The Benevolent Farmer

Once upon a time, in a country full of tyrants, there was a farmer who was more benevolent than the rest. One day he had to explain the workings of his enterprise and his country to a new slave.

According to a habit that had become a ritual, the master was expected to lead his factotum to the highest point of his property. In this farmer's case this was a brick tower erected on a little knoll, it being the only naturally elevated topography on the entire vast expanse of low, flat land.

This tower was a dark and secret thing. When the doors below and the trap‑door above were all closed its innards were drowned in an almost impenetrable darkness, a theatrical device deliberately designed by the farmer to instil fear and awe into the faint hearts of his servants. Fear: of falling, as they blindly crept up the tricky, slippery staircase. Awe: of the master, who rose with such confidence and conviction as if in direct and deliberate contrast to their own trembling. He was and would be not only their lord, but also their guide. He knew that by the time they had arrived at the top, the peons would have already been psychologically overwhelmed.

This slave was no exception and when the hatch on the occluded ostium was pushed outward and sunlight surged into the interior, giving form to the void which, until then, had only been imagined, his poor heart was filled with a new joy for life, confusing, for a moment, his master with a god.

They clambered out onto the wooden platform at the tower-top, the slave catching a splinter in the palm of his hand. It smarted and he grimaced, but that annoyance was quickly forgotten when the storm slapped violently against his face.

Savage winds blew across those flat plains, and over the undulation of that solitary pimple their fierceness was intensified. The winds made the tower top an exhilarating place to visit, and whilst the farmer stood with his back leaning forward, neck stretched forward, head lifted upward and out to maintain a noble balance against the squall, his dogsbody grimaced and shivered, clutching hold of an iron railing, groveling, and praying not to be blown over the edge.

The slave whimpered as he endured the nip and bite on his smarting eyes and the hurricane blew tears out of them, drenching his cheeks. Yet his back gradually stiffened in emulation of the master, and he prepared himself to withstand the worst of the horrible power enveloping him.

How awful being a slave, he thought: - In such a mundane world, with such powerful winds; a wind which always blows in the face of slaves.

Meanwhile the farmer looked over the dull and over-extended flatness, which was only meaningful, he reasoned, when understood as that which belonged ... that which belonged to him. From horizon to horizon, all was his: one great circular vista. From one point on the planet, he owned the world. And then, as if to punctuate his own role as master, he turned his back to the wind to ruminate on the other side of his realm. Alone, and with the wind behind him, he stretched his arms and thought about flight.

Now, in this particular land of tyrants, not so very different to all the others, it was deemed that the correct method for dealing with the punishment of slaves should be through the application of cutting machines, although each individual master was allowed the privilege (or freedom if you like) to decide which instrument of torture he or she would prefer to use on any given occasion. There were instruments for decapitation, castration, impaling and disembowelling - and machines which could perform all of these functions and more.

So, when it seemed that his slave was sufficiently impressed by the power of the tower, the farmer took his hand gently and led him down the spiral staircase downward and unto the lush fields of tall but green and unripened crops through which the wind flowed in many courses. They were like a thousand streams that had all been disconsolately born, perhaps only too aware that they were destined to disappear an instant later.

What does it matter if we live for a second or a century? - thought the slave: - What difference can it possibly make?

The factotum was led through the crop. His lord walked ahead of him with confident strides, the stems of cereal collapsing beneath his tread. He destroyed heads and ears, but gently. He did not derive the pleasure from this destruction that some tyrants did. The farmer's chin was raised, the slave stared down at his feet, and eventually they came to a clearing wherein rested a large, heavy, metallic contraption that looked like a kind of plough.

It had a delta-shaped frame, tapering at one corner into a yoke which could be hooked onto a worker's shoulders. The adverse side rose into a platform and just in front of that was an axle which carried large, spoked, iron wheels at either end. In the middle of the axle, enclosed by the delta, were two sets of four razor-sharp blades (the slave had never seen anything so sharp), one set pointing downwards, the other up.

The factotum could not help but realise that this machine was never used for ploughing fields and that one day he himself would probably be a victim of its terrible function. Perhaps an ox was used to drag this bulky contraption across a bound and motionless slave's body, slicing the disobedient subject into five even pieces. But why did it also have these upward pointing hoes? What purpose could they have possibly served?

Then the master, as if he had read his servant's mind, uprooted one of the new worker's hairs and sliced it in two on the edge of one of those same upward pointing blades. With a slight glint in his eye, he explained, in a quiet voice, that the cutters were never intended to hack a slave, they were in fact for himself: for the master.

"Is the delta plough then not for the castigation of my master's flock?" asked the dogsbody.

"Oh yes," replied the farmer. If a slave had to be disciplined then he would be forced to pull the heavy plough for an entire afternoon, under the sun, while he himself would sit on the raised and polished platform at the back. But the metal of this platform had been given such a smooth finish that the slightest jerk or alteration of pace could force the farmer to slip and be catapulted onto the sharp cutting blades in front of him. Thus, in order not to kill his master, the slave had to maintain a steady pull that he was not permitted to vary at all, let alone pause. Of course, such a heavy task was exhaustively difficult for anyone and there must have been a tremendous temptation to end their torment and agony by jerking the farmer to his death.

Yet such was the slaves' admiration for the benevolence of their master, whenever they compared him with the horrible and brutal descriptions they had heard of the other tyrants, that the farmer was able to become middle-aged with a handsome crop of frosty-white hair.

Still, life is not perfect, and one day he was found impaled on the blades, a tremendous grin stretching across the lower part of his face.

Although all the witnesses said he had pushed himself, the other tyrants ordered that the slave who had been pulling (the same dogsbody mentioned above), was to be flayed with a blunt kitchen knife and disembowelled with a wooden spoon. Afterwards they left him out in the sun and wind until any life left in him had gradually expired.

There is a saying in those parts that the souls of all slaves become air. And the wind will forever howl in that flat world.

So be it.

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