The Seven Days of Wander
Page 81
shadows maybe. Bind him ourselves if you wish, but let our teeth sit idle from his neck.
He may be craft, he may be not. Justice can remain swift over the space of hours but remorse stands too long over an innocent corpse."
"BIND HIM THEN" and a whip from a haired hand coiled his legs, jerking the Beggar flat back in the dust.
The man with the chin and rope pondered a loud. "But where shall we hold this adder's flush? Not in the village! I'll not have its tongue's magic slither amongst my family's throats!"
"Bind him here then" replied the haired whip and let the hyenas decide his flesh as like ours or theirs!"
"More like them to be spelled for teeth on his rope than ruled by their natural bellies!"
The beard grease flared in the spark of an illumination and pointing at the Stone and decreed like a bad architect's hunch "ON THE STONE, HAUL HIM THERE! on the back of it, he'll not travel far!"
"Good. Good. He'll mirror his Moon and is safe away." and the thin fist chortled "if he is a Prince of black, he will be safe from a flood of his toadish hordes!"
A laughter, carnival in its explode, roused the crowd to moving feet.
A few grabbed the beggar and tied a wrist to each end, a long length of the thick rope.
Another called for a ladder; two went to retrieve one laying by the cliff but another villager blustered even more the taunt around by shouting "Hold!
Let the Prince drag forth his own throning stair," and then with a sweeping bow to the Beggar" like the steps milled from his victims' necks."
To the Stone then the Beggar dragged the long clumsy rungs while one man stood upon the digging end holding both ropes in his hands like leads and pleasing the crowd with his names and jokes of "Mule" and "Half-assed man". There the Beggar collapsed, his legs bound to stall any human flight.
Four of the men then took the ladder and sweated it up. Another two grappled each an end of the Beggar's rope and began ascend. "About half way as the ropes drew taut, the Beggar was 'teased' with a whip to follow suit.
What a roar for the crowd, the Beggar hopping his height as one foot with jerks on his arms to repeat the rung.
The two men reached the Stones less curving plane and left the ladder. They crossed so the Beggar was forced to face out away from the Ball and circled to the back. They tied the ropes so that it held as a drape of secure.
At a wave to below, the ladder was jerked away.
The Beggar slid the height of a man down the Stone till the ropes held tight. Blood streaked the last foot above him where the skin had split upon rock.
He inclined his head and looked among them but said no words.
Only the woman trembled. The rest of the village too enthraled as one of the men on the stone urinated above the Beggar. There was a hush as the long trickle snaked its way downward, twitching and turning in the imperfections of stone.
Then their throats chorused wild as the stream did indeed kiss upon his bended neck, following after below the Beggar's legs.
The two descended when the ladder was thrust to them again.
Standing below, a few of the village taunted at the beggar. But he did not reply.
The woman looked upon him again. The Beggar and his shadow, half overlapping him. Her bowel cringed.
Yet for the life in her, she did not know why. It was just a man hanging on a stone' she thought. 'Nothing has changed in this world.' She looked away at the purple limbed sun, ringed in darker cloud. "Then why do I feel as if a terrible thing has been done. Not just done but ever repeated.”She shook her head “Too much blood of a day is in my nose. Tomorrow will make cleaner these doings. For sleep turns a wrong right like the tossing of fitful dreams.”
She moved as the evenings air rose; the wind already brushing sand over old blood.
The Beggar watched as the processions moved away. One group carrying the old woman's body. The other bearing Exas on a makeshift stretcher of the ladder.
These moved down the gully towards the path away to the village.
The last one was a dog having picked up the arm of Exas. It made up into the hill with two of its follows in hot pursuit.
His eye weaved into the sun.
'So much like hers 'he thought'. Borne then the red womb, then a white flare, then bleeding into a hue of death.'
A few flies itched at the blood of his back. He attempted to flinch them away by a lift of the ropes but his skin could not bear the fresh taste of stone. He slackened his grip and unnoticed the large knot slipped a little in its hasty tie.
'What was she then but the pores of my scent. That through her, a man could sweat life. She the roar, I the whisper. Sea and wind.
But always the rigid of land consumes all. The great bowl swilling like a cup laughed in the hand of a drunken God.'
Suddenly, on that image, of the dark fluid sloshing over same barren chipped lip, he felt again as if a pit rose growling to his feet; a rimless thing with only a swirl for its centre. His body acted in sobs, like a child, the physical defence of tears to erode the jagged teeth of this approaching thing.
"What gods are there to starve from a man's throat his why's and shove into such a hollow the fatal eye of merely: when?"
His head sagged on the roll of his chin, drips falling clear from his cheek's to the outward belly's curve.
“But what was 'why' but the ball sticked in the streets by a half starved childish hand, a toy of toys undernourished, though the dust sees endless reap.” He looked again to the sun. Aloud came his thoughts.
"Your faith of me was to believe in this believe. But they are blind and thus all I see is a blindman's vision. A noise of living, where no thing breathes well apart, like the things of a man bound in long string and dragged clattering down the street.
That is the music of believe."
He jerked taut on the ropes "AND I! I SHOULD BE SUCH GRATEFUL TO MY GODS. For I have such a silent world tied behind. For in its voice, I heard the ever slow cracking of my own heart." He slackened his pull; the knot again had gathered a little shorter end.
He visioned the short crouch of the beggar boy, a bowl set square in his jaw.
'I would have been. Been willing to be the mule of that love. Perhaps as simple as the use of love to stay the moonless season of alone. But instead was I not the mule of my own fate, like all things, fate astride like a jabbing spur who tells the way by tugging in a man’s eye sockets with its sharpened claws?And the mules hold 'why' amongst bitted teeth; hoping yet dreading only 'when' at each cavernous turn of the hill path.
What binds them not gallop but that fear of the fate yet fate is their waiting knife.
Two men travel this stone. One of the body who fears death and thus crouches low in his living. The other of the mind who does not fear death, yet has a terror of the short grip of his living. One to fall in the pit wailing: 'too soon'; the other tipped backwards in grave moaning: 'too late!.
If to know 'when', would not one cease his delay of falling and rise far from his bed?
Would not the other haste in his sowing, giving up his hesitation licking about dry lands.
But all men do nothing but war upon themselves, using the world and its fellow limbs as blooded both by their own bludgeon and opposing left handed shield.
Such a mindless drumming across their brows. Without victory a surrender; flee into their own shadows and there gnaw upon their own rat eyes with the rubbings of stumped reach.
Indeed, the Beggar's own vision itched in the lifting dust of eve's wind. Nor could his wrists woven into captivity assist their gathering pains. The tears had ceased a past cleansing but as, yet, not a taking from the future.
He closed his eyes.
But sleep, laid on an iron touch of his back, was not a thing coming.
His thoughts, even in such a short thing as a seven day history, could
come to no reason, no processing in a strand of series. Rather all seemed a torned web, he could only stumble in it the way the stunned grope in the ruins
of a charred dwelling.
Recognizing only what was, what should be, the singular reality had no meaning. Collectively as an asked heap one identified destruction but each image itself brought its own intense pain of denial. It could not be summed by the human mind.
In a time, his eyes opened again.
The dark sun nearly lost. The shadows long, near the height of their creep. Dusk would soon liberate each from their adherence to shape; loosen the footholds from each creator.
Looking down, the Beggar saw close to the stone foot. From his height the appearance was that of a circular bowl slightly off colour of the sand; roughened at edges, wisps catching on the wind. As if a hole swam gently in the dust.
By its shadow cast, he saw the reality of what it was. A desert owl, scruffing its talons where the blood was scented on the sand. Cream coloured as a dove, its camouflage of a crusted purity, both blinded a predator or prey.
Strangely, he spoke aloud the fullness of his father's name.
The bird, now aware from the speaking, looked up in the black falling of its eyes.
The Beggar answered "The dream fulfilled, father. Have you come to unleash your son? Strange that from above you are known only by the cast of shadows. I wonder was it thus of these from your heights?
And from their eyes? or their eyes? What were you, the shadow of cross or alone and a cross for shadow?
Where was the Mother drinking purple vein: a front or behind? She lies crumbling before us all, Father. The stone is my shadow, then. Round and circulus must be the man and the world is a shadow of stone.
What world crossed as shadow of