Of the Remembrance of Benefits
Gesta Romanorum
There was a knight who devoted much of his time to hunting. It happened one day, as he was pursuing this diversion, that he was met by a lame lion, who showed him his foot. The knight dismounted, and drew from it a sharp thorn; and then applied an unguent to the wound, which speedily healed it.
A while after this, the king of the country hunted in the same wood, and caught that lion, and held him captive for many years.
Now, the knight, having offended the king, fled from his anger to the very forest in which he had been accustomed to hunt. There he betook himself to plunder, and spoiled and slew a multitude of travelers. But the king's sufferance was exhausted; he sent out an army, captured, and condemned him to be delivered to a fasting lion. The knight was accordingly thrown into a pit, and remained in terrified expectation of the hour when he should be devoured. But the lion, considering him attentively, and remembering his former friend, fawned upon him; and remained seven days with him destitute of food.
When this reached the ears of the king, he was struck with wonder, and directed the knight to be taken from the pit. "Friend," said he, "by what means have you been able to render the lion harmless?"
"As I once rode along the forest, my lord, that lion met me lame. I extracted from his foot a large thorn, and afterward healed the wound, and therefore he has spared me."
"Well," returned the king, "since the lion has spared you, I will for this time ratify your pardon. Study to amend your life."
The knight gave thanks to the king, and ever afterward conducted himself with all propriety. He lived to a good old age, and ended his days in peace.
My beloved, the knight is the world; the lame lion is the human race; the thorn, original sin, drawn out by baptism. The pit represents penitence, whence safety is derived.
Source: Gesta Romanorum, translated by Charles Swan, revised and corrected by Wynnard Hooper (London: George Bell and Sons, 1906)
*****
Some of us went to the coast, or to the beach, really only to the beach, for a few days with friends. From the beach house you could step out the backdoor, take four magical strides, fall over the sea wall, roll just a little way down the sand and be in the water. You'd never want to do that, it'd be dumb, but you could. Nearly all the days were sand and salt water, golden rainstorms and soft, soft sea air. Good things for a dried out Millard County girl.
We talked and ate and took walks and one day the painter oversaw the making of a monstrous sand worm, but mostly we did all the body boarding we could do and then some. After the first day spent almost solidly in the water I felt like I'd been in a serious car accident. Wonderful. I took a sleeping pill, which, I guess, did its best. After the second day I felt like I'd been in a serious car accident the day before. The first day had the best waves, totally worth a car accident; also worth, but only just, the wild abrasion I acquired and am sporting above my left knee. I'd have put in a picture of it here, I deeply considered it, but it would gross you out and I'm not about that. Maybe I'll post it on Facebook. To be honest, I was a little bit worried you'd think it was fake. It looks fake, or like something you'd see and say, "AaaaaH! What the-!-!-!-oh, wait, that's fake. It's fake, right? I mean, look at it. That's got to be fake," because you just so totally hope that if someone has that on their body it's fake, maybe yucky body art or some sort of dare.
I'll tell you how it happened. It was sort of a dare.
Toward evening there came a truly huge wave and my sweet youngest child, boarding for the first time, watching it mounting, growing toward us, blocking out the view of the distant islands, blocking more of the western sky than we were used to, said, "Oh. We're going to die."
And then, "I'm not going to try this one."
A tiny interior voice said to me, ooh, she's smart, not dying is smart.
I jumped on the wave.
*****
LAVINIA. I can't help you, friend. I can't tell you not to save your own life. Something willful in me wants to see you fight your way into heaven.
George Bernard Shaw, Androcles and the Lion
*****
Through the wave, into the wave, I don't know, but not in front of it in an organized and manageable fashion. Too big for me, too pushy, too powerful. Broke me up completely, ate me alive. Bubbles go up, I reminded myself, blowing a little air to figure which way that was. A minute or so after I had got so I could breathe and see at the same time, we saw another big wave coming, like the one that had just messed me up. I held up my board and ran out to it. Oh. Good. I'm doing it this time. And I did.
*****
A lion roaming through the forest, got a thorn in his foot, and, meeting a shepherd, asked him to remove it. The shepherd did so, and the lion, having just surfeited himself on another shepherd, went away without harming him.
Some time afterward the shepherd was condemned on a false accusation to be cast to the lions in the amphitheater.
When they were about to devour him, one of them said, "This is the man who removed the thorn from my foot."
Hearing this, the others honorably abstained, and the claimant ate the shepherd all himself.
Source: Ambrose Bierce, Fantastic Fables (New York and London: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1899)
*****
Not dying is smart and body boarding is fun and big waves are very cool. It took so much of me, staying on top of that wave, I just completely neglected my legs, lost touch, forgot to keep them lifted, ground my knee hard and serious across sixteen miles of sand. Maybe more. Salt water. Stings, you know. Examining the damage after, I found myself missing my boy Noah. He's got such a weak stomach, so easily tipped over by skin and bones and sutures and splints but he's fascinated by blood running across wet skin. And he loves to play in the waves. Eden plays hard too and if she hadn't had to stay behind in Utah, a slave to her senior year, she'd have photographed the knee with her cell phone, adding record of my arrogant carelessness to the gallery of softball, volleyball and dance injury pics she carries around with her (ooh, look, you can see the stitching on the ball in the bruise; man, look at the swelling!; oh, gross, this one's still got sand in it).
Ever since I washed, smashed up, out of the ocean and into the hot tub and from there climbed carefully into a wet suit that covered the destroyed knee, ever since I had to begin dealing with the hole I have torn in my fabric, ever since then a little, long lost memory has come tumbling over and over into my mind, like a bright bit of beach glass in the surf. The memory, over and over, and then gratitude. And also relief, huge gratitude and relief.
*****
LAVINIA. Blessing, Caesar, and forgiveness!
CAESAR (turning in some surprise at the salutation) There is no forgiveness for Christianity.
LAVINIA. I did not mean that, Caesar. I mean that WE forgive YOU.
METELLUS. An inconceivable liberty! Do you not know, woman, the Emperor can do no wrong and therefore cannot be forgiven?
LAVINIA. I expect the Emperor knows better. Anyhow, we forgive him.
THE CHRISTIANS. Amen!
CAESAR. Metellus: you see now the disadvantage of too much severity. These people have no hope; therefore they have nothing to restrain them from saying what they like to me. They are almost as impertinent as the gladiators.
Shaw, Androcles
*****
This is the memory. One summer, when I was home from school, from college, a friend from high school days showed up in Kanosh, living in a house his parents had moved away from but not sold. People do that in Kanosh, leave town, never come back, hang on to their real estate. They think they want to retire there, come back if they ever get a decent job, hide out when society goes to hell in a handbasket, sell when the market is better or after all their relatives die. Whatever. My friend was living in his parents' spare Kanosh house, working a summer job. I saw him around a couple of times, no big deal, we liked each other well enough and had always been friends of a single degree of separation; he had, for a longish while, been my best friend's boyfriend, that sort of thing. One evening that summer he took a hard, fast slide along a goodly stretch of road, still mostly wearing his motorcycle.
And went home, alone, to a spare house to recover.
*****
LAVINIA. (laughing) You know,Ferrovius, I am not always a Christian. I don't think anybody is. There are moments when I forget all about it, and something comes out quite naturally, as it did then.
Shaw, Androcles
*****
No one in Kanosh did anything for him, of course, they are not inclined to extend themselves on behalf of (comparably) healthy young adult males who really should be on missions but aren't, whose relatives are too tenuously connected to the core handful of long-time town families, boys who are not exactly troublemakers but might be, someday, maybe, maybe not. Since as the twig is bent, the tree will grow, I am firmly Kanoshian in many/most of my views on human relations, devoutly believing not only that most people mostly ought to take care of themselves, but that most of them truly, deeply would prefer to if allowed, but thank you very much. This doesn't mean I don't help lost children or stop to give directions or make cell phone calls to report crimes or hold open doors for folks who have their hands full. It does mean I would never dream of opening your door myself, just to check, just to see if you maybe could use some help for no reason other than that I suspect you may have your hands full.
*****
Androcles. No: it's very kind of you: but I feel I can't save myself that way.
The Editor. But I don't ask you to do it to save yourself: I ask you to do it to oblige me personally.
Androcles. (scrambling up in the greatest agitation) Oh, please, don't say that. That is dreadful. You mean so kindly by me that it seems quite horrible to disoblige you...But I must go into the arena with the rest. My honor, you know.
Shaw, Androcles
*****
But. I was moved with compassion for my friend. No idea why. Nothing at all romantic in our history, not even near misses, though some possible romantic something had certainly been examined, contemplated. All the kids in a small town are closely considered, willy nilly, by every adult as possible matches for every other kid in town, without regard for the personal inclinations and preferences of the actual, living kids and these imaginary pairings result in greater and lesser degrees of foreboding and/or delight among the adults (and may have been a tiny part of the reason we moved. shhh). As a victim of this conversational, parental shuffling, I had, only a few years before he spread his DNA across an intersection, actually phoned Road Rash Boy (after three days of frozen, horrified, concentrated inability to do so) and asked him to be my choice at a girls' choice dance, the only girl's choice dance I ever attended. My mother prodded me, knew best, bucked me up, drove me into it (I think she had already talked to his mother. I mean, I know she had). That calling, that asking, was without doubt the worst thing I had undergone in all my life to that point. After he said yes, after I got the phone back onto the cradle (historical reference, some of you may have to ask an old adult about that one) but before I stilled the shaking and caught all my breath, I closed my eyes and promised God that I would say yes to every boy who asked me on a date as a tribute to their incredible bravery and in memorial to the things I had just myself suffered. That promise would itself wreck a considerable amount of damage, of course, but I meant well. And the date was fine, just fine, first because nothing could possibly be as awful as the asking but also because he was really a great guy, very cute and smart and funny and unfailingly polite to adults. Which is why my mom wanted me to go out with him, I'm sure. I think I remember we were a bit bored on our date, this being in the ages before people dated in pods and myself not being much of a planner. He asked me if he could kiss me to fill some time and I found I couldn't just step into that in cold blood. Perhaps if he hadn't asked first...well. At any rate. The point of that story is, I went to the spare house offering my assistance with no prior commitment, no history save that which is common to mankind nor any blood at all between us, bad or good.
*****
THE CAPTAIN. You are right: it was silly thing to say. (In a lower tone, humane and urgent) Lavinia: do Christians know how to love?
LAVINIA. (composedly) Yes, Captain: they love even their enemies.
The Captain. Is that easy?
Lavinia. Very easy, when their enemies are as handsome as you.
Shaw, Androcles
*****
Nope. I only felt a sudden wave of terrible sorrow for him, like contemplation of dental procedures, like homesickness, like the memory or foreboding of a breakup, and was sure, positive, he had no medical supplies in that spare house. I gathered an armload of my mom's stuff and made my dad drive me over (as I had no license yet; another story). He didn't like this, my dad, me alone with a young male person in a spare house but I scoffed him into silence. Pish. What could possible happen? I'm not attracted to road rash, scabs are not sexy to me. I promised to call my dad for a ride back (as he was suddenly, singularly concerned. Under other circumstances, many, many other circumstances, I had walked lots further than that, but, you know, boys and stuff). I knocked at the door while he waited (hovered, really, but that would sound funny) in the car and thought my friend shouted something from inside; a noise, it could have been anything. I nodded and smiled to my dad in the car and confidently pushed my way in, shouldered the door right open, just as if I had been invited, just as if I had heard a come in. Dusky in his den, the light all blue from the TV. I sat down with my armload of medicines by the patient on the sofa who, having had no call upon his voice, no reason to speak since the day before, could only make a harsh strangle when he tried to yell an answer to my knock. The first thing I did for my friend, who was so thankful, undone, pitiably grateful, to see any human enter his spare house, was to help him get up so he could creep down the hall to the bathroom. It was a slow getting up, some of him was stuck to the sofa.
I applied Neosporin and strategic Bandaids and set out food and water around him and changed the channel on the TV and talked, called my dad, waited a bit awkwardly till he came, and left.
I climbed into the car with my dad, smiled to show how unharmed I still was, smiled silently out the window because my eyes and mind were filled with stills and with short movies of arms and shoulders and torn skin.
Huh, I thought in the car.
And later,
Maybe.
Maybe not.
Arms and shoulders and a boy who made no sound when I pulled off bandaids, hard and fast.
Maybe.
I went back some more times, maybe every night for as long as a week; maybe it was a short week. Till he didn't need me anymore for doctoring, only for company, and then I missed a night and now I have grown old I realize I don't know what happened to him; he left the spare house and I never saw him again.
Or thought of him. Til now.
*****
LAVINIA. Remember me for a fortnight, handsome Captain. I shall be watching you, perhaps.
THE CAPTAIN. From the skies? Do not deceive yourself, Lavinia. There is no future for you beyond the grave.
LAVINIA. What does that matter? Do you think I am only running away from the terrors of life into the comfort of heaven? If there were no future, or if the future were one of torment, I should have to go just the same. The hand of God is upon me.
Shaw, Androcles
*****
My leg is surprisingly, stupidly, painful, red and hot. It has a fever, I think. When I pack it with the herbs I have come to use on open wounds I am appalled that it...well, it kills. Really. Embarrassing, inconvenient. The pain subsides, I remind myself, and it does after longer than I want to write about. I lie back in bed, a taut, bright rivulet of pain shooting out one edge of the scrape, minuscule screaming demons riding booted and spurred up the side of my thigh. Effleurage. Deep breaths. Wait it out.
Hurt nearly always makes a memory, for me, that's why I so often write about it. It sticks, I remember those moments. I remember and remember my friend, scraped and ground to a fare-thee-well, as my mom says. He must have hurt so big, so bad, those days alone in the spare house, the blue TV evenings with no one to talk to, listening, maybe, for a girl from down the street who had not promised to come back, had not asked what else he might need, a girl who ran her hands gently over his scabs and did not speak all her thoughts. The pain will subside, I say to him in my mind, and I know that it did, after more time passed than he wanted to talk about, time that was only a couple of very long days. This is the whole point of the story, Beloved, that it was not a big deal, going to him, putting on some bandages, taking off old ones, quickly. Buying a Mountain Dew against my better judgment ( bring Dr. Pepper for the sick and afflicted, dude). I take off my bandage, quickly, and am buoyed, floated, by this memory in this moment, a fortunate and prosperous time to recall that one time when I did something, opened a door when I knew somebody had their hands full just to see if there was help I could give. I receive it back to myself, my need so much less than his but still great enough, thank you very much, for me. For now. Not dying is smart. A friend to get you off the sofa is a friend indeed. A spare house is no place like home. An armload of home medicines is saving me. And one time, long ago before I became too old, I didn't let somebody down, though I owed nothing, had made no promise. Sweet, sweet, to me, sweet.
*****
FERROVIUS. In my youth I worshipped Mars, the God of War. I turned from him to serve the Christian god; but today the Christian god forsook me; and Mars overcame me and took back his own. The Christian god is not yet. He will come when Mars and I are dust; but meanwhile I must serve the gods that are, not the God that will be. Until then I accept service in the Guard, Caesar.
THE EMPEROR. Very wisely said. All really sensible men agree that the prudent course is to be neither bigoted in our attachment to the old nor rash and unpractical in keeping an open mind for the new, but to make the best of both dispensations.
THE CAPTAIN. What do you say, Lavinia? Will you too be prudent?
LAVINIA (on the stair) No: I'll strive for the coming of the God who is not yet.
THE CAPTAIN. May I come and argue with you occasionally?
Shaw, Androcles
*****
When I tore open my knee in the salt water no magical blond boy arose, like a Greek god from the seafoam, to carry me to the hot tub and run after bandages and ointments (have I yet mentioned that Road Rash Boy looked like a Greek god? Because, he did, dang it, though the Greek gods were unquestionably taller. Not that I fault him in this, without doubt they were showing off) because once I had helped him, had lingered on him in my thoughts and he had lingered on me, in his turn, and awaited the day I would scrape myself badly and foolishly enough that he might come to me for the end, the summation, of our story and this, Beloved, is the whole point of the story.
In the real of my life no one arose to carry me anywhere and they'd have been summarily dismissed if they had. Because I was going to get there on my own steam (more like fumes, at that point). Because I had to say it was nothing, a small hole, an easily repaired tear. And I had to go back for a few more hours in the water. I'm a tough chick; it's what we do. And it was pretty nice that a man loaned me a wet suit to cover my hole. He was nice, too, and pretty. He did this thing at the prompting of his wife, who could recognize a thorn when she saw one. And I was grateful to her, and relieved.
It's the temptation to make, to have made, my friend into a story; to wish for the why of it, the what happened because of and also the after. It's the too great longing for those tellings where he, the magical, injured god, saves me, the broken girl, since only he can see I need repair. And happens to have the tools on hand; he carries them with him for just such a chance as this. The heart's yearning toward discernible motives, explication, denouement, reward.
As,
She nursed him and he loved her; she saw deep into his heart in his suffering and her heart softened to his. When at last he could stand unaided they were married.
No.
She nursed him and he never forgot her and when he died he left her his fortune.
She nursed him when all others abandoned him and, later, she needed a kidney and he gave her one.
They threw him to the lions and one lion recognized him, from services rendered of old, and did not eat him but honored him and did him great service.
No, wait.
He took a thorn out of the lion's foot, so later the lion took a thorn out of his foot.
Once a person helped a lion in peril, which was a brave and stupid act. The lion, sensing this person was both stupid and brave and fearing what might follow, ran away as soon as it could, frightened and not so hungry. Later the person made up stories in which people figured prominently and lions could not get along without them. And sold the stories to other people, though the lions were not buying them.
*****
The locus classicus of the story is found in the fifth book of Aulus Gellius... of which Apion himself claimed to have personally witnessed in Rome...The emperor pardons the slave on the spot, in recognition of this testimony to the power of friendship, and he is left in possession of the lion.
"Afterwards we used to see Androcles with the lion attached to a slender leash, making the rounds of the tabernae throughout the city; Androcles was given money, the lion was sprinkled with flowers, and everyone who met them anywhere exclaimed: "This is the lion, a man's friend; this is the man, a lion's doctor".
Wikipedia, Androcles and the Lion
*****
Tony Hillerman, in an essay, told of a beautiful and miraculous natural story he and a friend watched unfold. The friend said, after, "This will be a wonderful moment in a book." But Mr. Hillerman already knew, sadly, that he could never use that miracle in fiction. "No one," he lamented, "would believe it."
Real life miracles are not what stories are all about. Story miracles do not make for real life.
It's the terrible, seductive desire to belong to a story, not just to events, to come away with something of your own, something to keep. A devoted lion. A beautiful boy. Someone to gather you into their arms and soothe away ugly scrapes. Something to keep. A hearty, well done thou good and faithful, at the very least. Even if it's not what actually happened. Even if you have to make it up. A life-friend. Someone owed you because once you were better than you had to be.
*****
THE CAPTAIN. Are you then going to die for nothing?
LAVINIA. Yes: that is the wonderful thing. It is since all the stories and dreams have gone that I have now no doubt at all that I must die for something greater than dreams or stories.
THE CAPTAIN. But for what?
LAVINIA. I don't know. If it were for anything small enough to know, it would be too small to die for. I think I'm going to die for God. Nothing else is real enough to die for.
THE CAPTAIN. What is God?
LAVINIA. When we know that, Captain, we shall be gods ourselves.
Shaw, Androcles
*****
Once a man came upon a lion, wounded and dying in the mouth of a dank cave, a man who disregarded his own life, whether bravely or foolishly, sufficiently to render the lion service, to go on his knees before it and to climb between its very paws, one paw badly torn by a terrible thorn which the man removed, though the lion could not. The man told no one this story for though he was brave enough for the telling he was not such a fool as to expect anyone would believe. He kept the thorn, for a time, but remembered it less and less often til finally he lost both the thorn and the story.
But the lion, who recovered, never forgot.
When, later, in his extremis, the man met the lion again, he did not recognize it, but nor did the lion recognize him, for men and lions do not so much love each other that either tribe has learned to know one among hundreds of strangers. The man, knowing not how he might face bravely or foolishly a fate so appalling, simply stood before the lion and cried silently. The lion, however, whose mind was not clouded by any fear of death and rending, observed still its habit acquired in the intervening years; it approached its prey softly, gently, raising one paw and holding it out to the man for a moment, waiting. To his astonishment, the man saw upon the pad of the great paw a ragged scar, made by a terrible thorn. As he had once before, the man fell upon his knees before the lion and wept tears, hot and gushing, onto the scar, in recognition of his lost friend and in relief, for his heart told him he had, all unlooked for, regained his own life. The lion, having long ceased to wonder at the ways of men, waited kindly, breathing on the back of the man's neck, small and weak before him, and onto the man's hair where his head was bowed before the lion. The lion did the man no harm then or ever, because they were friends.
It was never a story about a boy, but about a thorn and torn fabric and what came of the mending.
Though all our pain subsides, we shall know each other by the scars.
*****
You sit there in your heartache
Waitin' on some beautiful boy to
Save you from your old ways.
You play forgiveness, watch it now,
Here he comes.
He doesn't look a thing like Jesus
But he talks like a gentleman
Like you imagined when you were young.
The Killers, When You Were Young
