The Swedish Embassy

IKEA Jurong East

I messed up. I fell asleep on a bed in IKEA and slept for too damn long. Now the place is closed, and I am trapped here for the night. How long has it been? The clocks are no help. Every one of them is set to a different time; PUGG says it's 1am, ROTBLÖTA says 3.30, and TUNNIS and STURSK and JÄNKIG are all set to different times also — I've slept enough, that's all I know! From Monday to Thursday I have been here, on the prowl for some furniture to revamp my room with. This has really got to stop; I must have eaten enough meatballs to qualify for Swedish citizenship!

I really need to get out of this place, though. Who is around? Who can I call? I stumble around in the dark in the sofa section, tripping over every sofa, calling out to anyone, security or otherwise, who might be able to get me out of the building. I trip over something which was decidedly not a sofa; it was curled up into a ball next to the LINANÄS, sleeping, but wakes up with a high-pitched yelp. Reflexively, it grabs and lights up a SOLVINDEN table lamp, and everything is visible again. This is an middle-aged gentleman, of South Asian extraction; although looking older than his age, and in addition unkempt and unwashed, like a man of the streets; his face wears a dour expression, his hair and beard overgrown; he has on a yellow jacket, like a mall employee.

"Did you get trapped in IKEA too?" I ask him.

The man struggles to form a word with his mouth, like someone who has not had the opportunity to speak for a long time. With difficulty and a pained expression, he hisses and sputters with his mouth-parts; he contorts and reworks his face muscles this way, then that way, until finally he exhales weakly... "ja."

"I'm sorry, sir. I should have asked your name first. How may I call you?"

"Jens-Olov," says the Indian man.

CHAPTER I: JENS-OLOV

Jens-Olov entered the mall when he was a teenager, where he then lost his way. Jens-Olov at one point lost track of how much time he has spent in IKEA, looking for his way out. So he began to count each passing day by carving marks onto the bedposts. From the time he started counting, twenty years have passed. Jens-Olov does not remember the name he had been born with.

"How did you get such a Swedish-sounding name?"

"It came with the jacket," replies Jens-Olov. "Oh! As for the jacket, I don't remember how I got hold of it either." He points to the name-tag on his jacket, as if that explains anything. Jens-Olov takes a long time to produce a complete sentence; owing to the length of time he had spent in IKEA, Swedish has become his main tongue, and he speaks English with difficulty.

[source]

"I am only kept alive by the köttbullar. Köttbullar is all I eat," says Jens-Olov. "I have eaten enough to become a citizen of Sweden." He sighs. He does not appear to be joking. "However, if you have one too many, you get one of these." He reaches into his pocket, and produces a dark red booklet with the words emblazoned on its cover: EUROPEISKA UNIONEN SVERIGE PASS.

"And if you get a Swedish passport, there is no... way... back... anymore."

I am in denial. This can't be real. This can't be fecking real! I reach for my jeans pocket for my phone, but find nothing. Looking down, I find with startlement and horror that the cardigan I had on before has turned into a yellow hoodie. I trip and fall backwards, landing on my behind against the mirror LINDBYN. I turn and see that on the back of my hoodie is printed, in big friendly blue letters, "Hej!", the same as on Jens-Olov's jacket... And, in my hair, a disturbing detail: the hair that I had dyed black last week has grown out a little, and the roots are showing up golden blonde. 

"No! No!" I scream in confusion and terror. "I would have chosen another colour!"

I struggle to get back on my feet. I crawl backwards, keeping my eye on the ominous figure of Jens-Olov. He does not give chase, but has a look of exhaustion and profound loneliness about him as he watches me beat my retreat through the showroom.

CHAPTER II: THE EMBASSY

I decide to give my best shot to escape. After some time, I have learned to adapt to life in the IKEA showroom. I have commandeered a SOLVINDEN lamp like Jens-Olov did. The trick here was to find where the batteries are kept, and that was surprisingly not a trivial task. Of course I grow tired, as any human would. I have slept on every bed by this time; personally, I have come to prefer the VALEVÅG mattress over other designs which only used foam, even if the price point can be a little bit higher. I have been judiciously avoiding the meatballs for sustenance.

I must have been at the absolute depths of the building, because I find myself now looking at a row of POÄNG armchairs. The strangeness of the arrangement, which just begins to hit me, is that they seem to be like seats in some sort of waiting room, though the intentionality was somehow not as apparent to me when the store was still open.

At the far end of the armchair section is a TORALD desk. An engraved nameplate on the desk reads:

KONSULÄRA TJÄNSTER
CONSULAR SERVICES

Of course there would be an embassy here! That explains the flag outside! It is only right that, being the centre of Swedish soft power abroad, that every branch of IKEA must therefore also function as an embassy.

There is a bell on the desk. I consider briefly to ring the bell, hoping that someone might appear who could help me... But then I remember Jens-Olov, who warned that all would be over if the person who shows up hands me the passport. In any case, what kind of person would show up at this kind of lonely place if I ring the bell? What kind of person... or non-person would it be? In what form?

And so, with my imagination heaping oppressive vision after oppressive vision upon my mind, I leave the embassy in a hurry. In the process I pass by a large poster, which reads:

It's OK to change your mind
You have 365 days to return your purchase
Visit IKEA.sg/returnpolicy

And I sink to the floor inconsolably. "It wasn't even my mind to start with!" I weep.

CHAPTER III: SKOGSDUVA

I find my way to the plush toys section. I have passed by here many times this night, trying to escape. The toys, which on a better day would have given me so much joy, tire me out instead, with their dead stares and their ridiculous facial expressions. I ponder a pile of BLÅHAJ who continue to live their non-lives unbotheredly in this cursed place.

[source]

A soft toy owl, SKOGSDUVA, sits on top of the pile of BLÅHAJ. This one begins to seem a little different from the others; the eyes, for example, seems a little less dead... The owl blinks, and I leap backwards with a gasp. Hoot! Hoot! goes Skogsduva. "What brings you here, Lauris?" Up she flies from the pile, and comes to perch on a fake branch.

"Who's Lauris?" I asked.

With her beak, the owl gestures to my hoodie, where a nametag had materialised without my noticing it. Angrily, I pull of the nametag and throw it onto the floor.

"Okay, fine. What is your name then, traveller?"

I ponder the owl's question for some time. I pick up the nametag from the floor and pin it back onto the hoodie. "I don't remember," I admitted glumly.

Skogsduva chuckles and shakes her head, which, if you understand how an owl's head works, she shakes it more than 180 degrees in either direction, a strange and rather unsettling imitation of a human gesture if you ever were there to witness it. "Hoot! Hoot!" hoots the owl once more. "So that is what is happening to you. Beware! If you spend any more time here, you will surely come to lose your sense of self, not just your name! Hoot! Hoot!"

"Far åt helvete, uggla!" I curse. "Did you come alive just to mock me? I have seen what happened to Jens-Olov."

Skogsduva remains cool as a cucumber. "You silly person! Did you not realise that I am on your side?" she smirks. "Have hope! You are not the only one who has come here and made it out alive. Let me... show you... a way!"

Skogsduva takes off from the fake branch, and flies through the mazelike hallways of IKEA. I follow her flight path with renewed enthusiasm, past the carpets, showrooms, and bathroom equipment. Finally we arrive at the study room section, where the bookshelves BILLY are arranged in a neat row.

CHAPTER IV: BILLY

"Here, Lauris," said Skogsduva. "Read every one of these books! And perhaps, one of these can hold the key to the way out." As it turns out, instead of fake books or pictures of books, as in other furniture stores, shelves in IKEA are filled with real books, albeit written in Swedish, and thus entirely decorative in function in this part of the world.

"Wait, Madam Owl," I implored. "Don't you know which one it is that I should read? I don't know Swedish, besides!"

"How would I know? I can't read!" laughs Skogsduva. "I'm an owl! Hoot! Hoot!" And off she flies, disappearing around a corner, leaving me fuming. "Förbannad!" I cuss again after her.

"För... bannad..." I repeat to myself, half-mortified, half in amazement.

I dive into BILLY, and pull out Bryt det sista tabut written by Maria Borelius. I read it hungrily. The meaning of the words reads as clear as day to me. It is a book on the importance of mental health in the workplace.

I read one more book off the shelf, then another, then another... I lose track of time and fail to register how much time has passed from reading the entire section's supply of books. At last I come to the work Vår beskärda del written by David Jonstad, which is about the challenge climate change poses for humanity. The very last page reads, among other things:

... therefore, as long as the international community reaches net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2015, humanity may just (barely, may I add) have a fighting chance to survive the 21st century.

By the way, if you fix all the HANDSKALAD articulated hand models into a rude gesture in the computer desk section, the next clue to lead you out of the building will appear. Lycka till!

CHAPTER V: HANDSKALAD

Off I rush to the computer desks. Around the place, the HANDSKALAD articulated hand models are on display. Some of them are holding random trinkets, others fixed in benign gestures. I put two and two together. No wonder every time I come down this section during the day, some of them are flipping the bird at the customers. Maybe, it was not just bored children or immature adults having little moments of frivolity with the wooden hands? Maybe, as in my case right now, flipping the bird was actually a means to survival? I tear up thinking about all the brave souls who fought and found their way back into society, valiantly flipping the bird with the HANDSKALAD models.

[source]

I flip the bird on all of the hands. There are seven in total. This triggers some of the lights in the store to turn on, the ones which project glowing arrow shapes onto the floor. Yes! I think to myself. Now all I need to do is to follow the arrows to the check-out! I follow the arrows for some time. 

Suddenly,  I hear a familiar voice. It is Jens-Olov. His voice sounds more shrill and aggressive than before; feral and guttural, like an enraged beast.

"Who flipped the bird on all the HANDSKALAD?" growls Jens-Olov from behind the partitioning wall, in Swedish. "Why is it that this is all an employee gets to do here?" he adds, presumably pushing one of the middle fingers back down as he says it. 

I stop running and start making my footsteps light and as silent as I could make them, hoping not to arouse his attention. I wonder with trepidation if the arrow lights might turn off, now that Jens-Olov has un-flipped some birds. To my relief, they continue to stay on.

A different menacing voice, like that of a brown bear, across a partition wall from another direction. This is accompanied with the cacophonous and urgent ringing of the desk bell. "Where are you, Lauris Ahlén? I have good news regarding your citizenship application!"

The Consul General! This terrifies me even further. I slow down to an agonizing pace, uncertain of whether moving further is a good idea after all. The further I go along the direction of the arrows, the louder the voices sound. It will not be long before either Jens-Olov or the Consul General gets a hold on me, with unthinkable consequences either way.

Then a small voice in me starts to pipe: Against the arrows. Go AGAINST the arrows.

No, it's absurd. I say back at it. I can't. I'm Singaporean.

And Singaporeans follow the rules.

I stop in my tracks. I sit with the thoughts for a while. 

Meanwhile, around the corner before me, a tray of kitchenware gets knocked over, and fall to the floor with a huge crash. It is Jens-Olov. A louder voice bubbles up from the primal depths of my Singaporean psyche, up to the surface of my consciousness:

BUT IT'S OKAY IF YOU DON'T GET CAUGHT

"Feck it!" I shout, and turn around to bolt. I run and keep running against the direction of the arrows on the ground. I hear Jens-Olov and the Consul General give chase behind me. At one point they collide into one another (or both into some pieces of furniture, it was hard to tell). Anyway I finally have them off my back. I now see the mall entrance in sight, and am about to exit IKEA through there like an uncouth barbarian, but I don't care anymore. I will become Singaporean again! I will have my eggs undercooked, eat all my things with chili, and be able to smell durian without gagging, just as I am born into this world to do.

The Babiest Babe

"A good deal of what I had been thinking all my life fell down like a house of cards. I suddenly remembered that no one can enter heaven except as a child; and nothing is so obvious in a child— not in a conceited child, but in a good child— as its great and undisguised pleasure in being praised. [...] Apparently what I had mistaken for humility had, all these years, prevented me from understanding what is in fact the humblest, the most childlike, the most creaturely of pleasures— nay, the specific pleasure of the inferior: the pleasure of a beast before men, a child before its father, a pupil before his teacher, a creature before its Creator." — C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory (1949)

[Source: Күннэй — Таатта (MV)]

I walk in expecting to see the giants among men, those of fabled virtue and holiness whose statures have multiplied down the ages every time their stories are retold and embellished— and find only children. Shrieking children, tumbling over one another, milling around a vast space, wall-to-wall, if ever we can find any walls in such a boundless place; then, in the middle of them all, lies the most childlike of children, the babiest babe, nursed by his mother. His presence had such gravity that it warped the space around him, and all are drawn to him.

When people enter here they wake up in a sunny, breezy meadow, after their passing in the previous life. Those who die young wake up here young, and those who die elderly wake up here elderly, their consciousness passing between the worlds seamlessly. Immediately following this rebirth, children from all around accost them, tease them, climb all over them, and egg them on to move. Here a scraggly greybeard wakes up from his long slumber, and two young girls in bright yellow dresses dunk a bucket of water over his head. When he comes to, his back has stopped hurting, his spine is again straight, and he has regained movement in his joints. With this renewed strength he puts himself to work, for this is the place where seniority serves youth.

Often people entered after living the full life: a life time of joy, sadness, disappointments and betrayals, tragedies and injustices. They come wizened and cynical, their countenances ghastly, their utterances hateful; they wear grey cloaks which are like the hide of a porcupine, shooting quills upon each perceived slight or offense. The more they are at this extreme of the spectrum, the less kindly they take to the dousing. They scream curses at every child who splashed water onto them, because it feels to them scalding hot, and shake their fists at the kids as they bolt off in retreat, laughing and giggling ridiculously.

As the dousing continues, the morale among the new residents seem to improve, as the suffering of each subsequent douse becomes less and less. The age of the residents now approach the teenage years. Same as earthly adolescence, the soul squeezes through a liminal middle-space in a process as much terrifying and confusing and awkward as it is magical. Those who are at this stage enter a state of rebellion and defiance, not against the cloying love of their parents, as in our universe, but at the imprints the world has left upon them, the scars and the wounds that has accumulated over their lives, insecurity and defensiveness, feelings of vindictiveness and unkindness, self-superiority and inadequacy... The uniform, genteel, starched grey cloaks that cover them tear into shreds, revealing their bearers' true selves: clothes made of fabric of every imaginable colour, one in the earthly colours of autumn, another in pastel pink and blue and purple, another iridescent like the wings of a butterfly... all of them present themselves in varying degrees of frivolity and uproariousness, and no two persons are found wearing the same colours. The last rags of gravitas and respectability are blown away in a stiff breeze, and our friends emerge as fresh and liberated as a crab who has freed itself of its molt.

As spontaneously as happens on a dance floor, the colourful ones join their hands, and start dancing in a circle around the centre of the room, where lies the Babiest Babe in his mother's embrace. The more they dance, the younger they appear, the smaller the circle becomes, and the faster they spin. From where I watch them, the closest ones to the centre dance so hard and so briskly that they seem just a blur, blending into a continuum of light, and I like to imagine that they would keep at it until they are catapulted, in this ecstasy, into a memory of a dining hall, warmly lit in the glow of the late afternoon sun, all of their loved ones alive and somewhere in the house, the dinner being prepared, in a moment which one would wish to last forever.

22 November 2024, Bukit Tiram, Johor

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 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

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

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.

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

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

The Haji's Tall Tales

After helping the Bishop settle in to his temporary lodgings with Abbé Musa, the Haji was no longer obliged to dote on the young man. All the same, he decided to remain with us for a good number of months. Shortly afterwards, he befriended the young sisters Chrysanthi Simoglou and Maya. Chrysanthi had just turned seven the previous year. Maya was one of those war orphans, so we did not know how old she was for certain, but she was clearly younger than Chrysanthi. The former had fallen in love with the poor child when she first laid eyes on her. She had vowed to adopt Maya as her own to protect the young one with her own life. This vow manifests itself in running each other down in endless rounds around the dining hall, pulling each other's hair, and falling fast asleep on each other when they finally run out of energy.

The girls now find ample amusement in tormenting our newcomer, the Haji. The man is obviously advanced in age, but it is impossible to tell how old: on one hand, a lifetime spent on the road gave him a lean, sinewy, almost youthful build, with which he is able to weather the elements; on the other hand, his wizened, beaten face perennially radiates desolation, and his eyes have a distant look in them which say: I have seen enough; I have seen way too much. This amuses Chrysanthi to no end, who loves nothing more than to ask him:
"Mister Haji, when will you finally die?"

And the sad man invariably casts his gaze across the lake, heaves a long drawn-out sigh, and croaks:
"Everyone has a day when they are due... As for me, that day has long passed."

Chrysanthi Simoglou thinks the world of the old man, and never fails to recount her litany of praises for him before the rest of the grown-ups. The Haji has been to everywhere, seen all the places, knew all of the people. He knows stories from when the world was first formed, and when people still lived in the South. He knows answers to her toughest questions about the world, the kind which stumped every other adult. He is physically incapable of dying.

One evening, in a regular evening gathering after dinner, the Abbé himself invited the Haji to speak, and asked, "We have heard from some wise men that the Earth is flat as a disc, and from others that the Earth is a giant ball. Which of these stories is the right one?"

The Haji replied, "The Earth is a disc, but sits atop a sphere, which is bigger and grander than any world we have ever imagined." And everyone was amazed at his reply.

The Haji responds only to his title; if he had gone by any other name, then he no longer remembered it, and quite likely forgot it on purpose. By tradition the title of Haji was granted to men who had made a pilgrimage to Mecca, if they were Muslim, or to Jerusalem, if they were Jew or Christian. Once or twice someone voiced the objection that both of these places lie far to the South and are now unreachable, and there could have been no Haji for many centuries, but no one has been able to explain how the old man had earned this title.

One day, the Haji told us the story of a country which was created by God on the eighth day, after even he had gone to rest; as if he had unknowingly left out forming an entire landmass during the first day, and rose again to complete the job haphazardly.

The Haji set the stage at the the place where the Little Ocean joined the Great Ocean, at the very edge of the world where the waters from the little disc drains into the great sphere, between Tunu of the Skrælingjar and Norway. Beneath this oceanic passage here lived two gigantic sea-monsters, Eurasia and America, who were husband and wife. Their relationship, however, was so poisoned by jealousy that the two monsters fought constantly. During one particularly violent altercation they opened the Gates of Hell itself, and dragged out from the chasm huge half-molten boulders to heave at one another.

"And then what happened!" yelped little Maya, who turned out to be following the story very attentively.

And then the fight got so intense that the rest of the world could not be in peace anymore, and so God intervened. He trapped both sea-dragons under a huge pile of the boulders they had dug out so they could no longer fight, and that pile of rock was so massive that it rose above the waters, and became what we now call Iceland. The End.

As an afterthought, the Haji added that when the island was first formed it was devoid of a landscape, like a barren desert, and our Creator Dear took extra pleasure in this opportunity to repeat the act of his Creation in Iceland, sprinkling in the beautiful mountains and valleys as chef sprinkles condiments into a pot of stew. For an amusing side project, he extruded the coastline out west and made it into a dense network of headlands and fjords which were so numerous that they were uncountable. These are what we now know to be the Westfjords. Þormóður (the viking who hunted for his sworn brother up and down the far west, from Kiev in the Ukraine to Nuuk in Greenland) grew up in this strange land, but that would be a story for another day again.

The Bishop knew the Westfjords. "When I was working with the Mitropol at Archangel, we always met traders who were from there." This was a real place and known throughout the Barentines for its fine dried meats and ivory. Nonetheless, we concluded that the story of the sea-dragons was deemed far too fantastic to be for anything beyond keeping the children happy.

Young Nikos, Chrysanthi's brother, was always anxious to steer the conversation to the real problems of the present day, namely the ongoing war between the north and south of Taimiria. He pitched this question to the storyteller: "Haji, you are always talking about things that happened long ago. What can you say about now? Does the North really stand a chance against the princes, who have been ordained by Christ?"

And the Haji drew a long sigh and replied: "In Ancient Armenia, the noble families sought to bolster their stature by claiming the most illustrious lineage that they could, even on the flimsiest evidence. The Bagratids claimed to be sons of King David, the Ardzrouni drew their family tree back to the Emperors of Assyria, and the Mamikonian spun the tale that they were the remnants of the great Han Dynasty of China. What is different now that the Prince of Toyogarov claims to be the saviour of Christianity? He is no more a Christian than the Mamikonians were Chinese."

"There is nothing that the man has not seen before!" exclaimed the people of Amatodate, and everyone was finally convinced of the Haji's sagacity.

Statue of St. Vartan Mamikonian in Yerevan, Armenia (Vladimer Shioshvili/Wikimedia Commons)

Notes
1) The geological history of Iceland (link to a quick overview) is re-told in the Haji's sea-monster story.
2) The story of Þormóður Kolbrúnarskáld Bessason of the Fóstbrœðra Saga, also recounted by Halldór Laxness in Wayward Heroes (1952), is the Haji's "story for another day".
3) Characters Chrysanthi and Nikos Simoglou were first introduced in Parmiakert.
4) The link between the Mamikonian family and the Chinese is explored in this article: Robert Bedrosian, China and the Chinese according to 5-13th Century Classical Armenian Sources. Armenian Review Vol. 34 No.1-133 (1981) pp. 17-24.
5) I have quietly decided that the Haji does not go by any given name, apart from his title.

The Flight of the Palace Women

Young Irannika learned that after a short few days when she felt an intense sense of novelty about the outside, the mysterious place of wonder which she had been told the most horrible things about, to keep her in, that the novelty had worn off — that each place had begun to look very similar to the last, even though Hutanonoyong always seemed confident telling apart one place from the other. She envied the elder woman, who was an expert in making herself at home, and to make Irannika her guest. How far has it been, since Irannika, in her palace, her courtesans, and her shimmering jewelery, was the host, and Olivia Hutanonoyong her humble serf?

It was said of the fabled country of Finland, far to the west, even more so than Archangel, where it was said was as far as you can reach before falling off the edge of the world, to the Void, to Hades, or to America, whichever the case might be — that it was called the land of a thousand lakes, that the lake Saimaa snaked across the landscape and made it more water than land, so that the city of Savonlinna, with no space left to expand, was forced to be built across it, and such a thing was heard of nowhere else in the ancient world. Here in Taimiria, from Toyogarovsk to the big lake in the north, the two passed gullies and spotted lakes, small enough to be called puddles but so numerous as to be mind-numbing, that at times Irannika suspected that they only keep going back to the same place, all over and over again.

The serf Hutanonoyong sensed her disengagement, and decided to change her approach. If she still had an inclination to shield the princess from the surrounding universe, she made sure to get rid of it. The flight of the palace women slowly developed into a trot, then a stroll, so that in a sea of undifferentiated green trees and shrubs details begin to spring to life before Irannika's eyes, a myriad of details, each with its own name.

A stream bursts its banks in a gully after a night of heavy rain, and the serf points at it, and spake thus: tashkin

A mother-fox crosses their path, and nearby a den of her young: chirigani

A hare which was spotted swimming across a swamp, which the women caught and ate, after much difficulty: tavshan

And Irannika beamed, because the Aunt had loved to entertain her with stories of the patron saint of pranksters, Tavshantachi, Brother Rabbit, whose adventures with Bear and Fox she enjoyed to no end. "It's just a pity now we have to eat him," Olivia said to her. Fortunately, he tasted good.

A bright, open meadow was the first place where Irannika saw her first olmanat. Irannika was raptured and assaulted with a jumble of emotions upon encountering the apple under the tree. Was this not what Jaromil had said to woo her with: that her face was as bright and supple as an apple? Such was a customary gift of compliment, a venerable tradition of genteel folk, but the girl had not stopped to think or wonder about what an olmanat actually looked like, found in the wild, whole and unpeeled!

She held it in her hand, perusing it intensely. As she pondered her marriage she began to look a little forlorn, as the apple stared, facelessly and innocently, back at her. After a while which seemed a little too long to Olivia, the princess budged at last, and solemnly took a bite out of OLMANAT, with the firm conviction that she was eating, in some way, a part of her own identity. And she wondered, as the aroma and the sourness began to hit her senses, if all these were just something else about herself, that she had not yet discovered?

Oh, wonderful thing, that you exist; that I feel you and taste you: that you are not only an idea carried to me upon the words of men!

And it came the dream of young Irannika, the image of a gully, like the ones they have passed innumerable times during their journey. Down by the creek a wheelchair lay on its side, abandoned, like the one that Aunt used, when she was dying of cancer. As in the nature of dreams, one sees with their mind's eye an image, and an entire lore stretches out behind it, plain and self-evident: Lady Ershebet fell into the gully, on her way to expire in Amatodate, whereupon the waters of the creek washed over her, and she was no longer dying, but had five years added to her life. After she came to she was amazed how well it fit in with her Aunt's actual story, and went on her way to the monastery with renewed vigour, following in her servant's lead.

Doan Brook, April 16, 2020

References

The Essential Chesterton, David W. Fagerberg, 2000

Br'er Rabbit, traditional Akan/Southern U.S. folk takes in various compilations

Trips with friends to Lohja and Nuuksio, Summer 2012
Map of Savonlinna

Batukhan

It was spring in the Griadines, in late May, when the harsh mistress of Winter finally beat her retreat, loosening her grip on nature and on people. This year the sky was exceptionally clear and the blossoms of the cherry tree more radiant than the usual, and birdsong re-emerged from hibernation in step with the new leaves. What was absent, however, were the people. Only Batukhan and his brothers in arms can be seen, resting under one such cherry tree. Thin wisps of smoke could be seen in the distance, behind one hill or another. These came from villages which they had set to flame.

The Griadines were never a populous country, being mountainous; during the centuries of  the Settlement of the North, these parts were eschewed in favour of more conducive plains to its north and south. This was the same for most of the Sultanate, which saw the Griadines neglected as an inaccessible backwater. The consequence of this was that when Musa passed by, clad in sackcloth and with a bale of firewood over his shoulders, he followed a trail slightly less overgrown than the ground to either side, and this trail just happened to pass close by Batukhan's cherry tree.

We are reminded, now, that Musa had been a brigand in times before he found his present vocation. Batukhan knew him intimately as a fierce rival, an enemy that besieged his own people. Musa was undeniably a villain, who relished reaping where he did not sow and eventually to get his way by brutal force. It was exactly this greed and avarice which lured him to the monastery at Amatodate, where he was trapped and almost burned to death by the fire he started himself. Batukhan, who had led his loyal brothers in valiant defense against his onslaughts, was gratified with his downfall when the news of his downfall had reached Shurikoi. Presently he was surprised that Musa was still up and about — he had assumed for some time that the scoundrel had died.

As the lumbering figure with the firewood drew closer, it became undeniable that the sackcloth-draped creature was Musa of Abisheganaden, the skullduggerering family of the Griadas. His build was formidable, to the effect that Batukhan regarded him as swollen and grotesque as a buffalo. His huge dark face was set contemptibly in a perpetual scowl, his eyes set to the distance, unfocused on anything in his immediate surroundings. His lips moved, as if in conversation with an unseen companion, but his words were not audible.

Batukhan and his men emerged from the shade, and spread themselves to block Musa's path. Musa did not respond, only stopped in his tracks, and waited for them to leave. His eyes still had the distant look, and his lips also moved. Batukhan led the verbal assault, jeering at him; for the Shurikoi had prevailed and the Abisheganaden had been vanquished in this feud, and the former now shines with pride, now undeniably the victors. Truly, they have proven to be the true heirs of Qashlik, qualified to trace their illustrious lineages to Manas, who kidnapped all his seventy-two wives, to Yermak, who conquered the entire continent of Russia, and to Mehmet, who stormed the gates of Constantinople and brought the most humiliating deaths upon his foes, men, women, or children, with all their progeny enslaved in perpetuity. What has Musa to show for after all this time?

Musa's lips had stopped moving as he listened to Batukhan's boasts. When Batukhan had finished, Musa's eyes were watching him. The blank scowl he had worn before became sorrowful and downcast, and he replied: "I am now Servant to the Slave."

"Where you, dear Batukhan, are now swelling to a stature of a King, while only just short of being royalty; I have gone to the most wretched swamps of the Griadas. I live on locusts and wild oats, and maggots are my sleeping companions. No riches have I kept in my long life as a bandit; as easily as I tear it off the arms of the weak, I lose them in the span of a moment."

"I coveted the treasures of Amatodate, the magical source of wealth in its crypts, from where the peaceful keepers of that sanctuary took all they needed to live, as soon as they wished it. Only when I killed them all and set their home ablaze, I realized what it was, and it burned me." And he began choking and retching on his own tears. "It burned me and I did not even have a voice to scream with, so much was my anguish."

"I was a murderer; I maimed and I raped and I stole, fearing the wrath of no deity. I have wronged you and many others. I am fearful even to ask for forgiveness."

Batukhan did not seem gratified with this response. He later reflected that he had expected and hoped Musa to hold his own, to respond in kind, to throw an insult in retaliation, or an impotent curse, if just to amuse his company. He was disappointed that the man he once regarded as a formidable enemy has come through as wretched as a mealworm. He felt in some sense that Musa's act had diminished his achievements as leader of his militia. In view of this it made sense that Batukhan's immediate reaction was disgust, and he set his men to rain punches and kicks upon Musa, scattering his firewood, as what they would have done to any unlucky vagrant who dared stray too near to them.

When they came to disrobe him, however, they realized that Musa Abisheganaden's body was riddled with pockmarks and welts, as if four plagues had passed through him from his time serving the poor. At the same time, his bare body released a waft so pungent that the proud men of Shurikoi then decided that it was beneath their gallant duties even to trample this bandit into the ground, and left in haste, leaving him writhing on the ground in pain.

Fr. Damien de Veuster (St. Damien of Molokai)
Arterra Image Library

Shrove Parade

I shall always remember my encounter of a man on the day of the Shrove Parade. His name and the specific location both escape my memory, the meeting being of a primarily traumatic nature that I would rather forget. I had wound up in his house for some trivial matter. He was tall, well-built, with an air of detached self-confidence characteristic of someone who has come far in life, but has reached the peak of his achievements and now concerning himself only with enjoying its fruits. To his credit, he had treated me graciously when I first met him, up to the point we were revealing more and more to each other, and he inquired me of the method by which I came to his place in the first place.

"How long did it take for you to come here?" asked he.
"It must have taken me two hours," I replied, after some mental calculation.
"Two hours?" the man laughed. "but you live Downtown; it does not take more than twenty minutes to drive here." He peered at me quizzically.
"Oh, I didn't drive here. I took the bus."

My host's mouth went agape in disbelief; the revelation had took him by surprise.
"Why? What happened to your car?"

Now, it was my turn to be surprised.
"I... I don't own a car," I stuttered. "I thought you knew."

The man did not say another word for a long time; perhaps too long. The faintest shadows of geniality faded from the corners of his mouth, and his well-mannered gaze turned sharp and inquisitorial, like a pair of screws... or two pins a lepidopterist uses to pin a live butterfly to a corkboard, a butterfly which he does not particularly like.

I froze where I stood, pinned to a spot, as the silence stretched out to an uncomfortable length. Finally I broke the silence, lamely, explaining:
"Buses around here come to a stop once every hour. I changed a bus at Eastgate, the second one took fifty-five minutes to pick me up, which was why—"
"Rabble!" he snapped abruptly. "Commoner! How did you end up here?"

"You invited!" I exclaimed, and ducked as a vase flew through the space where my head had been a fraction of a moment ago. The porcelain shattered above me, drenching me with water and showering me with ceramic shards. I scrambled back up to my feet among the shards, and saw that a baseball bat had materialized in his hands. I knew right then that I had to bolt. I took cover under the baby grand piano, whereupon the bat was brought down upon the keyboard with all its wielder's might. It made a cacophonous sound, betraying the fact that the piano was neither just-tempered, nor well-tempered, but left out of tune for a long time. Its owner, it turned out, had only bought it for want of an ornament to grace the living room, rather than to use it as a musical instrument.

"You are one of the bad guys, aren't you?" interrogated the man. "Are you here to steal my property?"
"No, I'm not!" I protested.
"Did you come here to steal my property!" He repeated, more loudly this time, in a way that made clear that he did not mean to ask a question.

One of the wires of the piano snapped, erupting through the wooden panel and whipping me painfully across my cheek. I decided not to be demolished among with the poor Steinway, and made a run for it for the back door through the pantry. I glanced behind me and the man was following behind me with a bow and a quiver of arrows. With difficulty he drew his bow, with an arrow loaded, and attempted to skewer me through with it. He was not very good, however, and the arrow whizzed through a carton of cloudy apple cider on the top shelf, far above me. It exploded promptly, and I was inundated with the sweet and sticky substance, the finest produce of Ohio. Another arrow fired, and a bag of flour was upended on me. I caught a glimpse of myself in the puddle, but I couldn't recognize myself anymore, being covered head to toe with congealed flour.

Unable to ensure my demise swiftly, the man of the house turned bright crimson in the face with frustration. He threw down the bow and quiver of arrows and began whinnying like a horse, and then he retreated to the depths of the house. I grabbed hold of the doorknob at the back door and realized with dismay that it was locked, and in my state of panic I had forgotten how to unlock a door from the inside. I ran the other way, to the front, taking advantage of the fact that the man had disappeared, and hopefully had given up for the time being. But as soon as I reached the front door, he re-materialized again with a shotgun in his hand. The gun had a casing colored a jocular purple, and it was hard to tell, at first, if it was a toy gun or a weapon in totally good faith. But he took aim at me and fired it, and the shot tore a hole into the wall next to me. Squealing pathetically in fear for my life, I bashed my way through a Christmas tree, its decorations still on, and took cover behind the television set.

"I worked hard for my stuff!" he snarled.
"I don't dispute that!" I yelled back at him.

He fired again, putting a hole into a corner of the flat-screen monitor, and he neighed and whinnied again in rage, having destroyed his only source of cable news. He would have to pay a not trivial sum to buy another one in its place, and to be able to follow the trends of national politics again. I noticed to my delight that his first shot had also taken out the lock to the front door, which now hung ajar. I clawed myself out again through the Christmas tree, took down three canvas panels with the words "Live", "Laugh", and "Love" emblazoned on each one, and threw it at his face, one after the other, hoping to distract him. Then I flung the front door wide open and sprinted out, dragging with me a motherload of pine needles, decorative bobbles, gold-colored plastic stars, and string lights stuck to the floury goop on my body.

I found myself out in the neighborhood's main boulevard, verdantly furnished, with great and ancient trees lining both sides of a two-lane road, dark and cool and graced by little shafts of sun peeping through holes in the foliage. A peaceful place, where nothing untoward ever happens— save for a hapless newcomer, who had committed the unpardonable crimes of poverty and trespassing, and therefore must be brought to justice by its resident libertarian vigilante. I ran fast as I could on the road, which thankfully saw little traffic. My erstwhile host ran behind me, some distance away. I was lucky to have a quite ample head-start, and he still had his plush slippers on, and kept felling further and further back.

I ran past the neighborhood church, a squat, rectangular building knocked together with red bricks. The sign in front of the church stood out to me in that instant, because the Bible quote, spelled out with big black letters on a white background, seemed especially relevant. Turning to my pursuer, who was still far enough away, I pointed at the sign and shouted, quoting:
"You Will Always Have The Poor Among You! (Jn 12:8a, NIV)"

This appeared to give him some pause, but after a moment of thought, he retorted with a quote of his own:
"Whosoever Hath Not, From Him Shall Be Taken Away Even That He Hath! (Mt 13:12b, KJV)"

I was at my wit's end. "How Blessed Are The Poor In Spirit! (Mt 5:3a, NJB)", I wailed, and was back on my way. "All This I Will Give You," I could hear him say, increasingly distant. "If You Kneel Down And Worship Me! (Mt 4:9, Good News Translation)"

The boulevard ended in a T-junction, where the main road of the city lies. I will go there and be safe at last, I thought to myself. But, for many an agonizing minute, my flight did not seem to bring me any closer to safety. It seemed to me that this suburban road warped one's sense of time and space; the more I ran, the further the main road seemed to be. All around me, the plots of land the houses were built on grew vaster and vaster in size, and the distance between them stretched out and became so great, that I began to doubt that I would make it to the next house at all.

After an agonizing and interminable stretch of time, I reached the main road at last. In stark contrast to the boulevard, the houses here were built of wood instead of brick and stone. I realized as soon as I stepped in that this was what they considered to be a bad part of town, where criminality reigned; and where skulduggery, misery, and violent death held their vice-like grip on the populace, who were in any case not all angels here. The foliage which graced the boulevard with splendid shade no longer covered me on the main road, but a harsh daylight filled every nook and cranny of the sidewalk and of the shophouses.

Presently, a procession came marching down the great road. First came a cheerleaders' troupe, a team of thirty or so girls dancing and chanting to the sound of drums, and a banner announced the name of the local parish school where they went. Next came a truck which had a fitted snow-blade up in front of its bumper, but a banner was draped over the snow-blade, explaining to me that a special, annual yearly festival to chase away winter and welcome spring was in progress. Then after that came a second pick-up truck. The cargo bed of the second truck was loaded with cuboid bales of hay, and a band of musicians, decked in exotic national costumes of a distant country, were perched on them. Among them were a trombonist, a tubist, a double bassist, and two accordionists who swayed and played a cheery tune in almost perfectly-coordinated unison. Then came a third truck, carrying as cargo a team of college-age youths in grey t-shirts and wearing traffic cones as headgear, whose prime task was to reach into their satchels and throw candy at the crowd of onlookers, who cheered them ecstatically and welcomed every salvo of twinkies delivered.

Behind this third truck was a group which traveled on foot, comprising several families, young children, their parents, even some elderly folk. They were dressed atrociously in the most absurd fashion imaginable. One boy was dressed as a chocolate cake. That or a chimney sweep, it was hard to tell. He wore a big black foam cylinder on his head, with feathers stuck on top; he had put dirt on his face and carried a pair of huge black tongs with him. Another one, a bearded man, wore a suit which made him look as if he had been covered with post-it notes. Yet others came with ribbons draped all over them, or wore colorful masks in white, blue, and red. A grumpy old greybeard walked alongside them, a little to close to the crowds. He bumped into me, and with a start I moved aside, inadvertently landing right into the middle of the costumed throng.

At first I panicked, and looked for a way out, but after walking a short way with them, and thinking my situation through, I figured that being here provided me much-needed cover from the armed madman pursuing me, and he might just figure that I was no more a threat to his safety and go home. I finally began to relax, even dancing a little to the accordions and to the brass band. A young mother in costume, pushing a stroller with her toddler child, who was also in costume, called out to me and gave complements to my get-up. It was then that I realized that I had come dressed fit for the occasion unintentionally; I was caked from top to bottom in flour and cloudy apple cider; I was adorned all over with porcelain shards, pine needles, and Christmas tree decorations. In this disreputable neighborhood, among these goofy strangers, I could fit right in!

One young lady opened a can of India Pale Ale, pushed them into my hand, and disappeared among the spectators. I tried to find her to thank her, but it was in vain. Instead, I caught the eye of a rotund, ruddy-faced, smiling man on the back of the third pick-up truck, sitting at the foot of the candy-throwers on a bale of hay. I saw that he, too, held a similar can in his hand. The man rotated serenely about his axis, his entire frame beaming with peace and joy, like some majestic old planet of the solar system, until he faced me directly. Then he raised up his ale in my direction.
"Na zdravje," he toasted.
"Na zdrowie," I croaked in reply, weakly.

What had happened to my pursuer, the rich man, who only wanted to safeguard his turf from marauding villains? He was barely visible from where I am now. He had not come as far as to chase me through the parade. Instead he had stopped where the leafy cover of the boulevard ended, just the main road. He had refused to step into the "bad part of town" for even an inch. At first I thought he was screaming in frustration that an intruder had been allowed to go free, but later it seemed to me more likely that he was burned by the bright sunlight from the clear skies. If he did so much as stick out his hand beyond the shade, the harshness of the light seared his pale skin, turning it a painful, angry red. From time to time I looked over my shoulders to watch the man, lonely in his impotent rage, until finally he shrunk down to a tiny, faraway speck, a most inconsequential blemish on the face of the city.

Cleveland, February 22, 2020

References:
1. Cleveland Kurentovanje (Slovenian Mardi Gras),
February 22, 2020, St. Vitus Church and St. Clair Avenue

2. TEDx Talk by Rich Cochrane: "Thriving cities ... are trees the answer?".
Cleveland State University, 2015

3. The Great Divorce, novel by Clive Staples Lewis (1945)

4. Devil on the Cross, novel by by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (1980)