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Zarathustra Redux
By Christopher Ketcham
Zarathustra saw that he had become like Methuselah – old and infirm. The many goings under for mankind had exhausted him. The eagle had produced many new generations and the snake a thousand more. Their progeny stayed with Zarathustra but his spirit was saying ‘no more’. The old saint of the forest had long since died but had left his shadow on the wall of his hut. Zarathustra tried to burn the hut to the ground but its stone simply bubbled and oozed water as if from a robust fountain, robbing the fire of its strength to proceed with the wiping out of the shadow of the saint and his God.
Of the countless going unders Zarathustra could count on no fingers suitable followers. There had been the higher men but they feared the lion and their own shadows and returned to the forest to worship the old saint’s shadow. Nor did Zarathustra successfully complete his third metamorphosis, that of a becoming from lion to child. His age and decrepitude told him that this was the case and he was not destined to emerge from this pupae in this lifetime. He decided to make one more journey down into mankind into the village of the Motley Cow…
In the village of the Motley Cow lived a child named Pea. An itinerant priest with the strange name Zarathustra came to the village and said things that the village priest called profane. Pea hid behind a tree with other children and listened to the new priest. Zarathustra spoke of camels bearing great weight setting out upon long journeys into the desert only to become lions who fought dragons called thou-shalt using only the words I-will. Zarathustra then said the lion would become an innocent and forgetful child. And Pea was both the lion and the camel for a moment and later in dreams.
But the new priest ran afoul of the old priest and eventually the people of the village grew angry when Zarathustra made the dragon of the story out to be a gilded God—their God. “No we will not,” the villagers said, “give up this God for any camel, lion or even an innocent child.”
“It is for the children the most”, said the village priest, “That God is and he let both the lion and the lamb lie down next to each other”. This lying down confused Pea; for every child knew that the lion would eat the lamb. The people shouted down Zarathustra. An elder shoed the children from behind the tree. Pea and the others scattered back into the forest and meadow. Zarathustra left the village.
A year and a day after Zarathustra left Pea stood at the end of the wide meadow that The Noble used to graze his stock. The raven perched on the back of the sloe-eyed mule as was his wont, pecking at fleas and other such vermin. Then the raven gave a great squawk and winged upward to his other regular perch on the great oak. Pea spotted movement at the forest edges of the wide meadow. Wolves. Wolves came not often to these parts and Pea wondered why they were here now. In this wonder Pea forgot about The Noble and the warning that should be shouted.
The wolves came into the great meadow in a wide circle around the mule. The mule brayed and kicked at the wolves but the old mule was no match for the wolves and they had their feast of mule. As the wolves were growling and gorging the raven flew down and accosted the wolves but was driven back into the oak. Pea understood this as the raven and mule had been friends and the raven was angry at the wolves for killing the mule.
After a time and having their fill and with extended bellies and ruddy cheeks, the wolves trotted back into the forest. The raven winged down to the mule and perched on its great rib. Pea saw this as an act of solidarity with the dead mule—to be its guardian against further attacks. But the raven bent down and picked off a piece of mule flesh and consumed it on the spot. Pea fainted.
When Pea awoke three vultures were squabbling at the carcass. The raven had returned to the great oak where he squawked and preened his feathers. Pea could not erase the scene of the killing and wondered at its import and what it was that brought about the faint.
The Noble, in the end, did not express anger towards Pea for not warning him of the wolves, nor was he sorry to see the ancient mule go for it no longer worked and just took up valuable pasture land. The wolves were another matter. A group scoured the woods and the village remained watchful but the wolves did not return. The carcass of the mule became a catafalque upon which the raven continued to return to squawk and peck long after there was anything to peck but sun-washed bone.
But for Pea the matter was not yet over nor could Pea resolve the killing event. Then the other words that the priest Zarathustra said came back into Pea’s mind. Pea remembered him talking about spiders that whispered of existing before and before and then again, and of a snake that grasped the back of Zarathustra’s throat… the howl of Zarathustra after he mimed the biting off of the snake’s head was like that of the wolf. He had shouted the death of God in the same breath and some villagers swooned.
That if the village priest’s God could die, that was something to ponder; but if God lived forever as this priest said back to Zarathustra, that was another matter entirely. Forever was something that Pea could not grasp. Pea wondered why such a God who had forever to do things would create a monstrosity like the mule in the first place and which the village priest had called blasphemy because it had so little right to live that God did not give it the ability to produce other mules. That this God would also have let this otherwise blasphemous mule live to be ancient was another question Pea could not answer. Pea could understand that the wolves would kill because that is what wolves do. But the raven seemed another matter. Pea could not make the idea that the mule and raven had befriended each other go away.
Slowly Pea began to reconcile the scene. Pea saw that the animals, using their respective wills, simply did what it was their nature to do: the mule to kick, the wolves to kill in a pack, and the raven to be a raven, taking his advantage when he could and biding time when he could not. Pea came to see that there was only nature and within it the blasphemous mule, the raven, the wolves and the meadow. Yet this thought darkened Pea’s mind as if a great cloud had formed. And clouded it became because it grayed all the holy things that had been put there to thou-shalt. But all Pea could see in this world of ravens, mules and wolves was only the I-will of a will of beasts to be as they are wont to be naturally and necessarily so. Did the beasts not understand the need for their God and all the thou-shalts it begat? The measure of these thoughts weighed Pea’s mind and battled her in dream after dream.
A few months after these thoughts had begun to quarrel in Pea’s mind the village held its great harvest feast. It had been a good year. Lain across long benches were slabs of meat and loaves of breads and piles of squashes and steaming dishes that Pea lusted after or loathed. Pea frolicked with the other children, ate, fought, and otherwise became under the feet of the villagers.
Later when evening was about to be and the harvest feast had begun to wind down, an elder found a fiddle. Those who were not too leaden danced jigs and reels. The village priest had gotten too far down in his cups and snored into his chins. In chubby red fingers he clutched a silvery rosary which dripped across his bulbous thigh like a small stream.
Sated from the feast and from the day’s chasing around, Pea leaned back into the bench in a spent daze. The music soothed Pea. Through the miasma Pea saw the raven float down to the line of tables and strut towards where the priest snored into himself. Raven picked at this or that along the way and then spied the rosary. Raven cocked his head low and high stepped closer to the beads. The rosary rose and fell with each breath of the priest. The raven jumped on the priest’s thigh and pecked at the rosary. The priest did not stir. Soon the raven had worried the string to a thread and the beads tumbled down onto the ground. The raven jumped down after and pecked beads into his beak and flew away. Pea could hear what seemed like triumphant squawking over the sounds of the fiddle.
The rosary was ruined. The great symbol of the village priest and his God had been undone by a covetous raven. There was no more than this, thought Pea; no more than what was here—the feast, the music, the low
ering day, a drunken priest with a ruined string of beads and Pea to wonder at it all. Pea had seen the God for what it was, a gilded bauble protected not by the drunken priest but coveted by bird for birdly I-wants. Pea chuckled but then scowled. While the God of the village priest had been exorcised in a giggle it remained for Pea to understand how to understand—to understand all of this and the death of the mule.
Then it came to Pea: That Pea had been too quick to embrace the friendship of the mule and the raven and also too quick to dismiss it; that there could be more and more and why could Pea and all of them—the raven, the wolves, and the mule…even the village priest—think all of this and wonder at its problem? New dreams and indigestion for Pea came in the wake of the feast.
In time there became a new mule. Pea wondered whether the raven would once again perch on the back of the new mule and the wolves would know when it was time to return. The possibilities of endlessness of repetition and renewal in this world—not in the afterworld of the village priest—was what occupied Pea’s thoughts more and more. Pea found few answers other than what the world said in its everydayness. Pea wondered why only questions would come and understanding how to understand was so slow to become in Pea.
At the right age and time, Pea prepared to leave the village of the Motley Cow to look for answers—to look for Zarathustra or others like him—but even more, Pea yearned with an insatiable desire to think through these things that had become ever more present in Pea’s mind…To understand how to understand. Thus began Pea’s going-over.
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~~ Pumpkins in Fall by Faith Kuzio