Excerpts from
Brother Jacob
By Henrik Stangerup
Now it was my turn. Don Juan could see how delighted I was to hear this legend, and he asked if I knew any legends about my own country, the land of the white men far from the seven great caves in the north from where the Tarask people had set out on their journeyings. I pondered. Odin and Thor somehow didn´t seem suitable. As if I would merely repeat myself with stories I had told beneath other skies over here, stories I still wasn´t sure whether I cared about or not. In any case, they could not measure up to what I was listening to now because there has never been room for the Sun in the Northern lands, for the wisdom of Huriata. At that moment I spilt some of the precious food down myself, and while I tried to wipe off the burning hot chocolate chili sauce I was still gobbling down greedily after the fruit dessert, I felt between my fingers the coarse material of my worn habit, woven long ago by a pair of poor monk´s hands, and it seemed the most natural thing in the world for me to talk about Fratello e Poverello and all the legends about him put together in the Fioretti or ´Little flowers´. And I related all the legends others told about him. Rather ashamed of sitting there with such a full stomach, but with a feeling that Francis had forgiven me, I told how our seraphic father had reformed the fearsome wild wolf, and how he freed the turtle doves and about Christ who came to him while he slept and showed him the huge castle full of weapons that must not be used to kill with, since he was to wake up as a warrior for Christ. I described the profligacy of Francis´ early life, that he lacked for nothing and probably even had slaves, if that had been the custom in Assisi, and how he went into the grotto and stayed there for a long time and came out and looked up at the Sun and said Brother and waited for the Moon and said Sister. I told about Francis on Mount Alvernea when he performed a miracle and made the spring flow. I recounted everything, even his visit right out to where the Sun rises and where he offered to walk on burning iron so the sultan Melek-el-Kamel fell to his knees in reverence before him and gave him safe-conduct to go about Jerusalem in order to give thanks to Our Saviour. Finally, I quoted the Canticle of the Sun. When I had done, the food was carried away by his women and we were left sitting opposite each other, replete in spirit as in body, but with no thought of either rest or games with dried peas on mats, Don Juan said with an enormous question in his eyes:
"Well, but was Francis a Christian?"
"Yes, Don Juan. Francis was a Christian. And more so than any other," I answered.
"Father Juan never said anything about that."
"What do you mean, Don Juan?"
"Brother Sun. Sister Forest. Brother Wind and Sister Grass. And Brother Fire. He did not mention them."
"What did he tell you about, then?"
"He talked about the one true God and his only son whom He sent to atone for our sins. I have never been able to see your God as anything other than a cross. But I can picture Mary. Mother Mary. But you talk about something quite different. You say that Father Huriata, who Father Juan said was a devil, can also be your Brother Sun."
"Yes."
"Can Mother Cutzi be your Sister Moon?"
"Yes, Don Juan."
"Can Curicaueri be Brother Fire?"
"Yes."
"Can Mother Cuerauaperi be the same as Mother Mary?"
"Yes, she can, Don Juan."
"Dare I ask you something, Father Jacob?"
"Ask away."
"Could Francis be one of our people? Might it be possible that he lost his way and came to your country at the time we began our journeyings from the seven caves in the north?"
"Yes, it is possible, Don Juan, and even very likely."
"And Francis became a Christian, as you said?"
"Yes."
Translated by Anne Born
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