It was just a dirty alley, and he hoped that no one would attack or rob him…then, from the darkest point of the alley, near the trashcan, noises hit his ears. At first he didn’t dare to get closer to the source of those sounds. He had to gather all his bravery to be able to move his body….
“Yes, you! Don’t look around, you’re the only soul in this place. Come closer, I hate shouting. Come on, don’t gaze at me with such a stupid face. Open me up! Do it!
“Ahh, yeees, that’s it. I knew you would be able to do it. Ohh, yes, fresh air! You can’t even imagine how long I have been sitting here waiting for you! I knew you would come….
No, that stupid face again….haven’t you seen a talking doll, yet? Yes, I’m a clown doll, and this is not a dream. You are awake, and I can speak. But we’ve got a much more important thing to talk about. I’ve got a message for you. But first you shall do me a favour. I’d like you to buy my partner, you know, the female one of me. She’s got long, brown hair. When the wind blows it just waves in the air, and it smells like fresh flowers when spring comes to the meadows!
“You say, you haven’t seen her in the ads on the television? How can you take those lies that are coming from TV? Well, I myself can’t, so I don’t even watch it. Anyway, searching for her there would not be successful. One can not find her in the nearest Wal-Mart…there is a special place where we can find her. I’ll tell you the address.
Yes, it’s in the outskirts of London. Just take me there.
“On that old shelf, in the back of the antiquarian. Yes, there she is! No, not that old Barbie. The one to the left of it….”
In the basket, two souls met then. Time stopped for a short moment, and just slipped on, onto the next instant. Nothing has changed outside, but worlds have changed inside. They were each other’s, they were for each other….
The clown didn’t open its mouth again. The boy paid and left. Going home, he became quite angry, but there was no one to accuse…only himself for being so stupid, hearing those voices. These thoughts were rolling in his head before going to bed.
It was morning. The sun was shining into the boy’s face, and he could not go back to sleep. He had to wake up, the clock struck ten…. He had a strange dream. A rhyme was going in his head. Slowly he slipped off from his bed, and then had he spotted something in his desk. A paper, a piece of paper, exactly in that place where he’d left his clowns…but the clowns seemed to be nowhere. He grabbed the paper. His eyes were moving rapidly, notwithstanding his drowsiness.
When he ended, the paper just fell from his hands, but it did not matter then. He went to the window, but something was different from the other days. It was just like using his eyes for the first time, as seeing what matters!
“There were always bad and good examples.
I’m sad to be a bad one of them.
But no! Just let me remember,
To my life, entirely, to this vivid November!
Now do I realize, that I have always been a good example…
A good example, of how to live, as a bad example…”
By Bence Hrotkó (Fráter György Gimnázium, Miskolc)
Comments by the judges:
· I settled on this piece for its completeness and lyric simplicity as well as its efficiency. Instead of extraneous details that don’t seem to add to the overall picture, this story felt almost minimal in its treatment of how the boy obtains the clown doll’s counterpart. “Seeing what matters” in the end, the boy is left to contemplate the note about good and bad examples. At once allegorical and literal, its simplicity and its insistence on the physical world (without, for example, deferring to some spiritual presence) echoed the possible meanings in the title.