Читать книгу The Crooked Olive Branch - Frederick Munn - Страница 8

Prologue

You might ask why I am attending a wedding in a small town in Connecticut U.S.A. in the year 2020. The marriage is of special interest to me. A typical human reaction would be to think that I am here to preen.

Sorry, I ought to introduce myself. I am Lot. No, not that Lot. I am just one of the many Lots from the tribe Naphtali.

Should you think that this takes some believing, then consider the issue from a cared one in my charge. One Miriam Kessler, about whom there are many stories. She is part, a big part of this story I am about to tell, and I am following at this wedding.

Who is Miriam Kessler and why is she important? To partly answer this question, I wind time forward to the year 2036. I am stood at the graveside of the said Miriam Kessler who has died, aged 101, in the village of St. Mary Upperford where she lived for most of her life. In the moment of her passing her issue numbered almost 100 including grandchildren, great grandchildren and their issue. All these and their stories would not have existed if Miriam Kessler had become one of the many victims of the Nazi authorities of Munich, Bavaria in 1938. As it is now, there are enough stones around her grave to build a small house. If you carry all issue and their procreation forward just a few hundred years, there are more people and stories than there are pebbles on Chesil Bank.

Back to the wedding. The bride and groom are connected to my assignment to be Charge Angel to Miriam Kessler. Why, how? To learn more, you will need to read the story.

My medium for the story is an old man who is using his instinct to write now because his mobility is such as to limit normal physical activity. Crossword and other puzzles have palled. I suspect that he is aware of my involvement but not the level. It is fortunate that it is only necessary to point him in the right direction and let him loose. This, incidentally, mirrors the allowed activity of we guardians in their clients’ lives.

Having difficulty in believing? Try this: Imagine a web, similar to those built by spiders, constructed, as such a web is, in multiple sections all connected to a central point. Each section a parallelogram, some square, some rectangular, some irregular, bounded by unbreakable threads to the past. Imagine then each of these ‘boxes’ encompassing one person’s connected life within a specified time scale. If you have got that, now imagine the little fugitive Miriam Kessler as the epicentre of this web. If Miriam had not been rescued from the Nazis, this ‘web’ would change in its entirety and every single connected life would be different, very different. Each life having a changed epicentre. Got it?

Now please read on.

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