My Lost Doll!

My story is two stories: one cast by reality, the other woven by imagination. And it is only natural that truth should arrange its events as though they were imaginary, just as fancy disguises itself in the garb of the real. As for this inverse comparison, it was my little daughter who carried me to it on her sixth birthday, the day I watched her stepping along, proud of her new dress, rosy-cheeked, with her small companions as they lined up around the delicious table and sang her the familiar song, while the heroine, in the midst of it, gathered her breath to send it out in a single puff that would put out the flame of the six candles adorning the fresh sweet centerpiece. Then the applause rose, and after it a sudden silence spread, as the little mouths set busily to chewing; and even this the children soon forgot, taken up with the distraction of the new toys: and lo, the dainties and sweets were crumbs; and lo, they stood around the heaped-up presents, longing to undo them, their eyes sparkling. And since that task belonged to the birthday girl alone, everyone crowded around to watch her as she cried out over a doll, the gift of one of my friends, the like of which she had never possessed! Yet for all her longing for it, her joy did not make her forget to give her opinion of it: after expressing her thanks to the "grown-up" friend, she said she was very sorry that the color of the doll's dress did not match her own pink frock, made ready for this occasion!

When I tried to cut her short, to hide my embarrassment at a remark not free of a heedless whim, I do not know how the grown-up friend got ahead of me — the jest had charmed her — and promised to exchange the doll for another with a pink gown. I found no escape but to yield to her victory, if only for the moment, to preserve the reigning air of merriment; and perhaps my silence would have lasted to the very end, in keeping with what modern child-rearing requires, which holds a promise made to a child sacred and sees in the frankness of her expression, as that devoted friend saw, a sensitive, artistic phenomenon — to stifle it a crime! And more than that, it is a trailing vine that screens the formality which the years impose between their two ages. Does not every "little one" wish he were grown up? And does not every "grown-up" long for the time when he was "little"???

And I drifted off into the dreams of my childhood, and they brought me to a halt at an incident I could have wished had worn the longed-for pink dress, upon which the memories had bestowed their fresh and flowery garb! For it stood alone in the shape of a harsh trial, by which my gift-giver tested me, without her knowledge, a bitter testing... It carried me toward impressions that defy reality with their majesty and overwhelm the senses with their brilliance, carved into the conscience, firm of being, which no effacement or forgetting can master!

Until the laps of my bygone childhood outran the present childhood of my daughter, and showed me myself, at an age very near to hers, during a visit with my family to a noble and venerable lady. This aged dame thought to draw near to me, hoping to coax me away from my mother, to whom, in that strange atmosphere, I clung as a shadow clings, the way timid children do. She drew me gently along, crossing with me the great hall, whose far-flung corners teemed with every kind of curio and rarity — among them the cabinet of her hobby, its shelves lined with what the hand of the skilled craftsman had lavished: elegant dolls whose costumes were colored in every style and sort, and in which the races differed in feature and in stock.

She stretched out her ivory fingers, ringed about with black lace, toward the key of the cabinet, and picked up a doll whose feet were sunk in two wooden clogs, starched linen cascading from her waist like gleaming white paper, and on her head a bonnet like the wing of a white kite, from under which peeped two flushed cheeks and a crimson mouth — how I longed to have one like her! And how silence seized me with astonishment and struck me dumb when I understood her purpose, as she addressed me in English: she wished me to choose between this fair-haired Dutch toy and that dark Mexican one which the lady's ivory fingertips now displayed before me, showing off the charm of her striped skirt and her embroidered blouse with its puffed sleeves, a fine glittering chain sparkling at her throat, and knotted upon her head, like a crown, two coal-black braids and a jeweled comb — or whether I preferred to possess the one robed in the kimono with its leaping figures of serpents and sweet basil, she of the sleek hair and the flat nose, who seemed to be fanning, with her fan, the volcano breezes rising from the land of Japan.

The venerable lady turned to rouse me from my frozen stillness and cried: Well now, little one — wouldn't you like to take this one?

Had it been given me to answer her merely with a "yes," or at least to utter any word at all, it would have sufficed for me to win the toy I craved! But how could any sound escape me, strangled as it was in the gathering of my breath — so that every time my would-be benefactress held out a doll, I lifted my chin at it in refusal, or shrugged my shoulders in a gesture of indifference beyond all cure!

And the noblewoman labored to please me! She went on turning through the full and overflowing shelves until she came upon one she felt certain I would prefer. How not, when she was the owner of the gold-threaded cloak and the brocaded shirt, her gazelle eyes shaded by a silken kufiyya and an agal of hair — and to her astonishment, this one's luck proved like the luck of those before her... How strange! Had some stupefaction come over this child? Or had a kind of idiocy taken hold of her? Or was it nothing but childish obstinacy, that she turned away from all these captivating dolls... which had consumed the lifetime of the one who had acquired and selected them, to compose of them a collection unique — nay, a compendium of the costumes of all the nations together!

And now they stand before me, stirring in my mind rosy memories of angelic houris sporting in luminous gardens, bright of border, radiant of shoulder! But bitter truth willed that I pass them in review:

Phantoms they are, to the thirsty, like shallow waters.
And yellow, to the hungry, like honeycomb barred by sting and ailment.
And black, to the wayfarer, like a gloomy night the light has forsworn.
They are red as blood. Or blue, yearning toward the sky.
How far from them the dreams of childhood: soft and easeful, pink and pure, pearls — white, spotless, virgin!

And nothing barred the aspiration of those dreams but a reason that seems trivial to me today, though then it was grave and crushing: to obey my mother's injunction that I accept nothing from anyone!!! To this day I do not know how the span of that visit ran out; I only remember well that no thought came into my head prompting me to slip my complaint to any of the "grown-ups." So I waited for them, with all the innocence and calm that childhood is given, to take me away with them, leaving behind me my precious hearts' desires!

And before my disappointment there glimmered a hope that a miracle would come to pass, a wondrous sign, and that my burning palms must at last close upon one of them... I was in a kind of trance... until voices came to me, calling me from every side, so that I turned to look behind me. What was it?

And there was the lady, pursuing me with a fuzzy brown bear, saying:

"Take the bear with you, little one — perhaps it will charm you more than the dolls!!!"

And I took the bear with thanks!

As if it were a substitute for my lost doll!

I grieve for her whenever I remember her, even today!