The King and His Leg

(A Parable)

by Zohar Atkins

April 23, 2008

THERE was a king who lived in a splendid castle far from the rest of the kingdom.  One day, the king’s toe became infected.  For a long time, the king did not notice the infection.  The king, as it happens, was a giant, and it took years for his toe’s sense receptor to send signals to his brain.  By the time the king looked down at his toe, the infection had moved all the way up his leg.  From his remote castle, there were no doctors, wise men or magicians for the king to call upon.  So the king operated on himself.  He amputated his leg, and then planted the limb in the ground.  Up from the earth, the leg sprang forth into doctors and wise men and magicians.  They, in turn, created a new leg for the king.  They attached it to his torso, the place where his original leg once stood. This new leg was better than the old one.  After a short time there was no trace that the king had ever lost a leg – so natural did the second leg seem. When the leg became a part of the king’s body, the doctors and wise men and magicians returned to the ground.

FROM time to time, the king would think about his original leg, and about the doctors, wise men, and magicians who had repaired him.  As time went on, the king’s memory faded. Now when he remembered his past, he often doubted whether he’d ever lost an infected leg, or if such a memory was not in fact simply a conjuration on his part, a story to preoccupy him when he was bored, or a metaphor for something else eating away at his soul.  The recurrence of this thought – as well as the thought that he had not thought enough of the thought – caused the king to think of nothing but his past leg and the doctors, wise men and magicians who had mysteriously fixed it, but who, because they had done such a good job, had implanted doubts in his head as to whether they had really ever existed and whether he had really possessed a previous leg.

ONE day, the king decided to amputate his new leg and deposit it in the ground in order to see whether or not it would generate doctors, wise men, and magicians who would then fix it. Sure enough, when the king planted his leg in the ground, it spawned doctors, wise men and magicians just as it had before.  This time, however, the doctors, wise men, and magicians did not create a new leg for the king.  For they discerned – through their medicine, wisdom, and magic – that it was not a leg which the king desired.  Indeed, they discerned that were they to give the king a new leg as before, he would simply repeat the process of forgetting, doubting, and then longing to remember.  They figured that the pain his thoughts would cause him would far exceed the pain of having no leg, a pain which he would soon get over. They understood that what the king wanted was proof of the existence of others, and related to that, proof of his own past.  The absence of this was precisely what infected him.

WITHOUT others around, time did not exist for the king – and without time, neither did the past.  But in the presence of others – namely, the doctors, wise men, and magicians – the king experienced change.  And with change, he experienced memory, curiosity, angst, obsession, and so forth – so the doctors, wise men, and magicians discerned.  And, thus, they resolved not to cure the king, not to craft him a new leg.  But the doctors, wise men, and magicians also knew that so long as the king remained incomplete, they were bound to remain in the kingdom, and not to disappear into the ground. They were not bound, because they felt they had to remain as proof of the king’s past, but because their summons to the kingdom was to last as long as the king remained incomplete. The doctors, wise men, and magicians shared all of these thoughts with the king.

AFTER a long time, the doctors, magicians, and wise men multiplied, and as they did, they accustomed themselves to living as the king’s subjects. Finally the king could live in a kingdom in which he and his subjects could see each other, in which he could have proof of his existence, of his kingliness.  Over time, however, the subjects grew so vast in number that the king was forced to move his castle to a far away place. With the removal of the king, many of the subjects grew afraid.  Others thought the king had died or forsaken them.  Still others sought to take control of the crown and become the new king. Wars broke out between the three camps — the doctors, wise men, and magicians — who had previously not seen any distinction between each other, but who, over time, had grown closer as groups, and so naturally had become more exclusive, and eventually enemies to each other.

EVENTUALLY the noise of war, the shouts of pain, reached the king, and he returned feeling guilty, disappointed, and upset.  Since the first generation of doctors, wise men, and magicians had by this time died, either of natural causes, or during the wars, nobody recognized the king. They all thought he was an impostor seeking power like all the rest, and so many of them ceased fighting with each other, and declared war on the king.  At this point, the king felt sad and terrified.  Dodging spears and arrows, the king ran to the spot where, ages before, he had planted his second leg in the ground, intending to dig it up, sew it back onto his torso, and put an end to the madness. But alas, the leg was not there. Was it stolen? Had it simply atrophied under the earth? The king did not know.

BUT the king, remembering that the doctors, wise men, and magicians of old had mentioned that they were bound to remain so long as the king remained incomplete, decided he had only one chance to bring peace and order back to his kingdom. The king bowed his face to the ditch in which he had planted his leg, and cried: “I am complete. I renounce having ever had a leg. How I am is how I always was. I am perfect. I need no cure.” At once, all the spears and arrows, doctors, wise men, and magicians vanished, and the ditch closed up. The king looked down casually at both of his legs, and walked back to his castle, wondering what he had been doing so far away from it.  The king, even if he didn’t know it, even if there was nobody around or willing to tell him, was limping.

Zohar Atkins, a sophomore at Brown, concentrates in Classics and Judaic Studies. An aspiring Rabbi, Zohar strives to rescue reason from nihilism, faith from dogmatism, and existentialism from solipsism.