2
The Nativity
When Joachim was born, on the stroke of midnight, it took the midwife no more than a single look to restore her wavering faith in the Adversary. Within five minutes - that being the shortest time in which her elephantine legs could manage to convey the remainder of her ponderous bulk the three hundred yards of distance involved - she had wrenched the massive church door almost from its hinges and not so much asperged but bathed herself in Holy Water, drinking a good deal in the process. She then ignited every candle in sight, paying by a mental promissory note. This last act had the beneficial side effect of causing a rapid evaporation of the saturating Holy Water, thus sparing her from almost certain pneumonia as her ample bare knees dragged her from this side altar to that across the rough flags and smooth tiles, all of which paid more than adequate testimony to the praeternatural chill ever inhabiting these sacred buildings.
Just as the midwife (but that should be 'former midwife', of course, for by this time she had resolved herself to a nunnery, vowing never to look at another neonate) was re-selling her soul to her particular deity, the delivered woman was crying, "My God! He's the spitting image of his father." It was true: the seven-minute old boy sported a straggly grey beard roughly twice the length of his diminutive wrinkled body.
"Eh?" said the father who, being considerably older than his young maid of a wife, was rather hard of hearing and often said, "Eh?" He bent down over the super economy family size packet of 'Mmm-Oaty-Munchies' in which the unfortunate and grey-bearded infant lay, having been dropped so unceremoniously by the erstwhile midwife in her flight of terror. 'Mmm-Oaty-Munchies' are tiny ring-shaped crisp cereal biscuits which curiously had satisfied his wife's dietary cravings over the last several months but which, over the past few weeks, had been developing an interesting quality of elasticity and chewiness. "So he is. Just hang on while I go and fetch Doctor Shepherd from up the road to come and have a look at him."
"All right, but mind you don't let that old cow in from next door," said his wife, "nor that ass of a husband she's got. I can just imagine what they'd have to say about it." Absent mindedly, she reached down and pulled off what - it must be said in her defence - she truly believed was an especially rubbery 'Mmm-Oaty-Munchie'. "Ouch!" cried Joachim, "That hurt!"
Myth and legend, if not history, teach us that the very best of heroes always come, like salt and pepper or fish and chips, as part of a set. While the father, shining with the pride of new paternity, told his tale to Doctor Shepherd who, suffering from chronic insomnia, spent his nights counting sheep and so had been easy to arouse, a twin to Joachim entered the scene quite unexpectedly and, moreover, quite unknown to anyone other than Joachim and his mother. True to mythographic form, the new arrival was the exact opposite of Joachim: where the first had a beard, the second was hairless; where one was wrinkled, the other was smooth; where one was black, the other was white; as one had blue eyes, so had the other brown. "Oh, my!" the surprised mother exclaimed, "Whatever shall I call you?"
"Might I make a suggestion, mother?" offered the young Joachim who was busy severing the umbilical cord after solving a very knotty problem with three pieces of string.
His mother, still stunned by the less than anticipated appearance of the inverse infant, failed to register anything at all unusual in the activities of her firstborn. "Oh, please, if you would," she said. "I really hadn't thought of another name since I was only expecting one."
"Since he's my opposite, so to speak, I think we ought to give him a reversed version of my name."
"Mihcaoj?" frowned the mother. "That doesn't sound like a proper name."
Joachim smiled at her simple naivety. "No, mother. Not 'Mihcaoj' but 'Michael'. That is, if you don't mind engendering an Elohist along with a Yahvist?"
"Yes, all right," agreed his mother. "That seems a very good name for one who is like you by being your opposite."
Curiously, by the time Joachim's father returned with Doctor Shepherd (and the three rich uncles who resided across the river on the East Bank), Michael was nowhere to be seen. There was some later gossip, apparently originating with Mrs Methy at the Bakery, about a strange child being nurtured by wolves, unicorns, wild bees and, most strangely of all, a bear of the forest.
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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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