cup does not know what he will not and prefers closed, even onto emptiness. Escaping untouched. But beggars have lost their fear in this want of trade. Like certain desert rats, depletion can be held to the world, the loose folds of a belly skins stretched taunt outward by a full reach extended. Beggars straddle the street moving like a tiny bowl gathered to the backs of relentless spiders. Feared more than fearless. That open sore dogged in its bark at the cat clawing for flee inside each bypasser.
So hunger did awaken the Beggar. Without fear, without surprise. A trade, a calling stirred by placement of another's eyes. The Beggar's eyes scattered for a brief time along the beginning shuffles and churns of daily purpose. Plunged the scene, refreshed, then streamed quickly along the flow to a figure. This unordinary was startling; as a statue parts the common melee.
The figure indescript, wrapped as it was in a dirt washed hang of old robe, tight at the waist by a lash of unknown fibre. Thin, tall height through a difficult estimate so stooped was the figure with the weight of a large stone slab secured upon its back by a rope going
round and round the chest. An agony of burden 'thought the Beggar to chastise even full breath at the task so heavily bent'. The hair, brownish tint to gray, dishevelled but unmatted, tossed more than torn, upheaved more than tangled, as long as to the waist; though with the stoop the covering hung forward and swayed like the mane of some powerful beast ruminating upon the plain; in all appearance chewing only at the wind.
So the mouth moved, silent, as if caressing its own lips; the upper on lower, the tongue parting and delicately but only briefly. What could be seen of the mouthings for hair screened the face too well. Or not well enough.
But the eyes flowered wide as a solid pink passion born rare behind a forest's shield of entanglement. Pink eyes so rare amongst the sober, the sane, in drunken glean discard or fear.
Sin mad they beg worship obsession. The eyes told him in some deep sense the gender of the figure: Woman. Though the age of the face swam from twenty to ninety, a fleet of change dependent on hair strands and patches of skin revealed to the sun's catch. Moments passed, minutes unused, even speculation; spell-bound, that interlude 'tween shelter secured and storm awaited. All inside hushed while a taunt string was weighted, secured, tested along vision. Power hinted, brute compare without the touch of another. A sign language rapid in tally though the long fingers of invisible. Decision. Without comprehension's nod. Like a migration turning of sensed, the wings place their backs upon destiny at the fall of new degree, though the present is still bound to a history seasoned of fattening. The altar and the calf are well met, though unsure of definition. That must await a knife's point. She strides near him, stops, and beckons.
A cackle both discards the electric air and tells an older woman's secret. Her arm rises at a sure curve from hung side to slabbed back and a strong voice rattles across the cobble to his feet."Come, boy. The time of creeping between smooth crevasses has been walled away. Your manhood is destined for the roughened dry of far more ancient need."Another cackle and She begins trod away, his surprise at the lightness of her barren tread despite the weighted shield guarding so zealous her back from any fates descending.
Despite a common laughter travelled round the on-lookers, the Beggar's Young Son instantly rises, shouldering nothing but her request.
A few streets he follows, his stride quick but still decreasing their distance only slight. Her pace so agile, so sure, the still sensual sway of her hips even under such store. Her long fingers curled, rubbing the bottom corners of the stone as if not to assist the bear of its weight but in rather the slumber of its rest. Like a child, so like a child, she carries this dead rigor.
The Beggar cannot believe this an old woman, so drawn are his eyes to the smooth firm of legs taunting in youthful abandonment as they dart in and out of the robe parted below knee.
Suddenly she stops. The beginnings of a small market. Staring at a particular stall of bruised fruit and limp hang of meat. The owner, bearded with scowl, converses to his right neighbour in a mix of whines, whereas and head shakings. The proverbial language exchanged in the commiseration of vultures and buissness.
The Beggar watches where she watches and finally sees what she sees. A hand, thin as a snake, has emerged dark olive from the tabled shadow and creeps ever so slowly towards a bowl balanced near the edge. The finger tips almost elongated unhumanly touch the bowl, then creep spider-like, as if the Brothers Five Eel swimming to supper, play across to select a choice.
Unfortunate for the hungry tentacles, not the owner but the neighbour, whose eyes are ever estimating of the other's goods, spies the rummage by hands obviously lightened without coin.
He does not shout, for that would alarm small feet into flight but rather extends his arm full to singular point aimed at such evil encroaching his neighbour's open expose of his goods.
A dark, hairy hand hawks upon the bowl and grasps the useless squirmings of a smaller olive one. Shouts of indignation blend with the flings of encouragement sent congratulate from other stalls. The boy is hauled out, dirty, ragged and trembled all over. A sturdy stick gathers in the stall owner’s hand and both hands clap boy and stick together, again and again.
A celebration of victory, of bravery well acted. "Blasphemy" bellows the old woman as she bounds over slicing the thongs round her chest with a small knife taken from her robed thigh. The stone is lifted and, before the owner can intercede, is sent flying into the stall. The ferocity of the hurl explodes all into fragments of rock, fruit, bowl, wood, meat as if a mountain had descended upon a fruit tree laden with pickers.
From a single fruit to slaughtered worth, the owner turns his rage, the street boy making timely exit, bloodied ears in hand.
"BLOODY OLD BITCH" now you'll pay, foamed spittle on the glaring beard as the owner's stick was raised at the woman.
The Beggar raced to the old woman's side but there was no need. For though he could not seethe pink eyes flare to rose, the owner could, and mad but not mad, he simmered before the boil of madness itself.
Still as laughter began emerge round the picture of bear defied by bee, the owner must offer something to his dignity altered and growled “That boy was a thief”.
Shrugging, she replied ”No. He was a thief without a stall. No less now than others. Perhaps more. For when thieves gather, darkness shields their property. But when the truth descends it is the guiltful who remain at cause.”
"What guilt, the wretch stoled from I?"
"And you from God. For God gave the fruit onto man that man maybe fruitful with child. You deny the fruit from the child; to separate child and child things is to end belonging; you have stolen from the Will of God.".
"What are you, his Prophet, eh, then?"
"No I am but a sliver of his thumbnail; though it scratches your foul, well indeed. I pray the wound gives long fester; may yet allow the ooze of your soul back from putridness."
With that, she turned and tugging at the Beggar's half sleeve, began away.
They walked a street, unspoken, the Beggar still a little astounded by the woman. Her form, now when poised erect with breasts unburdened by the lashing of stone, so fresh; her face still largely obscured but showing more hint of age with the hair settled away.
Finally he swallowed an unusual dryness and spoke, "Woman, how old are you?"
The elder cackle then a voice husky with restraint: "Why a wish for age, do you wish to breed with me that we will flower children raised to twelve men high, who will devour fruit stalls for breakfast” , brushing her swaying hip against his thigh .
"Why then was there that stone you carried, woman?"
"Find a woman without stone upon her back and I shall brush the worms from her face and call her long hair the ornament of Death not Vanity!"
"Then are you free now from the abrasive weight?"
"Are you free from yours, boy?"
Silent again, they strode. They passed then the gates, the guards gawking the way fools do when
they have an idea that they know something of nothing.
She spoke.
"Like all sisters, I am a poet. I love what I kill and kill what I love: For the Moon loves the night as it destroys darkness, yet weeps in her hands in the cycles of shame."
"I do not understand."
"Of course not, boy" was the spit of response.
"But whyis woman this poet of killing love? Does not race emerge continuous from her?"
"Ah, boy, my boy. To conceive is to create, to birth is to destroy; for is not birth the beginning of death? The journey turns bloody at the womb's gate. The Father then conceives hope, the Mother gives death."
"No. The Mother gives life as well."
"Boy, choose. Is life hope or death?"
He gave no answer.
The mountains drew closer, their roundness low under the clouds gathered, moving like wisps of large fires; yet nothing burns in the desert but the desert itself.
"From there" her arm graced the air "I chisel slabs. And carve onto their bellies my birthings made of live or death Each day, each week, but always of them. The stalls, the broken children, the streets paved by my sisters' discarded wombs. A day love is cradled, I will write hope across my stone, the words milked presicely. I return with homage and see cruelty batter its own fruits to apulp of mindless. The poem is strengthened. Again. Again. Hate tasted, yet tomorrow compassion drunk so why burden the
The Seven Days of Wander Page 66
