BY DR. AGONSON
“The story is seldom told nowadays,” he sighed, gazing out the dirty window. “I heard it on my mother’s knee, at my father’s feet, and once, when I went to the city, in a theatre a man stood up on stage and told it. He told it badly, and I think that’s the cause. His sort, the professionals, oh they were grand and impressive, they were, but the story, in their mouth, how small it became. They cut it up in little bits and weighed out great minutia—the man seemed so interested in that little seed that was carried far more than in the tree that later grew.” His voice, all the while slowly passing into a whisper, finally faded into silence. He took a drink. “No one felt quite right telling the story once his sort took hold of it. We all began feeling we were missing some part, or we didn’t know it well enough; and I dare say the professors were right. Details ought not be overlooked, but all they left us were the details, all cut up, nothing fitting anymore.”
Two soldiers were passing below in the street, the muddy snow clinging to their boots. Their worn uniforms, their boyish frames—the old man said nothing until they passed from view.
“Aye, it’s my and my brothers’ fault. All our fault for letting a bunch of foreigners confound us with lectures. We shouldn’t have listened, or we should have laughed at them. We should have asked them the sign of the old witch or the riddle of the drooping bough. They might have answered alright, but those sorts of things, I think; well, it was remembering them that broke the spell on me. I woke up too late. Nobody knew the story anymore, not even the professors. Just one, I hear, a wizened specialist who spends his final grains of sand added pages and pages to a heavy book all about the story—I’m sure he loves it in his way, but that sort of love kills.”
“Will you,” I stuttered, pulling out a writing pad, “can you tell me the story, please?”
He looked at me, his eyes dim and grey.
“You look something too much like a professor to me,” he said. “Take my story, go back to your hall, write big books. Who will read them then? Can you breathe life into the dead?”
Laying the pad down on the table, I leaned back.
“Can you…” I stopped, the impropriety of the question burning my cheeks. “Did you ever learn to read?”
“Aye, a little,” he hurumphed.
“As a child, no one told me stories. You’re right, there’s much more of a professor about me than I’m proud of, but I’ve known them as you never did. I grew up hearing them drone on about this and that, and the only stories I had were those I read. I read, well, a story that’s stayed with me, haunted me, because I never—well, they found me reading it. I had only just started, he had the seed and the sultan had sworn his death, and they took the book from me. Said I needed to grow up first…”
“The sultan?”
“Yes,”
“Ah, a wicked man, fat and proud.” The words stirred something forgotten in me. “He’d nearly choked on that pit, didn’t he?”
“Yes,” I said, taking up the pad.
“Don’t,” an old hand rested over mine. “Not yet. I reckon, a gift is a gift, and what you do with it, if you write it down, I can’t stop you. But you’ll have it the way I give it, the way it was given.” Then the old man drew in a deep breath.
“The sun came down to bless the earth, for she saw its beauty below. But when her foot touched the land, it burnt the world she loved. And she cried out, ‘I’ve slain my love!’ and wept, filling the sky with stars…”
Tale Told 