The Beard

The Beard

by John Wijngaards in The Garden Village Roundup, issue no 151, 1 June 2021, p. 8.

Prepare yourself to listen to a grizzly story, claimed to be true, entertaining yes, perhaps even instructive!

You should know that I am familiar with Asia. I was born from Dutch parents in Indonesia. I lectured for twenty years in India. I visited various countries on educational business, such as Pakistan, Hongkong, Thailand and the Philippines.

On one occasion I visited Manila. A college lecturer invited me to his home on the outskirts of the city. He had invited a number of other friends too. Imagine us all sitting on his verandah, enjoying the relative coolness of the early evening after the scorching heat of the day.

One of his guests was a retired filipino priest. His name was Louis if I remember well. He had served as parish priest on the neighbouring Iloilo island. After drinking two bottles of the local Red Horse beer Louis became talkative.

“I had a colleague”, he told us, “who looked after a remote village up in the mountains. He was a nice chap. I liked him. We used to meet a few times a year.”

Pouring another bottle of Red Horse into his glass, he continued. “One day I received a message through one of his villagers that he was very ill. I immediately got ready to visit him. I travelled the whole day, part of it on foot. When I arrived, I was told the man had already died two days before and had been buried. To make sure, I asked people to exhumate him. They dug up his wooden coffin from the grave, opened the lid and there he lay on his back. His body still in reasonably good state.  But there was something funny about him… “

“What?”, we asked Louis.

“Well”, he said, “during his time in the grave, his short white beard had grown longer. It came down all the way from his chin to his feet!”

“It must have been a fungus!”, I exclaimed.

“No, no, no!”, Louis assured me. “It was hair. I felt it with my hands. All the way down to his feet!”

So my advice to any of us gentlemen out there. If your time is up, make sure you have shaving equipment with you in the coffin. You never know. You might need it!