Arnulf the Destroyer Read Online Free PDF

suffering, betrayal, too much to mention.  Then I tasted blood.”
    “It was communion wine,” the old priest told me.  “Wine but not wine.  Blood but not blood.”
    A sudden sense of disorientation whirled through my head.  I fell into the pew beside me before I fell down.  The dark of the sanctuary seemed to come alive, to surround and fill me.
    “What did I drink?” I just managed to ask.  “What was it I tasted?”
    “You tasted all that wine contained which no one else can taste,” he told me.  “You tasted suffering, you tasted love, you tasted a man paying the ultimate price for all that we have done wrong.  You tasted the cross.”
    “Everything tastes awful to me now,” I said.  “I can’t eat.  I can’t drink.  There is a taint on me that fouls everything that goes into my mouth.  I have awful dreams at night.  Every second of the day I live in fear.  Why?  What did it do to me?”
    The old priest leaned forward and folded his hands.  A deep sigh rose from him as he looked up at the altar, his eyes steadily upon the crucifix hanging in frozen agony.
    “You tasted sin,” he said.  “Now it won’t leave you.”
    “Whose sin?” I asked.
    “Your own,” he chuckled, leaning back again to look me in the eye.
    “You tasted your own sin and it taints everything in life.  That’s the nature of sin.  It covers everything, touches everything, fouls everything.”
    Nothing the old priest said made any sense to me.  How could I taste my own sin in a glass of merlot?  How did I taste blood?  A thousand different questions stirred inside of me.  But only one concerned me at the moment.
    “How do I get rid of it?”

    I stayed in the church all night.  The old priest and I spoke at length.  He told me things I had heard before but always ignored.  Even hearing some of it for the first time it sounded familiar.
    My whole life I always believed myself too sophisticated to believe as the masses believed.  This whole business of being born again, accepting Jesus, repenting and the such was so plebeian I always turned my nose up at it.  All that religious nonsense was for those who lacked refinement in life, who only had such superstitious habits to make their lowly lives worthwhile.
    I see the truth now.  All that refinement and sophistication that I believed made my life worthwhile only distracted me from the true meaning of life.  Only after I saw my life for what it was, what it truly was, did I understand.  All along I had used my snobbery as a shield, protecting me from the terror of living a deep life, protecting me from what I tasted in that glass of cheap, blessed merlot.  I tasted the truth.
    All that I was had been torn away with that one taste.  Even as I spoke to the old man I cared nothing for his religion.  Only I couldn’t bear to live anymore as I was, not with that awful taint on everything.  I even tried to resist further, leaving the church as the sun rose to mull things over for myself.  One taste of breakfast brought it all back, the rot on everything that passed through my mouth.
    That very day I was baptized and nothing has been the same since.  Oh, there is much about me that is the same.  I have my personality, my shortcomings, much in me that needs reform.  But I am trying now.  I am trying to be a better man. 
    My tastes I got back.  The taint that had spilled over and infected everything was washed away as I was washed with baptism.  I didn’t taste the taint anymore, although from time to time I can detect hints.  But I know now what I must do about it.
    It was impossible to go back to my old life.  I am no longer a food and wine critic.  What is a critic anyway?  Someone who stands on the sides and points out the flaws in the work of others.  Easiest thing in the world to do, criticize, and a pretty cowardly way to live.
    Now I work as a consultant to help improve food quality for any buyer, grower or purveyor of food and wine.  My