Part of The Fairy Tale of The Blue Shoe, where little Anton and Bella go on a quest to rescue their mother from the vaults of Melancholix the Dragon.
Did you miss the first part of the story?
It’s here: The Fairy Tale of The Blue Shoe (chapters 1 and 2).
Chapter 3
Anton and Bella could not sleep that night. The next morning came with a rain-filled sky, so Father went out in a hurry to bring in the hay. The two children did not hesitate for one moment. They hastily picked up a few things, first of all Mother’s leftover Blue Shoe, and of course the black mystery pouch that the Good Witch had given them the evening before: to open only when they got into trouble. And the little mirror the Witch had said they should use when they had found Melancholix.
They sneaked out of the back door and ran through the fields, past the honey tree where Mother had gone the day when she disappeared, and bravely they entered the Forest.
In there, it was dusky and eerily quiet. Not a sound, except for the crunch of their footsteps and the twirping of a few invisible birds, high up in the treetops. It was like all those trees stood waiting for something.
“Bella,” Anton whispered, “what now?” Bella said: “First we must find the other Blue Shoe, the Witch told us, remember?” “Yes,” said Anton, “but how?” Bella shrugged. “We just do what the Witch said. We ask the squirrels to bring us to the Dwarf who can help us.” “But I see no squirrels!” cried Anton. Bella said: “Well, let’s go deeper into the Forest. We’ll just follow the path and look out for them, okay?”
And so they did. They walked and walked. The forest remained silent. They walked and walked and walked. The huge trees around them looked all the same, so it was like they walked without going forward, as if they kept returning to the very same place while walking and walking. But somehow, the more they walked, the more the air got filled with Fear. They could smell it. It smelt like a deep, dark, moist hole in the ground, even though there was no hole to be seen.
Anton was just going to tell Bella he was getting afraid, when something strange happened. Suddenly the Blue Shoe in Bella’s hand began to sing. It was Mother’s voice. It was like Mother was hidden deep down inside her own shoe, and now she had started singing to them. The children stood frozen, perplexed. They had not heard Mother singing since a long time, never heard her voice since she had disappeared:
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Anton got very wide eyes, and Bella stood blinking: she swallowed like she was going to cry. When the Shoe stopped singing, it was dead silent again. Anton found his voice back and asked: “Bella, what was she singing? I didn’t understand a word of it.” Bella swallowed again, and took a deep breath. “No, Anton, no, it must be some strange language. Maybe this Frolian from when Mother was a child herself, do you remember how she…” Anton nodded. Bella hesitated and said: “This must be a good sign, Anton. I think it means we’re on the right way.”
“Can we hear her again?” Anton asked. “Please, I want to hear her one more time. Maybe if we listen carefully, then…” Bella sighed. She looked at the Shoe. “I don’t know how.” She peered into the Shoe, but it looked empty. “I don’t know.”
The children walked on, looking up and down and left and right for squirrels, but there was nothing but the silence of the forest, with a slight rustling sound of a breeze high in the trees. Even the invisible birds had stopped twirping now: maybe Mother’s sudden Shoe-singing had chased them away?
After they had rounded a very big tree, a gray shape loomed before them. When they got closer, they saw what it was. It was the Petrified Man. They had never expected to see him with their own eyes, but there he was, like a statue.
Father had often told them the story of the Petrified Man, as a warning to not enter the Forest. Long ago, this Petrified Man had gone in the woods all by himself searching for mushrooms, and like Mother, he had never returned. But unlike Mother, he had not disappeared completely. A search party had found him standing, turned into stone.
Slowly, Bella stepped forward and with her fingertips she quickly touched one of his stone legs. The Petrified Man did not move; he kept staring into the distance over their heads. Now Anton dared to touch him, too. He felt cold. Very cold.
“Would Mother be like this, too?” Anton asked. “Do you remember how the Witch said that in the Vaults Of Horror down below the Towers Of Ness Depry, we would find…” Bella said: “Now for once do stop asking questions, Anton. How would I know?” She looked up at the stone face. “I wish we could make him talk. If we could get him talking, maybe he could help us. Maybe he can tell where the squirrels have gone, or where the Dwarf lives.” She looked up at the stone face again, and stood thinking. Wisely, Anton kept his mouth shut.
Finally, Bella took a step back and said in a loud voice: “Petrified Man? Petrified Man? Can you say something, please?”
(to be continued)
Maybe sometimes you’ve been so very depressed that you wished you’d never been born in the first place. Life would have bypassed you. You simply would have never existed. You would never have had to suffer this much. You would never have become such a burden to others, and never have felt so alone. You would never have needed to think about suicide. And because you never existed, no one would ever have missed you. Right?
I admit that often I’m jealous of those among us who are able to state simply that our life is a gift from God. This is an understandable and honorable perspective, and one that solves a lot of nagging problems in one swift and clear stroke. For one thing, it gives us a much better defined motive to be grateful for life.
Within a few hours after this photo was taken, most of these women and every one of these children had been killed in the gas chambers and burned to ashes.
At the same time when this Auschwitz photo was taken, my father (pictured here shortly before his death) was a young Dutchman, in his early twenties. I’m really proud of him: as a staunch and principled Protestant, he was one of the very few who dared to actively resist the Nazi occupiers. He had joined an armed underground resistance group. They tried to sabotage railroads and raided administration centers for precious blank identity cards to provide “divers” (people in hiding from the Germans) with a false identity. My father had some narrow escapes, including a shootout with Nazi guards. Had they caught him, he certainly would not have survived. He was very lucky. Others were not.
What if on that one evening long ago, your mother had just happened to run a flat tire on her way to her friend’s party? This party where unexpectedly she bumped into your father and fell in love with him? They might never have met. Probably, in due time, some other never-born children would actually have been born. Not you.
Given the fact that we do exist now, wishing that we had never existed comes down to wishing the impossible. We might just as well wish that Planet Earth had never existed, or that the force of gravity did not exist, or that this mysterious Big Bang had never expanded into a vast universe full with starry galaxies. Or, for that matter, that in 1889, in Braunau-am-Inn, one Adolf Hitler had not been born. All such wishes are just fruitless in their futility.
The only thing I can say is that, regardless how you look at your life, regardless how excruciatingly painful your present feelings may be, having been born does mean you are now more than nothing. Even at the bottom of your depression, your life is a one-off product of birth, something unique. Would you really prefer to have remained nothing? Absolutely nothing? An unknown, empty, traceless void?
Once upon a time, long ago, far from here, in the lush green meadows between Spattering Brook and the Grimm Forest, there was a small wooden farmhouse with a bright red roof. An old father lived there with his two little children, Anton and Bella. Yes, father had a gray beard since the beginning of times, but Anton and Bella were young. They had a fierce black cat who called himself Tss, and a sleepy dog, Rowlins, who rowled the porch.
But wait! I hear you asking. What about mother? Yes, there was one very sad little thing in the house. Mother’s left shoe. A small, gleaming, pointed, bright Blue Shoe. It stood on top of the cupboard, and every morning they looked at it and had to cry a little. Just a few tears, you know. Because that Blue Shoe was all that was left of mother.
But that afternoon, father had heard a shrill, terrible scream from the Forest. This scream took so long that the flames in the cooking stove shivered and froze, motionless, and a blackbird dropped from the air right in front of the door opening. This scream did never end and had father frozen, too. He could not move until, finally, the scream stopped and suddenly the entire world became silent. Dead silent. Eerily silent.
The basket still hung in the tree. No one was there. The bees had stopped buzzing: they slowly drifted in mid-air without a sound, floating around like brownish flakes of snow. But Rowlins with his sniffer-nose picked up a scent and they followed the trail into the bushes, into the green twilight under the trees of the Grimm Forest.
All this had happened a thousand summers ago, but Anton and Bella still thought about their mother every day. They missed her so much, her dancing and laughing, her gentle caresses, her softly-sung lullabies, her good-night-kiss. And they missed her honey-spoon, too.
The Witch nodded slowly, like she understood. Bella said: “We want mother back.” Anton said, “Yes, we want mother back. Don’t you know a way to get mother back, Witch?” The Witch nodded again, and frowned.
“Come on children,” father said quickly, “Let’s eat now. This rabbit here doesn’t like to get cold!” And eat they did. The Witch kept very silent, and not just because she was eating. Anton and Bella said little, too.
“If you get lost,” said the Witch, “ask the squirrels to bring you to the Dwarf’s place. He’s the only one down there you can trust. He may be able to help you. All this will very dangerous, but don’t be afraid. When you’ve found Melancholix the Dragon and have been brave enough to look into his eyes,” she reached into her robe again, “then show him this little mirror. And don’t forget to take the Blue Shoe with you!”
May 22, 1859 –
