Dead Sea Capers

Dead Sea Capers

       Stingray Pete

One studied, the other sold. That's the way of the world, isn't it? Read Homer, for instance, or even better, Horace, and after Horace, Ovid. When you tire of the ancients, turn for a few well-spent evenings to Beowulf and Sir Gawain. End with Geoffrey Chaucer. In Chaucer we have the greatest purveyor of, or more accurately, the intense dealer in the contradictions between the meditant and the merchant. He is fiction's grand marquis of the philosophy of the ascendancy of thought over action.

       Who am I? My name is Meckling. I teach philosophy of religion at a small college in Trier, the oldest city in the country. That is neither here nor there, though. In my spare time I read, increasingly, to my own curiosity, accounts of the intrigue surrounding the release of Dead Sea scrolls privileges. These codices are all housed in the Kumran Building in Hafiz and access to them is strictly controlled, ostensibly by university religious scholars but actually by the Israeli government itself. What is this to you? Nothing. This is a question for the trained thinker, not for you. Not for commoners dabbling in ideas as if they were indifferently stirring their pudding after a sumptuous dinner of roast beef or candied pig. I eat no pig. My name should tell you that. Mine is one of the few sects, let me qualify to you, that still observes ritual Jewish holidays and fervently follows Levitican laws. I am a believer, that is. That is neither here nor there, however. You, unfamiliar with either Jewish ritual or German intellectual rigor, will about now be throwing this account aside for some less patently partisan and more piquantly sexual reading material. But bear with me. This is the conclusion of my digression into exposition of this sort. So, let me begin my story.

       First, however, I want to ask you if the name Eisermann means dick to anyone here? No? I will introduce him to you. Eisermann single-handedly toppled the Israeli government over this business of the Dead Sea scrolls. They--these scrolls, that is-- were to be kept out of reach of all scholars as well as out of the public eye. Nothing was to escape the vigilance of the repressors of information. No information flow about them whatsoever was to be allowed. No publications in scholarly journals. No newspaper accounts of how Malek the shepherd found them when he threw a stone into a hidden cave and heard pots breaking. Two thousand years after they had been placed there they had till then not been discovered! They had not been robbed! Nor any hurt or piracy done to them! Astonishing! Why astonishing? Because the Bedouins, who share that particular desert around Kumran, where the Essenes made their last stand against the Romans in 70 A.D. not on top of Mount Oreb but that fascinating messa the middle east has come to call Masada, have done for centuries a flourishing trade in and made passable livings from illegal trade in codices such as the Dead Sea scrolls. The only difference between scholars and Bedouins is that the latter get big dollars for these texts, and I mean big dollars. So, guess what. They break--yes! literally break, and it breaks my heart to say it--these more than precious texts into fragments, each of which they sell to the casual buyer or fortune hunter with the promise of more of the same if she comes up with another half a million denarii. God! God in heaven, how can You permit such a travesty?

       No appeals to the divine. It helps one dick, let me tell you. Back to the story. Now, having found these scrolls this shepherd, not practiced in the nasty science of scroll profiteering, actually visited a local scholar with his news, not a man of any renown but still someone who understood the significance of the discovery and who himself longed not for money but for the joy of historical knowledge. This encounter immediately reminds me of "The Pardoner's Tale." The maligned Pardoner, the protagonist of that marvelous tale, decides to confide to his fellow travelers, men and women on a pilgrimage to Canterbury one spring who have each agreed to tell a story to pass the time, confide to them that he is a cheat and a liar. Now, imagine that! A seller of relics and religious artifacts no more holy than the trinkets German entrepreneurs market to "seely" tourists in their hauptmarts in May or June or around the Porte Negra, he decides to come clean. Oh, sure, scholars have argued that the Pardoner does this to pinch and piss off his less pecuniary companions, but I have another theory, one eminently more intelligent than any I have read in Modern Languages Quarterly or Chaucer Quarterly.

(To be continued)       

Cream

       By Screamin' G. Durango Doug

When you're by yourself in the woods for any number of days, being a practiced eccentric, you talk to yourself now and then to see if you are still sane. When you notice your continued facility with the language, you are put suddenly in touch, with perfect clarity (though of a misty sort), with the complex ground of your training, your memory, and, thus, your sanity.

Parsimony played with the cream separator making the machine whir and slur. The cream flew to the outside and spumed from the milk, depending, of course, all on the speed of the handle and thus the centrifugal force. Two cats sat on their haunches nearby. The air of fall chilled the antechamber between barn and house. Her need for a baby talked to her. Chokecherry branches at the north window across the room crinkled in a steady breeze. Unwanted plastic two-litres lined the floor by the door. A plethora of activities preoccupied the flies on the windowsills. Surging didn't work on her new used Singer. Sour smells came from the opened canister into which the cream would go and she would wash it before filling it. In the woods a clatter of birds did not emanate as it had in spring when they couldn't sleep all night because too busy nesting and mating. Anchovy paste improved the flavor of pizzas if they contained no fruit toppings. The whisper of fine lacy things, Lind had said, and Judith had in time tried them on despite the prohibitions in the air. Grandpa had fallen into the hole the ice had made in the pond and somehow got himself out so that when he got back to the house Grandma saw him with frozen clothes and a funny smile on his face crazed with ice. Her period flow varied so much and this month it was strong and uncomfortable. She would have to change before lunch. Nibblets. The door to the barn creaked. Once someone (or something) had knocked on the house door at midnight and when she'd gone to look no one was there. The stars shone in eyeglass fullness and wind sighed above through the cottonwoods. Near her one of the dogs stood pointing toward the road as if someone had been passing. Nintendo. Wild with desire, Ned tore the shirt from her back and kissed her violently on her gleaming neck and shoulders, her hair flung back over the seat of the sports car. Down along the old tote road. The old colonial boy. Was there such a thing as supernatural intelligence? Could the bones have walked up the basement stairs and then be swept to the floor and lured up into the attic with the door locked quickly behind them so they creaked on the stairs at night trying for an unlocked door? That old cupboard there by the house door, dirty as the wood appeared by now after all these years, pleased the eye and made a kind of music that many creaking openings of the hinges had learned. The butter used to be kept in it. Did great-grandparents put ice in it daily to keep the cream and butter? Eggs, too. And bacon. Hams hung smoky in the smokehouse. The ashes piled there from the smoldering fires came up to the height of her shins when she entered it as a girl. She hid there during hiding games. Bandit now no longer gamboled in the field or even just stood there looking about as he did in his older years. His saddle still hung on the rafter. Soap the saddle and remember. Creamy tartar. Cream puffs. Cream of the crop. She would try creamed corn. Beef slices baked in a hot oven under asperic leaves garnished with cornflower and creamed corn on the side. Cinnamon coffee was disgusting. Her sister used it all the time. Why on earth not just straight coffee? Lord. Nebuchadnezzar died in his bed. Nebuchadnezzar watched what he said. Nebuchadnezzar raised from the dead.  Snuffling reminder her of the pigs and she stopped separating to bring them scraps. Oats on top made their meal. Squealing filled the dim air of the pen and cornhusks lay scattered everywhere. Chickens here and there with droppings on the soles of her shoes. She wiped her sandals on the grass and noticed how brown the green had already turned. Clearly the sky had changed attitudes and lost its patience. Overhead a winged v flew and underneath frost began to wake to a new dawn. Living here was a dicey business and Parsimony knew she could not stay in this place forever. 

  

Skiff to My Lou

Skiff to My Lou

       Goudlas Meirer

There was once a virtuous wife whose husband philandered shamelessly. That is, while she, Louella, baked cinnamon bread, scrubbed her neat lingerie and his baggy overalls (separately), washed and waxed the floors of their modest cottage at Camp Morton, close to the site of Freya and Segor Arondson's hotel and fishing resort on Lake Winnipeg, and made sure the aerosol spray in the bath room worked, Phil drank at the Skiff and Muff, danced with anyone whoever whenever anyone would dance with him, played on his harmonica sad love songs intended to entice the virtuous to indiscretion, quaffed frequently out of his own, private, oversized mug into which one would see him bury his face until only the hair tuft over his forehead stuck out and he appeared to have been assigned a beer vessel for a nose (his face over time came to resemble a tankard), and aggressively engaged anyone as far as three tables away in a contest of jokes and outrageousnesses. These rousting tales usually came complete with unrepeatable immoralities as punch lines that, even in a story such as this that intends to expose the rabbeliousness of this sayseed, may not be repeated, regardless of the chorusing I immediately hear from the more truculent non teetotalers among you. A common one of Phil's improper stories, by way of brief examples, involved Molly who ventured out on three successive nights to the site of a convenient alcohol vendor and requested of the observant bartender each time a twenty-four of Labatt's Blue. Each night, drinking only half the bottles, this particular libation would knock her unconscious on her back in the street, whereupon three particular male tipplers of questionable sensitivities and unlaudable scruples would, on each successive night, stumble upon her there, senseless, vulnerable and supine. She'd finally order Molsen's OV because, as she told the bartender, a certain region of her anatomy was made sore by Blue. And other such racy vaunditure did the said Phil disseminate.

(To Be Continued) 

  

    

    

Sardines in Lisbon

 Sardines in Lisbon

       by Douglasi del Sardos

Donna Juanita turned her back in modesty and Don Juan peered out the window of their summerhouse at a sailing ship with sails down and men loading her. He looked at his wife. She had her back to him and was bending over to pull on her stockings. She was naked and exposed but Don had other things on his mind.

       "Juany," he said. He watched her as she disappeared out the bedroom door. She sang a little song from the next room: "Ave Maria, Aaaaaave Mariiiiiiaaaaaa."

       "Which reminds me," he said, coming on her in the on-suite sitting on the commode, "Renaldo ordered the green. He thought it would go better with the underwear." Donna Juanita finished and washed and hurried into the kitchen, looking at her wristwatch.

       "Renaldo took it upon himself to order the green? Did you give him permission?" Don Juan got the milk from the refrigerator and also the brown sugar and orange juice and carried these to the dining room table. Outside a Junkocock whistled and made much of the morning, its song a downward whining with a tiny bright lilting uplift at the end and three dots of notes, low and throaty, following that. The dog scratched at the basement door to be let into the main living area. A mouse nibbled in the pantry on fallen crumbs. They let mice be for the most part.

       "I heard you the first time," she said and ate the last slice of grapefruit. She looked in the cornflakes box and thought better of it and put it back down. She put bread in the toaster and waited beside it. She reached up for the butter tray and put it down beside the toast plate.

       "I want blue but he gets his way." She took out a knife and fork from the cutlery drawer. "He is no friend of mine. I will have him for breakfast one of these days," she said, gesturing with the cutlery as if she were cutting and eating Renaldo.

       The wine glass held a clear and tawny liquid and it smelled sweetly of sherry when she looked at Don Juan. Don Juan sipped and remained quiet. He sipped and spoke. "I don't think it matters what we want since he's paying." He ducked down to his egg to avoid her irritation.

       Donna Juanita shrugged and got up and draped the wrap over her bare shoulders before leaving through the back door. He watched her for a minute, weaving through the purple Spirea along the garden path and then descending the stone steps to the alley. She was a splotch of graceful orange in a tall bank of green entering a band of grey and brown. He turned to his breakfast. He poured a second cup of wine. He drank it and drank a third, had a cup of coffee from Sunday's carafe and then walked down the garden path himself. He would find Ramona and ask her what she thought about it.

       Ramona opened the door. She wore a see-through something that showed Don Juan more than he needed for proof that it was really her he was speaking to. Nevertheless.

       "Do you think color is important at this wedding?" he asked her after she had offered and then poured and handed him a glass of bright pink liquid. It scented the room as if blossoms had been suddenly spread on the floor.

       "Do you wish for a salted sardine with that?" she asked. She brought him one on a plate. It smelled wonderful, old campfires, old cheese, and he bit into it, lifting it to his lips. He sucked his greasy fingertips and asked the question again.

       "No," Donna Ramona said, pausing just long enough to pour another bit of the busy fluid into his glass. "I do not think that the sardines are as good this year as last. Maybe it is the coolness of the spring that sent us an inferior mass. I don't know. Maybe my appetite for them has gone. Maybe I should attend mass regularly again." The bird in the apple tree outside whistled. Ramona bent forward and he could see her torso with its slippery, damp skin. He bent forward so he could kiss her. Which he did. Twice. She brought him more sardines, so many that he could do nothing but lie down afterwards on her bed to sleep off his fatty insouciance.

       When he woke and felt refreshed he went to the warf where he spent the rest of the day with Renaldo at billiards and drinking brandy. The ships came and went. The day slipped its moorings, and now and then a Junkocock landed on the window ledge and looked in at them playing till the night darkened the street outside and no birds, Junkococks or any others, were visible to the naked eye.

      

 Sardines in Lisbon

       by Douglasi del Sardos

Donna Juanita turned her back in modesty and Don Juan peered out the window of their summerhouse at a sailing ship with sails down and men loading her. He looked at his wife. She had her back to him and was bending over to pull on her stockings. She was naked and exposed but Don had other things on his mind.

       "Juany," he said. He watched her as she disappeared out the bedroom door. She sang a little song from the next room: "Ave Maria, Aaaaaave Mariiiiiiaaaaaa."

       "Which reminds me," he said, coming on her in the on-suite sitting on the commode, "Renaldo ordered the green. He thought it would go better with the underwear." Donna Juanita finished and washed and hurried into the kitchen, looking at her wristwatch.

       "Renaldo took it upon himself to order the green? Did you give him permission?" Don Juan got the milk from the refrigerator and also the brown sugar and orange juice and carried these to the dining room table. Outside a Junkocock whistled and made much of the morning, its song a downward whining with a tiny bright lilting uplift at the end and three dots of notes, low and throaty, following that. The dog scratched at the basement door to be let into the main living area. A mouse nibbled in the pantry on fallen crumbs. They let mice be for the most part.

       "I heard you the first time," she said and ate the last slice of grapefruit. She looked in the cornflakes box and thought better of it and put it back down. She put bread in the toaster and waited beside it. She reached up for the butter tray and put it down beside the toast plate.

       "I want blue but he gets his way. She took out a knife and fork from the cutlery drawer. "He is no friend of mine. I will have him for breakfast one of these days," she said, gesturing with the cutlery as if she were cutting and eating Renaldo.

       The wine glass held a clear and tawny liquid and it smelled sweetly of sherry when she looked at Don Juan. Don Juan sipped and remained quiet. He sipped and spoke. "I don't think it matters what we want since he's paying." He ducked down to his egg to avoid her irritation.

       Donna Juanita shrugged and got up and draped the wrap over her bare shoulders before leaving through the back door. He watched her for a minute, weaving through the purple Spirea along the garden path and then descending the stone steps to the alley. She was a splotch of graceful orange in a tall bank of green entering a band of grey and brown. He turned to his breakfast. He poured a second cup of wine. He drank it and drank a third, had a cup of coffee from Sunday's carafe and then walked down the garden path himself. He would find Ramona and ask her what she thought about it.

       Ramona opened the door. She wore a see-through something that showed Don Juan more than he needed for proof that it was really her he was speaking to. Nevertheless.

       "Do you think color is important at this wedding?" he asked her after she had offered and then poured and handed him a glass of bright pink liquid. It scented the room as if blossoms had been suddenly spread on the floor.

       "Do you wish for a salted sardine with that?" she asked. She brought him one on a plate. It smelled wonderful, old campfires, old cheese, and he bit into it, lifting it to his lips. He sucked his greasy fingertips and asked the question again.

       "No," Donna Ramona said, pausing just long enough to pour another bit of the busy fluid into his glass. "I do not think that the sardines are as good this year as last. Maybe it is the coolness of the spring that sent us an inferior mass. I don't know. Maybe my appetite for them has gone. Maybe I should attend mass regularly again." The bird in the apple tree outside whistled. Ramona bent forward and he could see her torso with its slippery, damp skin. He bent forward so he could kiss her. Which he did. Twice. She brought him more sardines, so many that he could do nothing but lie down afterwards on her bed to sleep off his fatty insouciance.

       When he woke and felt refreshed he went to the warf where he spent the rest of the day with Renaldo at billiards and drinking brandy. The ships came and went. The day slipped its moorings, and now and then a Junkocock landed on the window ledge and looked in at them playing till the night darkened the street outside and no birds, Junkococks or any others, were visible to the naked eye.