in endless suffrage upon his soul.
As his sons terrible is our grieve to witness such a father's agony but hopeless are our hands to expel this demon since the law forbids such mercy. A law designed as my brother, the lawyer of us, has explained to keep the some cunning hands of greed away from any relative plenty. For lust may find more suffering in its denial than the pain of the sickly rich, yet would not a death cure both sufferings? Hence the law stands firm and calls mercy as murder.
My brothers and I, a doctor, a lawyer, an executioner have argued a day into a noon and then onward to dawn as resigned as before. The law holds the door closed. The executioner cannot act without decree; the law allows a healer no withdrawal of skill or cut to a letting of life; the lawyer cannot sentence only plea
. What were we to do but leave and have an old man writhe at our impotence, him to die cursing his fruit, his seed for what he claims have more of love of the law then himself.
But truly it is our conscience, for none believe the law grossly misguide. For as there is the odd time reason enough to kill one man, it is believed better to keep intact a law forbidding murder as without the law, would not many kill for little reason? To save many of good, a few evil may life. So too with the mercy killings. A few may suffer terrible but many will live who suffered little but for the thirst of evil around them.
The law is a wheel and all men conform to its trueness, its uniformity by remaining exact as spokes in the wheel; thus each man is governed by the wheel and the wheel remains sound by the contributions of each man. There can be no exceptions in shorter or longer spokes. To begin to allow such is to begin allow the disintegration of the law, the wobble of civilization.
So Beggar, with your delicate tiny teeth you so amply have described can you nibble through this granite door we have leaned at in no sway of opening? Can you pluck the pin so mysteriously withheld that such as we three cannot repair our father's hopeless path?
Beggar: When one looks upon the law with a passionate view such as yours and rightly so, it at times happens that the law being cold and logical will have no doing of please or even a sense more common then the loft of the law. Like a lover who looks upon the bared way of his enchanted passion's father, what can he see but denial but refusal? Is not his first thoughts to plot the dimmer ways and weaves to circumspect this ominous guardian? But should he not first have a clear look upon this father, to know what will bring a father step aside, to gladly allow the blessing.”
There the executioner interrupted: “Brothers, you were right. The wind settles some long discourse with us disguised in rags? (Laughter) Beggar, play weddings at other tables, here, speak more solemn of graver things.
Beggar: By the father, friend, I mean the law. Too often that which may seem impassive gives passage; that which seems absolute is only of solid crust; a hollow egg awaiting the right drum of wing at its ivory skin. Men look at the mountain and peer for a channel's way; a creep then along at a snail's reach across wrinkles; they think not to thunder "is this mountain!?!!" Or like a puff adder, has a little thing, a mole's pilgrimage, a gnat's decree, been filled with the fetid air from trembling men and swelled a little thing to law? As with the state of a man's conscience, one must prick it for the test. This stab at a law's worth will tell a solid barricade against untruth or a single signpost where hang, where stretch, this illusion to false any approach. What I mean, sirs, is that a good law has no exceptions; it embraces full and fair the wide road of various human dwell and passage. Here a beggar's dog; a rich man's caravan bill the same toll; for payment is just to the road travelled and the roads denied. The good law looks not only upon when a man goes but upon where he could not go; it allows mercy but no exceptions. The bad law allows no mercy but is a road too thin to know the trespass of the way. And many are the way in this world.
So let us poke at a law as old men breath warm ashes with twists of sticks; seeking the final ember; stirring a recurrence of flames.
At the good law, intent is judged with act; on the narrow road, act is condemned unknown by intent and so unmercifully in that bad intent slips through in similar acts veiled as honeyed purpose or rich purchase.
There lies the question, sirs. When good intent meets good law shall purpose triumph or will good intent meet bad law and purpose die?
Lawyer: Hold a tongue, my friend. Have you not claimed a good law allows no exception, no skirt a pass, yet also claim a good law allows exception on good intent?
Beggar: A pardon, sir, in this confuse. The law is a thing of man and thus of man must stand both to logic of a mind and the emotion of a heart. As if to travel in a different direction is better than a rest.
For do not the wheels of a cart go round yet the cart pursues straight? The law holds fast the materials of a neighbour against theft, like the iron grip of a blind guardian. But say thy house at next door is set fire, the ladder coveted to release a trapped wife. The article is taken and in the tumble of confusion lost later amongst embers and forgotten. Later accusations outcry from a neighbour to the law to the general pursue. The investigation accuses you.
Will the pleas of 'burrow' or offer of 'retribution' appease the law now descending in its singular hammered stroke?Can any thief sing of 'returning' and the deed undone? Can the cost be denied with shadow and only paid when the hand stalking the fruit stall is seen? But can a law be bent, be fractured, be passed by?
Some would say let Wisdom overbear the law, let the peer call a sooty neighbour: thief, but let the judge call the desperate exempt!
But now we find not our thief on trial but the wisdom of the court; but what becomes the use of law, of trial, if in fact, when in the end, Wisdom is solely in the eye of one; wether proven guilty or not..if released by Wisdom, then the Law becomes useless.
Then if not wisdom, what hovers above this law to decorate the man in less guilty robes. The law? The law again, sirs. For does not the law forbid murder?
The man, though anguished to distraught at his wife's cries, has still in seconds split weighed law against law. Another day, to fix a shutter, would he steal this ladder? No, he would stay till a neighbourly permission. But time roars higher that he must steal to save life; had he remained not a thief, had he remained honest to his coveting; would he not then be condemned murderer?
For most men, the destiny of a wife has more sanction than a ladder bought, sold, broken, repaired; so the law of murder demands obedience of the man before the law of theft.
Lawyer: Ah, a little more clever your turn but we are on no new street. Whether we are past, through, above, we call the street a name: law and find some cart or wheel or slink about it whether the blaze of our glorious noon or under the hawk of its shadows. For if your law of murder rides rough shod over the law of theft, what verdict is rung if the man 'borrowed' the ladder to seal the shutters on his wife's escape? Now murderer instead of saviour, is he still a thief or not?
Beggar: Thus can one be called a murderous thief, or should the epitaph remain: a thieving murderer? For thou are right in your condemning, being a murderer he remains a thief but being saviour he is exempt. It must be so! Wisdom decrees it, common sense heeds it, every despairing wife demands it but it is not a law onto laws scribed well! What or whom judges all such laws piled atop laws, who is the gardener of such tangles, the needle of such thread bare heaps?
Let us call the thing a law either onto ourselves, onto our intimates or onto the society. Let us decree in the burning of scrolls (for what are scrolls but the dead of men's thoughts and as such not to be heeded by the unnerved in sane light) that the law onto ourselves is supreme, next the law onto intimates, next society's laws.
Doctor: What, now our street unbarricaded with calm's iron stance, run blood of lust, thievery and murder. The rabble unleashed and few masters to sate their glut and then as always? upon themselves they turn this law. Tis not law but unlaw! Men heed only the rule of other men, Beggar; conscience is but the whisper of another's whip.
Beggar:
Ironic though there is nothing borne of men that is not birthed by man, there are as few a man trusted as men. Only when the men act as one man as in a mob do we then distrust men. For men remain a vagueness, an obscurity of multi-purpose which gives dilute to their thrust. Men are the collections of blunt spears; man is a slim dagger.
Whether in courtly minds or random judge, we deny or repent this law onto ourselves; it exists and shall exist so long as man exists. And where is men without man?
Lawyer: Beggar, for a snout to the dust, you root too much impractical. Answer this: Say thy neighbour was at his dwell when the flames illuminated the resultant theft. He, being the law onto himself only, denies our distraught husband its use. Why? Project because he envisions a burnt fire the runs of his carpentry livelihood and hence starvation. They squabble the husband kills the neighbour, though now too late; his wife has jumped and saved herself with a mere broken ankle. Unscramble this scatter of hatched release fluttering all directions now? Where has the 'law onto ourselves' stood in this frenzy?
Beggar: Ah, tis no fault of this centuries evolve in this lawyer that such creatures belong to the law as the law wavered in its purpose from the gentle nudge of guide to the bludgeon of calloused blame.
The Seven Days of Wander Page 58
