Fairy tales

In Sunday school we had a teacher with a clubfoot, but she was a great storyteller. We were fascinated by both foot and stories, though rather more by the stories. One of them was about a dream the pharao of Egypt had. In it he saw seven fat and seven skinny cows. He couldn't make much of it and was looking for some explanation. A while before a certain Joseph, an Israelite sold as a slave by his loving brothers, was thrown in prison. As a slave he belonged to the household of a rich man called Potiphar, who was married to Zelikah. Zelikah turned out to be a jealous as well as a somewhat randy woman, who loved a good intimate talk with Joseph when Potiphar was out and about his business. If she was as beautiful as her name, I wouldn't have had second thoughts, but Joseph was a decent man and refused both talk and touch. Maybe she was as ugly as hell, who knows? Whatever, she accused honest Joseph of having raped her and so he was thrown in prison. It's quite like the way some teen-age schoolgirls take revenge on a teacher that refuses to turn an insufficient mark into a good. Potiphar blindly trusted Zelikah, although Joseph had made himself quite popular with him. Many schoolboards blindly trust the allegations of an angry pimple-faced young lady. The accusations are almost always immediately believed and very often the accused has a hell of a job trying to prove his innocence. And even if he succeeds he is usually looked upon with suspicion for the rest of his career. I've been a trade union official long enough to know what I am talking about.

Fate was kinder to Joseph than to many falsely accused teachers. In prison he developed a talent for explaining dreams and gradually his fame got beyond the prison walls. The pharao heard of it and summoned Joseph. He had no trouble dealing with the cows: seven rich and seven bad years. 'Lay up stores in the rich years,' he advised, 'so you won't go hungry during the bad.' Joseph, more or less the first economist in history and one of the very few who wasn't only right but one who was also listened to. You won't find many of those today. The pharao became so enthusiastic that Joseph was promoted from convict into viceroy. In this capacity he saw his loving brothers back during the bad years, when they reported at the border as economic refugees. Economic refugees aren't very popular these days. Fleeing bullets, or a murderous regime is something we can just endorse, but fleeing starvation is something we quite disapprove of in a Europe with a growing number of obese fellow human beings. You would have expected Joseph to refuse the bastards entry, but nothing of it. They were allowed in and well provided for. Such stories even made the club foot charming.

I had to think about the seven rich and the seven bad years when a little while ago I quite suddenly caught the flu and found myself in bed with a fever. In the weeks before I wrote more than usual, one story after the other. When I had the flu, and for quite some days after, I felt extremely feeble and unable to write anything. Having a pile of short stories and a handful of poems didn't make much difference however. Most Dutch writers can't make a living from their books. They're constantly living in bad years if they haven't got a job on the side. I had to think of another story. The one that came to my mind was that of the cricket and the ant by Jean de la Fontaine. Being a cricket I had ignored the invitation by my GP to go and get an inoculation against the flu. I was in Greece at the time and I hadn't got the flu for many years, so why bother? The story of the cricket and the ant was never told in Sunday school. There the holy bible was more than enough and quite correct. Even non-believers like me consider it to be one of the most fascinating books of fairy tales we've got.

©C.A. Klok