I am - to use one of the demotic phrases of your tribe - pleased to meet you. I realise that having what you term a conversation with a flea clinging to the anal hairs of a donkey may not be an everyday experience for any member of your species - in fact, I understand that some of your inhabited settlements are so benighted that the very expression "flea clinging to the anal hairs of a donkey" is actually a term of insult - so I shall attempt to make allowances, slow down my communication metabolism and attempt to establish clearly the appropriate mental conversion processes that will transmit my thoughts via your comparatively primitive "speech and hearing" mode of communication that you have evolved to use - we can only hope that it is fully functioning.
I am ready to deal with your query. Please be assured that I witnessed the events from a very similar vantage point to that which I currently occupy - my precise location being, of course, at the whim of the ass in question - a period ago that your culture would regard as a long time, in fact approximately two of those units that you refer to as centuries. As requested, I shall proceed to explain what happened the night that the couple arrived.
First of all let me clarify that they were not put amongst us as rejects who had no other place to go to, which is an ignoble hypothesis disseminated by an ignorant majority of your tribe. As has been recently accurately documented by one of your leading scribes, but ignored to a quite inconceivable degree by other members of your species, and your tribe in particular, their location amongst us was the result of an act of kindness by the innkeeper to ensure that they were in a quiet place, as far away from the bumbling tumble of the swarming revenant censused hordes as possible. Believe me, there is no peace where there are bureaucrats, or any massing of the recipients of their bureaucratic largesse. Moreover, it was that time of the year when the cold starts to intrude, and for those inhabitants of this earth not able to snuggle up into the steam of an equine rectum, the proximity of tied-up beasts of burden can provide a welcome blanket of heat and on this occasion was indeed a desirable boost to the body warmth of the couple and by extension to that of the woman's own hidden-away tied-up yet-to-emerge beast of burden.
I saw it all from my vantage, clinging where I am clinging now, having satiated myself on whatever scraps or crusts I could find in the sweating cave of muscle where I had habitually located myself. You will observe that I have not moved far, merely transferring my allegiance to successive generations of donkeys, a creature whose life-span appears to be even smaller than yours.
I saw them come in, and tether their ass next to mine. I saw her lay down and rest among the splinters, whilst he stood quietly by. Her halo was immediately apparent, but if he had one, it was invisible to me.
I was not the only example of insect life here. On one occasion, there were also three beetles, crawling across the stones in a line, each with a cross-shape on its back. The man made as if to crush them, but his wife restrained him, picked up the middle one, and held it to her distended belly for a while, before returning it to its middle position. Why she did this, I do not know, because word travels not so much slowly as not at all to the likes of us, and this was a gesture that had no cultural resonance to me and still does not. It is undocumented by your species. The two of them watched the beetles scuttle away beneath the wall and I never saw them return.
The moment soon came when it was time for the child to come out. The mother screamed and spat among the splinters, and yelled in a language I could not discern, while he stood by, quietly, interlocking her clenched fists with his, with the servant woman standing close to them with buckets of cold water, and it came out, and it was a he, its unsliced appendage nestling at the vee of its thighs. The child had no halo that I could discern either. The servant woman reached out, snapped and tied the tether, and smacked the backside of the boy, and when it yelled, all the hooves of the cattle, horses and donkeys drummed together but out of time with each other as if… But no, my role is to describe, not to assign my own interpretation of significance.
They were suddenly not short of visitors. Your testimonies refer to shepherds. They were here. They had been told, much against their wishes, to come to the city to be registered. It is in their tradition to visit new-born babies, to establish a hidden link between the new outpouring of life and the fertility of the pastures upon which the well-being of their beasts depends. They spoke not a word while they were here. Their ovine odour upset the animals. My donkey had a loosening of the bowels that provided initially extra nourishment but subsequently an uneasy abode.
Six meretricious rogues came later by a small number of those units of time that your species refers to as "days", each pair bringing a present between them. Again, the narratives of your officially enshrined documentaries would have it that there were merely three of them, purely because there were three presents, and I believe that other facets of your information system have gone so far as to ascribe totally spurious names to them. Nor were they philosophers: they were pedlars, wrapped in the cheap colours of cheap finery, trying to sell their wares after they had handed over their obligatory gifts as both offerings and samples. She and he, however, had no money, and so the six of them continued on their way, to pester the assembled temporary migrants and attempt to avoid the officials.
And shortly after this, the couple and the baby left, taking their own donkey with them. I was tempted to change my allegiance and switch arses, but security has always won out over adventurousness in my consciousness. As they moved through the stable door, she brushed her hair with her hand, and her halo fell to the ground and shattered.
So there we have it. This is what I saw, and this is what I know. I can state no more.
Moreover, tomorrow is a once-in-a-year treat in the calendar of this particular donkey-anal-flea, that time where I change my diet for just one day to absorb the nutrients that prolong my longevity and keep my sense of recall sharp, and I shall sneak out of my muscular home to feast on the remains of the discarded shards of ancient halo. It is Christmas, after all.
Disgustingly excellent!
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