One like a broken king

Lost in the myths of time

Two men encountered each other on a dusty trail between two mountains. It was a narrow glen of sand and sharp flint with the blaze of noon above them.

Let me pass, said the older man. I am distinct and distinguished. Once I conversed with oracular sphinxes to expose beast mendacities and their womanly jive. I grappled with the cyclops before I thrust a flaming spike into his only eye. I am wrecker royalty, walking the earth in penance for sins I daren't name. I am your father.

Indeed you are not my father, said the younger. I was sired by a man of clay that sprang out of dirt and I was whelped by hyena bitches. I dragged my clubfoot across dry screes and contested with jackals for bone marrow. I've the boundless hunger of the dispossessed, and am more perilous than you can know. Let me pass.

Only these two knew alone to what extent their boasts were vain, or were spoken in truth. There was a narrow space both to left and right in which to pass, but each man considered the central way only to be rightful to his proud blood. And so their quarrel continued in the unpardoning heat at that place at the head of the pass.

Let me pass, said the older. I have houris and concubines who await my arrival hourly. Their soft thighs twitch with every thought of my coming.

Soft women are a weakness, dotard, said the younger. I spit into my palm, and that is my only love. I depend on none and so I’m hard as silex. Let me pass.

Such was the impasse. Such the terms of the dispute.

A lizard spoke up. It was the trickster god Uyllrik, come to mediate between these stubborn dullards in the way such gods work things of this nature.

I hear your dispute, said the lizard. From both I hear wise words spoken before me, yet there is no easy reckoning to reconcile them. I propose a way.

Speak, slitherer, said the older man. I trust not the wiles of scaly speechifiers, but see no way else, other than to crack this blatherer's skull for his sassiness.

Speak, crawler, said the younger man. If your notions offer no consensus, it is this ancient oaf's barren pate must be split asunder for propounding a bluster empty as his wispy skull.

Here’s what I propose, said the lizard. I feel that the tetchiness of both is down to your wearied state. Why don't we all lie down here to sleep? When we are well-rested, we will be better able to resolve this matter.

So the men lay down where they stood in the road under the burning blaze of noon, and settled their heads on stony pillows. At once they were dreaming, their exposed skins turning to bright pink and then to blistering bubbles as the drool baked on the corners of their mouths.

The lizard spoke into the old man's ear and whispered his way into his dreams. While the old man wandered through cool palaces of green marble, the lizard walked beside him and was a plump dancing girl, voluptuous but with a flickering bifurcated tongue. Fountains played in cool courtyards as they conversed.

The young one looks to take all you own, said the lizard-dancer. To take all your riches and your hard-won honor. Does this sit well with you?

No, said the dream-man, groping now at the girl's fleshy buttocks. In my land there is an iron law: All I want I have, all I have I want. That must remain so.

Until you die?

I shall never die, averred the old man. And since he existed within a dream, who's to say it's not true?

Simple, then, said the girl, fending off the old man's advances. She slapped away his pushy fingers and flickered her flamelike tongue at him. Listen to me now, she said. Put away your gropage and your frottage, and heed me.

When the old man was again at peace and was listening, she continued, and it was the trickster's lizardy voice that spoke:

When the impertinent wretch challenges you, call on the little reptile and say: Lizard, make me an ocean! Make me a great sea that I might drown my foe in it! Then push the young man into the water. He will be submerged in the deepest slimy depths where lobsters eat his eyes.

It shall be done, said the old man. Now come with me to the divan, wench, that I might put my wizened member in you.

But it was too late for such things. The dreampalace shrank all around him, and the old man was awake once again, his head on a rocky pillow and his blistered head sore in the afternoon. He thirsted but he had no water to drink.

In front of him, the younger man was rising and stretching. He was also sunburnt, but he'd placed his loincloth over his face, so though his loins were raw and pink, his face was preserved in its fine pale tenderness and bright blond stubble. He was evidently wise beyond his years.

So, old man, said the younger. Are you ready to stand out of my path and let me continue on my way?

A bollock on ye, inconsiderable thing! said the elder. I'll squish you like a shithouse rat!

And he looked round himself for the lizard as the younger man squared up with fists like twin hammers ready to pound his father's face to coagulate of pap.

Lizard! he cried. Make me a vast ocean that I might drown in it this vexatious squit my son! It’s no more than I should have done when he slithered unwanted from the vixenish womb of his bitch mother!

An ocean of what? inquired the trickster lizard. An ocean of fire or an ocean of air like the airy sky above us?

Bigod, an ocean of water! said the old man. Such as you promised me when you were a curvy courtesan a-slinking and a-shimmying in my cool green palace of dreams.

That was not I, lied the god. Meanwhile the first blows rained on the old man's head and raised ruby welts to set alongside the pustulent white blisters of his scorching. It was my evil sister, the iguana goddess of lechery and temptation Ouradni. It is her constant whim to trap weak men in the claws of her concupiscence and squeeze them dry in her false promises and their despair.

Then make me an ocean of fire! screamed the old man, weakly fending off the younger man's punches as they hammered on his thin skull. Make me a river of fire that I might consume him in its flames and be rid of the curse of such malicious progeny forever!

A whoosh and a hot gale betokened that this wish had come to pass. But the lake of fire had opened up at the old man's back, not, as he had hoped, in front of himself and behind his opponent.

He was lost. He hesitated as the old are prone to do when things are unexpected. With a triumphant cry and a simple shove, the younger man pushed the elder into the great inferno.

Flesh scorched by the sun now seared in the flame. The small suffering the old man had at the sunburn and the few hard blows now expanded into a full universe of agony. Entire lifetimes of torment were heaped up in this instant and he knew true pain then.

The younger man looked on at the crisping and crackling figure as he waved his arms feebly and then kneeled in his own dark ashes amid the fire. He felt the humming satisfaction of knowing that the old man would suffer this fate forever and ever.

Smiling, not thinking of his days to come, forgetting that when his blond beard was turned gray and his lush head of hair gone away to a wisp, his time would come then also. When his strong arms were but twigs, while his arrogance still towered like monsters, at that time his moment in the furnace would be upon him too.

So, said the lizard, the trickster god Uyllrik, who was also the goddess of temptation Ouradni. So hero, again they said, speaking in twinned reptile tongues. Will you keep to your bargain forever? You and your kin, all your descendants from now until the end of all days?

Aye, said the young man. As long as I might gain the rule of the world, trickster, I yield all to you now and perpetually. Other gods may come and go, but they will be mere shams — tinkle-tankle potemkin saints and plasterboard demiurges. You, dear lizard, will be my secret god, and you, my iguana love, the goddess to rule over my desires.

Now, both of you, take me by my arms and escort me to where my mother lies. She's waiting for me among her whelps and licking her lips at my approach.

I have a great task to complete there.

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==== MEETING WITH ONE LIKE A BROKEN KING /// END ====

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That’s the hatred that kills you. There’ll be more of it, so deep and thick there will always be some left, enough to go around… It will ooze out over the earth and poison it, so nothing will grow but viciousness, among the dead, among men.

Louis-Ferdinand Céline

Do not let me hear
Of the wisdom of old men, but rather of their folly,
Their fear of fear and frenzy, their fear of possession,
Of belonging to another, or to others, or to god.
The only wisdom we can hope to acquire
Is the wisdom of humility: humility is endless.

T.S. Eliot

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