To: K-list
Recieved: 1999/05/03 06:18
Subject: [K-list] Sunday People
From: Amanda Erhart
On 1999/05/03 06:18, Amanda Erhart posted thus to the K-list:
Dear list,
Trying again, last time only a fraction of this story
came through.
Amanda.
---
Have had lots of problems with the mail server
the last week and thus unable to participate much
in the list's discussions, however much I would
like to.
Sending this through a default server, it came
to me this morning and felt like something worth
sharing on this list.
---
MAD MARTIN
Ever felt like going crazy ? Ever been scared of
going mad ? Me too.
But think of this: What if some kinds of madness
are a vacation for the soul ? A chance to do and say things you normally wouldn't be allowed. A
chance to let it all out, all the things you've always wanted to say and think, accumulated over
the course of several hundred years ? Everybody needs some time out from the duties and
obligations of normal life, to see things from another side. Everybody needs a vacation sometimes.
Of course, a life like that would have its
downsides, but it might be worth exploring:
I am Mad Martin, the village idiot. I'm not very
old, barely twenty years, but I'm already thought of as mad.
My parents run the village inn and make a good
living of it, lots of travellers here. Of course they wanted me to take over the business when I
was little, but they've long since given up that thought. Instead the business will probably go to
my little sister, who fortunately is without any traces of madness.
Nobody knows where it came from.
I had a quiet childhood with kind parents. My
father would take me out to watch the hay being scythed and hung to dry and I would love seeing
the little pieces of straw swirl in the hot air in complicated and intricate patterns before
falling to the ground. My mother would let me play in the kitchen while preparing mid day supper
for the guests. I would always stay away from the fire. But hearing and seeing things that others
could not was my companion from the age of five.
My parents tried exorcism. They thought maybe I was possessed by a demon and had the
village priest come over to ban the devil from me. I tried to do my best to get the demon out,
banged my head on the floor and screamed and cried, to force the devil out and do as the priest
said, but nothing helped. I realized that the demon was inside of me and a part of me. I told
the priest and that made him believe in the devil for real. He hadn't believed in the devil before,
but seeing made him believe. The priest gave up his efforts saying: The boy is the devil's
business. He won't leave. I can do no more for him. And then he left.
I would roam the village roads and the forest
around. I wouldn't be able to hang on to a thought for days, just walking and walking,
sometimes in circles, just to get anywhere. I would look at the rays of sunlight filtering
through the forest and the birds sitting in the trees and the white flowers growing on the forest
floor and talk to them all. It would be a dialogue with God.
But sometimes I would be gripped by
inexplicable fears and run from the house into
the forest at night, jumping at every little
sound and running, running to get away from the fear, at times running into trees blinded by
terror. The morning after I would usually find
myself at unknown places in the forest. But most days, it would be peaceful. I would spend days in
the hills, sleeping on the ground and wearing nothing but short pants, jerkin and waistcoat. I
would insist on being barefoot or at least wear no socks. I hated socks and thick clothes as I was
warm most of the time. Occasionally, this would cause me to become very ill. I got pneumonia from
having roamed for days in the rain. My mother nursed me as well as she could, I recovered but
not long after I would be at it again, to my parents' despair.
In winter, when the snow would whiten
everything and dampen every sound, I would still
be walking in the forest and be set to chop wood
when able to, or I'd sleeping in the barns, helping my uncle to feed the animals.
Once I decided to go to church on Sunday to see
what the priest was talking about. I walked along the road with all the dressed up people and talked
to the clouds. They stared at me but everybody knew
who I was, so they let me proceed. At church
I walked up to the first row where only the rich people were allowed to sit, sat down on the
uncomfortable seat and rocked my legs back and forth. During the psalms I sang with a loud voice
to the priest's great annoyance. But I liked the music, it was very serious and authoritative, like
a stern father's guidelines and I found it funny. The God in church was not the God I saw in the
forest, this was another God. I was perplexed and commented on the sermon.
The priest got more and more bothered by
my presence. I was obviously ruining the serious
and solemn service and thus, he was not slow to
declare that it was the devil working through me to sabotage the sermon. At that I got so annoyed I
jumped up and said he should resign, that he didn't know what he was talking about and that
everybody in the village ought to know. That he offered a dead man's God, not something to feed
living, breathing people. This is all false. Now I've told you, I said and everybody who don't
listen to me and continue going to this priest's sermons are just as dead and blind as him.
Martin, please, sit down, my mother said, embarrassed for the obvious trouble I was causing.
But I had just started and ran up to the altar and kicked it over, the stout white candles flying
along the wooden floor. At that some tough young guys from the better families of the village took
hold of me and escorted me roughly out. That was
my one and only visit to church and had me banned by the priest.
After that people let me act as I pleased, since
it was obvious all senses had left me and that I was completely mad, raising a raucous like that.
But not everybody feared and loathed me. My uncle
still let me come to the barns.
During a
calfing, an unborn calf got stuck in it's mother's womb on the way out. I was in the barn,
watching the sows and their newborn and tried to help the farmer as best as I could. When the calf
got stuck, I could hear it scream from inside the cow. The farmer did his best to turn it to get it
out, and huffed and puffed with his arm to the shoulder inside the braying animal. The calf is
suffocating I said. The farmer let me try and feeling my way around in side the poor cow, took
hold of the umbilical cord which was stuck around the calf's neck and managed to get it over its
head. Then the farmer pulled the swollen calf out by its legs and it slid out into the world on a
carpet of blood and slime, and steam rising from its body like protective angels.
What luck you were here, the farmer said,
but I had already gone by that time.
When my aunt fell ill, I sat with her until she
got better. I had problems sitting still for such long amounts of time, but no problem staying awake
while she slept. To keep her company I told her about all the things I saw and heard outside and
little stories which I made up then and there or had made up earlier. My aunt later said she didn't
catch a fraction of what I was telling, but what little she heard at least wasn't boring.
I would have my lucid moments during which I tried
to give a hand in the house or in the neighbouring farms. After such a period, my mother
would sigh and say: I wish you could always be like this, Martin, quiet and like everybody else.
I wish it could have been like that to, but how to tell her how hard it was to keep thoughts and
mind together when the sun shone on the hills and the birds sang in the forest.
Once I climbed a tree to see farther and fell down
on my back. It was very painful but I laid still and the birds in the forest landed next to me and
kept me company until I could get up again.
My life ended rather abruptly. The mayor saw me
sitting outside a store, waiting for my aunt to finish her shopping and help her carry the rolls
of fabrics home. He came riding on his tall carriage and had long thought there was no room
for people like me in the village. He loosened the horses' reins and ran me over with the right
front wheel. The wheel broke my spine and all sorts of horrible things, and then my time in
madness was over and I had to return to being a
responsible, sane individual.
---
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