Da Goshen Code

DA GOSHEN CODE
1. Da Code
Everyone loves a mystery. But that does not nearly explain the popularity of Dan Brown’s novel, for in the end, the mystery remains. Hardly the stuff for a bestseller.
Much more satisfying is the mystery solved by Dr. Lewis Bowels, M.B.S. It all began when the doctor was called to the Goshen Museum in the wee hours, and by wee, I mean numbers much shorter than 12. There lay the curator, naked, curled in a fetal position on the marble flagstones of the Great Gallery, clutched in the cold grip of death.
Well, they were vinyl tiles, actually, and it was the Anna Polly Nook (A.P. is a locally acclaimed artist in needlework on the cutting edge of stitches), and Redmond Rose, curator, was drenched in a cold sweat. Mere details, really.
Poised on an Egyptian obelisk (well, a newel post, actually) above the body was a mummified albino rabbit. Its red eyes stared glassily, as though it had seen a ghost of itself.
“Silas!” muttered Dr. Bowels – known as L.B. to his friends. “Bane of the Brotherhood!“ he said, blasphemously. I crossed myself, to the other side of the cavernous space - well, of the corridor, actually, for a corner of the museum having caved in last winter, the ceiling was propped up with mining timbers.
“There it is, L.B.,” said Raymonde Constrewd, bilingual cryptologist for Goshen Municipal Council.
There it was - scrawled in block letters on the Gallery floor, in Times-Roman font:
10-10-10-10-10-10-10
LEAD FOOLS IN OWL TEARS
“A message from the Ancient Ones,” said Dr. Bowels, sagely. “The owl. Symbol of Athena, goddess of wisdom. She does not suffer fools gladly, hence the tears.”
“And the lead,” I said, pronouncing it L-E-D, “is a reference to Plumbum, god of conduits.”
“Lead,” said the Doctor, pronouncing it L-EE-D, “for one fool leads another.”
“L.B.,” said Constrewd, reading the mirror version of the message, “I see 01-01-01-01-01-01-01.”
“Of course!” I said. “Team Canada game scores!”
“The Binary Sequence,” said she, calculatedly. “This is the key!” The Binary Sequence, the discovery of an ingenuous geekologist, the basis for all cybernetic communications, and the arithmetical thread that stitches up modern civilization.
I punched the second line of the message into my BlackBerry, hit the decode button, and voila!:
FOLLOW DA ROSE LINE EAST
“Yes!” I shouted. “The letters are out of order! It’s an anagram, the progenitor of da Morse Code and da telegram!”
The doctor raised several eyebrows. “Da?” he said, superciliously.
“I studied in Berlin,” I said, germanely. “Now Kitchener-Waterloo,” I added, historically. “The last line, “ I said, postally, “is addressed to you, Miss Constrewd.”
RAY, THE RAD BOOK IS, GOD
“Something about a document, the sacred feminine,” she said, theologically, “heretical, possibly Albigensian.”
My BlackBerry hummed ethereally:
SORRY, I GOTTA BAD KODE, EH
“A plague has descended upon the land,” I said. “It is the common virus known as da Goshen code,” I sneezed, coldly.
“We must follow Mr. Rose’s instructions,” said L.B. “Hark, observe his digital gesticulation, how it doth give direction.”
We looked at L.B., exegetically.
“Sorry,” he said. “For a moment there, I felt biblical.”
A finger of Redmond Rose pointed stiffly to the wall of the Great Gallery, whereon there hung a magnificent work of art. Well, a homespun sampler, actually.
Embroidered in blood.
Well, red thread, actually.
2. Da Rose
The sampler hung poetically in the Anna Polly Nook:
Roses are red
Violets are blue
I love my dog
His name is Stu
Anna Polly’s talent for verse was often left people in stitches. Her fame spread far and wide, as far east as Chaldea - Goshen’s token ghost town - and as wide as Balthasar, where the sun always sets.
“Holy Spit!” I said.
“Where?” said the doctor.
“There – on that sampler – a rose, red as blood! Surely a clue!”
“Let’s look inside the frame”, said L.B. But as much as we pried and jimmied and levered the piece de resistance, it refused to budge. Someone had screwed it to the sticking place, employing an ingenious slotting device that rotated clockwise, starting at 12, and whipping through all the wee numbers, until the charm was wound as tight as Anna Polly’s bum.
The three of us put our heads together, trebly: rose – Irish – ragout – stu - vegetables . . . “Vegetables!” we yelped. There on the reverse wall, suspended from a three-penny nail, hung another of Anna Polly’s works, Vegetables Arranged Artisically on a White Countertop – a turnip, a carrot, an onion, a leek –
“Leek!” cried L.B., urinously. “Which reminds me. If you’ll excuse me. . .”
Flushing the white porcelain chalice, L.B. sighed, “There,”, relievedly.
“You know,” said L.B., rejoining his companions, “I could swear that in that grotto (well, a grotty little room, actually), there is the most subtle of scents, as though someone, something had just laid a rose.”
The sampler read:
They seek it here, they seek it there, they seek it in my home,
They seek his holy chamber, for that damned elusive Rosetta Stone.
Carefully, gently, tenderly, L.B. lifted the sampler from its nail, and heaved it across the room. An object dropped and shattered on the marble flagstones (well, bounced off the vinyl, actually).
The Rosetta Stone. The keystone. A cryptex. Well, a lump of rose quartz, actually. And etched in crypt were three lines:
YES GREEK ED TEXT
GET OSIER NO TACO
NO I ROSE COTTAGE
“Yes!” said Miss Constrewd, decipheredly. “This first line is utter nonsense. Hieroglyphs. Mumble text. It’s Greek to me. And the second line, the second is an encryption, a progenitor of the telegram. And the third line . . . Well, it baffles my expertise,” she said, enigmatically.
“Follow me,” said Dr. Bowels. “I know where the Rose Line is.” And he led our party outdoors, proceeded to the middle of Goshen’s Main Street, and pointed down.
At this point, dear reader, I am compelled to point out that it took Dan Brown 32 chapters to move his treasure hunt from the Grand Gallery of the Louvre, to the streets of Paris. We here in Goshen have done it in 2, without all the folderol of scholarly exegesis, shaky theology, and pathetic character motivation. With these shortcuts, we bring you this mystery for the price that it is worth – not one rosy red cent.
Back to our story. L.B. pointed to a manhole cover. Printed in block letters, in Times-Roman font, was a single word:
R.O.S.E.
3. Da Line
The dying words of Redmond Rose, curator of Goshen Museum, had been:
FOLLOW DA ROSE LINE EAST
“We will go west,” said L.B., occidentally.
“Toi, mon tabarnac de merde, tu me fais chier!” said Raymonde Constrewd, cryptologist for Goshen Municipal Council. That means, “Why for?” she added, bilingually.
“We must start in the west, in order to go east,” said L.B., illogically. And so our party proceeded, occidentally.
“Three hours from here, at Thunder Bay Airport, I have a Lear jet on the tarmac,” said Dr. Bowels. “I have a pilot standing by, under contract from Err Canada (pronounced A-I-R).”
“Sounds like a plan!” I said, witlessly.
“Or we could walk,” said the doctor. “It’s just down the road here.”
“Dr. Bowels,” I said, as we ambled along, “tell us about your degree, M.B.S.”
“I belong to a secret society, thousands of years old, entrusted with a task so vital that the health and safety of the planet depend upon us, and the public knows nothing about us, except what they gather from the World Wide Web. We call ourselves,” he said, fraternally, “Brothers of Sanitas.”
“B.S.!” I said, fecesiously.
“The organization is always directed,” he said, “by a Grand Master and three senechaux. And I,” he said, grandly, “I am the Master. And our number’s in the book.”
“Master of B.S.!”, I said, enviously.
“Un trou de cul,” said Constrewd. She pointed down. “A manhole,” she added, unnecessarily.
“Let us descend,” said L.B., “into the bowels.” And we descended, slipping on the rubber boots we had neglected to bring, and flicking on the flashlights we had forgot. We were standing in a huge pipe that ran east and waddled west. We could walk upright, with comfort, if we scrunched down, and walked like a duck.
“Alright, you quackers! Line up!” said L.B. “Just a little avian humour,” the doctor added, ornithically. (Or would you rather he said it ornithologically, and try saying that fast triply!)
“Say,” I said, “this conduit – it’s lead (pronoucing it L-E-D) – it’s Plumbum – the gods are with us. And what is that scent, that suggestion of roses laid end to end to end to -- ? And these dead canaries --?”
“Enough!” said L.B. “Back to the open air!” And we ascended, slipping on our wet shoes.
At the next manhole, we descended. We could scrunch down, and walk like a duck, if we lay flat on our faces. Long cylinders of rotting wood, all bound by rusty wires, constituted the pipe.
“A good sign,” said the doctor. “We are travelling back in time, back to the origins of the rose, to the dim recesses of the past when a maiden’s secret pleasure was setting a sperm oil lamp aflame.“
We ascended. We soon found ourselves in a dark wood, it being still the wee hours. There were signs. A duck quacked. An owl hooted. And we spooked an albino rabbit, dressed in his brown robe of summer. I mention these for atmosphere, not because they mean anything.
And then we saw it. A sign – and a name – handwritten – in NuptialScript font:
ROSE LANE
“Wait!” said Miss Constrewd. “Don’t tell me! Let me get this one!” She strewd up her lips.
“S-O-L-E R-A-N-E,” she said, orthographically. “SOLE RANE. No, non, too fishy, too fishy. O-N-E L-A-S-E-R. Okay, okay, ONE LASER. No, non, hardly bright of me. S-A-N-E R-O-L-E. Yes, yes, SANE ROLE. Oui, oui! I, I – I have it! “ she said, schizoidally.
“The wrong role for you,” I said, psychoanalytically.
“Enough!” said L.B. “Proceed. And look out for Number 1,” he said, self-servingly, as he stepped over a little pyramid of albino rabbit pellets.
And we searched down Rose Lane, obviously.
4. Da Scroll
“Number 1!” said Lewis Bowels, pointing to a handlettered sign in NuptialScript, which it is not appropriate for me to reproduce here.
And indeed it was Number 1: NO 1 ROSE COTTAGE. Okay, now it’s appropriate. A trail led (pronounced L-E-D) into the dark wood. It was obscured by prickly weeds and raspberry canes and thorny bushes, so we took the driveway. The driveway was clear.
Rose Cottage, a fieldstone building with a screen door, sat in a bramble patch. This was the moment of truth. If we were to possess the secret, we must shed blood, our own blood, the blood common.
We proceeded. “O God!” said L.B. “Calvaire!” said Constrewd. “Jeez!” I said. Spikes pierced our flesh, and the red roses blossomed on the leafless branches. “My wet shoes!” I said. “Ruined! The pants! The shirt!”
“Shirt!” said Dr. Bowels, gutterally. “Which reminds me. If you’ll excuse me . . .”
Deep in the wildwood stood a solitary structure. Dr. Bowels scurried along, oblivious to the cinquefoils and the solomon’s seals and the venus flytraps, up to the wooden door. Above the door, an astrological sign, a half moon. Below the sign, the routered letters read, Rose Lane Chapel, in Baptismal font, so to speak.
This was it! The holy chamber, the inner sanctum, the original pew, so to smell. Gaining the chamber, L.B. pressed his seat tenderly upon the splintered rim of the wooden chalice. His fumbling fingers found a manful blade. Well, a penknife, actually.
The art of the ages surrounded him. A calendar from Goshen Garage, Year 2001: White foam caressed the bronzed thighs of a sultry Caribbean shore. Another calendar, Goshen Garage, 1971: A pretty woman in a prim housedress buttered her husband’s toast. Another, 1941: A buxom brunette with a cleavage you could asphyxiate in, waved an acetylene torch dangerously close to a manful blade. This was art on the cutting edge, time-lapse pornography!
The place was a monument to the sacred feminine. Tacked to the walls, pages from an ancient scroll – illuminations of petticoats in taffeta silk; misses’ drawers in white cotton, with tucks and frills; and ladies’ underwear in fine-ribbed wool, button front and summer weight.
He cast his eyes about for the original document, and reeled in Eaton’s Spring and Summer Catalogue 46, 1901. It was Le Dossier Secret! A secret scroll that the Brothers of Sanitas had pledged to protect! Their gift to mankind!
His fingers flew through successive folios -- the drug department, the silverware display, the racks of guns and rifles, and then – his heart stopped. The cabinets of crockery. He ran a finger through pages 166 and 167 – through Doulton’s Albermarle dinnerware, past Ohme’s fine German china, over brown Rockingham ware, and then – his heart stopped. Ironstone china -- Crown brand. He was so close he could taste it. Individual butter pats, 25 cents a dozen. Scalloped bowls, 8 cents each. Ice jugs, 30 cents. And then – okay, you fill in this line. And there it was. Chambers for toilet sets, 30 cents each.
This was it. Le Sangreal. The Holy Cup. Le bourdalou. Sought by generations of pilgrims, penitents who prayed in the Holy Chamber for some relief, some grace, some release from the flies of summer and the frost of winter, from the sweltering heat and the stormy blast, from the long trek through cinquefoils and brambles to the wooden chalice.
This was it. The legacy of the Sons of Plumbum. The lovely chamber pot, available in a trinity of patterns. The embodiment of peace, and prosperity, and progress. Full many a maiden had blessed the hands that made this crockery chalice, as they indulged a secret pleasure.
Grabbing his manly blade – well, a penknife, actually - L.B. sliced off the page and tore out of the Chapel. Wait. Let me back up. He pulled up his pants and tore out of the Chapel. Wait. Let me back up again. First, he found a hallowed use for pages 168 through 177.
“I have found it!” he said, detectively. “I have found it!”
“And I have found it,” said Constrewd, repetitively.
“What have you found?”
“The Ends of Day,” she said, eschatologically.
5. Da Days
Raymonde Constrewd waved a placard in the doctor’s face.
“This one,” she said, “I found first.” It read: Gone Fishing – Back at End of Day. “And then this one.” Gone Hunting – Back at End of Day. “And these.” Gone Berrying . . . Gone to Town . . . Gone to Outhouse . . . And each sign closed with Back at End of Day.
“See?” said Miss Constrewd. “So many Ends of Day.”
“I beg to differ,” I said, mendicantly. “We have here, signs of the End of Days.”
“Mere details, really,” she said, picayunely.
“Enough!” said Dr. Bowels. “We must go east!” he said, orientally.
So we proceeded, orientally. Through the dark wood. Through the pastures bright with moose. Through the darkled streets. To where, in the wee hours, the sun had rose – okay, I know, but please, grant me some literary licence. The wee hours were now considerably taller.
Past a field of podded seeds. “Potty’s Peas,” muttered L.B., leguminously. Past rows of peelful tubers. “Potty’s Potatoes,” he said, starchly. Past beds of elongated gourds. “Potty’s Cucumbers“ he said, burpily. “The stu thickens,” he muttered, vegetably shaken.
And there it was. Rising redly from a patch of wee pyramids -- and by wee I mean, shorter than an Egyptian obelisk, and shorter than the pillars of Solomon’s Temple, and certainly shorter than this column – but, back to the story. There rose redly . . . an alien machine. Its eyes flashed in the rays of the dying sun as it tottered on rubbery legs, and writ large on its swollen belly were the words – oops, wrong story. I’m confusing it with H.G. Wells’s War of the Worlds.
So, back to reality. You wish. On the red tanker truck were the words, in SepticSystem font, Potty’s Pumping. You flush – We suck up the mush.
A man emerged from a little hutch, gnawing on a carrot. He was clad in flowing brown coveralls, and in the vicinity of his red-rimmed eyes were a twitchy nose and big floppy ears – arranged artistically, of course.
“Silas! Silas Potty,” said Dr. Bowels, excretally. “Bane of the Brotherhood,” he added, unnecessarily.
“And how are you, Loo!” said Silas, shortly. “Which reminds me. If you’ll excuse me . . .”
We turned our eyes away, occidentally. L.B. sighed, and recited:
When the hurlyburly’s done,
When the battle’s lost and won . . .
That will be ere the set of sun.
“Anna Polly?” said Miss Constrewd, rustically.
“No. Shakespeare,” said L.B., classically.
Out of the sunset staggered a vision of the past, a creature that spent its days surrounded by relics, blowing its nose, and drinking Canadian tea. It was Mr. Rose, curator of Goshen Museum.
“Allow me to introduce myself,” said L.B. “I am Dr. Lewis Bowels, doctor of plumbology, Master of B.S.”
“B.S.!” said Rose, profanely. “Which reminds me. If you’ll excuse me . . .”
Mr. Rose fumbled in this trousers, suggestively, and we averted our eyes, orientally. “And I,” said he, extending his hand, “am Redmond Rose. Folks call me Red.”
“Red Rose! Of course. Only in Canada,” said L.B., patriotically. “And what is this? He opened the sheet that the curator had to handed him, stickily.
And there it was. The final clue, which he read aloud:
The rosy orb at dusk doth glow
Amongst the vines where mush doth flow
Beneath a glittering hill of gems
The health of hundreds there depends
At this point, dear reader, I am compelled to point out that it took Dan Brown 105 chapters and an Epilogue to get his entourage to Rosslyn Chapel and himself back to the Louvre Museum. We will have achieved it in 6. We have skipped the superfluous stuff, such as conspiracies concocted in the brains of a mad Englishman and a rogue priest, an international hunt for fugitives, and sundry murders and attempted murders, because we know your time is precious.
Back to our story. L.B. lowered the self-adhesive paper.
“Shakespeare?” said Miss Constrewd, shrewdly.
“No. Anna Polly,” said Red Rose.
“She’s God’s gift to literature,” he added, pollyannishly.
6 – Da Crock
“We left you for dead, Red,” said Dr. Bowels. “Explain that mystery.”
“I was overcome,” said Red. “By sewer gas,” he added, methanely. He explained that the plumbing in Goshen Museum had been installed sometime after the Crucifixation, sometime after the Crucifixation, but that he had learned to cope with the occasional double-cross.
“I had scrolled a toilet tissue,” he said, “and stuffed it up my nasal orifice. Surely you noticed.”
Well, we had checked his orifices, but we had missed the nasal one. “But you were naked!” said Dr. Bowels. “It was like a Paris Hilton video!”
“I had to get your attention,” he said, militantly. “And had you read the tissue that I left you, you would have solved the mystery, in the wee hours.”
“You mean --?“ said Dr. Bowels, detaching the sheet from his digit – his manual one, of course.
“Yes,” said Rose, “that one.”
“But the anagrams, the verses, the keystone, the frantic hunt across the darkled countryside, “ said Miss Constrewd, “why for?”
“You need to put in that stuff, if you want to sell the movie rights,” said Rose.
“Well, well, looky here,” said Silas Potty, returning to action.
“So,” said Red, looking at me, “have you met my half-wit brother?”
“Step-brother,” said Silas, semi-consciously. He waggled his carrot under my nasal orifice. “And you are – let me guess - Tom Hanks!” he said, cinematically.
“Allow me,” said L.B., “to present the Teacher, EJ, expert on symbology,”
“The Teacher, retired,” I said, pneumatically. “But what does it all mean – the ruby orb, the vines, the hill of gems . . .? “
“Follow me,” said Raymonde Constrewd, cryptologist for Goshen Municipal Council.” And we followed her, misguidely, into a patch of ruby orbs – “Potty’s Tomatoes,” muttered L.B., acidly. And there it was -- one of the plastic pyramids of garden cloches and kozy-coats and mini greenhouses, filled with purest water, and warmed by the dying rays of the sun at the ends of day -- a glittering hill of gems.
Reaching into the orifice of the monument, Constrewd extracted a soggy document, and handed it to Dr. Loo.
“I thought it was lost forever!” said L.B. The sheaf of papers read: The R.O.S.E. A Plan to Preserve the Health of Hundreds, by Dr. Lewis Bowels, M.B.S.
“The R.O.S.E.?” we said, unitedly.
“The Restoration Of Sanitized Effluvia,” said L.B. “R-O-S-E.” Since some time after the Crucifixation, Goshen’s conduits had been expelling raw sewage into Goshen Lake, prompting at least one failed entrepreneureal attempt at microbe farming.
“It’s my plan,” said L.B. “For the treatment plant,” he added, vegetably pleased.
“And Silas,” he continued, “thou wickedness incarnate, thou abomination, thou eater of filthiness, and cultivator of dunghills –“
“Whoa – ho - ho!” I saideth. “Whence cometh that?”
“I dunno,” said L.B. “For a moment, I felt biblical,” he added, prophetically.
Silas Potty, it seems, had pursued an agricultural calling to use unadulterated effluvia in a business he had founded, Potty’s Tasty Organics. “Waste not, want not,” he said, conservatively.
“Well, I, for one,” said I, “am disappointed. You call this a mystery? There is no blood royal, there’s no awful secret that will shake the pillars of the Roman Church, no female descendent of Christ who’s a baker in a Tim Hortons, and drawing sacred images in the glazed donuts, which are then auctioned on eBay in exchange for bearer bonds drawn on the Vatican Bank.”
“Not exactly,” said L.B., certainly.
“Okay, one for the road, eh?” said Red Rose, dipsily. The placard read:
I, ROCK A HELL’S CAT?
“Oh, that’s a crock,” said I.
“You’re warm,” said Rose.
“Yes, it’s a crock,” said I.
“You’re warmer,” said Rose.
“All of it’s a crock,” said L.B.
“You’re hot,” said Rose.
“Of course,” said Raymonde. “It’s so obvious, eh?”
“IT’S ALL A CROCK, EH?”, we shouted, ceramically.
* * * * * * * *
At every End of Days, there is a crock. So, sit on it.
* * * * * * * *
[Author’s Note: Each chapter was originally published as a weekly newspaper column in the summer of 2006.]