other guards assist their beaten fellow with a hand up and water to his face, the Captain walks over to the Beggar.
The Captain asks: "Your wounds, are they deep?"
Beggar: "Deep enough to remind me to carry a larger stick."
Captain: "You used what you had to much advantage. Where do Beggars become schooled in such?"
Beggar: "Let us just say when younger hands seek larger loafs amongst a forest of angry legs, the feet learn the art of dancing nimble."
Captain: "And is this school a rare or a common thing?"
Beggar: " Too common then, much the same now."
Captain: "Then the recruiters must begin to look under market tables for the best of the pickings. But no matter. My guard was no doubt been given a lighter beating than my ears will now be served. Sit here at this stone and rest while you speak of your new victorious point."
Beggar: "I ask first that you not discipline or let his fellows degrade that guard too much. For he would have won had he not been so much disarmed by you.
Captain: "What! By me! What do you mean!"
Beggar: "In the contest, I was to die, he was not. He had little to lose therefore little to try. For did we not say that courage was a muscle of the heart? Like an arm the sword must be there to hold. Where there is little chance to die, there is little chance for courage and strangely less reason to live or win. Had that guard pinned me to the ground, with sword point at my throat awaiting your signal to kill who would have breathed deeper? The crowd, undangered, air ,spellbound, stuck in their dry throats? Or I, most in danger, breathing full, as each dear breath may be my last?
Such is the strange way of the world that nobility breeds only in the nest of adversity. As it to man's spirit. the gods
give him the devil, the danger as a wolf to the herd. For look at the herd without the hunter. a flaccid, mulling thing;
shitting and cudding it’s path to eternity. Mating and the ritual
of horn clashings a feeble attempt at the meanings of immortality.
But let the wolves descend! Come among them! Behold, the thriving bulls, swelled in sinewy defiance, eyes glaring in warrior readiness. Tails flagging unity. the cows stamp defiance, crowd the tiny ones behind, snorting "Death before
surrender! There will be no turning in the wind!'
How has this been done? How has the ox shed its listless burdens to become noble from drudge? Danger. We have placed danger in the arm of courage and it has rose up to the call.
But harbour no delusions, my Captain, this is not all there is of man. If it were, it would be enough to put every man to the test of sword to make all men unneeded of sword. But alas there are others of a natural kind.
There are the colonies of toads where the snake preys. Here
courage has no call, no muscle. Rather the toads fight with a blank eyed hope. Sheer numbers as their defence. Eyes cast to side or behind they watch the snake move in its selection. If
there lies a hundred toads, each has a ninety-nine in a hundred chance of escape. But only in the cold hunch of stillness.
Movement will surely bring attack, the rigours of cowardice at least
leave chance. The snake selects, he has eaten, lies in a stupor of
neglect to the ninety-nine. They whisper ‘he is full, sated, now he will ask no more' and what do the fools do? They sing of their liberation! Till the songs awaken the thinner snake and again hope, cowardice must hold tight a snake's meal; hope, cowardice again doing the work of a snake's coils.
Thus do many men react to evil slipping through their towns, their homes, their hearts.
Hold rigid and hope thy neighbour fattens a serpents throat.
But what of conviction for these two species, what of that? That the bulls and cows were convinced not of the danger to
them; that is there, but courage ignores it out of the danger to the
young. The toads were convinced of no danger to themselves, just their neighbours.
Is this not the same thing? Both see danger outside themselves; are convinced of it. But see the difference. The one species convinced its immortality rests with the young, the other with itself!One results in courageous movement, selfless sacrifice; the other in cowardly denial, self—serving impotence.
And which species will succeed? The bulls, cows may defeat the wolves; the toads will succumb one by one, victory over the snake coming only with starvation! A rather odd method of combat! Captain: Bulls and toads, beggar, my ears swim in their bruised blood! Where is the point of a guards defeat in this arena of gardens? If for no other reason, make haste to a conclusion for your slave brothers, whose necks itch the redder with each passing hour!
Beggar: My apologies, Captain. You are not alone for it is said that in the hereafter, the gods know no burden hut a
prophet's tongue.
Captain: Or the singing bird draws the hawk!
Beggar: Or the frog croaks though water is near!
Captain: Ah, but the boldest cricket dines with the lizard!
Beggar: Defeat. I admit defeat. I beg sir you scabbard your tongue for mercy. But my point was thus, that a man is neither bull or toad or even wolves or snake but is rather of all four in his heart. Some more of one than the other, all having at least a small part of each.
That no man is born of courage or conviction but grows accustomed to it. That is grows within the customs of it. The ways of a species are bred into its young.
The toads hear no wolves.
So what a man is becomes greatly of where he was. Of what was
offered onto him. Praying amongst toads does not the snake become his idol?Running with wolves does not the calf beg his sacrifice amongst bellowing hooves?
We are all of equal stature yet we do not know we make our brothers great or small. In our offerings. Do not offer the snake before the bull, he will remain meek. Do not offer a toad to the
wolves, he will turn tail at the bitter warts.
No where the heard runs, bring only wolves. Let the snakes and toads alone to be devoured amongst each other in the clinging muck.
So here was your bullish man. His death unsentenced become the hiss of a snake. The toad emerged clumsy with a
hawkish front . All else were to die around him. But not him.
So he fought not for himself but who? What conviction?
Had I demanded payment in the slave's lives, then you and his comrades would surely die later in a king's rage. But he had no one to save. The wolves and
snake at least have conviction in their hunger. He had no hunger, no courage, no conviction. He carried steel limply with the heart of a toad. But twas all of us who demanded so. The courage penned. Conviction unscented. Even the snake pinned by the stick of my own conviction. Like so many men in life he had been disarmed by his brothers long before the arena was even entered.
Captain: The thrust cannot be parried, Beggar. Yet in your flurry of strikes, I am a mite shaken as to what all your meanings have to do with what here befalls a gaze?
Beggar: Captain, beware, truth brings its own bit beyond bone or steel.
Captain: Say it. (laughing) Besides, my calloused ears make a good shield.
Beggar: Here around as always are toads and snakes: wolves and bulls, and all shades of such. It is the snake that beheads the slaves. It is the wolves that fight armed man to man. The toads encircle and watch rejoicing in murmur ever their own unspilled blood. It is the bull which intervenes for the calves. Thus the
circus of death is danced in blood. Thus the arena of life is paid entrance in blood. If the man, toad, wolves, snake, bull all shed blood where comes any difference? Dignity. There is such in a man when he circles with the bulls or lunges with the pack. The toad and snake exist below its level eye.
You would kill slaves as a snake devours toads. You, as a wolf, must flatten to the ground and slither to your task, below the eye of dignity.
I have a choice of two hearts. Stand amongst the crowed warts and sing of
my deliverance? Or stomp hard clay and glower courage over these innocents?
Which breaths of a man, Captain? Which rings a man high; full in dignity's breast whether bronzed or ragged. Which builds the arms of courage, Captain, to take what is easily taken or to give what is not easily given?
And of conviction, I quote a greater man: 'Those who seek to live, die. Those who seek death shall surely live'.
As if to say those who cling quiet around only their living self lie nearest to the dead, but those who embrace death, raging for others, stand nearest to the living.
Where are you, Captain, amongst all this living and dead?
Moments passed. The Captain and Beggar eyes fixed, no movement,
stillness. Many around thought the Beggar would die, though they understood little of his words. Just that a quiet man is a
dangerous one. A silent one with a sword exceedingly so.
Not looking away, yet subduing the glint of glare to ease the
moment, the Captain spoke: Some men in the harness of occupation may seem as toads swallowing any conviction that flies at them. There is a command for 'Advance', a command for 'Retreat'.
Likewise a call to 'Raise up'; a demand to 'Crawl'. A man on his
belly may hide in the memories of his run, toads daydream of larger horns in past.
Your dignity scents of glory in the soldiery fashion. That is an ebbing, rising thing; of no account can a man hold to it. It is
embraced eternal only by those finally drowned in its music.
That a man is those four things, I agree. That he is brought to be one or the other I agree. But that he never sheds the other ,here is a lesson to all, including you.
The Seven Days of Wander Page 40
