Peepshow
CHILDREN’S VOICES A very old and much revered nun, after a lifetime of useful service, is given money by the village elders to build a home in her old age, and she chooses to build it in her favourite place on earth: a hill from which the most magical view passes over a green and pleasant valley to the distant, sacred, snow-capped mountains.
She calls in the mason and the architect and the gardener, and for many months they build in secret, until all is accomplished and the old nun invites the elders of her village to a tea ceremony. The elders enter the gate and pass through many garden enclaves, climbing hills along twisting paths of blue glass over jade streams and groves of oleanders, eventually reaching a small building on a tiny island in a little lake in the centre of the wood. There, quite in the dark, they sip their tea, eat rice biscuits and wonder to themselves and each other: Where exactly was this marvellous view they had heard so much about? They fidget their way through the tea ceremony, which is held by the light of a single swaying lamp. They grow bored and restless and angry. Is this was what they had walked so far to see? Then the old and revered nun bids them stand and prepare themselves to receive her parting gift. At these words, she pulls a cord. It raises the bamboo blind and the view is displayed in all its splendour, channelled through an avenue of trees. The nun drops the blind, fast as a blink. The elders leave the house and return to the village, satisfied. They have had a glimpse of heaven. This is the story. We think.