The only journey of his life (part 1)
(Original translation of a novella by Georgios Vizyinos, written in 1884. This is part one. You can find a link to the next part at the end of this installment.)
When they drafted me for the honorable profession of tailors, no promise made as appealing an impression on my childish imagination as the assurance that in Constantinople I would sew the dresses of the king’s daughter.
I was well aware that princesses have an exceptionally soft spot for tailor boys, and especially those who could sing the praises of their allurement while sewing the embellishments with which they adorned their beauty.
I knew that when a princess falls in love with her tailor boy, she doesn’t do so lightly; she falls in love for good; and becomes ill; and takes to her bed; and becomes moribund; and no doctor can heal her, no witch bring her to her senses. Until, finally, the princess calls her father and tells him straight out: “My deal father, either I get the tailor boy who sings so beautifully, or I will die!”
The kind doesn't have another child. What can he do? He puts his crown on his head and prostrates himself at the feet of the tailor boy and “By God and by the talent in your hands!” he yells out to him! “Do me the favor of marrying my daughter. Do me the favor of becoming my son-in-law. But first, demonstrate some bravery so that my reputation as the king doesn’t get tarnished.”
The tailor boy feels as if a piece of dry fruit has gotten stuck in his throat and cannot swallow. The truth, however, is that there is nothing to swallow because even his saliva has dried up in his mouth. That’s how scared he got at seeing the king with his crown!
The king with his crown pats his shoulder and asks him to tell him here and now: what the tailor boy is capable of doing. He secretly waits to hear that his aspiring son-in-law is capable of bringing a lion down from the mountains alive, or killing a dragon, or ruling a kingdom.
The tailor boy, meanwhile, took courage, but did not, nonetheless, lose his mind so as to want to go get a thrashing from beasts in order to become the son-in-law of his Highness. The tailor boy comes from a peaceful stock. And because he does better when he’s singing than when he’s talking, he responds to the king in song and tells him that he’s capable and able of sewing the wedding garments without thread or stitch.
“You dishonorable fool!” the king, who doesn’t feel moved by songs, thinks to himself. “I’ll show you, for making my child go crazy over you when you don’t have even the slightest bravery in your heart!” Then he glances at the tailor boy with some nasty looks and “Very well,” he tells him, “mister son-in-law! Sew, then, forty wedding dresses fit for a princess, and be careful that I don’t see a stitch or a thread anywhere! But make sure to have them ready early tomorrow morning, before the sun comes up, or else — I will cut your head!”
And the kind with his crown isn’t joking at this moment. He has decided, the ambitious man, to kill the tailor boy so he can give his daughter to some big-deal guy!
Thankfully, the tailor boy feels certain about his work and doesn’t get too bothered. That’s because he is — some say the son, others say the grandson of the Fairy. And he has a thimble with a closed top which he never takes off his finger.
All that evening, he eats, and drinks, and has fun. Around midnight when the master tailor and his apprentices fall asleep, he takes the thimble off his finger, takes out a golden hair that he keeps inside it, and burns its tip in the flame of the lamp. There, in front of him, appears the golden-haired Fairy…
“What troubles you, my love?”
Such and such, responds the tailor boy, telling her the whole story.
The golden-haired Fairy, who has promised to save him whenever he’s in danger, claps her white little hands three times, and — look now! — forty Fairy-children dressed in white, each one more beautiful than the other, set before the tailor boy, while signing sweet songs and moving about beguilingly through the air, the most precious fabrics of the entire world.
The tailor boy cuts and the Fairies sew; and they sew and sing and joke about and tease the tailor boy at times so provocatively, so coquettishly, that if their mother hadn’t been around, they would have seduced him for sure. But the golden-haired Fairy watches over them, guides them, and encourages them to finish the wedding dresses before the rooster crows, before the sun rises.
As soon as the Fairies leave, there comes the king who walks in with the crown on his head and with the executioners at his heels: He comes to kill the talior boy! But once he walks in, he sees the forty wedding dresses without thread or stitch hanging on a rope, and his eyes are dazzled: The gold and pearls that are embroidered on them are worth his entire kingdom!
The king with his crown bites his lips. He takes the tailor boy by the hand, goes to the palace, and gives him his daughter, and the story is over.
All these things my grandfather used to tell me, and he would tell them to me like they had happened just yesterday, like they could happen at any time around the world. I remember even today with what childish pride I entered into the city the first time as a new recruit of the “order” of the tailors, thinking that within a few days I would come out of the gate I was now walking under in triumph, accompanying the most beautiful princess to my village. That’s what my grandfather had given me to understand. And because my grandfather was the most well-traveled and most cosmopolitan person I knew, I believed his stories down to the letter.
(End of part one. What happens to our little tailor boy? Will he walk out the city gates victorious? Read part two to find out.)
