Caravaggio's Face

When he was born the legless man fell from his mother’s womb like an apple. His skin was shiny red, his tiny lungs tucking for air. He had a Caravaggio face, velvety red, red as blood and roses. The Doctor slapped him hard on the bottom, the flat of his hand raising a red welt on the curd of his tailbone. His mother let out an earsplitting howl, her eyes flared with unforgiving pain. ‘My son has no legs!’ she wailed ‘I’ve given life to a legless child!’ The Doctor swaddled the legless man in a hospital-blanket and laid him on the birth-scale. He weighed 4½ pounds 7 ounces, not a smidgen more. The birthing-nurse hoisted the legless man up by his arms, twisting his tiny shoulders until they disappeared behind his back. A cat-and-mouse wind cursed at the window in his mother’s hospital room, a pillory of rain scorning her unforgiving pain. When he was born the legless man didn’t cry. He lay in swaddles suckling an imaginary teat, his tiny lungs filling up with hospital smells and his mother’s unforgiving wails.