_To the Lady who wants pleasant stories._
I took your letter, madame, as an invitation to change my ways. I have
been tempted to shade my little tales a touch too darkly, and I
promised myself to give you something joyful, wildly joyful, today.
After all, what have I got to be sad about? Here I am living hundreds
of kilometres from the fogs of Paris, on a radiantly beautiful
hillside, in the land of the tambourine and Muscat wine. Around my
windmill, everything is sunshine and music; I have wind orchestras of
wheatears, bands of blue-tits, and choirs of curlews from morning to
midday. And the cicadas, and the shepherds playing their fifes, and the
dark haired young beauties laughing amongst the vines.... To tell the
truth, this is no place for brooding; I'd rather rush rose-coloured
poems and basketsful of spicy stories to you ladies.
And yet--I can't. I am still too near to Paris. Every day, even here
amongst my precious pines, it finds me with its ink-stained fingers of
misery.... Even as I write, I have just heard the lamentable news of
the death of poor Charles Barbara, and my windmill is plunged into
grief.
Farewell, curlews and cicadas! I haven't the heart for jollity right
now... For that reason, madam, instead of the pretty little tale which
I had promised, you will only have yet another melancholy story today.
* * * * *
Once, there was a man with a golden brain; yes, madame, a brain made
entirely from gold. At birth, the doctors thought he wouldn't survive
long, so heavy was his head and so oversized his skull. However, he did
live and he thrived in the sunshine like a lovely olive tree. Except
that his huge head went everywhere with him and it was pitiful to see
him bumping into all the furniture as he walked about the house....
All too often, he would fall down. One day, he fell from the top flight
of some marble steps and just happened to catch his head on one. His
head rang like an ingot. It could have killed him, but when he got up,
there was nothing wrong except there was a small wound with two or
three traces of congealed gold in his blond locks. That was how his
parents learned that their child had a brain of pure gold.
* * * * *
It was kept a close secret, and the poor little thing himself suspected
nothing. Sometimes he would ask why he wasn't allowed to go outside to
play with the other boys in the street.
"Someone would steal from you, my treasure!" his mother told him....
Then the little lad, being terrified of being robbed, made no complaint
as he went back to playing alone and dragging himself sadly from room
to room....It wasn't until he was eighteen years old that his parents
told him of this monstrous gift from fate. Since they had nurtured him
and fed him all his life, they told him that it was about time he paid
them back with some of his gold. The child didn't hesitate; he would do
it that right then--but how?
The legend didn't tell him. He pulled out a nut sized piece of gold
from his skull and placed it proudly onto his mother's lap.... Then,
dazzled by the riches within his head, he became maddened by desire and
drunk with power. So, he left the family home, and went out into the
world to squander his treasure.
* * * * *
By the way he was living his life--royally--and spreading his gold
around--lavishly--you would have thought his brain inexhaustible. And
yet it did become exhausted--as could be seen by the dullness in his
eyes and his pinched cheeks.
Finally, one morning, after a night of wild debauchery, the wretched
boy, alone amongst the debris of the festivities and the dimming
chandeliers, became terrified about the enormous hole appearing in his
ingot of a brain. It was time to stop. From then on, he was like a new
man. The man with the golden brain, went far away to live alone and
work with his hands. He became suspicious and timid like a miser,
turning his back on temptation, and trying to forget the fatal riches
that he no longer wanted.... Unfortunately, a friend, who knew of his
secret, had followed him. One night, the poor man was suddenly woken up
by an excruciating pain in his head. He jumped up frantically and
caught sight of _the friend_ running away in the moonlight with
something under his coat.... Another piece of brain had been stolen!...
* * * * *
Some time later, the man with the golden brain fell in love, and this
time, too, it came out very badly....
He fell deeply in love with a petite, blond woman, who loved him a lot,
too, but who loved fripperies, white feathers, and pretty, gold-tinged,
tassels bobbling along the full length of her boots, even more. In the
hands of this cute little creature--half bird, half doll--the gold
pieces just melted away at her pleasure. She indulged every known whim,
and he could never bring himself to say no to her. He even kept back
the awful truth about his fortune to the very end, for fear of
upsetting her.
--Are we really rich then? she would ask.
The poor man could only answer:
--Oh, yes... very rich!
And he would smile lovingly at the little blue bird who was unknowingly
eating away at his head. Yet, sometimes fear took hold of him, and he
had a craving to hang on to what little he'd got, but then the little
woman bounded up to him and said:
--Husband, you are so rich! Buy me something really expensive....
And so, he brought her something really expensive.
Things continued like that for two years. Then, one morning, the young
wife died, like a bird, no one knew why. Her funeral was paid for in
gold, or at least with what was left of it. The widower arranged a
lovely burial for his dear, departed wife. Peals of bells, substantial
coaches done out in black, with plumed horses, and silver tears in the
velvet drapery; nothing was too good for her. After all, what did the
gold matter now?...
He gave some to the church, some to the pallbearers, and some to the
everlasting-flower sellers. Oh yes, he spread it around alright,
without stopping to count the cost.... By the time he left the
cemetery, he had practically nothing left of his wonderful brain, only
a few particles on the outside of his skull.
Then he was seen going out into the streets like someone lost, his
hands stretched out in front of him, and stumbling like a drunkard. In
the evening, as the shops lit up, he stopped in front of a large window
with a well-lit, grand display of material and finery. He stood and
glared for a long time at two blue satin bootees trimmed with swan
down. "I know someone who will be very pleased with those bootees," he
smiled to himself, and, in denial of his young wife's death, went
straight in to buy them.
The shopkeeper, who was in the back, heard a great scream. She rushed
out to help and jumped back in fear as she saw a man standing propped
up against the counter and staring blankly at her. In one hand he had
the blue bootees with swan down trimmings, and in the other was
offering her some bloodied, gold scrapings in the end of his nails.
Such, madam, is the story of the man with the golden brain.
* * * * *
Despite it's air of fantasy, this story is true from start to
finish.... Throughout the world there are unfortunate people who are
condemned to live by their brains, and pay in that finest of gold,
blood and sweat and tears, for the least thing in life. It brings them
pain every day, and then, once they tire of their suffering....