Beggar warms to this human gesture, albeit unsure in its motive and simply states "Twice, the kindness, makes double the debt and the giver more giant amongst men. Yes, good Man, I would like a second drench of this rain sweetened by your honeyed nature. And I beg more; that you idle while I worship those gods of labour which demand your daily kneel. For is not water such a marvel in its flow: a trickle joining dust and man and god; that the cup hard of clay is filled with the dew of its birth evaporated; in circle first filtered through the god's breath? "
With that his cup was placed in an astonished hand and the Beggar took upon his own kneel the burdens of a barter's will.
And so doing the Beggar inched in lazy circlets towards the brothers.
The brothers indeed had caught the fill of the merchant beggar exchange. The Doctor spoke in the direction of the lower pace: "Fellow, your words sound rather wide leaping form such a thin throat! Are you by change a learned man in disguise; your rags a mask from which to peek for uncommon folk or prey the nature of unknown things?"
To this the Beggar answered, all the while, swilling his work, "Sir, no disrespect this rag caught to a rag would wave onto any great men who unravel the full lengths of ancient scrolls but does it not seem that for a few learned who travel about disguised as ignorant there are many more ignorant who strut about disguised as learned? Which fronts more unseeingly: those who do not talk as they seem or those whose seams begin fail as they attempt stretch a true nature?"
The Doctor looked a trifle displaced while the Executioner roared with laughter shouting "There, brother, your ego has been bled of its irritating swell and I wager his fee staggers less in crumbs than yours of gold" At that, the brother of the gallows choked off into shaking tears, knitting the doctor's scowl an even tighter black.
The lawyer spoke up, his eye set down upon the Beggar who kept methodical to his duty's press, "Such is the case then, to gather evidence and cast a verdict, though the cast may well resemble unnumbered dice spilling from cups. If we disguise the learned and yet fools learn another disguise can any differ so long as all learn well?
For of both, did not one thing begin as something and end as another. The prosecution will condemn: Appearances are deceiving. Ah but the defence rests that appearance is convincing, for seeing halos is believing.
Divide the line 'tween a convincing deception and such deceitful convictions! Who can?! Does it not seem then that masks are playfully carved everywhere? All hide a little of what they are; many wear the foretold of what they'll be. Till there is no one mask or one mask inside out but rather pieces of cover glued ruddily about; a patchwork of clay disguise. It would be a grotesque view were it not so of familiar. Familiar in its similar; come look in a mirror or a market stall, or whatever.
The defence rests: Any man who comes disguised amongst all men disguised is not false, for look upon those who trial his incident: The defence cares less, the prosecution has sympathy, the judge has little judgement except in the nature of his next lunch. The jury if peer is false, if not is unworthy and last the executioner prefers his garden of flowers. Even the mob jeers their own man, still in his disguise of condemned. Why sentence when we cannot hang what we cannot see? Why declare innocent of what is no doubt guilty of all else?
This fruit our fingers drum on the skin like buyers checking the spoil. Alas, we can go no deeper so what's the wear? Fingers gone numb upon men's skulls and oh what a thunderous din civilized beatings are.
Enough, Doctorate brother! Must we seek the truth in yonder slouch of scoundrel as if a boil between his skins? And what of any truth itched upon us? If none are the gather of themselves, we are at least well at herd in our folds."
To this the executioner waggled: "Oh brother, you are indeed a great bleat among lulls and tumbled meadows. Such delight but tell: is it a great oracle you stream from your pinnacle or just a single thought echoing everlasting in the cavern dangling between sheepish lobes?"
The brother again roared; this time spewing a gulp of wine round the table. "Brother, brother, hulk as you are, your tongue swings as your blunt axe and makes mash of a delicate task whether a stretched neck or a stretched phrase! I beseech, detest, we are as already drenched in the splatterings of your wit!" fired back the lawyer, brushing at his cloths in demeanour.
To these volleys the Doctor finally offered a diagnosis: "Hey you untownsy folk of lick and spittle! Is this both your first day unburrowed from the desert. One a snappy bulk of a great droop-eyed lizard, all a lumber in his brains. The other attacks his thickened neck in a blind of harmless dart, were it but some deserted flower uprooted, some bright coloured winged buzz, a confused little crawl who mistakes the unfold of his reddish appends for a sunrise and the whirl of his verbs for a rapture of cool winds."
As both brothers leaned into the close to sally a worthy unrestraint, the Doctor flung his hands in a open palm resolve of plea: No, no, seek my ears some other time for the deserts of a drumming, for now the task is for more delicate and in haste."
As the executioner resumed his slump, the lawyer piqued "But round round we've cranked the screw, we cannot squeeze darkness into light. The question is not flesh but pit, the rock of Law, and thereby remains unanswerable in all but to the No."
The executioner rose into his cup, its dimensions unseen in the border of his huge encircle of hands.
“The answer stays a blind no to three but can there be another who can slaughter another door with a new eye to the hidden crack.”
The Doctor laughed. "Brother, what team better to plow the furrow of how and the death of a man but we? Furious and bold have you dragged the steel; delicate our brother steered; pierce as a morning bird in dew, my eyes have starred the upturned. No avail, no seed for us to reap into any bread worth rising for our honest swallow."
The Beggar, having dribbled and scrubbed till almost under foot, rose upon his knees so that his neck came to the height of the table and spoke: “Forgive the intrude of a stranger amongst brothers but might I quote an old proverb that goes as such: ‘Though a law finds minute truth upon the heaviest of scroll, the healer, his mole upon a mountain, the hangman threads the single fray at the thickest of rope still none have the beggar's eye for crumbs dainty upon the earth's crust.’”
The lawyer retorted "What? Pray, what can the rag polish that the silk not shine? Is the cypress grove now to bend in the ominous wave of weedy prattle? Take no offence, Beggar but I mean that all journeys are a day's toil to the horizon of first awake regardless of the motion of the beast. Yet equal toil shall not reap equal distance; the ant knows its rest in yards; the hawk slumbers after miles. The answers to one species are as hard to scurry as another's, even though perhaps the worth is the same as is the compare of a twig spanning an ant's river is everyman's bridge.
But no delude, here, beggar, not every man has the nimblest toes for twigs; those without a monkey's grin must lay planks for the greater weight of their stridings. For great things cross in great thunderous bounds."
Beggar: My greater learned, with the respect as high as I am humble, I did not mean that a mole is burdened with the solitary eye of some eagle, for there would be a doubling of despair. No, twas more as the old parable of three of the wisest, noblest kings who pathed together for some diviner purpose. On their wander, their oxen cart had its wheel journey in its own unique direction, the pin holding the hub having parted with the company but where to heaven or earth this pin?
The towering stature; the far away gaze; any of the three could lift the burden a level forward in all human design; the wheel be recoupled by the support of shoulders bulge and bronze in great tasks but the pin what prey is such effort ungainly without the pin? In the mud the huge gropings have only trampled upon the little signs; battered the puzzled piece deeper deeper in its voyage of mire.
All was lost as it was lost but for a blind slave boy. His delicacy of touch toed his path and thus made better an insights than kingly vision or pairs of servant hands.
&nb
sp; Into the mud slithered this heel of a little brown snake, its tongue a toe tasting for the prey. The pin found, the fix complete, the kings travel on. Agreed the boy could neither plan the way, buy the cart or hold it up, yet his place was indeed unique and beyond the pluck of greater hands or eyes or minds.
Such was my offer, that you of great are greatly made, a marvel of construct, a colossus of intellect but by chance the solitarily pin lies in mud and needs small eyes and a finger dart to pluck it out!Thus, if you like, one puny boy does not hunt for a lion but he finds the thorn which impedes the greater chase.
To this Doctor grunts and gave an answer: "Very well, then, fellow, elevate thyself to a chair and heed this. We three brothers have a father, who is not only now alone in this world for own mother died ten years ago but now he suffers a most painful affliction. This disease will bring his death and welcome release but not for six lunar turns more at least. Now he would hasten that death but his affliction has castrated his strength, though not his will. He must in fact be assisted in all things. There is that which he demands assistance in which we cannot or have not as yet complied: his earlier death. He demands we secure poison for his drink to rid himself quicker of his body weighted
The Seven Days of Wander Page 57
