Born Beneath an Unlucky Star (4)

By sixteen, I had perfected the look. Downcast lashes. A haunted pause before speaking. The faintest bitter smile, as though I had loved too deeply and been disappointed by creation itself. Women mistook it for depth. Men mistook it for brooding intelligence. Old people, worst of all, mistook it for hidden goodness under duress.
That last sort will ruin themselves on a person like me.

There was a baker’s widow who slipped me hot buns and said I had “sad eyes.”
There was a cooper’s daughter who swore she understood me because she too felt different from others.
There was a stable hand broad as an ox and stupid in the holy way of loyal men who carried my share more than once after I explained that a strange pain in my shoulder had flared again.

And why should they not help me? Had life not already set itself against me? Had I not endured eye-rolls, sighs, pebbles, criticism, cold breakfasts, misunderstood intentions, demanding tasks, and the endless brutality of being expected to function?

Some men are forged in fire.
I was nibbled to death by ducks.
No one respects this.

When I grew up, I set out into the world because the village had become impossible. Too many people remembered things inaccurately. They would say, “You said you would do this.” Or, “You still owe for that.” Or, “No, that is not what happened.” Such rigid devotion to events as they occurred leaves no room for a man’s suffering. So I left, and took to the roads, where every inn was a new stage and every stranger a fresh audience.

The kingdom beyond the birch forest was full of towers and bells and thin, beautiful ladies with gloves to their elbows. It was there that I decided fate had larger plans for me.

Not labour, certainly.
Recognition.