4
The Medieval mind is a riddle in time
No reason, no rhyme
The Medieval man is a saint without a shrine
A monk, a monster, a knight of good line
3
The Medieval mind is a riddle in time
No reason or rhyme
The Medieval man is a saint without shrine
A monk, a monster
2
Alchemy is the science of the soul
Wizards – the servants of the past
Medieval man, artless in thy faith
Timeless in living, imagination so vast
1
Alchemy is the science of the soul
Wizards are the servants of the past
Medieval man, where art thou now
Now in this timelessness so vast?
“Have you ever heard of the Legend of Saint Stephan,” starts The Guinea, breaking what had seemed to Smith an interminable period of tense silence.
“I’ve been drugged in a doll house, attacked with hypodermics on two separate occasions, and shanghaied onto a ghost voyage of the Kyiv Metro after watching you rip off your head. I don’t want to end up in or near the Zhovten Cinema and am sick of all your face-sucking with black women.”
The Guinea’s coal-black eyes narrow into a thin smile over the white rim of a piping hot cup of Coffee Americano, only UAH 26.50, with a slice of chilled cherry pie, the powdered sugar sifted carelessly across its soft crusty surface.
The two men are seated on the upper floor of Podil’s most luxurious economy-class eatery, Puzata Khata, along the wall of framed classic photos from the turn of the 20th century, jacket-clad Arian poster-boy Charles Lindbergh, the Spirit of Saint Louis.
Near the windows, which look more like the glass wall of a greenhouse, sits a squat hideous figure in a wrinkled gray raincoat and a broad-brimmed hat pulled tight over his furled brow. The early morning beams of a dying December sun pierce the cloud of steam hovering above a stout teapot clutched betwixt his meaty paws.
Smith notices The Cornish with undisguised suspicion, then turns his stare, now full of accusation on the verge of contempt, back across the table to The Guinea.
“Son of a …”
“Watch it, man! My mother was a patrician.”
Smith lowers his eyes, leveling them on his interlocutor’s coffee cup, now looking fragile and cheap, as if it might explode any minute into thick, sharp shards, hot brown liquid, blinding his sight, scarring his face.
“Have you ever heard of the Legend of Saint Stephan,” starts The Guinea, breaking what had seemed to Smith an interminable period of tense silence.
“He was a copyist… or translator of sacred text at a monastery in the early 11th century, if my memory serves me right.
“Not the most glorious of times… the most colorful of days.
“Stephan was well known in his time, not so much for his linguistic craft, as he’d been poorly tutored as a boy, but for his dedication – which some called a religious fervor or stubborn spirituality that drove him to render the most complex thoughts and concepts of antiquity into modern expressions of faith, his own faith in the importance of his work and his special mission to perform it.”
Smith digs his fork into the frail crust of the cherry pie, which crumbles along the edges to reveal a thick sweet interior of red jam, thin cherry skins, but also the well-hidden pit, capable of cracking a man’s tooth if he weren’t careful.
“He would burn the midnight oil and sneak back for more while the other monks were asleep. His candles melted from both ends, as night waxed into day.
“Stephan took particular ‘pleasure’ – and I believe this is the appropriate word – in the Illuminated texts that were received at the monastery to be translated. He was inspired by their elaborate initials, marveled at the magnificent marginalia, falling into silent reverie at the sight of a gilded miniature. He was known to run his otherwise clumsy fingers over the vellum parchment for hours before settling into the task at hand.”
Smith’s tooth hits a pit and it hurts, but he doesn’t grimace or cry out.
“In short, you might say that Stephan was pretty cheesed,” exclaims The Guinea, his crude Mediterranean features taking on their own look of silly satisfaction, perhaps unconsciously in imitation of Saint Stephan.
“True, ol’ Stephan did have one bone of contention: He couldn’t get laid… No one could in that place, as the older monks would drive off anything resembling a female as soon as she got within a stone’s throw of the monastery walls.”
Smith smirks.
“Not the most colorful of days, as I said.
“Then one day a new abbot arrived. His predecessor had been suddenly afflicted with grave illness and expired shortly thereafter. At first, all the monks were terribly excited. For Joshua – that was the new abbot’s name – was said to be a highly learned man from the West, who had achieved great heights of spiritual insight and no less temporal erudition.
“Stephan began to secretly hope that his skill as a wordsmith would be duly recognized by the new abbot, who perchance might dispatch him abroad for further tutelage. Indeed, it sometimes seemed to the industrious ascetic that Joshua would glance approvingly over his shoulder as he traversed the rows of translators and copyists reverently bent over their texts.
“And late one evening, while Stephan was laboring over a piece of parchment with great care, his candle shrunk to a stump of shriveled wax, the shadow of Joshua could be seen descending across the light of his writing table. Stephan shuddered with a strange sense of discomfiture mixed with trepidation.
“A large weathered hand appeared beside him from behind, leaving a roll of goatskin parchment on the rough-hewn tabletop before moving on. When Stephan unsealed it, having waited at least an hour to gather the courage to do so, he was spellbound by the shower of light reflected from the manuscript’s gilded miniatures, in more abundance than he’d ever beheld. One of these images soon commanded the young monk’s attention to the exception of the others – that of a nubile young maiden with a single bare breast espying a tiny devil beckon her from the bulb of a freshly picked flower.
“Stephan winced from the onslaught of long-repressed passion, his loins grew heated, his face a-flush with desire. And before night had fully taken hold, the young monk found himself furtively returning to his cell with the manuscript held tightly beneath his scapular.”
John Smith pulls his fork out of the pie and makes a sudden wry-faced plea for decency to The Guinea, who to Smith’s surprise has anticipated this response with his own stock expression of dispassionate experience of the kind imparted by older brothers or worldly uncles.
Filed by 47L, Swing Shift, December 9, 2015