The Birth of People's Republic of Antartica, стр. 70
Over three years, I regained most of my faculties, also regained my weight and strength and demeanor, though my hair never did grow back properly—I was mostly bald, with long locks over my eyes. Nature also returned to me my acuity, which joined with my Norse skepticism to resist Longfaeroe’s hammering at my identity. I argued that me being Davidic made no sense, that such proceeded from something wild-eyed in Longfaeroe, some sad foolishness to retreat from the world by cramming it into a familiar illusion that seemingly had authority because it was based on the biblical canon. I did not say it that way, since I did not then have the wherewithal; that was what I thought, however inarticulately. Longfaeroe made the mistake of cultists, investing a found object with magical powers that seem tangible because they are actually the longing of the investor for recognizable truth. I do not mean to defame him. He was good to me, if he also confused me; in his way he trained my mind by attacking it. Longfaeroe was manipulative, fervent, long-winded, cunning, playful, pouty. I listened to him, because he was my friend and I wanted him to like me. I defended myself, because I had to spend most of my time alone and wanted to know whom I was with.
I objected to Longfaeroe that the one similarity I would admit between me and David was shepherding. I said that I was a shoddy shepherd. I suffered lapses, talked to the mountainsides when I should have been counting spring lambs, was inept at shearing despite Germanicus’s patient lessons. If not for Iceberg (she was pregnant by one of Goldberg’s pups when we landed, recovered from her wound to deliver five wolves) I would have lost my herds in the winter storms; she, the wolf, trained herself and her pups, and the litters of half-breed collie-wolves that followed, to go against nature and to tend the sheep, did so out of loyalty to and love for me, and I took it then and still do as a profound example of what faith and kindness can do—civilize the beast.
I further objected to Longfaeroe that I was not the youngest son of a shepherd of Bethlehem, was the only son, and bastard at that, of an exiled murderer who had been born in the Black Forest of Germany. Longfaeroe was not discouraged, applied his imagination. He reworked my life, twisting my tale of how I had been fetched by Cleopatra to Grandfather at Stockholm—which, Longfaeroe said, had deferred Grandfather from his despotism—to have been the same as how Saul, King of the Hebrews, fell into melancholy tempers while making war on the Philistines, and that only when David the harpist was ushered into Saul’s tent to sing songs did Saul return to Jehovah’s plan. This is typical of the liberty Longfaeroe was willing to take with truth in order to advance his plan.
I can review this matter more dispassionately than the savior talk, because it began and ended with Longfaeroe, and what trouble it caused I left behind on South Georgia. As I recall it, I see that the reason Longfaeroe’s notion bothers me is that there might have been weight to his fixation on finding me a “wee David.” It had its dark, wrongheaded side in that Longfaeroe pressed on me that David did not worship a God of Love, rather a heartier God, more appropriate to the travail of the Hebrews, a God of Fear and Trembling. Longfaeroe said this was the same I spoke of as a “God of Hate” at Port Stanley. He was wrong about that; I was pagan then, denying God more than refashioning his identity. At the time, I was not fully informed of my pagan self, and was confused by Longfaeroe’s contrivance. Now, I can reject it as an example of the damage overeager visionaries can do to their students. Yet, Longfaeroe’s obsession also introduced a telling thought to me, one that I carried with me afterward and can still be irked by because I take the point. Longfaeroe pressed on me that David’s story was more compelling than any other in the Bible because David was an impaired hero, made many mistakes, was remorseful, guilt-wracked in old age, when he had to watch his sons undo his work with squabbling and treachery. Longfaeroe said that, like me, David rose from humble origins, excelled first in battle against the Philistines’ champion, Goliath, as I had risen from the ranks of the Volunteers to slay Patagonians and beasties. (Perhaps the most unhappy coincidence between me and David—one that Longfaeroe never made because I concealed from him my longing—was that concerning the coveting of another man’s woman: David had his Bathsheba, Grim had his Cleopatra.)
I am not saying that I was Davidic. I am saying that Longfaeroe provided me a story of a king that reveals most of the lessons and ruin of kingship. I have mentioned how I was ignorant of Lazarus’s political science. Longfaeroe gave me a course in politics that I believe unequaled. It is all there, in the two books of Samuel, and as I read the Fiddle Bible I nod in sadness. I was a warlord king, like David, but not of a land of