entrance yawing to the south; called the Gate of Moon's Laughter named so for the hyenas chained cental to the night's impasse.
For the iron teeth of the gap dropped shut when twilight rose, so that the beasts and beast-like men of deserts skulk and black's peril could not ravage inside the wall’s shadows.
The daily guards would release from their pens, the manacled snarls still wild though known to the bowl of men since pups. Their meal the grieving flesh of any bones attempting to slip the barred boundaries between the iron ring of fence and the walled mortar.
Not just the slick of treachery that was gorged in this pitfall. Errant children have slipped into these foul doggish breaths. Once a blind man who could not see the sight of his torture tearing shreds of his old wrinkled meat.
In the first of light, the hyenas were winched to their dark caves molded from the wall. As other beings left other caves molded against the walls. The same borrow of teeth amongst different species. As if the gods flung only one jaw to an earth of many mouths.
The hyenas were winched with the chains dragged back in by a hole in the rear, since no man, nay, not even one so understanding as the guards who delighted the dying screams of criminals sent through the gate for music.
Not even these two legged kin could calm by boot or whip their less obedient brothers. Only the chain would hold this thing; fear was not enough. Into the caves they went, low and dark as a night is high and thick.
That passerby , merchanted on mule or camel, would roll an eye to these dim orifices, quiet in their ordeal of a sun's passing. But, lo, any urchin hand which might fancy indulge that a cool bottled wine or tucked lunch may wish liberation from its darkness.
Fortunately, the caves tale was well told to wise starts and nodding ears. Where it was not, a child and his stump had a story again of his foolish ends.
Near the Gate offering a different refreshment, were a number of stalls gathered with leantos that offered those full of a flat fare of sand a first taste of civilization. Cooled drinks rich in sugar served in tall clay cups , or at lesser cost was a tepid thin tea pooled in a wood bowl sloped the oval of a ladle, the handle torn from its lip.
Food too, the tastes not to exclude the finest crunch of sweetened goat's eyes down to boiled dog meat laden in flour not untasted by the very worms that were denied a dog's carcass for better feast. Had the dog ate of the goat which strayed to a wheat patch fertilized by the pause of the traveller, than the completeness of appetite truly seems of one tooth borne around each neck as a treasured pennant.
So the travellers and the travellers' servants and the travellers' herdsmen but not the travellers' slaves could all find a place to lay their cracked lips; dusting the corners of a baked mind; lay their lips upon moistened vessels and the hopeful beginnings of fresh trade and renewals of old pleasures.
Hollow stomachs, though not empty, yet unsatisfied to the taste of anything but gruel baked flat over dung or the cuttings of camel dead to any further whip and thus fit to nourish with its stringy sand tough hind what it once bore into the dust of a sur's wind.
These stomachs yearned the juiced pulp of fruit borne by other men, other ways just as they sold the dried dates, the rice those men craved as succulent, fluff brown cakes oozed in drips of honeyed layers.
Food and drink gather the travellers' scent; unwing the hawk to descend; join the tiger and gazelle in terrible embrace; bring the boar to a crocodile's grin; keep the oak rooted; hold the palm a welcome vision to all eyes.
Yet not just the travel over dust and danger that yields this gather but also the travel through regions more trailed, perhaps but equal in danger or at least uncharted. For is not always a wine bottle the candle illuminating the hunched forward of conspirators? And less evil but by no sound less whispered do not lovers linger to long stretched sup? Where does the scatters of family daily gather? Where in midday does toil stretch neighbourly basking in shadows hidden from the harsh master's sun? Eh, even to a dog who dines to the fingertips of an old man's generosity, even this, loyalty curled the knee of pleasant absorption, has a greater union in bread of passing scenes.
Who has not probed the hungered stranger into dew eyed brother by the tear of a loaf? Who has not seduced the ripened fig by the dance of a wet grape to her tongue's tip? Is there no purer cup than that which bears spiced wine for theinformed, who can neither beg nor thank so lost is their unwordly eyes to their body dwells?
So much of a man is his mouth then; so much prattles in round, round, the clucks of his tongue. The comings and goings of a flesh only of barely a frog's weight, hold the man and mold the states of civilized destinations.
That it will be said "Eat, then let us talk" or "Let us finish this talk and then eat" or even "Let us continue the talk while we eat." Ah, the dart's antenna of the insect, this tongue must give all address to so many concerns.
Called the instrument of evil, tis solely unfair, as it feeds the man and serves a mind's explore in the regimes vast of discard and discord. Both evil and good, call the tongue: the instrument of man.
Converse and consume are communal fare. A brother desires speak another, yet must witness his of hunger the while. Why? Perchance the inflow of earthal need denotes a man not the treacherous outward disguises of a god. The foods tells the discussion, remains man to man; not judge before prisoner. Perhaps, a watchful man knows the sated sin less and thus he is less to a depleted appetite. Reassurance lies in busy hands, not idle, ignoring deep suppress to gather from their unoccupation and strangle across tables. No, with food, with cup, the hands have little time to remember more distant urges than neighbourly fires.
Ancient laws forbid a death by the hand of the giver; what is laid to the altar of the tongue must not blasphemous and silence its glory with the laying on of treacherous hands. So sacred then this bond which raises a man's tongue above the bray of hard horn or the silent lap of a cur at a bloodied dog. That dog wilds upon dog in the feast or that cow rejoices the fall of its fellow is not always the whisper of men.
The tongue of men is both beastly and godly. To the fare and fair, the beasts eye equal and thus peace lounges, corner to corner. To the talk, the gods converse the ideals of existence, of question, their song of winds plays the storms not idle; there is no building of black clouds: eye to eye, the bolts remain in other hands; the lightening bolt finds no spark amongst this moist laden air, there is no drying salt of incrimination that breathes from divine tongues never swollen with need or drunk in tears. For a man can trust another man not to lie but can he a god?
It is right that the tongue of man speaks for both worlds; for its roots web from both.
Three brothers had gathered to a table at a smaller serving place but not one so close to the common dust as others. Their conversation was much heated, their tea cooled to limp in their disregard, the wine seeped of its coolness in the hang of a stifled air. Here one watched, as the Beggar did and learned of a tongue's act. For at some heated flare, when words bit into the air and a stabbing finger may turn to a belted steel, the tongue of the agreements would demand the tea, the wine sip. The argument cool, the fingers curve a cup not a hilt, the tongue in this obscure need of thirst; bringing again and again a god's wrath to a peaceful lull of brotherhood.
Again, again, the Beggar heard and saw each brother's tongue excite than soothe.
Delicately, the Beggar overheard enough to know the seeds of argument were well placed in these three. For of the three brothers, one ground the axe of an Executioner, another the probe and dissect of a Doctor, the third brother wits and weaves of a Lawyer's robes. Would that one asked these brothers if it be night or day, one would hear disagreement let alone the subject they had laid on the table with the fruit of indecision lodged throat wise in edge.
The subject dropped into the street was to the Beggar's appetite. For the words 'death; god; laws; obey; mercy; father' had his ear's nostril in swell. As if even the poorest or richest of philosophers must hunt. The uncontrolled sprint of
a dog before a rabbit's start. The master barks but nature is longer legged.
Forward goes the Beggar defeated at everything but his sense of defeat. His humanity not yet barricaded at that injustice of self-betrayal. When a man loses the name for himself: Man.
Inward to the dealer of drink the Beggar goes and secures a drink of water in the manner of which all water is demanded in these places from these peoples: he begs for it.
Thirst is not always known or understood by the eyes squinting at intruders, the wealth of the bargain to come must be of plain tell to the gold orbed ears.
The Beggar sits to a table adjacent the quarrel of three brothers. The merchant, his floor wiping stalled a third time, is not at all pleased to have Beggars gather both water and shade from his stall, his hospitalities.
As if too much of the lower street will not only sip dry the barrel of his wash swillings but drag the sun itself into the cool surrounds, its glare transfixed in pursuit.
He stands to demand a beggar exit but something of the look, of the darkened swirl that pools in this vermin's eyes checks his damp clutch from gathering the beggar's attire in a tight ball around his throat. His arm outstretched, his body leaned, his mouth frozen calm in this hesitation of act.
In the frozen moment, the
The Seven Days of Wander Page 56
