Episode 4: Let's Go For a Walk - Part One: Can't You Even Smile on Calendimaggio?

Episode 4: Let's Go For a Walk

Part 1: Can't You Even Smile on Calendimaggio?

I step out of my office and into the blinding noonday sun. Staggered on my stoop, I can only stand there a moment.

It was hot. And going to get hotter – as the day went on, as the season deepened. In fact, as the world continued on its procession through space. The last couple hundred years had marked, through some of Europe, at least, a period of global cooling. It's a whole thing, climate change, and I'm not here to tell you the world is getting warmer and Man is causing it – it's complicated; you sure aren't helping.

S - Someone'll be happy about this.

R - You're not?

S - I'm not unhappy. The weather is... the weather. But....

I - Plague. Famine. Cold. Suffering. Death.

R - That. For how long must the common people suffer in torment and agony?

S - It's almost enough to make you think the ancients were right – and that the Christians and their wars with the pagans are wrong—

R - Are you arguing that the pagan priests were right to worship their gods? That they kept the world spinning, the sun rising in the sky? That their prayers and rituals and sacrifices did in fact bring about warm summers and short winters, full harvests and bountiful hunts?

S - I'm not not arguing that. More than a few Millennials think that this is The End.

I - And for good reason.

I shield my eyes, looking as close to the sun as I can. The sky is blue, cloudless, portentless.

R - John did predict the world would end in fire this time.

An image of the Brazen Bull – a bull, of brass, large enough that a man could be placed in its belly – pops in my head. Probably because I'd already said this to Giorgio.

R - And we're wearing all black, a leather jacket down to our knees, and—

I pull the wide brim of my hat low on my brow, shielding my eyes from the blazing sun.

S - I like my hat.

Wafting my jacket, I am... aware is too strong a word – reminded that I am unarmed. Nearly everyone was armed in those days. If only because people by then, most people, had adopted the so-called Germanic—

By the way – Modern people, why are you so obsessed with obliterating Christopher – Genovese – Columbus from history when of one of your greatest modern nation states carries as its name the racist epithet given them by Rome – whom you all still emulate to this day whether you like it or not? Makes no sense to me. But, what, you're going to rename Germany?

Anyway, most of Christendom had adopted the custom of carrying a seax or the equivalent – basically a bowie knife on the hip that was used for everything from eating to taking out the trash. I did not. In fact, I didn't own a blade – not for personal use. Definitely not for defense. A blade – a weapon of any kind – carries with it the temptation to use it, to kill. And I... am not a fan - either of temptation or of killing.

My vision naturally scanned the horizon before I began my trek. I wanted to argue with myself, but I'd lost the thought. Liguria was too beautiful.

The whole region is a paradise of mountains cascading into the lapping waves of the Mediterranean.

S - The ancient struggle between Marduk and Tiamat playing out right there before my eyes.

R - Except that's not right. Marduk was a river god. Theirs was a love, not a slow devouring.

S - Then who was the earth god who was slowly eroded away by his goddess?

I - Who was Poseidon's wife?

S - You've got me there.

I look back out from myself.

If Italy is one of those fancy cuffed boots that would be all the rage in a few centuries – and which modern women are so proud to wear with their leggings or jeans and short leather jackets in the fall – then Genoa is nestled in a little curve where that cuff meets the boot's stocking for lack of a better word. If Italy were a leg, as it was very probably thought of in the ancientest of days, Genoa is the knee. Indeed, the ancient Ligurian word for knee looks a whole lot like Genoa. Looks like, is like? Established modern science will tell you that, no, it isn't. Established modern science is, however, less correct than it would like to give itself credit for – in most, if not nearly all, ways. In another way of looking at it, Genoa looks like a kindly god used an ice cream scoop to scoop them a perfect little home right out of the mountain.

Strategically, it's perfect. No one is going to climb an army over the peaks to the north. It would be suicide. Ask Hannibal Barca. Depending how you look at it, the lack of natural resources makes it less likely to be the target of invaders, as well. The ancient Greek and Phoenician, et al, colonizers of the Mediterranean left it alone; and Rome, during her military expansion, did the same. And while the Vias Postumia and Aurelia meet in Genoa, the much more popular Via Aemelia avoids the city and its hills almost entirely. Between Rome's Fall and the century of my youth, the city had become something of a refuge, you might say: a safe place, too difficult for the Saracens to attack, where Christian relics could be safely stored; but too politically remote to actually house important Christians.

My office was in what we now know as the Righi District. Now, as then, there is a sizeable – segregated – Jewish colony, including a famous Synagogue and even an Observatory! This word, colony, is what these sections of cities, where foreigners were allowed to settle and ply their trades, were called. Today we might call it Little Judaea. Some things never change. Coincidence that Genoa would emerge in the coming centuries as a major trade hub? If the American colonies are any hint, I would say no. Historically, where Jewish people are allowed to settle, prosperity follows.

The buildings around me were a slateyed, broken-toothed monument to urban migration. The city was South of me. North of and overlooking the forts that dotted Casteletto Hill. The biggest of these forts dominated the middle-distance of my vantage. My eyes naturally shift from it south and east where the scooped feature of the land leaves a westward-jutting barrier peninsula around which Genoa's harbor grows. They settle for a moment on the defensive structure down there, the Santa Maria: Church and castle in one; cus if you're gonna be Bishop in the Dark Ages, you're gonna keep being bishop – in more than a few cases, at any and all costs. Literally. Like those of building and maintaining a castle in a backwater maritime city.

I - Not that backwater.

I watched boats move about in the harbor. I was never much interested in nautical stuff. Pristis Pectinata to a herpetologist. In plain language: fish to a reptile person.

R - The navy grows every day, it seems.

S - But they aren't building more shipyards.

R - No room for building ships. No forests to harvest. They're sailors, not shipmakers.

I - They're building more docks.

S - More trade.

R - Do you think they're listening to you?

S - No. I don't.

I take a deep breath.

You might think we were shallow breathers, back then. Everything stank. You've heard the rumors. Can confirm. I stunk. The ground stunk. The air stunk. Everything stunk – of shit, mostly. If the stuff itself wasn't everywhere – like the bottom of my boots at all times – other shit was left to rot in their own melange of stinks. And the sea. But that day, the stink wasn't so bad: there were flowers everywhere.

And there would be.

It was the first day of Summer, as best as I could tell. Mayday – when everything was decorated with the new flowers of middle-Spring. I know – celebrating the beginning of Spring at the beginning of Summer is confusing to me, too. Ancient people were confusing.

R - Nice day for a stroll to nowhere, huh?

S- Yeah.

It was. I started walking.

S- Did they listen? Who knows. I didn't say much.

R - But they do appear to be anticipating more foreign trade. Which—

S - Which I'm not really in the mood for politics. Not after—

R - What are you in the mood for?

S - Nothing. Silence.

As I've said, it was about a mile to the docks and the nearby tavern.

There's a certain hypnosis to walking. To letting your mind and your eyes wander while you enjoy a lozenge of opium dissolving in your mouth. Not, maybe, a behavior I would recommend; but one which I certainly enjoyed a great deal.

As I got closer to the city, the towns I moved through had their own putrescences to add to the olfactory palate. They were also, more and more, Genoese. And likewise covered in flowers and filled with dancing, singing – not always fully or at-all clothed – people.

R - Genoese is not to say Christian, apparently.

Aware of and cognizant for, but not anticipating the threat of violence, I am paying little heed to my environment. Violence was, then, a much greater risk than it is now. If you wanted to kill someone, there was next to nothing anyone could or would do about it. Next to killing you back. Sure, the Church and what amounted to the state were nominally the Law, but had next to nothing in the way of resources or authority to enforce it - and in Genoa, I was effectively all the representation Order was going to get.

Anyway, the road isn’t going anywhere, and the decrepit, empty houses have no stories to tell which I have not long heard. So I let my mind empty. And it was nice. For a time.

“Sorcerer! Hey! Sorcerer!”

Your feet stop when someone is shouting at you from across a plaza. Whether you realize it is you at whom they are shouting or not. At least, mine did. 

I first become aware that something has changed when I'm not walking anymore. I look up, around, stunned and a little annoyed. I had overshot my turn to the tavern by maybe 20 paces. Then I see him. I thought I recognized the voice, but couldn’t place it. When I see him, I can literally not believe it.

Genoa’s tavernmaster is running toward me, waving his arms in wide arcs over his head. My feet stop dead. My mouth falls open - but only for a second: I nearly lose the lozenge of opium tucked under my tongue and snap my mouth closed. Some things are more important than expressions of disbelief.

My head turns from side to side, then I hazard a look behind me. He couldn’t mean me - could he?

R - Whom else would he call Sorcerer, Rob?

S - Why is he calling me a sorcerer, though?

And I’d be goddamned if he weren’t still shouting it.

“Sorcerer! Hey! Sorcerer!”

Had he ever called me a sorcerer? Had anyone in Genoa before today? Had anyone? I wasn’t sure. Neither was I sure that this was why the hair at the back of my neck stood on end. But my hackles were most certainly raised.

R - I don’t like this, Rob.

I - He’s never done this before. Something is wrong. Run.

My instincts, I think, are right on the money. And yet I stand, rooted to the spot, watching him approach.

The tavernmaster is not…. No one would mistake him for an athlete - current or former. His physique, if you can call it that, could best be described as… fat. He is fat. I was going to try to be clever, but let’s just call a spade a spade and move on. And he runs like it - like a fat man. By the time he's crossed the plaza between his tavern and where I stand, approaching the docks, he's red-faced and sweating like he’s just climbed out of the ocean.

“Sorcerer! God… dammit.”

I blink, pulling myself out of whatever private reverie has held me fast. The Tavernmaster is before me, now, bent double at the waist and panting. He is not, by the standard of that day, a tall man. At over six feet myself, I practically tower over him.

A common modern misconception is that we were, then, much shorter than we are today. This simply is not true. In fact, especially in the north of Christendom, Medieval males averaged nearly the same height as modern males. It was later, with industrialization and the lack of available nutrients, that men took a dive in size.

The tavernmaster looks and dresses just as you might imagine, if you are imagining Dom DeLuoise in period garb. If, that is, you take your references from Hollywood stereotypes. Or maybe John Rhys-Davies with a wispy bald pate and a great fuck-off beard no health department would be excited to see hanging over his stained brown apron. His eyes are a little buggy and set too wide in his face, and his mouth takes up more real estate than average; but he looks, if a little like a toad, just like any tavernmaster in any tavern in any Fantasy setting.

His parlance, however, would never have made it into one of Dom DeLouise’s films: The man could curse fit to make a sailor blush. I will not be attempting an accurate recreation of his profanity, by the way; and I think we would both prefer I not replicate the frequency with which he used it. A representation, then:

“Fuuuuuuck”

I look at him, bent at the waist the way he is, and I cannot stop myself from seeing him as somehow bowing. I am brought immediately and powerfully to mind of Genesis Chapter 18:

The LORD appeared to Abraham near the great trees of Mamre while he was sitting at the entrance to his tent in the heat of the day. Abraham looked up and saw three men standing nearby. When he saw them, he hurried from the entrance of his tent to meet them and bowed low to the ground.

He said, “If I have found favor in your eyes, my lord, do not pass your servant by. Let a little water be brought, and then you may all wash your feet and rest under this tree. Let me get you something to eat, so you can be refreshed and then go on your way - now that you have come to your servant.”

Except I’m not the godhead - or A godhead? - a god of any sort. And… I guess I was coming to enjoy his hospitality.

What is your message for him? That you have come to destroy Genoa and Venice?

That was a strange thing for me to think. That is what those were, though - the three men. If they were Angels of the Hebrew god, then they were messengers. Hermeses. That’s what the word angel means: messenger.

I don’t have a message.

The way he bows—

In the story, Abraham runs to greet the tri-form person of his god. In those days, it was the traveler seeking hospitality who bowed. You bowed according to station. You only bowed at the waist like this to a superior. So a king would nod to a peasant when seeking his hospitality. Abraham bows deeper at the waist than was common for the inverse situation – peasant-king. And in the wilderness - Abraham did it backward. The host wasn’t supposed to bow, the visitor was.

My internal monologue is nearly panicked, trying to make any kind of sense out of what is happening. I look down at the tavernmaster.

He isn’t bowing like that to me because….

Gasping and panting, the tavernmaster is bent with his back parallel to the ground – albeit with his hands on his knees. Head bent. Neck exposed.

What is he doing?

Like Abraham, he rushes from his tent in this urban wasteland. Like Abraham, he also bows.

But that's the thing – why is he bowing?

He's not bowing.

But why would he bow?

There was no option for Abraham. You drop to your knees before your god.

But I am no one's god.

Are you not his superior?

I'm no one's superior.

...Shouldn't you help him up?

My hands move to reach for his shoulders, then stop. Not everyone likes to be touched when they're this... vulnerable. And it was occurring to me that I'd never touched him before. I became intensely aware of my palms – like they itched. I jammed my hands into my pockets.

“What… the fuck… is your problem?” the tavernmaster gasps, straining to look up at me. “Ya just … gonna stare at me? …Bout as much good… as my wife’s… asshole! Seriously! What’s wrong with you? I know ya heard me…. How could ya not… see me? Jesus, kid… I’m too… old and fat… for this shit.” With some apparent effort, he thrusts himself upright. “This the manners ya momma taught ya, or what ya picked up from Wizard School?”

My spine stiffens. I've offended him.

Just say you're sorry.

But I'm not.

Lie to him.

“Alright, kid. Relax. I'm just bustin ya balls.”

I... should have known that.

The Dark Age tavern was not the High Medieval or Renaissance tavern. To say nothing of the modern.

“What are you doing?” I can hear the impatience in my voice. Evidently, the tavernmaster can too.

“That’s all you have to say to me?”

“I’m… sorry?”

“You should be! You better be.”

“No. Sorry– What? What are you talking about?”

“What? Ya was about to walk right past–”

“I come down here and drink your piss beer every single day.”

“Damn, kid. Ya act like ya doin me a favor.”

“I was distracted and forgot to turn, and you–”

“So... Where ya headed, kid? Santa Maria? Ya got somethin on ya heart ya need to confess that only a mother could understand?”

I frown at him, perplexed. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“Eh? Ain't supposed to mean nothin. Cept, well, ya obviously need to better remember yours. She taught ya better manners'n frownin at a man n grumblin at him after he runs all this way just to say hello to ya. I know it. You're smart enough to at least pretend like ya know better'n to be so... inhospitable to a fat old man.”

Hospitality.

God tellin Abraham that people aren't hospitable enough.

Be hospitable or I'll fucking obliterate you.

“I remember my mother just fine, thank you,” I say, suddenly struggling to stay in the moment with him and our of my thoughts.

“Ya sure don't act like it. When even was the last time ya talked to her? Bet she's proud as Hell with what ya made for yaself.”

I look to the Santa Maria, then into the middle distance. “It's been a while.”

“Hm. Well— Hey— I heard about Regina, kid. I'm sorry. Really, I am. You see a guy wandering, lookin lost— At your age, it's always a girl.”

My eyes meet his. I don't even try to stop them frowning. “What are you talking about?”

“How's your wife takin it?”

“I don't know.”

“You don't know? What do you mean, you don't know?”

“I mean I don't know what the fuck you're talking about.”

“Ya don't—“ his mouth hangs open, his face a mask of perplexion. “How do ya not know what I mean? Whole town's been talkin bout it all week. Most of em say that's why ya ain't left that office o yours for so long. Gotta be because you n her split up.”

“We didn't split up.” The yet was on my lips, but I bit down on my tongue, keeping it there.

And how could he know— How could they be talking all week? She just left.

“Oh. I thought— Well, ya know I'm gonna get worried about my lil sorcerer buddy. I ain't seen ya in a week!”

A week?

Has it really been that long?

“Tryin to avoid all the May Day bullshit? That's what you call holy days, right?”

Or maybe I'm just fed up with this town. Tired of—

“Hey— Do you have to talk about this here?”

“Who's gonna hear, Sorcerer?”

Wha—

I let my eyes scan the plaza, behind him and between us and his tavern – where I had been meaning to go.

It was empty. There were flowers every-damn-where, but not a person in sight. Even the maypole, with its ribbons and garland of flowers at its peak, was unattended.

What the... Hell? Where is everybody?

I had seen them – the townsfolk – on my walk here. Why weren't they in the one place you'd expect them to be?

A tingle of cold flirted with my spine.

The tavernmaster grins at me.

“Ya know, kid, this is the most words ya ever said to me – ever. But ya know ya can say more than one sentence at a time, don't ya?”

I blink. “I know how to talk.”

From the corner of my eye, I regard him. He isn't looking at me.

“Do ya? Cus far as I can tell, ya always got somethin on your mind. Always frownin. Always so damned quiet.”

“What do you want me to say?”

“Eh? I don't want ya to say nothing. It'd just be nice if we could, y'know, talk like adults.”

I shrug. “Say something worth responding to, and I will.”

“Damn. All right, then.” Then, after a moment: “All right, well— Let's go back to my place. We can get ya a drink. I got something to tell ya anyway.”

“That's where I was headed. You have to know that.”

“Two sentences! I got two sentences!” the tavernmaster exclaims, looking excitedly around him like he expected the invisible revelers to cheer. They don't. He laughs and slaps me on the shoulder. “Aw, come on, Sorcerer. It ain't that bad, is it?

“Can you please not call me that?”

“Hey! Improvement. He has got manners.”

“I'm not joking.”

“Call ya what? Sorcerer? Ain't you, though?”

“Yes – that. And, no. I mean – It's complicated.”

The tavernmaster smiles at me and slaps me on the arm.

“What is it they say? Let a little water be brought – wash your feet, and rest under the tree.”

“...What?” I asked. Hearing these words sent a tingle – neither electricity nor cold; more like... more like what it must be for a cat to feel a breeze only in the whiskers of its body – like a breeze – or a hand - closing around me. “No. They don't say that.”

He frowns, then raises an eyebrow. “They don't say, 'Eat drink, be merry?'”

“That's....” not what you said. “Yeah. All right, fine.”

“Walk with me. Let's talk.”

He said what Abraham said. I know what I heard.

Then he's playing Abraham.

That makes you the Angel of the LORD.

I'm no one's messenger.

Maybe he is doing an inversion.

But why?

What if he knows that you know the story. He knows you know its significance.

The tavernmaster expected you to come to him, to be concerned for him.

Why would I do that?

What doesn't he want you to see at the docks?

“Kid?”

Halfway to my decision to look over my shoulder, he called my attention the opposite direction. I turned slowly, glaring at him from the corner of my eye at first, then allowing my brows to raise as I completed the turn. He's already standing several paces away from me.

“Are ya all right?”

“Yes. Why?”

“I mean, ya look like shit. But I been tryna talk to ya, and ya ain't listenin. What's on ya mind?”

I looked forward, at the tavern, and started walking to catch up with him. It wouldn't take more than a few minutes to get there. Not so long his ceaseless chatter would kill me.

“Nothing.”

What if he is the messenger?

Don't be absurd. He's an angel?

It does not have to be literal.

Nothing is what it is. Everything is possible.

...Right.

If he is playing a part for the Master.

Which he's not.

Then you misheard him.

Even then, he quoted Ecclesiastes.

A common phrase. Meaningless.

“Kid... Do ya know how conversation works?”

“What? Of course. How do you think I spend my time?”

He's walking ahead of me, now; we're making a steady pace. I must not have responded to something else he'd said.

“All I ever seen ya do was sit there'n listen. Usually damn frownin. All ya doin now is avoidin my questions. Ya supposed to have an opinion. You say something, then I say something about what Ya said. Then we take turns like that, back and forth.”

“But getting nowhere.”

“Why do we need to be going somewhere?”

“Because conversations go someplace. Usually one or the other is trying to put some piece of information in the other's head – or, you know, get the other's reaction. There's a point. A goal.”

“And if all I want is to talk at you?”

“Then all I want is to get it over with.”

I hadn't meant to be that honest.

He nods, but says nothing for many seconds.

For my part, I enjoy the empty slapping of his naked feet and the leather soles of my boots on the cobblestones. It really does seem like we've been walking a lot longer than I might have expected; but I like it – the pace, the going-nowhere-important feeling. It feels like a night stroll in the middle of the day.

“It is nice that it's been so warm. Previews good things, maybe.”

“Also means armies'll count on more food from the harvest.”

“Hmm. You ain't wrong, but, kid— It's Calendimaggio! You can't be cheerful even one day a year?”

I don't say anything.

“So, what's new with you, Sorcerer?”

“Seriously— Please— Can you not call me that?”

“Why?”

“It's how rumors get started.”

“Who's gonna overhear?”

That sensation just outside my perception seems to grow closer, like a tingling net tightening around me. Like unseen eyes watching at my back.

“It's not about that. It's about habits. You won't accidentally call me one of those titles – which if I wear in public could still get me killed if overheard by the wrong person – if you don't get in the bad habit in the first place.”

The tavernmaster looks and gestures about us. “You think you're bein watched or somethin?”

“Someone is watching us at all times. That's what it is to be in a society. The question is not whether, but by whom and for what purpose.”

“That's an awful grim outlook to have, kid. You gotta talk to people. How else're ya gonna share what ya got hidin in there?” He half-turns and points at the center of my chest, then at my forehead. Looking where he's walking, he continues: I think ya'd find that people jus wanna get t'know ya. I think ya think ya do alright enough by that pretty wife o yours by not beatin her that givin her control o your money so she can throw them parties n spend round the city how she likes replaces ya bein home. Like ya money equals your love. But people need more'n that, kid – to feel like you're one of em.”