Before I go to bed my brother wants me to put him in my mouth. He opens his pants and turns his chair to the side. If he did not turn his chair to the side I would have had to crawl under the table to reach my brother. I rest one hand on the edge of my brother's chair and one hand on the table. I wish my mouth were not so small and dry. My brother is patient with me, but he is disappointed. He has to use his hand while I crouch by the chair.
Lying in bed, I cannot fall asleep. I took longer than I should have near the wharves and my brother had to use his hand. I do not know how to improve myself. If I had followed the doctor into his office perhaps he would have given me one of his capsules. The doctor would not have given me a capsule. Doctors only offer capsules to their patients. He might have given me a capsule for my brother. I decide to stay up all night so I will be awake before my brother in the morning. I will be ready to go to work in the forge. I wake up with a start when my brother shakes my shoulder. He has already fried the meat for breakfast. The air through the windows is salty and fresh with last night's storm.
9
My brother does not know why there are no customers. He dresses three axes. He forges hoe after hoe. He paces to the double doors of the forge. It is a clear day. On clear days, you can see the peninsula across the bay, the faint gray outline of the mountains. My brother calls to me. He can see the peninsula. I join him at the double doors. The day is exceptionally clear. I can see the stone monasteries set high on the mountains. The peninsula is long and thin. It stretches across the horizon. I do not know where the peninsula attaches to the coast. It must attach some place far away, in the wilderness to the south. The peninsula is not continuous. There are breaks in the peninsula through which ships enter the bay. The ships in the bay fly bright civil ensigns. They have come from far away, across the ocean. They move very quickly through the waters of the bay. The foreigners like to cross the bay at alarming speeds. The speeding ships make crossing from the peninsula to the town dangerous for the monks. The boats of the monks are crudely built, with low sides, and they take on water when they cross the rough waves of the bay. The monks build laughable boats. It is a miracle that their boats stay afloat on the bay.
The foreigners play a game with the monks. The captains of the ships try to drive their ships over the boats of the monks. The foreigners gather on the decks of the ships. They laugh. They look down to the water to see if there are small boats tossing in the wakes of the ships. Monks wash up by the wharves of the town. The doctor's practice is thriving. He has more and more opportunities to use his medical equipment. It is too bad all of the monks died in the same way. It must not be challenging for the doctor. I am sure that the monks do not produce big packets of paper like our father. The monks do not even receive obituaries in the newspaper. Instead there is a tally, a tally of the monks who have washed up by the wharves. This is how the foreigners keep score. Games with the monks keep the captains of the ships from becoming bored in a town as small as ours.
I tell my brother about the monk I saw by the wharves. The monk had not washed up by the wharves. He was lucky and had not lost the game to a captain. He had arrived alive by the wharves of the town. He did not lie face down. He crouched by his boat on the mud. I describe the iron talisman. My brother is not surprised by my description. He says the monks make their own talismans. There is a forge on the peninsula. A long time ago, the man who sold our father's father the forge left the town for the peninsula. He became a monk. He built a new forge on the peninsula. He taught the monks to forge talismans. The monks know how to work iron thanks to the man who sold our father's father the forge.
10
My brother closes the double doors of the forge. I look at the iron door pulls. They are the same as the monk's talisman. That is why the monk's talisman looked familiar. I feel close to the monks now that I know their talismans are modeled on the pulls of the double doors.
The man who sold our father's father the forge had lost his family to a disease. They could not keep any fluids inside their bodies and even their skin lost its moisture and shrank. It was a common disease. The man buried his family behind the forge. He had no living relatives and so he no longer had any hope for the future of the forge. My brother says that is why the man sold our father's father the forge. He did not care that our father's father changed the name of the forge. The man's name was no longer important. He decided to become a monk on the peninsula. Monks do not have names. They are called brothers. Brother is how they greet each other unless they have taken a special vow. In that case, they exchange only gestures when they meet.
Before the town became prosperous, it was common for men to lose hope. It was good that the peninsula was so close to the town, right across the waters of the bay. Men could leave the town for the peninsula. All they needed was to build a small boat. Speeding ships did not drive over small boats in the bay. The men arrived safely on the peninsula. The monks would welcome the newcomers, even though the newcomers had no hope for the future. Monks do not have sons. If the monks did not welcome newcomers, they would not be able to replace the monks who have died. The order of monks would dwindle. Nobody would inhabit the monasteries on the mountains. The monasteries would become dens for animals, the wild boars that live on the peninsula. Rose bushes would fill the lower stories, the branches would crack the panes of glass in the windows, they would grow through the windows. The windows would become bright with the hips and flowers of roses and the jagged pieces of broken glass. The monasteries are definitely inhabited. The windows are dark.
Now that the foreigners have come, every townsperson benefits from investments in his town. Men no longer lose hope. They do not build small boats to cross the bay. Only the monks cross the bay in small boats. Sometimes the monks take young boys from town back to the peninsula in their boats. By welcoming newcomers and taking young boys, the order of monks has prevented itself from dwindling. Now that there are no newcomers arriving on the peninsula, the monks must take as many young boys as they can. Luckily, the captains play games with the monks and most of the monks arrive face down by the wharves. Those monks cannot take young boys. Instead, they are taken by the doctor, taken to his office at the end of the dead end street.
I wonder if the monks can see our forge from their monasteries on the peninsula. Nothing blocks the view of the forge. The monks must be able to see the red light across the bay. We cannot see the red light of the monks' forge, but the monks' forge might be located on the other side of the monasteries, facing the ocean, or it might be located near the bottom of a ravine.