Little Samantha

Things were not well in little Samantha's life. Every night she cried herself to sleep, and she wouldn't talk to her family at mealtimes. The rest of the time she stayed locked up in her room. She would not look at anyone if they came in to see her, and would not speak if prompted. Her family thought she was angry at them, and so every time they saw her, they scolded her.

"You shouldn't be so irritated at us!" they would say. "So change your attitude!"

But this was not the problem, and little Samantha did not tell anyone this fact. So every time they reprimanded her, she withdrew more and more.

This had gone on for a week. Samantha was in bed, tucked down in her nightgown that was too large, for she'd been eating less and less, and she was crying. Normally she cried until she ran out of strength to do so, which was when she'd finally sleep. Tonight however was different.

As she lie softly weeping, she noticed a light on her wall. It was a thin bar of light that ran from the ceiling to the floor, like a door opening. She thought it was a family member come to check on her, as they often did before they retired, so she did not move. When the bar of light did not grow larger or smaller, she became curious and rolled over. Her bedroom door was open a crack, and beyond it streamed in a soft white light.

Little Samantha was confused, because the lights in her house were yellower than that. She sat up and noticed a thin line of mist crawling in through her door. More curious, Samantha got up. She took her stuffed toy with her, for she always slept with it tight in her arms, and into which she muffled her tears night after night.

When she pushed open the door, she noticed at once it was not her house. The room was too big to be her living room, with pillars all around, snow white, to a ceiling that rose higher than even Samantha's tallest relative could touch. The floor was a soft white carpet and from which the white mist seemed to be coming. There were candles held in tall black stands that were made of iron, that weaved around one another as they rose, bearing candles as red as blossoms high above her small head. From far, far above fell the petals of the reddest and fullest roses, like slow moving raindrops, coming from somewhere up by the invisible white ceiling.

"I hear music," thought Samantha, and realized it was true. She had heard the music for a long time now, but only just now recognized it. It was so gentle that her ears had not picked it up until now. She walked a little further into the room. She was scared, but she was curious. The room did not seem scary. It seemed to little Samantha to be very calm and very soft.

Little Samantha followed the music into the room. There she saw nothing but white carpet and more red candles in black iron, and the rose petals fell, and Samantha felt the feeling one has when their mother holds them close.

There she noticed a man sitting on a pile of pale red pillows to the far left, very close to the pillars and not at all in the middle of the room, where Samantha thought he ought to be, as he was the only other thing that moved in the room beside herself.

She approached the man and realized the music came from him, as he sat with a violin under his chin and a bow in his hand, and he played away very slowly and carefully with his eyes closed. His skin was very white and pale, and his hair was very red, and Samantha had the impression his ears were as red as his hair, sticking out to either side of his head. He was wearing tights as white as the pillars and a vest as red as the candles. Around his neck rested a choker of white set with a ruby at the front. His shoes were red slippers adorned with a very pretty red bow on either one. A red band was wrapped around his head to keep his hair tidy, and two bands of red hugged his wrists.

Little Samantha stopped walking then, because she noticed a dreadful red stain on the man's clean white gloves, and dribbled down his face, and falling from his eyes. And she was scared of this strange man who smiled so serenely, and so Samantha sniffed with fresh tears.

"Little Samantha, why are you crying?" said the man.

"How do you know my name?" asked Samantha, who noticed his voice was as soft as the rose petals that lined the plush white carpets, but still she was afraid.

"I hear your name every day," said the man. "Your family yells it and calls you by it often."

"Do you know my family?" asked Samantha.

"No," said the man. "But I watch them."

Samantha did not know what this meant, and so she stood silent, and the man played on.

"Why does your family yell at you every day?" asked the man.

"They yell at me because I don't talk to them," answered Samantha, sadly.

The man's violin churned out sorrowful notes, and the man said, "Why not?"

Here Samantha was quiet. She didn't know whether she wanted to tell this stranger about things that were personal.

"Why do you play with your eyes closed?" asked little Samantha.

"I play with my eyes closed because I am crying," said the man, quite calmly.

Samantha looked at the red stains on his face and while she watched, big red drops leaked from the man's eyes and followed the paths down his pale cheeks.

"Tears aren't red," said she.

"Mine are," said the man.

"Why?"

"I cry for your sadness, which is deep and cuts into your heart, and each cut bleeds, and therefore so do I."

Scared, Samantha asked him, "Is that what's on your face?"

"My face," said the man, still smiling. "And my gloves, and my eyes."

Little Samantha began to cry softly again, for she was confused, and this scared her.

"Please don't cry, little Samantha," said the man as gently as a feather. "I cry so you do not have to."

This made sense to Samantha, who had decided that this was a dream, and so it wasn't real, and she didn't have to be scared of it. She wiped her tears away and said, "If you are so sad, then why do you smile?"

"I smile for all the happy times in your life past, that you still remember, and yet those memories are obscured by your tears, which is why you noticed them first."

This also made sense to Samantha, and she looked at the man more closely.

While she looked, the man asked of her, "Why is your bear's head wet?"

Little Samantha looked down at the stuffed bear in her arms. "His head is wet because I cry on it every night."

"You cry because you miss your mother?" said the man.

Samantha nodded, feeling sad.

"And you don't want anyone else to know you're sad?"

"Nobody else misses her," said Samantha. "So I don't want to tell them I cry for her."

"Why does nobody else miss her?" asked the man.

"Daddy says she was a bad mom," said Samantha with tears again. "He says they were right to take her away from us."

"What do your brothers think?" asked the man.

Samantha didn't know how he knew she had brothers. Then she remembered he said he'd seen her family before, and this was only a dream after all, so it was all right. "They're older than me and think Daddy is right."

The man stopped playing his violin and turned his face towards her. He did not open his eyes, but he was still smiling very gently, and his lips were black underneath the tears. Samantha realized just how quiet it was in the room without his playing.

"Why is your nightgown so big on you?" he asked of Samantha.

"I don't eat," said Samantha, "so I'm not big enough to fill it out."

"I don't eat either," said the man. "But I don't eat so that you may eat instead. Notice how thin I am beneath my vest, how you can count the lines of my neck and name every bone in my fingers."

Hearing his words, Samantha became curious. "Is that why you wear that choker?"

"Yes, to hide the pain of not eating. This is also why I wear my vest."

"And you are so pale because you stay in this room, and do not see sunlight."

"Yes," said the man.

"Oh," said Samantha, who understood.

"Your face is pale, too," noticed the man.

"For the same reason," said Samantha.

"Oh," said the man, who understood.

And it was silent for a minute, and the man looked at Samantha and smiled, and Samantha looked at the man and wondered how he could see her without his eyes open. Her eyes looked more curiously over him, and his violin, which was wooden and beautiful and etched in with tiny words around the corners. At his feet there sat something else.

"You've spilled your drink," Samantha pointed.

The man's head turned down towards the pure crystal goblet lying on its side on the soft rug. "Yes, and it was filled with everything that kept your life balanced, and loved, and warm, which is why it's filled with such a fine red wine."

"The wine will ruin the carpet," said Samantha, who knew this from her father.

"Yes," said the man sadly. "And I cannot clean it up. It will always bear the stain of a once happy life tipped over to drain into the soft nothingness."

"Is this room soft nothingness?" asked Samantha, who was curious of the tall white pillars.

"It is," replied the man earnestly. "The pillars hold it up, you see. They hold it up, but they also trap me within. I cannot ever leave."

"That is sad," said Samantha, who was upon hearing this.

"Yes," said the man. "But it's where I'm supposed to be."

"What would you do if you could leave?" asked Samantha.

"I would disappear," said the man, smiling.

"Why do you smile when you say that?" asked little Samantha.

The man did not answer. Instead he asked, "What would you do if you could leave your house?"

Samantha thought about this and said, "I would go see my mother."

"Where is she?" asked the man.

"A big house," said Samantha, recalling it. "It's made of stone with bars on the windows, but the inside is white and clean, and the rooms have very soft floors and walls, soft enough to sleep on."

"Does she wear a white nightgown like yours?" asked the man.

"Yes," Samantha responded. "But its sleeves are too long. She has to have them tied around her back to keep them from dragging on the floor."

"That must not make her very happy," said the man.

"It doesn't," said little Samantha. "She can't move her arms and the doctors won't loosen them for her."

The man looked very sad at this, and picked up his instrument again. "Do you know what these candles are for?"

"To light the room?" guessed Samantha.

"To light the room where everything is sad, and to make it warm where there's no love anymore." And this said, the man put the violin back under his chin and began to play again.

Little Samantha understood this, and watched the candles burn and drip red wax onto the iron stands and the floors while the man played on.

"Why are there flower petals falling from the ceiling?" little Samantha wanted to know.

"Roses are flowers used at weddings, when everything is cheerful, and are used at funerals, when everything is somber," said the man, and his playing was sad.

Samantha watched him play and found the music brought tears to her eyes. "That is a very sad song," she sniffed. "Why do you play it so sadly?"

"I play it so sadly because it comes from your heart," said the man, who did not stop as he spoke. "And your heart weeps with grief over your mother leaving, and your family arguing, and your room being so quiet at night, when before, your mother would come in and read you bedtime stories. You miss those very much, don't you?"

And little Samantha was crying again, and nodded. "Yes. That's sometimes why I cry for so long."

The man nodded, and Samantha stood silent, and they both cried, and the man played on.

"Can you open your heart to me?" asked the man after a long time. "I want to hear all of the music inside of it."

This scared little Samantha, and she asked, "How can I do that? Will it hurt?"

"It will hurt to get it out, but once it is out, it won't hurt any more, and instead it will heal."

Little Samantha thought about this. "Will that help me?"

"It will," said the man.

"Are you supposed to help me?"

"I'm supposed to do whatever it is that will," said the man kindly.

This made sense to Samantha, and she said, "How do I open my heart so that you may play the music inside?"

"You must think about it," said the man.

Before little Samantha could think about it, she was curious to know something. "Does everyone's heart have music inside it?"

"All the time," said the man, nodding as he played so sadly. "When they change moods, the music changes, too."

Samantha thought this sounded right. "How much do I have to think about it?"

"As much as will help," said the man.

And so little Samantha looked at her feet standing on the soft white carpets and rose petals, and watched the fallen wine soil the carpet, and hugged the stuffed bear her mother had given her for Passover, and felt her chest shake in the nightgown that looked like her mother's new robes, and watched the candles and the man weep redness down their cheeks, and she thought about everything that had happened in the past fortnight, and she began to cry very loudly.

The man's face bore nothing but sadness, and as she cried, he cried as well, but he was silent. Instead, his fingers wrapped in the red-stained gloves began to play faster and more furious, but were still sad and upsetting. The music began to swell, and little Samantha realized that the violin was making sounds that a violin shouldn't know how to make, the sounds of an entire chorus of violins, the tinkling of a piano, the solemn hum of a cello, the light whistle of a single flute, the unhappy drawling of a harp, the gentle background of an organ. And the man played all these sounds at once, as though an entire orchestra was sitting inside his violin and the bow was the conductor, and it was beautiful. But as he played it was also very sad, so sad that little Samantha's tears seemed to fuel it, and the sadness seemed to fuel her tears, and it was a cycle.

The music played on and on.

Finally, the man's bow quaked to a very slow halt, and the swelling orchestra died away one instrument at a time, until it was just the man's one violin playing the tune, and he played it so very quiet that little Samantha had to strain her ears to hear it at all.

"That was very pretty," said little Samantha, who did not know what else to say.

The man nodded his head, and more of the scarlet dripped down from his hairline. "Yes," said the man. "Songs like that often are."

Little Samantha stood quite still and thought about herself, and she said, "That did not make me feel better. That only made me sadder."

The man nodded. "It did make you feel better," he insisted, but very softly. "But that feeling is overridden by the sorrow you feel. You will feel better in time."

Samantha did not quite believe him, but she nodded all the same, and watched him, and concluded to herself that his face was not scary with all its redness dripping and the black lips smiling and the pale skin white as paper. It was a very sad face, and it had taken her this long to realize it, but now she did, and she wasn't scared.

"Thank you," said little Samantha, who thought it proper to thank the man for his offer to play her heart's song.

"Please don't thank me," said the man kindly. "I play it because you needed it played."

This made sense to her, and so Samantha smiled, but only ever so slightly. "Thank you anyway," said she.

"Once upon a time," said the man, and he played his violin to the tune of his words. "There was a little girl and boy who lived in a house all alone, and they had no food to eat and had to share one bed."

"That's a tale my mother used to tell me," said little Samantha with a cry. "How do you know it?"

"I know it because it is your favorite, and it is the one you wish to hear the most, the one that I have heard many nights before you fell asleep, and the one you dream about very often."

"Will you tell it to me again?" asked Samantha, who was eager to listen.

"Of course," said the man. "Sit on a pillow and I will continue."

Little Samantha looked around and discovered there was indeed a pile of red pillows sitting behind her. She pulled up one of them and sat upon it. It was bigger than she was, and very soft, and she felt quite comfortable within it.

"The boy and girl," continued the man, who spoke very quietly, and played very slowly, and weaved back and forth in a way that was not scary to Samantha, "were always searching for food and clothing for themselves, for they had no parents, and were very poor. One day they decided to go walking in the woods to look for wild mushrooms and tasty roots to eat for dinner that night. Along the way, they came across a little house made out of gingerbread set back in the woods, and they came near it, for they were very hungry."

The man's face watched little Samantha as she smiled and listened and was very calm.

"They did not know if anyone lived there, and so they went up to the house, and do you know what they did?"

Little Samantha nodded, for she did know, having heard this tale many times before, but again she wished to hear it, and she smiled happily and tiredly.

"They went up to the door," said the man, "and they broke off the handle, which was made of frosting and cake, and they ate it between them."

The man's eyelids fluttered as he spoke, and at this line, they opened all the way, and Samantha could not remember ever seeing such kind and gentle and caring eyes, and even though they were red and had no black in the center, she wasn't frightened, and didn't ever want to look away.

"And then the boy and the girl heard a voice from inside the house…"

The man sat and played his sad music and told his sad tale, and little Samantha sat sleepily upon the red cushion with her bear in her lap and her little fingers laced together, and she listened, and he told, and she found herself becoming very sleepy.

The man was very sad when he saw her eyes droop closed and her mouth let a yawn into the air, and he thought, "I am here to make her happy, I am here to give her what she needs, even if it is very sad, for this is my purpose."

And he told his tale while Samantha died.

The doctors that were summoned to the cottage of her family would tell anyone that it was from lack of food and water and proper care that she passed away, and her brothers and the head doctors would tell you that she died of a broken heart, for she was the only one who missed her mother while her family did not, because she was too young to have known how her mother strangled her brothers at night and tried to drown the cat and tried to smash windows when her father made her angry, and so depriving her of this truth her father wished to spare her the pain, but instead it backfired upon himself. The doctors would tell you malnutrition, the head doctors would say a broken spirit, and her father would tell you nothing at all, for he could not bring it in himself for the rest of his days to ever speak of his little Samantha, or say anything to anyone else, ever again.

And all the while the brothers wept and the father turned to stone in his heart and the mother gave in to her illness and had to be put down, and the man with the red hair and the violin sat in his room of nothingness and played his sad song forever.

The end.