Tale 5: Drink
Every day, my father warned me of the dangers of the demonic fluid. It is drink which unleashes all of man's evil and eliminates the barrier from beast. It is drink which eliminates health and happiness. Drink is danger, drink is trauma, drink is obscenity and humiliation, blasphemy in the eyes of God and excrement in the windows of memory. Drink is serenity's eternal expenditure: instants of bliss for an eternity of inner violence.
Trauma is the intrusion of another soul that claims a new section of of the mind every day, intrusion doubling upon intrusion, exhibiting ever more masterfully that he, not you, is the part of your mind that thinks.
Perhaps this other soul is a devil or dybbuk, perhaps he's simply another person who deliberately lodged part of himself within you, or perhaps he's another person burdened with his own dybbuk. But whomever he is, he, not you, masters the mind, and you become a spectator within your own consciousness. With every hour he determines more of your decisions, and with every new decision he makes for you, you wonder ever more if he was you all along.
For centuries, father barely touched drink. He knew of its ecstasies and torments as well as any man, but he saw what drink made him, and what drink made others, and its humiliations were repugnant. It caused a whole earth on which man has neither self nor divinity, but only sense - pleasures to drown our pain, other people's pain to drown us in pleasure, a whole earth of trauma absorbed and trauma inflicted where man uses his divinity to inflict all the worse. And so where the rest of Earth was wine, the House of Noah was water, kept fresh and pure in wells we cleaned every day along with blessings to a spirited drink in a second, smaller well. A spirit of the drink whose name we never pronounced, and perhaps we never knew. For an hundred years of our lives, Ham, Japeth and I knew no drink but water.
All the while, as the temperature warmed and the Earth became fire and rain, Father communed with his holy spirit of the drink. Every day as he had for hundreds of years, he pulled a bowl from the well tied to a string, put a finger in the drink, touched its holy spirit to his lips, and threw the bowl back. Every day he spoke with the spirit of the drink, and the Drink spoke back. For seven hours every day Father walked around the well, speaking questions and answers, and the pool told him all creation, of its trees and crowns, of its spheres visible and hidden, and the Spirit of the Drink made Father the wisest of men.
The spirit told Father to build an ark and gather every living thing that creepeth upon the earth, for the spirit was wroth with the world and would flood it. The water would cleanse the world, who'd begin anew in a second Eden where would live none but the House of Noah's righteous offspring.
And the Spirit was right, for lo, the earth became drink; not drink still and clear, but torrential and murderous, until all the world was again without form and void. Then the sea level rose, and rose, and rose, until the planet itself rose up and murdered its unworthy caretakers, and all the Earth was but one large ocean, stewed in the iniquities of its trillions of drowned beings and glazed with salt to parch any survivors. And within three days, all remaining life lodged within an ark of 300 cubits.
The invisible spirit told us of the flood, he told Father to build the ark, precisely how, and with what, and how large, and how many animals to gather, but he gave us no extra ration of fresh water. All we had was the water within our well, which when drawn out must be fermented ere it turn to undrinkable slime. So there was only barley fermentation, and wine, and animals, and obscenity. There was not even water for children.
And yet the first thing we brought aboard the ark was Father's pool of drink, of which he made us carry pitcher by pitcher to a pool of stone he'd constructed without assistance.
Upon the ark it was only us and the wine. Father told us we had no extra rations of drink for the animals, but to allow ourselves twelve times an eleven month supply for four families - we asked why, he did not say. Surely father knew what was to come better than we.
It began not with agony but with joy and camaraderie - days of merry work followed fine nights of wine and song. Then lying with our wives in tents on the Ark's four opposite corners. The children would fall serenely asleep after dinner, and so torpid they never wandered. The House of Noah used our wealth to buy all the crops of nearby families to feed the ark's animals, and once aboard we pickled them within buckets of salt water procured from the outside deluge.
Father had always been serene, but he was quiet and cryptic, and often warned us of what sort of different man he was before encountering the holy Spirit. He took to the wine immediately, and his serene self turned upside down to the most dreadful moroseness. None saw him eat, and he said not a word even as he fed the animals. Yet while Father submerged into drink, our work seemed as play.
But at the cusp of manhood, no drink could torpor Canaan. In less than one year he'd have taken to wife, but what wife lived to take him?
The noises began with the sheep of course, and then the goats, and then the dogs and cows, and then to the larger animals, and the smaller, until we wondered if there was an unsullied animal among the 16,000 on the ark. An animal would exclaim that peculiar scream, always the same in every species, and we knew what Canaan was doing, particularly because he would return every morning with terrible bruises and scratches. But what did it matter if we all were so besotted with drink? The world was ending, boys will be boys, the animals were drunk too, and were we to believe Father, the House of Noah was the one family in the world who did not enjoy the company of livestock.
"Your father tried to kill me before I laid my curse on you!"
"It is not for you to question what the spirit in the drink tells me."
"There is no spirit in the drink."
"Indeed, the spirit tells me the world is fornication and wickedness. Just like y..."
"No, grandfather, the world was already flooding, the spirit only told you what you knew."
"No, our spirit sees with our eyes."
"May your bullshit visions of the Eden we lost haunt all your days and creep all your nights. May you forever see in me your only impediment to paradise."
Noah immediately charged at Canaan to strike him down but was prevented by the cage he built himself. He reached for the key to the cage, but Canaan pulled Noah's key out of his own tunic.
"Execration! Astonishment! Reproach! We spit you out of the House of Noah for eternity!"
"I was planning to run away from this pathetic house for years. Now I've got a whole new world I can start on my own!"
Tale 6: The Master Builder
So this letter is meant for God and Abel, though I don't know how to send it or if anybody else does. If anybody ever finds this letter, if you can find a way to send this to God I'll be very grateful.
It's been a little more over 30 years since The Flood. From the way people talk about it you'd think everybody died, but it couldn't have even been one in a hundred who got themselves killed. Maybe if you were closer to the Mediterranean you had worse chance of living, but people here just hiked themselves to the Zagros mountains, and a lot of people with houses made of proper mudbrick just camped out on the roof and fished.
As far as apocalypses go, the Flood just wasn't that big. ...It was big, but mostly for how it made us shelter in place for two years. It was just a pre-echo of the real event that came for us because of how we responded.
We thought The Flood focused everything, solved everything, clarified everything. It obliterated from our minds all the trivial drek. The generation before the flood seemed to be the generation of partisanship and violence, but we were the generation of unity and love. Every man and woman on earth experienced the same loss, the same fears, the same meshiggas, the same boredom, the same rage.
Everybody knew who was at fault. To make a flood this big, there must be a god so powerful that no other god can be much of a god, and it could only be Ea, this water god everybody believes in. There was even a movement to rename him Y'Ea because he was so willing to use his power, but nearly everybody agreed: if one god can be that powerful, we need a war on him before he kills the rest of us.
Of course there were some who didn't believe this, Ea still had a bunch of loud partisans on Earth who were violent and dangerously powerful, but the partisans of the other six gods had an unbeatable coalition. Any system in which the partisans of Ea win is a broken system, and if the system was really this broken, the only option left was to go up to heaven and fix the system. It was one of those few moments in every lifetime when everybody seems to speak the same language.
Nobody actually wanted the responsibility of a god, not if they thought about it... But they did want the right to sometimes be free of gods. Like every other god in their lives, they fulfilled every commandment of Ea's in good faith, they obeyed every obligation to sacrifice, they prayed to him whenever they were afraid, they talked to him when they were lonely, and only crazy people ever thought he answered.
As for me? I knew that Ea was an old wives' tale. I just had a thought that maybe you B'H didn't think of, that this flood was related to all that kvetching you write to me about this heavenly schpritz. Maybe there's a leak in heaven, so I just wanted to go up there to point out the leak and help you fill it.
And the the Kings of Babel, Persepolis, and Uruk did call a second counsel of all the kings of the Earth. And the kings of the earth did invoke their promise "Verily, thou hadst promised trusting mensuration for an end to floods, yet thou hadst not provided faithful measurement." And the three kings did say "It is better to burden with great care to avoid flood than than to take little burden to meet flood." And the kings of the earth did accuse them "Verily thou hadst not used thy plenty in the service of faithful measurement." And the three kings did respond "Lo, thou hast availed great use of our pronouncements. Thy subjects do live who shall have died, thy vines do multiply which shall have withered, and thy buildings do stay which shall have fallen."
Aleph. And war did rage for seven years, the very machines created by the builders of Babylon in hopes to conquer death did become the world's executioners: boulders of dashing pulverization hurled into masses of men; basins of tar lifted atop the walls of cities, burned to boiling and cast upon millions of innocent as rain. Rulers wished to preserve their men as chattel, yet their chattel lay upon hills as carrion; their blood transfigureth grains of sand into forest, their flesh turneth all that lives into plague. And a fifth of the earth's men did die, and a fifth of the earth's men did become crippled, and a fifth of the earth's men did dwell in the house of lunacy.
And behold, the unfathered children of the Festival at Babel had turned twelve. And by such time as their fifth years when war beginneth throughout the world, they all were cast out from their mothers as reminders of former sin. Great was their disgrace, and the streets of the world were tumultuous with cries through their mothers' windows: "Mothers, why hast thou forsaken us?" And the mothers did weep in concord with their children but offered them not food neither shelter nor warmth. And the children of Babel did sleep and eat within the streets of every city of the world - robbing for food, maurauding for shelter, and trespassing upon sheep to sheer for blankets. And the Children of Babel were much despised.
And as every city sent citizens into battle to die man by man, the unfathered boys and girls did become as men for every city. By six did they learn to ply trades no city man could practice. By eight did they tenant the markets of their cities. By ten did they take among themselves to man and wife. And by twelve they were manifold among ministers for the kings of the earth.
And verily, as men fought the world elsewhere, there was none to shield mothers from their unwanted children. Few were the new children of men, and the younger children who did live were great with hunger. And the mothers did come to their unwanted children and ask for sustenance they had not means to give, and the Children of Babel did grant their mothers and brothers food and nourishment.
And by the sixth year of war, the mothers of the earth were exceeding with woe, for their youngest sons were soon to be trained as soldiers, and the mothers did fall in supplication upon the Children of Babel:
"Go unto the kings of the earth and prevail upon them to end the war. For we have no children but our striplings, and err the war continueth shall we have no son but the sons of Babel and no honorable men to marry our daughters?"
and the Children of Babel did exclaim unto their mothers, "Were we not children enough for thee? Hath we not proven our honor? In shame didst thou banish us like slaver, yet for the world we did become as men. When the harvest was great we were like chaffe to thee, yet now we are the source of thy wheat, and thou askest us to vouchsafe the reverence of mothers who never did love us as children,"
to which the mothers responded, "We did always love you as the issue of our hearts, but great is the shame of our actions in Babel. Thou art not the children of thy fathers, for we did lie with enemies. Though we did wish to raise you as children, thou hadst been born with marks of shame.'
and the Children of Babel did reply: "We are not shameful. We are descendants of the world entire. Through no aid of forebears, we have turned shame to fortune. And behold, thou wishest to profit from thy shame."
and the mothers were prostrate with weeping and exclaimed "Lo, we have betrayed, we have been disloyal, we have sinned, we have turned away and ignored the children of our wanton acts of wickedness."
and the Children of Babel did say to their mothers: "Well,... fuck it. No, you're not wicked or evil, you're just kind of a selfish bitch. I'll talk to the kings of the earth and see what I can do."
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Bet. And the Children of Babel did speak with the kings of the earth and they did say "Verily, we have spoken with the mothers of the earth and they hath pleaded you to end this war ere their last children depart for the valley of the shadow of death."
And the kings of the earth did respond "Behold, what have these children to live for? We cannot provide them plenty nor succor without visiting the valley ourselves, for they shall rise up and revolt; and therefore their lives are saved merely by their commitment to our darker purposes. Only their deaths shall endow them with meaning."
And the Children of Babel did reply "Thou dost surely realize they would disagree."
And the kings of the earth did respond "What else may we do for them? Their lives are but torture and squalor, but glory may they find as swordly extension of sovereign's arm."
To which the Children of Babel did respond "They do surely have their consolations, and surely they do value their lives however small. Life mattereth to them if even thou seest them as wheat for the harvest."
And the kings of the earth did reply "Only pharaohs see themselves as gods of stone. We sovereigns are half mortal and do feel the guilt of their calamities. We cannot provide them with more ere they go the way of the earth, and when they do, the flock thins, and as shepherds we may tend them more."
And the Children of Babel did say unto them "Thou wouldst not have to fret over rebellion if thou hadst not become as tyrants over them."
And the kings of the earth did say "We did not become tyrants, our tyranny was compelled by the tyranny of many kings before us, and should we relinquish our despotic privilege, others would assume merely what we had, with all the greater force for their insecure positions."
And the Children of Babel fell prostrate "Thy chattel has bled the earth. As the dying wheat beareth much fruit the dying soldiery must beareth provision for the living."
And the kings of the earth were resolute "The people of the earth are chattel and chattel they must remain."
Gimmel: And the Children of Babel did return to the Kings of the Earth and they did say. We have spoken among ourselves and have solutions. Thou seest the verdancy of earth post-deluge, and the farming of the earth may be so fecund that there should be no drought for centuries hence. We entreat thee, make peace and put thy subjects as tillers to work the land in fields and forests.
And the kings of the earth did sue for peace, and the surviving men did go into the fields and work the earth, and there was abundance.
And the kings of the earth did take the abundance for themselves, and did distribute to their workers with meagerness, but fearing the Children of Babel, the kings of the earth did allow them to partake of abundance. And the surviving men did go to the kings of the earth and entreat them: Behold, we have not food for our children nor reward for the sweat of our brow.
And the kings of the earth did say: Lo, it is the Children of Babel with who hast taken thy abundance. Their rewards are great while thine are few. They hath not spoken for thee, and hath prevented us from bequeathing thou thy just rewards fear the surviving men shall overthrow the Children of Babel.
And the surviving men did overthrow the Children of Babel and did slay manifold among them, and the Children of Babel did flee their houses and cities, and did lodge together in the wilderness, and did assume the habit of wanderers.
And lo, they did wander the earth for seven generations until they came upon the House of Canaan.
And the House of Canaan did say: Behold, our rations are meagre, our cattle are weak, our coin is soft and our crops are dry. But this land will we shew thee, for there is room to settle and land to work. By the sweat of our brow must we work in heat and dust, but here is thy home, and here shalt thou bloom.
