creativity. Rigidity yields balance, stagnant, reality. Dream or 'is'. Seeing or believing.
Ironic for a deserted traveller as well that the unbalanced man creates. And therefore, is God.
The Beggar's young son had almost journeyed from the city. The streets on leaving the palace had remained wide yet narrow in their wealthy view just as the previous streets had been. These ended after several blocks and succumbed to the barter of a lesser purse.
Poorer, shoddier places but never near the decay of the Valley of the Dogs. These began the homes and sheds of the workers and craftsmen of the city. Forgers of gold to art, iron to sword, bronze to likeness. Here a tens of species of wood were burned to the revolve of foot powered lathes into legs of great delicacy or candlesticks of a man's height. Weavers too here, that could spin gold through silk or a hundred colours into a rainbow of cover worthy any noble form. Here the factories of a single family of hands for exotic bakes. prime cuts. sweet delicacies formed and delivered fresh to the wealthy coin. Wagons made and horses sold. All the barter to be sold; all the selling of any worth.
Not just all to be made but all gathered from the dust of caravans and merchants packed solid onto mules. Those such as these bringing the spoon to greed were not allowed to sell direct. The king’s men placed a hand before them and after a tax was served, they were allowed only the selling to the city's merchants. Thus in this more sacred progression of Marketplaces, the commodities pass singular hand to hand not thrown to the mill of crowds.
Money creates its own order. Handled with a respect, a reverence that slows its ease of depart from hand in accordance with its increasing weight. Like no other thing, the greater the burden the more delighted the bearer. It is a thing which both chains the limbs and raptures the eyes; here the wealthy hold themselves to such fixed interest, that they are as statues before any other measure in human terms.
Yet amongst all this great swill and swell, charity was such an odd thing here, that coins could depart in that name. For if a merchant came predicting of a sale for a hundred and instead, came fast upon two hundred, his dance of joy under a double burden would caper so light, so high that a coin or two might sing to an empty cup sitting nearby.
Thus, though the poor were hounded away, beggars of a number decreed by a city office (passage purchased around his tolling hand) were allowed the privilege of daily reside at the scene of golden pilgrimage; Scattered the market then, were wells empty but for the thanks tossed from wishers already glutted in victory.
Amongst beggars are common things which join their species snake's limbs. Some might be coloured in rags to attract, no employment of steady call, hollow eyes that go off and on before a friendly or stranger's face. Known only by empty cups or bowls or hats or hands. these are some common traits of beggars; though these traits fit thieves and merchants as well.
Nor are beggars necessarily in despair; only those who despair begging.
But of two common bonds beggars must hold, it is that all beggars are brothers and the more wretch of a man, the greater the beggar. By wretch it is meant in the decay of body, the limbs, the legs, the scar. The mind and heart remain sound if not allowed the probe of ridicule or shame. Thus his brothers are a beggar's veil against the scorn of fools as yet missed by a fate's breath. It even could be said that the greater wretch of a man, the greater the brother, till the most wretched would stand for King of the Beggars.
But beggars are too free to need kings for they have enough sense not to want beyond a day's coin, in fact, the only thing freer than a beggar is perhaps a dead one. And brothers seldom need kings, either. Though one may lead, none are ever commanded to follow.
The Beggar spied such a man...or more to his age ,a younger man.
He had a limb left. A leg. Both arms were stubs, one cut about the elbow, the other an inch or two higher. The leg that had been was a short stub, seen to be three or four inches above the knee. One rag he wore wrapped round his hips, if a frame that thin can be said to have hips. The cloth hung in shreds to his knee, bared, yet it was enough to give him a dress of decency.
For the guards who patrol here would allow a man stay to die but expel any who lay indecent; uncovered to the exposure of a careless glance.
The rest of his frame, or the parts left, were clothed only in a gray-brown of taut skin.
His chest was a fine dainty corset of thin ribs carefully placed by an artistic hand under the living fabric.
Then the skin drawn tight perhaps from behind with some lever of sorts, the surplus ends tacked behind the backbone, in the manner that nomads use with rocks rolled up in the corners of tents, to stretch the goat's fabric full.
So taut this skin, a viewer might perceive the drum beat underneath trembling on the skin. At full sun, it not for a curtain of dirt, one would expect a luminous sheen to this skin, like parchment held to the sky; the boy's inner organs to be seen in hazy outlines like the inner works of angels, their wings folded to obscure.
Yet, this was not a dying frame. Muscle was there in stretch and entwined bunches; not thickened but rather thinned of cable to an unbreakable part.
These few cables which anchored this beggar to life could not be allowed to fail. And thereby did not. For the power from struggle is not as most men suppose the struggle for power but is rather the power in struggle itself.
Those strings tightened, strung his frame. Cords of neck, the crisscross from a shoulder pinnacle of bone to stub ends armed him with a will to carry a destiny many of a stronger grip would let slip away in a despair of surrender.
Though not seen, as the beggar sat leaning to a wooden rot of wall, the cords strung aback as straight as a cripple's will and connected to the final leg. Here was iron, for upon this final pedestal, the general waged his vision; the captain gathered his daily orders; the sergeant cursed for joy of attack; the private rose glory in the march.
Support of this stance was seen on either side, crutches of an end, a contraption to fit the stubs like sleeves so that the shortened thin stiff legs were fixed well for mobility. Indeed unremovable without assistance , the beggar was like a boy with unbendable joints.. A walking stool.
On these and the good leg, the beggar rode from the Dog's Valley to his post of beg in this daily ritual of hands foot to mouth.
As the Beggar's young son stepped closer, the shadow of a whole man cast across the reclining beggar's frame and he looked up.
When the Beggar's young son saw the toothy grin a part broke in his heart.
When all in a time's plunge the cruellest destinies of man are railed against, the want of a god is begged so fate could be flung in that wicked face; when one human being is faced with the shudders of its own helplessness before the determined gather of a neighbour's out spilled bowels.
That fit of rage surged in the Beggar for this happy toss of greasy rag which begs ravage a world for that which it has ravaged. Yet all this cannot be, cannot be answered. The rage plunges to despair and snaps the heart. All is said in a sob, half-choked before a youthful grin.
For the body though scarred old and should be as if the plague of some ancient sinner deserving his worth, yet it is but the capsule of youthful heart not beaten to twenty years old as yet. The grin, the eyes have told more of a brother's history than the Beggar would cry to gather.
That he was alone, Deserted perhaps or those who would found a heart to care died of the years and cares toiling to rise this child; hoping in lost hope that they would be an inch higher than the poverty which swallows all here;
That he rented a box attached to a hovel; this his home, complete with a single blanket grimed with his own decay; that and flies, there was little room for else in a box 5 hands square, 15 hands long and cheap rent for it.
That a world of no hands, no other hands and worst of all, no offer or trust of loving hands yields a plague in the obstacles, avalanches, desert storms that for others are mere turnings of the wind. Though at least courage has the measure of a man in what he sta
nd against not his stride alone.
That a need with no hands must eat its bread underarm. That drink must be lifted by the grip of lips; raise the bowl in a grimace of heavens. That grime clings ever but for a chance rain to trickle rivulets through dried sweat.
Even bodily functions path difficult or at least become cast more to the stance of a dog. For the removal of a sarong is too awkward a task. If defecation results in a state unclean, dust becomes water and the strong leg propels backwards the bared cheeks for the wipe of dirt.
In the destitution of souls, this last stance, last scrape, the more apt. The soul, as too the body, some have accused get early punishment. That gods, as the fathers of men, judge the group by their splashes of heel.
In conversation, the Beggar learned how the young fellow had come to this state after his parents died young.
“Being a street orphan at run, I was rounded up with a bunch of the others by the City Guards. Much was our abuses and hardships as we toiled daily for the City and at night were locked in small hot stinking pens and throw bread for our solitary meal.
Still, we, for the most of us, survived and though I would not say grew up, we, at least, aged.
Even in that living all was not so bad. Friendships and fun was had as only children could do in such a world. Ah, my friend, man, what a spirit he has. So
The Seven Days of Wander Page 53
