Tot Vogel

My name is Tot Vogel. I am a forty seven year-old German immigrant. I live in a small house in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, once the home of my late parents, and my late older brother, Helmut Vogel. Cuyahoga Falls is a small city located in the North Central part of the state, perhaps best known for its proximity to the Cuyahoga River, a body of water that has, on more than one occasion, caught fire, events immortalized in songwriter Randy Newman's “Burn On”. A bachelor, my life is a simple one. My main interest is writing, both poetry and prose. Please visit my blog, http://nakedphotographs.blogspot.com/, in which I am documenting my life and that of my family. A well as writing, I enjoy gardening, photography, collecting old books, reading, and tinkering at my small electric piano, upon which I have recently begun writing my own compositions. The song I have posted here, Fehlend Betasten, which roughly translates to “The Missing Fingers” in English, is a story my father's brother, my late Uncle Alder, often used to tell me, when I was just a boy back in Germany. It was meant as a cautionary tale, one presumably for me, but I later learned the truth, that, indeed, each telling was a bleeding of sorts, of a fable cut deep into the tellers very heart. Though presumably based on elements of more than one European folk tale of oral tradition, stories I have not been able to locate or authenticate, Alder's version follows, which I have transcribed to the best of my memory...................................................... ............................................................ ..................FEHLEND BETASTEN or “The Missing Fingers” ............................................................ ............................................................ ...........There once were four wicked children, two brothers and two sisters, who had disobeyed their mother and had lifted the lid of the family piano and were running their tender little fingers all over its shiny white keys. Being so naughty, and so lost in the sweet cacophony of their disobedience, they didn't hear their father just outside the front door, stomping his muddy boots on the paving stones – stomp – stomp - stomp - STOMP. He stomped so hard he shook the entire house and – SLAM – down came the heavy lid – right upon the fingers of the bad children. Off they came, severed at the final joint, trapped shut beneath the lid, along with four of their nasty little thumbs. No matter how hard their mother and father tried, they just couldn't lift the lid. They called a neighboring farmer from his field to help, but he had no more luck than they. The farmer then fetched two builders who tried but failed as well. It seemed that nothing would open the lid. The poor children cried and cried, their bleeding hands all wrapped up in their mother's apron. “The doctor might stitch their fingers back on, but they are lost in the piano,” declared the farmer. “Perhaps we could chop it apart with an axe,” suggested one of the builders. “Never,” said the father angrily. “This is an heirloom, from my father's father's father it has been handed down to me, I will not see it destroyed.” “But what of my dear children?” cried the mother, her apron now all but red. “What futures will they have without fingers? They will be beggars - or worse!” “Then so be their fate,” hissed the heartless father, stomping off, followed by the farmer and the builders, leaving the poor mother and her children to bear their anguish alone. Which they did, until the day a traveling player came passing by, on his way to a grand recital in Stuttgart. This master pianist, seeing the fingerless children sitting by the roadside, took them to the house, where their mother showed him the terrible piano, long sealed shut with the children's blood. Sitting down and removing his satin gloves, he ran his beautiful hands across the surface of the lid. All at once it shot up, revealing thirty six little fingers – lodged between the white keys – each as black as coal. Seeing this, the master pianist began to play. He played as never had been done before, a rhapsodic miracle of sound that traveled up to the angels in Heaven, blessing all who stood below. And thus were the thirty-eight severed joints of the children restored, each as good as before. Their mother wept with joy, thanking the great musician who had so blessed them. But he, replacing his gloves, simply shook his head. “Thank not I, dear woman,” he said, making his way through the door to leave. “For it was the keys, the ebony slats now part of the instrument we all know, that gave new life to your children's hands, and in these chords shall they forever live, thirty eight missing fingers reaching up to join in harmony with all who play.” And with that he was gone, leaving the mother and her four children to marvel at what had transpired. ............................................................ ....................................................THE END