That David and Julius Caesar had been secret card-playing cronies? That Alexander the Great had challenged them both to a primitive sort of backgammon for nominal stakes, winning easily, yet had gone on to lose his earnings to a chattering barber whose only other distinction in history was that he had cut Mohammed's hair?
That Abraham had passed on his legacy to the Jews through his first son, Ishmael the wanderer, and his legacy to the Arabs through his sedentary second son, Isaac? And since he had no more sons, that he rejected outright the paternity claims of the Gentiles and refused to take any responsibility whatsoever for them?
Or that the trumpet beneath the walls of Jericho had been blown by Harun al-Rashid, not stridently but sensuously as was his manner, as he seductively circled the oasis seven times and brought his people into a happy land?
In order that Joshua might take a promised bath in the Jordan and Christ might retire to a sumptuous court on the banks of the Tigris to spin forth a cycle of tales encompassing the dreams of a thousand and one nights?
And so on in the windblown footsteps that fled across the pages of this desert manuscript where an entire fabric of history was woven in magical confusion, threaded in unexpected knots and colored in reverse patterns, the sacred shadows of belief now lengthened or shortened by a constantly revolving sun and shifting moon.
For in this oldest of Bibles paradise lay everywhere on the wrong side of the river, sought by the wrong people, preached by a prophet different from the one who had been heard, an impossible history where all events occurred before or after they were said to have occurred, or instead, occurred simultaneously.
Numbing in its disorder and perplexing to the edge of madness. Circular and unchronicled and calmly contradictory, suggesting infinity.
But the worst shock of all came on the final pages, where the compiler of the Bible had added an autobiographical footnote.
He was blind, he said, and had been blind since birth. His early life had been spent sitting beside dusty waysides in Canaan with a bowl in his lap crying out for alms, always close to starvation.
In time he learned a few more coins always came his way if he chanted imaginary histories and the like, for there was nothing poor toilers on the road loved more than a description of wondrous events, their own lives being both dreary and hard. And perhaps not surprisingly after so many years spent gathering gossip, he had no difficulty making up tales.
Before long an old couple had come to him with their son, an imbecile. The boy couldn't tell night from day or summer from winter, but while he was still young his parents had discovered he drew shapes in the sand very well. An idea had come to them. Why not see if the boy could memorize the alphabet?
Very few people could write. If the boy learned to do so he could become a scribe and copy down the documents others dictated to him. The advantage, of course, was that he wouldn't have to understand what he was writing.
It took many years and all their money but the task was accomplished. Their son could write beautifully, his teachers said so. When a reed was placed in his hand he wrote down exactly what was said, no more and no less.
The problem was that the other difficulties still remained. Now the parents were both ill and wanted to make some provision for their son's future. They thought of the blind storyteller. What if the boy accompanied the blind man on his travels and wrote down his words, in exchange for which the blind man could show their son when to sleep and eat and wear more or fewer clothes? Wouldn't it be a fair and useful partnership'?
Well it had seemed a good arrangement, said the blind man, and from that day forward they had proceeded from dusty wayside to dusty wayside making a meager living. Affection had grown into love and they had become like father and son. All had worked out for the best in the dusty waysides of Canaan.
But here the blind man had to make a confession. The histories his adopted son had faithfully copied down weren't histories at all, for several reasons.
For one, because the blind man only knew what he heard, having no eyes to verify anything.
For another, because his position in life was lowly and he knew little about great events, having never heard more than bits and pieces of rumors.
Thirdly, because the din beside a dusty wayside was often deafening, and how could one old man be expected to extract a coherent theme from so much noise?
And lastly, perhaps because he felt the truth could be rendered more accurately anyway when dealing with the open spaces of the future rather than the murky depths of the past. In the future anything might happen, so he could be flawlessly correct in reporting it. Whereas in the past, although some events were known and others suspected, many more were neither known nor suspected.
Furthermore, why belabor his poor listeners with the past? These wretches longed for new worlds, not old. Between them they had only a few coppers to hear hopefully where they might be going, knowing full well where they had already miserably been.
In any case, the blind man humbly noted, men tend to become fables and fables tend to become men, so in the end it probably didn't matter whether he was dealing with the past or the future. In the end it must all be the same.
And wasn't it also possible that all prophecies were really histories misplaced by tricks of time?
Memories in disguise? Pains and torments spilled out in weariness when memory no longer could bear its heavy burdens? When it lightened itself by taking a part of the past and putting it in the future?
He thought so, but even if he was confused he had still taken care not to cheat his listeners, by varying his accounts so there would always be new matters for them to consider. Occasionally he chanted about mighty wars and migrations and who begat whom, and although he sometimes presented the solemn side of life he also included the sensuous and sacrificing, all the while enlivening his chants with anecdotes and sayings and reports, curious inventions, every manner of adventure and experience that might come to mind.
And so the entertainment had gone on for years in dusty waysides, the blind man giving his recitals and his imbecile son recording them word for word.
Until with increasing age a time had come when they had both grown stiff in the joints. Then they had sought a warm place to assuage their aches and gone south into the desert, to the foot of a mountain called Sinai, where they were sitting at the very moment this last chapter was being dictated.
Having already been in the desert for some time, the blind man could not be sure what era was current in Canaan. But not too long ago a traveler had passed their way and he had asked him what news there was in Canaan, and the man had replied that a great temple was being built on a great mountain by a great king called Solomon, which of course meant little enough to the blind man since as long as he could remember great temples were always being built in Canaan on great mountains by great kings who all had one name or another.
So here the dictation was coming to an end. Unfortunately he couldn't add his own name to these recitations because in his blindness and poverty, being no one of importance, he quite simply had never had a name.
And finally, in conclusion, he advised that the verses had their best effect when chanted to the accompaniment of a lyre and a flute and a ram's horn, these pleasing sounds tending to alert passersby that something of interest was taking place beside the road.
But gentle blind man doth not will not shalt not knowing
Brother Anthony closed the book and groaned. He had read the last pages in horror. The mere thought of it paralyzed him.
A nameless blind beggar chanting whatever came into his head? His mutterings recorded by an imbecile who saw fit to insert a few shadowy thoughts of his own? The two of them moving their shabby act from wayside to wayside with no other purpose than to make a meager living?
