A Bald Man's Tale

On the island where I was born, there were many drunks. That is life in Russia. Sadly, my father was one of them. He had a good job, a good home, and a good family, but he left it all not long after I was born. He simply disappeared into the city one evening. There was a picture of him on our mantel, and on many difficult days, I would look at it and curse his name.

We left that house and that island. My mother brought the picture. I suppose she missed him, but my sister and I were too young to know him by anything but that one stern image. He seemed to taunt me until the day I left home. He haunts me still.

One January day, when I was a young man who traveled alone, I found myself returning to that little town. I stood outside that old stone house where I was born, and wondered why he had left. I knelt in the lane and wept for some time. A young woman came out of the house, and she asked me what I was doing. I stood and told her, "I am hating the name of my father, who left us in this house when I was a child."

She said, "Everything happens for a reason." She smiled at me, the most beautiful sad smile. I will never forget the curve of her slim pink lips, the sorrow in her large brown eyes. I felt that I had met her before, but I could not say where. Without thinking, I took her by the hands and kissed her.

I have been married twice now, and have loved many women. I have kissed my co-star a hundred times. But never have I felt a kiss like this. It seemed to last forever, and I did not want it to end. If only she had been real.

I felt her passion, and I felt my own passions rise. And then...she was gone. She simply walked away, and I was left standing in the road. Alone, again, with this old house.
I climbed the front stairs and rang the bell. Nobody answered, and the girl was gone, so I went inside.

I cannot say whether things were the way I remembered them, for I was too young then and it had been many years. It has been many more years since. But whether or not the house was the way we had left it, it felt familiar. It felt as though I had never left.

I went to the room where I had been born. It was a bedroom now, with pale pink walls and a soft bed. I sat on the bed, and passed some time wondering. I could swear I heard that magical woman's voice whispering in my ear. She said, "This is not where you were meant to be." And so I stood, and went back down the stairs.

I came to the family room and the fireplace. The portrait of my father was gone from the mantel, replaced by one of the young woman. She smiled down at me, but suddenly things felt wrong. I turned around, and sitting in the corner was a man. A dead man, his skin stretched tightly over his bones. I looked at his face, and realized that it was my father.

I yelled for help. Within seconds there were two police officers standing by me. They bent down next to the body to examine it.

"Looks like he drank himself to death," one of them said. Then he turned to me with a frown and said, "Say, don't I recognize you from somewhere?"

I nearly said yes, you know me from television or perhaps Broadway. But suddenly I remembered what had brought me back to that little town in the first place. I was meant to be on the run! What had I been thinking, calling the police to me? I would be caught!
The other policeman shouted, "Yes! You're Yul Brynner! Don't move!" I turned and ran, out of that old stone house. The girl joined me, and we ran hand in hand, hearts pounding with fear and excitement.

The policemen were gaining on us. I looked over at my new love, but the girl whose hand I was holding was my sister. I dropped my hand and stumbled, and then they were upon me. I screamed and was consumed by their huge dark hands.

And here the truth comes out. For just then I woke up, and discovered that it had all been a dream.