Idolatry
Round 1, Match 4: BSF vs. Piratecat
I had no food or drink, so as I walked I chewed on my own little collection of miseries. They tasted bitter: thirst, sore back, sore feet, the gnawing spike of resentful guilt, and the acid taste of panic in my mouth. I needed a drink. I kept walking. I had little other choice. It was getting dark.
I’d left Alicja that afternoon when we argued. I stamped away from the car that she had pulled to the side of the road when she started to cry. She stood there with both hands on the door frame, words sharp as knives and cutting just as painfully, face twisted in an unattractive mixture of sorrow and anger, ordering me to come and
discuss it instead of acting like an infant. I had been too furious to look back. I could feel the weight of disapproving parents and grandparents and relatives unknown sitting on my shoulders, anchoring me to ancient laws. I left Alicja behind me on the roadside and I walked away up a path that paralleled the road. I guessed it was less than fifteen kilometers to Kuzmina, and I could easily walk it. I heard her call once, then silence, and finally the distinctive sound of her car engine as it sped up the road.
I had almost turned back before I heard the car. Now I glowered and turned and kept going. I felt less self-righteous three hours later when it started to rain. I was lost.
I’m not entirely sure where my internal compass failed me. I’m sure I was self-involved enough to have missed a trail. When I topped a ridge and didn’t recognize the narrow valley stretching out before me, I swallowed my pride and back-tracked – and an hour later I still didn’t recognize where I was. By now I knew I had been foolish, but my pride prevented me from admitting defeat. The rain had stopped and it was a warm evening in the Carpathian foothills, so I certainly wasn’t worried about freezing. I was following a clear trail. I kept going.
Dusk fell, and the temperature with it.
Time to rest. I crumpled against a tree and put my head back, feeling the rough bark on the back on my neck. The birds were quieting now, but the meadows still smelled of summer. I clenched moss between my fingertips. Alicja wasn’t budging, and I could feel our love tottering – precariously balanced, slowly wobbling, and tipping under the counterweight of her false Gods. She didn’t have as much to lose as I did. She didn’t have to fear --
I pushed myself to my feet and kept moving. My good leather shoes were starting to raise blisters, but I knew sitting still meant getting cold.
Moving more slowly in the gloaming, I came out on a ridge overlooking another valley. Evening frogs were croaking somewhere in a swamp down the hill. Was that a road down there? Yes! And farther away, a light. Several lights. A town. Kuzmina? I didn’t think so, but they’d have a tavern with a phone. I’d call Alicja…
The blazes I would.
But I’d call a car service, or find someone to ferry me home. I suddenly realized how thirsty I was. I started down the hill, striding past the burbling of hidden frogs, moving cautiously through swampy turf to find a clear path. I kept moving, far too slowly for my impatience. Some time after midnight I hit the road. The town was farther than I would have guessed. By two in the morning I reached car-lined streets of cobblestone as old as the houses that lined them. The houses were dark. I could hear noise from somewhere – the sound of men laughing, and music.
The grumbling roar of heavy machinery led me to turn a corner, and far ahead of me I saw a bright yellow bulldozer pull away from a cheering, dispersing crowd. Someone yelled something that drew a bawdy laugh. A snippet of song, more shouted well wishes, and the small crowd began to disperse. I saw the growling bulldozer roaring towards me and to my astonishment the bulldozer’s lifted scoop had a bride and groom sitting in it, heads thrown back and faces suffused by joy. The bride’s white dress seemed to glow in the lamplight. I raised my hand and my voice, starting to ask for help, and then they were past me, laughing and waving. The bulldozer turned a corner and its roar faded in the narrow streets.
My thirst kicked in my throat like a wild beast.
They must have come out of a pub. I wearily tramped the remaining blocks up to where I had seen the crowd of people. The building was tall, black in the pale light, arched windows indicating an architectural style unusual for southern Poland. I looked up at the hanging sign. It said that the tavern was named The Quiet Pool. My heart sank when I saw that the “closed” sign was hanging on the door; the barman must have locked up as the last people left.
But maybe not? I knocked on the door, hesitatingly at first, then more loudly. I gathered my courage and tried the latch. It opened easily. The interior smelled old, very old, and damp – but not moldy or bad. I caught the scent of incense and horse. It caught me off guard.
“Hello?” The interior was dark other than a gentle light behind the bar. An oil lantern, wick turned low. It hung above a blue silk cloth that lined an empty niche in the wall.
“We’re closed, you know.” The voice came out of the dark. It was a resonant voice, female, but not from the kind of giggling women who trade tips on makeup and clothes. This voice didn’t giggle. It was the sort of voice could shake hospital walls during labor, that could call farm animals from the far end of fields. It carried the knowledge of pain within a rasp of smoke and liquor.
“I know, I saw, but I saw everyone leaving and I…” the words all flew out in a rush. “I had a row with my girlfriend and I got lost finding Kuzmina and I haven’t had anything to eat or drink since lunch. Please. I need someplace to rest, and something to drink.”
She was slow to respond. “Many people were just here. There was a wedding. Perhaps you saw.” She sounded amused, there in the darkness, but there was something else. Something formal. “You have asked for sanctuary in the same breath that you’ve asked for drink? How can I say no? I grant it, boy. Sit. Join me. This is a place where your thirst will be eased.”
I closed my eyes for half a second in silent thanks, and tottered to a chair. Her own bench scraped backwards, and she stepped to the bar. I watched her. Thin grey hair pulled back, a round face, Asian and ageless. She was very fat in her dull green cardigan sweater. My thirst scratched inside me, an angry rat trying to claw through a wall, but the first sip of beer washed it all away. No drink has ever tasted better than the one she handed me.
She sat, and her voice was proud. “I am Kopça, and you are in the Quiet Pool, my own little temple of drink. This has been my tavern for a long time. You saw the bulldozer?”
“I did. What is up with that?”
She sounded amused. “It is an ancient custom dating back a thousand years. The Mongol horsemen would ride their mounts in and swoop up their intended brides before the bride’s family could stop them. Later, after the marriage was consummated, the horseman’s brothers would gallop the couple around the camp as quickly as they could. It was meant to ensure that the baby would quicken in her. Some customs continue, even if the meaning has been forgotten.
For horses we have bulldozers.” She shrugged, her worn hands expressive. “Things change.”
I wrinkled my brow and chuckled uneasily. “But those were proper Poles I saw, not Mongols. The groom must have had a friend who owned a bulldozer.”
“Of course he did. But just because they are proper Poles does not mean they have no Mongol blood. Ogedai Khan reached Poland in 1241. Surely you don’t think they came all this way without leaving something behind as well?” She chuckled deep in her throat. “Tradition is important, as are rituals. In religion and in life.”
It all came crashing back, and I sighed. Her eyes caught the light as she tilted her head. She had seen my expression. “But there is a story in why you are here.” I nodded reluctantly. “Then you will tell me. It is the offering and the exchange.”
I blinked. The beer was already half gone. “I’m sorry. The what?”
She smiled with her small round mouth. “Tradition is important. We will exchange stories. First you will tell me why you are here, and why you have fought.”
“My girlfriend,” I said, and I licked the foam off the inside of the glass. She fetched another pint and pushed it towards me. “I want to ask her to marry me, but we have a… problem.”
She watched me in silence. I felt awkward, exposed.
“What do you think of churches?” she asked abruptly.
My brow furrowed. How did she know? “I was raised in one.”
“So was I,” she said, “but surely in a different way. How are you of the church?”
“I’m orthodox. Really orthodox. My father is a Pastor. Our branch of the church makes, well,” I forced it out, “makes most conservative churches look like athiests. That’s the problem. We try to obey the old laws. I was raised to know what the one true God demands of me. I
know the punishments if I fail. I don’t believe in blasphemy, or heretical worship, or the worship of false idols. And she does.”
She gave a croaking laugh. “False idols.” Her voice fell flat. “Of course. Deuteronomy 11:17?”
I lifted my eyebrows in surprise. “You know it?” She started, and we finished it together, her voice suddenly loud in the small space.
“And ye turn aside and serve other gods and worship them, and then the Lord’s wrath be kindled against you, and he shut up the heaven, that there be no rain, and that the land yield not her fruit!”
And as she spoke I was gone from the bar. I was in a dank room in a seeping dungeon, and I could feel the weight of a castle above me, and the endless drag of years. It terrified me. The impression only lasted a second, but it left me shaking.
The room fell silent other than the burble of her breath. “What was that?” I asked. The taste of panic was back.
“History,” she said. “Ignore it.” And oddly enough, I did. “What is the other line about idols? Do you remember it?”
I instinctively quoted from chapter 29.
“Ye have seen their abominations, and their idols, wood and stone, silver and gold.”
“They forgot ceramic,” she said dryly.
“I’m sorry?” I asked.
“Nothing. How does this involve your girlfriend?” She settled back into the shadow, and I could hear her sip her drink.
“My girlfriend is a Wiccan,” I said. I pinched the bridge of my nose in embarrassment. “She worships.. I don’t even know. False idols. Trees, nature, the moon, some Goddess, the seasons, I have no idea. Their traditions are bizarre. She’s a heathen.
I don’t think she’s a heathen, I mean, but everything I’ve ever been taught insists that she speaks blasphemy, and if I marry her I’ll be ex-communicated.” I hunched over my beer, miserable, taking a long pull. “I don’t know what to do. There are no other Gods. I wish she’d understand that.”
The room fell silent. She blinked slowly, as if considering.
“You need perspective.”
I sat up straight, angry, offended. She snorted in disdain.
“Today was a day of weddings,” she said, “and you complain of false gods. So what better than a story of idols? Hearken.” She settled down against the old leather of the seat. Her hands lifted the beer, and the liquid poured down her small mouth. She gave a croaking belch, swallowed convulsively, and looked past me as if talking to the distance. Her voice gained strength.
“The steppes of Asia are a desolate place, and a hard place. Once it was a land that birthed gods. Not like your god of Deuteronomy, although He was once like them as well. The steppes bred spirits. Tiny gods of Horse, and Luck, and Blood and Battle. Gods that a man could
use. Men would call on their gods at home and in war.
“Kyzyk was one of them. Legend says that He was first a frog, a sign of life that drew a dying rider to a hidden mountain rainpool, after the rider had ridden thirsty for three days. The rainpool of the frog saved his life, and so he said prayers to the frog of the pool, and the spirit awakened. Thus was born Kyzyk, the God of Thirst, male and female both.”
I found myself behind the bar, pouring us both another drink. I brought both glasses back to the table.
A libation, I thought nonsensically. She smiled at me with thin lips as one of her long fingers traced an abstract design in the spilled beer on the table. It was a frog, and it was beautiful.
“But Gods need worshippers,” she said. “The first horseman rode off and told others that he had found the sweetest nectar of life, the drink that salved all thirsts. He was the first hopping priest. His stories brought people to the high plateau, and they too drank the true water. The frog lived in a golden cage by now, gold stolen from the plundered cities of Xiongnu, and it was treated with respect so as not to offend the Thirst spirit that lived within it. When the frog died – for all things die, must they not? – the hopping priests took the dried corpse and wrapped it in muslin, burning incense over it all the while, and placed it in a special reliquary that watched over the pool. And the spirit stayed, tied to the idol.
“Soon, the hopping priests to the God of Thirst would take payment from any who would come. Their method of prayer was
laughable to outsiders, hopping across the plateau with their faces to the ground as they offered up their sacrifices unto their God. But none would mock them openly! For it was known that the priests could curse their enemies with drought and dryness, as their frog-god would grant their prayers. It was a heady time for those who settled near the pool. By now the reliquary for the God of Thirst was pottery, round that it might be filled with drink, and painted in the image of the frog that led the first travelers to the pool. The faithful traveled and brought their rites across the steppes to the edge of the Caspian Sea itself, and their antics were often greeted with equal amounts of laughter and fear. Death sometimes followed. Such is the fate of prophets and missionaries.
She looked directly at me with her slow-blinking eyes. “You would call this God a false idol, would you not? And yet it was as true in its way as your God was to His worshippers.
“Fame breeds jealousy, and jealousy breeds greed. Soon the tale of the God of Thirst had even reached the ears of the great ones. They spoke to their shamans, and a plan was hatched. The Shrine of the Quiet Pool was razed and burned under the orders of Ong Khan, and the reliquary of Kyzyk was stolen forever. Imagine what it must have been like: to be at the Pool and hear the thunder of the approaching horses, to know that you held a power that would be of no help at all! The pool was stained red by the blood of the fallen priests that day, and as far as I know it runs red still.”
Her voice was sad, and she paused to drink. I was lost in the horse scent and sharp tang of coppery blood, in the screams of the fallen and the sound of steel. I was somehow there, under the mid-day sun, and I saw the filthy warrior who ripped the idol from the arms of a bleeding boy. Her voice jolted me back.
“Ong Khan gave the idol to the warlord Temüjin. He had 70,000 horse soldiers, and he brought Kyzyk with him as he wrought war across deserts. It traveled with him after he took the title Genghis Khan, and it traveled with him when he swept westward across Asia. When Genghis died and his son Ogedai continued west, the idol went with them. When the Mongols invaded Poland, though, the idol was seized. A Catholic priest recognized it for what it was, an object of holy power. And here in the Carpathians, it spent the next six hundred years hidden in the dungeons of a tower belonging to the Knights Templar.”
Once again, I was seized by the claustrophobic image of
darkness and time. I looked up to see her eyes glinting orange in the lantern flame. Her voice was terribly old.
“You talk of faith and false idols. Imagine being stripped of your worshippers, to be self-aware enough to feel your power stripped from you by the icons of a heathen religion that had trapped you, and to be able to do no good while you languished. They preached to it constantly, scores of monks reciting scripture all the hours of the night. That is misery. You shun your love because she worships Gods you do not believe in. That does not make them
false, boy. You can have everything or nothing, just as Kyzyk could have, and it is your choice.
“For that is what the God of Thirst did. He changed. As the years grated on, He realized that he had not been abandoned by His worshippers. For was there was not a time when He had no worshippers at all, before he created them himself? It is so! And so He did with the Knights Templar. It took decades, but the newly faithful smuggled Him out of the dungeons on a dark night, and some gave their lives to make sure that the God was free. People talk of religious freedom now, but this is something they would never have dreamed of. Kyzyk knew that He could never return to the old days. This was a new world ruled by a different God, and He could never again perform vast miracles or keep an army of missionaries.”
My voice was dry. “What… what did He do?”
She smiled, and it was like a drink of icy water after a dusty ride. “Why, I like to think that He found somewhere old and quiet to settle down. Someplace simple to act as His temple. Maybe some place He built to remind Himself of the prison, so he wouldn’t ever forget the lesson. Where He could help people who helped Him, and where no one would ever really know of His existence. Things change. So could He.”
Her hand clutched mine, and something roared through my body. I hadn’t eaten all day and all the alcohol seemed to hit at once. I could barely hear her voice.
“People adapt, boy. It’s who they are. It’s what they do. Gods are the same way. Are you so insecure in your faith that you would deny her hers? Or me mine?”
My voice came from a long ways away. “…no.”
The room whirled.
Something prodded me in the chest. “Up, you.”
I lifted a perfectly clear head. I was on the floor of the tavern, and a mustachioed man was prodding me with his foot. Early morning sunlight streamed in a dusty window. “What? Wait.” I pulled myself to my feet and looked around. No beer glasses. No chairs pulled out. My shoes had been taken off, and my sweater placed beneath my head for a pillow.
“What are you doing in here?” He looked as if he was going to throw me through a window. His mustache curled up the side of his nose, exquisitely waxed and combed. Close up, I could see the wrinkles around his eyes.
“The owner said I could stay here,” I said distantly. I was grasping for last night’s details. I felt like I should have had a hangover. I sat to pull on my shoes.
“I doubt it,” he rumbled. “I’m the owner. There was no one here when I closed up last night, and I locked the door. How’d you get in?” He glared. “I already checked the till. Good thing its all there.”
I caught something out of the corner of my eye. In a niche in the wall across the bar, a fat ceramic sculpture of a frog
sat on blue silk. It looked ancient, and very familiar. I pointed slowly. “How long have you had that?”
He turned. “It’s been in the family forev—” He stopped cold. His voice dropped. He turned back to me. “You saw Her?”
I nodded.
“She called you here?”
“I…” I swallowed. “I think so.”
His face filled with light. “Then don’t talk about it, son. To anyone. But you’re always welcome here. I’ll make you some breakfast. And there’s a phone if you need to ring someone up.”
I did.
- The end -
