Toiling in Torrential Torment

The splash of boots stampeding through puddles echo over the deserted plaza. Hoods and cowls obscure grim faces, anxious to move, move, and move! Boxes and crates and packs and bags; trinkets and baubles and whatnots and gauds. The foreman hollers against the wind instructions that fall on deaf ears, eyes strained against an onslaught of rain. He stands alone, a centerpiece ignored – the willing heart of a failing body. His bristled brow plays a curious dance; a concoction of expressions that betray his fatigue and desperation. But like a soldier who cannot give in, even if the battle is lost, so does the foreman exhibit a stubborn resolve, and ushers on his fellow marketeers, the foolishly brave.

At the entrance of the square, at his master’s flank, one merchant fails to put up his poles, winds whipping and beating the canopy. The tarp is in tatters and, defeated, allows the wind to whistle through its scars, mocking the man’s futile attempts at taming his beast. He has not seen the crate of bruised apples, which lies cracked and upside-down, wedged between his would-be stand and the slick stone wall of the Brownstone on his right, for the poles are groaning in their attempt to lie down, and require his full attention. His teeth are clenched at the burning of rope against his palms as they are desperate to escape his waning grasp.

Elsewhere two oxen groan against the crack of the whip, their agony worsened by the burden on their backs; the leather straps that hold such heavy bags, though slickened with rain and mud, bite into their hides like vicious dogs, the pain stubborn and unrelenting. Not through the city gates yet they pull their weights forth, eyes shining in brilliant madness. They ignore their master’s cries and the flogging he gifts them, for what drives them forth with foaming mouths is the promise of wet hay that lies ahead, as well as the subconscious, instinctual knowledge that their backs will soon be burdened no more.

To the foreman’s right a tugging war of sorts happens upon a young errand boy and his mule – both equally stubborn in their foolish desire to have the other give in first. Unlike the great oxen at the gate the ass finds no allure in the sloppy heap of hay, and with an iron will (and devious delight, mayhap?) it denies the boy the pleasure of cooperation. Similarly the young lad, his hair plastered to his face and his arms trembling with fatigue, resorts to a mulish determination – the irony of which is completely lost on him. The rain’s continuous assault is ignored, or perhaps not even felt, by these equally opposing forces of will. The clash, indefinitely, persists.

Towering above all stands a figure, bronze and graven, overseeing the miserable lot that grovels at its mighty feet. The gold-plated collar of office that was meant to embellish his might instead becomes a chain, undermining his good nature in unintended mockery. In the absence of sunlight his smile has turned callous, like a deranged God who relishes the suffering of his minions, stone-cold eyes devoid of meaning and life. He is a monument, a testament, to the negligence of nobility – but the merchants down below pay it no heed, for this is a fact they already know and feel, oh yes, from the intrinsic knowledge that the aristocracy sleeps, warm and undisturbed and very much unaware of the struggles of lesser men, who toil in torrential torment that means to drown them, if only it can, if only it can…