All Is Free

–My favourite fairy tale is the one in which the little girl strikes matches on the sides of houses in order to keep warm.
The old man sat on a bench in the sun by the side of the large grass field in front of the Atheneum. He watched two boys hold hands and play cowboys and Indians. They made guns out of their thumbs and forefingers.
–The sickness that bleeds inside of me is a terrible nuisance. It’s consumption. Everything drains out into the stomach and I can feel it mostly during the day.
One of the boys stopped his playing and walked up to the pensioner who had found a particle of food stuck in his false teeth and was chewing on it with his fake molars while rubbing his hands. The boy cocked his head and squinted from the glare of the sun coming off the freshly-painted white bench. The old man became melancholic.
–My father was a hard man. Just like yours, perhaps. He worked in salt mines in Parajd. He never liked my wife. I loved her. He didn’t. We got married for small change and after that my father said I will give you no money. When I was a boy like you I fell off the back of a horse drawn carriage upon seeing Satan whip the animal and shake the reins. He took off his teeth and I fell off into the mud. When I was a boy.
The old man removed his false teeth and laughed. The boy stood in front of him and squinted from the glare of the sun coming off the freshly-painted white bench.
–My first wife is now dead. My second wife is pretty. She has a twisted foot. I have bought her a white dress. She is thirty-two and I am seventy-eight. I have bought her many pairs of shoes. She has dozens of them. But she has a twisted foot. I buy straight shoes.
The boy said:
–Let me see your hands.
The old man flipped up his palms.
–You are a happy man?
The boy said and cocked his head and squinted from the glare of the sun coming off the freshly-painted white bench.
The old man said:
–And a good man too. Ask around town. I am a bricklayer and I am seventy-eight years of age. I hate old age. My name is Lynn.
The boy stood in the warm spring light in front of the bench in the sun by the side of the large grass field in front of the Atheneum. He watched the old man’s hands tremble under their own weight. He said:
–I can take your warts off the hands without blood coming out. You can write me letters after. I can take them off without pain. I won’t charge you. All is free.

The Girl Who Loved to Strike Matches (A Fairy Tale)

–What happened?
She looked down at her bare feet. The snowflakes clung to her long hair. It looked like they were slowly arranging themselves into a white hat for her. She was tiny, and seemed like she was floating inside an oversized, cut-out burlap sack.
–What happened? Where are your shoes?
–They were slippers. And they were too big. They were my mum’s, besides.
–Well, what happened to them? It’s frigid.
–They fell off. I lost them crossing the street. One of them. The other was taken away by a boy who wanted to make a cradle out of it, for when he would have children.
–I know that.
–It’s a good story, isn’t it.
–It is. I read it when I was seven years old.
She snickered and rubbed one blue foot with the other.
–I read you and Jules Verne and Renart the Fox.
–Which did you like the most, she said.
–Jules Verne.
–Which Jules Verne?
–Twenty thousand leagues under the sea.
–Naturally. You were a boy. All boys love a good sea adventure.
–From that I learned the word maelstrom.
–Well, what is it?
–It’s like letting the water out of your bathtub. The big swirl as it goes down the drain. That’s what it is.
She snickered and blew warm air into her hands.
–Where are your matches? You’re supposed to have a bundle. You’re supposed to keep warm by striking them against the frozen walls of the houses.
–I sold them, she said.
–That’s not how the story goes.
–I know. But the end is the same.
–Why? Aren’t you bringing home money?
–No. I gave it away to the pauper with the fiddle.
–All of it?
–It was just matches. It wasn’t that much money.
–Who will find you in the morning?
–The townspeople.
–The end is the same.
–I told you. The end is always the same.
–I didn’t like your story because of God.
–Why God, she said.
–I didn’t believe in him.
–Not even when you were a boy?
–No.
–What did you believe in then?
–Once, at Easter, my father made giant rabbit footprints out of flour. I believed that.
–And then you lived happily ever after?
–I don’t know. I don’t think so.
She giggled and shifted her weight and shivered.
–Where will you be? I’ll call out to them.
She pointed to an alley in between two homes.
–Wait some time before you send them. They are not supposed to find me until I’m frozen. It’s how the story ends.
She giggled and walked away, barefoot, on the ice. She turned into the alley and squatted down and pulled her feet under her burlap sack. Then she shifted on her side, facing the cold concrete wall.
–All right.
Once upon a time…