. . . . . . . . . . . Right
. . . . . and
Left
A Parable
by Edward Pearlman
____________________R-1
We are in the right. We are the right wing. This needed no explanation when we had the House. Now that it’s gone, we have to teach the young ones well, tell them our stories so that they won’t forget who they are. We cannot weary of it, we cannot simply pine for the old days. Even the older ones need reminding. Already some are attempting to break us into factions, and if we don’t rein them in, we could fracture in more ways than they know. If we weaken, we will only bring about the hopes and dreams of the left without any top-level negotiation at all. They’ll laugh at us and tell us they were right all along. How absurd that would be! They have never been right, only left.
As one who leaped into the frigid waters and came back to shore to weed out who was who, so we could pull together once more, I know a great deal about the courage and grit that is required to save our people. We have loyalists, of course, but also relativists who are weak and fearful. There is no other way forward than to bring them on board, or to overcome them, so that we can rebuild the right wing. There is only right and wrong; we know that in our hearts.
When I was growing up, all of us children did the right things. We worked our way up to the higher floors as we grew bigger.
We’d walk into the classroom keeping close to the wall, with the beautiful view out the window in front of us. Tall trees rose on the banks across the lake, still as a breath, or swaying in the wind, or wearing a coat of snow. Sometimes they were hidden in the mists. Every day my eyes would seek out the tallest tree, which to me was the Chief of the Trees, tipping this way and that way to give orders and plans to the other trees. He was my inspiration. I am not tall but I always knew I would be the one among us to rise to the top.
We used to sit facing our teacher, but we were kids and couldn’t help peering out the window looming evilly to our left from time to time, as long as we barely turned our heads the wrong way to see the view. We did even that cautiously, so that if anyone noticed, they could see that turning our heads to the awkward left was not something we meant to do. If we were caught daydreaming as we watched the trees, we quickly turned our heads happily to the right to face our teacher correctly, without pang of conscience. Sometimes I would allow my eyes to divert subtly and barely noticeable toward the window, even daring to lean close. I wondered whether the water came right up to the back of the house, as some kids said. Much later, when I had to leap, I learned that this was true, and that the water is very deep. I’m grateful for both things, or I might not be here today, or at least not in good order.
Some kids got in trouble for turning backwards to visit with friends, which was not at all necessary, since we had swivel chairs that turned in the right direction. Once in a while, a student even went the wrong way round to leave the classroom, but they learned their lesson through severe embarrassment, a most powerful weapon of the right. I have heard those in the left wing refuse even to embarrass their children.
One boy in my class persisted in turning his seat to the sinister left to visit with friends, and no amount of yelling or humiliation would turn him back to the right. He was rightfully expelled, and I hear from others that he even turned out to be left-handed. The other side probably took him in. He’ll never be allowed in with us again, though, because by now he’s no doubt a spy. Maybe he was a spy to begin with, come to think of it.
We always have to be vigilant. That’s why I instituted regular tests recently, since the fire, because spies could have joined us at that uncertain moment when we were trying to sort out who was who. So far, we’ve seen no evidence of sinister influences.
By the time we graduated to upper classes and then to upper floors for our work and home lives, everyone knew how to handle everything the right way. The entryway to the house began with a long passageway along the front of the house, turning right into the main doorway; this allowed our people to enter a good distance from the lefties, with no need to even see each other. Once we entered the house, a hallway led straight to the back so that all subsequent hallways turned to the right. To exit, we used a secret stairway down to the basement level which took us a short way under the left wing. This allowed us to turn right into a short passage underground, climb the stairs and exit, to the right of course, into the long entryway along the front of the house, the same one we used to enter.
I suppose this may seem complicated to those who never knew the house. I don’t know if the leftists ever knew we crossed the line in the basement on our way out, but for all I know, they may have had something similar that used some space in our basement. Had I thought about this, I could have used it as a bargaining point when I negotiated chief to chief before the fire interrupted everything.
We had a smooth life before the fire, with hardly any troublemakers, and all of us on the same page. It is what God intended for us and we knew it so well because we lived in peace. Once, a boy from the left tragically won over one of our girls and we never saw her again. I sometimes think about her lost soul. We never figured out how the two had met, as there really is no way for the young people to mix. A few times we had teenagers who disappeared for a week or so but they always came back with stories about how unfriendly the Others were, and how they would accuse our youngsters of being spies, refuse to speak with them, and call them “tainted” by their long association with us.
We all heard strange stories about the left wing, which served mostly as useful warnings against associating with such people. Our only real communication with them was by slipping a letter into their letterbox, usually with complaints and demands to be included on the Chiefs' agenda. It wasn’t until I spoke in person with their Chief that I found out some of the crazier things about them, such as that they believed God wanted people to do everything with their left hand, turn only to the left, believe in leftist ideologies, do careless things, break rules, and the like. I had to laugh when I heard of their wacky ideas. They only served to confirm that we should stay away from them.
Lately we’ve had our own troubles. A group of relativists think we should not rebuild the House at all. I can only shake my head when they make their ignorant arguments. Unfortunately, their arguments will become stronger the longer we go without a proper House. They claim that if we rebuild the right wing and the leftists don’t rebuild theirs, our wing won’t be a right wing but will be the whole house. How can we possibly let the left determine what we do? That is obviously not right.
The relativists sometimes even have the audacity to call themselves “centrists,” which is a very funny joke. God gave us right and wrong, which clearly correlates to right and left. We can eat with right hand, excrete using the left, but we can do neither with our center! Our center doesn’t have the capacity to do anything, and neither do the so-called centrists!
I want to see the right wing rebuilt with a plan to add extra rooms as our right-wingers grow. One of our most important rules, next to loyalty to the right, and obedience to our system, is that all of us bring in more right-thinking people. To do that we need space to accommodate more followers. The larger numbers we have, the more obvious it is that we are fulfilling God’s mission.
L-1
I don’t believe we will rebuild the House. It was so old that I don’t think anyone remembers how or why it came to be. Some say everyone lived in it together at one time, but that is really hard to believe. Those of the right are so narrow and rigid in their views that I can’t imagine, even I who have a rich imagination, that they were once a part of us or that we were a part of them.
Our goal is to be unlike them. They are so cold and hateful, so sure of being correct, based merely on the past, and what has worked to keep them in power and their followers in check. We encourage our people to think for themselves, to experience life and love, to become educated, as long as they’re not like the Right. Many is the time someone escaped the clutches of the right wing, only to go through tremors of withdrawal as they complained bitterly of the way they were treated and struggled to get used to our freedoms.
One of our freedoms is that we can do things the left way around. In fact, if someone insists on doing things by the right, we can’t help wondering if they’re a spy, because the Others have done that to us before — sent spies to find out the secrets of our successes and joys. Even spies have ended up converting to our way of life because it is so much more honest and true to our natures. One or two, well only one that I know of for sure, actually went back to the Others and was never heard from again. I can only imagine what they did to them for having learned left-handed ways of doing things!
Our education is not done in strict classrooms as the Others do. We teach each other, based on our own experiences and observations. Of course, those of us who are older have more to share and teach, and the youngsters need to respect that. Some have tried to write down their knowledge but we have little to write with and most children choose not to learn to read anyway. It is unnecessary, really, because we live life as we live it, and share what we know, including what our parents knew, and presumably they know what their parents knew, and so on. So we really do incorporate into ourselves all knowledge. Reading and writing are time-consuming skills to learn and they do seem to disrupt childhood, the time of exploring the world, or at least the forest we live in. Once the age of learning basic skills is past, most people, well everyone I know, has found our way of life quite comfortable in the moment without isolating themselves just to write or read without having people present to share the experience.
As I write this, I have to explain that I myself did learn the writing and reading but hardly have use for it. I have taught others by reading aloud but it is uncomfortable to see the distracted faces, the boredom of those peering out the windows or making faces at each other, the disparaging looks from so many who think I’m a blowhard because I can read.
Still, I would say that being able to read and write put me on a higher level, even though we have no levels per se. These skills are, I’m convinced, what led everyone to elect me Chief, to represent us in the High Chamber of the House, the one room where Left and Right meet and hammer out our differences.
Since the fire, we have been together but uncertain of whether we are all present at any given time, and there are unnatural times of isolation, some of which I’ve used to write down my thoughts. I find it settling to do this. I can’t begin to think about whether to share these writings. I just do them in the moment, as I have lived my life.
When we had the House, all were free to roam at will, though it would be very sad if anyone missed a community meal. We had a seat for each person and if there was an empty seat, we looked forward to a thorough explanation about their absence at the next meal. Usually these explanations included delightful stories that everyone enjoyed and learned from, but rarely did someone who missed a meal miss another. It just was not done, it was not fair to the others, and nobody wanted everyone else to feel uncomfortable on their account.
____________________R-2
I always treated everyone firmly and fairly. That’s why they made me Chief. You might hear tales about T, who wanted so desperately to be Chief that he sweet-talked the members of the Committee into believing things about me that I didn’t even know myself, things that nobody should ever believe if they hear of it at all. When I cleared it all up with the Committee, they set things straight and moved T to where he really belonged, so he wouldn’t mix in with the others and cause more trouble. The basement apartments are comfortable and clean and they get plenty of food. They’re not at all “dungeons” like some call them.
I worked my way up as everyone should, doing all the right things, and impressing my Superiors until I became one. I did right by God, the Committee, the Superiors, my supervisors, and I treated my wife and children the way I was commanded to do for the sake of order and peace and love.
My tenure as a Committee member taught me all I needed to know about methods of organization and rules by which we must live. Not that I didn’t know them all and live by them before, but once I was on the Committee, I really came to understand the whys and wherefores of them because we had to make decisions that were for the good of all. Before being on the Committee I had merely memorized the rules; now I understand them. It’s really only those of us who have been on the Committee who can do so. Life experience works in that way. Without the experience, you can only dream and imagine, and those flights of fancy are usually more dangerous than useful.
L-2
I don’t really know how I was elected Chief. I just lived my life until one day it happened. I knew we had elections coming up, and there was plenty of talk about it. I made it clear to all that I had no opinion in the matter, even when people started chiming in about how great I would be, given all the teaching I’d done, the organizing of groups to retrieve food and fuel, the ideas I’d come up with for cleaning, cooking, keeping people away from ideas of the Others, not of course by forcing anything on anybody but by honestly explaining the consequences that have befallen others — in other words, pure education. I made clear to people that I thought nothing of myself, that even when writing things down, as they saw me do from time to time (it was thought suspicious to go off and do practically anything by yourself), that even then when I wrote things down, I almost never used the word “I” because I thought so little about myself and really I thought only about the good of everyone else.
____________________R-3
On that fateful day, I entered the Room at the Top via a winding stairway, sent up with all good wishes by the Committee arrayed below me. Only the Chief is allowed to enter that room, except for the annual cleaners – very specialized people with the honor of going into the Room to dust and clean, and generally set things aright before the Chiefs enter. One cleaner is allowed from each side, I’m told, and they are very carefully selected, their appearances timed through negotiation by the Chiefs so that they never appear at the same moment. Due to an incident ancient beyond our memories, the cleaners are tethered so that they can only reach roughly the halfway point of the room, and gagged so that they cannot speak to the cleaner from the other side, should there be some mistake in timing, since only the Chiefs are allowed to speak to the other side. These cleaners are normally selected to this position for life, so they are well trusted and familiar with the work, and fully sworn to say nothing to anyone about the Room at the Top, on pain of being confined to a basement room for the rest of their life. Their annual job is to dust and clean their own side of the Room, and also, very importantly, to lubricate the sash and pulley, on their respective sides, of the Window.
The cleaners did a fine job, I could see that. The wooden floor boards sparkled, the walls were dust-free, even the steeply pitched low ceiling was clean, the dark rough wood in good shape.
The single Window facing the lake was closed shut to keep out the weather throughout the year between meetings, during which the room was not used. The Window is very large, as wide as the ceiling between the sloping sides of the roof, about ten feet wide, I would say. It’s very heavy, of course, but the cleaners had done their job of lubricating the opening apparatus, and it was quite easy to open.
The first act of both Chiefs, once we’ve entered the room from our respective sides, is to make a show of cooperation by opening the Window. We bow to each other, take hold of our respective window grip, and lift together until the Window is completely open.
I have heard stories of meetings between Chiefs when there was a storm raging outside, with a chill wind and rain blowing into the room, but that was usually a sign from God that the two Sides were living through stormy times and needed more than ever for their Chiefs to come to agreements for the sake of peace.
The day we had our meeting in the Room at the Top, the weather was fine and balmy, hardly a breeze ruffled the lake below. It was at this moment that I could fulfill my lifelong dream as a kid and see below me that the lake did indeed lap up against the back of the house. It was a deep blue, and clear enough that I could see the shallow shelf of rock at the edges of the lake drop off quickly into an abyss of endless depth. Some say there is actually no bottom to the lake.
L-3
It was so strange being ushered up the little creaky staircase to the Room at the Top. The other Chief was short and plump, with a craggy face that seemed both cruel and kindly.
Neither of us spoke as we performed the required ritual of approaching the Window, bowing and lifting the grips until the Window was fully open. My first surprise was to see the other Chief lean out the Window and look down. I thought he would be more formal than to allow himself such freedom.
Indeed, he was mostly formal and rigid in his movements, just as he was in his speech, which was clearly well-prepared. They made demands about hours of entry and exit, about noise control, about punishment of spies, about mutual prisoner releases, about House maintenance, the usual things.
Then the smell of smoke filtered up from the staircases. We tried to keep an eye on each other as we discussed important matters, him writing down each point and me wishing I could but committed to showing the Others how well versed we are in the art of memory.
The wisp of smoke drifting under Their door distracted me. I had to interrupt him to point out that his door was releasing smoke into the Room. Certain that the workers below would tend to the matter, I commented on how brilliant our Ancestors were to begin the Meeting with the Window opening, so that the air stayed fresh even in the event of fire.
Then he pointed out to me that smoke also drifted under the door on our Side.
I saw the look of assurance on his face falter. I never try for a look of assurance because generally I simply am quite assured and comfortable with who I am. But I believe my face betrayed my doubts and fears. Where there is smoke, there is fire. That is what was going through my mind.
Both of us looked at the Window. That is when we began our most earnest discussion, and probably the most earnest discussion I have ever had in my life.
____________________R-4
The smoke streaming in under the door of the Left alarmed me because I was sure that some careless fool among their unschooled and sloppy people had started a fire, not realizing that it’s not just their Side that’s at risk, it’s our whole House and Way of Life.
I was formulating words to say in a diplomatic way, since that was my job as Chief, that some low-level worker had started a fire on their Side, when their Chief pointed out to me the slight bit of smoke wisping under the door on our own Side. At first, I was sure that a faulty bit of ventilation duct had conducted the Left side smoke into our own Side, and I began to think about adding ventilation as an agenda topic for our afternoon session, once we had adjourned for lunch and gone down to meet with our respective Committees, come up with proper responses and proposals, and come up for another session. Whether they even have enough organization to form a Committee, I couldn’t say.
But we each noticed the increasing stream of smoke, and I for one recognized that even though some kind of fire must have been started by a sloppy and careless Lefty, since they are so lax in their behavior and supervision that only a disaster like this could really teach them anything, this disaster-in-the-making could very well engulf all of us.
It fell to me to begin the ultimate discussion, the one we’d all waited probably centuries to have.
“If this fire grows any bigger, you will have to give up your sorry ways,” I said.
“What are you talking about?” he said meekly.
“We are Chiefs. We are strong and steady, or at least I am,” I said.
“I too,” he said, but his voice was uncertain.
“Before we leave this Room, you must convert to the Right,” I announced.
“What? You are crazy!” His fears drove him to this temerity.
“If we must escape this Room, without retreating down our own stairs, it will be through the Window.” I pointed firmly at the Window on my right.
“Yes,” he said and smiled. “You will have to go out to the Left!”
This is where I smiled broadly and said in a commanding voice, “But you will have noticed that the Window is to the Right. It is you who will have to go to the Right.” I held out my right hand and pointed directly at the Window. My meaning could not have been clearer.
The smoke was growing heavy. I was the first to notice that on his side, some flickers of light suggested to me that fire was climbing their stairway.
I stood up now, facing him with a severe look, summoning God to my Side. “You will either come down the Stairway of the Right, behind me, just to save yourself, or you will jump out the Window, which is to the Right. You have no choice but acknowledge at the end of your days, and at the end of the days of this House, that we have been Right all along. You, the Chief of the Left, must come to the Right in the final fire.”
I was shocked when he laughed. He who was about to lose all he had stood for! “No, you see the flames licking under your stairway door? The Window will be our only Salvation. And that Window is to the Left. It is you who will end your days knowing that your sacred Way has been wrong all along. You and I must jump if we are to be Saved, and we must go to the Left. It is as plain as the day is long.”
The flames were not only coming under the door, they were consuming the door and entering the Room itself. The end of History, the end of the House, was upon us.
Heroically, I proclaimed, “Salvation is for myself alone, unless you come to the Right Way. I salute you and your kind, and I salute God who is teaching us all the truth of Salvation.”
I moved to the open Window on my Right, gazed out at the crystal clear blue lake in all the magnificence that God had given it, and, hoping there was little or no shallow shelf below the house, I leaped out, Right all the way, into the clear air to Salvation. And yet, my last thoughts as I flew through the air toward the lake below were not about myself, but were about the Salvation of my dear colleague, the Chief of the Left. The very words going through my mind were, “Let him know God's Salvation through the Window of the Right – or burn.”
L-4
I’ll never forget the most amazing moment of my life and of history to this point: the burning of the House. It was clearly God’s punishment for our life of separation, for the intransigence of the Right, how they abused and constrained their people, and denied the freedoms and education of our Way. Their biases and bullying nature led to their own destruction, and I believe we will never rebuild the House that embodied their institutional hatreds.
It was terrifying and yet glorious to stand up to the other Chief and to see him finally admit the error of their Way.
Here was the smoke pouring in, here was their Chief exhorting me to come to his Way, and I could only laugh. He tried hard to appear strong, firm, even severe, but the doubts and fears that crept into his face were increasingly obvious until the moment he gave up his whole set of crooked beliefs and jumped, abandoning his people, to save his paltry self.
I laughed because he kept trying to shout at me to come to the Right, that I needed to escape to the stairway of the Right, and become one of them! And yet there in front of me were the smoke and flames consuming the sacred doorway and stairway of the Right, and it was obvious that the only exit for both of us was to the Left, where stood the monumental Window.
The Window must have been constructed for this moment. It was the perfect size for a man to leap out of without even ducking, and I knew from my explorations of the forest that the deepest water lay at the foot of the House.
“I command you to go to the Right!” he shouted in his terror.
I answered steadfastly and quietly, “You can see for yourself, if you let go for just one moment of your ideology, that the Window is to the Left. It is to the Left that you must find Salvation. You speak as if you alone know God’s will. But there is the fact, as clear as the nose on your face, or the flames climbing the wall behind you. The Window is to the Left, and for both of our Salvations, we must leap out.” I held out my left arm, without a hint of trembling, and pointed toward the Window on my left.
It was a really fine speech, and it worked. He snorted at me, made a rude and lowly sign with his hand, and walked to the Window — on the Left! He was about to abandon countless ages of mindless belief, to come to our Side, to end his days and the days of the House, by going to the Window on the Left, and leaping out to his own Salvation, leaving the House and his people to burn.
I watched him go, my heart full. As Chief, I had accomplished what no Chief had done before: the conversion of their leader.
Then I saved myself with a glorious dive straight into the crystal clear depths of the blue lake. I swam Left to find my people, and we have gathered here. It is left to me to describe the end of days and our road to recovery as the group who won, whose freedoms and beliefs, whose God and Way and Salvation, have been proven, by trial of fire, to be in the right.