The flies didn’t bother Elian, or the smell. He was used to the filth, and it never left him. Every day began with urine and ended with dung for the tanner, with flesh and skin throughout. He worked hard to produce leather for the people of the city that despised him and were repulsed by him. It didn’t bother Elian. He knew he provided a valuable, useful commodity.
The smell of his work caused the people to drive him to the outside of the city, and everyone that entered and exited on the road near him would cover their nose and hurry by. All the same, he worked. He had the stomach to do what was necessary. The process could make even the stoutest of heart shy away, but sandals and skins and shields required it. Though the people were disgusted with him, he knew he was helping, and he took pride in it. Someone needed to do the work, and he did it well.
The work was nowhere near glamorous, but it was methodical, and Elian enjoyed the routine. The butcher would bring the skins, hard, caked in blood, flesh, and dirt. Elian would soak the skins in water, then take a large, rust-colored stone and pound the skin to scour away the impurities. Then he’d take the skin and soak it in urine and scrape off the hair. One of the final steps was to knead the skin with his bare feet in dung and water.
In the beginning, it took some getting used to, but Elian grew to enjoy the process. He understood why people were disgusted. He was, too, when he first started. He was dirty, the work was filthy, and every aspect of tanning caused defilement. He knew the law, but he accepted himself as unclean. He was helping the people.
In his spare time, he would go out to the road and remove debris to make traveling easier for the passersby, every stone, branch, or blunt obstruction, while the people gave him a wide berth and quickened their pace. He didn’t need their thanks or affirmation, and he certainly didn’t get it. Nonetheless, he did his part for the people.
In the beginning, his business was quite profitable. It didn’t matter how rancid his trade was, people needed belts and pouches, water and wine skins, and sandals. Leather was necessary and useful, and even if people were above coming in person to buy from Elian, they sent someone from a lesser station. They still covered their nose and refused to touch him. They carefully fulfilled the transaction as if with a leper. But Elian didn’t mind. He gave the people what they needed.
Before long, Elian’s booming enterprise reduced to a trickle. Less people came to buy his leather, and then none. Another tanner had begun to work on the opposite side of the city, one who used alternate methods that did not defile or cause as bad a stench. Yet he created an inferior product. His leather broke down more quickly. And the people still refused Elian.
Elian knew that the people would come to their senses sooner or later. They wouldn’t keep buying leather articles they would have to repeatedly replace just so they wouldn’t have to deal with him. His smell was not that bad. Surely, they didn’t hate him for it.
They never came back.
The people turned away as they passed, but he knew the disgust that contorted the features of every passerby, and it robbed him of his pride. He began to look forward to removing the soaked skin, to beat it with his stone. His finished leather soon piled up. No one would even look at him, much less approach and buy from him. He no longer had anything to offer the people except fear of contamination.
With no customers, Elian had no reason to make leather. Generations of work come to an end with him. Perhaps it was time to switch occupations. He took to sitting with his feet propped up on his rust-colored stone thinking of the teeming sea. Mending nets, gutting fish. The rich citizens in their opulent robes, the thieves and beggars trailing behind them, the women teasing, the men leering, the greedy, the gluttons, the tarnished all found him nauseating as they passed, brought him back to reality. He saw their disgust, and he returned it.
He hated the city and the people and bristled as he sat with his feet on the stone. He saw the people for what they were–stains. Their dark hearts were more foul than any urine soaked, dung-mashed skin–and yet they were repulsed by him. And here, a whole city sat bloated and teeming with the filth. They scheme and they fight and they steal and they taunt. Their pride falsely elevated what should all be brought low.
Elian still took time to clear the road. But he did not do it to be of service to his fellows. He had his own selfish reason. As he cleared the rocks and detritus, the people would run to get away from him. Every small rock or twig or blunt obstruction he would remove and cast it far away, but there was no amount of apparent good he could do for the people that would not make him defiled in their eyes. They hated him. He could see it in every face, and they didn’t try to hide it. He began to hate them too.
Elian’s watching turned to waiting. Every raised voice spiked his pulse. He knew the law. He knew the people. They were as defiled on the inside as he was on the outside. Elian’s defilement was for the good of the people, yet their vile choices were only made for their own gain. He knew his actions would be justified, but a small part of him wondered if they were right.
Even so, every tumultuous group of people made his chest heave. Every argument made his fingers twitch. He became obsessive. He would spend hours scouring the ground from the edge of the city to where he sat. He no longer only kept to the road, but twenty, thirty, forty paces on either side.
He was never satisfied. While he sat and waited, when he wasn’t thinking about how much he hated the people or leaving to become a fisherman, his mind was searching the ground. He was about to remove his feet from his stone and search again when he heard the faint sound of the people.
He held his breath and closed his eyes. He had to focus to hear, but it was unmistakable. People were shouting, clamoring in the distance. He kept his eyes closed as he imagined the thief, the adulterer, the heretic caught in the act, enraging the people and throwing them into a frenzy.
A small smile quirked at the corner of his mouth as he imagined the accused seized and condemned by their peers, no more holy or righteous than they. He knew the law. It could be anyone. Not one person when thoroughly examined could be justified in the eyes of the people. Any person on any given day when caught at the wrong moment could be damned by the mob. Even Elian. He grit his teeth and forced the thought away.
They forced him out. They made him useless. They despise his efforts to serve. How wrong could it be to beat them at their own game and use their rules against them? Growing with his pulse, the crazed cries of the people neared. The mentality was cancerous, spreading quickly to every person in its path and radius. It took over the mind and the body, and otherwise unconcerned citizens would throw their lot in with the crowd and become one in the enraged and uncontrollable entity that grew with every step and demanded justice from a frothing mouth.
Elian’s heart began to hammer in his chest. He tried to control his quickened breathing, but anticipation tingled down his spine. He sat up and opened his eyes. The crowd was nearer, angry as a swarm of bees, convulsing and undulating like the black sea. The shouts now drowned out every other sound and incited others on the street to join in. Elian made his decision.
Elian’s chest heaved as they grew ever nearer. The mob approached his small home, now safely outside the city. The people parted and cast a man to the dirt. The roar of the crowd drowned out the man’s anguished whimpers, and he held out his pleading hands. The people scoured the ground and began to disperse in search, but Elian was thorough. Elian stood and grabbed his stone, the only one around.
He tossed it in his small home and made his way to the crowd. Almost nothing could deescalate a mob so hell-bent. Almost. They didn’t see him until he was in their midst, touching as many of them as he could, their faces if he could manage it. One by one, their fury and bloodlust turned to disgust. They spit on Elian and hurried off to their cleaning rituals until it was just Elian and the man on the ground.
Elian helped him to his feet and they made their way to the sea.
Brilliant 👌👌