The Art of Everything

The Man with a Crystal Heart

                In 1985 a man was born. His name was Hansel and he would achieve renown for being the most psychologically unstable being on earth. That is to say, anything that would leave normal people like you and me indifferent, made him lose his mind in the utmost sense of the expression.

It all started on a windy night of 1988, as a bird's nest fell off a tree near Hansies' home. When encountered with the fatality of the baby creatures' death, the poor child cried uncontrollably with a strength that made all the neighbours click their tongues with disapproval. Hansel was brought to the hospital, where a negligent doctor assured his naive parents that everything was just fine.

In 1989 the Berlin wall fell and Hansel outcried the Germans out of pure joy for them. And his parents brought his weeping boy to the same negligent doctor, who once again, conveyed that Hansel was just fine.

But then, Hansel entered a school and fell in love with a smart girl with long hair and big feet and he had a heart attack. The medical world was puzzled, for that child was too young and physically healthy to suffer such condition. Hansel became subject to a number of tests and examinations in Houston, Texas. Meanwhile a brilliant Russian butcher who had run away from his mother and was then living in Sumatra, reached the conclusion that the source of Hansel's delicate health was his extreme psychological sensitivity. No sooner did he unveil the truth, than he took the nearest ferry and travelled to Houston.

"I'm afraid your son has a crystal heart" he told the young's parents.

To this, the medical community nodded in approval and awarded the Russian butcher with the Nobel in medicine - stolen from its previous owner - and a diploma from Oxford, a city he had never once visited.

Unfortunately, there was no cure for Hansel's condition, for any remedy would be temporary and something that is temporary, can never be a cure. Now an adolescent, he was forced to live in permanent quarantine with no stimuli from the outside world. He was given some Legos though, which always make the wait a little bit less tedious.

In the meantime, the Russian butcher who had been Hansel's saviour and executioner both at the same time, travelled to Germany to watch the remains of the wall. He came back months later to Houston, carrying with himself a pretzel which he gave to young Hansel, who in turn suffered another joy attack and was left as one would say, as a vegetable.

While Hansel was in coma, he met what would be the love of his life, a blonde nurse three years his senior and obsessed with afro haircuts. The patient happened to wake up at the exact moment when the nurse - named Joycelyn - was declaring her endless love for him. Inevitably, that made him go back to his coma.

It was considered that such reaction was enough proof of Hansel's love for Joycelyn and the state allowed them to marry each other. The Russian butcher was the groomsman while Hansel's first love was the bridesmaid, as she happened to be Joycelyn's younger sister.

When Hansel woke up again, he went with his wife on a quite honeymoon in Greenland, where the lack of stimuli was sure to allow them to conceive a child without the husband's caressing death. And so it was, until the happiness he felt when thinking about having a child made him have a second heart attack. Luckily, Joycelyn was able to attend him - even though he fell in a coma again.

The marriage was consummated and 9 months later a mentally and physically healthy child was born. A child Hansel would never meet. In August 2003, Hansel woke up in the middle of an unknown house, in an unknown city, in an unknown world. Suddenly, he heard a tingly high pitched voice:

"Mama! Papa has awoken!" she said.

And so it had been indeed. Such was the happiness Hansel felt when being referred to as "papa" that he had another heart attack and collapsed in the living room. A blonde little girl came running and caressed her papa's cheek. Then he died with a smile on his face.

At his death, thousands of books where published on his case. Of course, it was considered that such writings were nothing but a string of nonsense and idiocy of authors with nothing better to do than creating individuals with the only tools of their prose. And so Hansel became legend.

This chronicle may as well be one of those writings which are nothing but a string of nonsense and idiocy of authors with nothing better to do than creating individuals with the only tools of their prose. We might never know, for all the registers of Hansel's life and his own family have vanished like thin air.

Yet, let me pose a inquiry to you before you reach a conclusion. Suppose we have two individuals: one fictional and other one real. On the one hand, there are numerous books referring to the fictional individual, including accounts of its adventures, its likes, dislikes etc. but no legal document proving his existence. On the other hand, there are birth and death certificates of the real one, bills and a grave with its name, but no account of its personality at all. Now suppose we travel in time to an age where the two individuals have been dead for centuries and all these documents have survived but are impossible to identify as neither reliable nor false. But to a citizen of this age, which one feels the most real, the fictional individual or the real one?