The Knowledge Stone (16 page)

That evening, after the evening meal was finished, Old Malik spoke, looking at Joachim and Giana: ‘You know I have been conducting important business in the last few days. This is business that affects the future of both of you. We will speak about this tomorrow evening. Meanwhile Maretta and I must speak further and I would ask you to leave us alone.’ This hardly reassured the young people. They withdrew to Joachim’s house and he lit the lamp before they sat down in some dismay.

‘It’s going to affect our future.’ Joachim was sombre. ‘That sounds ominous. It must be about the future sale of the farm. Maybe he’s selling it right now. Maybe he’s sold it already.’ Their faces mirrored their worry. Then Joachim, ever practical, tried to inject a positive note. ‘Look, Giana, whatever it is we’ll know tomorrow. And whatever happens, we have each other.’ Giana was quite startled by this declaration.

‘I suppose so,’ she murmured uncertainly, looking anything but convinced!

The night passed restlessly. The day dragged by on leaden feet of worry. The evening meal was eaten distractedly and cleared away rapidly.

Then … Old Malik looked at Giana: ‘First it’s you I wish to speak to, Giana. I want to tell you a story. You’ll be interested in this story, because it’s a story about you.’ The man paused and looked at Maretta. She nodded encouragingly. Old Malik continued. ‘You will have seen that we have no children. We have never had any, although it was our wish to have many. After we had accepted this, one night the midwife of this village came to me at the village tavern and offered to sell me a new-born baby to be adopted as my own daughter. But I refused to take the child.’ The last sentence was spoken very quietly.

There was a long pause, then the man spoke again.

‘Do you know who that child was, Giana?’

‘No, Master, I don’t,’ the girl whispered.

‘Well, Giana, that child was you! You had been born in the middle of a violent storm and your mother and father were killed shortly after by a falling tree. You were found by a travelling merchant and his wife. They gave you to the village midwife so that she could find a home for you. That’s when she came to me and I refused to have you. As a result, the midwife placed you in the handyman’s family and I know you had a very bad time there. Years later when he decided to sell you, you were thin and ragged and starving. That’s when I bought you. Maybe you remember?’ Giana did remember. It was not a pleasant memory; Old Malik had frightened her. The man now ended his story. ‘So you came here and you have been the Mistress’s servant ever since.’

Giana had a question: ‘Master, how do you know that the baby given to the handyman was the same baby you were offered?’

‘A good question. I had to check that too. I went to the handyman the other day and asked him to tell me what the midwife had said about the baby. The story she told him was identical to the story she told me. The only extra bit of information he was given was your name. Evidently the merchant’s wife had named you Giana after her grandmother who lived in a country far away. So there’s no doubt there was only one baby – and that baby was you!’

There was a long silence. Then Giana spoke, tears in her eyes.

‘Master, why are you telling me this? It is making me sad.’

‘Giana,’ the man spoke huskily, ‘if I had accepted you all these years ago, you would have been brought up here as my daughter and Maretta would have been your mother. Now I am going to put things right.’ He took out a thick piece of paper, rolled as a scroll. ‘I know you are not able to read this, Giana, so I will ask Joachim to tell you what it says.’

Joachim took the scroll and opened it, reading its contents quickly.

‘Giana, this paper says that from today you are the adopted daughter of Malik and Maretta and that you have all the rights and privileges of their daughter. It is signed and sealed by the landowner, in his position as King’s Justice.’

There was complete silence in the room. Giana sat, wide-eyed, looking from Old Malik to Maretta, her mind clearly in the numbness of total surprise.

Then Old Malik spoke: ‘Giana, you will no longer call us Master and Mistress. You are no longer a servant. It is your choice how you wish to address us. We hope you might choose Father and Mother. This would please us greatly.’ Giana burst into tears of shock and joy.

‘Of course I would wish to call you Father and Mother,’ she said between sobs, ‘this is the best day of my life.’ The girl rose from her chair and threw herself into Maretta’s lap. ‘Mother,’ she cried, ‘I will be a good daughter, you will see. You will never regret taking me as your daughter.’ Maretta put her arms around Giana and they rocked gently together.

Joachim was surprised but very pleased for Giana. What an incredible story! What a wonderful outcome. Admittedly, he had thought the “important business” would be about the farm. He had never guessed that Giana was to be Malik and Maretta’s daughter. Within his feeling of joy for Giana, there was nevertheless an aching emptiness. Giana’s life had been transformed. At one stroke she had changed from being a servant to a loved daughter of a successful farmer. On the other hand, his life, good as it was, was totally unchanged. As all these thoughts swirled around in his brain, he suddenly became aware that Malik was speaking to him.

‘Joachim! Joachim!’ The man tried in vain to gain the boy’s attention and placed his hand upon his arm.

‘Sorry, Malik, it’s all been such a great surprise and I was thinking …’ His voice tailed off.

‘Joachim, the important business is not yet finished. We must yet talk about the future of the farm.’ These words brought Joachim back to the reality of his life. Now Malik was going to tell him about selling the farm. How was this going to affect him? All his worries flooded back.

The man now spoke quietly into his ear: ‘Joachim, Maretta and I are not adopting you as our son. You still have a father and a mother in the next village and you are still their son. But I want you to know we both think you are a very fine young man; if things were different, we would be delighted to have you as our son.’

Joachim sat totally still. Malik’s words had disappointed him. He would still be a servant, just like he was before – and with a new master, when Malik sold the farm. He felt deflated, alone and abandoned. Malik was still talking quietly into his ear but, in his misery, the boy’s hearing had ceased to function. Then he became aware that the old man was holding out another scroll of paper: ‘What was this? What was happening?’ The boy tried to listen to Malik’s voice but was unable to comprehend the words that Malik was speaking. He gazed at the old man’s face blankly.

Finally, with a great effort, Joachim was able to reset his hearing and he interrupted the older man: ‘Malik, I am sorry, so much is happening and I have missed what you have been saying. Will you please start again?’

Malik smiled gently at him and, in reply, handed him the heavy scroll of paper: ‘Joachim, are you listening to me now?’

The boy nodded.

‘This paper makes you my sole heir. When I die, the farm will be yours. The farm and everything in it. I would only ask that you look after my wife and my daughter should I die before them. Will you do that?’

The boy was flabbergasted, hardly able to understand what had just happened to him.

‘Of course I would,’ he said faintly, ‘I promise – I will write a paper to you recording my promise.’

‘No, Joachim, your word is enough for me.’

The boy looked at the old man with great love in his eyes and they embraced warmly. ‘You have made my life wonderful,’ Joachim said, speaking through tears of joy, ‘and I will never let you down.’

Meanwhile, the words “I will be the owner of this farm!” raced around inside his head, almost making him giddy. He had never been so happy.

So the months and years passed. Joachim became a man and took over the running of the farm as Old Malik withdrew more and more from the work.

‘I am an old man,’ he said to Joachim, ‘I can leave the work to you, now.’

‘As long as I can always come to you for advice,’ Joachim would always reply with a fond smile.

The years had also transformed Giana. She had metamorphosed from a young and skinny girl into a beautiful, tall young lady. She and Joachim often sat and talked together in the evening after the meal had been eaten. They were firm friends and enjoyed each other’s company very much.

One evening, they sat quietly in front of Joachim’s house and tried to count the stars, soon having to abandon the attempt: ‘There are too many stars to count,’ Joachim said, ‘Just think of all the worlds there must be up there.’

‘I’m perfectly happy with this one,’ Giana answered softly. ‘I like it the way it is. I like the way everything is different …’ The word “different” echoed in her ears and sent her mind back to something Maretta had said to her. What was it? Ah yes, she remembered now.

She turned to look at Joachim: ‘Do you know what Mother said to me once? She said: “Boys are very different from girls.”’

The silence lengthened as they both contemplated these words.

Then, for the very first time, she slipped her slim hand into his and breathed: ‘I think I’m glad …’

Perhaps the power associated with the Stone should be linked with the concept of “dark matter”. Today, it is proposed by science that such matter is plentiful in our universe systems but its constitution, existence and reality are currently unknown speculations.

Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. And the Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground – trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Genesis Chapter 2 Verses 8-9.
The Holy Bible, New International Version (The Bible Society, 1973)

Looking around, she seized an old, rusty broad-bladed knife from a box of tools. ‘This will help me to get it open,’ she thought, forcing the blade under the lid and levering the knife handle upwards. At first the box resisted her attempts but then the wood splinted around the lock and the lid flew open on its hinges to reveal its contents – a small yellow stone lying upon a thick layer of woollen cloth.

In her disappointment, the girl was about to throw the box and stone on the floor and kick both into a dark corner but, at the last moment, something made her change her mind. Instead, with finger and thumb she picked up the stone from its bed of cloth. It proved to be rather light in weight, roughly cylindrical in shape and with two peculiar depressions towards one end. As she held the object, her finger and thumb slipped along the length of the stone and fitted quite naturally into the two depressions near the top. It was then that Kati felt a strange momentary jolt within her, a strange feeling she had never experienced before; for a moment her head swam.

‘That’s funny,’ she thought, ‘I’ve never felt that before. I wonder what caused it? Maybe I’ve spent too much time in here. Maybe the air is too dusty.’

Now that the stone was much closer to her eyes, Kati could see that it reflected multicoloured light in quite an attractive way; the light appeared to come from vertical lines etched along its length. The girl now looked at the stone with mounting interest.

‘You know, this would hang nicely on a fine gold chain,’ she mused; ‘a hole could be pierced through these depressions. What a good idea that is.’ Once again, Kati was very pleased with herself. No sooner had that thought entered her mind than she was looking around for the means to make a hole through the stone. ‘A large sharp nail would do it,’ she said impatiently, her eyes darting around the storeroom.