Joachim Finds Meaning

Joachim was growing tired of tests. Every day it was tests, tests, and more tests, and not in metaphors. These were tests of needles and gauges, of straps and tongue depressors, shavings and sterile gauze wrappings and faceless aids, hovering over the hygienic white space, filling and emptying. Jump through this. Can you hear that? Does it hurt when I do this? Tests. More tests.

It wasn’t his fault. Joachim was only a boy.

They had a name for his condition – hyperthrihos – which Joachim couldn’t even pronounce. His body was covered from head to toe in hair, like a primate, topped with an oval-shaped skull. Nothing like anyone had ever seen.

His father Rafael had said, “His life will be full of struggle. He will be mocked. He will be ridiculed.” And so, when Joachim wasn’t undergoing tests behind hospital doors, he was shrouded underneath white draping cloths, leaving only a slit for his hairless eyes.

“Perhaps you should have him join the circus,” Rodolfo, his grandfather, had tastelessly joked, to lighten the doom of his family’s misfortune. Mayalen, Rodolfo’s only child and the mother of Joachim, was a ceaselessly pious woman, or entirely humorless, depending on the circumstances at hand. What was certain was that, at the age of twenty-eight, she had swallowed enough exhales of wounded innocence to forever crush a heart into blackness. She endured with fury alone. She told her father, plainly, “Joachim is going to be a man, not a beast.”

And so the tests justified the man, for the boy’s mother. The professionals kept their distance from the boy, treating their subject as humanely as possible without engaging his full humanity. To be accurate, they were unsure of the immediacy of this human link. Joachim was not only covered in hair, but also off the charts in his mobility, flexibility and strength – already he was a man.

“Not only that,” said one specialist, “But his intuition is very unique, and he’s demonstrated an innate sense of placement and direction. Even blindfolded with earplugs in, his response is alarmingly acute. A marvel, really, a total anomaly.”

But none of this meant anything to Joachim, as his perspective was drowned in a sea of white chaos – indifference, analysis, despair – and his loyalty had no measure of balance. All of it felt the same, distanced.

At home he would sneak away to the basement of the family’s two-story house, disrobe into his underwear only, and stand on old furniture and boxes, looking out the windows unto the lawns and streets before him. From this vantage point he could envision a framed world, bustling with activity and movement of wheels, organisms organizing, dogs sniffing, other children chasing down desires. Standing on boxes behind icy windows, he was safe and unobserved.

* * * * * *

Kostas Vondapoulos set down his book and looked out the window. It is now warm and clear, he thought. Now is a good time.

He stood and walked into his bedroom and pulled his shoes out of the closet, returning then back to his chair. All of his movements economical, all of his gestures with a purpose. Every breath coming in and going out of his lungs was measured and grateful.

Kostas stood again and looked closely out the window, thinking he had seen something dart across the lawn. He shook his head and thought, too hurried, I am much too hurried. He sat again and slipped on each shoe, dressed as every day in lightweight black cotton pants and pullover shirt. He re-examined the drawstring on his pants, pulled out on the shoulders of his shirt, and rose back to standing, seemingly all at once. For a man of seventy-one years, Kostas was admirably fit.

He went outside to his side lawn carrying a mat under his left arm, which he then unrolled across the perfectly trimmed surface. The sun burned a hole through the sky and shone across much of the block, yet the air remained crisp.

Kostas began his series of postures by leaning forward and touching his toes and holding for several breaths as the wind whisked by his head in sporadic gusts. He breathed in, and out. In and out.

There had always been an elusive channel of stillness in between the busy shorelines of Kostas’ consciousness, or at least as he liked to picture it. Always the river flowed, caged in the past by smoke and mirrors, now widening with each quiet day. Kostas was close. He knew what he was approaching and knew how to approach it. Almost, he thought, almost I am there. The movement of stillness, the breath, once more, one move closer. It had taken a lifetime to begin what he set out to encounter, and on sad days he found himself wondering what might have been done with all of those lost years. But now, he reminded himself, I have started now, and now I am close and there isn’t a lost day to remember, nor a reason not to try.

Arts come in many languages, and Kostas had adapted many of them into his practice. His daily routine mixed equal parts ashtanga, hatha, and Kostas, he liked to joke. In all of his seventy-one years on this earth he hadn’t so much as a migraine headache, and he intended to keep on that path. Variety within the construct of discipline, he repeated, is that which breeds vitality. The string cannot be too loose, or it will lack the strength to resonate, nor can it be too tight and risk snapping at the slightest touch.

Kostas reached into a warrior’s posture and inhaled deeply into his open chest and then saw something – what was that – out of the corner of his eye. He sensed it coming from across the way, and stood up tall to look. It had come from the basement window of his neighbor’s home.

* * * * * *

He knew he had been looking for too long and would soon enough have been caught staring, and so Joachim, in his underwear, cursed himself as he crouched beneath the opening of the window pane. His knees bounced together, and for the first time in his life there was an unstoppable coursing through his veins. Breathlessly, he moved up and peered over the bottom frame of the window, just his eyes and forehead. He just had to look.

And there stood Kostas, staring from across the lawn.

Joachim darted back down and thought about panicking. Perhaps he could cry for his mother and fabricate a story, but how could he justify the half-nakedness? Why had he been down here, staring at strangers performing calisthenics on their side lawn? Had the man really seen him?

He slowly looked out the window another time, and the man was no longer staring. Joachim watched as the old man sat, legs crossed, and with his eyes closed, how the man hummed to himself, and soon enough the boy’s curiosity trumped his fear.

And once again Kostas opened his eyes, only this time without the retreat of the boy, who, frozen in place, had been caught for good. For a moment the boy considered running, but there was truly nowhere to run. Something the man said with his eyes said come here son I have something to show you.

* * * * * *

Joachim approached the old man, covered in his white shawl. The lawn was immense, and it seemed to take an eternity to cross it and for the old man to finally acknowledge Joachim’s presence.

“I see you are curious,” said Kostas.

Joachim nodded beneath his hood.

“Come then, we will have tea.”

And the boy watched as the man rolled his mat with tireless care and followed as the man went inside the house.

* * * * * *

Joachim liked the taste of the tea, and held it close to his face to let the steam warm his nostrils.

“You are fond of Chai tea, no?” said Kostas.

The boy smiled through his hair.

Kostas set his cup down and leaned forward.

“You,” Kostas said, “Are not like the others. Do you know your history?”

Joachim nodded his head no.

“Always there is history,” said Kostas, “And yours is very much ancient and rich. You please wait here.” Kostas left to the other room and returned immediately, holding a book covered in black silk embroidering. He flipped through the pages as Joachim sipped the tea and stared around the kitchen, fascinated especially by a painting of the purple Krishna pinned above the stove in the old man’s kitchen.

“What is your name?” asked Kostas, still leafing through the pages of the book.

“M-My name is Joachim.”

“Ah,” said Kostas, “The lord will judge, that is your name, this is what it means. But perhaps your mother and father, they did not know, because – “

He held the book open and passed it across the table to Joachim. On the page was a small sepia-toned picture of a man wearing a three-piece suit, framed formally, the exception being the hair streaming across both sides of his face, along his eyebrows, over his nose and mouth and chin. Hair; long, beautiful strands parted down the middle of every feature. Covered in hair.

Joachim looked to Kostas with clear eyes, and Kostas grinned assuredly.

“This,” Kostas pointed to the picture, “Is the fiercest in all of the warriors of the Shao-Lin. China, yes? You see, he was left as a child, left behind as you say, a rubbish thing, a demon they think, perhaps. And one day then, a monk passing by, took the child along with him and then home to the circle of the Shao-Lin masters. They knew very much it would be hard for him to live out, in the world, so for him they decided training would be best. And do you know then what happened?”

Joachim shook his head no.

“The child proved very much to be strong, and to be how you say, vigilant. Never does a man train in every branch of the Shao-Lin, but for him they make an exception. For him they have a name, Su Kong Tai Djin.”

Joachim brushed his fingers over the picture and wanted to keep it with him forever.

“Su Kong means grand master, and soon this was his name. So strong were his skills and technique, that he fought bears with his own hands, for practice.”

With this, Kostas pantomimed with his arms held high and growled, as a bear might, and it made Joachim giggle.

“So too was the time for when a meeting, yes, was arranged for Su Kong and the other twelve Shao-Lin masters, and the masters bowed to greet him. And instead then of bowing, Su Kong threw a knife straight up high – SHA! – and struck in the heart of an assassin, trying to hide in the rafters above. It was the breathing. Thirteen breaths he had heard, one more than he expected.”

Joachim’s eyes grew wide and Kostas laughed with great enthusiastic bellowing for some time.

“You are very much surprised then, no? That you have a history?” Kostas inquired.

Looking back down to the page before him, Joachim felt the burn of relation in his chest and it trembled down his arm as he held fast onto the book. He looked into the eyes of the man in the picture and they sang back with possibility.

Kostas leaned back and nodded.

“For you,” he said, “The book.”

“Oh,” said the boy.

posted by ZHorton at 6:41 AM