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My father was a drunkard you know.
All fathers are drunkards.
Well, mine was crawling on his belly almost every night,
trying to grab our feet
and beat us blue and yellow
with whatever object he could reach.
My mother had to hit him in the head
with a frying pan.
Anyway, one night when I was sixteen
I woke up in the middle of the night
and he was standing over me,
staring into my face.
I swear, his eyes were glowing.
I was scared that he wanted to kill me,
but he just whispered softly
"Come with me son, it's time."
I followed him out of the house, down to the boat house
where he used to drink himself to madness.
I thought he wanted to initiate me to the world of alcohol
or just finally beat me to death,
but when we entered he looked at me with the most curious expression,
and then he opened a hidden door in the wall
that I never realized was there.
And?
And he lit a candle with surprisingly...
and waived on me to follow him
down a narrow staircase.
We entered a big room
that was furnished like something between a library
and a scientific lab.
I thought I was dreaming.
Well, are you sure you weren't?
He waived me towards a big armchair in the middle of the room
and I sat down.
Opposite of it was an identical chair,
and after lighting an oil lamp he sat down.
He looked at me for a long time.
His eyes were clear and extremely bright.
I got the impression that I had in fact
never actually seen them before.
Then he leaned forward and said
"You are my firstborn son."
I didn't know how to reply to this obvious statement,
so I said nothing.
After a little while he continued
"It is now time for you to learn who you are
where you come from
and what is the purpose of your life."
I must admit that I thought it had finally snapped for him
and that it was time for me to either escape or,
you know,
kill him once and for all.
but then he continued...
What did he say?
Well, he said:
My dearest son...
I know you think that I am a drunkard and a lunatic
but believe me,
it has been for the best.
You will soon understand.
The truth is that
I am clear as a sunbeam
and sharp as a razorblade.
Making the world see me as a pathetic drunk
has been a necessary evil
for the protection of our inheritance
and, most importantly,
of you.
You?
That's what he said.
And then?
Then he told me
the most fantastic and unbelievable story.
He says:
From the dawn of ages
the male line of our blood
has carried a knowledge and obligation
assigned to us by the Creator.
The creator, as in God?
The Lord himself, yes.
And?
Well, he seemed to be waiting for me to ask something like:
Beloved father,
what was the assignment given to us by our Lord The Creator?
But I was simply too baffled
to make any kind of reply,
so I just sat there.
Then he got up
and he started to pace up and down the floor,
waiving his arms
and speaking with this fanatic intensity,
like a priest you know,
as if he had a whole congregation around him.
Get to the point. What was the story?
Well, he was talking for at least one hour,
lecturing me on biblical history
and the pedigree of the patriarchs.
And then,
then he sits down in the chair again,
and leans towards me,
and I catch a whiff of sulphur, and he proclaims:
My son,
I will now tell you what my father told me when I was your age:
You descend in direct line
from Abraham the patriarch!
If the chair hadn't been so deep
I would have fallen off.
Wait! It's stuck!
In the thorns!
Then he goes on explaining how our blood-line runs
through Isaac
Jacob, Levi,
Aron, and who not.
On to Zachariah and John the Baptist,
and some off the record *** son of his.
Well.
I must say you are well descended.
But why stop there?
Why not include Jesus?
Well, you say something there...
You stupid ***! You ruined it!
So what about the legacy? The purpose of your life.
Yeah, well,
it was just a mad mans ravings.
Come on
To turn the hearts of the fathers to the children,
the hearts of the children to the fathers,
and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just;
to make ready a people prepared for the Lord...
Oh. That's it? Nothing more?
I thought he was...
Actually he claimed that he had never been drinking.
That his violent behavior was caused by accidental inhalation
of sulphur and mercury
from his experiments with alchemy.
God. This just gets better and better.
He said....
that he had just revealed how to...
How to create...
life
from dead matter.
He told me that the night before
he had finally managed to, well,
to make a fish.
A fish?
Yes.
A small herring actually.
It was swimming around in a glass jar on his desk.
Actually,
at that point it kind of snapped for me.
I got up and started screaming at him,
accusing him of the poverty and misery of our family
and all else in the world.
I picked up the jar with the stupid herring
and slammed it in the wall,
and it shattered in a thousand pieces
all over the floor.
The little fish flew through the room.
And my father screamed
and then bent down on all four,
crawling around between the glass pieces
searching desperately for his herring.
Suddenly I saw him
as the pathetic old man that he was
and I started to cry
and I ran out,
away from him.
I could not stand to look at him.
The day after we found him there,
intoxicated by all sorts of chemicals.
He had been trying to bring the fish back to life
all night.
And then he died.
The same night.
From the toxins.
Totally delirious.
Raving about his lost legacy and ancestry
and the fall from grace.
His failure as a father.
And recipes and chemical combinations...
His last word was....
He looked me deep in my eyes and said:
Salt.
Salt.
Salt.