Krisaldimum's Great Wealth

Krisaldimum's Great Wealth

       by Default Doug

                        when upon life's billows you are tempest tossed

                        and you are discouraged thinking all is lost

                        count your many blessings, name them one by one

                        and it will surprise you what the Lord has done

                        count your blessings name them one by one

                        count your blessings see what God has done

                        count your blessings, name them one by one

                        count your many blessings, see what God has done

It dawned on Staniuslaus that his sister (Riat Riata Singh) might just be hiding the fact that she knew something about the family inheritance now that old Krisaldimum Kechkov had finally died. At eighty-eight, Riat would no more, and had not for many years if the truth be spoken, need much of anything to live on. He would keep a sharp eye on her interactions with the attorneys and on the attorneys themselves to try to circumvent any embezzling. He did not mind embezzling as such, but in this case he stood to lose big time, so he minded.

       The day of the reading of the will arrived. The lawyers sat about a table in a room in the old woman's home. Riat was there with her husband, twenty years her junior. This man seriously required care, thought Staniuslaus. Medical men and psychological clinicians as well as clairvoyants and spiritual leaders needed to unite their efforts on his behalf. The upshot of such a pursuit would be the declaration that he (Bill Bob Singh) was incurably insane and deteriorating. Bill Bob would be looked at, he would be asked a few questions, eyebrows would surreptitiously be raised, fearful smiles exchanged, and discrete telephone calls made to bring in the police and hospital attendants trained in the handling of the desperate. He, too, Bill Bob, sat there near Riat with arms crossed as Antolio read the will.

       Radium Singhapore played with his tie and white shirt button at the neck. Big, a former sportsman, hockey being his profession, now sports announcer on national television, he had debts that he would like to clear up. He owned a palace in a grand suburb of the city worth at least six hundred and fifty thousand, maybe twice what he could afford. In his possession, although mortgaged and not his, and never to be, was a Land Rover worth eighty-five thousand, as well a Jaguar that his wife drove worth an additional ninety-five. He himself wore costly, fine, woollen suits, rings with precious stones, thick-soled shoes from import stores and always accessories such as socks and ties and underwear that matched in expense and in fashion the lifestyle he attempted to lead. Staniuslaus knew that though Radium appeared well heeled, he owed his soul to the devil.

       More of the family who stood to receive a legacy of possibly nine hundred thousand apiece, or even more, the total of the old woman's estate not being fully understood by them, waited in expectancy about the table. Each, from the bearded scholar, Kentucky Knowles, to the delinquent thirtyish woman-child, Crappusel (last name of Porrin) crossed his fingers hoping for the best. Knowles's books (he had published some four or five) had not done financially as well for him as he, at the threshold of his retirement, and beginning to show signs of some mental equivocacy, would have hoped. Now money and security, in the time of life when he would not spend any of it but put it in the bank, meant much. It was his last great possibility.

       Ms. Porrin, too, hoped for money to reassure herself that she had been worth it, nothing else in her disorganised life having managed to do that. She did not play an instrument, did not understand the intricacies of any scholarly discipline, knew nothing of the workings of anything mechanical, had never learned songs, memorised poems, played in a sport, run more than a city block, exercised regularly, or learned to cook, much less read a magazine or newspaper through two issues in succession. Her deepest desire was that money would vindicate her and leave her clearly valuable to herself and to the world at large, as well as to her God who expected works and accomplishments.

       The will was read by a thin-faced lawyer whose day job was with the federal tax branch, and it went this way, the important part of it: ". . .I bequeath all my monies, all my valuable certificates and bonds, all my capital holdings, all my companies, all my shares, and all my personal effects such as jewelry, gold and silver coins and trinkets, rare books, etc. etc. to the Catholic Church, a lawyer representing which will be present at the reading of this declaration and last testament. My six pets (Rover, Barko, Grouchy, Hiss, Whine and Sparkles) I give into the hands of Bill Bob with the expectation that they will be well cared for and pampered. Crappusel will receive my diaries if she promises to keep them well and faithfully in a secure place where no weather or children might harm them. . . ."

       First there was silence. Then Bill Bob jumped up and ran to the lawyer reading the document. He grabbed it from his hands and tore it to shreds. Then Crappusel began to cry and lifted her dress up above her waist as if to take it off. Riat blanched, for she had had it from one of the lawyers that she might well be inheriting a tidy sum. Staniuslas made as if to defecate on the floor. He dropped his trousers and showed himself for all to see. The rest all engaged in similar acts of personal violence. Bill Bob went out of the room saying, "Where's those cats. Let me at those cats." Crappusel soon had the said diaries in her hand and was tearing out pages at a great rate, flinging them into the snow through a casement she had got unstuck. Riat had disappeared and was nowhere to be seen. The lawyer who had lied to her still sat at the table glancing about in worry lest she appear again.

       The family degenerated after this affair. All of them died within six years of the reading of the will. Each and every one suffered from high debt load and found that the banks refused them any more loans or guarantees. Had Krisaldimum only seen fit to give her vast wealth to her children!