Scrapbook

by Michael White

  He paced in a circle around the tree and he ventured at one point out onto the snow covered slope of the tor. The drop in temperature was at once alarming and sudden. Once out from beneath the branches of the strange tree he felt his skin freeze as the temperature plummeted and his feet began to slide into the deep ice underfoot. In alarm he threw himself back to the top of the hill and instantly the temperature rose and the snow disappeared from underfoot.

  He eased himself back to the ground and rested against the tree trunk. It really was quite warm here he considered, and so he rested back and slowly watched dawn break and the winter landscape all around slowly return to life. He must have dozed, as when he next looked around the sun was a lot higher in the sky, and sunlight sparkled across the fields around him, twinkling off the ice and frozen fields.

  Also, beside him, hanging down from the tree and staring at him in a somewhat intent manner was a long snake. The knight startled a little and made to reach for the pommel of his sword, but as he went to do so the snake dropped to the ground, and raising itself looked him directly in the eye.

  “Sir Knight you are far from home.” Said the serpent in a surprisingly deep voice, its forked tongue flicking in and out of its fanged mouth as it watched him intently. Its eyes were small and deep crimson in colour, as if a fire burnt from within its body and was streaming out of its maw. “Still. The tree provides shelter of a sort for one so weary, and not just of the dust of the road either I would say.”

  “I see no dust on the road today, snake.” said the knight, a smile crossing his face. “Just snow and a strange tree that seems to be of a mind a mind to ignore the worst ravages of the weather.” He reached across to his bag that was on the ground before him, and opening it pulled out the whetstone. He then placed the bag up against the tree trunk and using it as a cushion leaned back against the tree and removing his sword from its scabbard began to sharpen it with the stone. “And a talking snake as well.” said the knight, the sharpening of the sword being completed carefully and with precision.

  “A fine sword.” said the snake in admiration, carefully ignoring the knight’s words. “Yet it has many small notches and markings on the blade. This is a sword that has seen much use I fear.”

  “Indeed.” said the knight. “Though I wonder what business that is of a snake. Sly creatures I am told.” The knight replaced the whetstone back in his bag and then leaned back. He did not however put the sword back in its sheath.

  “Ah.” said the snake, and for the first time since the knight had encountered it the serpent hissed as if in irritation. “I find that depends upon who does the telling.”

  “Well the good book says so.” said the knight, swinging the sword casually through the air as he stood. The blade made a slight swishing sound as if it was cutting through the very air itself, but the knight swung it away from the snake who was on the knight’s other side, though this did not seem to concern the snake at all. It still stood upright on its tail, its dark red eyes staring at the knight as if he was of particular interest for a reason known only to itself. “Though the word of the lord I find can sometimes be interpreted in many different ways, and although I do find that the words of the prophets can sometimes be misinterpreted, I find that on the subject of snakes it is quite clear. They are devils and liars at best, and so must be treated as such, for if you ignore them then you do so at your peril.”

  “Your good book seems to have at best many contradictions.” said the serpent, hissing loudly as if mocking him in some way, “It is easy to see how it can be misrepresented.” said the snake, “Or just completely wrong. “An eye for an eye”, for example, or is it, “turn the other cheek”? I forget now. It all becomes much more complicated the more you read of it to my mind.”

  “I am of the opinion that I have neither need nor want of advice on the tenets of my faith from a snake.” said the knight, swinging his sword lazily and then stopping to look down the length of the blade from the cross guard, before nodding to himself in satisfaction and then slowly sheathing the weapon away. He did not however close the locket, leaving it open so the sword could be hastily drawn if required. He noticed with satisfaction that the snake seemed to notice this too.

  “Why so far from home then?” asked the snake, changing the subject. “Surely a fine knight such as yourself should be away fighting for the preservation of the Christian faith in the Holy Lands?”

  “This I have done already.” said the knight sullenly, noting the snake’s sarcastic and hectoring tone, “I have returned now. I have no more stomach for such things.”

  “Ah.” said the snake, its eyes seeming to glint almost in the early morning light. “So sad that one who holds so much faith is so jaded.”

  “Jaded?” said the knight, raising an eyebrow, “Have care, serpent. You presume too much.”

  “Or nothing at all.” hissed the snake. “You say that you have returned from the Holy Lands. The question is why?”

  The knight paused, looking out over the winter landscape. For a while there was nothing but silence, and the dulled sound of a harsh breeze rushing across the hilltop and the vales about it, but no more than that. The snake did not move at all, not even its tongue flicked from its mouth, and the world seemed to wait to listen to what the knight said.

  The knight seemed in some way to realise this, and so he began talking, looking out across the snow buried landscape to the horizon, his words slow and faltering.

  “I was at the sacking of Jerusalem.” he said, spitting out the words as if they stuck in his throat. “I have never seen the like before and I hope I never do again.”

  “I have heard that the slaughter of the infidels was more than enthusiastically conducted.” said the snake slyly, almost with relish. “Still. Your God demands a great punishment for those who do not believe in him. His gaze is mighty and encompasses all. You should be proud of yourself for being the bearer of God’s will. Still. I am sure your God will reward you. He does see all apparently, and rewards those who give him good service.”

  “Many sheltered in the Dome of the Rock or in Temple Mount when we took the city.” said the knight, ignoring the serpent entirely as if he was suddenly oblivious to its presence. He stood and began to pace about the tree. “None were spared.”

  “Which is as it should be.” said the serpent, “They stand against God’s will and are heathens in his temples and holiest of cities. They should be treated as vermin and you should not judge yourself for acting against them. They are not of your faith and your anger and rage should be visited upon them. You have acted well in the eyes of the lord! Chasten yourself at your peril, for it was God’s work that you did that day, and your God will reward you well when you go to your eternal rest.”

  “There were women and children.” whispered the knight, stalking towards the serpent and withdrawing his sword, the long sharp blade glistening in the whitened landscape. The knight held it towards the snake but the serpent did not move. Not at all. “I was ankle deep in blood and worse. There were corpses all about me. Children impaled on spears and left writhing or to rot.” He stopped suddenly, looking out to the horizon as if he could see in front of him all of the things he had described. “It was like hell had risen to earth.” he said and the serpent rose slightly higher.

  “Yessss.” it hissed. “Your God is strong in his desire for revenge. All those who did not worship him should shrink in fear and hide for fear of death. Jerusalem is but a start I feel. Soon your God’s desire for blood will engulf the world. Perhaps for all time. Such is the ways of all Gods, it is the very basic foundation of all faith. It is all or nothing I think you will find.”

  “What then of your God, fell creature?” asked the knight. “You seem almost to relish the things I abhor.”

  “It is true my God opposes yours.” said the snake, “Else why would he have been cast down as he was? Yet I feel my God has no more desire for blood and death than yours.”

  “It would seem to me that my Go
d; the God of the Israelites, is more than willing for blood to be shed in his name.” said the knight, staring intently at the snake.

  “The children deserved to die.” hissed the snake. It sounded like laughter. “They are not members of your faith and therefore are of no importance at all. Their death was not just required; it was necessary. Your God teaches you to hate them as they do not believe in what you hold to be good and true and proper. They are challengers to your faith and so they must die.”

  “So my God hates them and desires their deaths as they do not have faith or worship him. So why would your God hate them?” asked the knight.

  “My God would hate them for no reason other than that they walk in the light of your God’s creation. My God and master walked alone in the dark and in his majesty and power was cast down by him who would slay your children of Jerusalem and soak the world in blood to prove he is mightier.”

  “Enough.” said the knight, gripping the sword tighter.

  “Oh it will never be enough.” said the snake, humour in its voice. “It will never stop. Not until every single person of this world believes in your God and him only. It cannot stop. He will not allow it! As I say it is the way of all Gods.”

  “Once again I say enough!” screamed the knight and swung the sword at the snake, stopping suddenly, the blade but an inch from the serpent’s head. It did not move at all, nor did it blink.

  “Do it then.” whispered the creature. The knight stood staring at it, the sword now trembling in his hand as if he was desperately trying to master himself. “Kill me.” it finished, and as it did so the knight screamed and threw his sword to the ground, shaking his head as he did so. “Kill me in the same way you killed the children of Islam in the burning ruins of Jerusalem. Kill me as you killed the women, the old men, the young men, the babies. Kill them because your God is mighty and powerful and above all desires that those who serve him to serve him blindly and do his will without question. Kill me and prove your faith, knight.”

  The knight’s shoulders drooped and he staggered back a little but quickly recovered his weary poise. He raised his head and stared the snake directly in its dark red eyes that watching him intently, as if mocking him.

  “My God is a God of love.” he spat, and the snake moved towards him a little.

  “As is mine.” it said. “As long as you believe and worship him above any other, for it is this obedience that is of great worth to any God. That and a good sharp sword.” it said, sliding over the weapon that now lay on the ground. “My lord is one of the dark, the snake in the Garden of Eden. Azael some say; Satan others. Yet he is a God of love. For those who worship him of course.”

  “Your God is a God of evil!” laughed the knight. “Of jealousy and murder, of rage and death.”

  “Yet Jerusalem was not sacked in the name of Satan now, was it? The more you speak knight, the more you reveal of your blindness and stupidity.”

  The knight stood unmoving, looking down at his sword on the ground.

  “Then this is my weapon no more.” he said, picking up his bag and placing it over his shoulder. “I relinquish the way of the sword for it only leads to violence and death and slaughter.”

  “So hasty.” Said the snake. “Violence is a worthy path if your God is satisfied. It is not hard to understand that, surely?”

  “It seems I have a choice that is no choice at all.” said the knight, preparing to depart the hill and continue through the snow, heading north.

  “How so?” hissed the snake angrily, “It seems you do not listen to me at all!”

  “It seems I have two choices.” The knight watched as the snake nodded. “Light and dark.”

  “Always the way of it.” said the snake almost with satisfaction.

  “Yet both paths demand they are the only way and all those who deny the opposite should then without consideration be totally destroyed.”

  “Indeed.” agreed the snake.

  “So my sword, snake, is mine no longer. I relinquish both your God and mine too. Those who take up arms and seek violence in the name of any God are fools at best, and I will not be one of those men any more. I relinquish you both.”

  To his surprise the snake began to chuckle. “Then what way do you choose?” it said.

  “I choose to listen to neither, and to speak in favour of none too. I choose the way of unspoken defiance. The way of silence. I shall be a Knight who is silent; in search of a better way. A way that does not use violence or ignorance or the blindness of religious faith to attack those who do not agree with me. I shall make no more suffer at my hands as I have suffered at the hands of those who would set one religion against the next in the name of anger and flames and ruin and yet try to disguise their actions as either faith or love.”

  He paused, looking out across the hills as if choosing a route before he finished his words.

  “This I shall do no more.” he said, and doing so strode out from below the branches of the tree and began to walk through the snow down the hill.

  “Silence is no answer!” laughed the snake as it watched him depart down the hill. The knight did not turn back or indeed answer the creature at all. “Come back!”

  Yet the knight did not turn even his head back to the top of the hill for he was already braving the frozen ground and slowly heading north, hoping to leave the worst of the weather behind him.

  “There are always others!” screamed the snake after him, anger in its voice, its rage seeming to dissipate in the air as it quickly began to realise that the knight was not going to even turn his head back towards it, or indeed answer. “Always there are more, the fools and those blinded by faith and fear of those who do not see the way they do, or anger that they have choices that they do not. Come back! You have seen what any God would make you do in his name. Come back!”

  Yet the knight did not turn, even though its voice was loud in his ears, carrying across the growing distance between him and the tree atop the hill in some strange enchanted way. Yet as he walked he answered, though he answered in his mind, his words unspoken in the cold winter’s air, but it worried him not at all for the words were his own, and spoke of neither defiance or anger or rejection, or even answers to the struggle of God against God and the deaths that resulted. His words were of winter and hope and of love for those who are not blinded by anger or lack of understanding or anger or fear.

  No. His words faded as surely as would eventually the snow, and they were words of silence.

  (For Paris - 13th November 2015.)

  Mister Mortimer’s Magical Toy Shop

  Mister Mortimer’s magical toy shop was no doubt held in high regard in the memory of every child who grew up in its locale during the nineteen sixties. To most it would never be forgotten, and though it had long disappeared in the name of a council compulsory purchase order along with a certain amount of main road moving, most people - whether they be boys, or whether they be girls, would never forget it.

  I often think that the word, “emporium” is greatly over-looked, but this was most definitely an emporium. I remember Mister Mortimer in his long brown overall, polishing his glasses on the front of them as he watched you entering the shop, looking for the expression on your face changing as you came into his shop. It was an Aladdin’s cave of toys, bikes, dolls, soldiers. Everything that a young boy or girl could ever want really, and even now forty-two years after it was demolished I can still see it in my mind. If I close my eyes I can see the red flaking paint on the wooden window frames, the curved glass of the window that inexplicably (to a boy of six anyway) curved around the window into the corner of the next street.

  There were two main rooms inside the shop. In one were the bicycles and scooters, go-karts all hanging from the roof and being displayed about the room. Boys bikes, girl’s bikes, some small, some large, but all gleaming in the sunlight that streamed through the large windows, the cloth canopies unfolded to try and protect the stock in the window from the sun, mostly in vain. There was al
so a thin yellow film that could be unfolded over the inside of some of the windows, again to protect the stock from the sun, but it was imperfect really, for it made looking at the stuff in the windows almost impossible.

  Through the archway to the back was the second room. This was where all of the Airfix soldiers were stacked high; the train sets and pieces of track, signal boxes and little packets of sand and gravel to make your train set even more realistic. The Dinky cars, the Corgi ones too. The Dinkies were robust; made to last. These were dumper trucks and wagons. Heavy duty. Corgi cars were invariably sports cars or the like. Much lighter.

  Then there were the action man sets. A deep sea diver. Snow combat gear, all on large cardboard cards. The Airfix model planes and tanks; the landing craft and battleships. All remnants of a war not yet forgotten. It was the Airfix soldiers that we always made a beeline for though.

  By “we” I mean my brother and I. I was six and he was a year younger, and the soldiers were our greatest joy. They were of every army from every era of history, and if our dad was flush enough we would get a box each, though deliberating on which one to buy could sometimes take quite some time.

  Not that the era meant much. Once home we would set them up, and quite often the Romans would find themselves facing off against a combined force of Japanese, Dragoons from the battle of Waterloo and the second panzer division of the Germans from both the first and second world wars. The only difference that we could determine between the first world war Germans and the second world war Germans was that the first world war ones had weird pointed helmets, which the second world war ones did not. It didn’t really matter of course, because we knew who the real enemies were, because dad had told us. They were of course the Germans, with the Japs coming in a very close second. There were also the Russians too, who Dad seemed to think were a little bit dodgy, but never explained why.