The Lavender Tavern
The Golden Door, Part 1
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Episode notes
In the small town of Wolfwater, every door was always open to Finn, except for one...
Finn can go through any door in the town of Wolfwater except one...because he's too fat to fit through it. But Finn is determined to find out what's behind the golden door. No matter what.
Part 1 of 2.
Written by: Jonathan Cohen
Narrated by: Joe Cruz
A Faustian Nonsense production.
To read the full transcript of this episode, go to https://thelavendertavern.captivate.fm/episode/the-golden-door-part-1
Content warning: disordered eating, body image
Transcript
In the small town of Wolfwater, every door was always open to Finn, except for one.
Finn – or Phineas, as his parents had named him – went from a hefty, cherubic smiling baby to a husky, inquisitive child, a large and awkwardly-private teenager, and then into his current incarnation as a broad-faced, wide-shouldered, large-bellied man.
He was fat. Fat – the word was fat. He hated the terms the townspeople and even his parents were forever using to get around saying “fat”: husky, big-boned, full-figured, large. No, he was fat, and they were not.
Wolfwater had been through a terrible crop failure and famine in the year when Finn had been born, and the memory had imprinted a certain asceticism on the town and the townspeople. They rushed from task to task, ate light, simple food, and poured their energies into tilling the fields and harvesting the crops so that there would never be another famine.
But Finn…sometimes he thought that the famine had imprinted itself on him in another way, as he lay in bed at night, hands clasped over his belly. He liked to eat, to savour the elements of a meal. Even the simple meals his mother prepared over the fire. Though they were too simple, with few spices, and often overcooked or underdone.
When he turned twelve, he insisted on helping her with the meals. “You can sit and relax,” he said, “while I make supper for the family.” Anna, his mother, was a tall and thin nervous type who could not relax. But she used the time while he cooked to fret over him. He could not pull a plow or stack sheaves, or carry wood – it was simply too much for his body in the heat of the summer.
But Finn could cook. Even though Anna told him not to use up the spices, to make the dishes smaller, to leave some for later, he baked vast meals from the simple meat and potatoes and root vegetables they had available. Finn would try to draw his parents into conversation over the dinner table, but his father Marin was hungry from the fields and ate whatever Finn put in front of him. Anna was too worried about gaining weight to eat much. Look at Finn, she thought; look at Finn. So he was usually left alone to eat the remains of the dinner, staring thoughtfully out the window and thinking of an infinite number of dinners, a myriad of fantastic meals made from ingredients he’d only ever heard about.
Even though he could not work the fields, people liked Finn. He had a broad, easy smile, and was quick to pitch in with whatever non-physical help he could provide. The housewives and househusbands appreciated his advice on recipes and how to stretch a meal when there wasn’t much food.
All the doors in Wolfwater were open to him – from the town’s gathering chamber to the shack that sat by the lake and held paddling boats and oars. All the doors, except for one.
In the temple, at the back of the main room, there was a golden door that led…somewhere. Finn did not know where it led, and he could not find out. Because Finn could not physically fit through it.
The door was as narrow as his mother – as narrow as all of the other townspeople, actually. Finn would have used his hands to take its measure, but Abriel the priest did not like people fiddling with the golden door. It could not be more than a hand’s breadth in width. The other townspeople could only fit through by turning sideways, taking a deep breath, and wriggling their shoulders until they popped through into…somewhere.
When Finn had been a child, like the other children, he hadn’t cared about the temple or the golden door. He had heard the stories, knew that it led somewhere, but it was a mystery, like why the birds left towards the end of every year and came back every spring.
Instead, as a child, Finn always dreamed of cooking, and dreamed of having his own tavern and inn. Anna – for she was less nervous back then – joked with him that they would have to call it “Finn’s Inn,” and he laughed and laughed.
Then he grew older and laughed less. The others his age started to wonder what was behind that golden door, and he did too. Only, at some point they were able to cross the threshold, and he was not.
His belly got in the way. If he sucked his belly in, his chest pushed out too far. The sides of the door scraped against him and left bruises, but he could not pass through the golden door no matter what he did.
Abriel let him try three times: the priest thought that three was a reasonable number. Each time, Finn tried desperately to see beyond the golden door, see where the other townspeople were going, but there was a golden corridor just beyond the door that turned and twisted, and beyond that he could see nothing…only the bruises on his chest and belly the next day from his three attempts.
What always galled him was that nobody would tell him what was behind the door. Not his parents, not his best friend Celine. Nobody.
Everyone had an excuse for why they couldn’t tell him. His parents told him to wait until he was older. Abriel the priest told him only true believers who could pass through the golden door would be able to find out.
And Celine? Celine, a tall redheaded woman who was as thin as he was fat, would simply look at him with a sad smile. “I am sworn to secrecy,” she said one day as they sat in the village square eating a hand meal he’d prepared and watching the townspeople hurry by.
“We’ve known each other since you sprained your ankle that time and I took you to the healer,” Finn protested. “Surely that counts for something.”
Celine ate another dainty bite of the hand meal. He was proud of the dish: a stew of beans and meat and sauce that was bound up in a light pastry. One could eat it anywhere, without making a mess of one’s hands or clothing. “It’s wonderful, but that’s all I can say. I’d get in trouble,” she said at last. “And someday, you’ll find out for yourself how wonderful it is.”
He looked down at his ample proportions under the rough cloth and sighed. Then, looking at the hurried townspeople, he said, “Do they never slow down? Do they never stop to think?”
The men and women passed before them herky-jerky, as if they were in a shadow play put on by an amateur puppeteer that had no idea how fast or slow real people walked. Wolfwater was built in such a way to encourage this: all of the streets ran straight and true, with no detours or curves. Shops and other places of business were set in from the street so that there was no reason to stop or dawdle. Finn half-closed his eyes and saw the townspeople as a blur upon the buildings. “If they could only see,” he murmured. “There is all the time in the world, if they were only to take it.”
Celine shot him a look and got to her feet. “I have to buy my mother a bolt of cloth! I had nearly forgotten…” Then her sad smile returned. “Oh, and I am becoming one of the hurrying crowd, but I’m afraid I don’t have all the time in the world. I won’t forget you Finn, even if I outpace you.” And she was gone.
Finn tried to return to the golden door to see if he could fit through one more time, but Abriel the priest stopped him at the door to the temple. “You are not ready to go through,” Abriel intoned. “When you are, you will be able to pass through it.”
This he spoke as if it were a mental trial, but Finn knew better. There was only one way to pass through the golden door.
A relative passed away and left his parents some money and a house, and when Finn came of age, they helped him with his dream: turning the abandoned house into Finn’s Inn. He called it The Inn at first, since Phineas’s Inn didn’t sound right either, but everyone ended up calling it Finn’s Inn.
At Finn’s Inn, he hosted lodgers and those who came to drink and talk and play cards. But the real purpose of Finn’s Inn, the reason he’d always dreamt of it, was to serve food. The type of food he wanted to serve. Heavy stews of lamb and goat, aromatic with spices from cities across the sea, accompanied with cream potatoes in cheese sauce and loaves of rye with freshly-churned butter that melted in the bread’s peaks and valleys.
Wolfwater was not a large town, and it was far from the trade winds and caravans. As a result, there were few visitors, except for some merchants who passed through and left quickly once they realized the townspeople had little appetite for luxurious satiny fabrics or scented jewels.
At first, the townspeople came out to support Finn’s Inn, and he had a crowd every night the first week. But they left their dishes piled high with uneaten food; his portions were too large. Finn tried cutting back, but by then the townspeople had decided that Finn’s Inn had seen enough of their patronage, and why should they eat at an Inn when they could eat more cheaply, more quickly, and more healthily at home?
Celine sat at a table every night and ordered a different dish each time. He’d watch her from the bar, as she poked at the food with a spoon and took bird-sized bites of it, face lighting up in pleasure but never really surrendering to the meal. Then, when he came over to ask how it was, she’d praise it and say, “Could you pack it up for me, so I may take the rest home? There was so much!”
Every night, a package for her to take home. Finn imagined an endless stack of lovingly-wrapped bowls of stew, shepherd’s pies, cassoulets, chops – crowding Celine out of her own home.
He knew she was there out of friendship, nothing more. As teenagers they had experimented and kissed and tried more; but she discovered that she liked women just as he liked men. Celine had her eyes on the blacksmith’s daughter, but of the men who liked men in Wolfwater, Finn knew only of Calabas, the wild-haired town drunk who fought ceaselessly with his stick-thin partner Yoav. He could depart for another town, of course…but he had promised his parents he would stay as long as he could keep Finn’s Inn afloat.
The townspeople, he thought that night after Celine had been the only one to visit, had abandoned Finn’s Inn. Finn ladled himself some stew from the pot that had served nobody else and sat in the empty Inn, drawing the spoon through the stew.
I’m not hungry, he thought. I do not wish to eat my stew. And when he forced himself to try a spoonful, he could not eat a second one. He felt depressed, and the stew tasted bad, although he knew it was a fine stew.
Over the next weeks, Finn tried hanging a sign outside the Inn, and then he tried putting up a sign in the village square, and then he desperately tried to convince Abriel to let him put a sign up inside the temple, but Abriel told him that Inns and drink and hearty foods were the province of men, and not gods.
Then one morning, Finn unlocked Finn’s Inn and turned his body sideways to enter the Inn door as he always did…only he no longer had to turn sideways. His shoulders grazed the sides of the oaken doorway, but he could enter it without turning.
When he knotted the drawstrings of his apron behind his back, the ends were longer than usual. He puttered around the kitchen, but did not taste the food he was making, for he had no appetite.
Having no mirror, he could not see what was happening, but he saw it reflected in the eyes of the townspeople. Where they had once rushed to and fro in front of him, now they would sometimes stop to talk to him and ask him how his day had gone. Even Calabas the drunk grinned toothlessly at Finn from across the village square.
Finn’s parents were all smiles. “Finn, you look wonderful!” Anna said. Marin said nothing, but stole looks at Finn while he made supper for them – a supper Finn did not want to eat. Finn did not feel particularly wonderful, but he did like the smiles and the compliments.
Celine had her usual sad smile for him, and told him at their next meeting, “You’ve lost weight. Finn, how did you go and do that?”
“I don’t feel like eating. Isn’t that strange?”
She prodded him in his lessening stomach. “Watch yourself, Master Finn. If you drop too much weight, you will lose yourself and disappear entirely.”
But Finn did not feel as if he was losing himself; he felt as if he was becoming himself, after all the years of his life. The drawstrings on the apron became longer, and as winter turned to spring, Finn needed a rope to keep up his pants. The looks and compliments of the townspeople were like honey to his ears, and he would sprint to Finn’s Inn and slam the door behind him, blushing and smiling.
One day, one of the farmers that supplied him with vegetables fell ill, and his son, a strapping young man named Dron, came instead. Finn had spoken with Dron before, curt conversations where the man made Finn feel like he was wasting his time with his inquiries. And the gods forbid he should want to sample the vegetables before he bought them!
This time was very different. Once the horse and barrow were parked by Finn’s Inn, Dron looked at Finn, then smiled. “You came to show me your vegetables?” Finn prompted him.
“Yes, vegetables,” Dron said. Then, snapping his fingers, he nodded and pointed to the display in the barrow: luscious red tomatoes and emerald green snap peas that looked fresh to the point of still ripening on the vine. “Are these to your liking?”
Finn did not know what to say. In times past when Dron’s father had been ill, the vegetables Dron showed him had been of middling quality. “They look…fine?” Finn said.
Dron packaged up the vegetables Finn pointed to and wrapped them in sackcloth. Then he surprised Finn yet again by offering to take them down to the Inn’s root cellar. Normally, Finn would have to haul the sack himself, stooping and panting with the exertion.
He followed the farmer’s son down into the cool cellar, and Dron busied himself putting the vegetables upon the shelves with the potatoes and turnips and peppers. Dron even straightened up the vegetables Finn already had, and it finally occurred to him that Dron was stalling for some reason.
“As to the matter of payment,” Finn said, clearing his throat and looking at Dron meaningfully. Dron’s father would only accept gold on hand; credit was foreign to him.
“Next time,” Dron said, and smiled again. “Next time I come you can pay me. Don’t worry about it.”
His eyes stayed on Finn. More than Finn’s face: his gaze roamed about Finn’s body and made him feel peculiar, as if he were a vegetable at market being examined for suitability in someone’s stew pot.
“I’ll pay you now,” Finn announced. Credit, his father Marin had told him many times, was the start of the road to ruin. He had managed to run Finn’s Inn on a gold-only basis so far. He took out a gold piece from the sack at his belt and passed it to Dron, who rubbed it with his fingers, but made no move to go back upstairs.
Finally, Dron asked, “Are you busy this coming rest-day?”
Finn imagined that Dron’s father might have more wares to sell, that they might come back with different vegetables – and, knowing Dron’s father, most likely with vegetables that were very close to being spoiled. “I have no plans as yet.”
“Would you like to go to the river?” Dron asked.
Finn was not usually slow, but it had taken him up until this moment to get Dron’s point. The looks, the attention, the payment on credit. He was unused to such a handsome young man paying attention to him. He was not interested in Dron; the farmer’s son was like a beautiful meal that gave no sustenance. But it was such a novel experience that Finn accepted.
They spent the day at the river, and when Dron offered him a meal he had brought, Finn refused. He did not wish to eat. Dron spoke of crops, and the land, and minerals and horses. Finn spoke of cooking times and wooden spoons and baking pans. Dron wished to see him again, but Finn kindly told him he was too busy with the business of the Inn.
As the days passed, if Finn’s stomach complained, he pretended that he did not hear it. If sometimes, stirring a hot stew after a long day, he felt dizzy and broke into a sweat, he pretended that he did not feel it. He measured himself with hand-widths and lay in bed, ignoring the growling of his insides, dreaming of the golden door.
And it came to pass in late summer that Abriel knocked at the door of Finn’s Inn. Abriel did not enter the Inn, but from the outside, he suggested that Finn come to the temple. With trepidation and pride, Finn went to the temple the next day after gathering up the courage to do so, feeling that the eyes of the townspeople must be upon him.
The golden door seemed wider than he remembered. Finn angled himself just so, and took the deepest breath he’d ever taken, and tried to shrink himself in his mind so that he was nothing more than a flat Finn, a Finn on a sheet of parchment…and he wriggled and pushed and felt his bones scrape across the doorway…and then after a timeless moment, he was through the golden door.
As he had seen so many times from the Wolfwater side of the door, there was a golden corridor that took him three steps to cross. He rounded the corner in anticipation, but then stopped with a gasp of recognition. It was the last thing he would have expected, and the first thing he should have guessed: a tavern.
Where Finn’s Inn was squat, low to the ground, and welcoming, this tavern had walls that soared to a high ceiling. Paintings with splotches and dashes of colour hung from the walls. Golden light streamed in from windows that seemed to look out onto a forest; there was no forest around the temple, however. The tables were narrow and long, thin slabs of white surrounded by simple but elegant wooden chairs that made the chairs of Finn’s Inn look like something carved by a childish orc.
Men and women sat at the tables: a selection of the townspeople of Wolfwater, talking and laughing, and sometimes, rarely, eating. From where he stood, Finn could not see what they were eating, but he could see the man who had cooked the food.
He stood in the kitchen to one side of the eating area, a kitchen of long counters, bowls and ladles and ingredients placed in precision. The man was surrounded by his own halo of light, and Finn thought that he was the most beautiful man he’d ever seen.
Yes, beautiful. It was an odd word to assign to a man, but it fit this one. Tall and slender. Pale, pale skin, penetrating green eyes, and long blond hair tied up in a topknot. This, so as not to get in the food, Finn thought. A good twenty years older than Finn, with wrinkles at the corners of...