not show me the end of Virtue. What is it?”
“ My Will is the end of Virtue. Imposed upon you.”
The son looked long at his father’s face. Tears came. He looked down at the sword.
“ You are right. If I kill you now, I become a King. Without Virtue. For it is your Will to die, not mine. And have me King. If I had killed you before I might have had brothers, I might have had compassion...or love. Now to kill you is to kill...emptiness. Virtue should have spoke long before this.
If I refuse to do such, refuse to kill you... if I kill myself instead, I seemingly deny your Will but do I?
For if to have Virtue, I must seemingly always do the opposite of your Will, is not your Will still imposed upon me...does not your Will still dictate wether I must follow its same...or its opposite? That is still no Virtue.”
He threw the sword against the wall breaking it to pieces.
To have Virtue, I must free my Will.
First, I must simply discard everything that is of your Will. Sword, death, son, father, king. They are nothing to me.
Now I leave this place. As a beggar. Of Free Will. You can have me easily put to death but that will not end Virtue. Virtue remains beyond your will. You can do anything and everything to me, if that is your will but you cannot make Virtue a King.”
The beggar stopped here, at this ending, looking at the other man.
A moment passed then a boy coughed.
The other man shoved at him a little, then abruptly stopped.
Another moment passed, then Big Nose ended it “ A good tale. At least worth a stick.”
He handed the club over to the Beggar and gestured at the boys and the man no one saw to walk away with him.
The beggar’s young son stood for awhile watching them then he too walked away. In opposite. Towards the Valley of the Dogs.
The Fifth Day
This fifth morning for the Beggar in the city unfolded gently. The black of night, little contested by oil lamps or large fires, was whispered, nudged aside.A much quieter procession than other parts of the city where gongs and shouts, brayings, neighings and prayings splattered the fresh light. The dawn's broom sweeping up the street's shadows and discards into little piles of dim here and there amongst alleys or doorways.
In the Valley of the Dogs, there were few mules to bray or horses to neigh.Gongs and bells are of no use in hovels unserved. No sweeps need pass in streets where little is found and never discarded.
And the ritual of prayers rose with the risen; and here the risen had no impel to ascend to the needs of
man in haste.
The priests were little found in this Valley, and yet the people were themselves dutiful unto their gods or god.
For , truly , the god worshipped here had many a multitude- of
hands, many eyes, many forms of shape, yet was known of the same: Seek.
Here amongst such a dense press of taut skin, could any other god find room, let alone demand worship? And no god desired such grovel of status as to be followed by this rabble poured into
a valley's hole; except Seek.
Ironically, the Beggar saw this Seek was indeed the god from their dingy mirror, . . Since Seek did not come to the people, did not create the wretched but rather the poor combined created Seek.
Intimately, yet universally from one empty edge to another of the valley
The ways, the rules, the delights, the wrath of Seek poured, seeped, stole, bled it’s being from each bundle of worship, whether a leprous old woman, who sealed her oozing nakedness daily with mud for want of rags or the dart of toothless child hunting mice skilfully for a night's stew.
These were embraced as the gathering of Seek. Seek was of them what they themselves were of; at times nothing; times, a bit; seldom some; never much.
So each in not being much, did not Seek much. Hence for each, Seek was a tiny god, more of a brother, a fellow sufferer than a wrathful or giving father. Seek did not provide.
Seek was taken along on the daily hunt for luck or a whisper of advice and the words of Seek were rarely ignored.
Yet Seek had only one command as a god; for an individual or a throng gathered like piling chafe. Other gods were allowed. All manner of human or inhuman acts were allowed. No rituals required. No penance or sacrifice desired. Blasphemy not heeded or obedience to form.. None of this. In this, Seek was by far the most forgiving god.
Yet for one LAW there was no forgiveness.
Penalty always the same: death. Seek demanded only its existence. From that of each worship and collectively.
What was created, Seek, now also was tyrant. Though tiny to each man, small in their smallness, Seek could not be denied. As if as the life-long breathing of a man, a breath missed of a thousand breaths is nothing in it's loss, unless it is the next breath he takes! Then the untaken breath, though nothing of a volume of air, brings death in its denial.
So also Seek. No other god was so jealous of its worship. No
other god had such a tethered gathering to its embrace. Seek was like a child. For the father, the child laid hope, blessing to the man's eyes yet compelled, ,drove the father to hunt for more bread
in a breadless cave.
For the mother, the child brought worth, love to her heart, yet the lips at her breast drained the little life flow she could not spare.
Such again was Seek. Offering enough to raise up the crippled yet only a morsel that they would not step very far.
This puzzled the Beggar. Thata god in likeness is created, which in turn keeps all within its likeness. Any here
would quickly stone him a fool were he to say a man is poor by his desire to be so. And rightly so, for he knew that to be a crime in utterance against all humanity.
Then the collective Seek, the huge Seek, kept all poor?
That all the poor desired no one individual un-poor if they themselves will remain poor! Envy, jealousy are cruel
neighbours, true, yet....
He had heard of riots here. The famished willing to swallow steel; gnawing at palace bricks; raging, howling their
families' limp emptiness. A collective Seek seeking for all an end of this perpetual scorn by empty heart and raining spit. But alas, this new Seek, or at least melded Seek had not the temper
cool, nor the alloy strong to force the opening of justice.
Back to the hole; always the end, in a cascade of slide into the slime.
Rarely is more than a push, a few slaughtered, required, so treacherous and sloped is the crowded edge.
So the Beggar understood it now. Back to the holes. Seek was a hunter god; a god of hunters. A ferret. A god even
collectively not as powerful as the gods collected outside the hole; those gods of the collective un-poor.
Gods of long sight and grinding teeth while Seek had short sight, keen only within the distance of a day.
Seek had only sharp needle, teeth to gouge little bits of gore, a feast of nibbles, not a relentless mill of plenty.
Seek: a god animal of lightening dash, only enough taken to sustain. For to linger is to be crushed by the ever descent of retribution.
Seek did not grip his worship to his breast, rather the destitute, the wretched were pressed against him by the seethe of
human mass carried in this Bowl of Curs.
Seek was the collective protector, the image of a thousand arms thrown across
faces terrorized to an apparition of foul loathsome Gatekeepers. The blazing white eye of the un-poors' Gods forbidding passage.
Seek shadowed this and allowed life, though thin stalked and brittle; a seed nonetheless.. Furrowed in the bowels of Seek. Watered daily from the few drops lost in a tiny trembling cup, a cup nestled in jerking knobs of hands, the gnarled hands of an old man who journeyed slowly, inching through a melee of mob and din and dust and dung; stepped with soles
layered of skin, dead skin piled, hardened, years, cracked like cemented dust, coloured as the cemented dust till the
ground was mirrored of his feet. That each lifted step was as if the tortured ground was repulsed and drew away from its own image scarred to its dense eyes.Hundreds of steps, the shaking hands
travelled daily in a task as cruel as any mule's. Yet the deed was done for love, a hundred times a day. To a well a few hundred yards away, the feet stroked a moving line across split dried
canvas. Water for his dying wife, her thirst insatiable in the steady evaporation to a crumble of breathing husk. A rustle of dead grass in hot winds. The old man could lift only this cup, his arms the twigs of an undernourished tree.A pail, a bucket may as well be filled with stones, such was the lack of his grip. No relative to help, an old man too proud to plead with other dwellers; so hence this endure of daily devotion. And from this religion, Seek gathered the spill of drops and spread tears from
lip to lip.
Seek sustained the flock; that there was no better god to lead all to greener hills was not the fault of Seek. That abomination of mistrust lied elsewhere.
So every morning the ablutions to Seek were done quietly without ceremony. Slowly and individually, man, woman, child, dog opened their eyes to a scarce look, opened a mouth to an empty hand and rubbed the world large in open bellies.
Haste in duties was not required. What little was to be had in the Valley would remain till it was found. For want, hunger, as a new thing brings a desperate scurry, a haste of scavenge. But when it is an old thing, a continuum of empty being, its pursuit becomes less striking and more dogged. The spirit feeds upon itself for sustenance and is thereby less eager to unfold to its own cannibalistic nibbles. It keeps its limbs hidden from its own teeth,
The Seven Days of Wander Page 34
