Richard Seltzer's Blog: Richard Seltzer, page 11
June 14, 2020
Bodmin, 1349 by Roberta Kalechofsky
Bodmin, 1349: An Epic Novel of Christians and Jews in the Plague Years by Roberta KalechofskyMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Brilliant.
Out of print.
You can read the full text at my website http://www.seltzerbooks.com/micah/ano...
And her other works at http://www.seltzerbooks.com/kalechofs...
This epic novel vividly evokes life in medieval England during the Black Death.
Unfortunately it is relevant to what we are beginning to go through today.
I plan to reread it soon.
The back cover of the original 1988 edition reads:
"... an amazing work -- Cynthia Ozick
"Bodmin, 1349 is a masterful work. Language here is a powerful and highly original cognitive instrument, surpassing Eco's The Name of the Rose. -- Mario Materassi
"... skillful novel... grounded in well-documented data -- provides a fascinating glimpse of the rich relilgious heritage of both Christians and Jews." -- Publishers Weekly
"... a very unusual work of fiction and scholarship ... Bodmin, 1349 is a fascinating introduction to a vanished era." -- Sylvia Rothchild
"... remarkable novel ... every sentence in her book is grounded in little-known but fascinating details fo the daily lives of serfs, monks and Jews in the Middle Ages." -- Gerald Jonas
Here is history with veracity and humor, told from the point of view of all the social classes who experienced The Black Death.
Here is history with human faces in the characters of Will, a peasant from York, and his wife, Miriam, rumored to be Jewish, a "leftover" from the expulsion of the Jews from England in 1290, who becomes a picaresque heroine through whom the events for the Black Death on the continent are told.
The novel is passionate and witty as it interweaves existing documents from the times, charters and chronicles, monastic life and town life, the rectory and the brothel, with fantasy, vision, and lyricism. It is a compelling work of the religious and historical imagination.
View all my reviews
June 11, 2020
The snow of yesteryear just returned
I briefly made the acquaintance of Claire Mergeay in Brussels at Christmas 1964, when I was 18.
That year I was studying in England, at Brentwood School in Essex, near London. It was Christmas vacation and not realizing that hitch hiking was easy in Europe back then, I had decided to bicycle through Belgium and the Netherlands.
As I approached the center of the city, shortly after sunset on Christmas Eve, it was snowing hard, and traffic on the city streets was at a standstill. I was pushing my bike along the sidewalk when the driver of a delivery van signaled to me. He had to make a delivery and there way no way he could park and he couldn't leave his truck blocking traffic. I helped, carrying some boxes of coffee into a restaurant. Then he told me that his family was singing with a choir in the town square (la Grande Place) just up ahead.
The scene was magical. The lights illuminating the medieval buildings reflected off the falling snow. The choir voices echoed.
When the singing ended, he introduced me to his wife and twin daughters, Claire and Collette, who, like me, were 18. I was on my way to the youth hostel. They invited me to stay with them at their home near Waterloo.
I stayed two or three day. I remember few details only that I thought that I fell in love with Claire, and hoped that she cared for me as well. For several months, we exchanged letters. She recommended poems by Paul Valéry, such as "Tes pas, enfants de mon silence..." And I wrote a poem in French for her:
ENSEMBLE
il errait dans la rue
tout seul, perdu
du brouillard dedans, dehors
rien que les mains dans les poches
rien que le coeur dans la tête
il ne cherchait rien partout
elle errait dans la rue
toute seule, perdue
du brouillard dedans, dehors
rien que les mains dans les poches
rien que le coeur dans la tête
elle ne cherchait rien partout
ils se sont rencontrés
ils flânent dans les rues ensemble
clarté dedans dehors
rien que le monde dans les poches
rien que l'autre dans la tête
ils cherchent demain ensemble
We lost contact with one another more than fifty years ago.
I was married for 39 ans. My wife died in 2012. I live alone in Connecticut and write novels.
A few days ago I searched at Google for Claire Mergeay. I had searched before and found nothing. This time I found her obituary. She died in 2010. I also found an email address for a Martine Mergeay.
Martine just replied. She is a sister one year older than Claire and Collette. She wasn't home when I visited back in 1964, so she knew nothing about me. Then she called Collette and Collette sent her the scanned images of three snapshots taken that Christmas, including her, Claire, and me, standing outside their house in the freshly fallen snow.
Seeing those photos I couldn't help but think of Francois Villion's fifteenth century poem "Où sont les neiges d'antan?' " "Where are the snows of yesteryear?"
Then two story ideas occurred to me.
Life is too short. Why do we have just one life to live? I would prefer two or three or more lives, including at least one with Claire.
And realizing that Collette had saved those snapshots for fifty-five years, another story-line occurred to me. The narrator, having gone through this same experience, and getting in touch Collette now that they are in their seventies, realizes that he had fallen for the wrong twin. And he and Collette begin a December romance together.
That year I was studying in England, at Brentwood School in Essex, near London. It was Christmas vacation and not realizing that hitch hiking was easy in Europe back then, I had decided to bicycle through Belgium and the Netherlands.
As I approached the center of the city, shortly after sunset on Christmas Eve, it was snowing hard, and traffic on the city streets was at a standstill. I was pushing my bike along the sidewalk when the driver of a delivery van signaled to me. He had to make a delivery and there way no way he could park and he couldn't leave his truck blocking traffic. I helped, carrying some boxes of coffee into a restaurant. Then he told me that his family was singing with a choir in the town square (la Grande Place) just up ahead.
The scene was magical. The lights illuminating the medieval buildings reflected off the falling snow. The choir voices echoed.
When the singing ended, he introduced me to his wife and twin daughters, Claire and Collette, who, like me, were 18. I was on my way to the youth hostel. They invited me to stay with them at their home near Waterloo.
I stayed two or three day. I remember few details only that I thought that I fell in love with Claire, and hoped that she cared for me as well. For several months, we exchanged letters. She recommended poems by Paul Valéry, such as "Tes pas, enfants de mon silence..." And I wrote a poem in French for her:
ENSEMBLE
il errait dans la rue
tout seul, perdu
du brouillard dedans, dehors
rien que les mains dans les poches
rien que le coeur dans la tête
il ne cherchait rien partout
elle errait dans la rue
toute seule, perdue
du brouillard dedans, dehors
rien que les mains dans les poches
rien que le coeur dans la tête
elle ne cherchait rien partout
ils se sont rencontrés
ils flânent dans les rues ensemble
clarté dedans dehors
rien que le monde dans les poches
rien que l'autre dans la tête
ils cherchent demain ensemble
We lost contact with one another more than fifty years ago.
I was married for 39 ans. My wife died in 2012. I live alone in Connecticut and write novels.
A few days ago I searched at Google for Claire Mergeay. I had searched before and found nothing. This time I found her obituary. She died in 2010. I also found an email address for a Martine Mergeay.
Martine just replied. She is a sister one year older than Claire and Collette. She wasn't home when I visited back in 1964, so she knew nothing about me. Then she called Collette and Collette sent her the scanned images of three snapshots taken that Christmas, including her, Claire, and me, standing outside their house in the freshly fallen snow.
Seeing those photos I couldn't help but think of Francois Villion's fifteenth century poem "Où sont les neiges d'antan?' " "Where are the snows of yesteryear?"
Then two story ideas occurred to me.
Life is too short. Why do we have just one life to live? I would prefer two or three or more lives, including at least one with Claire.
And realizing that Collette had saved those snapshots for fifty-five years, another story-line occurred to me. The narrator, having gone through this same experience, and getting in touch Collette now that they are in their seventies, realizes that he had fallen for the wrong twin. And he and Collette begin a December romance together.
June 9, 2020
The Book of Anonymities by Roberta Kalechofsky
I can't enter this book as "read" at goodreads, much less review it, because it has no ISBN.
Roberta's other books are all listed at goodreads, but this one was completed when Roberta was 85, in a nursing home, and not in a position to go through the normal publishing steps.
This amazing novel takes place in contemporary NYC, following the lives of Jewish extended family, The spot light shines on a young woman who is a PhD candidate in literature. Her research into 12th century France opens a new world for the reader. We learn about the poet Chretien de Troyes who wrote about Sir Lancelot and other Arthurian knights and his patroness, Marie of France, Countess of Champagne.
I know Roberta well and read and gave feedback on several drafts of this novel. I don't want this fine book to simply disappear, to never be read.
Therefore, I have posted the full text at my web site, where you can read it for free
http://www.seltzerbooks.com/micah/ano...
And I will make it available soon as an ebook at
Nook, Kobo, etc.
Please read and enjoy.
Roberta's other books are all listed at goodreads, but this one was completed when Roberta was 85, in a nursing home, and not in a position to go through the normal publishing steps.
This amazing novel takes place in contemporary NYC, following the lives of Jewish extended family, The spot light shines on a young woman who is a PhD candidate in literature. Her research into 12th century France opens a new world for the reader. We learn about the poet Chretien de Troyes who wrote about Sir Lancelot and other Arthurian knights and his patroness, Marie of France, Countess of Champagne.
I know Roberta well and read and gave feedback on several drafts of this novel. I don't want this fine book to simply disappear, to never be read.
Therefore, I have posted the full text at my web site, where you can read it for free
http://www.seltzerbooks.com/micah/ano...
And I will make it available soon as an ebook at
Nook, Kobo, etc.
Please read and enjoy.
June 7, 2020
Hundreds and Hundreds of Gerbils by Richard Seltzer
Bobby knew that fathers are pushovers when it comes to pets, especially gerbils.
Sure, Dad talks tough, "There will be no pets in this house ever. And that's final!" But just warm him up a bit with a trip to the zoo, then a visit to a friend with some brand-new baby gerbils. All it takes is preparation, timing and technique, and suddenly he'd be saying, "But just one gerbil would be so lonely all by himself."
Dad would be the one delighted at the birth of new gerbils and unable to let any of them go. He'd be the one running to the store for more pet stuff.
Bobby had heard all about this weakness of fathers from his friend Jimmy at school. He had seen Jimmy's house turned into a maze of pet cages and tubes. And he knew he could make the same thing happen at his house.
Yes, nine-year-old Bobby was quite proud of himself, sitting in the car with his sister Heather and brother Mikey on their way to the zoo. He knew just what to do and how to do it to start a whole gerbil adventure.
"Didn't you just love the baby bears?" asked Heather.
"I liked the baby elephant," said Mikey.
"And the baby chimpanzee," added Heather.
Bobby just smiled. They couldn't have done better if he had given them a script to read.
"The children love animals so much," Mommy said.
"Mommy, can we have a dog?" shouted Mikey from the back seat, "Please Mommy! Please!"
"Perfect," thought Bobby, "just perfect."
"No, Mommy!" protested Heather, pushing Mikey aside. "A kitten! We want a kitten."
"A dog! Mikey and me want a dog!" insisted Bobby, laughing at himself as he said it.
Mommy leaned close to Daddy and whispered, "Maybe we should, dear. They do so like animals."
"Baloney," said Daddy. "The kids themselves are more than we can handle -- a four-year-old, a first-grade girl, and a third-grade boy. And you want more than that?"
Bobby leaned over from the back seat and quietly suggested, "Just a little pet."
"Look, you have a dozen fish, a huge frog, and, at last count, 213 ants. That's plenty enough pets," insisted Daddy.
"But, Dad," Bobby whined, in his most pitiful, annoying voice. "That's just not the same."
"Yeah, Daddy," Heather agreed. "They aren't furry like kittens are."
"Yes," added Mommy, in a soft convincing voice, "you can't expect them to hug ants, can you?"
"Or frogs, either," said Heather, with a grimace.
"Never!" Daddy bellowed.
Mommy moved away. Mikey started crying.
"He hit me," whined Heather.
"Who?" asked Daddy.
"Mikey."
"Why?"
"Because I hit him."
"Why?"
"Because he hit me."
"And you want pets?" Daddy asked Mommy.
"Forget I ever said anything," Mommy answered coldly.
For the rest of the ride, the car was perfectly quiet, except for a few whines and cries and tickles and tussles in the back seat.
Then Bobby innocently asked, "Could we stop and see the Buckners?"
Daddy couldn't help but feel guilty for being so mean to such perfect children and such a wonderful wife, so of course he said, "Okay, why not?"
Heather piped up, "Oh, good! Jimmy has the cutest gerbils. Bobby took me over to see them just last week."
Daddy was so glad that the family was happy again that he wasn't at all suspicious and didn't even notice or try to figure out why Bobby would have had taken his little sister to visit at his friend's house, and why he now wanted the whole family to visit there.
Heather was the first inside the door and the first to run to the gerbil cages -- room after room of gerbil cages. Soon she had one brown and white furry creature cuddled next to each cheek. Then Mikey, then Bobby, then Mommy were cuddling more of them, too.
There was no way they could leave that house without bringing home gerbils -- three gerbils, one for each child.
They made a quick trip to the pet store for food, a 10-gallon fish tank and a screen they could put over tank to make it a cage.
Then all the kids could talk about or think about was gerbils.
Daddy, who was in the mood to play video games, was a bit put out when no one would play with him.
But Mommy insisted, "It's good for them, dear."
They named the brown and white gerbil "Chester." The two all-brown ones, who were impossible to tell apart, the kids called "Frick and Frack."
Chester was the fastest. They found that out the first night when Bobby dropped him.
"The gerbil's loose!" shouted Heather, as if she were announcing the sky was falling.
Bobby dove and missed and bumped his nose against the leg of a chair. He started crying.
Mikey was delighted. He jumped on Bobby's back, like riding a horse and hollered, "Go gerbil! Go!"
"The gerbil's loose! The gerbil's loose!" Heather repeated, stretching herself sideways across the door so it couldn't get by her.
"What!" shouted Daddy, rushing to the rescue, tripping over Heather and sliding belly-first across the floor.
"Here, Chester. Here, Chester," coaxed Mommy, offering a handful of food.
But Chester wasn't interested. He was having too much fun, dashing from one end of the room to the other -- right between Mommy's feet, right over Bobby's arm -- pausing to lick Heather on the nose and then hiding under the sofa.
Mommy and Daddy lifted the sofa. Chester sat next to the wall watching them.
They put the sofa down in the middle of the room, then turned to get Chester. But he ran right past their feet and under the sofa again.
They moved it again, and he ran under it again.
They had to take the sofa out of the room, but to do that they had to take the door off its hinges, and they had to move furniture in the next room to make space for it.
Piece by piece, they moved all the furniture and all the toys out of the living room.
A little after midnight, Bobby cornered Chester and caught him.
"I did it! I did it!" he shouted, with all the pride and excitement of an Olympic gold medalist.
"Gosh, Mommy, that was fun," said Mikey. "Can we do that again?"
"Yeah, that was fun," added Heather.
"I bet I could get him even faster next time," boasted Bobby.
"Go to bed!" bellowed Daddy.
"Now, now, dear, don't lose your temper," cautioned Mommy, petting Chester as she put him back in the cage.
The next night, just at bedtime, Heather shouted, "The gerbil's loose!"
"How in creation?" asked Daddy. This time he saw Heather stretched across the doorway and stepped over her carefully.
"Mikey did it," said Bobby, with a satisfied smile on his face.
"Bobby told me to," said Mikey.
"But he did it," said Bobby grinning. "And now we have to catch him."
"No, we don't," said Daddy. "To bed with all of you."
"But what are you going to do, dear?" Mommy asked.
"Leave some food and water in the middle of the room and shut the door. We'll worry about catching him tomorrow. Right now it's bedtime."
But the next day, there was no sign of Chester, and the food was untouched.
"He's gone, Daddy. He's gone," Heather sobbed, shaking all over.
"That's all right, honey. Don't you worry," Mommy comforted her. "Daddy will find him."
"Daddy will what?" Daddy asked.
Mommy glared at him.
"Okay, okay," he gave in. "Everybody to bed. I'll take care of this."
Daddy put a board across the doorway -- tall enough so the gerbil couldn't jump over. And with Mommy's help, once again he removed all the furniture and all the toys from the room. Only this time, without Bobby to help, they found no sign of Chester.
The next day, Heather wouldn't talk to Daddy; she wouldn't even look at him.
Mikey whined even more than usual.
And Bobby walked around with a grin on his face as if to say, "Okay, gang, when are you going to let the pro get to work on this case?"
That night Daddy gave in, "All right, Bob. See what you can do."
Bobby walked straight to the tightly-packed toy closet and opened the door. Stuffed animals fell all over the floor. Bobby picked them up and threw them to the other end of the room, then took out more and more, emptying the closet.
Daddy shut his eyes in despair.
Mikey started playing with the stuffed animals.
Heather picked up one, hugged it, and started crying, "My Mickey Mouse. It's broken. My Mickey Mouse."
"Let me see that," said Bobby. "Just like I thought," he added, doing a Sherlock Holmes imitation. "That's an animal bite on the foot. Either Chester's in that closet, or we have mice."
"Mice?" asked Mikey. "Can we have mice too, Daddy? Can we? Can we please? I'll take care of them. Honest, I will."
"Mice?" asked Mommy. "You think there might be mice? I just remembered I have to do the dishes tonight." She left in a hurry.
They found three more stuffed animals with bite marks. Then Bobby lunged and shouted, "I've got him! I've got him!"
"My hero," exclaimed Heather, giving Bobby a big kiss as he put Chester back in the cage.
"Now let this be a lesson to you," Daddy began to lecture. "Don't let a gerbil out on purpose because next time we might not be able to find him. And he could die, do you understand?"
Right then Bobby took the lid off the gerbil cage again, reached in and pulled out Chester.
"What do you think you're doing?" yelled Daddy.
"They were fighting, Dad, fighting. Look they're all bleeding already -- Chester the most. They ganged up on him Dad. I couldn't just let them kill him."
"What are we going to do, Daddy? What are we going to do?" asked Heather.
"Well, for now, young lady, you're going to bed."
While the kids got ready for bed, Daddy sat beside Bobby on the playroom floor, with Chester bleeding in his hands.
"They eat cardboard, so a box won't do," Mommy thought out loud. "But we could put him in a punch bowl with a tray on top, just for tonight. And tomorrow I could pick up another cage."
"I will not spend another penny on gerbil gear," Daddy insisted.
"Then what are you going to do, Dad?" asked Bobby. "They don't recognize each other anymore. If you put them together, they'll just fight each other like they were strangers and enemies."
"Recognize?" said Daddy. "Yes, that's it. They recognize by smell. Frick and Frack have the smell of the wood chips in the cage. And Chester smells like stuffed animals. We've just got to give him a chance to get his old smell back."
So Daddy used a piece of perforated plastic to divide the gerbil cage in half. It was the same plastic that he had used to divide a fish tank to isolate a fish that was chasing and biting the rest.
The next day Frick and Frack snarled and scratched at Chester through the partition. By the second day, they didn't pay much attention to Chester. And on the third day, Daddy took the partition out, and they all got along together fine.
"My hero," said Heather, throwing her arms around Daddy, and sitting on his lap on the sofa.
"My hero," mimicked Mikey, sitting on his lap, too.
"Not bad, Dad. Not bad at all," admitted Bobby.
And the whole family spent the evening sitting on the sofa watching the gerbils play.
"You see," said Mommy. "Getting gerbils wasn't such a bad idea, after all, was it, dear?"
"You're right, as always," he admitted, petting Chester and kissing Mommy on the cheek.
But the next morning Daddy exploded, "Good grief! Didn't Jimmy say these gerbils were all boys?"
Bobby had to work hard to stop from laughing. Everything was going according to plan.
"You mean?" asked Mommy.
"Yes," answered Daddy, "Frick or Frack just had babies."
"Babies!" shouted Heather. "We've got babies!"
"Eight. I count eight," Bobby announced.
"I thought they were only supposed to have three to a litter," grumped Daddy.
Bobby smiled innocently.
"Well, I guess we were extra lucky," said Mommy.
"How long before we can get rid of them?" asked Daddy.
"Not until they're weaned -- several weeks at least," answered Mommy.
"Get rid of them?" asked Heather.
"Give them away," explained Daddy. "We'll find new homes for them. You could give some to your friends, and the others we'll give to pet stores so they can find homes for them."
"You're not going to give them away, are you, Daddy? You're not going to let him do that, are you, Mommy? They're just the most beautiful, wonderful little gerbils in the whole world."
"They go," said Daddy.
Daddy sounded very sure of himself, but Bobby could tell he was softening. At a moment like this, all it would take would be a few words -- just the right words, words Bobby had already prepared for the occasion.
"But Dad," added Bobby, "they're pretty neat. They're all red and hairless like little hot dogs. Why don't we keep them, Dad?"
"Why don't we keep them, Dad?" mimicked Mikey.
After a week, the babies started to grow hair. One turned out to be brown and white. They named him Chester, Jr. The seven others were all brown, like Frick and Frack. They named them after the seven dwarfs in Snow White. But they looked so much alike that the kids kept arguing about which one was Dopey or Doc or Bashful or Sneezy.
A few days later, Heather woke up Mommy and Daddy, racing into their room, sobbing, "They're dead! They're dead! Somebody killed our gerbils! Why did you let somebody kill our gerbils?"
The exercise wheel had fallen on Chester's head. Beside him lay the dead bodies of three of the seven dwarfs.
"It must have been a freak accident that killed Chester," Daddy tried to explain. "And maybe the mother smelling the blood, in panic and confusion in the dark, hadn't recognized her own babies and had mistaken them for enemies. I really don't know, but it could have happened that way."
Bobby stared in disbelief, "Nothing like that ever happened at Jimmy's."
The whole house was depressed.
That afternoon, they buried Chester and the three little brown ones in a cigar box in the backyard.
The mother refused to nurse anymore, and the other five babies, including Chester Jr., died the next day.
"I hate her," sobbed Heather. "How could she do that to her own babies?"
Mommy and Daddy tried to console her, tried to explain that gerbils aren't people, that gerbils deal with one another in different ways than people do, that you can't judge gerbils by people rules.
"How can you defend her?" Heather sobbed. "I hate her. I hate her. I hate her."
Daddy said, "Maybe it would be best to give away Frick and Frack."
Heather cried even louder and ran to her room.
Nobody petted or played with Frick and Frack anymore. Heather wouldn't go near them. Bobby had to take over the chore of feeding them and changing their water and cleaning their cage. Mikey got involved in video games again.
But Heather kept a close eye on them from a distance -- staring angrily at them from across the room.
When Daddy suggested that they give away Frick and Frack, Heather burst into tears and ran to her room.
Bobby didn't say anything. He was still in shock. Everything had been going so great before -- all according to plan. And now this happened out of nowhere, like in some horror movie.
A week later, Heather woke everybody up at five in the morning. "It's a miracle! A miracle!" she shouted.
"What?" asked Daddy, drowsily. "What could be a miracle at five in the morning? Have you cleaned your room?"
"No, Dad. No. You know that could never happen. It's the gerbils."
"Did they turn into butterflies?" asked Daddy.
"No, Dad. There's six new ones. Six of the cutest little red hairless babies you ever saw. And I saw it happen! I got up to get a glass of water just as the babies were coming out of her. It's absolutely the most miraculous thing I've ever seen in my life."
Once again, one baby grew brown and white hair. They automatically called him Chester the Third. The others all looked like Frick and Frack.
This time there was no talk of giving away babies when they grew up.
Within two months, the babies were having babies of their own, and Daddy had to buy another cage -- another 10 gallon fish tank with a screen on top.
Two months later, just as all those babies were getting big enough to have babies, the original Frick and Frack both had more babies. Daddy had to buy three more cages.
"Way to go, Dad," Bobby encouraged him. "Soon we'll break Jimmy's record."
"What is Jimmy's record?" Daddy asked cautiously.
"Twenty-four cages," answered Bobby.
"No way," said Daddy.
But Bobby smiled proudly. He was back in control again.
Then more babies were born, again and again. Buying new cages became a regular event, like buying groceries.
"This is getting ridiculous," said Mommy. "Soon every table and bureau in the house is going to have a gerbil cage on it."
But despite himself, Daddy was getting more and more interested. He and Bobby went off to a pet store and came home with box after box of plastic tubing and connectors and special plastic exercise wheels. For an entire weekend, they struggled with the tubing until it connected all the cages in a vast maze that stretched from Heather's room, through the upstairs hall, down the stairs into the living room and dining room.
Now everybody, including the neighbor kids, took new interest in the gerbils, watching them learn to climb up and down and around. They especially liked to watch gerbil mothers take their newborn babies into the special exercise wheel compartments and build nests for them there.
Three months later, they had twenty-five gerbil cages -- one more than Jimmy -- and were running out of places to put them.
That was when Daddy decided they had to be firm, that they couldn't just let these gerbils multiply forever. "There has to be a limit," he told Mommy and Bobby. He was trying to build up the courage to do what he felt must be done, even though he didn't really want to do it. And he was practicing lines that he knew would be very hard to say to Heather. "Hard as it may be, we have to set a limit and give some gerbils away as new ones are born. It's one thing to have a gerbil. And it's something else altogether to have hundreds and hundreds of gerbils."
Just then Heather came rushing in to say, "The Harrison's cat had kittens! Three of them! I want the brown and white one!"
"I want the one that's all brown," said Mikey.
"I want the black and white one," added Bobby with a smile.
"Since when do you want a cat?" Daddy growled at Bobby.
"I've always wanted a cat. Haven't I, Heather? Haven't I always said I wanted a cat?" he asked innocently, looking forward to a new adventure.
"Yes, Daddy," Heather quickly agreed. "He did say so. Lots of times he did. We all did. We want all of them. That way they won't be lonely. Can we, can we, please?"
"Yeah," added Bobby. "If each of us has one, we can have races."
"Yeah, races," said Mikey. "I love races. Let's do it now."
___________
This story also appears at my website
http://www.seltzerbooks.com/gerbils.html
Sure, Dad talks tough, "There will be no pets in this house ever. And that's final!" But just warm him up a bit with a trip to the zoo, then a visit to a friend with some brand-new baby gerbils. All it takes is preparation, timing and technique, and suddenly he'd be saying, "But just one gerbil would be so lonely all by himself."
Dad would be the one delighted at the birth of new gerbils and unable to let any of them go. He'd be the one running to the store for more pet stuff.
Bobby had heard all about this weakness of fathers from his friend Jimmy at school. He had seen Jimmy's house turned into a maze of pet cages and tubes. And he knew he could make the same thing happen at his house.
Yes, nine-year-old Bobby was quite proud of himself, sitting in the car with his sister Heather and brother Mikey on their way to the zoo. He knew just what to do and how to do it to start a whole gerbil adventure.
"Didn't you just love the baby bears?" asked Heather.
"I liked the baby elephant," said Mikey.
"And the baby chimpanzee," added Heather.
Bobby just smiled. They couldn't have done better if he had given them a script to read.
"The children love animals so much," Mommy said.
"Mommy, can we have a dog?" shouted Mikey from the back seat, "Please Mommy! Please!"
"Perfect," thought Bobby, "just perfect."
"No, Mommy!" protested Heather, pushing Mikey aside. "A kitten! We want a kitten."
"A dog! Mikey and me want a dog!" insisted Bobby, laughing at himself as he said it.
Mommy leaned close to Daddy and whispered, "Maybe we should, dear. They do so like animals."
"Baloney," said Daddy. "The kids themselves are more than we can handle -- a four-year-old, a first-grade girl, and a third-grade boy. And you want more than that?"
Bobby leaned over from the back seat and quietly suggested, "Just a little pet."
"Look, you have a dozen fish, a huge frog, and, at last count, 213 ants. That's plenty enough pets," insisted Daddy.
"But, Dad," Bobby whined, in his most pitiful, annoying voice. "That's just not the same."
"Yeah, Daddy," Heather agreed. "They aren't furry like kittens are."
"Yes," added Mommy, in a soft convincing voice, "you can't expect them to hug ants, can you?"
"Or frogs, either," said Heather, with a grimace.
"Never!" Daddy bellowed.
Mommy moved away. Mikey started crying.
"He hit me," whined Heather.
"Who?" asked Daddy.
"Mikey."
"Why?"
"Because I hit him."
"Why?"
"Because he hit me."
"And you want pets?" Daddy asked Mommy.
"Forget I ever said anything," Mommy answered coldly.
For the rest of the ride, the car was perfectly quiet, except for a few whines and cries and tickles and tussles in the back seat.
Then Bobby innocently asked, "Could we stop and see the Buckners?"
Daddy couldn't help but feel guilty for being so mean to such perfect children and such a wonderful wife, so of course he said, "Okay, why not?"
Heather piped up, "Oh, good! Jimmy has the cutest gerbils. Bobby took me over to see them just last week."
Daddy was so glad that the family was happy again that he wasn't at all suspicious and didn't even notice or try to figure out why Bobby would have had taken his little sister to visit at his friend's house, and why he now wanted the whole family to visit there.
Heather was the first inside the door and the first to run to the gerbil cages -- room after room of gerbil cages. Soon she had one brown and white furry creature cuddled next to each cheek. Then Mikey, then Bobby, then Mommy were cuddling more of them, too.
There was no way they could leave that house without bringing home gerbils -- three gerbils, one for each child.
They made a quick trip to the pet store for food, a 10-gallon fish tank and a screen they could put over tank to make it a cage.
Then all the kids could talk about or think about was gerbils.
Daddy, who was in the mood to play video games, was a bit put out when no one would play with him.
But Mommy insisted, "It's good for them, dear."
They named the brown and white gerbil "Chester." The two all-brown ones, who were impossible to tell apart, the kids called "Frick and Frack."
Chester was the fastest. They found that out the first night when Bobby dropped him.
"The gerbil's loose!" shouted Heather, as if she were announcing the sky was falling.
Bobby dove and missed and bumped his nose against the leg of a chair. He started crying.
Mikey was delighted. He jumped on Bobby's back, like riding a horse and hollered, "Go gerbil! Go!"
"The gerbil's loose! The gerbil's loose!" Heather repeated, stretching herself sideways across the door so it couldn't get by her.
"What!" shouted Daddy, rushing to the rescue, tripping over Heather and sliding belly-first across the floor.
"Here, Chester. Here, Chester," coaxed Mommy, offering a handful of food.
But Chester wasn't interested. He was having too much fun, dashing from one end of the room to the other -- right between Mommy's feet, right over Bobby's arm -- pausing to lick Heather on the nose and then hiding under the sofa.
Mommy and Daddy lifted the sofa. Chester sat next to the wall watching them.
They put the sofa down in the middle of the room, then turned to get Chester. But he ran right past their feet and under the sofa again.
They moved it again, and he ran under it again.
They had to take the sofa out of the room, but to do that they had to take the door off its hinges, and they had to move furniture in the next room to make space for it.
Piece by piece, they moved all the furniture and all the toys out of the living room.
A little after midnight, Bobby cornered Chester and caught him.
"I did it! I did it!" he shouted, with all the pride and excitement of an Olympic gold medalist.
"Gosh, Mommy, that was fun," said Mikey. "Can we do that again?"
"Yeah, that was fun," added Heather.
"I bet I could get him even faster next time," boasted Bobby.
"Go to bed!" bellowed Daddy.
"Now, now, dear, don't lose your temper," cautioned Mommy, petting Chester as she put him back in the cage.
The next night, just at bedtime, Heather shouted, "The gerbil's loose!"
"How in creation?" asked Daddy. This time he saw Heather stretched across the doorway and stepped over her carefully.
"Mikey did it," said Bobby, with a satisfied smile on his face.
"Bobby told me to," said Mikey.
"But he did it," said Bobby grinning. "And now we have to catch him."
"No, we don't," said Daddy. "To bed with all of you."
"But what are you going to do, dear?" Mommy asked.
"Leave some food and water in the middle of the room and shut the door. We'll worry about catching him tomorrow. Right now it's bedtime."
But the next day, there was no sign of Chester, and the food was untouched.
"He's gone, Daddy. He's gone," Heather sobbed, shaking all over.
"That's all right, honey. Don't you worry," Mommy comforted her. "Daddy will find him."
"Daddy will what?" Daddy asked.
Mommy glared at him.
"Okay, okay," he gave in. "Everybody to bed. I'll take care of this."
Daddy put a board across the doorway -- tall enough so the gerbil couldn't jump over. And with Mommy's help, once again he removed all the furniture and all the toys from the room. Only this time, without Bobby to help, they found no sign of Chester.
The next day, Heather wouldn't talk to Daddy; she wouldn't even look at him.
Mikey whined even more than usual.
And Bobby walked around with a grin on his face as if to say, "Okay, gang, when are you going to let the pro get to work on this case?"
That night Daddy gave in, "All right, Bob. See what you can do."
Bobby walked straight to the tightly-packed toy closet and opened the door. Stuffed animals fell all over the floor. Bobby picked them up and threw them to the other end of the room, then took out more and more, emptying the closet.
Daddy shut his eyes in despair.
Mikey started playing with the stuffed animals.
Heather picked up one, hugged it, and started crying, "My Mickey Mouse. It's broken. My Mickey Mouse."
"Let me see that," said Bobby. "Just like I thought," he added, doing a Sherlock Holmes imitation. "That's an animal bite on the foot. Either Chester's in that closet, or we have mice."
"Mice?" asked Mikey. "Can we have mice too, Daddy? Can we? Can we please? I'll take care of them. Honest, I will."
"Mice?" asked Mommy. "You think there might be mice? I just remembered I have to do the dishes tonight." She left in a hurry.
They found three more stuffed animals with bite marks. Then Bobby lunged and shouted, "I've got him! I've got him!"
"My hero," exclaimed Heather, giving Bobby a big kiss as he put Chester back in the cage.
"Now let this be a lesson to you," Daddy began to lecture. "Don't let a gerbil out on purpose because next time we might not be able to find him. And he could die, do you understand?"
Right then Bobby took the lid off the gerbil cage again, reached in and pulled out Chester.
"What do you think you're doing?" yelled Daddy.
"They were fighting, Dad, fighting. Look they're all bleeding already -- Chester the most. They ganged up on him Dad. I couldn't just let them kill him."
"What are we going to do, Daddy? What are we going to do?" asked Heather.
"Well, for now, young lady, you're going to bed."
While the kids got ready for bed, Daddy sat beside Bobby on the playroom floor, with Chester bleeding in his hands.
"They eat cardboard, so a box won't do," Mommy thought out loud. "But we could put him in a punch bowl with a tray on top, just for tonight. And tomorrow I could pick up another cage."
"I will not spend another penny on gerbil gear," Daddy insisted.
"Then what are you going to do, Dad?" asked Bobby. "They don't recognize each other anymore. If you put them together, they'll just fight each other like they were strangers and enemies."
"Recognize?" said Daddy. "Yes, that's it. They recognize by smell. Frick and Frack have the smell of the wood chips in the cage. And Chester smells like stuffed animals. We've just got to give him a chance to get his old smell back."
So Daddy used a piece of perforated plastic to divide the gerbil cage in half. It was the same plastic that he had used to divide a fish tank to isolate a fish that was chasing and biting the rest.
The next day Frick and Frack snarled and scratched at Chester through the partition. By the second day, they didn't pay much attention to Chester. And on the third day, Daddy took the partition out, and they all got along together fine.
"My hero," said Heather, throwing her arms around Daddy, and sitting on his lap on the sofa.
"My hero," mimicked Mikey, sitting on his lap, too.
"Not bad, Dad. Not bad at all," admitted Bobby.
And the whole family spent the evening sitting on the sofa watching the gerbils play.
"You see," said Mommy. "Getting gerbils wasn't such a bad idea, after all, was it, dear?"
"You're right, as always," he admitted, petting Chester and kissing Mommy on the cheek.
But the next morning Daddy exploded, "Good grief! Didn't Jimmy say these gerbils were all boys?"
Bobby had to work hard to stop from laughing. Everything was going according to plan.
"You mean?" asked Mommy.
"Yes," answered Daddy, "Frick or Frack just had babies."
"Babies!" shouted Heather. "We've got babies!"
"Eight. I count eight," Bobby announced.
"I thought they were only supposed to have three to a litter," grumped Daddy.
Bobby smiled innocently.
"Well, I guess we were extra lucky," said Mommy.
"How long before we can get rid of them?" asked Daddy.
"Not until they're weaned -- several weeks at least," answered Mommy.
"Get rid of them?" asked Heather.
"Give them away," explained Daddy. "We'll find new homes for them. You could give some to your friends, and the others we'll give to pet stores so they can find homes for them."
"You're not going to give them away, are you, Daddy? You're not going to let him do that, are you, Mommy? They're just the most beautiful, wonderful little gerbils in the whole world."
"They go," said Daddy.
Daddy sounded very sure of himself, but Bobby could tell he was softening. At a moment like this, all it would take would be a few words -- just the right words, words Bobby had already prepared for the occasion.
"But Dad," added Bobby, "they're pretty neat. They're all red and hairless like little hot dogs. Why don't we keep them, Dad?"
"Why don't we keep them, Dad?" mimicked Mikey.
After a week, the babies started to grow hair. One turned out to be brown and white. They named him Chester, Jr. The seven others were all brown, like Frick and Frack. They named them after the seven dwarfs in Snow White. But they looked so much alike that the kids kept arguing about which one was Dopey or Doc or Bashful or Sneezy.
A few days later, Heather woke up Mommy and Daddy, racing into their room, sobbing, "They're dead! They're dead! Somebody killed our gerbils! Why did you let somebody kill our gerbils?"
The exercise wheel had fallen on Chester's head. Beside him lay the dead bodies of three of the seven dwarfs.
"It must have been a freak accident that killed Chester," Daddy tried to explain. "And maybe the mother smelling the blood, in panic and confusion in the dark, hadn't recognized her own babies and had mistaken them for enemies. I really don't know, but it could have happened that way."
Bobby stared in disbelief, "Nothing like that ever happened at Jimmy's."
The whole house was depressed.
That afternoon, they buried Chester and the three little brown ones in a cigar box in the backyard.
The mother refused to nurse anymore, and the other five babies, including Chester Jr., died the next day.
"I hate her," sobbed Heather. "How could she do that to her own babies?"
Mommy and Daddy tried to console her, tried to explain that gerbils aren't people, that gerbils deal with one another in different ways than people do, that you can't judge gerbils by people rules.
"How can you defend her?" Heather sobbed. "I hate her. I hate her. I hate her."
Daddy said, "Maybe it would be best to give away Frick and Frack."
Heather cried even louder and ran to her room.
Nobody petted or played with Frick and Frack anymore. Heather wouldn't go near them. Bobby had to take over the chore of feeding them and changing their water and cleaning their cage. Mikey got involved in video games again.
But Heather kept a close eye on them from a distance -- staring angrily at them from across the room.
When Daddy suggested that they give away Frick and Frack, Heather burst into tears and ran to her room.
Bobby didn't say anything. He was still in shock. Everything had been going so great before -- all according to plan. And now this happened out of nowhere, like in some horror movie.
A week later, Heather woke everybody up at five in the morning. "It's a miracle! A miracle!" she shouted.
"What?" asked Daddy, drowsily. "What could be a miracle at five in the morning? Have you cleaned your room?"
"No, Dad. No. You know that could never happen. It's the gerbils."
"Did they turn into butterflies?" asked Daddy.
"No, Dad. There's six new ones. Six of the cutest little red hairless babies you ever saw. And I saw it happen! I got up to get a glass of water just as the babies were coming out of her. It's absolutely the most miraculous thing I've ever seen in my life."
Once again, one baby grew brown and white hair. They automatically called him Chester the Third. The others all looked like Frick and Frack.
This time there was no talk of giving away babies when they grew up.
Within two months, the babies were having babies of their own, and Daddy had to buy another cage -- another 10 gallon fish tank with a screen on top.
Two months later, just as all those babies were getting big enough to have babies, the original Frick and Frack both had more babies. Daddy had to buy three more cages.
"Way to go, Dad," Bobby encouraged him. "Soon we'll break Jimmy's record."
"What is Jimmy's record?" Daddy asked cautiously.
"Twenty-four cages," answered Bobby.
"No way," said Daddy.
But Bobby smiled proudly. He was back in control again.
Then more babies were born, again and again. Buying new cages became a regular event, like buying groceries.
"This is getting ridiculous," said Mommy. "Soon every table and bureau in the house is going to have a gerbil cage on it."
But despite himself, Daddy was getting more and more interested. He and Bobby went off to a pet store and came home with box after box of plastic tubing and connectors and special plastic exercise wheels. For an entire weekend, they struggled with the tubing until it connected all the cages in a vast maze that stretched from Heather's room, through the upstairs hall, down the stairs into the living room and dining room.
Now everybody, including the neighbor kids, took new interest in the gerbils, watching them learn to climb up and down and around. They especially liked to watch gerbil mothers take their newborn babies into the special exercise wheel compartments and build nests for them there.
Three months later, they had twenty-five gerbil cages -- one more than Jimmy -- and were running out of places to put them.
That was when Daddy decided they had to be firm, that they couldn't just let these gerbils multiply forever. "There has to be a limit," he told Mommy and Bobby. He was trying to build up the courage to do what he felt must be done, even though he didn't really want to do it. And he was practicing lines that he knew would be very hard to say to Heather. "Hard as it may be, we have to set a limit and give some gerbils away as new ones are born. It's one thing to have a gerbil. And it's something else altogether to have hundreds and hundreds of gerbils."
Just then Heather came rushing in to say, "The Harrison's cat had kittens! Three of them! I want the brown and white one!"
"I want the one that's all brown," said Mikey.
"I want the black and white one," added Bobby with a smile.
"Since when do you want a cat?" Daddy growled at Bobby.
"I've always wanted a cat. Haven't I, Heather? Haven't I always said I wanted a cat?" he asked innocently, looking forward to a new adventure.
"Yes, Daddy," Heather quickly agreed. "He did say so. Lots of times he did. We all did. We want all of them. That way they won't be lonely. Can we, can we, please?"
"Yeah," added Bobby. "If each of us has one, we can have races."
"Yeah, races," said Mikey. "I love races. Let's do it now."
___________
This story also appears at my website
http://www.seltzerbooks.com/gerbils.html
June 6, 2020
Revolution by Richard Seltzer
Once there was a kingdom where the farmers were unhappy, the tradesmen were unhappy, the soldiers were unhappy, and even the king himself was unhappy. The farmers blamed it on the tradesmen. The tradesmen blamed it on the soldiers. The soldiers blamed it on the king. And the king was the unhappiest of all because he had nobody to blame it on.
Then one day a farmer's son, who had gone far away to a great city and had studied at a university, returned to the kingdom. He told everyone that the farmers weren't to blame if everyone else was unhappy. And the soliders, the tradesmen and the king to blame either. Rather, it was the system, the superstructure.
If things remained as they were, people would always be unhappy because people couldn't really "be themselves." They were forced by the system to act out their assigned roles as farmer or king. Regardless of who was a farmer and who the king, things would always be the same -- so long as there were farmers and kings. What they needed was a revolution that would do away with such distinctions. Everyone was delighted to hear what the student said, especially the king, who was the unhappiest of all. So they had a revolution -- a glorious, merry revoluton. Farmers and trades men and soldiers and even the king himself forgot that they hated each other for making each other miserable. They marched together through the streets carrying signs and chanting and singing and making speeches about how great everything was going to be after the Revolution. While everyone was making merry, the student drew up a constitution and started planning the way things would be in the future. Everyone was so happy with the Revolution and the Constitution that they immediately elected the student president. He proclaimed that no longer would farmers be farmers and tradesmen be tradesmen and soldiers be soldiers, but rather all would be workers doing their share as a team for the good of the Republic. There would be new tasks that would need to be done, and all could choose among them according to their skills and inclinations. There would be agricultural workers and industrial workers and defenders of the Republic. Everyone was delighted that everything would be so different in the Republic.
Years passed, and things settled into a routine, with people choosing to do work that they understood and were good at. The farmers became "Agricultural Workers." The tradesmen became "Industrial Workers." The soldiers became "Defenders of the Republic. Their jobs had much fancier titles now, but, in fact, they were all doing exactly what they had done before -- all except for the student and the king, who had traded places. The king had found that he was unsuited to be an agricultural worker or an industrial worker or a defender of the Republic. In fact, he found it hard to imagine himself being anything but a king. So he had left the Republic and gone to the great city and to the great university where the student had studied. There he, too, diligently sifted through the great works of history and political science. More years passed, and once again everyone was unhappy. The agricultural workers blamed it on the industrial workers, and the industrial workers on the defenders of the Republic, and the defenders of the Republic on the President; and the President was the unhappiest of all because he had nobody to blame it on. Then one day the old king returned, dressed in the garb of a student, with several huge books under each arm. He told everyone that he too had been to the great university; but having stayed there longer, he had read more and learned more than the student who had become President.
He pointed out to them that everything had fallen back into its usual place, with only the names changed. There was no reason to blame the student for this turn of events. The student had been right, as far as his theory went. But if he had read a bit further, he could have found that the superstructure depends on the super-duper-structure.
So long as the super-duper-structure remains the same, every thing will eventually fall back into the same pattern as before. The only way to have a "true revolution" is to attack the root of the problem: the super-duper-structure itself. Now, they were all so unhappy and so anxious to change their lot that they all wanted to hear what this super-duper-structure was and how they could change it.
The old king told them that so long as people needed food and water and sleep, and so long as they unthinkingly obeyed the law of gravity, people would remain pretty much the same. It was the super-duper-structure of natural necessity that they must fight. Then the super-structure could really and truly be different, and the government be different, and everything be different. Then everyone could live happily ever after. So commando teams were formed. Some challenged the limits of gravity by training for the high jump and pole vault. Others experimented with flight by hot air balloon. Through science and conditioning, others tried to stretch the limits of human endurance in such areas as hunger, thirst and sleeplessness. The old king was made Chief Commando and oversaw all these varied revolutionary activities. Being a kind, understanding man, and realizing that there is a limit to the fervor of even the most zealous patriot, he declared that every other day should be a holiday, with feasting and drinking and merrymaking of all sorts. That way the commandos could renew their strength, and, for having tasted the fruits of Revolution, would work with enthusiasm on their days of work. But soon, the commandos found the pace was too much for them. Both the revolutionary acts and the merrymaking were wearing them out. Besides, they were running out of food with which to feast and wine to get drunk with, because no one was working to make more.
So every third day was declared a "Day of Replenishment," and the men who had been farmers plowed their fields, and everyone else did their accustomed tasks.
Weeks passed, months passed, and the commando rules gradually changed. Now just one day a year was set aside for jumping and fasting and going thirsty and without sleep. The next day was a day of great feasting and merriment. And the rest of the days were as they had always been, with all the people going about their accustomed tasks, and everyone unhappy. One day the Chief Commando asked the President why he didn't go back to the university, since the office of President was now no more than a title. "If I went to the university," explained the President, "I would conceive of another revolution and would once again become the ruler -- the most unhappy man in all the land.
"As it is, everyone in this land has an assigned task but me. I can simply do whatever I please. I am the happiest man of all." Indeed, he did just what he pleased. He took up gardening as a hobby. And when his father the farmer died, he planted a gar den on the old farm. Soon all of his spare time, which was all of his time, was spent in farming the old farm, in quiet content.
Then one day a farmer's son, who had gone far away to a great city and had studied at a university, returned to the kingdom. He told everyone that the farmers weren't to blame if everyone else was unhappy. And the soliders, the tradesmen and the king to blame either. Rather, it was the system, the superstructure.
If things remained as they were, people would always be unhappy because people couldn't really "be themselves." They were forced by the system to act out their assigned roles as farmer or king. Regardless of who was a farmer and who the king, things would always be the same -- so long as there were farmers and kings. What they needed was a revolution that would do away with such distinctions. Everyone was delighted to hear what the student said, especially the king, who was the unhappiest of all. So they had a revolution -- a glorious, merry revoluton. Farmers and trades men and soldiers and even the king himself forgot that they hated each other for making each other miserable. They marched together through the streets carrying signs and chanting and singing and making speeches about how great everything was going to be after the Revolution. While everyone was making merry, the student drew up a constitution and started planning the way things would be in the future. Everyone was so happy with the Revolution and the Constitution that they immediately elected the student president. He proclaimed that no longer would farmers be farmers and tradesmen be tradesmen and soldiers be soldiers, but rather all would be workers doing their share as a team for the good of the Republic. There would be new tasks that would need to be done, and all could choose among them according to their skills and inclinations. There would be agricultural workers and industrial workers and defenders of the Republic. Everyone was delighted that everything would be so different in the Republic.
Years passed, and things settled into a routine, with people choosing to do work that they understood and were good at. The farmers became "Agricultural Workers." The tradesmen became "Industrial Workers." The soldiers became "Defenders of the Republic. Their jobs had much fancier titles now, but, in fact, they were all doing exactly what they had done before -- all except for the student and the king, who had traded places. The king had found that he was unsuited to be an agricultural worker or an industrial worker or a defender of the Republic. In fact, he found it hard to imagine himself being anything but a king. So he had left the Republic and gone to the great city and to the great university where the student had studied. There he, too, diligently sifted through the great works of history and political science. More years passed, and once again everyone was unhappy. The agricultural workers blamed it on the industrial workers, and the industrial workers on the defenders of the Republic, and the defenders of the Republic on the President; and the President was the unhappiest of all because he had nobody to blame it on. Then one day the old king returned, dressed in the garb of a student, with several huge books under each arm. He told everyone that he too had been to the great university; but having stayed there longer, he had read more and learned more than the student who had become President.
He pointed out to them that everything had fallen back into its usual place, with only the names changed. There was no reason to blame the student for this turn of events. The student had been right, as far as his theory went. But if he had read a bit further, he could have found that the superstructure depends on the super-duper-structure.
So long as the super-duper-structure remains the same, every thing will eventually fall back into the same pattern as before. The only way to have a "true revolution" is to attack the root of the problem: the super-duper-structure itself. Now, they were all so unhappy and so anxious to change their lot that they all wanted to hear what this super-duper-structure was and how they could change it.
The old king told them that so long as people needed food and water and sleep, and so long as they unthinkingly obeyed the law of gravity, people would remain pretty much the same. It was the super-duper-structure of natural necessity that they must fight. Then the super-structure could really and truly be different, and the government be different, and everything be different. Then everyone could live happily ever after. So commando teams were formed. Some challenged the limits of gravity by training for the high jump and pole vault. Others experimented with flight by hot air balloon. Through science and conditioning, others tried to stretch the limits of human endurance in such areas as hunger, thirst and sleeplessness. The old king was made Chief Commando and oversaw all these varied revolutionary activities. Being a kind, understanding man, and realizing that there is a limit to the fervor of even the most zealous patriot, he declared that every other day should be a holiday, with feasting and drinking and merrymaking of all sorts. That way the commandos could renew their strength, and, for having tasted the fruits of Revolution, would work with enthusiasm on their days of work. But soon, the commandos found the pace was too much for them. Both the revolutionary acts and the merrymaking were wearing them out. Besides, they were running out of food with which to feast and wine to get drunk with, because no one was working to make more.
So every third day was declared a "Day of Replenishment," and the men who had been farmers plowed their fields, and everyone else did their accustomed tasks.
Weeks passed, months passed, and the commando rules gradually changed. Now just one day a year was set aside for jumping and fasting and going thirsty and without sleep. The next day was a day of great feasting and merriment. And the rest of the days were as they had always been, with all the people going about their accustomed tasks, and everyone unhappy. One day the Chief Commando asked the President why he didn't go back to the university, since the office of President was now no more than a title. "If I went to the university," explained the President, "I would conceive of another revolution and would once again become the ruler -- the most unhappy man in all the land.
"As it is, everyone in this land has an assigned task but me. I can simply do whatever I please. I am the happiest man of all." Indeed, he did just what he pleased. He took up gardening as a hobby. And when his father the farmer died, he planted a gar den on the old farm. Soon all of his spare time, which was all of his time, was spent in farming the old farm, in quiet content.
June 5, 2020
The Barracks by Richard Seltzer
(from Saint Smith and Other Stories)
Synopsis --
At basic training during the Viet Nam War, all-white, reservist trainees who will never be in combat and will soon go home are paired with four black trainees facing immediate shipment to Nam, who deliberately fail the course repeatedly to delay the inevitable. Tensions of the war (which none of them support) and race relations (which the reservists have never faced) come to a head over a minor incident that looms large symbolically.
Novella, 11K words
The complete text is available for free at
http://www.seltzerbooks.com/barracks....
Synopsis --
At basic training during the Viet Nam War, all-white, reservist trainees who will never be in combat and will soon go home are paired with four black trainees facing immediate shipment to Nam, who deliberately fail the course repeatedly to delay the inevitable. Tensions of the war (which none of them support) and race relations (which the reservists have never faced) come to a head over a minor incident that looms large symbolically.
Novella, 11K words
The complete text is available for free at
http://www.seltzerbooks.com/barracks....
June 4, 2020
The Mirror by Richard Seltzer
(from Saint Smith and Other Stories)
A middle-aged man in a business suit is about to walk out of his apartment. He reaches toward the doorknob, then halts abruptly. There is panic on his face. He tries again and again, but he can't bring himself to touch the doorknob.
He checks his pockets, his hair, his shoelaces, making sure everything is in order. Something is wrong. He doesn't know what, but he simply can't leave the room until he figures it out.
He turns around and starts checking and straightening everything in sight. But still something is very wrong. Something he can't identify.
Finally he turns toward the mirror over his bureau. Once again he checks pockets, hair, shoelaces. He checks his wallet, his zipper, his tie.
Once again, he halts abruptly. He feels the tie at his collar. Looking down, he sees the tie hanging in front of his shirt. But the image of himself in the mirror has no tie.
His eyes open wide in shock as he looks from mirror to tie to mirror. It's a dull green tie, held in place by a silver-plated tie clasp. It goes well with his gray suit. But it simply doesn't appear in the mirror.
In the mirror, he himself looks the same as always. His height and build are the same. He'd recognize his face anywhere.
Everything in the mirror is the same as everything he sees on him and around him -- the gray suit, the white shirt, the black shoes. Yes, that's certainly his own face, with an expression of confusion and fear.
He shuts his eyes, turns around and looks again. Still the image in the mirror is not wearing a tie.
He goes to his bed and lies down again. Then he gets up and walks to the mirror -- still no tie.
He undresses, climbs back into bed, gets out of bed again and dresses again, just as before. Then he walks to the mirror -- still no tie.
He starts testing the image in the mirror as if it might not be real. He moves a hand quickly, then both hands, and the head, and the hips, and a leg -- faster, and faster. The image in the mirror falls at the very same time he falls.
He gets up, smooths out his clothes, clenches and unclenches his fists several times.
Then he checks his watch, takes a deep breath, and stares again at his image in the mirror.
Finally, he takes his tie off, hangs it with his other ties in the closet, calmly walks to the door, turns the doorknob, and enters the world.
A middle-aged man in a business suit is about to walk out of his apartment. He reaches toward the doorknob, then halts abruptly. There is panic on his face. He tries again and again, but he can't bring himself to touch the doorknob.
He checks his pockets, his hair, his shoelaces, making sure everything is in order. Something is wrong. He doesn't know what, but he simply can't leave the room until he figures it out.
He turns around and starts checking and straightening everything in sight. But still something is very wrong. Something he can't identify.
Finally he turns toward the mirror over his bureau. Once again he checks pockets, hair, shoelaces. He checks his wallet, his zipper, his tie.
Once again, he halts abruptly. He feels the tie at his collar. Looking down, he sees the tie hanging in front of his shirt. But the image of himself in the mirror has no tie.
His eyes open wide in shock as he looks from mirror to tie to mirror. It's a dull green tie, held in place by a silver-plated tie clasp. It goes well with his gray suit. But it simply doesn't appear in the mirror.
In the mirror, he himself looks the same as always. His height and build are the same. He'd recognize his face anywhere.
Everything in the mirror is the same as everything he sees on him and around him -- the gray suit, the white shirt, the black shoes. Yes, that's certainly his own face, with an expression of confusion and fear.
He shuts his eyes, turns around and looks again. Still the image in the mirror is not wearing a tie.
He goes to his bed and lies down again. Then he gets up and walks to the mirror -- still no tie.
He undresses, climbs back into bed, gets out of bed again and dresses again, just as before. Then he walks to the mirror -- still no tie.
He starts testing the image in the mirror as if it might not be real. He moves a hand quickly, then both hands, and the head, and the hips, and a leg -- faster, and faster. The image in the mirror falls at the very same time he falls.
He gets up, smooths out his clothes, clenches and unclenches his fists several times.
Then he checks his watch, takes a deep breath, and stares again at his image in the mirror.
Finally, he takes his tie off, hangs it with his other ties in the closet, calmly walks to the door, turns the doorknob, and enters the world.
June 1, 2020
Size Matters by Richard Seltzer
Bob was advertising executive who had a bright future ahead of him in the sales of women's undergarments, especially brassieres.
Starting in the art department, he had won praise and promotion for the beauty of the female forms he drew, especially the breasts. He drew small firm breasts, pert sexy breasts, and full round breasts. But above all, he was a master of large voluptuous breasts that seemed on the brink of bursting out of the narrow confines of bra, blouse or dress, the huge breasts of show girls and strippers.
The other aspiring ad-men he by-passed on his rapid rise to the executive ranks vented their envy by nicknaming him 'Bob the Boob.' He countered by making breast jokes and expounding breast philosophies. He referred to the mammary protuberance as the 'fountain of youth.' He claimed that it was the true symbol of the American nation -- Mae West and the spirit of the Wild West; Marilyn Monroe and the American Dream. A huge burgeoning breast was the natural symbol of the forward-looking, striving vitality of the nation: its hopes, its aspirations.
Bob was engaged to Sandra, a charming girl in all ways but one -- her breasts were small.
He could call them 'firm,' even 'pert.' He could aesthetically appreciate their shape, and the way they went so well with her shape. But they were not the voluminous, unaesthetic, bold fleshy swellings that had captured his imagination.
He tried to be reasonable -- there was no mistaking Sandra's beauty of person and form. But he craved that abundance, that super-abundance, that fleshly counterpart of the expansive vitality of America itself.
Bob was convinced that with larger breasts Sandra would be more aggressive, more self-reliant, more vigorous -- so much more the perfect wife for a young advertising executive with a bright future ahead of him.
Being a true American, he did not simply resign himself to the situation. Rather, he did everything in his power to change it.
After long months of study of the physio-bio-chemistry of the female breast, he developed a chemical that he believed could reactivate the growth cells of the breast and enable breasts that had been stunted to fill out to their natural abundant dimensions.
Rather than insert foreign matter and artificially prop up the living tissue, this method allowed the breast to literally grow.
When the experiments he performed with chimpanzees were uniformly successful, he told Sandra about it.
She was taken aback. She was, of course, aware that her breasts were below average in size. But since high school days, she had learned to get along with her disability, had learned to choose the clothes that would accentuate her more positive features, and had eventually ceased to think about the size of her breasts. But from Bob's enthusiasm, Sandra could easily guess how much their size meant to him.
For herself, she was content to remain as she was. She was suspicious of wonder-working drugs and chemicals. And, as he explained his method, she couldn't help but think of hybrid tomatoes and pumpkins growing to the size of houses. She wanted to laugh, but she didn't want to hurt his feelings. And she hoped that even if the experiment didn't succeed (and she was sure it wouldn't), the effort would cure him of his obsession, and they would be able to live together happily ever after.
She let him give her the first injection.
After a week, nothing noticeable had happened.
After two weeks, Bob grew impatient and gave her another, much larger injection.
A week more with no results, and he injected her again. She felt sure that when it didn't work this time, he would stop; and all would be well.
For another week, nothing happened. But instead of simply accepting defeat, Bob became morose and buried himself in his basement laboratory, determined to perfect the treatment.
Sandra was dismayed to learn that he had not perfected it before he tried it on her. She was still more dismayed at how little attention he paid to her now, and how surly he was when he did see her.
She wanted to hate him, but she wound up hating herself, hating her small breasts. She lay in bed whole days at a time, staring at the ceiling or in the mirror across the room where she saw the two pitifully small lumps that lay so lifeless and blah on top of her ribs.
Two months after the first injection, she thought she noticed a change. It scared her to think that she had become so obsessed that her eyes were playing tricks on her. She tried to pull herself together and go back to her normal pattern of life.
A week later, a tape measure confirmed that her bust was a full inch larger.
She didn't tell Bob.
Another week passed, and she put on two more inches. She wasn't sure if the overall effect was becoming, but they were now statistically at least average; and, considered separately from the rest of her, they were attractive.
At least Bob would be pleased; she was sure of that.
She didn't mention what was happening the few times that Bob called.
He was so busy with his advertising work and his experiments that a month passed without him seeing her.
More time would have passed, but she got scared. For her breasts had continued to grow, slowly, but steadily and her bust was now 36".
The problem wasn't their size, but their shape. They had grown irregularly, grown in length without growing commensurately in width. They hung limply and painfully -- for she wasn't used to supporting such weight. It was awkward for her to do anything but lie in bed, as she had done before, when her breasts had been so hatefully and yet comfortably small.
So Sandra called Bob and, as calmly as she could, explained that his experiment had worked, but not as planned.
He was ecstatic. Even when he saw her, he was ecstatic.
With complete confidence, he gave her new injections near the base of her breasts.
At first, his confidence seemed justified, as the breasts did, in fact, fill out and become full and round, and in succeeding weeks they grew still more to the huge voluptuous breasts of a show girl or stripper.
Bob was in paradise -- proud of his achievement. His dream was being fulfilled -- the American Dream. He called Sandra his 'butterfly' and lavished her with praise and love.
She didn't know what to think. She was proud that he was proud, pleased that he was pleased. But she was uncertain that it was over, that her breasts had stopped growing.
And they hadn't.
Bob remained proud and enthusiastic as they rose to 41", 42", 43".
"When the tape indicated 44", he made a joke about the Guiness Book of Records.
At 45", he joked about Ripley's Believe It or Not.
At 46", he announced, more positively than before, that the growth had reached its peak.
At 48" he was clearly uneasy. He kept coming up with excuses for why they shouldn't go out together in public.
But the breasts continued to grow.
At 52", he began to call in specialists: doctors, biologists, sexologists, endocrinologists, bio-chemists, and physio-bio-chemists. He, at first, told them that this growth had just happened. But the forelorn look in Sandra's eyes made him break down and confess that he was guilty: it was his experiment. He explained in full what he had done.
The doctors and scientists were amazed and congratulated him on his success and speculated on the scientific and market value of the discovery. They could offer no antidote, but rather stared in awe and even reverence at those huge breasts, bursting with vitality.
At 53", newsmen and photographers started besieging their apartment. Sandra was offered movie contracts by three major studios.
By 54", he was determined to stop this growth before it became hideous or even fatal. He called in world-famous plastic surgeons. But they stared in awe. When they said they could do nothing, Bob wasn't sure whether this was a limitation of science or if they couldn't bring themselvs to touch with a knife what must have been the most voluptuous breasts the world has ever seen.
They continued to grow. Sandra could no longer lie on her back because the weight on her chest was painful and made breathing difficult.
They continued to grow. All of New York City followed their growth on the front page of the Daily News and then even of the New York Times.
At 60", a sketch of Sandra's breasts made the cover of Time Magazine. At 65", her breasts overshadowed the Grand Tetons on the cover of The New Yorker.
Bob and Sandra became the most famous couple in America. Sales of bras doubled, then tripled, and Bob's advertising company prospered in equal proportion. The whole nation had focused its attention on Sandra's bust.
But the breasts continued to grow.
A special platform had to be built to support them. A Las Vegas nightclub owner offered Sandra a million-dollar contract just to lie supine on his stage.
Bob turned down that offer and all the movie contracts. He also turned down an offer of a vice presidency and quit his job. He spent all his days sitting by Sandra, tending to her needs; and, with her, staring in awe at the ever-growing, ever-swelling breasts.
After a couple months, the newspapers lost interest.
It was always the same story -- the breasts were always growing; and they were always the largest breasts the world had ever seen.
But half a year later those same breasts once again forced themselves on the consciousness of New Yorkers and Americans.
They burst through the walls of the apartment...
Then the walls of the building...
Then the walls of the neighboring building...
They were growing now at an alarming rate. You could see them swell like balloons, all the while maintaining their perfect voluptuous shape.
Bob was first interviewed, then apprehended by police. He laughed hysterically, but refused to say a word.
The newspapers concluded that he had gone mad and given the breasts a new and even more powerful set of injections.
He was detained at Bellevue for observation.
Sandra, the person, seemed to have disappeared. No one could see anything but these twin mounds of perfectly proportioned flesh.
But while the newspapers speculated, the breasts kept growing -- a foot an hour... a yard an hour... a yard in half an hour... ten minutes... a single minute.
Soon all of Madison Avenue was in ruins. But no one dared raise a hand against the breasts.
A millionaire went so far as to have his skyscraper levelled by wrecking machines before the breasts reached it, for fear that they might be bruised in the effort by themselves. But he need not have worried -- nothing could stop them.
Soon all of New York was in ruins.
Philosophers in Paris speculated on the meaning of the event: the dynamic relationship between quantity and quality, the transformation of object to subject, passive to active, the pour soi to en soi.
Artists in Chicago greeted the breasts as living pop art.
Southern Baptists claimed the end of the world was at hand.
Women's rights groups hailed the beginning of the end of the exploitation of women. Thousands gathered in the Boston Common carrying "Breast Power" signs.
Students at Berkeley went on strike to express their solidarity with the breasts.
Students from Columbia marched in the wake of
the breasts, singing 'We shall overcome.'
Harlem residents chanted, 'Grow, baby, grow,' as their homes were levelled.
A House subcommmittee was formed to investigate the matter.
And still the breasts continued to grow.
Northern New Jersey was levelled. The normally conservative citizenry stared in dumbstruck awe at the power and magnificence of those mountains of voluptuous flesh.
Blacks and Puerto Ricans, the poor and the young sang and danced and chanted and bared their breasts in solidarity with this natural force that was rising up in their midst and levelling the nation.
Church-going, old ladies were seen bowing down and praying to the breasts.
Foreign tourists and pilgrims began arriving in droves.
The sale of brassieres reached critically low levels as bras were burned in bonfires across the nation.
Finally, a group of businessmen decided that the situation was getting out of control. Congress was too slow to act, and the Department of Defense dared not use force against the symbol of motherhood, apple pie, Hollywood, Madison Avenue, and the American Way. They flew to India seeking a solution.
Within weeks, just as the breasts were levelling both New Haven and Philadelphia and brassiere sales had dropped to zero, an Indian Brahman designed and built a huge brassiere. A fleet of B-52's airlifted the bra from India and dropped it on the mighty breasts.
Silence fell upon the crowd, upon the millions of refugees, upon the millions of demonstrators. The steady advance had lasted for nearly two months. Many were cold and hungry. Many were hoarse with cheering and chanting. No one moved. No one spoke. All watched anxiously as the breasts strove to burst out of the bra, watched -- in the words of a French philospher who had come to America to experience the advance of this extraordinary revolutionary movement -- 'the battle of form and matter.'
When, after three days, the bra was still intact, people began to accept the fact that the breasts had been contained, that they would grow no more.
The revolution came to a stand-still. It had lost its impetus, its vital driving force.
Millions were homeless. The industrial and commercial capital of the world was buried beneath these extraordinary mammary mountains. The slow work of relocating and rebuilding began.
Eventually, the nation returned to normalcy. The 'Peaks of Progress' became part of the landscape -- an American monument and tourist attraction."
This story is also available at my website http://www.seltzerbooks.com/size.html
Starting in the art department, he had won praise and promotion for the beauty of the female forms he drew, especially the breasts. He drew small firm breasts, pert sexy breasts, and full round breasts. But above all, he was a master of large voluptuous breasts that seemed on the brink of bursting out of the narrow confines of bra, blouse or dress, the huge breasts of show girls and strippers.
The other aspiring ad-men he by-passed on his rapid rise to the executive ranks vented their envy by nicknaming him 'Bob the Boob.' He countered by making breast jokes and expounding breast philosophies. He referred to the mammary protuberance as the 'fountain of youth.' He claimed that it was the true symbol of the American nation -- Mae West and the spirit of the Wild West; Marilyn Monroe and the American Dream. A huge burgeoning breast was the natural symbol of the forward-looking, striving vitality of the nation: its hopes, its aspirations.
Bob was engaged to Sandra, a charming girl in all ways but one -- her breasts were small.
He could call them 'firm,' even 'pert.' He could aesthetically appreciate their shape, and the way they went so well with her shape. But they were not the voluminous, unaesthetic, bold fleshy swellings that had captured his imagination.
He tried to be reasonable -- there was no mistaking Sandra's beauty of person and form. But he craved that abundance, that super-abundance, that fleshly counterpart of the expansive vitality of America itself.
Bob was convinced that with larger breasts Sandra would be more aggressive, more self-reliant, more vigorous -- so much more the perfect wife for a young advertising executive with a bright future ahead of him.
Being a true American, he did not simply resign himself to the situation. Rather, he did everything in his power to change it.
After long months of study of the physio-bio-chemistry of the female breast, he developed a chemical that he believed could reactivate the growth cells of the breast and enable breasts that had been stunted to fill out to their natural abundant dimensions.
Rather than insert foreign matter and artificially prop up the living tissue, this method allowed the breast to literally grow.
When the experiments he performed with chimpanzees were uniformly successful, he told Sandra about it.
She was taken aback. She was, of course, aware that her breasts were below average in size. But since high school days, she had learned to get along with her disability, had learned to choose the clothes that would accentuate her more positive features, and had eventually ceased to think about the size of her breasts. But from Bob's enthusiasm, Sandra could easily guess how much their size meant to him.
For herself, she was content to remain as she was. She was suspicious of wonder-working drugs and chemicals. And, as he explained his method, she couldn't help but think of hybrid tomatoes and pumpkins growing to the size of houses. She wanted to laugh, but she didn't want to hurt his feelings. And she hoped that even if the experiment didn't succeed (and she was sure it wouldn't), the effort would cure him of his obsession, and they would be able to live together happily ever after.
She let him give her the first injection.
After a week, nothing noticeable had happened.
After two weeks, Bob grew impatient and gave her another, much larger injection.
A week more with no results, and he injected her again. She felt sure that when it didn't work this time, he would stop; and all would be well.
For another week, nothing happened. But instead of simply accepting defeat, Bob became morose and buried himself in his basement laboratory, determined to perfect the treatment.
Sandra was dismayed to learn that he had not perfected it before he tried it on her. She was still more dismayed at how little attention he paid to her now, and how surly he was when he did see her.
She wanted to hate him, but she wound up hating herself, hating her small breasts. She lay in bed whole days at a time, staring at the ceiling or in the mirror across the room where she saw the two pitifully small lumps that lay so lifeless and blah on top of her ribs.
Two months after the first injection, she thought she noticed a change. It scared her to think that she had become so obsessed that her eyes were playing tricks on her. She tried to pull herself together and go back to her normal pattern of life.
A week later, a tape measure confirmed that her bust was a full inch larger.
She didn't tell Bob.
Another week passed, and she put on two more inches. She wasn't sure if the overall effect was becoming, but they were now statistically at least average; and, considered separately from the rest of her, they were attractive.
At least Bob would be pleased; she was sure of that.
She didn't mention what was happening the few times that Bob called.
He was so busy with his advertising work and his experiments that a month passed without him seeing her.
More time would have passed, but she got scared. For her breasts had continued to grow, slowly, but steadily and her bust was now 36".
The problem wasn't their size, but their shape. They had grown irregularly, grown in length without growing commensurately in width. They hung limply and painfully -- for she wasn't used to supporting such weight. It was awkward for her to do anything but lie in bed, as she had done before, when her breasts had been so hatefully and yet comfortably small.
So Sandra called Bob and, as calmly as she could, explained that his experiment had worked, but not as planned.
He was ecstatic. Even when he saw her, he was ecstatic.
With complete confidence, he gave her new injections near the base of her breasts.
At first, his confidence seemed justified, as the breasts did, in fact, fill out and become full and round, and in succeeding weeks they grew still more to the huge voluptuous breasts of a show girl or stripper.
Bob was in paradise -- proud of his achievement. His dream was being fulfilled -- the American Dream. He called Sandra his 'butterfly' and lavished her with praise and love.
She didn't know what to think. She was proud that he was proud, pleased that he was pleased. But she was uncertain that it was over, that her breasts had stopped growing.
And they hadn't.
Bob remained proud and enthusiastic as they rose to 41", 42", 43".
"When the tape indicated 44", he made a joke about the Guiness Book of Records.
At 45", he joked about Ripley's Believe It or Not.
At 46", he announced, more positively than before, that the growth had reached its peak.
At 48" he was clearly uneasy. He kept coming up with excuses for why they shouldn't go out together in public.
But the breasts continued to grow.
At 52", he began to call in specialists: doctors, biologists, sexologists, endocrinologists, bio-chemists, and physio-bio-chemists. He, at first, told them that this growth had just happened. But the forelorn look in Sandra's eyes made him break down and confess that he was guilty: it was his experiment. He explained in full what he had done.
The doctors and scientists were amazed and congratulated him on his success and speculated on the scientific and market value of the discovery. They could offer no antidote, but rather stared in awe and even reverence at those huge breasts, bursting with vitality.
At 53", newsmen and photographers started besieging their apartment. Sandra was offered movie contracts by three major studios.
By 54", he was determined to stop this growth before it became hideous or even fatal. He called in world-famous plastic surgeons. But they stared in awe. When they said they could do nothing, Bob wasn't sure whether this was a limitation of science or if they couldn't bring themselvs to touch with a knife what must have been the most voluptuous breasts the world has ever seen.
They continued to grow. Sandra could no longer lie on her back because the weight on her chest was painful and made breathing difficult.
They continued to grow. All of New York City followed their growth on the front page of the Daily News and then even of the New York Times.
At 60", a sketch of Sandra's breasts made the cover of Time Magazine. At 65", her breasts overshadowed the Grand Tetons on the cover of The New Yorker.
Bob and Sandra became the most famous couple in America. Sales of bras doubled, then tripled, and Bob's advertising company prospered in equal proportion. The whole nation had focused its attention on Sandra's bust.
But the breasts continued to grow.
A special platform had to be built to support them. A Las Vegas nightclub owner offered Sandra a million-dollar contract just to lie supine on his stage.
Bob turned down that offer and all the movie contracts. He also turned down an offer of a vice presidency and quit his job. He spent all his days sitting by Sandra, tending to her needs; and, with her, staring in awe at the ever-growing, ever-swelling breasts.
After a couple months, the newspapers lost interest.
It was always the same story -- the breasts were always growing; and they were always the largest breasts the world had ever seen.
But half a year later those same breasts once again forced themselves on the consciousness of New Yorkers and Americans.
They burst through the walls of the apartment...
Then the walls of the building...
Then the walls of the neighboring building...
They were growing now at an alarming rate. You could see them swell like balloons, all the while maintaining their perfect voluptuous shape.
Bob was first interviewed, then apprehended by police. He laughed hysterically, but refused to say a word.
The newspapers concluded that he had gone mad and given the breasts a new and even more powerful set of injections.
He was detained at Bellevue for observation.
Sandra, the person, seemed to have disappeared. No one could see anything but these twin mounds of perfectly proportioned flesh.
But while the newspapers speculated, the breasts kept growing -- a foot an hour... a yard an hour... a yard in half an hour... ten minutes... a single minute.
Soon all of Madison Avenue was in ruins. But no one dared raise a hand against the breasts.
A millionaire went so far as to have his skyscraper levelled by wrecking machines before the breasts reached it, for fear that they might be bruised in the effort by themselves. But he need not have worried -- nothing could stop them.
Soon all of New York was in ruins.
Philosophers in Paris speculated on the meaning of the event: the dynamic relationship between quantity and quality, the transformation of object to subject, passive to active, the pour soi to en soi.
Artists in Chicago greeted the breasts as living pop art.
Southern Baptists claimed the end of the world was at hand.
Women's rights groups hailed the beginning of the end of the exploitation of women. Thousands gathered in the Boston Common carrying "Breast Power" signs.
Students at Berkeley went on strike to express their solidarity with the breasts.
Students from Columbia marched in the wake of
the breasts, singing 'We shall overcome.'
Harlem residents chanted, 'Grow, baby, grow,' as their homes were levelled.
A House subcommmittee was formed to investigate the matter.
And still the breasts continued to grow.
Northern New Jersey was levelled. The normally conservative citizenry stared in dumbstruck awe at the power and magnificence of those mountains of voluptuous flesh.
Blacks and Puerto Ricans, the poor and the young sang and danced and chanted and bared their breasts in solidarity with this natural force that was rising up in their midst and levelling the nation.
Church-going, old ladies were seen bowing down and praying to the breasts.
Foreign tourists and pilgrims began arriving in droves.
The sale of brassieres reached critically low levels as bras were burned in bonfires across the nation.
Finally, a group of businessmen decided that the situation was getting out of control. Congress was too slow to act, and the Department of Defense dared not use force against the symbol of motherhood, apple pie, Hollywood, Madison Avenue, and the American Way. They flew to India seeking a solution.
Within weeks, just as the breasts were levelling both New Haven and Philadelphia and brassiere sales had dropped to zero, an Indian Brahman designed and built a huge brassiere. A fleet of B-52's airlifted the bra from India and dropped it on the mighty breasts.
Silence fell upon the crowd, upon the millions of refugees, upon the millions of demonstrators. The steady advance had lasted for nearly two months. Many were cold and hungry. Many were hoarse with cheering and chanting. No one moved. No one spoke. All watched anxiously as the breasts strove to burst out of the bra, watched -- in the words of a French philospher who had come to America to experience the advance of this extraordinary revolutionary movement -- 'the battle of form and matter.'
When, after three days, the bra was still intact, people began to accept the fact that the breasts had been contained, that they would grow no more.
The revolution came to a stand-still. It had lost its impetus, its vital driving force.
Millions were homeless. The industrial and commercial capital of the world was buried beneath these extraordinary mammary mountains. The slow work of relocating and rebuilding began.
Eventually, the nation returned to normalcy. The 'Peaks of Progress' became part of the landscape -- an American monument and tourist attraction."
This story is also available at my website http://www.seltzerbooks.com/size.html
May 30, 2020
Now and Then by Richard Seltzer
(from the book Now and Then and other Tales from Ome, 1976)
Once upon a space there was a time, a cute little time. Her name was Now.
Her father was Yesterday, and her mother was
Tomorrow. And they loved her very much. But there was nobody around to play with.
Her big brother, Today, was twenty-four hours tall -- so big that she could hardly see his face. And it was very hard for him to bend way down and play with little Now.
There were many many times -- good times and bad times, long times and short times. But none of them was anywhere near as little as Now.
When her mommy saw how lonely she was, she told her, "We aren't the only times. We're a special class of times, a leisure class. There are many other times who have to work for a living, and maybe among them you can find some time just your size to play with."
So Now flew (for all time flies) to the land of working time. There was A-Time-to-be-Born and A-Time-to-Die, A-Time-for Sowing and A-Time-for-Reaping. There were big big times like A-Time-for-War and A-Time-for-Sorrow. But there were little times, too -- times almost as little as Now, times like A-Time-for-Peace and
A-Time-for-Joy. So she asked A-Time-for-Joy if he'd like to play.
But he said, "Don't bother me. I'm busy. I've got no space to play in. All I do is have joy, joy, joy; everywhere nothing but joy. It's a drag, of course. And I'd love to play with you if I could. But a job's a job... Why don't you try A-Time-to-Play. He should be able to help you."
But A-Time-to-Play said, "You want to play? You've got to be kidding. I'd give you this job, glad to get rid of it. But the labor market's tight these days, and a time's got to eat. So I'm sorry, but I can't help you."
"But I want a time to play with. Just some time, any time. Don't any times play together? Surely you must know?"
"Most times around here are used to being by themselves. Afterall, we've got work to do. We're respectable. Only those good-for-nothing, lazy... Oh, there are times that play around."
"Mommy said that there'd be times like that."
"Yes. I might have figured as much. Tomorrow's not so far from being one herself."
"One what?"
"An indefinite. No reflection on your mother personally, Now. She raised herself up from all that. She married a time of the leisure class. She's respectable, Now. But what she came from... Don't get me wrong, Now. What I'm saying is for your own good. You've got it in your blood, and maybe your mother hasn't taught you. You see, Now, Tomorrow's parents are Forever and Ever: two of the laziest, most indefinite times in the universe. They play all right. All they do is play, play, play. But they have no fixed place in society like Yesterday and nine o'clock. And they don't do a bit of work. Why they're the very lowest class of time. And (but don't tell your mother I said this), Ever's brother, Never, is so low he isn't a time at all. He's an enemy of society, that's what he is. He's ..."
But Now didn't wait to hear the rest. She wanted to see her grandparents who she hadn't heard of before and to meet these merry times, these free and easy, happy-go-lucky times of the "lowest class."
And she liked Forever and Ever -- they were so much fun to talk to. But they were so big. She really couldn't tell just how big they were, but together they just seemed to have no end at all.
And she grew very, very unhappy because even here she couldn't find anybody her size to play with.
But Then.
Yes, Then.
She saw him. And he saw her. And Now and Then. Then and Now played and played and played.
Now and Then -- the greatest playmates of all time.
_______________
For the complete book, including illustrations, for free see http://www.seltzerbooks.com/nowandthe...
Once upon a space there was a time, a cute little time. Her name was Now.
Her father was Yesterday, and her mother was
Tomorrow. And they loved her very much. But there was nobody around to play with.
Her big brother, Today, was twenty-four hours tall -- so big that she could hardly see his face. And it was very hard for him to bend way down and play with little Now.
There were many many times -- good times and bad times, long times and short times. But none of them was anywhere near as little as Now.
When her mommy saw how lonely she was, she told her, "We aren't the only times. We're a special class of times, a leisure class. There are many other times who have to work for a living, and maybe among them you can find some time just your size to play with."
So Now flew (for all time flies) to the land of working time. There was A-Time-to-be-Born and A-Time-to-Die, A-Time-for Sowing and A-Time-for-Reaping. There were big big times like A-Time-for-War and A-Time-for-Sorrow. But there were little times, too -- times almost as little as Now, times like A-Time-for-Peace and
A-Time-for-Joy. So she asked A-Time-for-Joy if he'd like to play.
But he said, "Don't bother me. I'm busy. I've got no space to play in. All I do is have joy, joy, joy; everywhere nothing but joy. It's a drag, of course. And I'd love to play with you if I could. But a job's a job... Why don't you try A-Time-to-Play. He should be able to help you."
But A-Time-to-Play said, "You want to play? You've got to be kidding. I'd give you this job, glad to get rid of it. But the labor market's tight these days, and a time's got to eat. So I'm sorry, but I can't help you."
"But I want a time to play with. Just some time, any time. Don't any times play together? Surely you must know?"
"Most times around here are used to being by themselves. Afterall, we've got work to do. We're respectable. Only those good-for-nothing, lazy... Oh, there are times that play around."
"Mommy said that there'd be times like that."
"Yes. I might have figured as much. Tomorrow's not so far from being one herself."
"One what?"
"An indefinite. No reflection on your mother personally, Now. She raised herself up from all that. She married a time of the leisure class. She's respectable, Now. But what she came from... Don't get me wrong, Now. What I'm saying is for your own good. You've got it in your blood, and maybe your mother hasn't taught you. You see, Now, Tomorrow's parents are Forever and Ever: two of the laziest, most indefinite times in the universe. They play all right. All they do is play, play, play. But they have no fixed place in society like Yesterday and nine o'clock. And they don't do a bit of work. Why they're the very lowest class of time. And (but don't tell your mother I said this), Ever's brother, Never, is so low he isn't a time at all. He's an enemy of society, that's what he is. He's ..."
But Now didn't wait to hear the rest. She wanted to see her grandparents who she hadn't heard of before and to meet these merry times, these free and easy, happy-go-lucky times of the "lowest class."
And she liked Forever and Ever -- they were so much fun to talk to. But they were so big. She really couldn't tell just how big they were, but together they just seemed to have no end at all.
And she grew very, very unhappy because even here she couldn't find anybody her size to play with.
But Then.
Yes, Then.
She saw him. And he saw her. And Now and Then. Then and Now played and played and played.
Now and Then -- the greatest playmates of all time.
_______________
For the complete book, including illustrations, for free see http://www.seltzerbooks.com/nowandthe...
May 28, 2020
Gentle Inquisitor by Richard Seltzer
Esteban had always been a zealous Dominican, wishing to do all he could for the good of the order and the glory of God. He had been in monasteries since the age of ten, and he loved the life: the tranquility, the libraries with their theological treasures, the tradition of so many lives over so many centuries devoted to the service of Christ. At an early age he had been ordained as a priest and had become a professor of theology at the University of Salamanca.
But he felt that it was selfish of him to spend his life so quietly and securely feeling the presence of God about him. His students had all taken their vows, had given their lives to Christ; but outside the academy walls, millions of people rarely thought of Christ or thought wrongly of Him. He had read of such people time and again. And many of his former classmates were directly confronting such people, taking an active part in the Inquisition. So Esteban requested that he too might take part in that great work of saving souls from perdition.
That was how it came to pass that one day a young priest found himself as the chief prosecutor in the case of a young Jewess who pretended to have converted to the True Faith and paid lip service to Christ while continuing in the abominable ways of her ancestors. The highest dignitaries of the church were assembled with all the official robes and insignia of a great religious festival. He tried to restrain himself from the sin of pride, to remember that he was acting in the service of God, that what mattered was not his own eloquence, (which surely was superfluous since she was known to be guilty), but the soul of the young Jewess who must be forced to confess and must be burnt at a great and glorious Auto de Fe that she might, with the grace of God, be granted everlasting life. And so many others like her needed saving: a great new career in service to God was opening for him.
But he found himself saying things he never expected to say, found himself, in fact, pleading in her behalf in front of the entire Court of the Inquisition. It was quite embarrassing, a shocking display. And to make matters worse, he spoke well, too well, much better than he had ever spoken before. It was all quite unfortunate. She was acquitted, and ever after that he had her soul on his conscience. All his prayers and penance did nothing to erase his guilt: his action was unthinkable.
He apologized again and again to his superiors and friends; and they could tell that he was sincerely penitent. They tried to comfort him, assured him that he meant well and that in the eyes of God that was what mattered. They would see to it that he would never again be placed in such a difficult situation. He was evidently unsuited for the pressures of courtroom oratory. Another task would be found for him so he might work for the good of the order and the glory of God.
But, unfortunately, the young Jewess, through his folly, had never been brought to a true understanding of her sins, had not been humbled to repentance, in fact still considered herself perfectly innocent, had no fear for her soul at all; and was grateful, immensely grateful to Father Esteban for saving her from the flames. And her family was grateful (though they were now much more careful about their public behavior). And her friends were grateful (though in public they dared not let it be known that they were friends). And Esteban kept receiving, even months after the trial, anonymous gifts and tokens and letters from well-wishers. The gifts he donated to the order. The tokens and letters he destroyed, trying to erase that scandalous incident from his mind.
His superiors wanted him to return to his old professorship, but Esteban requested that he be given a task, however humble, that involved the saving of souls. So Esteban became the confessor of several of the greatest nobles of Salamanca. And at first the job delighted him: having contact with real people and real problems, being entrusted with the care of souls that were in daily danger. But then it struck him how trivial were the sins that were confessed to him: mere matters of lust and avarice, pride and ambition. And he became more and more deeply convinced that he was a greater sinner than any of them, having lost the soul of the poor young girl. Who was he to absolve anyone of anything? It was more likely that his advice would corrupt rather than cleanse the moral lives of these fine upstanding people. Esteban requested to be relieved of his duties, to be given some still humbler task of saving souls, one befitting such a sinner as he.
And so Esteban became a seller of indulgences. And he was a fine salesman, quite eloquent about the miseries of hell and purgatory, quite adept in his argumentation, in the way he summoned masses of evidence in support of the effectiveness of indulgences. And though his superiors were disappointed that such a fine young scholar insisted on taking up such a lowly task, they were pleased with the results, for many hundreds of souls were advanced in the celestial hierarchy toward lesser misery and much fine marble could be bought for St. Peter's in Rome and the glory of God.
But it soon came to light that Father Esteban had on occasion given indulgences to beggars. It would have passed unnoticed, for he paid for them out of his own pocket: but it so happened that one of the beggars took offense, was quite loud in his complaints that he asks for bread and this priest gives him a fancy piece of paper ;that promises in Latin that after he's dead he won't have to suffer quite so many years.
It created quite a scandal: giving indulgences to beggars. Why in no time everyone would be expecting the Church to just give them away. Why It was contrary to the whole spirit of the thing. And Esteban recognized his error, did penance for having been so weak, for having forgotten that pity is one of the most powerful weapons in Satan's arsenal.
In his guilt and despair, Father Esteban returned to his books, buried himself in the abstruse studies of his youth; and it was in such studies that he discovered his true calling. He felt drawn to heresies, to their intricacies and subtleties. It was amazing how rational and convincing some of them were, how subtle the ways of Satan. It would be easy for someone, anyone, even he Father Esteban to be seduced into taking the false for the true, the Anti-Christ for Christ.
Of course, in retrospect, the scholars of the Church always untangled the true from the false, pointing out the very source of the error. But to be confronted with a new heresy, one that was not yet officially recognized, that had not yet undergone such painstaking analysis: that would indeed be frighteningly difficult for a learned priest to properly understand, much less the ordinary lay believer. And time and again throughout history, hundreds, thousands, perhaps even millions of souls were lost, damned for all eternity before the Holy Catholic Church had time to diagnose the disease and begin its curative efforts.
It occurred to Esteban that if heresies could be described and analyzed before they captured people's imaginations, many millions of souls could be saved. And the very logic of heresies, the reasonableness that made them so convincing, made it possible for someone well versed in theology to imagine the ramifications of shifts of emphasis, of slight changes in the True Doctrine as they were logically developed and expanded. He dreamed of compiling a monumental compendium of all possible heresies, completely and conveniently indexed, so that even the simplest carpenter could check his idle musings and be assured that he had not unwittingly fallen into deadly error.
The Grand Inquisitor was not particularly enthusiastic about the idea. But he gave his approval nonetheless, pleased that the zealous priest now had a harmless task with which to content himself, a task that might, in fact, prove useful.
So Father Esteban set about his work. And he was amazed at how easy it was to dream of new heresies. In just a few years, he composed 7000 heresies, and they continued to flow readily from his pen.
Just the slightest change in wording or in interpretation of a word could lead to the most mortal of all sins. For instance, in the opening sentence of the Gospel of John, the standard interpretation rendered the preposition "pros" as "with." But in classical Greek it was quite possible for "pros" plus the accusative to mean "against." On the basis of such a slight change one could claim that "In the beginning was Reason and Reason was against God and Reason was God." In other words, Reason by its very nature is opposed to God but, in fact, is itself God Himself. Variations on those opening passages of John alone gave rise to 2153 heresies. And there would have been still more if Esteban hadn't grown weary of the theme.
He loved best the heresies that dealt with Christ incarnate as man, with his man-ness and his god-ness and their varying degrees and interrelations. That was the most difficult point of theology: how God could be man. And a simple carpenter. It was so hard to connect the abstruse formulations of theologians with the life of a simple carpenter. But to fail to do so was heresy, a heresy that every carpenter since the time of Christ had probably fallen into, had probably only avoided by never asking the question.
And Christ himself, the carpenter -- could he have known that he was God? Of course, all is possible to God, but God-as-man? How far a man? Perhaps he was even man enough not to know all these subtleties. Perhaps he considered the behavior of his disciples extraordinary. He was amazed at his own behavior in front of crowds, saying things that he never intended to say. This interpretation would clear up some of the apparent contradictions in the gospels. Sometimes he spoke as God and sometimes as a man who, as far as he knew, was just a man, unambitious, finding it difficult to explain his own behavior and to restrain the reactions of his friends.
And he had been among us twice: both before and after the Resurrection. And if he didn't know that he was God the first time, perhaps he didn't know the second. And one day waking up in a stone cold tomb, enshrouded and anointed like a corpse, he quite frantically unbound himself, trying all the while to convince himself that this was just a nightmare, though he found it difficult to remember the other world he lived in when he was truly awake. He stumbled as he walked out into the bright Easter sun, so painful to his unaccustomed eyes. Two women who saw him screamed and ran away. He didn't mean to frighten them, or the soldiers either. But that was the way with dreams -- sudden shifts of scene, transformations, and people forever over-reacting.
It was all probably symbolic of something he wanted -- the holes in the hands and feet probably indicated that he was nailed down to some job, some pattern of life that he found deadening and wished to break away from at all costs, in order to start a new life in a new place among new friends.
All these people and places struck him as unfamiliar. He kept hoping it would end soon. And it did. But from beginning to end, it was an extraordinary dream in which he was forever amazing and frightening himself with his own behavior.
And, reasoned Esteban, if Christ had been among us twice unbeknownst to himself and had on those occasions announced at inspired moments that he would return again, then perhaps he had returned, perhaps many times, but had passed unrecognized. Perhaps he is even now among us.
Father Esteban broke out in a cold sweat as he reread his pages. They were in a sense "inspired." He had let the words and ideas carry him whither they would. They struck him as unfamiliar as he reread them now. "Exceptionally good," he told himself near the start. "A veritable gem," he told himself as he neared the end. "It alone will make my compendium a work of at." He tried to restrain himself from the sin of pride.
But now he remembered the last sentence, and he was afraid to read it. He dared not turn that last page, dared not see the sin of sins committed so clearly in his own hand. He painfully remembered the incident with the Jewess, tried to excuse the present circumstance as another case of that madness. But, fortunately, this time it was only his own soul that was at stake. No one had yet read the words. Not even he had read those words of his madness, not his words, even though he had written them. No, he wasn't the author. And no one would ever read them.
He pulled himself together, took several deep breaths, then calmly and quietly gathered up his manuscript and calmly and quietly burned it in the same hearth where he had burned the tokens and letters from friends and relatives of the Jewess. But as the last page went up in flame, a doubt arose in his mind. He was no longer certain that the words on that page read, 'I am the Christ, the son of God." He was no longer sure, and it disturbed him profoundly that it might not have been so.
As he wandered through the streets of Salamanca in despair, he was disturbed that he was disturbed. He needed to speak to someone, to anyone though he dared not turn to his fellow Dominicans, for how could they sympathize with a priest who wanted to be Christ, who wanted not just to be like Christ, but to be Christ in the flesh -- to forever do the "right" without necessarily even thinking of God.
Yet he didn't know and couldn't believe that that was in fact what he wanted. It was just an illusion. He had never written it. And afterwards he was simply distraught, not in command of his senses, having just destroyed in a matter of minutes his life's work. And he couldn't tell the Jewess or her family either, as they welcomed him with great rejoicing and spread a feast before him.
And so it came to pass that Father Esteban no longer worked for the good of the order and the glory of God, that, instead, he learned the trade of a carpenter and lived a simple, long, and quiet life.
But he felt that it was selfish of him to spend his life so quietly and securely feeling the presence of God about him. His students had all taken their vows, had given their lives to Christ; but outside the academy walls, millions of people rarely thought of Christ or thought wrongly of Him. He had read of such people time and again. And many of his former classmates were directly confronting such people, taking an active part in the Inquisition. So Esteban requested that he too might take part in that great work of saving souls from perdition.
That was how it came to pass that one day a young priest found himself as the chief prosecutor in the case of a young Jewess who pretended to have converted to the True Faith and paid lip service to Christ while continuing in the abominable ways of her ancestors. The highest dignitaries of the church were assembled with all the official robes and insignia of a great religious festival. He tried to restrain himself from the sin of pride, to remember that he was acting in the service of God, that what mattered was not his own eloquence, (which surely was superfluous since she was known to be guilty), but the soul of the young Jewess who must be forced to confess and must be burnt at a great and glorious Auto de Fe that she might, with the grace of God, be granted everlasting life. And so many others like her needed saving: a great new career in service to God was opening for him.
But he found himself saying things he never expected to say, found himself, in fact, pleading in her behalf in front of the entire Court of the Inquisition. It was quite embarrassing, a shocking display. And to make matters worse, he spoke well, too well, much better than he had ever spoken before. It was all quite unfortunate. She was acquitted, and ever after that he had her soul on his conscience. All his prayers and penance did nothing to erase his guilt: his action was unthinkable.
He apologized again and again to his superiors and friends; and they could tell that he was sincerely penitent. They tried to comfort him, assured him that he meant well and that in the eyes of God that was what mattered. They would see to it that he would never again be placed in such a difficult situation. He was evidently unsuited for the pressures of courtroom oratory. Another task would be found for him so he might work for the good of the order and the glory of God.
But, unfortunately, the young Jewess, through his folly, had never been brought to a true understanding of her sins, had not been humbled to repentance, in fact still considered herself perfectly innocent, had no fear for her soul at all; and was grateful, immensely grateful to Father Esteban for saving her from the flames. And her family was grateful (though they were now much more careful about their public behavior). And her friends were grateful (though in public they dared not let it be known that they were friends). And Esteban kept receiving, even months after the trial, anonymous gifts and tokens and letters from well-wishers. The gifts he donated to the order. The tokens and letters he destroyed, trying to erase that scandalous incident from his mind.
His superiors wanted him to return to his old professorship, but Esteban requested that he be given a task, however humble, that involved the saving of souls. So Esteban became the confessor of several of the greatest nobles of Salamanca. And at first the job delighted him: having contact with real people and real problems, being entrusted with the care of souls that were in daily danger. But then it struck him how trivial were the sins that were confessed to him: mere matters of lust and avarice, pride and ambition. And he became more and more deeply convinced that he was a greater sinner than any of them, having lost the soul of the poor young girl. Who was he to absolve anyone of anything? It was more likely that his advice would corrupt rather than cleanse the moral lives of these fine upstanding people. Esteban requested to be relieved of his duties, to be given some still humbler task of saving souls, one befitting such a sinner as he.
And so Esteban became a seller of indulgences. And he was a fine salesman, quite eloquent about the miseries of hell and purgatory, quite adept in his argumentation, in the way he summoned masses of evidence in support of the effectiveness of indulgences. And though his superiors were disappointed that such a fine young scholar insisted on taking up such a lowly task, they were pleased with the results, for many hundreds of souls were advanced in the celestial hierarchy toward lesser misery and much fine marble could be bought for St. Peter's in Rome and the glory of God.
But it soon came to light that Father Esteban had on occasion given indulgences to beggars. It would have passed unnoticed, for he paid for them out of his own pocket: but it so happened that one of the beggars took offense, was quite loud in his complaints that he asks for bread and this priest gives him a fancy piece of paper ;that promises in Latin that after he's dead he won't have to suffer quite so many years.
It created quite a scandal: giving indulgences to beggars. Why in no time everyone would be expecting the Church to just give them away. Why It was contrary to the whole spirit of the thing. And Esteban recognized his error, did penance for having been so weak, for having forgotten that pity is one of the most powerful weapons in Satan's arsenal.
In his guilt and despair, Father Esteban returned to his books, buried himself in the abstruse studies of his youth; and it was in such studies that he discovered his true calling. He felt drawn to heresies, to their intricacies and subtleties. It was amazing how rational and convincing some of them were, how subtle the ways of Satan. It would be easy for someone, anyone, even he Father Esteban to be seduced into taking the false for the true, the Anti-Christ for Christ.
Of course, in retrospect, the scholars of the Church always untangled the true from the false, pointing out the very source of the error. But to be confronted with a new heresy, one that was not yet officially recognized, that had not yet undergone such painstaking analysis: that would indeed be frighteningly difficult for a learned priest to properly understand, much less the ordinary lay believer. And time and again throughout history, hundreds, thousands, perhaps even millions of souls were lost, damned for all eternity before the Holy Catholic Church had time to diagnose the disease and begin its curative efforts.
It occurred to Esteban that if heresies could be described and analyzed before they captured people's imaginations, many millions of souls could be saved. And the very logic of heresies, the reasonableness that made them so convincing, made it possible for someone well versed in theology to imagine the ramifications of shifts of emphasis, of slight changes in the True Doctrine as they were logically developed and expanded. He dreamed of compiling a monumental compendium of all possible heresies, completely and conveniently indexed, so that even the simplest carpenter could check his idle musings and be assured that he had not unwittingly fallen into deadly error.
The Grand Inquisitor was not particularly enthusiastic about the idea. But he gave his approval nonetheless, pleased that the zealous priest now had a harmless task with which to content himself, a task that might, in fact, prove useful.
So Father Esteban set about his work. And he was amazed at how easy it was to dream of new heresies. In just a few years, he composed 7000 heresies, and they continued to flow readily from his pen.
Just the slightest change in wording or in interpretation of a word could lead to the most mortal of all sins. For instance, in the opening sentence of the Gospel of John, the standard interpretation rendered the preposition "pros" as "with." But in classical Greek it was quite possible for "pros" plus the accusative to mean "against." On the basis of such a slight change one could claim that "In the beginning was Reason and Reason was against God and Reason was God." In other words, Reason by its very nature is opposed to God but, in fact, is itself God Himself. Variations on those opening passages of John alone gave rise to 2153 heresies. And there would have been still more if Esteban hadn't grown weary of the theme.
He loved best the heresies that dealt with Christ incarnate as man, with his man-ness and his god-ness and their varying degrees and interrelations. That was the most difficult point of theology: how God could be man. And a simple carpenter. It was so hard to connect the abstruse formulations of theologians with the life of a simple carpenter. But to fail to do so was heresy, a heresy that every carpenter since the time of Christ had probably fallen into, had probably only avoided by never asking the question.
And Christ himself, the carpenter -- could he have known that he was God? Of course, all is possible to God, but God-as-man? How far a man? Perhaps he was even man enough not to know all these subtleties. Perhaps he considered the behavior of his disciples extraordinary. He was amazed at his own behavior in front of crowds, saying things that he never intended to say. This interpretation would clear up some of the apparent contradictions in the gospels. Sometimes he spoke as God and sometimes as a man who, as far as he knew, was just a man, unambitious, finding it difficult to explain his own behavior and to restrain the reactions of his friends.
And he had been among us twice: both before and after the Resurrection. And if he didn't know that he was God the first time, perhaps he didn't know the second. And one day waking up in a stone cold tomb, enshrouded and anointed like a corpse, he quite frantically unbound himself, trying all the while to convince himself that this was just a nightmare, though he found it difficult to remember the other world he lived in when he was truly awake. He stumbled as he walked out into the bright Easter sun, so painful to his unaccustomed eyes. Two women who saw him screamed and ran away. He didn't mean to frighten them, or the soldiers either. But that was the way with dreams -- sudden shifts of scene, transformations, and people forever over-reacting.
It was all probably symbolic of something he wanted -- the holes in the hands and feet probably indicated that he was nailed down to some job, some pattern of life that he found deadening and wished to break away from at all costs, in order to start a new life in a new place among new friends.
All these people and places struck him as unfamiliar. He kept hoping it would end soon. And it did. But from beginning to end, it was an extraordinary dream in which he was forever amazing and frightening himself with his own behavior.
And, reasoned Esteban, if Christ had been among us twice unbeknownst to himself and had on those occasions announced at inspired moments that he would return again, then perhaps he had returned, perhaps many times, but had passed unrecognized. Perhaps he is even now among us.
Father Esteban broke out in a cold sweat as he reread his pages. They were in a sense "inspired." He had let the words and ideas carry him whither they would. They struck him as unfamiliar as he reread them now. "Exceptionally good," he told himself near the start. "A veritable gem," he told himself as he neared the end. "It alone will make my compendium a work of at." He tried to restrain himself from the sin of pride.
But now he remembered the last sentence, and he was afraid to read it. He dared not turn that last page, dared not see the sin of sins committed so clearly in his own hand. He painfully remembered the incident with the Jewess, tried to excuse the present circumstance as another case of that madness. But, fortunately, this time it was only his own soul that was at stake. No one had yet read the words. Not even he had read those words of his madness, not his words, even though he had written them. No, he wasn't the author. And no one would ever read them.
He pulled himself together, took several deep breaths, then calmly and quietly gathered up his manuscript and calmly and quietly burned it in the same hearth where he had burned the tokens and letters from friends and relatives of the Jewess. But as the last page went up in flame, a doubt arose in his mind. He was no longer certain that the words on that page read, 'I am the Christ, the son of God." He was no longer sure, and it disturbed him profoundly that it might not have been so.
As he wandered through the streets of Salamanca in despair, he was disturbed that he was disturbed. He needed to speak to someone, to anyone though he dared not turn to his fellow Dominicans, for how could they sympathize with a priest who wanted to be Christ, who wanted not just to be like Christ, but to be Christ in the flesh -- to forever do the "right" without necessarily even thinking of God.
Yet he didn't know and couldn't believe that that was in fact what he wanted. It was just an illusion. He had never written it. And afterwards he was simply distraught, not in command of his senses, having just destroyed in a matter of minutes his life's work. And he couldn't tell the Jewess or her family either, as they welcomed him with great rejoicing and spread a feast before him.
And so it came to pass that Father Esteban no longer worked for the good of the order and the glory of God, that, instead, he learned the trade of a carpenter and lived a simple, long, and quiet life.
Richard Seltzer
Here I post thoughts, memories, stories, essays, jokes -- anything that strikes my fancy. This meant to be idiosyncratic and fun. I welcome feedback and suggestions. seltzer@seltzerbooks.com
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