The Midwife. Jemma Foster

8/14/2019 The Midwife. Jemma Foster

1/30

THE MIDWIFE

JEMMA FOSTER

1


2/30

At first she felt nothing. She had been distracted by a strangely familiar yet not quite

recognisable sound meat on a grill, water on a flame so brief and surprising that

she was momentarily oblivious to the villainous fangs that had harpooned her skin,

shooting venom into her flesh.

The pain, cloaked in shock, had disguised itself magnificently, but before long it crept

out of the shadows and launched its attack.

Paralysis. Fire devoured her muscles before morphing into a cramping ache that

strangled the nerves and froze the tissue.

Asphyxiation. Sand poured into her lungs, now hourglasses at the mercy of time.

Nausea. An army of antibodies fought to expel the poison.

Disorientation. Toxins coursed through her veins, turning the world upside down and

taking her vision hostage.

Loss of hearing. A river of blood flooded her ear canal. Just before the door to the

audible universe closed forever she heard what she now realised to be the distinct

hissing of her tormentor as it slid away through the rushes.

That was the exact moment that Angela Rosalia began to live her life inside a glass

bottle.

2


3/30

Shifting her weight on the pew, Angela traced the lips of the priest as they curled

around vowels and embraced consonants. His tongue flicked against his teeth as he

spat out the words, his jaw see-sawing with purpose as his pupils dilated and

retracted, his arms exalted heavenward.

Then God said: Let there be light; and there was light. And God saw that the light

was good; and God separated the light from the darkness.

She translated his gesticulations as frustration with the torpor of his flock, lost she

suspected - in thoughts far removed from the holy. He vacillated between spurts of

arm flailing, red-faced puffery and head-bowed defeat that at once amused and

saddened her.

The theatrics of his performance struck her as rather amateurish and - judging by a

medley of huffs, puffs and pickings the Sabbath matinee had failed to captivate the

audience. In truth, it was a theatre of sorts, a weekly simulation of faith that served as

the prelude to a social gathering of gossipers and gossipees. They were a vociferous

and fatuous crowd that Angela was grateful she was not obliged to participate in.

When you hide your face, they are dismayed; when you take away their breath, they

die and return to dust. When you send forth your spirit, they are created and you

renew the face of the ground.

3


4/30

She cast her eyes over the dismal, motley bunch and her gaze fell upon the balding

head of the butcher, a fleshy middle-aged man of astonishing hubris who possessed

bovine qualities both in manner and appearance. A bead of sweat trickled down his

neck from what hairline remained, to join a small puddle that had formed at the nape.

Further along the line sat the town clerk. He was a petulant, fidgety creature, who

thought prose convoluted and time wasting, preferring only to talk in numbers. Since

he had become a widower, he fancied himself as quite the Lothario and to her alarm

gave Angela a toothless, lascivious wink. The mayor, a normally austere and

supercilious man, caught her eye and chuckled at this, obviously in a rare jovial mood

on account of his wife being away visiting relatives.

The barmaid, a facetious young woman a good deal younger than the story her face

told and who had shared her thighs with half the village and most of those passing

through - was plaiting her curls, quite aware that the local inebriate was feasting his

beady eyes upon her breasts. He was an odious man, frugal with everything other than

his words and he was known to detain people at the bar (where he had dissipated his

fortune) or in the street for a good few hours with his idiotic rants.

To her relief she saw the twins playing. She had delivered them into the world and as

yet they remained untarnished and delightful nymphs. They communicated with one

another in a secret sign language of their own creation, which the observing Angela

understood, an invisible guest in their imaginary world.

4


5/30

The congregation rose for the hymn and she rifled through the leaves to the page and

observed, with some lament, the deft fingers of the organist as they glided across the

keys.

This is my Fathers world,

And to my listening ears

All nature sings, and round me rings

The music of the spheres.

This is my Fathers world.

I rest me in the thought

Of rocks and trees, of skies and seas

His hand the wonders wrought.


With a somber heart, Angela gently placed her lips around the words but they were

nothing more than empty whispers, for she could not bring herself to sing.

The last time the world had heard her voice - one so ethereal in beauty, so haunting

and otherworldly that it reached out far beyond humanity had been only a few days

before the snakebite.

A young and promising musician, she travelled to the edges of the world, which

promised her its treasures in return for her gift. Music was her life and in her naivety

she had taken it for granted because she could not even fathom a silent world. She

was touring with the Vienna Philharmonic and was in Beijing for their last

performance of Mahlers Song of the Earth.

5


6/30

The words cascaded from her mouth, flowing from within her as naturally as a river

into a sea. She did not just sing of maidens picking lotuses, she was for those few

moments there next to them, scooping up the blossoms in her hands.

Sunshine weaves a web around them

Mirroring their sweet eyes in the water

She did not just sing of the earth, but stood there on the hill with Mahler and watched

as night fell and the world prepared for another day that only the fortunate might

wake up to, and spring renewed the earth again and again.

Oh see!

Like some tall ship of silver sails the moon upon her courses

Through heavens blue seas

When sound disappeared from her life, she could not bear the loss of her love and

retreated from the world as she knew it, vowing never to open her mouth in song

again and her grief weighed heavy on her soul.

Dolores Bilbao traced circles on her pregnant belly with her forefinger as she listened

to the gravelly voice of Priest Olivios. His tone was suitably didactic but also

dangerously soporific and the throaty cadences of the sermon washed over her

6


7/30

thoughts, making her eyelids drape heavily over her eyes. He recorded every Sunday

mass for her and had done so for the 22 years that she had not left the house.

One day long ago, her father an obstinate but kind-hearted and gentle man -

announced that they were moving to the other side of the village. He had been forced

to sell the land but he had no intention of leaving the house that he had helped his

father build as a young boy. He and her brothers set about uprooting the house,

digging up the foundations and hoisting it onto a suitably sized wagon that he had

hired from a neighbour. As the youngest, she rode upfront with the wagon man, while

the rest of her three brothers, two sisters, mother, father, uncle and grandmother, sat in

the living room and held on to the china.

The village was situated on the top of a large peninsula; the northern part bordered by

a rather imposing cliff. Instead of going through the village, which was very bumpy

and littered with potholes, it was decided that they would circumnavigate it and

follow the cliff road. Due to the weight of the house, not to mention that of her

grandmother, progress was slow. They had been travelling for half a day and Dolores

was acutely aware of the rumblings of her tummy and was relieved when they

stopped to have a picnic. It was then that the ropes gave way to the strain and snapped

like the strings of a violin, rolling the house and her entire family off the cliff and

bouncing a thousand feet into the sea, erupting in a splash that soaked the land for

miles around. So a poor little seven-year-old was left standing alone on the edge,

dripping, as she rang out the sea and tears from her frock.

Since that day she had begun to suffer from panic attacks and seizures when faced

with the great outdoors. She slowly retreated from the world, fearful of when another

7


8/30

episode would take hold of her. She moved in with the family of the wagon man who

looked after her until she was old enough to live on her own. Then she bought a little

house in the southern part of the village, but it was not long before she could not

conceive of venturing beyond those four walls and has remained inside all these

years.

Since the recordings began she had grown apart from her faith and instead used the

tapes to live vicariously. She relied on them as an unbiased window on the world,

without which she would rely solely on the words of her visitors and see only with

their eyes. After years of practise, she was now rather adept at allocating the various

murmurings and whispers of the congregation to the names and faces stored in her

memory library. She could pinpoint the stick of the tailor an eccentric man who

approached life with incredible alacrity tapping gently against the stone floor. She

could hear the larger-than-life butcher mopping his brow with a handkerchief and

almost thought she could hear the sweat trickling down his skin. The mayors wife,

who was always dressed in the finest of silks, was fumbling the tortoise shell buttons

of her blouse.

As the idle worshippers stood to sing, there was a torrent of feet shuffling, knees

cracking, pews creaking, coughs released and stifled sneezes gladly expelled. The

house filled suddenly with a cacophony of shrill squawks, booming bellows and

strident warbles as they broke into song.

The birds their carols raise,

The morning light, the lily white,

8


9/30

Declare their Makers praise.


He shines in all thats fair;

In the rustling grass I hear Him pass,

He speaks to me everywhere.

Her mind wandered lucidly and she imagined the sound waves tiny vibrations -

jostling and bouncing along her airwaves, caught by the jugglingpinna, which rolled

them down the bowling alley with his 8-pin and into her ear canal. There they

wiggled their bottoms and danced with her receptors, searching the cavities of her

brain for slides and sound bites of her neighbours.

Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all their multitude. And on the

seventh day God finished the work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day

from all the work he had done.

Waking to an unpleasant racket invading the still of the womb, he breathed in the

saccharine odour of amniotic fluid and heard the syncopated double beat of his

mothers heart against his own and was consumed with melancholy. He did not think

he had it in him to suffer another life.

According to the Babylonian mythEnuma Elish the world was created not by one

benevolent God as a utopian whole in no need of evolution in its perfection. Nor did it

9


10/30

emerge from the ashes of dead stars, an energetic soup of particles that made man out

of stardust. Instead it was born out of conflict, a battle between the Gods, that would

result in Zeus eventual creation of the iron race where evil would manifest itself and

man would labour and perish until even the Gods abandoned the earth they had made.

And so it is fitting that his story begins there.

As he lay in Dolores womb he thought back to his original self that had first been

thrust into existence in Mesopotamia as the illegitimate son of Belshedezzar, one of

the last Kings of Babylonia and a young concubine who died during labour. He was

born a twin but blood was their only bond, and from the womb to the grave he stole

life from his brother.

So Heana was born physically strong and of considerable intellect. He excelled in

politics and commanded a following of fearful devotees, but he had a cold and cruel

heart and it was his brother that the people truly loved. Though he tortured him with

vile words and harsh blows, Abednago never retaliated, never raised his hand. He

instead silently suffered his pernicious ways and continued to love his brother without

condition.

One day, they were sent by their father to Resaena to consult an old oracle on the

future of the Hitite King who he suspected posed a threat to the empire. They left in

the pale light of dawn and travelled for three days in silence, save the odd vituperative

remark from Heana. Normally it was his brothers stoicism that infuriated him most

but this time he was grateful to be alone with his thoughts, for he had other, darker

matters on his mind.

10


11/30

They rode down a deep and savage road to the nexus of the universe. When they

reached the mouth of a cave they journeyed further into the chasm, towards the centre

of the earth where Beelzebubs cavern lay and where the flames of the core were

white with heat, emitting a tremendous howl. Stopping just before the gates to the

woeful city they found the eight-hundred-year-old oracle they had been searching for.

She saw straight into Heanas soul and warned him of the immortal coil that

transcends this time and place, whose shackles were never blind to evil.

In his ignorance and egoism Heana did not take heed of her words and when she

answered his questions with riddles he could not understand, the spite and hatred

inside him bubbled and boiled, and he gauged out her eyes with his blade.

There wretched creature, may you never see again!

Brother, you are mistaken for she does not see with her eyes.

Heana began to laugh. It was a terrible, derisive sound that echoed in the caves and he

turned to his brother and said: Do you speak with your tongue?

With those words he pounced on his Abednago and sliced out his tongue with one

stroke of his knife. He carried him out of the cave and slung him on the back of his

horse, then began the long journey home without pausing to rest. When he reached

the city walls, he waited for darkness to fall.

11


12/30

In the still of the night, he stole into the palace and locked his brother in a disused

dungeon, deep beneath its foundations, where he was sure no one would find him and

he would not see the light of day again.

When dawn broke he told the people a tale of a lion that - though he had valiantly

fought its jaws with his bare hands to protect his brother - had devoured him

nonetheless. The city wept at the news until the tears flooded the gates and their

sorrows floated amongst the streets.

As was the custom, Heana announced the next day that he would be marrying his

brothers widow, Diala. She had always been wary of her brother-in-law and did not

believe his lies. She felt it within her that her husband was still alive and the night

before the wedding she went to a white witch who put a protective spell on her so that

no man could touch her other than her true husband, Abednago. The woman tied a

thread of gold around her waist a symbol of her chastity that could only be broken

by his hands and his alone.

On their wedding night, when Heana found that he could not make love to her, he

flew into a rage and frantically tugged at the thread, but it remained as strong as iron.

He beat her until she barely had life left inside her, but she did not yield and, like

Penelope, waited faithfully for her husband to return.

Decades passed and he reined the kingdom a relentless tyrant who showed no grace.

He led the army with such brutality and evil that no one dared - not even his father -

to second him. Not once in those years did he speak a word to his brother, only

feeding him scraps that he ate in the belief that one day he would see his wife again.

12


13/30

One hot autumn afternoon, he was passing his fathers chambers when he overheard

the King lamenting the day Heana was born and wishing that instead only Abednago

had sprung from his mothers womb and if that had been so then the country might

still be a blessed land instead of one now torn apart by famine, disease and war.

Heana ran to the chamber where he kept his brother and, without uttering a single

word, plunged his knife deep into his chest and tore out his heart. He returned to his

father and hurled the still warm organ at his feet.

Here, this is the heart of the one you love.

The heart of the king was so grief-stricken that it too, stopped beating.

Heana felt a pang in his chest and looked down to see that a scar had appeared on him

in the same place and manner that he had slain his brother. This scar ran deep into his

soul and marked the debt of his sins that he would carry with him into the next life.

Every time he closed his eyes to sleep for the rest of his days, he heard the beating of

their hearts, for he had bargained with Sin and she had opened up the gates of hell.

The Lord God formed man of dust from the ground.

As the muffled words of the priest resounded in the womb, he thought of what fear

could spring from a handful of dust or a fistful of clay and how for epochs man had

allowed his ego to destroy himself and to rape the earth. The world was now full of

tales of greed in bed with corruption, betrayal courting murder and wickedness

13


14/30

spreading far and wide. He did not want to be there to witness its demise and began to

make his retreat.

So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male

and female he created them.

Dolores thought of Adam and Eve, naked and innocent as a baby born into the world,

and it appeared to her that the Fall was a design flaw, for it was God who made

humankind capable of sin, sufficient to stand but free to fall, weak against a breeze. It

followed then that the life inside her, as with every living person, would inherit that

weakness and that frightened her. How could she allow her baby, whom she had

created in her own womb, the freedom of his will but still protect him?

Even before the accident she had been of a particularly nervous disposition. As a child

she was untrusting of her surroundings and led her life through ritual and superstition.

Convinced that the world was a place of utter chaos and jeopardy a jumble of

treacherous molecules colliding with one another at random, she saw that her only

chance of survival of controlling this chaos - was to live by certain rules.

When she woke in the mornings it was imperative that the minute hand rest on an

even number. If it fell on an uneven one, she would close her eyes for another hour,

open them again and hope for an even number. Some days she never got out of bed.

For three years she only spoke in backwards sentences and for much of her life she

14


15/30

refused to have anything to do with primary numbers. By the age of twelve, her

nerves were in ribbons.

As she could not go to the village, the village came to her. The bakers son a morose

boy who appeared to carry the weight of his youth on his shoulders brought her

loaves of bread and pints of milk and used the time as a cathartic offloading of his

woes, to which she listened to with sympathy but not experience. The school

headmaster, who was retired now but had taught her when she a girl, delivered books

once a fortnight, which she feasted on a fantasy world that she could lose herself in,

and which was in many ways more real than the stories relayed by the villagers. The

two elderly and garrulous sisters who lived next door and had a quite alarming

penchant for homebrew would tend to her garden which she otherwise watched

though glass and fill her house with its flowers. The butcher would send her small

parcels and though she had never met him in person, she could tell that he was a mean

and thrifty man by the size and quality of cuts. The grocer was of a more generous

nature and would send her only his ripest, juiciest fruit and vegetables. His wife, a

God-fearing and meddlesome woman, was of a less appealing demeanour and would

yarn at length, prevaricating or at the very least embellishing the goings on of the

village, of which she almost always did not approve of.

In part, these acts sprung from good will and a genuine sense of community

responsibility (or fear of finding themselves in the same predicament) and partly it

was born out of curiosity and boredom. In the past few months there had been a

marked surge in gift-bearing, question-laden visitors, each angling for a clue to the

paternity of her unborn child. Dolores never gave anything away and instead only

smiled and enquired after another member of the village.

15


16/30

When she had chopped the last apple, she piled the fruit into the blender - a cast-off

from one of her neighbours whose husband had banished it on account of the fracas

that it produced. It was a curious contraption and she had never come across one

before, nor did she have a great use for it: she preferred her fruit cut and solid. Still,

she thought it only polite to give it a try. She took a deep breath, crossed her fingers

and pressed the button. It began to roar and yell, churning the pieces of fruit around

its cavernous belly. The sound was deafening and she had to hold the lid down for

fear that it might explode or take flight.

He awoke to an earthquake, the sanctuary of the womb disturbed as its windows

rattled and the waters churned into a tsunami. For a moment, with glee, he thought

that his Armageddon had come, but then the noise subsided, echoing faintly around

him as the waves settled and, to his dismay, normality was restored.

Since his first life he had entered and left the world a doomed man, burdened with the

weight of his past wrongs, his soul cursed and damned. His subsequent lives were

marked with pain and suffering. Incurable diseases, torture, betrayal and unrequited

love littered his incongruous reincarnations. Each time he was born with a birthmark

on his chest that, unknown to him, marked his past sins.

Born to Slovenian parents, the young Henric nicknamed the glass boy because his

bones were as fragile as glass - survived only infancy until he fell from his crib and

16


17/30

shattered into a thousand pieces. Once, he had been cursed with a disease that led the

sun to burn his skin as if paper and he lived his youth like a vampire in darkness until

one day an unwitting maid left the window open and he went up in flames. In Japan,

as Hokuto, he survived long enough to fall so completely and hopelessly in love, only

to then watch as she followed his enemy up the aisle, after which he lost a game of

Russian roulette solitaire. A young foot soldier in Germany, Herman saw things no

man should ever see. He outlived the war only to fall down a well the next day and

wait seven days before death came to rescue him.

After death, the soul rests for a period of time that is relative to the strain life has

bought upon it. Once recovered, the soul is allocated another living body or being.

This may stretch as far down the food chain as a gold fish, and let it be known that the

devastating truth is that their memory goes well beyond a few seconds - a fact that led

him to leap from the bowl and end his tedious life gasping for air on the carpet below.

The gestation period in the womb or egg is a time for enlightened reflection on ones

past lives. Once born, the memory of the past ceases to exist in the conscious. As is

the nature of reincarnation or metempsychosis to be exact - a life star will not be

truly liberated from the confines of a physical shell until it has reached Nirvana: a

state free from sorrow -Dukka - and completely emancipated from ideas of self and

ego. Footprints of mortal acts walk alongside the soul as it remains in a constant flux

of evolution, an energetic causation that branches off into a labyrinth of which the exit

is only known to a few.

The self is dependent entirely on the experience of the senses, involving distinct

modes of past, present and future, existing and reacting to their individual exposure to

life. Each interpretation varies, where one man may see light, another darkness, the

17


18/30

individual is nothing without the whole. The blink of an eye can last for all of

eternity, but the unwitting man forgets this basis of karma and acts selfishly, oblivious

or uncaring of the repercussions of his actions. The present world has gone astray and

the cause is man himself; self-tempted and self-depraved.

Aware now of the past, of Mesopotamia, he felt sorrow and abhorrence at that

existence but could not relate to the man that he was then. He felt alienated yet

inextricably entwined with that life. He could not marry his soul with the evil

capabilities of that man, and, in turn, could not feel the guilt that is the backbone of

remorse.

Instead he felt only the woes of his affliction. He was so far removed from that life, so

disconnected from that guilt that he could only experience bitterness and self-

indulgent pity, sulking as if an adolescent, well beyond his mere eight months in the

womb. He could not see past the injustice of his existence and wanted nothing more

than to end it all. He would have strangled himself with the umbilical cord then and

there if it would have put an end to it all, but he knew better than to think that that

would be the end of his misery. He winced at the memory of his life as a polar bear in

a Singapore zoo and forced himself back to sleep.

When it became apparent to Angela that, unlike her other faculties, her hearing was

not going to return, and might be lost forever, she sat back and watched the silent film

of the world play out around her. As she adjusted to this new visual-heavy world, she

18


19/30

began to see everything in miniature, cuttings and snippets of life. The agitated heel

of a foot dancing in the air, the flirtatious curling of a lock around a finger or the

sideward glance of a lie. She relished in the prosaic and even the smallest mudanities

of life came alive.

The world became a jumble of snapshots: lips quivering, noses twitching, eyes

darting. Where once before she would have listened to the tone of a voice or the

accent to read between the lines, she insteadsaw them. Flushed cheeks, dead eyes, the

presence of energy or lack of it, all became the pretext to speech. She no longer relied

on sound to navigate her life and slowly the world poured back into the bottle.

From the start, she took a pragmatic approach to her disability and set about learning

to read the lips of the people around her. It was a skill that required intuition, a keen

eye and the art of guesswork. People did not always say what they wanted to say with

their lips, but it was almost always there in the eyes, which were less accomplished at

lying or capable of expressing the words they could not. The voice began in the throat

and she watched and monitored the vigour at which the Adams apple bounced up and

down or the way the jugular would expand and pulsate when someone raised their

voice or became angry. Sometimes an entire subplot would develop in a persons

facial expressions a raised eyebrow, frown lines knitting a cats cradle on a forehead,

squinted eyes that suddenly pounced open, dilated pupils, the subtle biting of a lip or

nostrils flaring. To her amusement, Angela realised that the ears of the matron who

cared for her while she was in hospital took on a twitching life of their own when she

19


20/30

became animated or enraged, usually with a maverick patient that had broken the

rules.

It was her time in the infirmary that led her to train as a midwife. Initially the idea had

been met with some disapproval and concern but she proved herself when she

excelled in theory and outshone her peers in practise. Her natural capabilities where

largely attributed to her disability as it was well known that the sounds of a womans

cries during childbirth raised the blood pressure and heart rate of anyone within a five

mile radius. Angelas however remained calm and steady and so in turn had an

reductive affect on the hysteria of the mother and baby.

Angela placed her hands on Dolores stomach and felt the faint and rapid beat of the

babys heart alongside the mothers. The vibrations pulsed through her, she could feel

the baby wriggling, kicking, gurgling. She traced the tiny body with her fingers, but

they stopped short and a feeling of unease rose within her. She took a pair of gloves

out from her bag and applied some petroleum jelly to the latex fingers. As she gently

slipped her hand inside Dolores and felt for the baby, she was met only with a cold

sensation in contrast to the sticky warmth of the womb. She withdrew her hand and

repeated the measurements once again. It was then that she recoiled with horror as she

realised what was so terribly wrong.

Dolores wanted to preserve the precious memory of the babys conception as hers

alone and it was for this reason that she refused to divulge details of the father to the

20


21/30

villagers. For all her concerns with routine and control in life, the conception of her

child was rather haphazard and unexpected, in the most beautiful of ways.

A barefooted stranger, lost in the night and drenched from the storm, had knocked on

her door in need of shelter. He had walked the earth for thirty years and mesmerised

her with a thousand tales of things she could only imagine. He had witnessed the sun

rise over the world from the summit of Everest, watched flesh fall from the clutches

of vultures on the rooftops of Delhi, seen a flock of flamingos land on Lake Naivasha

and turn the water pink and he had danced with the dead in Mexico. For one night, he

served as a lifeline to the outside world that she had for so long been exiled from. In

that moment she felt a wholeness never experienced before and so it was fitting that

this brief union of two lost souls, in finding one another just for one night, had created

another life.

Dr Eugeno Menendez Etchegoin was a stout, snuffly man, who was in the habit of

muttering to himself at inaudible volumes, his language peppered with the likes of hoi

polloi and gobbledegook. He also had a tendency to simply make words up in their

entirety1. He was relentless in his use of a hodgepodge of rare and obsolete idioms,

which infuriated his patients. He commonly referred to the villagers as

flibbertigibbets and they in turn called him a charlatan, quack, beatnik and other such

things less worthy of repetition.

1 Please refer to the Dictionary of Dr Etchegoins Weird and Wonderful Vernacularof Fictitious Idioms.

21


22/30

He was most punctilious and could often be seen examining his large pocket watch,

holding it to his ear to ensure that the tick-tock was regular and had no plans for

escape. He feared time, which was not all unsurprising for a profession that demands

you work constantly against it.

The veteran of many a sleepless night, he devoted the midnight hours to his studies

and at the first wink of dawn he could be seen crossing the gates of the village and

walking up towards the mountain, to collect various remedial mushrooms, roots and

leaves for his concoctions.

Despite these idiosyncrasies he was, in truth, a good-hearted and erudite old man

whose wisdom went far beyond the realms of western medicine. He wanted so

desperately to cure the world around him. It appeared to him that for years the village

had fallen into a state of constant malaise, one that stemmed not from the body but

from the mind. At times, late at night, his thoughts were encumbered with the sound

of their hearts creaking in the wind, rocking their sick souls to sleep.

There was a knock on the door that sounded as if it came not from that door but

another one, far away in a parallel universe.

Doctor?

He turned to see Angela standing in the doorway, her head resting against the wall in

a way that implied that she would not be there at all if it were to relinquish its support.

22


23/30

Why only the nudiustertian I was pondreaming about you. Can I offer you some

advwisdes?

Thank you but I just ate.

Thats all very saludood but is there some medistion you came to ask?

Angela was reminded why she kept her visits to the doctor at a minimum, the

conversation was always somewhat testing.

Its Dolores and her baby.

Oh fuddlesticks, what is the wee spondguman up to?

He appears to be shrinking.

SHRINKING!! he bellowed, veins bulging. No dilly-dallying we must bootatglov

and get there with hasthurun!

Much to his disappointment, Angela did not appear to share his sense of urgency and

remained rooted to the spot.

Do you have another quiz?

No, the house is unlocked.

23


24/30

Angela paused and took a moment to gather her words. Theres something else. It

defies all reason and science, but when I felt for the baby inside to no avail - I could

hear his thoughts.

That is most shockculier indeed. If I may veriloquent, it has been perknown to me

for some snipochs that if all that exists in the world anscalls to reason and logic, the

world would be a very dull place indeed. He lent back in his chair and inhaled deeply

on his pipe, the contents of which were a constant source of speculation. What was

he insithinking?

He does not want to be born and I fear that if we do not do something, though what

exactly evades me, he will disappear all together.

Quite right, afirmas, what a conundrum. He yanked on his winklepickers and with a

jaunty step, set off with Angela on his arm in the direction of the reluctant baby and

expectant mother.

He had, of course, been aware that he was shrinking for some time, and it had pleased

him in the hope that he still might not be born. It was only now though that its

attention had come to the midwife, that it became a reality for him and he wondered

what his alternative fate would be and if Mother Nature were just calling his bluff. If

he were to die a natural death would he not just be born again, into another life as

dismal, if not more so than this one? Or would his lifes star explode in a supernova

24


25/30

and be swallowed by the abyss? Would he then float, suspended in a black

nothingness for all of eternity, with his thoughts alone for company?

The Doctor knelt down on his knees in front of Dolores and began to prod and poke,

listen and observe, measure and weigh until he was, well, dissatisfied,but nonetheless

convinced of his findings.

He took Angela outside to relay that he had come to the same unfortunate conclusion

that she had. Then he turned on his heels and scurried off as fast as his little legs could

carry him to brew blends of teas, medleys of potions and all sorts of magical powders

and creams.

Over the followings days, under the pretence of a mild iron deficiency and doing his

upmost to mollify Dolores who was becoming increasingly and understandably on

edge, he tested these home remedies on mother and baby, but with no joy. On the

ninth day, he took Angela outside and with much remorse expressed his fearful

conclusions.

No medicine can cure his sickness, for it is a sickness of the soul. He has fallen out

of love with life and I do not know what can bring that back, he said with rare

perspicuity.

25


26/30

He had shrunk now to half his size and day or night he tossed and turned with his

thoughts. Was it admirable to face the bullets of the future, armed with the weapons

of today or was it prudent to cut his losses and drown in his sea of maladies? He was

sure a friend had asked him the same question once before; it seemed to him such an

oddly familiar predicament. Was it noble or insane to enter into the world and fight

what appeared to be a losing battle, or was it sensible to silently slip away? Was to

feel - to havesomething- not preferable to nothing? Fear grew inside him as his life

began to ebb away from his ever tinier grasp.

She had helped deliver thousands of children, and she had a wrinkle for every one of

them, but none had caused her as much grief as this one. She could accept that those

who had truly lived life could become disenfranchised from it but she could not bear a

child who had not yet even tried. And with this thought she began to cry deep, vast

pools of tears. She wept for the baby, for Dolores, for herself and for the miserable

world around her. Then she heard a sound so magnificent and divine that she listened

for a lifetime before realising that it was, in fact, her own voice.

His thoughts were suddenly and bewitchingly intercepted by a haunting beauty that he

had never experienced before. In a solitary note, the culmination of his hopes and

26


27/30

fears sung out to him and it was in that moment that he understood suffering as a

necessary part of existence, not only that, he relished it. Nothing could be beautiful

without pain. No bird could sing without experiencing sorrow. No sun could rise

without setting. For every person that left this world, another two entered into it. It

dawned upon him with incredible clarity and peace that without this understanding

and acceptance of his past, he and the universal equilibrium would be thrown off

course so catatonically that it would catapult not just his world but that around him to

spin on an axis that would take a million eons of unravelling to restore its balance.

His heart, as did his mothers, and every single beating heart in the land, stopped dead

in its tracks. The butcher lay down his knife, the clerks pen ran dry of ink and the

tailors stick stopped tapping. They looked inside themselves and the muddy waters

ran clear with hope.

Years passed, the leaves of the universe fell and scattered the ground, the flowers

wilted and covered with frost, they slept a winter and woke again to a spring. The sun

rose to paint the morning and set a thousand times while the moon bounced across the

horizon. The song had no words, but, at last, everyone understood its meaning. When

Angela rested on her final, long note their hearts started to beat again, but to a

different rhythm.

In this time, he grew and grew until he was not only ready, but eager to meet the

world again. His thoughts were no longer just with himself but with what might be -

27


28/30

for better or for worse and he wanted to live it with his all. It was then that he heard

a loud, guttural sound that seemed as though it came from a distant prehistoric beast, a

primal call that he finally knew how to answer.

Dolores awoke from her deep sleep to hear a cry that rolled like thunder across the

fields, expelled uncontrollably from her core. She willingly submitted every thought

and emotion and trusted in her body, no longer afraid. With an unbearable desire to be

outside and leave the house she had for so long been imprisoned in, she broke down

the door and drank in the air around her with ecstasy.

Her eyelids instinctively shut against the sunlight, a dazzlingly white haze curious to

spring. The ground was covered in a thousand flakes of snow that refracted like a

garden of diamonds. The natural volume of the world was magnified and she could

hear at once the rapture of a mother feeding her nest with worms, ants erecting grass

scaffolding in their dead city of twigs and foxes chasing their unsuspecting prey. It

was not until she heard the cries of her newborn son that she came to herself and

opened her eyes to see the glory of her surroundings, imbued in the sunlight, and she

understood, instantly, that everything was different now.

In those final moments, as he was thrust from the self he had just briefly known and

catapulted into a world that he would see again with fresh eyes, armed with the silent

28


29/30

wisdom of his soul. He emerged, flooding the world with his tears, this time not of

agony but of new beginnings and with flesh no longer bearing the scar of his past, for

his soul had, at last, grown out of it.

-END-

29


30/30

Date post:	30-May-2018
Category:	Documents
Upload:	tashall
View:	220 times
Download:	0 times

The Midwife. Jemma Foster

Documents