The Autobiography of Mercutio Polinski (4 page)

“
One evening, this
beautiful and easily-scared girl couldn’t sleep yet again. She
called for her parents, but they were too far away to hear. Then
the girl grew even more scared, because she thought they had been
attacked and taken away by the evil monsters. She huddled under her
blanket, trembling, and held her little fluffy dragon toy
tightly.

“
But suddenly, the girl
felt really thirsty. She nervously lifted her white blanket and
hesitantly stepped onto the floor. In no time she’d trotted through
the corridor toward the kitchen, as if she was being chased by
someone. In the distance the kitchen looked so dark and dangerous
to the innocent mind of the child that she started weeping, and
held her little toy even more tightly. The girl stopped timidly
just before the door of the kitchen. She made one tiny step ahead,
and then one more, and one more. She felt a breath in the dark, and
heard faint steps just in front of her. She felt unknown eyes
looking at her face, and that gave her goose pimples. The child ran
ahead, her heart bumping, and switched on the light in the
kitchen.

“
When the light spread
through the room, she saw some really strange creatures in front of
her: tall and short, one-eyed and four-eyed, short-legged or with
no legs at all. They seemed frozen in front of the closed doors of
the refrigerator, with food in their hands or paws, and they all
stared at the girl. At that moment they opened their big mouths and
roared at her. The startled child dropped her fluffy toy and cried
so loudly that it drowned out all the monsters. Because of her
overwhelming fear, she couldn’t see how they were running across
the kitchen in panic. They were bumping into things and stumbling
into one another. The girl gave them a puzzled look. Then she
realized that they were really frightened. The monsters were crying
because they were scared, just as she was.

“
After some running around
the room, the monsters scattered on their way and disappeared,
leaving no trace of themselves. Just one small creature, very much
like a cockroach, was still roaming the kitchen in a fog of fear.
It hit the wall twice and disappeared.

“
The girl was alone again.
Her worried parents came running out of their bedroom and hugged
her, but she was not afraid anymore. She even found it a little
funny, when she remembered those clumsy, harmless creatures. She
went back to her room, squatted, and bravely looked under her
bed.

“
A pair of round eyes were
anxiously looking at her. The child apologized for scaring them,
and asked them to come out of their shelter. A little pink animal
emerged from beneath the bed. After it seemed OK, a few more of
those ugly but kindhearted monsters appeared. They explained that
they were hunters of bad dreams and children’s fears. They told her
that people often cast them out of their homes, disgusted by their
long nails or snouty faces, thus making it impossible for them to
help children and take care of them.

“
The girl and the monsters
became friends and she was never again afraid of them, because she
knew that she was protected by lots of magical
creatures.

“
That’s why, my dear Rosa,
whenever you have a bad dream, you just have to call on one of
those luminous, magical creatures, and they would gladly help you
forget it. Give your fear to them, just as you would give away
something you don’t need. Because someone is waiting for what you
have to give away, in order to turn it into fairy dust and scatter
it around the world.”

Rosa hastily closed her
eyes.

“
I give every worry, fear,
or trouble of mine to those bright magical creatures that would
gladly accept it. And I thank them.”

After a while, she opened her eyes and
smiled.

“
It worked! I’m not afraid
anymore.”

I was so moved that I
clapped.

This is how I, Mercutio Polinski,
helped Rosa overcome her fear caused by the bad dream. But this is
not the end of my story. Because the most beautiful things always
happen when we free ourselves from our fears.

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.