The Autobiography of Mercutio Polinski Read online

  IX.

  On the Stories of the World and Other Interesting Things…

  There are stories that we tell to the world, as well as stories that slowly come to life and tell the world about us. They assume their own spirit and individuality; they become independent of their creators, just like a child who grows up. And then the time comes when they start to talk to us with wisdom, and teach the moral beauties of the world to us.

  “What’s morality?” Rosa looked me straight in the eyes. I was embarrassed, because I was so in love with her.

  I stammered, “Morality is…is…when we talk about our spirits.”

  “Aha,” Rosa nodded. “It means about spiritual beauty.”

  “That’s right.” I nodded my head in agreement and rubbed my nose with my paw. “So, as I was saying, there are moments, in which the story of a fairy tale is so gripping that it begins to clearly come to life in front of you. It turns into a fairy with the wings of an angel, or into a monster from the marshlands with a playful smile. They both are wonderful creatures, because they bring so much love with them.”

  “I haven’t seen any ugly monsters.”

  “I think you haven’t seen any monsters at all.”

  “That is so, but it seems to me that if I see one, I most probably won’t be scared, because I believe that all beings are good.”

  “I think so too.” I smiled.

  A few weeks had passed since Rosa had stopped going to school. At that time, she was at home every day. Only in the mornings would she and the writer go out. They were absent for hours, and when they came back at noon they seemed exhausted and troubled. At such moments Rosa paid almost no attention to me. She was in a hurry to go to bed and sleep, but when she woke, she was again that playful, glowing girl I knew so well.

  Soon enough, for reasons unknown to me, the fur on her head started to fall out. Back then, I thought that people, just like animals, changed their fur for the summer season and strongly believed that hers would soon grow again. But her hair didn’t grow again, and Rosa became more and more discouraged because of that.

  “I’m so ugly, aren’t I?” she asked me once, when she was very sad. I tried to cheer her up.

  “I think you’re even more beautiful than when you had your fur.” Rosa smiled at that. I added, “Don’t be sad, because you may cause a flower to dry out.”

  “Really?”

  “Sometimes our bad moods may do that—be the reason for the lovely flowers to dry.”

  “I wouldn’t like to harm the lovely flowers,” she said, and leaned her head on her hand.

  Yes, my dear friends, sometimes there are stories that speak to us instead of us telling them to others. This story is one of those.

  X.

  On Good and Bad, and a Bit on Those Who Often Grow Sad When They Are on Their Own…

  “Will I go to hell?” Rosa asked.

  “Hell does not exist,” her father said.

  “They say that bad people go to hell.”

  “Who says so?” the writer asked.

  “Maybe those who do not believe in heaven.”

  Rosa rested her head on the pillow. The writer put the little book he was holding aside and leaned forward.

  “You are not bad, my dear Rosa.”

  “I lied once.”

  “If this is so, you must know that even the worst people go to heaven. We are all born to go to heaven.”

  “That is so nice,” the girl sighed and smiled.

  “True. We suffer only when we forget it. There isn’t any soul on earth, not even in the whole universe, that does not deserve to go to heaven.”

  “Even those who steal biscuits?” I asked, because I remembered that time when, unnoticed by anyone, I snuck a biscuit from the kitchen at home.

  “Even those who grow sad when they are by themselves.” Paul looked at me with his warm eyes. I hung my head because I had been feeling sad when I was left on my own, recently more often than ever. I didn’t think anyone had seen me, but the writer knew it. He was smiling kind-heartedly.

  “Yes,” I said, a bit embarrassed. “I am sometimes strongly grief-stricken, I myself do not know why.”

  “We all feel a little miserable sometimes. Those are the graceful moments of our lives, when we clearly realize who we really are. Sometimes I am sad when I’m lonely, and then I find out I need a hug. There are other times when I grieve that I see the sun setting, and then I realize how much I love the day. And sometimes we may be sad because of things that we think we want, but actually we don’t.”

  “How so?” I asked, at the same time as Rosa.

  “When you don’t really know what exactly you want,” the writer answered gently.

  “But how can we know what we really want?” I leaned toward him impatiently.

  “That’s very easy. Listen to yourself. You always know what you want; you just have to hold your breath and listen to your soul. Then you will hear a little voice that will remind you about your real wishes. You will feel a light warming in your stomach when you reach the right decision.”

  “And what is that voice I will hear?”

  “That is you, your own self that is hidden deep inside of you, waiting to be recognized.”

  I grew pensive. So, of me there were more than one inside, just the same as me? Was that possible? Paul, as if he guessed what I was thinking about, quickly explained.

  “Your true self is hiding from you when you are sad, and appears again when you are happy. That’s why the faster you find out why you are sad, the faster you can return to the you who is always happy.”

  I nodded in agreement.

  “I’ve known since I was very young that I am Joy!”

  “Then tell me, my dear little mouse, do you know why lately you have been Sorrow?”

  I sank into deep thought. It is so easy to realize something about yourself when you know why you are sad, but what can you learn when you don’t know why you are sad? With droopy ears, such as I had every time I was unhappy, I went to him and cuddled in his neck.

  “Some day you will know,” he said, and went on reading his book aloud.

  XI.

  How I Knew the Reason for My Sadness…

  Rosa was so lovely, with her sparkling look and beautiful bright eyes. She was a mystical creature that soon started to fade away in front of me. Unnoticeably, almost invisibly, she melted like a fallen autumn leaf in a rainy forest. She became hollow-cheeked; her face became thinner, her look darker. It took me a long time to notice all that, because for me her real beauty arose from the depths of her breath. With this change in her came my awareness of what had caused my sadness. The insight about this reality, which at the beginning was only smiling at me from a distance, was now weighing on my chest invisibly. Before that I couldn’t understand where it came from, and I was wandering between smiles and seriousness. But what you realize can set you free, is that not so? It happened to me, too. The moment I knew the reason for my sadness, I was freed from the burden of it. But at what price?

  Rosa spent almost the whole day in bed. She slept a lot more than before. She was exhausted. I tried to cheer her up with funny stories and merry adventures, but this could only bring a temporary smile to her face. It brightened up the atmosphere for a very short time, and then she sank back into the infinite world of the dream. I tried to keep her away from that world, because I could see how it gradually drove me away from her, and her father as well. The writer was worried. More and more often he stood beside her bed, and he rarely wrote. There was no time for writing. He was trying to transfer his love to Rosa, to support her in her dream.

  They say that people sleep because their spirit is looking for a rest after long, tiring days. But if this was true, then Rosa‘s spirit was not only looking for a rest, it was looking for freedom. What the writer was doing every day was trying to inspire her soul with peace and love.

  Every morning I impatiently climbed to the windowsill in Rosa’s room. I opened the shutters wide
and met the rise of the day, my breath held. And when the sun rose from the somber fields beyond, it touched Rosa’s eyes, kissed her nose, stroked her with its warm hand, and woke her up from the dream. She gazed at the sunrise and started to daydream of those wonderful places the sun had touched during the night, when it was on the other side of the world.

  “Mercutio, let’s travel the world together,” she suggested sometimes. I readily agreed, because I wanted to see the world very much.

  Every time the boiling sphere stood high in the sky yet hidden from us, I used to bring different flowers to Rosa in flower pots. In fact, it was the writer who brought them and put them on the windowsill, but the idea was mine. I chose them, because I knew very well which ones were her favorite plants. She loved sunflowers most, because they reminded her of the sun and kept the sun’s warm breath on their surface for a long time.

  XII.

  The Day When Everything Changed…

  It was a summer evening, the time when bird couples had already gone to bed in their nests and the moon hadn’t yet dropped her white yarn over the city. That night, it was as if everything had stopped to take a breath. Rosa was sleeping, breathing imperceptibly. The writer was watching over her as usual, his head leaned against his hand. His hair was scattered, and his look said his mind had drifted away.

  I cuddled in his hands, on his chest. The air was still and dry, and we could hardly breathe. Paul petted me when I twitched, and that calmed me down. I peeped through his hands toward Rosa. She was still sleeping.

  “Mercutio, someday we will all disperse around the world just as the leaves do in the autumn,” he told me, feeling that I was restless. “Parts of us will be put in every living creature, thus contributing to its beauty. Rosa will also be part of this magic. She will be part of eternity.”

  His words made me think. I jumped on Rosa’s bed and whispered to her, “Your real story is just about to begin.”

  Her fingers quivered. An unknown calmness came over me. And as if an invisible guest settled down between us came the dense energy of love. I started to talk to her about that—about love.

  The fairy tale that I told Rosa was about the prince with the beautiful blue eyes, because in my dream I was that prince and Rosa was the princess of his dreams. That is to say, of my dreams.

  “A long time ago, three troll women as dark as tar threw the prince’s beloved into faraway worlds where no man could reach her. Their eyes were big and black, and their noses looked like snouts. They envied the beauty of the princess, and turned her into an invisible spirit. She roamed here and there; she was confused and alone, and couldn’t find the way back home.

  “But one day, she was called upon in the dream of the prince. She didn’t know how she got there, but soon she found out that the prince was longing for her so much that he had called her unconsciously, with his thoughts. They hugged and cried, because they were happy to be together again. They held each other and talked so much that they didn‘t notice nine years had passed. The kingdom of the prince had changed a lot during that time. The country had become deserted without the king and queen, who had died of sorrow over their long-sleeping son.

  “But the princess raised her head from the shoulder of the prince, and being a spiritual creature, she immediately saw what had happened with his kingdom. She embraced him, and so three more years passed.

  “Then she told him, ‘My prince, we shouldn’t hug any more. The years pass in timelessness for us, but there beyond the dream, your kingdom is in deep agony. Wake up and help your kingdom, because I saw how much it suffers without your protection and care.’

  “‘But I love you,’ the prince cried in the dream. ‘I don’t want to be where you are not. You are here now—that’s why I want to keep on sleeping.’

  “‘Don’t be unwise, my prince. I love you, too, very much. But if we go on like this, soon there will be nothing left of you but a soul. And you must fulfil your destiny. Please, feel compassion for your people and forgive me for keeping you in thrall to myself for so many years. You are a man now, and when you wake up, you will be a king.’

  “‘I can’t live without you,’ the prince whispered. ‘Please don’t leave me.’

  “‘You don’t need me to be happy, but I’ll tell you this. Whenever you stretch your hand toward the trunk of a fir tree, when you feel its pulse and let it flow through your veins, then you must know—that is me whispering to you. And then you will realize that I can smile at you even through the pale glistening of the foam of the youngest river. I will smile at you even from here, from your pure heart. And when you feel it getting warm as a stone in the embers, then you should know that I have put my hand on your chest.’

  “The prince started crying from happiness. When he woke up, he brought prosperity and peace to his people, and strength to his country. But his aides noticed an odd behavior in him. The prince often liked to stay alone in the wild forest where, they thought, he was looking for a long-lost elf-woman among the trees. They heard him talk to the fir trees, and sometimes they could even distinguish the quiet, gentle voice of a woman, carried on the backs of the horses of the wind. That voice was talking to him. At such moments the prince smiled so sincerely that it looked as if an invisible nymph with clothes crocheted from the morning light stood before him and kissed him on the lips.”

  I saw Rosa’s lips part and she gave me her last smile, saying “Thank you.”

  “Continue talking, my dear little mouse,” the writer told me, his eyes shining with dampness. “You are a great storyteller. Some day you may save the world.”

  I felt happy. Did he really believe that I could be like him? That I could give joy to the world? He nodded, feeling the stream of my thoughts.

  “You can do a lot more than that.”

  Rosa sighed. This breath bestowed a kind of dizziness upon me, intoxicating me with love. I tried to close my eyes, but I don’t know why I gazed at the ceiling. I felt that presence again and suddenly started crying, but so gently and softly that my tears turned into a pink mist. I looked around; I hadn’t realized the mist had spread across the room, and was now gently covering Rosa from her feet to her beautiful chestnut hair. Paul was smiling with benevolence, and I knew that he had met it before. Maybe it had once embraced his wife, I thought. The writer nodded at me.

  “Rosa is becoming one with eternity.”

  I blinked at him in astonishment.

  “But how?” I protested. “We can’t just let her leave and do nothing!”

  “There’s nothing we could do. There are moments in which we are nothing but mere observers in the lives of our beloveds. We have no right to choose for them. We can only be thankful for them, once we have hugged them and set them free. But where Rosa’s going now, thousands of flowers will be singing for her.”

  “Will there be sunflowers?”

  “If she wishes it, there will be.”

  I sighed, as I was struggling with the idea of freeing Rosa. I was jealous of the pink mist. Was it more important for Rosa than me or the writer?

  The mist thickened, and as it assumed density I could feel its great nature. I couldn’t resist it any more. I gave my permission to the mist, and now it could do what it came to do.

  I don’t know how long we stayed like that, staring into the distance, dreamy; without knowing it, we gave in to sleep. When we woke up, Rosa was gone. Her bed was deserted. It had lost its essence, and now it was just a piece of wood. The writer petted me on the head. Then I saw her in his brown eyes, where a piece of the purest soul sparkled; Rosa’s soul. I knew he had seen her in mine, as well. I felt tears coming to my eyes and turned aside.

  “Dearest mouse, remember, never to be sad on your own again. Turn to those who love you most, and then you can cry out your sorrow in their embrace.”

  XII.

  Why We Live and How I, Mercutio Polinski, Began to Give Joy to the World…

  I realized one thing—there were lots of ways to give joy to the world, and one
of them was through love. I have given my life to love. Even though my heart is so small, it holds and gives out all the warmth that could ever shine, even during the night. This strength was given to me by thoughts of Rosa. This is also what her father taught me.

  I chose to tell you about Rosa and the writer, because they were the people who inspired me to write, to create. They revealed to me the magic of the book, and the joy of their poetic solitude.

  The writer and I, we often muse over the profound and insightful ideas of an interesting book, just the way I once dreamed we would. Under his guidance and support, I wrote down all those fairy stories that had been inside me, urgently coming to the surface since I was very young. I freed them, as one lets a genie out of a bottle, and gave them to the world. Have you ever let a genie out of a bottle? It’s very easy. You just close your eyes and declare: “I choose to create!” And then all magical creatures, fantasy fairies, forest leprechauns, and wizards of the seas, will come to help the one who has wished that. And when you yourself have fulfilled that, you will feel the cork popping out; there, from the bottle, a new fairyland will start flowing out, in order to settle down in the world. And then all your dreams will come true, because you have wished it so.

  And why do we live? Probably every one of us has his own view on the matter and wants to say it out loud, but for me the reason is and will always be this one—for love.

  Now your turn has come,

  In one short verse to say,

  What makes you glow,

  Or even play.

  But remember: The words you choose to use must be frank and pure as a sculpture of the first snow. Just think…dig deeply, think seriously just once more, and say out loud:

  “This is what I’m living for…”

  With Love,