My name is John. Yes, that is a good name. I have had so many names along this road … and so many identities and roles … thief, clown, magician. But I am really a traveler and a conman. I live stories for lonely people in the cities on the road. People go to see the tall magicians in their long golden and black robes with their pretty color gases and grand miracles, to the blind seers with their profound words about the future and the past. I knew how to make the whole universe disappear and other feats, and I call up words with great ease and juggle them right before your eyes. But I got tired of being on stage. When was that? Where?
Where am I going and where I have been I don’t think about that much. I use where I’ve been last and have a good idea where I will be next. But I guess beginning and the end have the same names: Eternity. And the road I am on is called Infinity. That is why people have a hard time figuring out where and why I am going. They would follow me if I said I knew of a better place to which I am going. Follow me or stone me. I don’t want followers. Just a brother. Just a lover. Just someone who is willing to travel without hope of stopping.
I have been stoned many times when I was about to leave a city by people who thought their city was at the end of the road. These cities are always beautiful with hanging rose gardens, castles with ivory spires, busy streets with marble temples, libraries and schools. I conned myself into the heart of a beautiful princess with long brown hair. She herself served me the greatest feasts that a king ever ate. Just because I showed the pretty pictures of my trade and made her think they were of her. I used a picture of a poor milkmaid … a simple girl who is much more delightful than any princess could be. The princess felt the milkmaid inside of her, and fell in love with me because I could see inside. She was willing to do anything for me, give me anything. Share her riches … make me her king. Me a King? Being a king is worse than being a magician!
She was willing to give me everything except what I needed … what she needed. She wouldn’t release the milkmaid out of the prison inside of her. The milkmaid was strong enough to walk with me on Infinity to Eternity. Strong enough to break the idea that the city was the climax of everything, that beyond it was Nomore. Strong enough to give in the conman’s way, everything inside of her to everyone we would meet along the way. Even strong enough to leave every city with its bright colors, beautiful operas and gay theatres when the time came to leave.
I would have spent all the time needed to set the milkmaid free even if it took years. Time means nothing to a man who learns he is immortal. But the princess would rather have thrown me into a dungeon with spikes on the floor. Seven wizards with seven dragons would keep me there for the rest of my life which is forever. Through my magical arts I could create a comfortable mansion called Stagnation and avoid the spikes. But I would know that I was imprisoned. I wouldn’t want to know because knowing is the heaviest pack I’d carry. I the traveler would know that I was traveling, and I the conman would know that I wasn’t conning people into loving, tricking them into loving. I would be in the same cell as the milkmaid so I could create for her a sleepy bedroom in my Stagnation. In the palace above and around our cell, the beautiful princess and her witty playboy would become the queen and king. People would both love and fear the powerful royal couple as gods right up to the famine. Then the people would kill the two … pop the beautiful balloon shaped like people. Then the masses would die from hunger, just the same. We, the milkmaid and I, could save them by giving them real food. But they would not even have known our existence and would never stumble across our cell, hidden by the princess who thought the people would never need or accept Simplicity … who thought she had to wear heavy diamond earrings, to play the violin and to look unearthly in order to be the leader of her people. A dead queen of a dead land.
Me? I slipped away before one part of me could be made into a king and the other part a prisoner. I always like to keep myself together. I slipped a turkey leg in one pocket and a ruby necklace in the other to finance my next adventure. They still talk about the thief who came a beggar, lived with their future queen, robbing her and then leaving for Nowhere to carry the burden of two. Leaving free.