The story of the broken man, his many churches, and of a legacy impossible to replicate…
by: Rita Kasperek
There are several versions of this tale. This is one.
There once lived a brave warrior who, it is said, slayed 150 men in a single battle. He was revered throughout his land, a small but well-off kingdom near the sea. This warrior one day suffered a terrible accident in the village where he had been taught the art of war. A cart filled with building stones, along with three oxen, fell on top of him and crushed his body. When his body was extracted from the splinters and bones and sinew and stones, he was still alive. This warrior was not of noble blood; no one saw fit to claim him, and the poor man lay silent and clinging to life until an old crone and her grandson dragged him back to their hut.
For weeks they labored to heal him, and though he lived, he never again fought in a battle. His body was a dreadful sight to see, for all his bones had been broken and had not healed soundly. He slithered upright rather than walked, his arms swinging uselessly from their cracked sockets, his legs bowing in and out over his flopping feet until his entire body threatened to collapse in either direction. He did not make a sound but instead began to earn his living as a builder. To the amazement of the villagers, this broken man, this former warrior, built them a fine community structure of stone and wood. Inside the walls and floors gleamed white, and eight gold sconces lit the front and back walls. The villagers began gathering there, grateful for their kingdom and their village and their good fortune.
By and by, the building became familiar by all within the community. Most people swept their fine building after gatherings, but a few left remnants of feasts that others had to clean up. Some families began to argue about the times and ways they chose to use the structure. Soon the village elected a few organizers to set a few rules around the structure’s use. This did not detract from the building at all. In fact, some rules alleviated difficulties and added to its reputation.
The people began calling their structure a church though there wasn’t any worship aspect associated with it. However, in no time, they acquired a minister who tended to their spiritual needs.
Word spread of the broken man’s feat, and soon he was secured to build structures for other villages throughout the kingdom. Each seemed to exactly fit the needs of each village or town: tall and narrow with pure white spires and long panes of colored window glass, simple stucco with warm wood rafters, stately stone edifices, propped up with marble arches or adorned with onyx and pearl roses. Each community found solace and comfort in their buildings. Many took to calling them churches. Peace spread like a warm quilt over the land.
The ruler, of course, heard these tales and grew concerned that the land had grown vulnerable to attacks from the outside. No army would fight under the somnolence of goodwill! This ruler asked that the broken man be placed in chains and brought before her. Horrified to see his misshapen body, she asked forgiveness for his capture. His twisted jaw could not form a reply, but he set about building a church in the capital, one specifically for the queen and for the country she ruled. This was perhaps the most holy structure of all, blessed with grace and purity yet most warm and welcoming. The material used for the exterior glittered in the sun and glowed under the moon. Inside, the large sanctuary was comforting as a spring day, no matter what the weather, and able to amplify any music or song to the most exquisite tones. The room always smelled sweet and pure. People of the land made pilgrimages to this holy place, and the ruler grew even more wealthy and beloved.
One day the broken man finally died. He simply did not arise from his sleep, and lay still on his pallet in the hut of the old woman and grandson who had saved him. All citizens of the land were disbelieving. How could he die, this famous warrior who had outlived being crushed, who had continued his service despite his incapacities? People wept and flocked to their churches to pray. The corpse of the broken man was delivered to each of the buildings he had brought to life so that every community could pray for him. At each funeral his body fell apart a little more. First a few fingers, then his feet. Finally his legs and arms could not stay in place, and when the queen finally saw him, he was nothing but a mess of decaying flesh and bone with a distorted wispy-haired skull placed atop it. The queen ordered him buried beneath the altar of his last and greatest creation.
The people didn’t know it yet but their lives were changed forever. The thing happened gradually enough. First, schoolchildren started quarreling among themselves. Soon husbands and wives bickered. Then neighbors fought over property rights and merchants squabbled about wages. The churches no longer seemed to offer comfort or salvation or hope or community. They were just buildings of stone and stucco and wood.
Finally, in the very village where the broken man had fought and died, a riot broke out among the citizens. Someone considered that the change had come about because of the death of the broken man. In desperation some folk seized the home where the grandmother had once healed the fallen warrior.
“We need another broken man,” they said.
They set about beating the grandson. Unlike his predecessor who suffered in silence, the young man screamed unearthly sounds as each of his bones was cracked apart, one by one by one. Finally he lay there, in pieces, inhaling what wisps of air he could suck into his crushed lungs. They asked him to rise. He did not. They asked the weeping grandmother to intervene. She could not. Soon the young man died without so much as twitching a toe.
The churches remained empty.
More and more villagers threatened to find another broken man. This sentiment found its way to the queen. She consulted all of the former church ministers about what to do.
“We need another broken man,” they said.
No one was able to countenance just how to find another broken man. Clearly a random execution would not work. To prevent more rioting, the queen ordered a more scientific, organized approach. The queen’s physicians and priests contrived numerous ways to create another broken man, under the most humane circumstances possible. Poisoning them before breaking them, strangling them in their sleep. All attempts failed.
At first men volunteered to become broken. After fifty men perished, however, no one else came forth. A draft was implemented. The villagers grumbled. More men were crushed. Finally in desperation the queen ordered her guards to stage an accident with cart, stones, and oxen. It took another fifty deaths to recreate the mishap exactly how and where it had happened to the original broken man. But, to the despair of all in the land, this experiment ended as all the others had: in failure.
This went on for a dozen years, until the queen herself grew old and soft and the kingdom ran short of men to break. Yet the queen rounded up another fifty men to try again.
This time a mother of three young sons stepped up and begged her queen to try another solution. It seemed, she said, that feeding her sons mercury in their milk had softened their bones. She had started the year of the first village riot, the very year her first son had turned three. By the time he was six, she could ply his bones like grapevines. She started her other sons at birth, and their bodies were even more pliable, even more delicate, than the firstborn’s.
The old queen announced that the land had indeed produced true broken men.
There was much rejoicing. Church bells pealed for the first time in years, and the citizens flocked to their community buildings, sweeping out cobwebs and dust and singing new hymns.
It soon became apparent that, though the original structures were again in use, they were not the unique refuges they’d been when the broken man had built them. People still fought among themselves, criminals flourished, and prostitutes fornicated. But generally the peace was kept, and the queen decided that before she died all newborn sons would be fed mercury so that the kingdom would remain intact and that perhaps another true broken man would eventually be born.
The kingdom went on for a half century as such, long after the queen was dead and buried.
One day, however, invaders came to the land and easily defeated the delicate, mercury-boned men of the land. All of the broken man’s buildings were burned to the ground. The invaders never quite belonged in the conquered land, but that did not stop them from trying. They started their own families in this new land, mating with native women or bringing in their sisters and brothers. Everyone quarreled more. Everyone disagreed about who would rule the land.
Yet, the invaders kept alive the story of the broken man and his churches. At first soldiers drunkenly sang his song in taverns; mothers used the tale to frighten children at bedtime. Gradually the story became one of hope and honor. One day, centuries after the broken man had left his mortal coils, a new ruler declared him a visionary. This king then built the one and only church of the state in his memory, and many people from many lands paid homage. They believed they had found religion. Their lives gained meaning. They believed they were free.
Rita Kasperek is a Pushcart Prize nominee whose work has appeared in The Portland Review, Terrain, River Styx, and other publications.
