Tales of Joachim

(and his lamb)

Close your eyes and imagine...

— imagine a diminutive man with a long, grey straggly beard, and a lamb who will never become a ram;

— imagine how they find themselves caught up in history and legend and myth, and modern invention;

— imagine this unlikely pair as foils for humour and philosophy, the sublime and the ridiculous;

— imagine them on the eternal quest for simple understanding: here teaching, here learning;

— imagine most of all how wonderful it is that you can read this;

Now open your eyes....

1. 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.

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.

3. Achilles and Zeno

One day, as Achilles was idly picking at his toenails with the end of his spear, an old Greek philosopher sidled up to him. "Wanna race?" said the ancient.

4. The Pied Piper of Hamllyn

"Did you know that 'B' and 'F' are two pillars supporting the octave of musical tones?" asked Joachim, as he watched the placid glass-green waters...

5. Evensong

"One should not delve too deeply into things," Joachim said to the Great Architect of the University as the two of them waded through the foundations...

6. The Old Man and the Sea

"Apsu, apsu, every where, nor any mead to drink..." sighed Noah, as he gazed across the unfathomable face of the deep.

7. Talk of the Devil

Joachim dropped the sheaf of papers on his lap as he fondled the lamb's head and said in exasperation, "This contract is the very devil!"

8. The Citadel

Through the Valley of Despair they came; an innumerable surge of gross humanity: unwashed, ragged, lame. Bowed but never quite broken...

9. Lamb Cutlets

The vet wiped the anal thermometer across the brown sleeve of his old tweed jacket, plucked the antique stethoscope from his ears and sniffed loudly.

10. Cave Rescue

The leaden sky turned to graphite, drawing an early evening to the fell. The vast canvas of softly burnished browns and sallow greens, washed here and there in purple haze, charred into coal-black silhouettes...

11. One Lesson

"I don't remember my death, of course," said the Dalai Lama. Joachim nodded...

12. Understanding

Finishing the bedtime story, Joachim allowed the paperback to close then placed it on the ornate mahogany bedside table beside the lamb.

13. A Rum Business

The lamb's Navy rum hadn't gone down by so much as one eighth of an inch in the last half hour. "Looks like you'll have to carry him home," laughed Nelson...

14. Blut und Ehre

"Note that one night too, the three blutwursts for Lohengrin's five very sick swans even got ate by nine. That's ten incidents!"

15. The Sands of Time

"I think we may have a bit of a problem," Joachim said, as he stepped out of the machine and saw himself sitting on a rock, whittling a piece of blackthorn root into the shape of a plesiosaur.

Postscript

"And that," said Joachim, yawning as he closed the heavy covers of the almagest, ornately decorated with a golden image of Athene's Owl, before placing it carefully - reverently almost - upon the scored and scarred and deeply patinated lignum vitae plane which served as top to the intricately perforated occasional table at his side, "is the last game: the end of the tale."

Michael laughed. "The absolute end: the very tip? It does seem to have rather a lot of whiskers, though. Are you certain there are not a few hairs yet to write?"

Joachim gave his inverted twin a condescending glance and, in silence, fondled the flaking spiral of the large ram's horn which hung by a woollen thread, twined of several colours, from his shoulder.

"Perhaps," he said, after several seconds of consideration. "It is like a ladder stretched between Earth and Heaven: there are always a few more rungs to right."

Michael's mouth twisted in sardonic triumph as he twisted mentally the sword in his imaginative grasp: "And so there never is an end? All is infinite? - Or continuum? I think we've caught you out there."

Joachim's answering smile was lost beneath his long, grey straggly beard. "Can there be an end if there is no beginning?"

"Now I've got you talking in riddles," laughed Michael. "And in my book, know-alls only talk in riddles because they really don't know enough about the subject to hold a proper conversation on it. Riddles, indeed! Just watch out you don't fall through the interstices!"

"And in the end, all is dust..." mused Joachim. "No, my dear brother. I may be small - and fictional, even, in your book - but I'm still of too much substance to be blown away like chaff between the legs of oxen on some ancient sacred threshing floor."

"Then explain this rubbish about ends and beginnings. If you can!"

"Oh, I can indeed," Joachim said, "but now is not the time, nor here the place, for the subject is not quite so prosaic as to sully itself on these pages."

"When, then? Where?" asked Michael, darkly.

"Ah," said Joachim, a wicked grin lighting up his own fair face. "Since the light of my humble (but nevertheless profound) little homilies has given you a game tan, let me put it this way: you might be a demonic magnate but if your origins had not resulted in your being so green as to be a cabbage looking frog when it comes to that serpentine metamorphosis of letters, commonly referred to as the anagram, to which you are averse but to which I, as student of the arcane, am drawn like a magnet, secretly indulging in the practice from time to time, the name tag pinned upon your chest would surely show you holding the position of gateman to the Aureole by now!"

"Hrrmph!" said Michael, suddenly disappearing through a golden age.

Ink Amera

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