A Condensed History of North East I - 2nd Part

Part II: Heading East to South East

Heading East once told his shipmates that history is only a thread made up of intertwined decisions and accidents. Everybody agreed, especially the ones who did not give a damn. But nobody agreed with him when he criticized the magnetic compass, claiming that the world’s magnetism would someday shift from the north and be scattered around the world. Of course Heading had no idea about the science behind Earth’s polarity; he just supposed that whatever it was that made the compass work, it would be subject to change. He was aboard the Polos’ ship then, on the waters south of Zaiton, and it was the last quarter of the 13th century CE.

He was an orphan adopted and raised by semi-eremitic monks in the Balkan Peninsula. They named him Heading East because “Heading East” was painted on the intricately patterned cloak that wrapped his toddler frame when the villagers found him. He grew up aware of these facts and that he was not a native of his adoptive country, or any of the nearby lands. When he was old enough to ask questions, it was explained to him that he probably was of Romani ancestry for he did not look like the Balkan people. But that probability was questionable since he did not look like a gypsy either, and the painted words on his cloak were in Greek. Anyhow, he decided he was a nomad.

By the time he was twelve, he had already thrice caused great panic to the monks and their close neighbors, because thrice he had gone away without notice and was missing for weeks. Twice he came back accompanied by traders, and once by Roman Catholic missionaries. During an incident involving religious disagreements between the three Christian church divisions, Heading became interested about Roman Catholicism. He had always been interested in religion, but not due to his faith or anything pertaining to the esoteric, but because of its social implications. Before he reached fifteen, Heading decided to join a group of travelers heading across the sea to Italy in hope of someday meeting the pope.

He asked for his foster fathers’ blessing and explained to them that his goal was all in favor of the Eastern Orthodoxy: To be able to move in and move up and finally have an audience with the Roman Catholic leaders to convince them into an impartial meeting where the said party would 1) apologize for the sacking of Constantinople and 2) open a discussion regarding the reunification of the Eastern and Western churches. The said discussion did push through in the Second Council of Lyon but without much effect in ending the schism. The apology, on the other hand, waited for a thousand years before it happened.

The monks did not give assent but Heading went away anyway, carrying his childhood cloak. He would find later on, on the Silk Road, a textile trader selling fabrics that resemble his intricately patterned cape (but the trader had no clue where the merchandize originally came from, except that they were consigned to him by another trader from Yangzhou City).

In Italy, using his natural aptitude, Heading managed to work his way to be a scribe to clergymen. He became a student of Aquinas after the Dominican priest came back from Rome and before the scholastic theologian lectured in Rome and Bologna.

Heading was in the middle of proofreading the first part of Summa Theologica when he heard news about two brothers’ expedition to the lands of the Far East. From that point, he was fixed on getting to that barely-known land, encouraged that he might somehow find there a clue regarding his origins.

During his stay in the Roman territories, he earned the confidence and friendship of a bishop who was directly under the man who would soon take the place of Pope Urban IV, and a relative of the Polo brothers. With the bishop’s help, Heading expressed to them his predilection to travel, his inclination to chronicle-writing, and his interest in history including events that are yet to happen.

Seeing these points and that Heading looked a bit oriental—plus the fact that even Pope Gregory X advised them to— Niccilo and Maffio assessed that it would be to their benefit to have him along. So Heading became part of the second Polo expedition, taking the place of Niccilo’s son Marco, who was in those days too busy writing journals based on other travelers’ accounts of journeys to the east.

As a deal with the Polos, Heading wrote down details of their voyage, taking care not to make any allusions to his self, and making all his first-person references read as if he was Marco. Unknown to anyone, he kept to himself a separate journal. This journal would be found and used audaciously after seven hundred years by an author with less-than-adequate familiarity with real World History.

They reached their destination mostly by land. Heading East enjoyed the three and a half year long trip, especially when they reached the Silk Road. The journey went on rather smoothly except for the parts that involved: passing a war zone, rerouting because of death-trap ships, Heading getting ill and getting them delayed for a year, passing a land with goiter-causing drinking water and a land of two-sided marital infidelity, crossing an immense lifeless desert, and finally, almost getting into trouble with traders when Heading carelessly calculated that the Silk Road would cease to flourish in less than two hundred years.

Their group was warmly welcomed in Khan land, as Heading called it, and it was there that most of them stayed for the next seventeen years. He liked it there, mainly because of the noodles, and also because of the many fascinating and ingenious things he was to discover, particularly the complex social structure, the express mail delivery system and the use of paper currency. The Polos liked it there too, especially the considerable amount of jewels and gold they acquired.

When he first set foot in that strange but homey land, Heading had no idea that that would be the beginning of his love story with the eastern land. He would be serving the Khan’s court and travel to China, Burma and India. He would be a governor in Yangzhou, where he would fail to trace his cloak’s origins, but would successfully set-up an Italian village.

He would accompany the brothers on their journey back to the west, but only until the ship’s stopover in Hormuz where the real Marco Polo would be waiting.


Six Centuries Later

Middle East had no idea about the life of his forefather Heading, not even about the man’s existence. He had been right there in the country where his great ancestor started his unaccredited-for carving of history, but he had to flee. Little did he know, too, that he himself would make his own mark in the human-recorded timeline, albeit in a shady manner.

Middle and his common law wife Maria were already out of Italy and far beyond the ‘Ndrangheta’s grasp when they confirmed they were expecting an offspring. They reached France before the fourteenth year of its Third Republic. They had barely any money in their pockets, and their pockets were all in the clothes they were wearing because they did not have any luggage. That cross-country journey was an impromptu one.

He took on several blue-collar and sometimes odd jobs, never one at a time, to save enough money to prepare for his would-be family. He worked as a circus guard, a messenger, a plumber, a carpenter, a tin-smith, a hansom driver, a magician’s assistant, a fire-eater, a knife-thrower’s target, a potato-peeler and then a cook in a questionable restaurant, a private cook, a butcher, a milkman, and other jobs that could not be listed because of lack of proper title. Unfortunately, he also had been a gambler, and he never had the skill for that. He sometimes had to resort to dirty jobs as well; like for example, chimney cleaning, drainage de-clogging, and waste collection; and dirtier but well-paying jobs like unconsented possessions-transferring, unendorsed night-banking, and gossip-writing.

When he was young, Middle dreamt of being a doctor. They stayed in India during his youth and his father Far East had told him many times about Ayurvedic people being amazingly advanced in the field of medicine.

Their ancient healing practices date from up to 1500 years before the time of Hippocrates, and this is not about witch-doctors but actually scientific methodical know-how. Far often mentioned that the Indians were experts in various areas of health-protection, curing diseases and treating injuries. They were proficient in dentistry (even tooth-drilling), rhinoplasty, lithotomy, eye surgery, and other forms of surgery and therapy. They would have reached the level of neurosurgery even before the rise of major western civilizations, had it not been for the introduction of an Asian religion that Far did not specify.

Of course, Middle had no means to verify his father’s stories, and he was aware of the likelihood that these were fictitious. But still, he was fascinated and he believed, he took high regard for the Indian people, and most of all, he was inspired.

Sadly, young Middle never had the chance to go to school. Yet, he liked to read: Borrowed books about medicines, biology, botany, mathematics, physics, geography, international histories, philosophies, religions, and arts; picked-up or collected leaflets and manuals about practical mechanics and first-aid. These readings would prepare him as much as necessary for the various jobs, even the odd ones, which he’d have to take when he was old enough to be on his own. But he would never be a doctor.

His father’s occupation of constant transferring from one place to another had cost him having any formal education and, in turn, his one dream profession, thus earning him only frustration.

But being a traveler had its up side. He got to see a lot of places and races, and he had learned much about various cultures. Blending in had never been a problem. Starting from Heading, every East and his son was naturally skilled in absorbing the traits and custom of the people of wherever he sets foot. The Easts were fast learners of languages, traditions, beliefs, accents, and collective psyche. In return, the places and people absorbed them well, not yet counting the fact that every East bears the looks that nobody in the world would think of as foreign. More than twenty generations (from Heading to Middle) and self-preserving heredity have perfected the assimilation ability. This could have been more than enough compensation for Middle’s lack of classroom education, but he never thought of it that way.

Every job he took only reminded him that he was not a doctor. He may not have had any proper schooling, but that did not mean he was an idiot, and certainly not one to fool himself into thinking that he was happy and that what he was doing were enough for fulfillment.

He got depressed eventually, and soon succumbed to unhealthy dependencies. He took to alcohol, nicotine, compulsive gambling and morphine. He even became a morphine dealer, and when they get to Britain, he would be a supplier to the brother of his future friend Mycroft Holmes.

Middle, however, always stayed away from females-for-rent regardless of his penchant for vices. This was due to a couple of reasons. First, he was cautious against the kinds of diseases they might carry. Second, he had learnt to love Maria during those months they had been together, although not as much as he loved the child in her womb.

Despite his down sides, he always made sure their savings never go anywhere near negative. He never laid a finger to hurt her, never raised his voice to her, and never treated her improperly, even in his most unsober moments. He kept her warm. He kept her safe. He kept her from any hunger, and he kept her happy as much as he could. To him, that was the meaning of love.

But that love would never be reciprocated. Much worse, it would be inverted and would lead to one of the most horrific series of morbidity in the history of crimes. This would happen in the east of London, right after his son North’s third birth anniversary.


Three Decades After

North East I had two sons: North II and South. Like all the Easts before him, he brought forth no daughter. All the Easts were male, from Heading East to South East.

As in the case of all his forerunners, only one of his sons would survive childhood, but that had been enough for propagation so far. Conversely, unlike all the Easts that came before North and South, it would be with the two of them that their bloodline would stop.

North East II died in a car accident. South East, the younger of the siblings, was four years old when the tragedy took his brother’s life away. Before he turned five, he disappeared.

These were the bitterest taste of fate that North East I ever experienced in his life. The consecutive blows struck hard through his heart and mind. They were too much even for someone like him, who masterminded the death of his own father.

Losing two sons in a span of a few months was unbearable, especially since he was rendered helpless by a strange human phenomenon. This deteriorating evolution that North East I went through will be called the Eli Syndrome. It would be the Split named Evan Timor who would call it that, for the sake of giving it a name to refer to, and because of the man who would experience the same peculiarity. But that man known as Eli would not be a part of their story until the years nearing the next millennium.




Continued on Part 3: North's Revolution
Previous: Far East, Middle East, and Italy

Copyright 2008 Klaro de Asis