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The Last Word
One night, the Emperor failed to please his fifteenth wife. "You are not a complete man," she said to him. The next day, he returned the observation as he watched her head tumble from her body. However, the importunate remark set the Emperor thinking about what makes a complete man. Would, for example, a decorated war hero, bereft of a limb or two, still be considered a complete man? What about the blind, the deaf or those demented by old age? And, of course, since he was an Emperor, this problem, like all the other problems he had ever come across, had a simple answer. "Soothsayers and sages - arena - tomorrow morning - sharp!" he said to his secretary.
And so it was that at dawn, all the wisest men in the Emperor's city were herded into the arena and gathered before the Imperial Throne with only seconds to spare before the Emperor made his Grand Entrance. "I have a question for you all," said the Emperor, and your answer must be quick for in an hour I must attend the execution of yet another unsatisfactory wife." He leant forward from the heavy throne, a living eagle set with golden wings, and said to the assembled, quavering wizards, "How much of his body or his mind may a man lose before he ceases to be a man?"
Now this seemingly innocuous question caused immediate consternation and dread in every single soul arrayed before the Emperor for two very simple reasons: The one being that none of them knew the true answer and the other being that they all knew the Emperor would demand immediate empirical proof by scientific demonstration of whatever answer any of them felt brave enough to give. The certainty of that latter fact was assured them by the presence of the two most ugly serjeants in the emperor's service, both armed with a variety of butchers' implements; and the noticeable lack of expendable miscreants or slaves indicated all too clearly on whom the experiments would take place. For forty minutes, or more, the conclave argued while the Emperor drummed his devil's tattoo on the golden hand rest of the throne, mentally taking an arm from one doctor, an ear from another, or the legs from a third. Eventually, of course, the Emperor became extremely bored. "Right," he shouted. "I want an answer. Now!"
A quick jostling amongst the mass of magicians resulted in the oldest, most senior - and therefore least loved - suddenly being impelled to the foot of the throne. After a few moments of wild eyed despair, this most unfortunate of men gathered what remained of his wits and his courage and opened his mouth to utter what he truly believed would be his very last words on this earth - and at that very moment, the doors to the arena swung open as in rushed Joachim.
"Sorry, your Warship!" shouted the little man with the long, grey beard, "I was caught up in the seventh stage of transmuting gold into lead when your messenger arrived. I came as soon as I could. Now, what was your problem?"
Just as the unfortunate spokesman of the professorial gathering thanked his lucky planets and slipped unnoticed back into the crowd, so the Emperor forbore having Joachim's head struck off there and then for his impertinence, for he knew that in all his Empire, the one man most likely to provide a satisfactory answer to his puzzle would be Joachim. Patiently, he restated the question.
"Oh, is that all?" said Joachim. "All you have to do is look at a broom."
"And what on Earth is a broom?" asked the Emperor who, of course, didn't trouble himself overmuch with daily household chores.
"Ah," replied Joachim, "There you have it in a nutshell!"
"All I get in nutshells are nut kernels," snapped the Emperor in exasperation, "and if you persist in talking in riddles, you won't talk for very much longer."
"Well, your Lardship," smiled Joachim, "the broom is a shrub, the cut twigs of which can be tied in a bunch to the end of a long pole and used to shift the dust from under your very throne. Dust is made up of extremely small individual particles. Now, if we turn your question about a man into a question about a broom, then we can see that however much of the broom we chop off, we can always use the remaining bit, however small, to move one or more particles of the dust. Therefore, the broom remains a broom until it ceases to exist at all."
"And this also applies to a man?" asked the Emperor as a dangerous smile flickered on his cruel lips.
"Most assuredly," Joachim confirmed.
"Cut off his ears!" the Emperor ordered. The serjeants duly obeyed.
"So, are you still a complete man?" the Emperor asked Joachim.
"Why, yes, of course I am." replied the brave little man who, naturally, was word perfect in lip-reading.
"Then pluck out his eyes!" yelled the Emperor. "Now admit you're not a true man any more."
"Oh, but I still am myself, a true man," responded Joachim who, as we might expect, was sensitive to the vibrations in the air.
"Remove his tongue!"
Joachim wrote with his finger in the sand of the arena: "I am still myself!"
"Wrench off his arms!"
Joachim performed what appeared to be an Irish jig for the cruel tyrant. When he had finished, the words, "As you can see, I am still wholly myself!" could be seen written upon the sand in an exquisite cursive script.
The Emperor jumped to his feet: "Hack off his legs!" he screamed.
The limbless body of Joachim crashed to the ground and, as though finally defeated, a stream of urine fountained into the air. To the consternation of the Emperor, a line of wet sand spelled out the words, "I am still I."
"Emasculate him!"
The sudden, though not entirely unexpected, removal of Joachim's male parts seemed to occasion him much more agony than the previous amputations for he began the most awful writhing in the sand. However, within two minutes, it was clear that his movement was quite controlled for writ in large letters across the breadth of the arena was the phrase, "I am I."
This last defiance enraged the Emperor so much that he grabbed a sword from the nearest of his serjeants and with one mighty blow struck off the head of the ill-used Joachim - though, fortunately, not severing the progressively smaller man's long grey beard. As Joachim's head rolled across the arena, two bright crimson streams spurted from the neck to write "I I" in the sand. The Emperor tore at his hair and then plunged the sword into Joachim's body.
Finally, entirely surrounded by the wisest of the wise, none of whom dared hardly breathe, Joachim's body lay perfectly still. "And now," cried the Emperor with relief, "Who amongst us can say that Joachim is still a true and complete man?" Then, in the ensuing awful and deathly silence, a very slight movement of gasses deep within the bowels of the dead Joachim whispered, "I."
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This is one of the Tales of Joachim |
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Ink Amera |
(C) David 1/9/2007 |
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