There was barely any resignation among the scant crowd that populated the rocky hills from which they looked down upon the stranger who had been chained to a dry tree; with a face concealed by a featureless leather mask, bruised and battered, and covered only by rags, he was merely an interesting episode in their uninteresting lives. No one knew of his crime and no one cared about it as long as they had something to pull them from boredom.
The fate of this stranger had been decided by the four wise men of the village, who after little deliberation and zero protest from any one (including the stranger himself), had condemned him to be expelled from the village. The decision had been reached at the breakfast table of the four wise men, an exclusive and sacred place itself where the fates of many had been decided before. The stranger’s case was no different, given the equal time of one hearty breakfast.
Thus, according to the judgment of the four wise men—who accompanied the stranger on the day of the execution of his sentence—he was to be put alive inside a coffin that was to be nailed shut and pushed into the river. This designated coffin was black with a golden cross upon it. There was a Roman inscription, much of which was defaced by then, underneath the cross. According to rumors, it was the same coffin that had been meant for a godless man condemned by the four wise men only a year before; however, the said godless man, who was to be hung and buried away from the village, disappeared a day before he was to be executed. The coffin remained in storage, where it was used for everything from a chest for old worn clothes to a bookshelf, until it was asked for the stranger.
The stranger had been mostly quiet during his trial and completely silent after the judgment was passed against him, by which he was put in chains and his face was covered with a mask to hide his shame from the people until his sentence would be executed.
The four wise men put the stranger into the coffin themselves and quietly nailed the lid closed. There was no resistance, no sound but that of rushing water from the river. Little was said by anyone excepting a few words from the holy book read by the eldest of the wise men. Soon the coffin was in the river. However, as soon as it was pushed into the fury of the currents, it was met with resistance and came to an instant stop. The scene caused a murmur amongst the crowd and embarrassment among the wise men who argued amongst themselves.
One or two superstitious souls responded by shouting out from among the spectators. What was said was no more than what had been said before, though this time it echoed in the valley. Thus, the youngest of the wise men stepped into the water and, wading through the rapids, reached for the coffin. With one strong push he freed it, sending it out into the river. However in doing so, he himself went with the rushes and had to be saved by a dozen villagers.
Though the coffin was freed, it met another immediate resistance. This time it stopped at the other bank of the river. The wise men, though content at first for disposing of the coffin, were angered by its continued resistance. While the spectators quietly stood their ground waiting for the next act in this drama, the wise men deliberated amongst themselves.
On the other bank of the river, where the coffin had stopped, it was mostly dense forest populated by age-old trees. From amongst these ancient trees emerged an old ragged man who had been an audience to the panoply on the other side. Nonchalantly, yet hesitantly, this old man started for the coffin, and while doing so, he looked at the other bank where the ceremony had taken place and could see people gesturing violently toward him. He wondered what they wanted since no one was ever interested in him. Yes, he could hear voices from the other bank but couldn’t make out a word of it for the ferocity of the river, thus he remained oblivious of what was being asked of him; and yes, he could see the animation of the people on the other side but he couldn’t make much of that either.
The ragged man could only oblige with a shrug and stopped at the coffin, where he quietly stood looking down at it. Thus, running his fingers over the wood, he started to examine the coffin. What makes you so important? he wondered.
Seeing the intent of the old man, one of the wise men stepped into the river from where one of his colleagues had just been rescued. “Stop. Please stop in the name of God. Don’t open it. I beg of you.” The rushing waters tested his progress. He witnessed the old man, to his awe, working to open the lid of the coffin, which he quite easily succeeded in doing. He stopped within the fury of the river, helpless to do anything but observe as the old man bent over the coffin and said something into it.
Is he talking to him? wondered the wise man as he tried to stay firm against the running water. No one or nothing came out of the coffin, but it could be seen that the ragged man took out the mask. He unmasked him. He has seen his face.
“Wait there,” he cried. The ragged man quietly returned the mask into the coffin, put the lid back on, and started to walk away into the forest. “Wait for me,” the wise man shouted at the top of his voice. “In the name of God, stop. I am one of the wise men, listen to me. Stop, I say.” But the ragged man disappeared into the darkness of the forest.
The coffin slowly started to drift back into the river. The river raged and the coffin followed its course, undulating with the flow of water and only momentarily hindered by rocks and floating branches but none stopped it permanently. It continued with the rushes of the water that took it into the wilderness.
No sign of life came from inside the coffin; no sound or movement. And it had been so for days when it reached a calm in the watery silence of wilderness. Here the curious creatures of the forest could only give cursory attention to it and ventured back into the forest. None came to disturb it. However, it found a passenger when it started to drift back into rapid waters.
The cub had been separated from his family for a night only, yet the fears of vast darkness of the forest and its loneliness had forced him along the river. He made a few valiant efforts for food but had not yet become a component hunter to seek food for himself, and it was during one of such efforts that he came upon an object which he, at first followed and checked with his paws and, after satisfaction of its lifelessness, climbed upon it.
It was a fascinating journey for the cub, for he could see the forest the way he had never seen before; the creatures, the flora and, at places, people too. At a distance, he had seen tall mountains with snowy tops. He had seen what none of his siblings had seen before, maybe none of his fellow creatures would ever see. He stayed on the coffin until it stopped. He climbed down to look for food that he found in scraps and bits, but nothing to satisfy his appetite; thus he climbed back onto his ride and lay quietly and sadly as it started to move again. He continued the practice of jumping down on the bank for food and then jumping back on to the coffin until one day, now very hungry, he went deep into the woods looking for food, glancing once or twice over his shoulders at the coffin until it went out of his sight as he busied himself with his hunt. Upon his return, he could see the coffin far off in the distance. Though out of his reach, he vainly tried to catch it, yet the further he followed it, the further it got until it was too far for him to follow. Quietly he went back into the woods.
There were few other curious creatures of the forest that tried to follow the coffin; running after it on the banks of the river yet never reaching it. Still there was no movement from within the coffin. The first human being that came upon it since the commencement of this journey was a lone hunter, coming back from an unsuccessful hunt. Little attention did he give the curious object in the water, as, for him it was just a piece of wood; big enough to burn for fire, yet too big to carry all by himself.
It finally came to someone’s attention when it stopped at a rocky bank, where it stood for two days, and it was on one of these days that it was visited by a man accompanied by a little boy sitting on a worn donkey that carried the burden of the man’s prospecting. It was the child who first noticed it while his father relieved himself at the bank; the child had jumped on top of the coffin, where he sat until his father noticed.
“Get off, it’s unlucky to touch a coffin,” he said. The boy didn’t oblige and the father picked him up. “You never touch a coffin. It is a bad omen.”
Curiosity being the nature of man, and this man no different from any other, tempted by this very nature, tried to open the coffin. But his efforts to do so proved futile. He couldn’t break it open with his axe because such temptations clashed with his beliefs, which prohibited him from damaging anything holy, and this was tested by the cross on top of the coffin; thus he could only try and force it open.
“You are not supposed to touch it,” said his son.
“Yes, son, you are right,” said the man and the two quietly went away, leaving the coffin where they had found it.
The coffin had not floated far when it found its next interested party. She was a widow, still young and beautiful, but weary with grief. She lived not far from the river in a small broken-down wooden house with her three small children: two girls and a boy. She had built the house with her husband, every part being the fruit of their labors, and they had done so close to the river for its scenic beauty rather than the provision of ample water. He had perished at sea when sent by his father on a futile adventure. Now the river only represented a place where three times a week she came down with her wash, or sometimes to take a dip with her children when the heat was unbearable; for other requirements she had the well to provide for her needs.
The day she found a coffin floating slowly in the river she had come alone for a bath and it was before she had undressed that she notice the curious object. Her action was delayed, for at first she perceived it as an illusion and waited for it to disappear. When that didn’t happen, she wished to see it float away; which didn’t happen either for it had stopped in the middle, undulating with the movement of the river, yet remaining stationary as its path had been obstructed by a boulder. Still hesitant, she jumped into the river and swam up to the coffin. She curiously examined it before stopping to read the inscription. Then, cautiously, she opened the lid. She looked inside for a few quiet moments; even felt inside it with her hands before closing it.
Slowly she pushed it to the bank and slid it further up to dry land and quietly returned home.
In the afternoon she returned. By her side were her children and on her shoulders a rope. While the woman and her eldest daughter, who was no more than twelve years old, wound the rope round the coffin, the other two played in the river. Tying the rope around her shoulders and slender waist, she dragged the coffin. Her eldest joined in the effort too, while the other girl, who was walking behind, gave occasional pushes when she saw some resistance. The boy enjoyed a seat on top of the coffin. Though not a pious person herself, she believed in hymns and prayers, things that she had adopted from her husband’s side; much of her own family never cared about religion, and it was this education she applied to the situation as she started to quietly pray.
By the time they had reached the house, it was twilight, and being tired, thirsty, and hungry, they left the coffin under a tree just outside the house. Inside they lit candles and prepared dinner, and when done with eating, the children went to their beds. Then the woman, carrying a candle, went outside and inspected the coffin before placing the candle on top of the coffin; there she quietly prayed and hummed to herself before retiring for the night.
At night, the coffin was visited by nocturnal creatures that came out of the forest onto the plains—the family was used to these animals and their noises, which were part of the norm for which even the children were well prepared. The wolves circled the coffin quietly and then went noiselessly away. The coyotes sniffed it, danced over it, and after howling, went away. Even the little birds that came with the dawn examined it. None of these creatures damaged the coffin; it had stayed the way it had come out of the river, which had been the same as it had been when it was first driven into it.
Close to the house, at the back up a mountain were four graves. One belonged to an uncle of the woman’s husband who lived not far away. One belonged to an incompetent cousin of her husband who had been lynched. Another belonged to a stranger who had died at their doorstep when she was having her first child. The fourth was an empty grave marked with only a tombstone and nothing more. It was meant for her husband should his body be ever found.
At the break of dawn just as the sun was on horizon, she went outside to uncover the empty grave, the hollow of which was covered by an old worn door. Two hours later her children awoke one by one, and each of them went to look at the coffin and saw their mother fast at work within the grave. She promised them breakfast as soon as she was done putting the coffin to its rightful place. They all dragged the coffin, the mother and the children, and slowly pushed it in.
“Is it Father?” asked the eldest daughter.
“No,” quietly replied the woman as she started to cover the grave.
“Is it another stranger?”
“No.”
“Then why are you giving him Father’s place?”
“Because it’s empty. There is nothing inside it. Nothing,” she replied and pushed the tombstone aside, on which was inscribed her husband’s name. “Your father is not here. And he will never be. Why waste good space when there is one.”
“Why?” asked the youngest girl.
“Let’s cover it.” And they covered the grave and prayed upon it and then went in for their breakfast.
As the years passed it became common knowledge that the woman had buried something where her husband was meant to be buried. There were rumors that she had buried a chest full of treasures in his grave. But there were also rumors that she had gone mad waiting for her husband and thus buried an empty coffin in the hope that he would return one day. Some even called her a heretic.
Years later when the woman had died and the girls had all grown to be women married and with families of their own and had left the land of their parents, the boy, now all grown and married with children, decided to take action on the issue of the grave and its contents. The decision was influenced by the relatives of his wife, who, governed by their own brand of religious thought and influenced by common gossip, forced him to dig up the grave and return the coffin to the place where the woman had first found it: the river. Thus he obliged by digging up the grave, tying the coffin to a horse, and dragging it back to the river. He was tempted to open it but by the force of his beliefs he refrained to do so and slowly let the coffin back adrift into the river.
There was little interest from those whom it went past; some only gave it a cursory look, others took it for a piece of wood, most didn’t even see it. And so it went until a girl who had jumped into the river to escape distant pursuers came to use the coffin once again; though taken for a plank in wild waters, the girl climbed onto it and lay spreading herself face down by embracing its sides. When the rapids slowed, she sat up and using her arms for oars, started to paddle herself out of danger. The flight was slow and agonizing, and it was driven by fear of her pursuers whom she expected to catch up with her sooner or later. It was when she decided to take rest that she examined her supposed raft and realized her savior was but a stray coffin. Though repulsed at the thought of riding on top of a coffin, she accepted it as her redeemer and continued on it down the river as it made its way slowly toward, hopefully for her, brighter pastures.
She was never really hungry or thirsty, yet slept comfortably on top of the coffin when it came to stop in the middle of nowhere, and when awoken by distant noises she quickly started to paddle with her arms. During one of these naps, which she took occasionally, the coffin gained speed, causing the girl to wake. To her horror she could see her pursuers far off in the distance. In an instance, she jumped from the coffin and, opening the lid, jumped inside. She could hear the hoofs of the horses from time to time as if they were following her as slowly as the coffin drifted downstream, sometimes along the bank of the river and sometimes in the water. She couldn’t, for fear, lift the lid that she might be noticed. The agony was furthered by the suffocating darkness inside; she wished that the river would end and she would reach the safety of the sea where there would be no horses to follow her but only an endless loneliness she so preferred to this agony of terror.
At some point, the coffin came to a halt and the calm and silence that followed was too painful for her to bear. They must have seen me, she thought. It might be them. They must have stopped it. She eased the lid up and looked outside. The water was still and she could clearly see her pursuers standing not far off on the bank; in fact, they were so close that she could clearly hear them. A man on a horse started toward her, and she quickly shut the lid. Her heart beat violently as she heard the horse wading toward her; she could hear every splash and every neigh as it came closer. She put a hand on her mouth when she heard the horse breath over the coffin. No. No. Please no.
“It’s just a piece of wood,” said the man on the horse. She heard the horse retreat back to land, and when she raised the lid again she could see the last of the horses heading toward the mountains.
She quickly climbed out of the coffin, put the lid back on, and feeling the coffin for one last time, pushed it into running water and watched her savior slowly drift away as dusk set in. She quietly walked away to her freedom.
It was a dawn or two later that the coffin stopped again in the calm of waters that belonged to a remote village. The village depended entirely on water from that river and it was now contaminated by the presence of a coffin in its midst. Thus the elders of the village declared it unfit for human consumption as well as for agricultural purposes, and so it was decided to block all the canals taking water into the village. It could neither be drunk, nor could it be used for washing both themselves or their clothing. It was useless to them. It was better to be wasted then consumed.
Being superstitious in their own religious and supernatural thought, none dared to reach for the coffin. They only observed it from a distance; no one went up to it for fear of calamity. Some even considered it as a premonition for a catastrophe to come, a point augmented by the fact that many had drowned in the river over the years. The coffin had been lodged in the shallows for two days when the villagers gathered and started to throw heavy stones at it. They kept the practice all day long, yet the coffin refused to bulge from its position. By then, some of the villagers had started to secretly take water from the river, while some went to other villages for their water needs. Some never returned.
Losing the faith of the people, the elders, after much deliberation, decided to take action. They chose six of the bravest in the village and assigned them the task of driving or pushing the coffin into the deeper part of the river. Thus the chosen ones, with the blessing of the elders, on the sixth morning at dawn started into the river while the villagers sang hymns for them. The chosen were equipped with lances with which they tried to push the coffin, which wouldn’t move a bit despite half the lances breaking in the men’s efforts.
When all efforts failed, one of the chosen brave men finally went close to the coffin, where he noticed that it was only a small rock that had hindered the coffin’s path, and it took him just a little effort to move the rock away, freeing the coffin back on its gentle journey.
An old man had been waiting for the moment to see the coffin afloat again; he had been secretly trying to reach it for days, but all his efforts were stalled by people who came to see the coffin all day round. It was when the coffin was far away from the inquiring eyes of the villagers that he started to follow it in his boat. He had equipped himself with sufficient rations for this journey, which he meant to continue as far as the coffin traveled, since to him it meant a path to a hidden fortune. This was not a journey for the old man, but a pilgrimage.
The seed of his quest lay in what he had been hearing for years along his travels. Being a traveler all his life, he had collected many legends and stories, and some rumors and hearsay too, among which were the stories related to a mysterious coffin that had been floating in the river for years. Different lips, different stories: ‘It is looking for a resting place,’ ‘It contains many treasures,’ ‘It is a phantasm that has brought only bad luck wherever it has stopped,’ ‘Those who touch it, perish’…
As the coffin floated with the flow of the river, the old man quietly followed it, only stopping to relieve himself when the coffin reached calm waters. The old man kept with the rhythm of the river, without resting much and hardly ever sleeping. However, as his stamina dwindled, drowsiness and want for rest became agonizing. He could no longer keep himself awake, thus he took frequent naps, mostly forced by weariness. In most of these pursuits he caught up with the coffin quickly, in others it took an almost violent effort to reach his goal, yet he never lost it.
After a particularly long nap, the old man hadn’t reached his goal, and now tired and weary, felt his venture to be a mission in futility. It was then he took on a passenger; a young man, an adventurer himself, commissioned to seek a mythical village. It was a relief for the old man; for the paddling was taken up by young shoulders and he resigned himself to the task of keeping watch.
“What’s inside the coffin?” asked the young man.
“Something holy,” replied the old man.
“You haven’t seen it?”
“It is forbidden to open it.”
“How do you know?”
“I have been following it for years,” lied the old man.
“Must be something supernatural.”
“Or holy,” replied the old man.
It was not long before that another boat joined the pursuit, followed by another, and soon numbers had joined the convoy, which was still led by the old man; no one tried to get ahead of him or reach for the coffin. In fact, no one asked of the mystery of the coffin, they merely followed. No one knew whether they were following the coffin or the old man.
It could be easily observed from a distance, the long train of boats and rafts and canoes that had joined the convoy in scores; the medley of different colors could be seen crowded in the river. The old man felt important and his companion felt that he had finally found himself a worthy adventure and those who followed believed it to be a pilgrimage that would end in a land of promise and hope.
But the journey went on; from days, to weeks, it just continued. No one questioned the old man’s authority or opinion; some who differed quietly left the band, others still believed in the promise and continued the journey.
At one point, the coffin came to a halt in quieter waters, and here the people stopped too. For days they remained; most turned to the banks where they parked their boats, but some still remained on their boats, sometimes moving around the coffin. Weary and tired, most of the people started to leave the group; no one argued with anyone, or asked anyone else to join them as they departed as quietly as they had joined.
Once again the coffin started to move and with it the remaining convoy of boats that had so patiently waited for it to do so. This time the drift was painfully slow, and the journey was tested by the cruel sun that burned the followers during the day. To boost the motion of the coffin, the old man started to push it with his arms extending from the boat as his companion paddled. Now disinterested, much of the followers left like the others that done so before; slowing down, they turned other bends or stopped at banks, deliberately losing sight of the coffin. Now it was down to one boat; the same that had been following it from the start of the journey. The old man and his adventurer companion still pursued the coffin.
“I think I should leave, too,” said the adventurer one day.
“Why?” asked the old man.
“We seem to have almost come round to where we started.”
“Yes, me and the coffin. And maybe in the end it will be the coffin alone again.”
“Maybe,” said the adventurer as he jumped out of the boat.
Without a farewell, the old man, maybe feeling lonesome and sad, quietly continued his voyage. But he didn’t get far. Not far from where he had left the adventurer, there came a waterfall. Though the old man had seen the coffin fall off the waterfall, he somehow followed it, maybe hoping to come up fine at the other end. Maybe this was meant for only me. Yes, the coffin did come back up, but the old man didn’t.
It was an old woman, while crossing over the river on a bridge, who noticed the coffin on a pebbly bank. This old woman never was an enthusiastic party in superstitions and religious beliefs that would have stopped any one of her kinfolk from reaching for the coffin. Like all the others before who had come upon it, she quietly examined the coffin; however, unlike most of the others, she opened it. To her surprise and delight she saw two lambs sleeping inside, and at the touch of sunlight they woke up. The old woman, picking them up, caressed them against her cheeks with a childlike delight. With lambs at her side, the old woman left gleefully.
The coffin was not far from the sea when, upon seeing the anomaly, a curious traveling family disposed a coffin that they had been carrying with them into the river. This coffin, heavier and yet lighter in color, drifted behind the first for some time before it struck a boulder and immediately broke into pieces, throwing its corpse into the river, where it immediately disappeared into the rushing waters.
The coffin was in the sea. And as soon as it went there it sank for a few moments before coming back up. Out in the sea, for a while undisturbed by the wilderness, it remained floating until one day a small boat approached it, and it was at that moment that the lid of the coffin opened and out crawled a man.
Just as he came out, the coffin sank.
