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Set in the 1920's, The Legend of Peter Borka by M. Schottenbauer tells the story of English-speaking travelers who develop peculiar notions about a Russian god based on their misunderstanding of a spoken Russian word. They travel around the world, learning about new religions and cultures and elaborating their false Russian religion into a cultural monstrosity, as they accumulate a dizzying array of contradictory beliefs and elaborate rituals. Elements of major world religions, including Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism, as well as myth-based religions from Greece, Rome, Norway, and North America appear in the beliefs and worship surrounding Peter Borka. A dialectical tension emerges between the fledgling Peter Borka religion and ideas from ethical humanism, rational humanism, and Communism. The book contains a surprising ending with a unique moral.
A free sample chapter from "The Legend of Peter Borka" (Copyright 2014, All Rights Reserved) by M. Schottenbauer is included below.
Chapter 1
It all began in a tiny shipbuilder’s office.
There was not much work in the town, wherever it was. Commerce was dull. Life was bland. People were normal, so everyone thought.
Their lives perked up a bit one day, when a foreigner came to town.
The foreigner was a Russian, a man who had sailed many seas in order to arrive in this distant location.
Had he been shipwrecked? Nobody knew. But there he was, one day, speaking very little English, wearing foreign clothing. He carried a small case which appeared to be filled with carpentry tools, and, separately, a bulging carpet bag. (Carpet bags were what travelers carried back then, in the 1920’s.) The carpet bag must have contained his meager belongings. He had no horse, no car, and no mule.
The townspeople loved to spread rumors. They stared out their windows, hiding behind curtains, muttering among themselves, commenting on the presence of this unique individual: the fur trim on his hat, the gold cord on his coat, and the exotic carvings on his toolbox.
Somehow, the shipbuilder found a room to rent. Somehow, he located a shipbuilding office. Somehow, he hired a small staff. For all the rumors, people knew very little about him. That is, the rumors were meager or fanciful, until one day, due to the help of his assistants, a sign suddenly appeared in front of the shipbuilding office:
PASSAGE TO RUSSIA. BOOK NOW.
COMMERCIAL FREIGHT TO AND FROM.
30 PASSENGERS. DEPARTURE: AUGUST.
COMMERCIAL FREIGHT TO AND FROM.
30 PASSENGERS. DEPARTURE: AUGUST.
The fare was unexpectedly low. The departure date was surprisingly late in the summer, but too early for snow.
A pile of lumber was being assembled on the dock. The lumber appeared used, perhaps from one of the buildings on Main Street which had burned partially in the previous year. A few of the boards were charred on the edges. From them, something would arise, like the mythical Phoenix.
The townspeople were not accustomed to the presence of international commerce, or to traveling to exotic places like Russia. They barely knew the name of the city of arrival: M-O-S-C-O-W. They could barely make out the distance on the sign: Was it four weeks by steam, six weeks by sail? Or was it four months? That part of the sign was difficult to read. Apparently, the paint had run out, and the final details had been written in with charcoal from the used lumber, such that the lettering had smeared in the rain.
The work went quickly. Within a week, the lumber had been assembled, and now a team of 20 were fashioning from it a boat.
Despite great interest in the internal combustion engine, the boat would not run on steam. Evidently, there were not enough funds for the most advanced technology. Instead, a gigantic sail was being fashioned from used linens collected from a local charity. Although downright practical, driven by the reality of a small budget, the sail was a massive absurdity, fashioned from multiple colors of fabric, sewn in double and triple layers to approximate the weight and thickness of heavy canvas. Curtains, linens, pajamas, and even a few bloomers were being cut into squares, rectangles, and triangles, and sewn together in the largest reconstruction project anyone could imagine: A multicolored sail with the appearance of a quilt.
The shape of the hull was quite a topic of conversation in the town. Was it a Viking boat? Certainly the shipbuilder, who was a native of Russia, was not a Norwegian or a Swede.
The local waiter exclaimed that if he built a model of the hull out of pieces of a coconut shell which he had received as a gift from another exotic traveler who had long since departed, that the model would skim across the top of the oyster tank in his restaurant faster than a water bug.
Everyone politely laughed.
They knew it was not a fishing boat and not a skiff, but they could not recognize the shape. A boat built for both commerce and passengers? Where would they fit? The boat was tiny by the ocean’s standards, so the cabins must be miniscule.
Someone said that the cabins must each be as small as a closet.
The hold was large enough only for 200 small trunks. What would the boat carry? Every townsperson wondered what would be so valuable as to justify the long trip to M-O-S-C-O-W.
The shipbuilder was learning the English language. Someone finally discovered that he was trying to go back home to visit his sister and aunt. He had traveled to a foreign land on a boat which was not seaworthy, in search of better fortunes, and had been stranded somewhere for quite some time after the boat sank in the harbor as he sailed into port. Afterwards, he had traveled West by rail, and had built rowboats and even a steamboat for a company which went bankrupt. When he finally received news from back home, he had vowed to return, bringing money and hope for the future. By now, his parents, who had been old, had passed away, and only his sister and aunt remained. They were artisans, living in a part of the city near M-O-S-C-O-W. Like most artisans, they were always low on funding. He had been away too long, and should return.
Once the townspeople had learned something real about the shipbuilder, they decided it would be safe to purchase tickets. Before, they had wondered whether he was really a pirate, dressed in nice clothing, almost as if he were the wolf from the story about Little Red Riding Hood. He might have offered them passage, and then thrown them all overboard in the middle of the night in order to steal their money.
The shipbuilder grew in status. The workers at his shop grew to respect and admire him, and they taught him every English word they could imagine or recall. Although his workers were not educated, the shipbuilder learned quite a great deal.
Now, on occasion, he would smile and show good humor. The strain of shipbuilding waned as the project neared completion, but he still had no passengers and no crew.
The townspeople considered the cost and the stress of the voyage. Was it worth the venture? What would be gained? They lived in a small town on a river, near the bay, near the ocean. They were far enough inland that the water was not salty, and that the surging tides did not reach them. They were not a large town, but they were not too small to sell goods from a foreign nation. Nobody had ever considered going to M-O-S-C-O-W, nobody knew what Russians manufactured or sold, nobody knew what they would like to purchase, and nobody had considered going on a long voyage. Their lives had seemed complete, prior to the posting of the sign in the shipyard.
Certainly, the weather was an issue. Napoleon’s army had frozen dead attempting to invade Russia. Why depart in August? Was there enough time to return before being swallowed up into the middle of a glacier? And what of the icebergs they would encounter on the long voyage back? Was the ship seaworthy enough to fare well the storms and waves, to survive attack from large whales, or to brave onslaught from the creature of Moby Dick?
One day, one shopkeeper decided that such a voyage was not too risky. His general store was low on excitement. He had purchased too much cotton twill fabric and corduroy from a journeyman, and it had been sitting there for years. Perhaps someone in Russia would think it a novelty, and decide to purchase the lot.
The shopkeeper ventured down to the shipbuilder’s office. The sun shone down in the heat of July. It was humid, and the workers were not to be seen.
The shopkeeper paused for a moment before knocking on the door, noticing the sea gulls as they circled the ship and landed on the massive, colorful sail.
Voices from inside the office wafted out the window, a mixture of English and Russian. The shipbuilder had been teaching his assistants Russian, so the conversation went both ways, in broken bits and pieces of both languages.
The shipbuilder’s voice was heard, slightly indistinct.
The assistant inside the shop, near the window, repeated what had been said, perhaps more clearly: “Peter Borka.”
The town would never be the same.
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