Wynn MacKenzie

 in sui sanguineum, in vino veritas

(in oneself there is blood as in wine there is truth)

2017

i.

You squint at the rows of figures in front of you, in the cool almost-darkness of the storehouse. Sheaves of vellum are spread out around you, some stained with olive oil, some stained with dirt, and your work taking inventory of the Family’s harvest season is almost done. The droning, thunderous sound of echoing voices and the rolling stones crushing thousands of olives surrounds you, and the only other thing you hear is the scratching of your pen against the vellum. It’s been a dry season, drier than most, and the acrid smell of the olives permeates the air, permeates everything.

You wipe sweat from your brow before it can drip onto the neat rows of figures you’ve scratched onto the rough paper. Discouragingly low numbers, but as the Father says God will provide, my sons, He will provide. You hope He would provide, otherwise this year’s sparse harvest would make little coin for the Family.

You wonder, idly for a second, why the money from the olive oil could not be used to purchase a real olive press–a fancy one, like the people in the farms closer to the city had, perhaps then your brothers would not hurt so much at the end of each day, from pushing the rolling stones, perhaps nobody’s hands or feet would be crushed–and catch yourself. A spike of anxiety and guilt slams through you. Impure thoughts, thoughts of sloth, of self-indulgence. The priors had whipped Brother Nicodemus for saying such things just last week. Who knew what state he would be in if he recovered…You rub at the worn leather cuff, embossed with the name of God and the Family, that is tied tightly around your wrist.

You remember standing in the stuffy summer heat of the chapel among all of the other initiates as a youth, bare feet on the floor, a crown of a young olive branch tied around your head. You were proud that day, and you felt like now your life could begin, that you would be full and complete as a member of the Family. You remember the joy you felt as the Father came around, down the line of groomed initiates and blessed you, anointed you with that acrid oil and your new name, and given you the consecrated leather cuff that signified your status as a full Family member. You remember the taste of your Family name in your mouth like lamb’s blood, Jude, the Father had said in his old booming voice, echoed by your smaller, cracking one. At last, purity. At last, purpose. At last, yourself.

And as long as you held on to that, no sin could befall you. That’s what the Father said. Still you feel a little more weight settle around your shoulders, and you frantically wonder how much weight it is possible for you to carry, until you break. Your immortal soul floats somewhere above this storehouse, and the groves of olive trees, and the rugged hills of the valley, the green and dusty earth. You wonder how much weight it can bear before it is dragged down to where you could touch it, stain it with your dusty hands. You wonder if it would smell like the olives, the way your clothes and your cuff do, the way your dusty house does.

The guilt still sits in you the way that the smell of olives sits in the back of your throat, behind your eyes.

You shake your head, trying to dislodge such dark thoughts. The Father’s voice echoes in your head, a comforting rumble. You are where you are supposed to be, doing what the Father and God willed. You gather up your sheaves of vellum, and step out into the sunlight.

ii.

You wake up.

Your hands are covered in blood and it drips softly, running down your fingers and wrists to settle gently in twin black pools on the floor. Your back, when you struggle to sit up, burns in tandem with your side, as if you’ve been stabbed, or branded. Your throat feels like dust, like scratchy old pine. You cast your eyes about, blinking in the purple twilight. Watery light, pale and ghostlike, reaches fingers through the rough slats of the barn’s walls around you. Your circadian rhythm doesn’t have a hope of telling you what time it is. Three is the customary number of days to be kept here, before–before exile, but you wouldn’t know. You can’t remember anyone being exiled in your lifetime. What have you done? What will you be if not a part of the enormous, breathing, all-consuming creature of God, the many-headed hydra of the Family?

Cut off one head and it would surely be replaced.

You shake your head and dust flies from your hair, long, lank, split and greasy at the ends. The place you’re sitting in–it looks like the interior of a barn. Shapes resolve themselves before you as your shifting bones creak. Bodies? No, stones and broken bits of furniture, pews perhaps, rounded like human backs in slumped and splintered piles.

You stand. There’s a throbbing weight in your head and it settles like a burning, buzzing brightness behind your eyes. You examine your wrists, the source of the blood. Twin blackened holes, burned and blistered and punctured–not fatally, no, but still oozing all manner of gross fluid, running over the pale white ring of skin where your Family cuff used to sit. You feel blind, stricken with pain as you pat down your body searching for new injuries, for any kind of clue of yourself or your motivation. You feel like you’re trying to read a book without words, watching just another doll of the Family stumbling, its joints and puppet strings cut. You flex your bare feet against the dusty floor and feel twin stings just like the ones in your wrists, and wince. Your stained immortal soul floats somewhere above this barn, in the dry bite of a wind that has its teeth firmly in a pale sky.

You blink, and take a few steps forward. Another few. Your hand meets the blackened wood of the door. Around you, your surroundings still dizzily sway like oil across your vision, but you push the door open and are met with the mercurial light of an overcast day. Warm wind buffets you–the grey valley stretches out beneath your feet, and you see the tiny lights of your old home–not warm anymore. The leaves of olive trees tremble in the dry wind, and a dragging path of many footsteps winds a drunken way between where you stand at the barn and back to the houses of the Family. Your heart feels like it’s being crushed, and all the purity and joy and pride you ever held was oozing out in viscous drops.

A cross is stood in front of the barn, and tattered ropes hang limp from the crossbeam. They are stained, as is the cross. No nails litter the ground nearby–the intent, as you understand, from the frantic and wrathful blur of the verdict of your punishment, was to keep you in agony but prevent you from escaping. Your words and your past cling to you; you didn’t deserve so noble a fate as martyrdom. The thought writhes inside you like a snake, and threatens to choke. You were whole, and holy, and now you are nothing, and nobody, and you shall not die until you have served your time on this Earth before being eternally cast to a hell the likes of which you cannot imagine. So it was, so it shall be, so it will always be, for you and for those like you.

At a loss of what else to do, you begin to walk.

iii.

Under the golden noonday sun, you hold a worn pair of shears in your newly calloused hands and breathe in the sweet, earthy air.

It has been a fortnight since you woke up in the barn, and started walking. You are standing among the endless rows of leafy trellises festooned with clusters of green and purple grapes. You are far from the city, where industrial food can be readily obtained, and there was no one willing to ship it this deep in the mountains. The sounds of the other laborers around you comforts you, as you wipe sweat from your brow. The soothing, constant sounds of grapevines being snipped and gathered, of steady progress and simple, essential purpose.

You had noticed, too, in yourself, this steady rhythm slowly becoming a part of you. Sun browns your skin more here, instead of dust. The pale ring around your wrist where your leather cuff once resided has sunburned, and you’ve covered it with a scrap of white cloth so it won’t blister any further. The wounds on your wrists, and feet, and back, and side, they’ve stopped oozing and are all healing to stiff pink scars. The most unfamiliar thing, though, is the absence of the olives. The smell no longer clings to you, or lingers in your throat. It feels odd to be without it, but not unduly so.

In this gentle, sunlit moment, you close your eyes briefly and out of habit, think of your immortal soul floating far above you. It will probably be stained, and tattered, and broken…

But to your surprise, you find in yourself nothing more than the memories that you carried of that soul. A wave of unidentifiable, wild emotion washes through you. The panic of losing such an integral part of–of you. Was it ever you? Where were you? You feel unmoored, and clutch your shears with sweaty palms.

The shears’ familiar weight is calming, and the sun’s warmth sinks into you once again. You try to breathe, in this air without olives. You feel the wind stir your hair and lay its dry palms on your face. If I have no soul, you think, at least I still have my body. And that was comforting, in its sameness, even if that body still bore the weight of your soul’s guilt.

The lunch bell rings, startling you out of your reverie, and all of the laborers stash their tools in the shade as they stroll towards the largest building on the commune, the dining hall. You follow them, unsure of what to make of their casual smiles and lighthearted conversation. You came here so recently, to the mountains, and you have been welcomed by these people. Like yourself, many have been excommunicated, and now they live and breathe with the gaiety of those who have never known the inside of a temple or the strictness of the Commandments.

You enter the dining hall and find a seat next to a stack of barrels, alone. One of your comrades walks up to you with their tray, a languid grin tracing the sun-tanned lines of their face. They sit next to you, pouring their energy and life out onto you and the table like oil.

“You’re new here, right?”

You nod, still unsure of your status here, of who was superior and who was subordinate.

“From the Family?”

Your voice is hoarse, and catches a bit as you reply. “Yes.”

The comrade chuckles and takes a bite of their sandwich. “Excommunicated, eh?” they ask through a full mouth. “Don’t worry. No priors here to switch you for forgetting the wafers.” Your shoulders relax slightly. Interference with the venerated communion was sacrilege of the highest order–but then, these people didn’t take communion.

“Where do you work?” they ask.

“The vineyard.” you respond, carefully. A smile quirks their mouth.

“I’m in the vineyards too. It’s a good job, easy to adjust to if you haven’t done much farm work before. Usually we send the newer comrades to the potato plots. It’s hard work, but that’s just to weed out the freeloaders. You’re an excommunicate like us though, so we figured you’d be fine. I guess it’s just that Familial work ethic?”

A somewhat uncomfortable silence follows. Since the incident with Son Samuel, you’ve been wary of speaking. Perhaps too wary. You look down and pretend to focus on eating.

“I’m Valentine, by the way.” the comrade says abruptly.

You wait to finish chewing your food. “I am Jude.”

Valentine’s eyes soften a little. “Relax, Jude. We’re all friends here. Most of us were excommunicated too, you know. And bad-natured people don’t tend to stick around in a commune for long,” Valentine says. Something inside your chest pulls at the gentleness of Valentine’s voice, at the reminder of that shared experience.

They gesture towards the barrels that you’re sitting near. “You know how long those barrels have been there for?”

You shake your head.

“Three years. The vintners here say that the wine changes. But I don’t get how the wine can change if the barrel stays the same, you know? The barrel doesn’t change, but the wine is always a little different every year.” Valentine smiles and finishes off their sandwich as the bell rings again. Back to work.

You spare another look at the barrels before you go, imagining the wine within. When did they decide to empty the barrel and drink the wine? When was it different enough?

iv.

Four years go by.

Gently, you lay your hand on the palm scanner next to the lockbox. Rows upon rows of softly glowing lockboxes stretch out on either side of you, upwards into the sterile white darkness. The smell of preserving fluid and oiled steel lingers in the back of your throat–not unpleasant, but cloying like red iron. The smell feels like a hand reaching into the cold and closed-off places in your brain, incessantly grabbing and ripping at what’s there.

You shake your head a little, trying to dislodge old memories. The old echo of the Father’s booming voice sometimes still feels like it’s leaking out of your ears, a constant diatribe, like a radio station left on in an empty house.

The lockbox pops open with a mechanical cascade of clicks, and the sheaves of vellum inside are illuminated by the white light that pervades this white hall. They look strange, anachronistically so, against this sterile backdrop. Stranger still to think that this was the last existing voice that called you back to the Family. The old smell of olives contained by the lockbox spills out into your face.

Dearest brother,

How have you been faring? Mother Rebekah just had her baby–her fourth, but it’s taken a lot out of her. The baby’s strong. She has named it Jude…I do not know if it is a good omen, but the name had to stay in the Family after you left. I only wish that you were here. Nobody will talk to me about why you left–the Father says that you committed a terrible sin, that you’d lost your sense and been taken by the Devil. The Son Samuel still won’t talk about what you said to Him, only that it was blasphemous, and dangerous, and inhuman, and you had decided that you couldn’t stay here anymore. I thought we were all family, all part of the Family and that meant that none of us who was Family could be corrupted by the devil. I don’t understand, and I want you to come back, but I don’t know if you should.

Your hands tremble. Your dear sister…she had been too young to remember…

The dirt on your fingers leaves shadows on the worn vellum–worn, old, but the words unfaded. You’ve come back here less and less since meeting Valentine, since you started working in the vineyard. It hasn’t felt as important, and guilt’s bite has stung less and less with each month that passes that the day isn’t punctuated by the Father’s ringing voice, chastising, always chastising.

You remind yourself to breathe, and Valentine’s voice replaces the Father’s in your head, reciting scraps of poetry to you, rambling about wine. You recall the sun, and the deep purple of the grapes, dark like benevolent eyes on their twining vines. You recall the tables of the dining hall, the stars, the joy of your comrades. You rub absentmindedly at your bare wrist, the one that used to wear the leather cuff. Father’s voice recedes. The heaviness of your past–a weight you thought would be bound to your back forever–recedes quickly, like a dark tide. All that is left is a silver expanse of sand, stretching to infinity inside of you.

You continue to read.

Father tells me that everything we ever did gets remembered by our souls. He says I just have to reach upwards in my mind, and that my soul is floating there above me, always in the eyes of God. He says that He can always see what we’ve done, and so can everyone else. My soul is up there, but I don’t know that anyone can see it, ‘cause I can’t see anyone else’s. I won’t say that though. I don’t want to be whipped. I want to be strong, and good, and get my leather cuff and be anointed by the Father, and I don’t ever want to leave. Father says my future here is already set in stone, so I shouldn’t worry.

I hope this letter finds its way to you. I don’t know if you read them anymore, and I’m afraid to write you sometimes in case someone finds out. Then I’ll really be punished. But I can’t just forget about my older brother the way everyone else has.

God bless you, brother, and may you live in purity wherever you are,

Sister Calvina

The vellum still trembles in your hand. The intervening years had felt so long at first, days and months stretching out into hundreds of eternities, so much so that you feared you might go mad in the endless spiral of time. But–slowly, so slowly, with the help of Valentine and the others and the grapes, you had settled. You no longer startled at the creaking of doors and the cracking of knuckles. The steadiness of each day became comforting, the careless joy of your comrades as warm and lovely as the sunlight instead of a source of anxiety. Your body had healed from its punishment, regained its old strength, your floating immortal soul had leached from your mind the more you lost yourself among the idyll of the vineyard. The weight of that–that floating thing, it was immaterial, invisible, inexistent. Its weight could not pull you down to hell anymore.

But if it couldn’t, you had reasoned, then what possibly could? Your thoughts had returned, again, to the wine in the barrels that Valentine had mentioned the first day you met. But you were a person, not a barrel of wine. And you, unlike the wine, held control over the story of you. Like labeling each bottle, distinguishing it forever from the others by giving it a name and a number and a year and a lineage–none of those things existed to the wine before you wrote them all down and glued them, ever so carefully, to another identical green glass bottle. You figured, you could do the same for yourself.

v.

Your hands are steady now, and you breathe in sharply the smell of the olives and the smell of the white hall. You can’t remember the sound of your sister’s voice, anymore, nor her age, nor the thousand mundane details that made her up. You cannot well remember your brothers, nor your parents. The Father exists in your mind as a dark and faceless shadow, though his voice is as clear to you as the day he anointed you with your name. It is strange to you, but though you spent most of your life in the Family, with each passing day it felt more like a half-remembered dream, seen through a glass and darkly, as Valentine might say.

You fold the vellum and shove it carelessly into your back pocket. Your other hand closes the lockbox, and it whirrs quietly as it secures itself again. The smell of olives is fainter now. You turn on your heel and march quickly out of the white hall, into the sunlight, back to where Valentine is waiting for you.

Valentine looks up as you approach, and sweet smoke curls from their mouth around a hand-rolled cigarette. “How’d it go?”

You shake your head and pull out the vellum from your pocket. “Got a light?”

Valentine’s eyes widen slightly, and flick to meet yours. Their face is still as open as the day you met them, and you see every complicated emotion in you mirrored there almost perfectly.

They reach deliberately into their pocket, and press a heavy silver lighter into your hand. Their eyes do not leave yours.

You crouch down, at the side of the red dirt road outside the archive hall, and quickly dig a small hole with your calloused hands. You cast the vellum into the hole, and carefully light a dried-up grape leaf. You hear Valentine’s boots shifting in the dirt, and they crouch down beside you.

You breathe.

The dry vellum catches quickly, but burns slowly. Calvina’s words blacken and disappear into soot. The grey smoke carries them up, up into the burning blue of the sky.

You close your eyes. Your immortal soul is no more, your broken and punished body is healed. Valentine bumps your shoulder gently.

“C’mon, Jude. Let’s go home.”