Scarecrow (from the Munich Tales)

SCARECROW
By Michael Kroetch

He came from a small village where everyone was blind. Over the years several teams of doctors, scientists, and health officials had been to the village to explore why everyone in it was unable to see. No answers were found. It wasn´t the water and there was no record of unusual amounts of radiation or cancer or any of the known transmittable eye ailments. Nonetheless, as far back as anyone in his village could remember, no one born there had ever been able to see. He was no exception. What made him different was that he left the place. His journey to the city was strange and long. A doctor who had studied the village had found him the job and place to stay and had brought him to it, shutting the door with a click after saying so long and goodbye. There was a storm the first night in the new apartment. He stood there in the thunder. He could feel it all around him. He had been in storms before, but never had been this high up inside of one. None of the homes in his village was taller than one or two floors. His apartment was on the fifteenth level of the complex. He was out on the terrace, face being ripped by the wind, the curtains flying around madly behind him, rain pelting his hair. He held fast to the iron grating of the rail. The doctor had told him to be careful about the rail, very careful, and to not go out on the terrace if alone. He had nodded agreement and said yes to the doctor´s words. He was good at saying yes to what people wanted and doing the opposite later. His parents had not wanted him to leave the village. His grandmother had cried and cried and taken hold of his sweater sleeve earlier that day when the family had helped him load his things into the doctor´s jeep. “Don´t leave us. Come back to us. Stay,” she pleaded. He said he would come back, but he knew he could not. He could not stay there in the land of scarecrows. That´s what he called the people of the town. The doctor had asked him why and he hadn´t been able to explain. It had bothered him that he could not. In the end he told the doctor it wasn´t the word itself but the feeling of the word. “They are so full of fear all the time, always worried someone will forget to put away a rake and they will trip over it. I´m so tired of this fear always everywhere under everything like an underground river they all pretend is not there. I can´t take it any more.” When he had told the doctor these words, he had not known they would be the words to free him from that world, but it was that same day the doctor began working to help him begin a new life in the city, the life he was now about to begin. And standing there where he was, at the rail, he was in the very center, in the throbbing heart of what the people from his village feared most. He could feel the storm rampaging all around him huge and terrifying and magnificent. He didn´t remember ever feeling anything more beautiful or frightening. It was like the world was being born all over again.