When he was little (much littler even than he is now!) Herble would sit on his father’s knee and be told the story of his people. This was a weekly ritual aside from the extra special occasions when the story would come out and those other times when Herble felt particularly down or discouraged. The first few words of the story excited Herble and hearing them, even now in his adult life, brought a nostalgic feeling of comfort and peace.
“It was when the first light dawned…”
With the incantation of these few words, Herble’s mind was filled with images of creative perfection, newness of life and a freshness of hope. His father would lower his voice to almost a whisper in telling this opening part of the story and to tell it any other way would ruin it for Herble. It was something about the rumble that underpinned the words as his father found the bassier tones of his voice.
“It was when the first light dawned on the land and the green green grass stood to attention, that down in the depths of the earth a heat, unfelt before, warmed the clay and made it home. Like fingers of God enfolding the mud, the heat cooked the soil and moulded it into life.”
‘Like the fingers of God.’ Herble loved that phrase. He would often interrupt the story and ask what that meant and his father, impatiently would burst out with his scripted response,
“Wait, Herble, all will be revealed.”
Herble would settle into his father’s lap and nestle his head onto his chest where he could feel the vibrations caused by his voice.
“Like the fingers of God enfolding the mud, the heat cooked the soil and moulded it into life. When the clay was malleable, the wind blew across the field, down into the ground and into the little, womb-like pocket of sediment. There, being knitted together and birthed was the first ever of our kind.”
At this point Herble’s father would stop and be quiet. Reverently he would bow his head; he was ever the storyteller with a love of the dramatic. Herble would slowly raise his head out of fear of disturbing some religious moment, not that Herble’s father was religious in that sense. When his father knew he had Herble at the peak of expectation he would continue.
“He emerged from the firmament blinkered eyed and naked. Cold shivers went down his spine and the heat of the sun warmed his newly formed body.”
“Why did he not have any clothes?” asked young Herble.
“Because, my boy, there were no shops! Now if I may continue… Anfang, the First, was alone, master of his destiny and in control but soon he came to feel loneliness, the first most painful experience we feel. After loneliness comes lostness and after that comes lethargy, a sense that there’s no point of living. Most think this is the moment before the end but there is a final sensation that of lugubriosity.”
Herble loved his his father said that word; slowly, definitively,
LA-GOO-BRI-OS-CITY.
His father’s theatrics were well rehearsed because at this point in the story his father’s eyes would water slightly.
“A kind of weeping of the soul floods over you and you long to return to the dust from whence you first came. Anfang felt this in a matter of moments. He was finely tuned, more tuned than you or I, to desire the tenderness of another’s company, to hear stories from another voice, to have other ears to hear stories from his own heart. What point is there to have story if there is no one there to hear it?”
At this point young Herble would look at his father, straight in the eye and whisper,
“The fingers of God.”
“That’s right, Herble, the fingers of God are always knitting and deep down in the ground, amidst the clay another shape was forming, like Anfang but different. Just when Anfang shed his first tear and it cascaded to the dirt beneath him and the wet droplet soaked into the crack of earth the ground began to deliver another…”
At this, Herble would join his father,
“Zweite.”
“Zweite completed Anfang and ended his lugubriosity, dampened his sense of lethargy and quietened his feelings of lostness. He was no longer alone for there was someone else to share his life with. The fingers of God had made a partner for Anfang and why, Herble?”
“It’s not good for us to be alone.”
“That is right but soon the two creatures found fault with one another. Anfang, however hard he tried, was unable to make Zweite happy. She demanded the impossible and he worked so hard making so many beautiful things for her, collecting items from the world that might please her but the pleasure would always be short lived and she wanted more. Likewise, Zweite, didn’t know what would make Anfang long for nothing more. He was a creature who desired the new thing all the time, everything grew old and boring in his eyes and to try and keep up with these whims was tiring.”
Herble knew that this truth had special relevance to his father and longed to be able to satisfy his father’s desire for peace and security. It is a truth we all know in our very bones, that true happiness seems always just out of reach whilst remaining so achievable.
“One day Zweite and Anfang decided to move to different fields and try and find peace alone but…”
“It’s not good for us to be alone.” Herble would repeat.
“No. This experiment didn’t last long and the two were back together even if it was just to stave off the downward spiral from loneliness to the end. In a moment of genuine innovation Zweite had an idea.
“If we shape, out of the clay, another of us, then we wouldn’t have to rely on one another for our enjoyment.” she said.
“What a good idea,” Anfang exclaimed and they got to work. In the mud of the ground the four hands entangled together and they formed a shape that resembled another of them. As they worked on the different parts they argued about which of their noses it should have and whose eyes, after which of them would it’s leg be shaped and other nonsense like that. When they were finished it was shaped into a hybrid likeness of the two and they were both satisfied and yet, disappointed as it wasn’t exactly as they had hoped for. Neither said anything to the theory and they agreed that it was the best that they could do.
“Now what?” asked Zweite.
“I guess we wait,” suggested Anfang and they sat down in silence and waited.
It was a long time before either of them spoke and it was broken with an exasperated cry from Zweite,
“O come on!”
At that moment a wind blew across the surface of the earth and seemed to rest on the lifeless mud shape. At that moment the fingers of God picked up the form and stood it on its feet…”
“Säugling” Herble would interrupt almost crushing his father’s legs as he jumped up and down in excitement.
“Yes, yes, Säugling,” his father would say trying to settle Herble down whilst stifling the painful shriek inside him. “Säugling was an energetic and curious creature who had his father’s passion for the world around him, exploring and discovering, but also had the intuitive care of his mother. Säugling also had the stubbornness of his father and the arrogance of his mother.
His parents, for that was what they were, loved Säugling, despite his many faults which they blamed on the other parent’s choice of making him that way. Despite the depth of desire to be happy, Säugling didn’t satisfy and the spiral began; first they felt lonely, then lost, then lethargic and then, one day, both Zweite and Anfang felt the first pangs of lugubriosity. Not wanting to feel this again they decided to move back to their separate fields and Säugling would have to fend for himself.
Säugling didn’t like this one bit and began to copy his parents and blamed them for his own loneliness, lostness and lethargy. In their separate fields they dug their hands into the clay and formed new creatures out of how they imagined the perfect creature to be, often in their own image and would wait for the wind to blow over their creations. One after the other these creatures were made and soon the land was filled with them each a different version of the original but with increasing defects but because they all thought they were not to blame when they parted or disagreed with another they would go off and make one in their own image.
After a time Anfang found himself surrounded by others who would come to him to hear his stories but they would also ask for him to solve their disputes or satisfy their insatiable desires for pretty things and trinkets from his explorations. Anfang was now old and tired but the demands on him were not lessened. It seemed to him the others would only come when they wanted something and this made him feel first of all lonely, then lost, then lethargic…
It was in his old age, when the the first signs of lugubriosity were both familiar and yet fearful, he longed to succumb to the throngs of dis-ease and discover, once and for all, the very bottom of the miry clay, to travel into the great abyss and never return. He had a fond fascination with the womb-like pocket of sediment and wanted to return there.
He closed his eyes and let go…
He awoke and heard a voice.”
“Like the fingers of God! Tell me about the fingers of God!” Herble was beyond excitement when his father got to this part of the story.
“I’m getting there, Herble,” his father would patiently respond. “Like the fingers of God the voice engulfed Anfang and filled his being like when the first light dawned. It said,
“My child, has it taken you this long to learn? Is it that difficult to understand?”…”
““It’s not good for you to be alone.”” Herble would repeat liturgically.
His father would continue,
“Anfang was overcome with fear and awe.
“I am not alone. I have Zweite and Säugling and the others.”
“And yet,” replied the voice, “you still journey round the cycle of loneliness, lostness, lethargy and lugubriosity.”
“That’s life,” exclaimed Anfang confidently.
“No. It’s not,” the voice retorted, “that’s death.”
“Death is a return to that which we came from, a completing of the cycle,” Anfang philosophised.
“What if you were designed for something else? What if you were made to begin a journey of eternal rotation, a continual transformation into something new?”
“I will return,” exclaimed Anfang still misunderstanding the voice. “I will be used to shape new creatures and live on through them.”
“I want you, though. I don’t want some half-thought through replica made by you in your image. You were made in my image and you have great potential. Why would I want to continually want to start again?”
“Why did you design us to want others and force us to make more and more of us to populate the earth, straining the resources and make a mess of the world?” Anfang was now getting angry and was ready to cast all his disappointments and frustrations and blame the voice for ruining everything.
“I didn’t. I designed you to want me. When you didn’t come looking for me I designed another of you to encourage you to look but you got caught up in your tiny desires and petty indulgences. When you made Säugling, I was confused but this tiny creature may have united you and Zweite to learn about the wind that brought forth life.”
There was silence and Anfang didn’t know how to respond. The voice continued,
“Do you know what I call you?”
“Anfang?”
“No. I call you Gnome; it means ‘to come to know’ but it also means ‘earth-dweller’. You were made for me to know you, to love you, to complete you. You have always felt loneliness, a twinge in the depths of your heart. I designed you to feel it but you were also made for the earth to make a home or me with you there.”
At that moment it was as if the fingers of God flung Anfang back out of the miry pit and he opened his eyes as the light first dawned. He looked around and saw all his creations, all his trinkets and was thankful for the pleasure they brought. They shone with a newness that he hadn’t seen before and saw in them the mark of the fingers of God.
Anfang went around telling the others about the voice, some believed him, others didn’t and he entered back into the ground aged 105 promising that the fingers of God would renew and strengthen him and that one day all his genomes would be made new, healed of all their faults and find true and lasting peace.”
“That,” Herble’s father would conclude, “is where we came from. We are a people who wrestle in the earth to find the truth of Anfang’s peace. The End.”
Herble liked it went his father finished stories because he would give him a big hug and a comforting stroke on the back.
Now, in his adult life, Herble would try and tell that story to others but he had lost the magic of the story. His father was older now and, although he could still tell a good story, Herble, often wondered what his father thought he was doing in telling them. He saw great anguish and sadness and longed to bring him peace. The story was clearly myth and, although it was poetic and fanciful, Herble became angry when he thought about the lies it had taught him. His father didn’t believe it to be true.
“It was just a story.” his father would say.
“What does it mean?”
“It means whatever you need it to mean. The circle of life, the reason we all strive after that which cannot be grasped and some sort of higher being; the fingers of God.”
Herble had to settle with that and learnt to be as satisfied as he could be to tell the story to his children and his grandchildren with the same theatrics as his father had done. There was, however always a lingering hope that one day he would finally escape the terrible cycle of loneliness, lostness, lethargy and lugubriosity. He would stand outside the door of the house watching and waiting for the first light to dawn and to feel the wind blow over his face. He would mumble the words of Zweite, “O Come on!” and wait for the voice to speak to him and to tell him that he was loved and was known. Every now and again he would hear a sound which he thought was a voice quiver in his soul and feel what felt like the fingers of God begin to massage his tired form but it wasn’t like the story and he would continue to wait.