The Belltower of St. Agnes

Three main thoroughfares connect the "Uptown" and "Downtown" of the City of Cleveland. They are, in order from north to south: Chester, Euclid, and Carnegie Avenues. Of these, the middle one is my least preferred way of driving downtown, because unlike the other two, this avenue has a lane reserved for the HealthLine buses (which fills the streetcar-shaped hole in the city's psyche somewhat), leaving only one precarious lane for cars. On the bright side, the grandest and stateliest dilapidating buildings of Cleveland's East Side adorn this road. Among these is a bell-tower, which sticks out of the wasteland like a sore thumb. The tower exudes an aura bloated with historical significance, yet is wedged incongruously between a pharmacy and sweet fuckall. I remember being quite distracted from my driving to wonder just how the heck it had gotten there. Obviously, I wasn't going to take a picture from the driver's seat, so here's a picture courtesy of the Google car:

(2050 East 81st Street)

After reaching home, it only took a straightforward snoop to find out that the tower had a name (St. Agnes Bell Tower) and that an entire church building used to go with it. Then came the story of the Parish of St. Agnes, as told by Sarah Nemeth, Bard extraordinaire. I loved the story, because it felt to me to hold a mirror to the story of Cleveland at large in the past century, and to the state of the Catholic Church in America, then as well as now. Here, I shall attempt a short summary of the story as told by Ms. Nemeth for your pleasure, with the intention to serve heaps of mirthful sarcasm on the side.

In 1893, a group of women began to harass the Bishop of Cleveland, Ignatius Horstmann. Your Grace! they clamoured. Do you realize that there are only two parishes in Cleveland that hold Mass in the English language? For verily, Catholicism in Northeast Ohio, the frontier of the civilized world, was formed by a hodgepodge of peoples, a potpourri of sweat-stench from all the tribes of Christendom. Year after year, the ladies were dismayed, flummoxed, and absolutely overtaken by vexation at the sight of these Poles, these Italians, these Slovenians, these Lithuanians, these Bohemians, and othersuch exotic types ranking barely above the barbarians of the Asiatic steppes; They resented the sight of those who have audaciously come to Cleveland with their strange guttural tongues, their loud music, their raucous street parades, and their edible cuisine in tow.

Bishop Horstmann gave in at last, for before opinionated Catholic women there is absolutely no defense. A survey of the Diocese confirmed the need for a third English parish, and construction of St. Agnes commenced on Euclid Avenue. The church was built so grand as to upstage the Cathedral itself; Aye, for the prospect that the Bishop will live among the gazillionaires of Euclid Avenue, it will surely raise the stature of the Faith of Ages; Their tithes will ever fill the coffers of the parsonage, and even Catholicism itself will be exalted! No longer a "church for the poor", nor a "sanctuary for the stranger", but part of the fabric of mainstream American identity. Yes! A bright future awaits the browbeaten and discouraged Catholic faithful, who thus far have had their loyalty to America constantly put to question, on account of their strangeness and their popery. On the contrary, the bishops of days to come will take their place in the exalted halls of public governance, sipping tea daintily with fellow dignitaries on Sunday afternoons, under the benevolent gaze of the Founding Fathers.

But big changes are afoot. Good times, to everyone's utter surprise, do not last forever. Industry collapsed following the Depression, and steel mills faded into obsolescence. Where are the rich and powerful now? Where have they gone? Alas, they have fled the sinking ship of Cleveland, as rats astutely sniff out the first signs of trouble. With great prejudice, they have beaten a retreat into tree-covered fortresses in the countryside. They have cast away their mansions in Hough, in Glenville, and in East Cleveland, and left them in the mercy of creepers and moss. Then, in their heels, came the Black Americans: They have fled the South after generations of servitude, and were led to the promised land of Cleve, where supposedly flowed an abundance of milk, honey, and gainful employment — but, alas, the Sceptre of Poverty left no prisoners in Cleveland.

Bishop Floyd Begin, the new pastor of St. Agnes, was unfazed by such adversity. By God, he declared. St. Agnes parish is right where it needs to be, among the people! He sensed opportunity in reaching out to his new neighbours. He began the radical and erstwhile unthinkable initiative to treat the Blacks as human beings, thereby bringing them into the flock. One day, during a memorable homily, he went as far as to say: Adam and Eve themselves were Black! Upon this bold statement, the parishioners were shook to the core; they had never heard anything so outrageous; for everyone knew, as a self-evident fact, that Adam and Eve were genteel Anglo-Saxon folk, who loved yoga and cupcakes and expensive but pointless vacations to the beach, and who raised a son so wicked that he would livestream a murder for social media clout (as he inevitably did).

Present-day St. Agnes parish
(6808 Lexington Avenue)

The Bard's story ends with Fr. Begin's sad failure to turn around the fortunes of St. Agnes; her plaintive final notes heralds the emptying of the coffers and the demolition of the main church building. But as she weeps for the memories of a gilded past, should we not also look for a silver lining in the clouds? Sarah Nemeth had thought of a church as stone and mortar, where in fact it is blood and flesh. Thus, St. Agnes has not perished under the demolition ball, but instead has commenced a new life forthwith in the interior of Hough, where they have become a full-fledged parish of the Black community, thriving even to the present day. Even bold Bishop Floyd Begin, whose ventures were met with such misfortune in Cleveland, later received a calling as Bishop of Oakland, and continued a long and fruitful career. And neither has Catholicism in Cleveland finally succumbed to the honey-trap of gentility, as it remains after all a Church for the Poor, and a light for all the nations; and under her wings the motley rabble of Christendom will continue to dance; they will dance!

The Stone-Father

1. So the story goes that the Elena Kazoglou and her children fled their home in time to avoid a massacre, and ran towards the south-east. Where initially the enemy, the boys of Shurikoi, were close on their heels to kill any Permyaks who had escaped their ambush, the journey then evolved into a fleeing towards, more than a fleeing from; for Elena was so possessed by the belief that a place of refuge lay beyond the three Griadas, three mountain ranges separating the north and south of the country. 

The daughter, Chrysanthi, developed at this time a habit of picking up random trinkets from the ground, carrying them for a distance, studying them with an odd intensity, then discarding them; this she did until settling on a long, flat piece of shale from a dry river bed which they passed in the summer. Chrysanthi did not throw away the shale after a few days, like the usual, but seemed to have developed an emotional attachment to it. She did not mind that the weight added to the difficulty of her trip. Whenever they found a place to rest for the night, she set up the stone next to her mother before falling asleep murmuring beside it. 

When Nikolaus asked her about her curious practice, she replied: This is Father. Father died when he fought our attackers. He had left in such a hurry, there is still so much to be said to him, I miss him so much... and Nikos could only gape incredulously, convinced that his sister had gone mad from the grief.

There came a point, after the crossing of the second Griada, that the three had to ford a wide river. When that was happening, the water, which up till then went halfway up their shin, rose gradually until it threatened to reach their waists, and thus to wash them away; a storm far upstream had swollen the river. The three picked up their pace to reach the opposite banks, with increasing urgency. Nikolaus jettisoned his supplies, as did Elena, but Chrysanthi refused to give up her charge to the river, and she trudged on while the distance between her and her mother and brother grew. 

Fuming, Nikolaus turned back to reach Chrysanthi. "Sister," he commanded. "Get rid of your load." 

When he found that his persuasion was to no avail, he untied the cloth knot that fastened her luggage around her forcibly, ignoring her protests. "Baba!" she shrieked, as her belongings was taken away in the current, and she had to be dragged unwillingly and bodily to the opposite bank, first wading, then swimming, as the water had gone up to their chests by the time all had successfully crossed.

Chrysanthi was brought to shore inconsolable. "We have to find Baba," she wept. "we lost Baba in the river."

"Don't worry, my bird," cooed Elena, trying to be reassuring. "you only lost a stone. The stone is not Baba. The real Baba is up in Heaven, watching over us."

"What a big deal to make over a piece of stone," snapped Nikolaus, who had become impatient and resentful that his rescue efforts were not acknowledged.

"Oh, but it is him, it is," insisted Chrysanthi, stamping her feet.

"Come on now! We will find a new Baba somewhere along the way."

"What?"

Nicolaus repeated. "Find a new Baba—" and fell backwards, his head hitting the graveled bank. When he came to he felt a warmth streaming down the front of his face, and the taste of blood in his mouth: His sister had knocked him over with a punch square in the nose. "How dare you say such a thing? There is only one Baba!" she hissed, scandalized, her voice trembling. Her fist was still clenched, but a look of profound loss had washed over her. Nicolaus came vaguely to a understanding that he had said something unforgivably foolish.

The decision was made, on Mother's immovable authority, to wait for the floodwaters to subside and to find Baba on the exposed river-bed, as far as that could be done. The water level receded the very next day in sunny conditions. The three combed the river-bed again, starting where they had crossed and moving downstream, hoping to find Chrysanthi's piece of slate or any other useful tool or trinket they had cast into the river during the crossing. In the afternoon they came to a cataract, and found about half of their things in the plunge pool. The surprise find, however, was when Elena found Baba himself.

"But how did you tell?" asked Nikolaus, puzzled. "Baba was stone, and the river bed is all stone. They would have been all mixed up by now."

But it was not all the same stone. The rock that Elena had picked up was shale, but by a fortunate turn, the rock found in this river bed was different from earlier; a light-colored aggregate. And so Baba-rock was easy to pick out from the rest of the pebbles, even though he had disintegrated. After a meticulous search leaving no stone unturned, the trio collected about ten pieces of shale in all, which they brought to the monastery.

2. Young Arkadius found Makarios at his work bench, leaning against it and staring intently at ten pieces of shale laid out upon the desktop. He was amused at the bishop's earnestness.

"Are you debating with yourself, if you would fashion an idol for this poor child?" asked Arkadius after some time.

"I'm not sure if this would count on the same rank as a golden calf at all," replied the bishop. "Chrysanthi Kazoglou has all her wits about her. If you mean that she thinks that these pieces of shale are literally her dead father, I would argue that this is not the case."

"What do you make of it, then?"

"If you imagined yourself going through what she has, you might be able to understand why she had risked her life in the river to keep it," said Makarios. "You are working through the loss of a loved one. You are thinking of him day and night. Someone whom you have poured yourself out for for much of your life is gone suddenly. For someone in this situation, it would mean having to think of their loved ones not just as dead, but diffuse; Even with the assurance of heaven, her father occupies the space of everywhere and nowhere, an abstract, cerebral state as yet out of reach of normal human interactions. This unpalatable state of affairs is what got Chrysanthi so attached to the rock." He swept his hand over the shale. "And this is my cure for her."

In a sand cast, Makarios-Aspag arranged the shards of shale into what he imagined to be the flat, oblong shape of the original rock. He melted down tin in a crucible and poured it into the case, so that the tin filled the cast and seeped into the gaps between the shale pieces. Then, from a piece of tree stump, he fashioned a base for the restored tablet, so that it could stand on its own and be placed anywhere, and not need the use of another structure to lean on.

"Chrysanthi, if you would have your father's name written into the tablet, then others will know what your tablet stands for," proposed Makarios, when the project was near completion. "Will you like me to do it for you?"

But the girl only declined. "No, thank you. There is no need," she said. After perusing the restored Stone-Father in her hands with an air of placid resignation, she took him with her to be installed in her own room.

Source: Kintsugi Australia

Notes

1. The story is a meditation on the role of the spirit tablet (lingwei 靈位 / ihai 位牌, etc.) as a common method of ancestor reverence in East Asian societies.

2. The Aspag's method of restoring Baba's tablet is a very crude re-interpretation of the fine art of kintsugi 金継ぎ (pictured above).

3. The geology of the Taymyr Peninsula takes reference from this survey (Zhang et al. 2013; Geosciences 2013, 3(3), 502-527, see extracted Figure 1 below). The shale tablet was collected by Chrysanthi from the first river bed in the area shaded orange ("Riphean to Carboniferous carbonates and shales"). The flash flood occurred further to the south-east, in the white region where sedimentary rock is found instead, which is important to how the tablet was recovered afterwards.

Detective Crawford and the Tragic Case of Dr. Nately Huang

[People, places, and events in this story are fictional or have been fictionalized.]

Detective Crawford Shyu, who had scarce taken a vacation for the previous three years due to factors entirely outside of his control, had some relief from his official duties that was a long time coming. The way he chose to spend the time was to go to a place as far and remote as possible, from his home in Northeast Ohio, a place where he has already counted the number of floorboards and roof tiles many times over, in times of quarantine, and head to the hometown of a dear old friend in China, the great Dr. Nately Huang, hero of the country's pandemic response and head of the virology lab in the University of Zhejiang.

Dr. Nately had accrued a notable measure of celebrity and prestige due to his work. The man whom Detective Crawford met when he went to town to meet him, however, was the same humble man with which he went to medical school in Cleveland, many years ago. Nately Huang Zhengxi was then and now a clean-living individual, fastidious, studious, and very introverted; a student who easily topped his classes, with Crawford always trailing behind, settling for second place. Nately was dressed in a simple T-shirt and an earth-colored jacket, in a manner that was indistinguishable from the style of a common peasant that one would find only an hour's drive out of Hangzhou city. Such was a person determined to put the years of fame out of the way of the reunion. Crawford was gratified by the sight of his old friend, whom he had not met for many years.

"Nately!" cried Crawford. "You have not changed one bit, starting from that dang jacket of yours."

In the school where they had met, Nately had been a foreigner, fresh out of Hangzhou, while Crawford was a native of Akron, and a child of the Rust Belt born to Taiwanese parents. The two were very similar in character, despite the difference of backgrounds; in addition to their shared reserved nature, they had very obscure interests and no dress sense worth mentioning. Nately then took a natural attachment to Crawford, the latter being one of the first and the only few friendly Asian faces that met his eye. Crawford helped his English and his integration to the community, and in return he helped a very expectant and very curious Crawford find his Chinese roots. It was an ideal match.

"Do you still go by the name Nately, by any chance?" asked Crawford.

"No, not so much anymore," replied Nately. "Most people just call me Huang yuanzhang, since I became head of that lab down here. I'm tired," he sighed, pensively, "no one after you has treated me right. I always seem a mythical being, like someone to be looked up to, an idol, or a model for the public. It doesn't sit right with me. Do you feel that way towards me as well, Crawford?"

"No, of course not, you shit-arse," laughed Crawford, giving Nately a shove. "You are the same old chump I met eight years ago. Shall we find somewhere to grab a bite real quick? I'm hungry."

"I know a place," replied Nately without delay, as though the decision had been made long in advance. "a Halal restaurant right by the West Lake parklands. It has the best food and the best views too. Let's go there!"

The walk was about a mile along Nanshan Road. Nately led the walk, picking up a brisk pace. Crawford, native of Akron and son of the Rust Belt, was not used to walking, and the time that he had spent in quarantine was of no help. "I could have used a car," he thought inwardly, dismayed by the distance that they had to cover on foot. Outwardly, the conversation with Nately was a spectacle in linguistics: Crawford, who was taught Mandarin only at home, insisted on speaking in Mandarin with Nately. In return, Nately gave short replies in Mandarin, and started the next sentence in English. This strange tug-of-war persisted for the entire duration of the journey.

"I would really like to practice my English," said Nately. "It's use-it-or-lose-it. I don't find much use for it here at all. Maybe, just for writing papers?" 

Like many other Chinese students studying abroad, Nately had had to find a name which was tame and pronounceable by English speakers, and "Zhengxi" definitely was not it. When pressed to come up with one during one of his first-year courses in medical school, he had muttered, "I have been thinking of getting one lately." Or so he thought, because the lecturer and everyone around him had heard "I have been thinking of Nately", thus dooming him to this absurd moniker for life. "I keep saying, it's Nately, like the guy in Catch-22," he always used to complain. "But people keep calling me Natalie, like they're all twelve."

They arrived at the restaurant, neatly furnished but humbly disposed, at the corner of a four-way junction. Crawford squinted laboriously at the sign. Authentic Tastes of Kashgar, Xinjiang: Beef Noodles and Big Plate Chicken, it seemed to say. 

"Uyghurs," explained Nately. "Uyghurs run this restaurant. This is us." The heavy glass door opened with a yank, and they both stepped in. The restaurant was minimally decorated, with a nod to a clean, Islamic design sensibility: Plain white tiles paved the floor, while the walls were painted with a gentle green paint. The hall was decked with a parade of small café tables and black plastic stools, and on the wall hanged only two decorative pieces: to the left, a calligraphic scroll of the Shahada, in the style of Haji Noor Deen Mi Guangjiang; to the right, a faded picture of the Dome on the Rock in Jerusalem, framed. 

Haji Noor Deen Mi Guangjiang 米廣江, calligrapher [source]

The kitchen was situated at the far end of the hall, as a separate room, although a glass window allowed you to watch the chefs at work; a typical arrangement, since the pulling of the dough into thin strands of noodle, when done masterfully, is considered quite a spectacle. Nately and Crawford could not see anyone at the window initially, but a small, mousy face topped with a white cap soon emerged from the side, peering at them curiously. He was joined by a second chef.

"Assalamualaikuuum," they greeted, in heavily-accented Arabic, "peace be upon you."

"Where has Mr. Abdulrehim gone today?" asked Nately.

"Laoban has some other matters to attend to."

Nately grunted in acknowledgement, somewhat visibly disappointed. Nevertheless he found some amusement demonstrating the digital ordering kiosk to Crawford. After keying in the orders on the touchscreen, Nately selected the check-out button, whereupon a window opened on the screen with Nately's face looking back out at them; a camera is now trained on him. A glowing green line descended across the portrait, for stylistic purposes. After a brief pause, the display switched to the words:

Welcome, Dr. Huang Zhengxi of Yongjinmen Neighborhood. A charge of ¥45.00 has been deducted from your WeChat Wallet. Thank you for your patronage, and please come again!

Nately turned to the amazed Crawford, grinning proudly. "Isn't that great? Mr. Abdulrehim here knows my face, because I come here to eat so often; Now they know me even when he is away." After some thought, he added: "But it won't fly in America, this idea. You guys value your privacy too much."

"It's the privacy, yeah," shrugged Crawford, and resigned to speak nothing more about the matter.

From this time on, Dr. Huang Zhengxi spoke entirely in English instead of Mandarin, even after Crawford's repeated attempts to the contrary, and the latter had to concede the fight to his host.

"They are probably nicer restaurants out there, if you'd like to try in your free time here," said Nately apologetically. "but this is the only place I can come to have lunch or dinner and be completely sure that everything is... clean, and safe."

"You have always been a very singular-minded individual, wherever you go" said Crawford. "You were not like the others, who join a clique and go everywhere with the same gang of students. You had one friend and that was me. You only ate at one place and that was a tea shop off campus in Little Italy. You went there so often that you knew the owner and the names of all his children."

"I just despised most people there or anywhere," said Nately. "Still do, in fact. It doesn't matter if it was America or China. People are all messed up in different ways. My God, I can never have a normal conversation with your people. It's like there is always a commonly-used word that is also a dog-whistle that I don't know about, and that starts a fight. Your entire country has got politics too much in the brain."

"What about me, in particular?"

"You were barely tolerable," Nately smirked mischievously. "Sometimes."

They laughed. Crawford took a swig of tea. "Ya jagoff. If you can tolerate me, you can tolerate anyone. Have you even tried?"

"I tried here, too," sighed Nately. "Even though this is my home and where I grew up, I don't think I will ever get used to the people here. Of course you remember that I took specializations in virology and infectious diseases. I left that school with the feeling that everything everywhere is coated with a layer of filth, and I could never rub it off me again." 

He looked forlornly out of the glass doors, where neon-lit skyscrapers shimmered.

"We think of ourselves as a country that has made it, a billion-strong version of Singapore, something to be envied of the erstwhile powers of the world: the Americans, the British, the Australians. But every day people roll in and roll in again into our proud city, and they bring the country with them. They spit everywhere on the streets and alleys, they get in each other's faces, they pick fights over any stupid trifle. If there is any reason the country can never be truly great, it's the unwashed masses."

Crawford was gripped by a pang of sobriety, and said nothing in return.

"Do you see a connection to that and why I brought you here?" asked Nately, rhetorically. "It is not as common a term, but we Chinese have our own way to refer to the religion of Islam." Taking a piece of napkin and clicking his ballpoint pen, he wrote:

清 qīng "Purity"
真 zhēn "Truth"

"Qīng for purity, zhēn for truth. Such are the values that Muslims, good people like Mr. Abdulrehim, hold supreme," explained Nately. "When Laoban explained it to me, I was so impressed. A few things that I had been puzzled with over the years fell and fit together neatly. He never takes more money than what was on the menu; in fact I think he often gave more change than was due, on purpose. He treats all the customers with a level head and with respect. And, most importantly," he gestured to the immaculate interior of the restaurant. "he keeps this place spotless. What a pity it is, that people could say that people like him has no place in our country."

"And the city folk, they are alright then?"

"You'd be surprised," answered Nately, after some thought. "I've suffered the most with them. In the world of the power-gorged elite there is no Purity and no Truth."

"The party secretary of my university was an evil man," he continued. "You have missed it after all these years, but I was with a wife for a short time after I came home to Hangzhou. The party secretary took a liking to her. I, on the other hand, liked to put long hours working in lab, all the way up to the wee hours. And every time I did that, he would force his way into my house, and onto her. I have two daughters and no idea if they are mine."

"And she never told you about it at all, while it happened?"

"She did, but surreptitiously, and only when the bastard was promoted and moved out of here. Otherwise he would have killed her and the baby, she said," Nately sighed, but with his teeth clenched, so that it manifested as a long, snarling hiss. "What would you have done in my position? City people! City people don't ever have a moral cell in their bodies, not even one of them."

"Now, we can't say that your wife is at fault," said Crawford, trying to console his old friend. "I certainly hope she is doing better now, in any case."

"Ex-wife," explained Nately. "I divorced her on paper so that I could move her somewhere safe, outside of the country. It's not that I do not love her anymore. It was just a bureaucratic maneuver, not a real divorce the way that you Americans do it. The plan is that I can continue my work here and she can live and raise the kids with my earnings tucked away in Connecticut. However, with all that time we have spent apart since then, we might as well be really divorced, I think."

He hissed again, despondently.

The glum moment was interrupted by one of the restaurant's attendants, who laid out the dishes and sounded out their names: A bowl of beef la-mian on Nately's side of the table; a rich plate of chicken stew, laden with spices, on Crawford's; peanuts as appetizer; mugs of hot tea; a side of rice.

The mood has lightened at the prospect of a full dinner. Nately nudged the rice and the stew towards Crawford. "You know the post-Covid habits. No sharing!" he said. "You get to have the dapanji. Big Plate Chicken. A Xinjiang favorite."

Crawford studied the dish closely. "I'm no expert, but this does look like a big ol' plate of chicken. With chili peppers and cumin and a whole lot of other things."

"You've always complained about all the tasteless food in Ohio. Well, here's your treat. It is made with all the spices you have ever wished for."

Nately's beef noodles, in contrast, seemed as if it was made without the use of any spice or flavoring, save for a few inconspicuous slices of leek. The noodles, so thinly stretched as to appear almost translucent to the sight, swam in the clear broth with the beef slices, and the only indication otherwise on the presence of meat is the few bubbles of fat on the surface, reflecting the ceiling lights. Nately leaned forward so that his face was caressed by the rising steam from the bowl, and took a deep breath, breathing in Purity and Truth.

Crawford found his old friend intoxicated with his bowl of noodles. This had been the case even in university days; the guy had always put all his attention on eating, whether they were alone or when Crawford brought his other friends to sit with them. Today, in addition to that quirk, the worldly problems of Dr. Nately Huang seemed to have dissipated into the sanitized ambience that characterized every feature of the restaurant. Crawford was amazed that the doctor, in his usual self so given to dark and lonesome brooding, could put such an injustice behind him so effortlessly.

"I'm glad to see you have gotten so good at getting over this grudge," said Crawford, when they were almost finished. "I wouldn't have thought it possible, if it were ten years ago. Maybe, you just got too busy being crowned Hero of a Nation, eh?"

"Oh, on the contrary!" replied Nately. "I got back at Mr. Party Secretary personally. I got him good. It was the proudest moment in my life, and still is, too."

"How so?"

"I got him demoted from the provincial party committee. He mishandled the pandemic response in Hubei; covered it up before it was too late. His entire team was low-key sacked, and stripped of their party membership. He himself caught the virus and died in disgrace, along with his entire household."

"I understand, but what has it to do with you?" asked Crawford. "The virus got him. You didn't get him"

Nately was momentarily distracted, having raised his bowl to drain the last morsels of his bowl. After he was done he gave a start, apologizing: "I'm sorry. You know what it is when you know about some knowledge special to your field— you start assuming that everyone else also knows the same. My bad." He wiped his lips on a napkin. "The pandemic was my doing. That's how I got him."

"That ain't true," laughed Crawford. Nately, however, was not laughing. "Now, I'm not going to come all over to your country and say that the virus started here—"

"Do you remember when people over on your side were saying that we started the pandemic in Wuhan by eating bats? And after that, when it was a bioweapon released in a lab, also in Wuhan?" recalled Nately, still dead serious. "None of it is true. It is baseless!" He thumped the table dramatically. "A fantastical, racist, malicious falsehood, fabricated to discredit the good people of Wuhan and the entire province of Hubei, who now carry the stigma of the plague on their backs, no matter where they go in this wide land. No... It started with me. In Hangzhou."

"The outbreaks did not start right here, of course, for the simple fact that my team and I know about the monster we have created, and could treat it with respect... but, not so my gormless ex-student, who received my package over in Wuhan," continued Nately. "It worked way, way better than I could have anticipated. When it spread, the butt-wipe who had slept with my wife was faced with the choice of shutting down transport routes out of the city boundaries of Wuhan. If he did that for just two weeks when the first signs of the illness appeared, the pandemic would be history. But he demurred, because it was too close to Lunar New Year, when basically everyone travelled out of town, and doing so will cost him his political career."

He cast a sidelong glance at Crawford, who gawked back at him. "In my defense, though, I was counting on him to shut down the city and take the fall for the consequences. He was worse than I imagined. He let ten thousand people die and then died himself. I've overestimated him by that much, the fool! They are all fools."

"Americans died too," whimpered Crawford.

"It's all on him," barked Nately dismissively. "Let him burn in hell in with the vengeful dead."

"You were the one who ruined the lives of my friends," Crawford protested. "their work, their sanity, their sweet old gramps and grandma.." 

Nately remained insensitive to Crawford's distress. "But, don't you think it was great? The pandemic got rid of all of the worst people, in your country and mine. Go out into the streets here and see if you can catch anyone clear their throats onto the sidewalks like they always did in the before times, or find news of people licking handlebars and doorknobs for no reason. We have finally bred the filth out of us. Those among us who lived those disgusting habits are now gone."

Crawford said nothing, quietly fuming.

"And you? Do you not remember your ill-tempered compatriots who let politics and conspiracy fantasies override their common sense, such that they could not even bring themselves to do something as simple as wear a mask? Don't you remember the same buffoons who brutalize Asian Americans, people like yourself, for the virus, and then turn around to declare the pandemic a hoax the very next second?" said Nately. "What luck! They are gone from this sweet earth too."

"I was hoping that the misanthropy would never translate into action with you," said Crawford. "I don't like it at all that this pandemic has happened. Please tell me just once that this was all a joke."

Nately only chortled at this earnest request, and sipped his tea coolly.

After a tense stretch of silence, Crawford started to speak again. "I hate to break this to you, but... this goes beyond our friendship." He reached into his coat pocket, producing a small, card-sized wallet, and revealed its contents. The doctor leaned forward to look at it, his eyes squinting.

"United States Foreign Serv—" mouthed Nately, then his lips clamped shut.

"The Consul General of Shanghai would like to have a word with you," said Crawford, slipping the wallet back into his pocket.

Nately's face had turned ash-colored, all the blood having been drawn away from his cheeks. He lowered his head such that to Crawford, his facial expressions were hidden. With stately, deliberate motions, he moved his bowl of noodles a half-inch across the table, and perched his chopsticks upon the porcelain rest. 

"What evidence do you have?" he asked, his voice low and trembling.

"All the evidence about the nature and provenance of the first outbreak are in order," said Crawford. "we are only missing a spoken testimony. That will be yours."

"I ain't comin'," blurted Nately. He turned and left through the glass door, leaving it swinging.

Crawford rose and followed him out of the restaurant. Dr. Nately Huang's jacket was still visible, and very much distinguishable due to its incongruous style, contrasting with the rest of the city-folk of Hangzhou. The difference now was that Nately wore the jacket with the collars turned up, covering the side of his face. Crawford trailed behind the doctor, struggling to maintain the distance between them, for the doctor's pace had turned brisk. After fording a few intersections northward along Nanshan Road, Nately ducked right, onto Xihu Avenue. A few moments after he turned right again, into an alley, then left, into a slip road, then left again, into a different alley which led back to Xihu Avenue. Clearly, Nately was still trying to shake off his pursuer.

Aerial view of Hangzhou in the evening [source: Xinhua]

With each turn that Nately took, Crawford could feel the landscape slowly changing around him. Large, enclosed shopping malls and high-rise office buildings dominated the arterial thoroughfares of downtown. Smaller roads and intersections formed the next rung in the hierarchy of streets, giving room to sleepy inns, cafés, small corner stores, and boutique outlets which did not tolerate more than a trickle of foot traffic. Presently they arrived, through an alley, to an apartment complex, a cluster of four towers of about fifteen or sixteen stories in height. The raised faux-metal characters on a nearby plaque said Yongjinmen. "I've followed him home!" thought Crawford.

Nately did not seem as if he had let his guard down. He pressed the up button at the lift lobby, and then found that he had to wait. Without looking back to check for Crawford, he changed tack and ducked behind a white door on the far end of the lift lobby. Crawford followed suit, and found himself in a stairwell, with the pitter-patter of Nately's footsteps receding into the distance above him.

Crawford gave chase without delay, and followed for an innumerable number of floors up the stairwell. But, alas, while the doctor had trained himself physically with commutes on foot, the detective had gone soft in the car-heavy workday of the Akron Police Department, compounded with a diet largely consisting of donuts. Gradually, Crawford found that he had to slow down to a stop, as Nately's footsteps became more and more distant. He collapsed into a sweating, panting heap, leaning against the banister. "Ya jagoff," he cussed, weakly.

The footsteps seem to have stopped. A face appeared in the well hole, staring angrily downwards at Crawford from several floors above. Nately.

"Jagoff yourself," spat Nately, his voice echoing down the stairwell, amplified. "you're going to snitch on me to the CIA. You snitch."

"Look, none of us are going to do you any harm. You only have to come clean."

"None of us," repeated Nately, wincing with hurt, "No, you and them, in cahoots! What happened to loyalty between friends?"

Crawford found his breath again. He stood up, his chest swelling. "A detective gives himself in service of the Truth," proclaimed Detective Crawford. "My loyalty is only to the Truth!"

The distant face of Nately nodded slowly, almost showing a momentary sign of relenting, and then it disappeared again, while the sound of his footsteps resumed. Crawford took off, more slowly this time, wondering if at any juncture Nately would be able to reach his floor and throw him off the chase, since there would be no way he could know for sure where the doctor could have ducked to, just by listening for the footsteps. Eventually, the footsteps did stop, but was followed by loud, metallic creak and the sound of a heavy door opening. Crawford picked up, and reached the unmistakable source of the din. It was metal door that opened up to the roof.

When Crawford himself reached the roof of the apartment, he was greeted by a wondrous sight of the Hangzhou skyline, the ubiquitous presence of skyscrapers decked in lights like so many Christmas trees, and the light diffusing through a blanket of haze, hanging heavily over the city. Nately stood at the far end of the roof area, looking serenely out across Hangzhou, the tenseness in him seemingly dissipated once more. Despite the lack of lighting here, his silhouette stood out starkly to Crawford.

"Oh, what dismal coincidence it is, that both the Party and the CIA have caught up with me on the same evening. I guess my time has come," Nately chirped, sensing Crawford's presence.

"What do you mean, the Party?" asked Crawford.

"Crawford, you are a shitty spy," jeered Nately, turning around to face him. "On the way here, when I was running away from you, I was thinking that there was something wrong with that restaurant we ate in. Do you know why?"

Crawford perked his ears metaphorically.

"Mr. Abdulrehim is usually around whenever I show up at the restaurant. If he isn't, which is rare, then two of his employees are able to hold fort for him," said Nately. "There is nothing wrong there. The only thing was that the way he and all of his employees greeted their customers was with Uyghur: Qarshi alımız! This applies whether the employees are Uyghur or Hui, who have no language other than Mandarin. The fellows we met today, on the other hand, said As-salāmu ʿalaykum, in Arabic. The real employees never do that."

"Are you saying," said Crawford slowly, "that Mr. Abdulrehim and all his helpers have been switched out for people who were there only to spy on you?"

"I think so," said Nately. "Poor Mr. Abdulrehim could be breaking rocks somewhere in Turpan right now, for all we know," he sighed, his mood having took a darker turn. "He was closer to me than even my wife."

"And they know where you stay as well," noted Crawford.

"Oh! They always know where I stay. Nothing is new there," said Nately. "The difference is that this detail has become significant only today." He hissed. "They've been on to me for a long time. Their greatest fear is that if my true story goes out to public, the prestige of the country would suffer. They would much rather I remain a celebrated National Hero at any cost. It's wonderful what benefits you can extract from such an insecure bunch of people."

"So that was why you refused to talk to me in Mandarin while you were there. You were not insisting to refresh your English language, but to make sure that the men did not understand what you were going to say!"

"I am no spy, Nately," Crawford went on, shaking his head. "I am only a humble detective, sent on here on a holiday with a side assignment to sniff out some leads. I did not expect to have gone this far, such that you have laid out your crimes barely before me, only because you trusted me as a friend. Since I now have you cornered, will you come to join your wife again in America? Maybe we will not be friends anymore after this. But I will see to it that the consulate will treat you well, and put in a good word on your behalf. Do you accept this from an erstwhile friend?"

"I respectfully decline," responded Nately with a slight nod. "I made the mistake of blabbing to you out of a sense of pride. There is nothing you can do to save me from it, as a humble detective. You are right: I already have the blood of millions on my hand. If your colleagues do not lay their hands on me, the Italians will; if not the Italians, the Brazilians; and if not the Brazilians, the French... The nations of the world will fall in line for their turn to tear me limb from limb—" he drew a sharp inward hiss. "You know, Crawford, there's just no good way out of this."

"The process of law is fair and based on the truth, Nately," said Crawford. "I don't know how it is in China, but this is how we do it in the United States."

"Nothing in this world is fair and based on the truth," retorted Nately. "Think! What will the consulate do with my testimony, Crawford? This is just a damned excuse for another war."

Before Crawford could think of a rebuttal, they heard a flurry of footsteps echoing in the stairwell, and wafting to the rooftop in an urgent crescendo. "The men from Mr. Abdulrehim's restaurant," Crawford yelped.

"I was spot on about those guys," noted Nately laconically. "Welp. This is me."

Crawford's mouth ran dry as he came to the horrific realization of what Nately was about to do. He dashed to the metal door to the stairwell, slammed it shut, and bolted it tight. "Nately!" he screamed. "You'll do no such thing!"

"Aint' make a difference seeing what they will do to me, mate," Nately shrugged, gazing into the hazy sky. "But there's something you can do for me right now. Will you promise to take care of my widow and daughters in Connecticut?"

"Your what?" screeched Crawford hysterically. "How am I supposed to find them?"

"You're a smart guy, Crawford. You'll figure it out. Goodbye."

Still facing Crawford, the silhouette of Dr. Nately Huang bowed, and took a half-step backwards. For a moment or so the figure seemed to hobble comically, as if it were tripping over a rock. But, before Crawford had time to react, it had disappeared without a sound over the ledge. And the skyline and hazy sky shimmered as indifferently as before.

Crawford's knees began to grow soft as jelly; he found it hard to remain standing. He was overcome by a feeling of nausea and lightheadedness. Falling on his hands and knees, he let hurl the contents of his stomach from the dinner, a porridge of half-digested chicken stew, Nately's last treat. When he had recovered, he rolled himself to the stairwell entrance, where he leaned against the bolted metal door, The men from Mr. Abdulrehim's restaurant presently arrived, and set themselves to banging against it, in a way that made Crawford sick again. "Huang yuanzhang! Huang yuanzhang!" they shouted. "Where are you? We need to talk!"

"Huang yuanzhang not here," mumbled the grieving Crawford in broken Mandarin. "He gone. Ya jagoffs."

-------------------------------------

Glossary of names and terms
Huáng Zhèngxī 黃政錫: Nately Huang's given name at birth (fictional)
Shyu I 徐乂 (Xú Yì): The Chinese part of Crawford's given name at birth (not specified in story)
Yuànzhǎng 院長: Head of an institute
Kashgar قەشقەر 喀什 (Kāshí): City in southwest Xinjiang Region (pop. circa 800 thousand)
Xīnjiāng 新疆: Autonomous Region (province-level jurisdiction) in northwestern China
Uyghur ئۇيغۇر 維吾爾 (Wéiwú'ěr): Ethnic group native to Xinjiang
Haji Noor Deen Mǐ Guǎngjiāng 米廣江: Ethnic Hui lecturer and calligrapher specializing in the Sini style of Arabic calligraphy, Islamic College of Zhengzhou, Henan
Abdulrehim 阿布都熱依木 (Ābùdūrèyīmù): Transliterated name of Mr. Abdulrehim; although, in colloquial, non-Uyghur speaking settings, his name is likely to be shortened
Lǎobǎn 老闆: Boss
Yǒngjīnmén 涌金门: residential neighborhood in Hangzhou (the name is real, but the detailed setting is my own imagination)
Zhèjiāng 浙江: Province in Eastern China
Hángzhōu 杭州: Largest city in Zhejiang (pop. circa 10 million) and seat of provincial government
West Lake 西湖 (Xī Hú): Freshwater lake adjoining Hangzhou city
La-mian 拉麵 (Lāmiàn): Noodles made with pulled dough. Cognate with Japanese ramen ラーメン (a street cuisine delicacy), Korean ramyeon 라면 , and English ramen (a kind of junk food)
Dàpánjī 大盤雞: Chicken stew dish from Xinjiang Region
Húběi 湖北: Province in Central China
Wǔhàn 武漢: Provincial seat and largest city of Hubei (pop. 11 million)
Nánshān Lù 南山路; Xīhú Lù 西湖路: Road names in Downtown Hangzhou
Hui 回族 Huízú: Ethnic Chinese Muslim (designated as an official nationality in China)
Turpan تۇرپان 吐魯番 (Tǔlǔfān): City in northeast Xinjiang (pop. circa 630 thousand)

The Inner Life of Shaun the Psychopath

The Crowns

Close to the moment to his untimely death, the mind of Shaun the Psychopath wandered to a strange dream which he had dreamed when he was a young boy, where he was stopped by two strange men, drifters decked in rags, while walking home from school. It startled him, the situation being rather typical of a robbery, but one of the strange men, who had warts covering every inch of skin as if they were eyes, had something to give, not take from him "Kid, I have something for you now, but you have to make a choice, between two crowns of glory." He stuck out two closed fists before Shaun's face, continuing, "In my left hand, a white crown of purity, and in my right the red crown of the glory of martyrdom. What do you choose?"

Shaun was unfazed by the strange circumstance; after all, in a dream the most improbable things could be thought to be reasonable. "Both, I want both," replied he, with confidence. "You never said I had to pick just one. I shall choose both, and be a double king with double the glory." And here he glowed with self-satisfaction, glad that he has gotten the better of these two clueless strangers.

The other vagrant began to guffaw in the most unbecoming manner. "The tricky bastard! To think he is one of us!" He bent over and slapped his thigh mirthfully, his lips curling back to show two ghastly rows of teeth. The man's homely grimace and his ugly laughter then appeared to grow in scale and intensity, until it enveloped and overwhelmed all of Shaun's dreamtime senses. It was impossible to recall the events of the dream beyond this point.

Grandmother

The life of Shaun as a psychopath began when he was five, when his grandmother died. Grandmother had been brought to the household of Shaun's parents, to partake in the quotidian tasks of rearing Shaun. Grandmother had loved Shaun, had doted on him, had kept him happy and close to herself all the time they were together, while Dad and Mom both held on to jobs, and could not afford the same company. When Grandmother died, Dad beat himself up rather badly, thinking that he had been a bad son, for he was for the longest time distracted by the myriad demands of work, and did not make himself emotionally available for his family. It was for this reason that, when Dad brought Shaun onto his lap and hugged him close, tears of regret cascaded down the front of his face, like a waterfall.

Shaun watched the waterfall with a mixture of fascination and vague revulsion. He had never seen his father as vulnerable as now. He reached out absently to touch his father's face, feeling the tears first wetting the tip of his fingers, then filling the space between his fingers. Soon he decided that it was not enough; that he could not wipe away his father's tears as quickly as they would come, and that he has now been bound to this absurd task.

"Please always remember your Grandmother; she loved you very much," said Dad to Shaun's uncomprehending mien. He reached for Shaun's face to wipe off his tears in return, but found them to be very dry. 

What is Love?

Mom was frequently unhappy at Shaun. "You take my beauty and my youth; you take your father's blood and tears. You take, take, and take again!" she would lament, in each of the more intense of their familial disagreements, "When?! When will you finally learn to give?"

Shaun had nothing to say in reply. He was at a loss for words. He wished he could make sense of what the big deal was about, but he has, for once, no hope ever to win the argument.

Shaun understood very much that Grandmother had loved him, that Mom and Dad loved him still. By this we mean that as long as he asked for something, then they would give it to him; and if they refused and he asked more insistently, then they would relent and give it to him anyway. The world played by very simple rules, and the rules were that other people gave good things and love to Shaun, and Shaun took it all.

Why then does Shaun have to love? Why is that now expected from him?

Insulted by Shaun's blank and bewildered face, Mother snatched the slipper off from her own left foot, and bestowed upon him the gift of a hefty wallop.

The Missing Pen

When Shaun entered high school, Mom and Dad enrolled him into the school's hostels, where he would become a student in residence during the weekdays. Bereft of the help from Grandmother, they welcomed some respite from parental duties from this arrangement.

Shaun had grown to be a fine young man. He had grown out of his parents' smothering love. He was now ready to face the world on his own terms. He was now free to make his own decisions about everything.

But it was here that it became clear that this world was a harsh, barren, and unforgiving wasteland where no one loved Shaun. The teachers did not devote all their time and attention for him. His so-called friends did not give him absolute admiration, nor did they avail themselves for his service whenever he needed it. One day, during a sports meet, when he needed a pen for the attendance sheet, he asked around and no one had a pen. He grew more and more flustered, glowing red in the face, pacing up and down the grandstand demanding a pen, but his classmates only laughed at him, and told him to bite his own finger.

Shaun had taken accounts of all the little acts of disrespect the past few months. Now he could not take it anymore; his inner rage had shot past a critical threshold such that it was impossible to hold down. He launched himself at the nearest person, and tried to break his face with the clipboard.

Counsel

Madam knew Shaun to be a troublemaker, who was involved fights up and down the school. She had noted with amusement that Shaun was usually the one who started them, and also the one who always lost, or else was pinned humiliatingly to the floor by the onlookers. The lad presently entered, his eyes still red from breaking into a tantrum of tears randomly from his previous class; the teacher had sent him away for her for this very reason.

When she heard the words coming out of Shaun's mouth, she found she had to change her mind. Shaun was no wildly temperamental and violent creature. He was eager to please Madam, to rise to talk to her level, to articulate his thoughts, his emotions, and his motivations eloquently. Madam found herself almost convinced by his logic. She checked herself in case she had given in to sympathy for the Devil. In the end she did not give in. With the same stern gaze trained on Shaun, she pushed a print magazine across the table to where Shaun sat. The cover story was of the Pope in Rome.

"Read this. You have much to learn from his life," she commanded. And Shaun wilted faintly under the severity of her eyes.

The Theology of Monsters

God is Love. But, what is Love?

Shaun's friends had successfully duped him into going to church. It was in the city, where the Pastor had rented an auditorium which was their regular worship venue. The pastor came with a roving band of musicians: a bassist, a drummer, a team of guitarists, a light crew, and a dry ice machine to shroud the faithful in very mystical smoke whenever the mood called for it; at such points in the service emotions in the church ran so high that people raised their voices and their hands in praise and love to Jesus.

Shaun did not love Jesus. Shaun did not know how to love anyone.

He had no part in the swirling, bubbling, frothing emotions in the auditorium. He felt only embarrassment and inadequacy. Hoping that no one would notice him or call him back, he left on his own.

This incident notwithstanding, whenever he was asked, he would say: yes, I am Christian. On the grounds of Pascal's Wager, in fact. "Have you thought about this: that if you did not believe that there is a God, but there turns out to be one and he throws you into Hell because of your disbelief, then it only stands to reason that it is the best strategy to believe?" And everyone who heard this only smiled and shook their heads.

The Beach

Shaun stood out alone at the beach, looking out to the sea at the cargo ships. He rarely felt happiness as such, but this is as close as it gets to being happy, he thought.

I do not feel happiness, but I feel the breeze in my hair, he thought to himself, thoroughly satisfied.

I do not feel the pain of others, but I feel the sea spray on my cheeks.

I feel the clouds, I feel the waves, I feel the evening chill.

But I do not feel the love of God within me.

The sun set upon his thoughts, which had slowly grown to be dark and troubled. There was no longer any fun to be had; it was time to leave.

The Clashing Cymbal

There came a day that Shaun did something good. This came as a surprise to his acquaintances, who knew him to be evil.

He did not do this out of the goodness of your heart, they said among themselves. He is doing it for recognition and celebrity. He is a hypocrite.

When pressed about it in person, he replied: "Isn't recognition a pretty sweet thing to have?" 

When Shaun was in college, he rented a house with a some of his schoolmates for his Junior and Senior years. One of these long-suffering housemates was a very pious Christian, who held him in private distaste for his glibness and his unruliness in personal habits. One night, during a routine reading of the New Testament before bedtime, he arrived at these words of St. Paul:

"If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal."

At the moment when he had finished reading, the sound of a clashing cymbal wafted from the basement, followed by the insistent thumps of the kick drum, and the rest of the drum set. Shaun had started his drum practice again, this time at the crack of midnight. The housemate groaned loudly, and did not get any sleep for the rest of that night.

The Buying of the Field

A friend recounts at Shaun's funeral:

I had the chance of running into Shaun again, a few years before his untimely death. I was surprised to find him with a wife, two kids, and his own parents in tow at the mall. Ever since Shaun had made public his psychopathy, we had assumed that it would doom him to a life of delinquency and infamy. It was very hard to imagine that he had gotten himself a wife with anything other than wily tricks or force. This scene piqued my curiosity so much, that I asked to meet him for breakfast the very next day, where I would be free to ask any number of burning questions at him. Fortunately, Shaun agreed to the reunion.

At the breakfast table, I took a perfunctory sip of my coffee and brought my mug down upon the table with a loud thud. It was urgent, and I went straight to the point. "So, do you feel love now? How did that happen?"

"I do not," replied Shaun. "I still don't feel much of anything. Don't you remember? I am a selfish, self-loving man who only looks out for himself." He took a long, indulgent draught from his mug, feeling very caffeine.

"But your family, your wife, your children. You seem to love them very much, and do not hurt them in any way."

"Ah, but you see, as soon as I realized that love was not only about feelings, but about a decision that you throw your life into, then it became that much easier," said Shaun. "Doing things is what I'm good at. Besides, why should I hurt those who are close to me? That foolishness does me no good."

Then, I remembered my failed attempt at bringing him into my church. Against my better judgement, I asked him: "So, what about Jesus? Are you a believer at this point?"

Shaun did not answer immediately. Presently, a wicked smile spread slowly across his lips, and I felt a creeping, ominous dread. I saw the Shaun of old, the crazy man who started every brawl and lost all of them. Shaun the bully, Shaun the devious manipulator, Shaun the tempestuous demoniac; he has not changed one bit after all this time!

"I have found—listen here carefully—the perfect strategy!"

The perfect strategy was a leaf out of the book of Good Evangelist Matthew, whom he failed to credit, although I understood the reference: A man finds a priceless treasure in a field. He hides it again. Then he buys the plot of land, with the treasure in it, for the fraction of its price. "It's a real steal!" exclaimed Shaun. The mere suggestion of trickery and quick profits stoked his spirits.

"My family, my wife, my children, they are the treasure that I have found," explained Shaun. "What have I done to deserve them, other than forking out the money to buy the field?" He was ultimately aware, in a cold, rational manner, that he was describing a fruitful relationship with the Almighty God. Nevertheless, he took much joy and amusement from the idea that he was always coming out better against him in a series of very unfair trade-offs. It is for this reason that I believe he died a very happy man.

James Tissot. The Hidden Treasure/Le trésor enfoui, 1886-1894. Collection of Brooklyn Museum

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References and Notes:

1. Matthew 13:44-46 (The treasure in the field; the pearl of great price)
2. 1 Corinthians 13:1
3. An interview with Dyshae, who is diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder.
4. Recalling the contents of the interview, I realize that I have missed a few important aspects of what it is like to be a psychopath. However, I have resigned myself to be happy just covering things the aspects of emotions and theology.
5. The story of Shaun as a teenager is semi-autobiographical. If you knew me in high school and are reading this right now, I duly apologize for having been a horrid little man.
6. The conversation with the school counsellor was something that actually happened. The year was 2004. Pope (now St.) John Paul II had recently passed, and Time Magazine had his face on their cover for that week's issue.
7. Disclaimer: If your name is Shaun, the choice of name has nothing to do with you. All Shauns I know have been very nice.

Petrushka

Performed by Accordé Guitar Ensemble on 29th September 2018
See here for full playlist

The Kidnapper

National Shrine Basilica of Our Lady of Ransom, Vallarpadam (Kerala State, India) [source]

The way Musa described it to me was like how one would narrate things which happened in their dream. The Abbé, however, was quite sure that he was awake through the whole experience. This, given that the people of Taimiria were weak-willed, superstitious, and threw themselves at the feet of any passing demon or any elf living under a rock behind their homestead, is no longer a surprise to me. Musa saw, late one sleepless night, a friend who had died some years earlier, from a time far back, when they were both dreaded felons terrorizing the good people of Taimiria.

The friend, Batukhan, was a sturdy, handsome youth, head of a roving gang. He easily towered above his subordinates, and maidens up and down the Qarataimir swooned in his sight. On that night he met Musa he was darkened with soot, coated with pitch, and exuding a sulphurous odour. Musa could not recognize him, until the burnt man opened his mouth and started to croak, and he noticed the accent was of Batukhan of Shurikoi.

On the other side of Musa appeared a large family, all of them dressed in colourful silk and woven cotton, of all the weaves and patterns known to man. It was impossible to count how many there were; once Musa thought he had them all in account, someone new appeared again. they were led by another tall and handsome man, whom Musa thought might look like Batukhan, except older and much less of a scoundrel. Coal-pit Batukhan seemed consumed with envy at the sight, which he took to be a personal insult.

The large family walked as a group to the east, keeping a festive mood with their tambourines, bagpipes, and bombards. They did not pay any heed to Batukhan as Batukhan had to them, rather they passed by him without doing so much as throw him a glance. Batukhan took offense at this slight and fumed, yellow-green smoke hissing through the cracks of his skin. 

Presently, Batukhan seized a girl decked in a bright kimono, and dragged her screaming off the path. The leader of the group paused, and broke away from the group to face him. "Son," he said, "let my daughter go. How much must I pay you? Ten tamgas?"

"I will accept no less than fifty tamgas. Can you pay it?" growled Batukhan.

And the man reached into his pocket, passed Batukhan a thousand tamgas, took back the child, and was back on the way.

Batukhan soon came to the realisation that this was an opportunity to jump on, since he could seize custody of any child who followed in the tall man's path, ask for a ransom, and be sure he was paid many times as was worth the trouble. In exchange of a young teenage boy he was able to have in exchange a mansion in Ustanashehir; for a girl of eighteen, a fine ship in the harbour of Totte Muran to sail the circumference of the Little Ocean. "I will be a king," thought Batukhan, "I will be a prince-satrap, and all the earth will act to my bidding."

Musa, greatly distressed, found the tall man and protested: "why do you give a ransom so readily to a fiend like Batukhan? Do you not realize that he has learned to take advantage of you? He will take many more of your children hostage; he will do so until he has drained all of your finances."

The tall man turned to him and retorted: "Am I not free to do as I wish with my own money? If even one of my precious children has gone astray, know that I will be there to wrench them from the maws of the Devil. If he thinks he was able to drain my coffers, I am able to grant him what he asks, far beyond the point of satiation. Wait, and you will find him begging for me to stop."

So Musa rushed to find his old friend Batukhan, but it was too late. "The treasures of the world I hold in my hands," lamented the tar-encrusted creature, "but in my hands they are like worthless dust. I am wrecked with envy," he wept, "to see each of the little children run back to their father's embrace, whereas I am left in the dark with my tamgas and my mansions and my ships, with no Father of my own to return to." And here the Abbé concludes his vision.

References:

Feast of Our Lady of Ransom, 24 September 2020

Matthew 20:15

Matthew 18:4

Matthew 18:12-14 / Luke 15:3-7

The Day's Battles

Do you know what I like about you, Niwa? 

You always ask the questions. You always ask the right questions, and you listen in a time when people spend so little time 

just listening. 

The Aspag looked touched, but not in the usual way that people express joy or gratitude. What happens with Makarios Niwa, whenever he becomes emotional, is that he tends to pause whatever he was doing, even if it was chewing food. Presently he lifted his cup to take a sip of water, and one could discern a slight trembling in his hand. He let out a long sigh. After a while he said:

"What else is there to do? I always want to know what goes on in people's heads. Even if these thoughts disagree with my own. Especially if they disagree with my own."

"What would I know if I never questioned anyone in seminary? The way they taught their things, it was like theirs was the only right way to see it — they are poised to tear any opposing point of view. And of course I had to find out what they were."

It was the old moral dilemma whether to entertain one's morbid curiosity. Some wise men say that nothing good could come out of courting that kind of controversy. The Aspag just happens to be one of those who could not switch it off.

"If he could get in my brain and read all of my thoughts, he will do it, the rascal!" said the Abbé.

The Abbé loved hiding his thoughts. He also loved hiding the fact that he rose two hours earlier than everyone else, and broke a hearty sweat tilling all of the fields. War orphans who grew up here just assumed that fields tilled themselves.

The plough used by Abbé Musa Abisheganaden was made to fit the yoke of a buffalo. Now that livestock were either eaten or otherwise lost, the Abbé yoked it upon his own shoulders. No other person at the abbey could heave the plough like he.

Least of all Irannika, a person who was made for everything other than manual labour, even though her convictions would protest every syllable of what I just said about her.

"I am made to serve my people!" she wheezed, as she let fall a bucked filled with water from the well. Once, she would have felt an affinity to the story of the prince Siddhartha Gautama, of noble birth and painless upbringing, who witnessed human suffering only by accident, spent a ton of time in meditation and finally arrived at the conclusion that all the world's ills came from one's own mind.

But Sister Irannika had not the acumen of Siddhartha, nor could she detach herself so cleanly from the messiness of the physical world, and the daily pains of the Abbey's elderly inhabitants. Today she was particularly disturbed by having to clean shit in the hallway. She berated herself for not making the chamberpots available, and that she had neglected to change the diapers for grandma Anita.

Sister Olivia had her own garden at the side, where she grew tomatoes and mint. She was softening the soil on the outer parts of the garden with a pickaxe, hacking at it with more fury than one would consider normal. It was probable that she had recently with a quarrel with someone prior to this. Perhaps Irannika? On days like these even the Abbé gives her berth, so we should leave her alone for now.

Jean-François Millet. The Angelus (1857)
Collection of Musée d'Orsay

Romance of the Three Oblasts

I take a segue from the usual narrative format to deliver a report on a less-mentioned aspect of my world-building. As George Orwell had to devote an entire chapter in Homage to Catalonia to delineate the byzantine mess of Communist-Anarchist factions in the Spanish Civil War, I have to do the same for fear that without it much of the other stories will not make sense. Up to now I have focused on building up individual characters, and because of their limited perspective on the big picture, it was necessarily at the expense of a more holistic view.

For once it helps to recall that the theater on which the Little Ocean stories occur, which in the modern day is called the Taymyrsky Dolgano-Nenetsky District, is roughly similar in size to George Orwell's dear old Spain. The timeline of the stories span the process in which the old Sultanate of Qarataimir (covering the entire area of the district) dissolves into chaos and slowly separates into three entities, and by its end the distinction would be as irreconcilable and permanent as what we see between the two Koreas. These are, in turn:

The North Coast, or Karadeniz. This is the northern third of the Sultanate of Qarataimir, bordering the Kara Sea. The people of the North Coast identify variously as Muslim and Turkish, but in fact trace their ancestry to Central Asian peoples such as the Kyrgyz and the Uzbek. By a coincidence, this region is sometimes referred to as Karadeniz by its inhabitants, alluding both to the old Nenets name for the sea and to its northerly location (1). The capital of Karadeniz is called Ustanashehir and lies somewhere at the Ob-Irtysh estuary and owes its prominence from being the western terminus of the main land trade route through Qarataimir. Unfortunately, the city is wiped out in a flood triggered by the collapse of the Krasnoyarsk High Dam, killing most of the Qarataimir ruling class, and triggering societal collapse across the sultanate.

The leadership structure of Karadeniz during the events of the civil war is not clear. It is rumored that the Islamic factions are headed by a "Sultan" distantly related to the ruling line. If such a sultan would exist, his legitimacy would find very limited recognition and would make an organized war effort improbable. For this reason, the civil war is fielded in the north side mainly by large roving revanchist gangs who conducted pogroms against Christian civilians in the marches, whom they blamed for the tragedy of Ustanashehir.

It is alluded that the Karadeniz people follow a special variety of Islam which is closer to folk belief and Pan-Turkish nationalism than to what the modern observer would recognize as Islamic doctrine. This is a persistent source of embarrassment and frustration to the Larabin Hafiz, a roving scholar of the Qu'ran and champion of Orthodox Islam who stayed for a time in the abbey of Amatodate.

Taimiria, or Rumelia. The southern third of Qarataimir is dominated by the Khatanga sea channel, which was formed from the Khatanga River. Over centuries, rising sea levels continually encroached on the river basin, gradually turning it from a river to a wide sea channel (2). The sea channel is unique among Siberian rivers as one that flows west-east instead of south-north (3), and its widening greatly facilitated trade across the Eurasian continent. The inland location of the channel protected merchant ships from piracy and made it the preferred route over the more exposed Arctic Ocean route.

The land bordering the sea channel is controlled by a conglomerate of prince-satraps. They are so named because while these power centers started out as governorates, on authority divested from the Sultan, they mutated over time into hereditary positions and have become very much akin to oligarch clans. At the start of the events of our story, the prince-satraps would use the destruction of Ustanashehir to their own advantage, staging an war and attempting to take over the entire country. Ironically, by declaring war and closing themselves to the outside world, the Taimirians would inadvertently force trade routes to move back into the Arctic Ocean, and consign themselves to irrelevance.

Taimiria is sometimes called Rumelia, as an effort in branding on the part of the prince-satraps to posture as the "Christian faction" (4). The south has a diverse population and solidly Christian populations as a result of immigration and trade, among which included the Sarmyaks (Koreans), Dungans, Muranids (both Chinese), Karagandines (Volga Germans, some Ukrainians), and others.

The Taimirian polity is led by the charismatic prince-satrap Jaromil of Toyogarov, who is known for his pious fervor, claims of being the brother to Jesus (5), and hatred towards northern hegemony. The majority share of military power, and therefore the actual power, falls into the control of General Tansukchin, who governs the industrious far-eastern satrapy of Totte Muran or Töçmuran. The Bishop Sikander, from the Sarmyak clan of Yasin, is Irannika's father and serves to lend legitimacy to the regime with his position. During the story, Sikander Yasin's position is greatly threatened by the arrival of Makarios, who was in fact an atheist, but who was nevertheless elected to the position of "bishop" by an enthusiastic mob after a freak accident involving a sword in a stone.

The third region is variously called Midlands, the Griadines, or the Mesogriadines in the stories. The name "Griadine" is derived from the Russian гряда, meaning "highland" because the area includes the Byrranga Mountains. However, the flat, relatively poor areas south of the Byrranga Mountains which are not under the control of the Christian prince-satraps can also be counted in this area.

The Griadines fill the role of the "marches" between Muslim- and Christian-controlled lands and sees the worst of the conflict throughout the story. The population in itself is a mixture of both Muslim and Christians, with Muslim and Christian villages built in a patchwork fashion across the region (6), sometimes right next to one another. Unable to neatly categorize the Griadines as a majority-Muslim or Christian region, the Karadeniz and the prince-satraps consider the area to be up-for-grabs. By the strategic view of Tansukchin, it is considered advantageous for Taimirian frontiers to advance into the Griadines for two reasons: one, that the hills make this frontier more easily defensible; and two, that the water of Lake Taymyr can be diverted to replace the Khatanga river, which has over the centuries become less viable as a source of drinking water.

The people groups populating the Griadines tend to retain a vestigial identity to people groups of our age, among them Poles, Greeks, and Assyrians. A portion of the people are resettled Permyaks, refugees from an earlier (as yet unspecified) ecological disaster who also form a permanent underclass in Qarataimir. Their ancestry is unclear, but they are likely to be of diverse origins (7).

In the events of the story, the ex-brigand Musa Abisheganaden would build his iteration of Amatodate Abbey on the shores of Lake Taymyr, and turn it into as a base for civic activity and relief efforts in the Griadines. The end of this iteration is guaranteed after a series of events: one, when Musa stubbornly refuses to side with the prince-satraps or to give preferential treatment to Christian troops over Muslims and local Griadine civilians (who they consider barely Christian); two, when Irannika, the daughter of Bishop Sikander and the betrothed of Prince Jaromil, runs away from Toyogarov to join the abbey; and three, when a rumor is spread that an actual Sultan somehow exists, secretly leads the Karadeniz war effort, and was granted sanctuary at Amatodate. For these three travesties, the abbey would be mowed to the ground by a powerful, triumphant, and impeccably "Christian" army. What comes after this sad and tragic event, I have not decided.

A scene from the Battle of Anqing 安慶之戰, 1860 [source]

Footnotes
(1) The color black refers to the north in the Turkish system of codifying cardinal directions. The same name Karadeniz is used in modern Turkish to refer to the Black Sea.
(2) See: St. Lawrence River
(3) This is one of the key reasons, from geography, why today's Siberia remains underdeveloped.
(4) The same name has been used in the Ottoman Empire to denote the regions of Bulgaria and Thrace, and alludes to the Byzantine Roman Empire.
(5) See: Hong Xiuquan 洪秀全; Taiping Rebellion 太平天國, 1850-1864.
(6) See: modern Bosnia and Herzegovina, modern Caucasus.
(7) For example, the family name Hutanonoyong is speculated to be of Chinese and Japanese etymology.

Saimonhyo

The story goes that after Musa Abisheganaden escaped the burning abbey without loot, he retreated to Putorana, and hid in a mountain cave for some years. What he did or thought there is lost to time; if you asked him, he would not say much in reply. Some who heard about him from before would say that he was a changed man, now docile and obedient to the service of the good. I think this assessment to be rather unfair, and based on wishful thinking. When Saul was blinded on the road to Damascus, he was rescued by his enemy, Ananias, and thereafter spent a good time as a hermit in the Syrian desert. Even then, Paul and Saul were made of the same stuff; Paul spread the Gospel with the same bull-headedness with which previously Saul persecuted the Christians. As before, so now: when it became Musa's turn to do so, he went ahead with the ferocity of a brigand.

Whenever I hear anyone who imagines him meek as a lamb, soft hands clasped in prayer, eyes tearfully raised to Heaven, I would retort: you should ask the Chief Shaman of Saimonhyo, what Musa did to him!

For verily, each one of us is made by the master potter himself, and as scriptures say: He saw that it was very good. It said so seven times. It would be unimaginative if one were to think if there was only one way to be good, and that Musa had to be broken into that mold, if he were to hold any hope of redemption.

The first year after Musa returned from the plateau was a year of disaster in Taimiria. For many centuries the river Khatanga had slowly turned from fresh to brackish, then salty, and expanded until it became a wide channel deep enough for small ships to pass through. Farmers who had up to that time lived by channeling water from this channel abandoned the main valley and moved upstream along the tributaries for fresher waters, but the ones leading up the north slopes of the plateau suffered the unpredictable flash floods and droughts caused by the torrid climes of the uplands. Saimonhyo was one such river.

The river Saimonhyo lies in the middle of a sizeable floodplain; the village with the same name is built on an escarpment overlooking it. River flow was unpredictable, and it was impossible to tell when the yearly flood would arrive to flush away any structure build on it. On some years the river dried to a trickle and the flood never came, and on other years the rains and meltwater so torrential that the entire stretch became a sea of foamy rapids which threatened to burst through the banks, engulf the houses, and sweep the entire village away into the sea channel.

They said of the river that the demon Saimonhyo lurked in the river, a demon as tempestuous as the river, who swung between the extremes of drought and wrathful torrent, who held the lives of the townsfolk in its stranglehold. His Chief Shaman is his deputy in the realm of men, a strange man who has held the position for as long as people remembered.

And who is the demon Saimonhyo?

Everyone was afraid to discuss it openly with Musa, but it was possible to derive some signal from the noise, if one bothered to decipher what they told through hushed voices, curt explanations, or innuendo.

Saimonhyo, a dictator, a corrupt petty official who abuses his power to enrich his own; he would skim off the top of his public coffers, and grew fat on this undeserved wealth with his mistresses.

Oh, his desire for the tender flesh of the virgin!

Many a daughter of a poor but virtuous family would come into his snares! He would tempt with his wealth both her and her family, but if they refused, he set the dogs on them. And, like so many unhappy and vengeful souls from yesteryear, souls like his survive his death and dot the landscape, some as trees, others as rocks, others as rivers like Saimonhyo, who swells every year or so with insatiable desire, crying through the voice of his prophet, the Shaman: Wed your daughters to me again, if you desire to live! And the people obeyed him, because they only desired their houses not to be swept away, and because they could hear no other voice above the roar of the river.

This year the two virgins were chosen among the people; picked, as it happened to be done, by drawing lots. It was said that Saimonhyo had an exquisite taste in women, and favoured those of most comely appearance who had just come of age; the Shaman himself assured them this was true. On a few occasion that some could recall, even a married woman was drafted as tribute to the lord of the river. In the ten days leading up to the sacrifice the two fiancées were first brought to a state of stupor by a mix of drink and special herb, moved to the Shaman's quarters for secret rituals for the rest of the duration, and finally led out to the bursting river for the consummation, whereupon the two unfortunate girls are cast into the waves and donated to the river god.

It was said that in the before-times, a holy man named Boniface converted the pagans of Germany by chopping down a sacred oak, where housed the soul of Þór. The pagans believed, with utmost sincerity, that no harm can possibly befall the oak, which was protected. But gentle Boniface felled the Oak and preached the living God from the tree stump, and used the wood to build the first church of the country. For each time the story was told, the bells of the new church chimed placidly, as if through time and space, from the meadows of the Rhine in times long past to the ears of children, and cloaked them in the protective blanket of peace.

But Musa was no Boniface, and did not have his astuteness: he was guided only by an intensely choleric personality. When the reality of the rituals finally came to him, on the day of the sacrifice, a fire burned in him as brightly as the flames in the abbey which had almost burned him into a crisp. He tore through the crowd observing the ceremony, sending people tripping and tumbling over one another, left and right. Then he advanced to the Chief Shaman, looming over his slight frame, which only came up as tall as his chest.

"You send these girls to plead Saimonhyo to hold back his flood, do you not?" he interrogated.

The Shaman was too taken by surprise to call out Musa for his impudence, and only nodded in affirmation. So Musa seized him by his collar and his belt, heaved him over his shoulder, and bellowed for all to hear:

"Then, why don't you go and ask him yourself?"

Without waiting for a reply, he hurled the Shaman bodily into the raging waters, whereupon the small man sank like a rock, and vanished without a trace.

The Shaman's squires protested loudly, denouncing Musa's rash actions. They declared that Musa had incurred total destruction on the village of Saimonhyo by disrespecting his only messenger. Musa ignored them at first. The following two hours felt like an eternity in the tension. When Musa found no change in the water level, he concluded that the Shaman had been tardy, and needed the squires to go and hurry him up. So, just as he sent the Shaman to pacify Saimonhyo, he disposed of the squires likewise, each boy disappearing beneath the waves screaming, squirming, and kicking.

In the following days, it became clear that Saimonhyo's lust was not limited to virgin girls, since the prophet obviously satisfied him as much as did any other sacrifice; the flood had subsided again, as floods tend to do, and the silty riverbed again rose above the surface again, ready for the new crop. The people of Saimonhyo agreed among themselves that some kind of thrall had only just been lifted from their minds; that they were no longer preoccupied with the thought that one day their daughters would be sent to the demon as brides, and, most importantly, that the malevolent presence that had once so haunted them had departed, spirited away by the gallantry of the Chief Shaman and all of his squires. 

To repay the hospitality of the villagers, Musa joined a work detachment to set up floodgates and water-mill upstream. Some men from this group later left Saimonhyo and followed Musa to the Griadines, where they took to calling him Abbé and built the new Abbey next to a lake. One of the two virgin girls who had escaped sacrificed went to the Abbey as well, where, towards the end of her life, she would welcome Sister Ershebet to the community.

Scene from "Ximen Bao Governs the County of Ye"《西門豹治鄴》 [source]

References

1. Galatians 1:17; Genesis 1:4,10,12,18,21,25,31

2. Zhu Shaosun 褚少孫 (Western Han 西漢 Dynasty, 1st Century B.C.): Ximen Bao Governs the County of Ye 《西門豹治鄴》. Addendum to the Records of the Grand Historian / Shiji 《史記》by Sima Qian 司馬遷

3. Aḥmad ibn Faḍlān أحمد بن فضلان (A.D. 922): On the Rus' merchants at Itil [summary video]

4. Pope Benedict XVI (11 March 2009): General Audience: Saint Boniface, the Apostle of the Germans