, he began to observe his surroundings for any clue as to where he might be. He felt, if it made any sense to put it that way, ‘himself’. Being alone presented no immediate source of concern: He was quite used to being on his own. Also, he had name: That he knew. But for the moment it had gone—presumably slipped from his mind in a moment of inattentiveness.

He was, as far as he could judge, a slim youth of average build, dressed in a tunic belted with a cord at the waist, leggings of a light but sturdy fibre. His clothes did not seem in any way familiar, but then again, they did not seem overly foreign and he found them comfortable. The hill and valley behind him were recognisable for what they were, and although, even at this distance, the pavilion seemed rather unusual in shape, it easily registered in his mind as a ‘structure’, with all that the word entails. However, no matter how deeply his mind searched, he found it difficult to place these features into a larger map of memory.

As he continued up the slope, his attention was again caught by the rocks, and with it the disquietude returned. And as he came even closer to them, he began to sense within himself an unwillingness to move forward, which strengthened with each step he made in their direction. They were formed into a distinct cluster that seemed somehow familiar, as it might be with a detail registered in the course of a bad dream. He could not have said what exactly it was that repelled him, but he found his pace gradually slowing until he halted some twenty paces from where the path passed them by. He hesitated.

In some manner, their cold surface seemed to embody the utter silence of his surroundings. And they disturbed something within. Looking around him for an alternative route, his eye spotted a path breaking off through a clump of low bushes to the right. Although rather narrower than the path he was on at present, it seemed well enough trodden and would no doubt do as well.

As he moved forward, the sides of the path closed in against him, the low branches scraping at his leggings, and again something deep in his memory stirred, an inner voice issuing a clear injunction: This way is not yours to pass. But whether the voice was urging him backwards or forwards, he could not say, and already in this far it seemed unreasonable to consider a return. Moving ahead as quickly as the undergrowth would allow, some fifty or so paces on he was relieved to find the bushes clearing.

The hill dropped steeply away in front of him, the path moving back down along the line of the slope that he had just climbed. He could see no further than the next hundred or so yards, and presumably the path could turn again and rise from that point, but he paused. Having set his mind on a route to the pavilion, it seemed wasteful to move off in some other direction. But then the sense of relief that had come to his mind merely by turning away from the rocks carried him forward.

After an initial, rather steep drop, the pathway levelled and moved ahead in open curves. It was not rising, but the pavilion was still within clear view, and there was no reason he would not meet another trail leading in that direction. He continued forward. The path cut straight across the slope, occasionally dipping slightly, but never lifting as he had hoped it might,

*

The path was now clearly dropping. Unsure, he stopped and turned. The pavilion was no longer visible. The fine mist had gathered once again in his wake, resting low against the hillside and forming threatening cusps in the shallow hollows that dotted the slope. Even so, the way ahead was for the moment clear, and the path, he reasoned, would take him somewhere.

Some thirty seconds on, the mist had claimed the path from him, dulling the silence and leaving him for the first time completely alone. And now he quickly lost all sense of positioning, and the path with its constant winding left him no way of judging in which direction he was actually progressing. Reaching a rocky outcrop, he paused to try to get some sense of his bearings. Ahead of him there was another clump of wind-stunted bushes and the path here turned abruptly to the right. He hesitated, walked forward ten or so steps and then halted completely. He could not see it, but he strongly sensed a steep fall to the left of the path. The mist clung to his body.

Everything was still, and he suddenly felt an urgent need to remember who he was. For a moment, he imagined there was some creature, a large bird perhaps, circling above him in the sky, and he almost heard its shrill cry as it turned and swiftly winged its way down towards the earth. His mind, following on its line of flight, descended into the mist. And there a fear returned, blanketing all memory.

He turned, and moving as swiftly as he could, struggled back up the path the way he had come.

*

The slope was steep. Coming down he had not had the sense of dropping quite so quickly. His breathing remained firm, but on the steeper sections he found he very quickly developed a tightness across the chest—somewhat similar to the feeling he had had when he was approaching the rocks—which repeatedly forced him to slow his pace considerably. The mist showed no signs of clearing.

As the slope steepened yet again, a particularly sharp stab of pain, centred at the lower tip of his breastbone, brought him to a standstill. Finding himself unable to move any further, and noticing a low, flat rock slightly above him on the slope, he pulled himself up onto its rough surface.

For a long moment, he sat with his head lowered, trying to regain some focus. Then as the pain gradually eased, he was able to raise his eyes a little. The mist had thinned somewhat, and from his present position he found he could see much further across the slope than he had been able to previously. The pavilion was not in sight, but as he was following an upward path and moving, as much as he could judge, to the left, he presumed that at some point he would find himself again on the main path leading in its direction.

And without even the briefest of forewarnings, the mist again enveloped. Eric pulled himself to his feet and began again to climb the slope.

*

The upward trail did not run as close to the rocks as it had seemed to originally. Either that or he had found himself an alternative path. And far more importantly, they were now below him on the slope, where they no longer threatened. From his position here, they had the appearance of a whale, not unlike a toy a child would play with in the bath—a large rounded rock representing the head and body; a smaller, roughly triangular rock at its left, the tail, and the narrow flat extension at its base the sea from which it was rising. Or, for some reason he smiled, it could have been a tortoise or turtle.

The path from this point followed a smooth incline, and with his objective in full view, his spirits rose and his pace lightened in accordance. Somewhat further up the slope, he paused and took time to examine the pavilion. At first appearance it had seemed quite small, but from here he could begin to appreciate its size. A two-, or possibly three-storied, hexagonal wooden structure, with seemingly smooth walls, no windows and no apparent entrance that he could see, it was raised upon a stone wall base around which ran a simple veranda, protected from above by a broad awning with narrow pillars, and then above that by a softly sloping roof.

The only decoration that was apparent was a steep-sided pyramid in some dark-metal, or possibly rough stone, placed at the apex of the roof. He was struck by the spareness of construction, and particularly the lack of windows seemed to him in some sense odd. The entrance presumably was at the other side. A pavilion, to his mind, required ornamentation and most definitely should have windows to view the outside world, or why have one?

Again, he wondered what might have brought him here, still having nothing to define himself by other than an assumed name and the unbidden sense of fear that came from the mists. Perhaps, when he reached the top, there would be someone to help explain his position.

The final slope leading up to the pavilion was embedded with roughly-hewn, rectangular slabs of rock. Laid out at irregular intervals—either hand-carved or split by nature, he could not be sure which—all were covered with a stubby-looking moss, springy to the touch and speckled with tiny starred flowers the colour of rust. Also, the path here was spread with a fine gravel, which pleasantly scratched at the soles of his sandals, and from this point, the path climbed steeply, zigzagging left and right, but it was only a short spell of time before he reached the embankment wall and the path around its base. Some thirty paces to the left, the path rose up to a short flight of steps, and he scrambled up the final slope.

Chapter 2

The Bowl

As he reached the top step, overcome by a sudden wave of exhaustion, Eric found himself impelled onto the veranda deck where he could do nothing but lie still on his side until the faintness cleared. Whether he actually lost consciousness or not, he was not sure, but when he opened his eyes, he found himself staring at a low rail, which ran along the edge of the platform. Bringing himself up into a sitting position, but still not having the strength to raise himself up onto his feet, he could only sit staring down at the valley. He could see as far as the spot from which he had started his walk, but nothing beyond.

The higher sections were for the most part now visible as the last traces of mists faded away, but then even as they lifted, they clung, leaving a fine vapour hanging over the slope. The rocks were no longer in view and he determined to put them from his mind.

Now more steadied, he grasped the closest pillar, slowly pulled himself to his feet and began to walk towards the corner of the building. The veranda platform was narrow, with essentially only enough space for one person to walk in comfort. The pavilion walls were formed of sets of five or six broad wooden panels, smooth to the touch, with each set divided by a dark narrow vertical line, which upon inspection appeared to be of the same material that he had viewed on the roof. However, even at this close distance, he could not be confident of what the material actually was. Looking carefully, he found that there were similar, even finer lines inset into each of the wall panels and also running down the pillars and along the inside of the platform rail—but to what end he could not imagine. They did not appear to be an obvious form of ornamentation.

As he approached the corner of the structure, he noted what appeared to be a slight projection extending from the wall, and as he came even closer, this projection grew in size until it took up a full half of the walkway. Or rather the veranda appeared to have doubled in width. (There was quite enough space to actually walk around the corner.) Looking back along the way he had come, the path appeared straight. He shrugged his shoulders: An optical illusion? And yet again, there seemed to be no apparent reason for the detail. He moved to round the corner, but instead was drawn into the angle formed by the projection and the wall, and as he did, rather than narrowing, the space expanded and he found himself in a short, low-lit corridor. And beyond the corridor, a room.

Circular, or rather oval in shape, it was, he guessed, some fifty feet across. The walls were composed of large, finely-planed wooden panels, carved to varying depths along (and occasionally across) the grain to emphasise the natural beauty of the wood, and layered to form oddly-shaped recesses from which streams of light diffused, creating a pool of soft light throughout the central area. He could see that the walls were arched inwards slightly in their higher parts, but the ceiling, if there was one, was lost in the light.

The room itself was empty except for a low bench placed at its centre and beyond it a slightly higher table upon which was placed a brilliantly-lit crystal bowl containing a mass of green stems topped by red and purple buds, which upon approaching he recognised as anemones. The flower stems had all been cut at different lengths and arranged to stand upright, with small groups forming miniature plateaus of delicate blues and mauves. Four or five stems stretched way up above the central mass, and the petals of two of them—and three or four in the lower sections—were on the point of unfolding.

He turned his attention to the bowl. With an inner diameter of some twenty inches and around six inches in height, and its broad rim curving inwards, it was clearly an object of art and a product of the finest craftsmanship. A single shaft of light shone down directly from some unseen point above him, highlighting its pale intensity and the raised design of outsized leaves and grasses on the smooth, outer surface, and it was enveloped in a fine haze which undulated constantly, making it at any one time visible only in part.

The glass was strikingly thick, with individual sections clouded or frosted over and others cracked ice—the glass clear enough for him to see directly through to the stems inside. The surface overall carried a greenish hue, together with touches of blue and purple from the odd bud that had been placed deep in the arrangement.

About to pull back, his eye spotted a detail that he had not noticed earlier; a snail, fully extended—its eye formed of the most minute of bubbles hovering beneath the shining surface—was making its way across one of the darker leaves, its perfection almost demanding to be touched. Eric stretched out his arm, only to have it met by a shot of cold air, an icy blast that numbed the senses. And his hand was drawn, and he drifted forward into empty space.

*

He was at the entrance of a gigantic cave, looking out at a dark night sky scattered with a myriad of coloured stars in vibrant greens, reds, yellows and purples. At first, there were only the stars, scintillating in the empty night. Then as he continued to stand there, his eyes gradually focused onto a shadow, which in its turn came to form the dim outline of a low mountain. And the stars moved, first one and then a second, up and down its slopes, distant gondolas in a fairyland. Caught by a sense of wonder he moved forward a pace, only to find himself restrained by an unseen hand.

Without warning, the scene changed and he was in a paved country lane, standing next to a narrow stream which had been channelled in with irregularly shaped stones and was backed by a wall so high that it blocked any view. The water of the stream, though clearly running quite swiftly, carried itself silently. Up ahead of him, on the left of the road, was a row of low-strung stone cottages, fronted by a single, dark green hedgerow. The road was empty.

A little unsure as to whether or how he should proceed, he moved across to the other side of the lane. The long hedgerow ran its way up into the distance broken only by neatly-inserted wooden gateways that led to each house. It had been carefully clipped into groups of two to four bushes, forming a series of skewed, oddly-shaped blocks which intersected at random along the length of the road. Each block was of a similar height, except where they formed somewhat higher, thickset pillars at the sides of each gate.

Reaching above the level of his shoulders, the hedge left him with only a limited view of the small gardens and cottages beyond. However, everything he could see, from the well-tended flowerbeds to the lace curtains at the windows, indicated that the houses were occupied. Still, there was no more sign of life than out here on the road, and for a moment he felt a short stab of panic, an urgent desire to be with someone—it didn’t matter who, but with someone.

And just as suddenly, he was back in the cave, his eyes wandering upwards to the stone arc above his head and into the shadows. The roof of the cave was far above him, at its highest point only faintly discernible, and without the stars, he could not have divided it from the sky. Nor would he have seen the dark swirl formed by the stream as it dropped down the steep cliff below his feet.

As he rested his hand on a rock, his mood darkened. A damp lichen scratched at his open palm, and in one murky corner of his vision some empty black presence—a huge slug or leech—edged towards him. Terrified, he stayed motionless as it felt out in his direction, examining the pitted surface of the rock for lingering smells, uncertain even now whether it was he who was there. He slipped his other hand from his parent’s grasp—it was his parent’s, he was sure—and moved back into the cave.

Release brought with it release: The presence withdrew and the sense of wonder that had filled him as he had viewed the night stars returned. It was a large cave—far larger than he had sensed standing at its entrance, and the sheer expanse of space lifted his spirits. There was no sign of the stream on the floor of the cave. Presumably, it was cut deep under the rock, somewhere beyond his knowledge. Towards the back, the cave narrowed down to what appeared to be a tunnel. Much narrower but still roomy, it presented a way forward, and without hesitating he entered.

The rocks below his feet were smooth but not slippery. Moving sure-footedly, he loped his way up the slope in long strides. Here, for the first time he found he was experiencing a sense of absolute weightlessness, and though he recognised that he was moving over an irregular surface and within the confines of some form of passageway, he felt no sense of unease that he might stumble or miss his way. His feet moved instinctively inwards and upward, and his hands grasped lightly at the smooth outcrops of rock, which could in all probability have been placed there to guide him.

In places, he found fine cascades of silvery water spread over the path—where flows of calcite had formed rounded steps along the floor of the cave—and he presumed that he was following the path of the stream he had seen emerging at the entrance. As he moved in even further, all light faded before him, but now the darkness was soothing. Empty of everything, it held no fear, nothing that would or could hurt him. He moved forward lightly, stepping with the fullest confidence into empty space.

Working his way in deeper and deeper into the rock, the tunnel narrowed, and his bare feet finally touched water. Shallow at first, it quickly deepened into a long pool, so narrow in parts that it became almost impossible to pass. For the first time, he experienced doubt. He was truly on his own now, in absolute silence. It was as if all sound had been suspended and it occurred to him that he couldn’t even hear himself breathing.

*

He was still in the tunnel, but the darkness and the pool were gone, and he followed a thin stream of light through into a small chamber beside the path. On the floor beyond the entrance where he was standing, there was a cluster of some thirty or more tube-like, bulbous creatures each roughly the size of his thigh or forearm. Semi-opaque, they gave off a fine light—just enough for him to make out the sides of the chamber. He crouched down to view them more closely.

None had any appendages or sign of any visual organs—only a star-shaped discoloration at each end, which appeared as they split and which they apparently used when connecting with a neighbour. And as they moved, fluids pulsed along the inner side of their smooth bodies forming dark, irregular, wavy lines. But they were beautiful. Their dappled flesh was sketched in colours ranging from light orange through vermilion to the deepest of ambers, together with the occasional contrasting patch of crimson on ivory.

And they became aware of his presence, and he felt an upward draft of cold air envelop his body as they surrounded him. He sensed a soft touch running across his sides and examining the back of his spine, but he did not move. For all their strangeness, again he had no sense of fear. One of the smaller creatures moved towards him. He reached out his hand to touch it and the tips of his fingers sensed what must have been the finest of hairs on the otherwise smooth surface. A soft tingle passed through his whole body. He watched, fascinated, as the indeterminate form firmed into a hand, almost identical in shape to his