Nanowrimo - 7

I never actually saw Zoltan die. For years he tutored me, or attempted to do so, while I lurched through the long adolescence of the undead.

“Once born!” I can almost hear him correct me.

Over decades he perished slowly, withering imperceptibly each day until the cumulative effects of not drinking compounded and he declined with an amazing alacrity. At last his skin was like parchment paper and his spine stooped. His voice had a thin gravelly sound to it as if he were at once speaking with the voice of a man and of a child. By then I don’t think he would have had the strength to feed if he did possess the inclination. Succumbing to the urge alone could have torn him to pieces from the inside out.

I was following something I didn’t yet understand as my feet first hit French soil. On the continent kings were shuffling alliances and treaties like playing cards while people, masses of people, suffered from incredible famine. Gaunt and angry they worked fields only to give up large sums in taxes. Another deliberately disgusting system aimed at systematically weakening those who, with a little more strength, might rise in rebellion. The French I learned at the hands of British tutors served me well enough at the drawing tables and in the parlors of London. But here in the land of native speakers who did not necessarily enjoy the formal instructions in grammar of my own experience, I could not make myself understood. My gold, however, did well to make itself perfectly clear.

At first I have trouble believing that this was really such a brilliant idea. Roads and bridges lie in disrepair where they exist at all. Just getting to Paris requires me to pay several carriages and wagons that each in turn carry me past both chalets and fields of poor workers. Some eye me hungrily. I have difficulty sleeping when the opportunity presents itself. I feel as if my mind is crowded with the voices of other people. I hear whispers around me but see no one. Some sense this cloud of presence and hold back where otherwise they might want to closer inspect me as a mark. Horses whinny and pull away. They seem to run a little faster with me in the wagon riding right behind their tails.

I haven’t taken a proper toilette in weeks and exude and absolutely fetid smell which none seem to notice. Why Paris? The closer we get to the city the worse the condition seem. And once I get there, where do I go? But something pushes me on toward that place and the whispers in my ear grow louder with our approach. My final entry is made via a wagon loaded with grain. The dirty little man at the reins asks where I’d like to be dropped off. I do hate it when he speaks to me. His teeth are rotted clean out of his head and when he opens his mouth the most putrid smell emerges. Where do I want to be let off? We’re here? From the sea of fields arises the city before us, packed full of wood and stone, chimneys and fires that send spindles of smoke into the sky, and so many bodies that I can smell the place from here.

Where? I know nothing of the city. That was the first time I felt my voice being used, as if by another self that lived inside of me untethered to the brain I typically employ while thinking.

“Ile de France.”

“Right in the middle? By the Notre Dame?”

“Oui. En face de Notre Dame.”

This is probably the only feature of this city I had ever heard about from those ladies fortunate enough to have traveled to Paris. I alight the wagon onto the grey cobble stones. It is dusk and a wet chill already hangs in the air. Before me the gothic cathedral rises into the sky, it’s façade tinted blood red by the setting sun. At first I merely there to steady myself. The bumpy wagon ride has left my limbs jittery and my stomach weak. After regarding my feet whilst gaining some stability, I am able to look up at her great west-facing wall again. It rises like a giant hand held in the air, bidding me to stop. Travel no further. I move in closer to inspect the details, angels and gargoyles, rosettes and saints whose stony presence marches over each surface. Around every window, above every door the edifice teems with activity. The sun’s light fades fast and I watch the faces cool from bright red to purple and finally a dim blue. It is night and I am alone in this city.

Quiet at first, I could mistake the urge for a vapor, then perhaps a mild headache. But all at once it is over me, in me. I have the sense of having fallen down a deep chasm in the landscape of my soul into a place I do not normally inhabit. I grow hot, my senses are alive to every slightest smell and sound. I see the world from the beast within, with a mind ineluctable and impenetrable by the words of rational thought.

Sniffing the air I can filter out the strains of smells coming to me. Animal excrement, urine, the Seine, cooking pot of stew, I sift through until I hit upon the one note which really makes my blood hot with excitement. Fresh meat, so fresh that blood still beats through its veins, lies nearby. The scent pulls me with its promise to fill an unstoppable hunger. Finding it promises food. It promises relief from this merciless animal craving. Where is it?

I follow the strain of that smell past homes filled with people in each other’s company, past huddled groups, over the bridge and onto the dwellings upon the south bank. Like a red chord, pulling me, guiding me through the encroaching dark it twists around corners, down steps, up narrow streets until at long last it stops.

“jingle jingle” says the rattling of a cup. “Help the poor! Help an old man!” a weak voice calls from the darkened street. I come upon him, elderly and crouched by a gutter running with filth. As I approach he first notices my skirts. Then his tired, nearly blind eyes gradually roll upward, taking in my person and stopping at my face.

“What’s a lady like you doing here?” Is the first thing he asks.

“Why, I was merely passing this way!”

He holds his little cup up toward me. “Help a poor old man, ma dame?”

“You seem to be in dire straits indeed.” I bend down a bit to look him over. He’s a bit thin, possibly ill. “What could I possibly do that would be of assistance?”

“Have mercy on an old man, ma dame!” he raises his cup.

My teeth have pricked through and are ready. They hurt with anticipation. I take his chin in my hand and lift it to me. Bending down to put my face near his I discern his thin features with skin stretched taught over bones through the dark air. Milky eyes strain to see forms in the dim light.

“Here is your mercy!” And with that, the beast is loose.

In a few minutes his pale form is lifeless on the stones. Weak and old, it doesn’t take long before he is spent. This man has no people, no one to watch over him, no one to miss him. Street dogs will make fast work of whatever I leave behind. As I beat a hasty retreat the effects of the feed well up. It’s a heady elation, a lightening of self and the sense of having been popped out of a dark cave and pushed up into the clouds. Strong and free.

“Well done, little girl!”

A voice heard with something beyond the naked ears gives me a start.

“This way! Over here!” and thus came Zoltan into my life.
Every week there are more faces in the benches, more trucks in the lot. This is why the board of directors dislikes me. I’m attracting in those people that they believe are the wrong kind. UU is a place for those who seek, they insist. It is for those who wish to develop a depth and weight to their beliefs and who are always open to having their way of thinking changed. These people they are seeing? These renegades from the Catholic or Baptist churches? These are deemed not to be seekers at all. They would like to find. They want to feel good in their spirituality, like it’s a warm blanket. Some want to seek for all eternity. Some just want to burst out of spiritual obscurity yelling “ollie ollie oxenfree!” and be found by a loving heavenly parent. And that’s my problem, they say. I’m too much about love and not enough about principle. You can call it candy coating (they do). I call it choosing to go to heaven instead of choosing to go to a lecture about heaven.

But I think their problem with the swelling ranks is that this new lot are not so familiar with tithing. I was told by someone much wiser (and who, unlike my board of directors, was not merely acting out their family bullshit in the congregational forum) that if living by principle has stolen away the loving god in the sky who inspired you, well just put him right back!

One board member tried reproving me by making a poor manipulation of Emerson’s words. Fool! I knew Emerson, Emerson was a friend of mine and you, sir do not know your Emerson! But then how to explain that you were taught at the feet of a great minister when that minister is over a century dead?

“I’d love to tell you that God was all sweetness and light, the eternal doting parent in the sky, but that would simply not be true.” I look out over the room of inquisitive faces. “God’s love can feel quite fierce. Any of you who have toiled with guiding a child or teenager toward what you think is best for them know what I’m talking about, don’t you? How about some of my twelve-steppers out there? Didn’t the road to your grace and freedom lead straight down Hell’s Main street?” I get some chuckles. “Oh I know, we don’t believe in hell, but we’ll get to that later.”

“Here, let me demonstrate what I’m talking about here.” I head over to the piano normally employed by the sound director (not calling it music) and sit to play a tune. From the corner of my eye I notice the regular pianist sit up a bit in her chair with panic. Relax lady, I’ve been playing these things since Beethoven was in diapers. In fact, I think I will play some Beethoven.

“So, I’m just going to do an audio illustration of what I mean. Now here is your life with no god, or when you’re not prayed up, or it’s Monday morning and everything just feels like rolling a rock up a hill.” I play out only the left hand of a melody. “And it’s heavy. It’s the sound of never getting what we want, of frustration. Now, we come to church on Sunday, we get all prayed up, we sing, we see all of our friends, and we really feel that glow of the love of God in us.” I play just the right hand of the melody. “It’s beautiful, but it’s a little on the light side. Cute tune, but a bit flimsy. It’s not really the complete melody. Where we want to be is here.” I play both hands together, the heavy and the light balancing out, I extend the melody to the end of its phrase. “This is living in the middle, balancing the god within us with the chaos manifesting before us. And while we would like the high of Sunday to last all week and I do know that some of you are quite good at kicking yourselves when it wears off by Tuesday, that’s just not where the real work of God in our life is done. God is in the mix, in the dirt, in the spilled milk, dirty diapers, car accident and fool cashier at the grocery store who put a watermelon on top of your eggs and busted the lot!” I pause for the wave of chuckles. Fingers still play Beethoven, but a bit more softly. “It was the Buddha who said that we are like potatoes pulled from the dirt and put into the bucket of water together. It is not the water that cleans off the soil. It is as we bump into and rub against each other that we wash each other, removing the dirt and revealing ourselves.”