The Log

“What do you want?”

“I want you to teach me to be wise,” said the young man.

He stood on top of low and steep bank above the lake shore. By the water below him, on a rotting log, sat a gaunt old man in a torn monk's habit, surrounded by clumps of tall sharp grass and bulrush. His back was turned at the newcomer and his eyes studied the rain clouds above the lake, ther threatening brown mass closing around the last island of clear sky far in the west. Darkness was gathering fast. The far shore still burned with sunset, painting edges of clouds and forest tops yellow and red.

“Nonsense. Get out of here.”

The young man stared at the back of the man below. He took off his cap, crumbled it in his hands, opened his mouth to speak, but did not. Than he stuck the cap back on top of his black tousled hair, moved to go, than did not.

“I am sorry, master. I can not do that.”

“Demons! Who gave you the idea I could teach you anything?”

“You are wise. People come to you, everybody trusts you. Your word helped so many, for so long. Can you teach me just one wise thing, just one, to tell my folks at the village? Please?”

“That rain is coming, before dark. I can smell it.” The hermit blinked at the sky, chewing thin mustache with his toothless jaws. “Yes, before dark. Frightens me, somehow. Help? They are fools for believing me. Has it been that long?”

“It has. Your kingdom has celebrated twenty five years, just before this summer’s solstice. Big celebration it was, three days.”

The hermit snorted.

“Shame. Damn shame.”

“Shame, wise one? Why?”

“Fire and death, boy, they are the cursed oven that belched out that kingdom. My arrogance, too. My wish for power, for greatness... to be somebody.” He sighed. “As if I had not been somebody before. I, me. Stupid. If I could... Run boy, I am too stupid to teach you anything.”

He threw a clump of earth at the lake, but it turned to cloud of dust before it reached the water. He groaned.

The young man leaned on his walking staff and slid part of the way down the bank.

“You mock me, holy one. I hope my youth is the only reason for that. You are the wisest, the holiest, why do you speak so?”

"A bad day it is, I'm certain," said the hermit. He turned to the tall lean youth dressed in poor man’s wool and covered with road dust.

“Do you really want to know? Whatever the cost?”

The young man tried to wipe the dirt from his face and made more smudges.

“Yes, oh wise one, I do! Er... the cost?”

“Maybe this is the time. That rain is coming, as I expected.”

The hermit faced the far sunset and was silent for a while, picking on a rosary of yellowed animal bones. In a gathering gray dusk, his figure was brightly lit by reddish rays.

He started in a very low voice, as if talking to himself.

“Long ago, on my way to the last and greatest battlefield of the Founding war, I passed with my army by this lake. I saw the old hermit, a dried old goat, sitting on this same place. Miserable, insignificant, tiny sack of cold bones he was, crouching there before my mighty enraged thousands. Why, each of us could have walked right over him and not even know. Gods, we could have walked over a herd of elephants and not know."

"I asked of him the same thing you just did.”

He paused as a green-headed duck flew off through the shade of willows reaching above the water. Wind gusts fluttered his thin gray hair.

“In the blaze of my power, I expected the old crow will be terrified. But he refused me flatly. He said there is nothing he can teach a great and valiant man as myself, except one thing. And he pointed out to me those shallows there, see? Where those fish babies swim? See?”

“I do,” said the young man. “They were here that many years ago?”

Chuckle. “Oh, yes. Same shallows with baby fish just like those. Oh, yes.”

“Anyway, I did not kill him for that insolence. I went on and won the battle, same as all other battles I had fought. I won.” He clenched the rosary to his chest. “I killed the Baron and displayed his head on the gate of my new metropolis. And those of all of his captains. Oh, I was so great, so mighty. Gods gave me talent for war, and I used it, I used it to the full.”

He fell silent, face contorted in ugly grimace, corners of his mouth twisted downwards which made hairs of his beard point every which way.

A fish splashed and created spreading circles on the calm surface. From nearby bulrush thicket a snake streaked over and disappeared in the depths to hunt the fish.

“That is the end of the story?” asked the young man.

“When I realized the world was mine, I lost interest for it. The kingdom, the people, all were mine to control and none posed any challenge to the divine person I had been. None could resist me. But I still had no peace. There was a thing I did not have.”

Raindrops tapped on the foliage and made a few ripples on the green water, then stopped.

The young man rose his hand to speak, but the hermit continued:

“Somewhere in the depths of my darkest dreams, I remembered the one that had mocked me, that had not been impressed with my greatness. The time passed and I grew madder and madder. In the end, I gave my useless kingdom to others and came here searching for the secret that would make me even greater, the secret that makes a man not fear the army of enemies. I came to look for the old man and ask him.”

“I found him on this very place where I sit now, the same place where I had left him years before. The old jackal did not seem surprised, at all, just said it is good we can finish my lesson.”

“”What lesson?” asked I.”

“”Look at those shallows,” says he. “What do you see?””

“”Nothing. They are same as before.””

“”Exactly!” says he. “You have been gone, fighting, killing, maiming, burning. Making women cry and man cry even more. You have changed the world, or so you think. But look at those shallows. They do not care. Some mud, some water, a few blades of grass, a few fish. For them, you do not exist. That is my lesson.””

“The most holy man he was,” said the young man, shuffling down the bank. "He was not easy to be understood."

The hermit continued:

“Amazingly, you know, somehow I got it, understood. It had been so crazy that it made sense. Delighted with my cleverness, I decided to become as wise as he.”

“”I will sit with you here,” says me, the former king of everything, “and I will watch the water too.””

“He was pleased. He welcomed me and babbled off about things that can be seen from here, the forest, birds, sky, clouds, sun, wind. He pointed to that hollow in the old tree over there, if you look carefully you can see an owl inside. He said that it is a spirit of the forest. That this cool water is full of spirits. That they are hiding in dense water grass. That our job is to watch carefully so that we miss as little as possible.”

“I said I would not sit on the ground and asked him to make a place for me on the log he was sitting on. It was his log, he answered, and I had to find my own. That is what he said.”

Wrinkled bluish hands attacked the rosary again. It was old and strong rosary, made to resist stronger hands, thick brown hands with nails chewed to the roots.

“So I killed him.”

Young man flinched. He stared, eyes bulging, mouth open, pressing one hand on his chest.

“You killed him?”

“Later, much later, after long sitting here, I realized that it was his test, test for us both, and for all men too. Oh, such a test. And I had failed it. And with me, he had failed it. With us, all mankind had failed. The old fool had been teaching me, just as I had asked him to, imagine. I just didn’t get it... Do you get it?”

“You killed him?”

The hermit stared in the boy's brown eyes.

"You don't get it. I fail again."

“Anyway," he sighed, "I dragged his body away and threw it into those bushes over there, so it does not stink here and that animals can eat him. His bones are still there, I think. Then I sat here, and I have been sitting ever since, drinking the deep wisdom that this fine place has.”

“... hoped to learn his wisdom from you...” said the young man, staring in the direction of the distant bushes, their tops bending with the wind. “Fate, black fate... Or curse, is it curse? Can I sit with you and get wiser myself? Like you did, you?”

“Of course. Make yourself comfortable... But the rain...”

His voice trailed off. His eyes squinted, his fingers stopped counting. The young man remained standing, his fingers white from clutching his staff.

“Is that the same log that the old hermit sat on? The one you killed him for?”

The hermit paused. “No. No, you know, that one had rotted away. I brought another one, a better one, this log I am sitting on now. A good log.”

He spat at his feet and thrust his chin forward, making his beard look like a balding hedgehog.

“My log.”

“It looks very comfortable,” said the young man. His voice cracked like a dead bug.

The hermit’s eyes were locked on a patch of wavelets the wind was making on the far water, his hands square on his knees.

“Madness, that’s what it all is. You look strong, not a hermit type,” said he.

“You were stronger, when you came here.”

Raindrops started again, first tapping, then with a thick hum on the bushes and tree canopies. Pungent smell of wet dust rose in the air. The daylight was waning and night was creeping in from the forest.

“Who are you?” said the hermit.

“I am from his people. We believed he was from gods, yet of us. The one whose bones are bleaching in the bushes over there.”

The hermit drew in a deep breath, and slowly pushed it out. His thin hair and beard were already soaked, while young man’s still resisted.

“It does not have to be this way, kid. I was dumb, you do not have to be.”

“I have been sent to become like him. Now I can not. Now I must be what I can. Now I must be like you.”

The hermit spread his hands towards the water: “Behold, a glorious sunset at the horizon, and magnificent mighty rain on us. What a scene! Raindrops on the lake, Sun on the water! What a glory! Know, boy, that is why I sit here.”

“I think I like the log that you are sitting on,” said the young man slowly.

“Around the lake there is birth and hunt and kill. But men, they kill only for that old log over there,” thought the forest spirit, looking at the soaking wet young man standing in the rain by the lake shallows. The man's wet hair stuck to his bowed head and he held his bloodied hands out in the rain.

The Sun has sat down. The spirit wished to fly out towards the distant bank where tasty mice lived, and died, in great numbers. But in this downpour she will remain in her tree hollow and, just like the young man, stare at the eerie dance of the raindrops on the gray lake surface.