Eric Cantona

Note: This story is meant as a fictional depiction of one man's perspective, regardless of their height or size and is not meant as derogatory or discriminatory in any way, rather more as a celebration of a human life and what it means to be a human and part of human society as a whole, for good or bad.

The story begins.

I am a short guy, I’m no dwarf, but am short enough for it to make a difference. Sometimes I see a ‘real’ dwarf walking down the busy main high street in the city downtown, carrying a sleeping bag and I wonder ‘where do you go?’ or ‘how does society treat you, I wonder, just because you look different?’ It doesn’t happen to me fortunately, but it could have had in one universe, had I been shorter.

One mid-summer day, I saw the dwarf again. It was the kind of day that blazed with heat combated by the gentle wind that has the habit of building up to a strong gust by the time dusk appears. This time he was sat on a cardboard on the street corner, cross-legged smoking a Marlboro light, and with one hand held forward waved towards passers by. I crouched down to him with a handful of silver coins.

‘Can I ask you something?’ I asked.

‘What do you want?’ responded the dwarf sharply.

‘Well, I’d like to chat to you for a few minutes. Would that be okay?' I asked.

He hesitated, ‘Why?’ he responded.

‘I don’t know,’ I said, ‘I’m a writer, and you looked interesting to me. Would it be okay?’ I asked again.

'Alright,’ he agreed finally, 'just for a few moments maybe. I'm kind of busy.'

I smiled: ‘What’s your name?’ I asked him.

‘Is that part of the interview,' he said with a little irritation, 'It's Eric.’ He said simply.

‘Like Eric Cantona.' I said, but it fell on dead ears. He didn’t seem to smile much and he had sad eyes behind gargantuan sunglasses that made his face look like a garden pea, but despite his small stature, he had a confident and relaxed presence about him that made him stand out; I realised he was a handsome man.

‘I don’t like football,’ he shrugged, a thread of annoyance still in his voice, but then subsided as the silver shine was slid into his hand; all fifteen pounds worth. Eric’s eyes lit up. A bearded man in his mid forties began tuning up his guitar on one of the public benches up a cobbled walkway and Slovak folk song started up and reverberated from the apex of his musical corner. The neatly arranged benches filtered up the steep cobbled stone high street towards the assortment of banks. The pleasant sounding melodies flowed through the people and the trees, a breeze twittered the leaves of the elms in front of the great casino, and the broad-leafed elms stood like soldiers among the concrete.

‘Eric?’ I asked the dwarf.

‘Yes Mr. Writer?’ he replied, with one eye kept on the busy traffic of people. ‘What happened to you?’

‘Well, what do you think happened to me?’ he said, visibly irritated now, ‘I’m a dwarf!’

‘Well, yes, you are, that’s true; but that doesn’t necessarily explain your homelessness does it? Just because you are short doesn’t mean you have to live like this, surely.’

At this time he began to open up.

‘Well, you might not believe this,’ said Eric, taking one deep breath he closed his eyes for a moment. He was taking in the gentle strum of guitar sound waves, accompanied by the soft flawless Slovak singing; ‘but I’ve always been an ambitious guy,' he said and laughed, 'Unfortunately it seems, I have ended up on the unlucky side of life. If there are percentages and the average man ‘wins’ in life 70 percent of the time, then I fall into the 'failed' category.

‘So you tried and failed.’ I said, ‘that isn’t just because you are a dwarf? ‘I mean…oh…I’m sorry.’ I hesitated in embarrassment,

‘That’s okay,’ Eric said smiling, ‘Yes … that’s right…I tried and failed….but one day I intend to get back on my feet - I lost it all up there,' he nodded towards the casino building.

There was a silence between us as he music went into full swing. It being around lunchtime, 1 o’clock-ish, the street heaved with shoppers, workers and officials of some kind now, while the bright clear day had begun to turn to the white alabaster colour of an Italian terracotta building, thin wispy clouds slowly covered the blue void. Eric seemed fully immersed in his own thoughts at times, his eyes darkened visibly, as he recalled his life events.

‘My parents were actually extremely encouraging of me when I was a boy,’ he began, ‘and neither of them were a dwarf, believe it or not. But my grandfather was.’

‘I see,’ I answered surprised, but tired not show it. There was nothing else to say as I continued to crouch down right next to him, not sitting too close as a kind of subconscious protective gesture, ‘Should I even care whether people thought I was a beggar too?’ I thought.

Eric the clown

‘My grandfather was a clown in a famous local circus that used to travel around the country in the 1950's and as a young man in his twenties, he was ambitious to take on the role of a clown; but that didn’t define him as a person of course.’

‘It was just a job,’ I suggested.

‘Exactly,’ agreed Eric, ‘However, for a dwarf to get the job as a clown, especially in the 1950's, was an incredible achievement! Things were much harder even then than now, then,’ he stopped to take another drag from his cigarette burnt down right to the end.

‘Sounds like you really admired your grandfather,’ I said, more as a show that I was still listening.

‘Well, yes,’ said Eric, ‘In a way he was my hero. It’s where I got my ambition from. He was a great man.’

Eric now took one long drag from the final stub of his cigarette before tossing it away and shuffled his legs apart on the cardboard carpet in rough worn-out shoes.

‘But unfortunately the circus owner was a bastard,’ said Eric, ‘He was the kind of man who would put a poison snake in someone’s bed (usually someone he didn’t like) and laugh about it.’

‘I see,’ I said.

‘Yes, you keep saying that,’ said Eric a bit sharply again looking at me, ‘Well, anyway, one day my grandfather (his name was Eric too) managed to seriously piss off his boss. Unfortunately for my grandfather this was a 'really' bad move. '

'On a cool summer evening of 1954 the Niloford circus as it was called, had set up on the outskirts of the city on a plateaued hill at the highest point by a wood.' Eric continued, 'It also happened to be next to a chapel, famous among the folk of the town for providing good luck and therefore often used on the weekends for weddings. But ‘nasty Niloford’ didn’t care about chapels or churches. For him, they could be thrown to the fire. He wasn’t a sucker for luck either; as his dad always taught him (‘son there are only two things you should take seriously in life: profit and women.) He HAD respected his dad, and would bite anyone’s head off (theologically speaking) if they ever said a bad thing about him. The circus had a reputation for being the wildest and most exciting circus in all the land; in a word; the best in Europe!’

'The stage was set. The young dwarf-clown, my grandfather, had just made the audience laugh by having his baggy trousers torn off, skilfully as they’d trained for the past half a year, by a Cocker Spaniel (his trusted dog) and then actually thrown an ice cold bucket of water over the bald headed man at the front of the audience. By now, the audience, bathed in bright red light by the screens and torches which hung up on the thick wood beams, roared with laughter.

'While Mr Niloford, as was the usual format of each night’s performance, had been invited on to the stage and was ready to receive the usual applause from the raucous crowd. However, the dwarf-clown Eric felt extra boisterous tonight.'

'The clown, sat on his dog, wheeled around, sat in his pants on his dog’s back and scooped up the empty ice bucket from the floor to fling it skill-fully up high in the air to land expertly onto Mr Niloford’s head. It was a one-in-million shot to be fair! A throw that on any other day would have fallen short or gone too far.'

'The audience roared like lions. Seventy year old grannies hooted, five year old's screamed with laughter, full grown men were laid trembling on the floor in delirium. Any noble director might have taken this a minor slight, a small demeanour, and shrugged it off as a light bit of humour for the night.'

'But not Mr Niliford tonight, oh no, not this director. He seethed and seethed and glowered at the audience in anger for what seemed an eternity, until turning slowly towards the dwarf on the dog. The audience’s laughter halted by a loud bellow so loud it shook the gymnast chains hung from the ceiling.'

‘Yooouuuuuuuu,’ he screamed, ‘GET THAT DWARF,’ he ordered the guards at the tent, three big burly men. ‘Everyoneeeeeee!’ he continued loudly, ‘The show is oveeeeer! Kindly make your ways out!!! OR (and he was deadly serious) BE THROWN OUT! You have five minutes he finished calmly.’

'A n hour later, (and you could imagine the meeting they had) Eric was on his backside in the mud on the periphery of the field half a mile from the tent with thick spruce trees and a cold stinging wind for company in the pitch dark. He was out alone, with no job and his reputation in tatters. The circus boss had been merciful by giving him his pay, but only half; coins were now strewn about the glass like golf balls that had been tossed to him.'

‘What was he to do now?’ thought the dwarf-clown.

'The night was cold and bitter and he was relieved when strands of sunlight washed over his corner of the field as morning came; he had lain not far from where he’d been thrown by Mr. Niloford’s thug bodyguards hours earlier. He had nothing but his wits and small handful of coins in his pocket.'

‘So Eric did the only thing he could think of doing.’ ‘To walk. To walk and walk and walk. He walked along a wet and slippery path that was both steep and treacherous through the fresh smelling pine forest, still wet from rain; enamoured with deep and dark and mysterious patches of forest hidden within its depth where imaginary monsters lay in wait. At the bottom of the downward climb, he came across a tiny hamlet of four houses, a place so hidden, no person could find it without taking the path Eric had come.

In the hamlet there was one beautiful church that offered visitors free tea and coffee and this is where he stayed for a while and prayed and cried until he couldn't do anymore, until he began to walk again. He left the church by a path leading behind the church where he climbed up the steepest and longest hill he’d ever traversed. On it went into countryside and this continued for half the day, hill after steep hill, forest after forest, until he decided to rest exhausted and hungry by a bench overlooking a small village.

On the bench there was a poem carved into the wood and as he read it, he laughed:

There was a crooked man

And he walked a crooked mile

He found a crooked sixpence

And a crooked stile

He bought a crooked cat

Which caught a crooked mouse

And they all lived together

In a little crooked house

Eric was about to enter the village because he was tired and hungry. But suddenly a mysterious girl, as if from thin air, emerged out of the forest at the top of the hill. She shimmered in the daylight, as if covered in an array of peacock feathers, and it seemed as if she wasn’t really there; you could see through her arms and legs!

‘Who are you girl?’ asked Eric.

‘I’m a mountain spirit in the form of a girl,’ said she, ‘come to help you on your way. You’ve had a hard time, dear friend.’

‘I have 3 wishes to grant you,’ she whispered, ‘just rub this magic red cloth and make your wishes as you do.’

So Eric took the cloth, silver and red and embroidered with the finest silk designs of shapes and writing he'd never seen in his life, magic, and then thought about his wishes. At first he considered how good it would be to be rich, or to be tall or to travel the world with long and strong legs. ‘But…that might not satisfy me in the end.’ Eric was a wise old bird so he thought, ‘what I should wish for should be better.’

‘Dear mountain spirit,’ began Eric, ‘I wish to make the world a better place, without the threat of war, that would be my first wish.’

‘Granted,’ said the spirit, ‘And good choice.’

‘Secondly, to make everyone in the world happier, if that is what they want themselves, and if not then that’s okay too. It must be their free will.’

‘Done’, answered the spirit.

‘Thirdly, I’d like to live a humble and simple life here in the mountains, in a little house, with enough wood to last the cold winters and some food of course when I need it.’

‘Your wishes are my command dear Eric, even though the last one is 3 or 4 wishes, but as you've endured so much, I'll grant it as well’ waved the spirit, and gently took the magic cloth from Eric, before disappearing back into the forest.

Back to the city street corner in 2025

‘So that’s what happened to your grandfather.’ Said I.

‘In a word, yes,’ said Eric.

‘Doesn’t seem like a very believable story to me.’ I said.

‘Perhaps not, but I told you my grandfather was an ambitious guy. Just a different kind of ambition to what you might have expected right?’

‘Right.’

‘In the end, he was a happy man.’

‘All I want is the same as that,' said Eric, 'to make the world a better place, for people to be happier and to live quietly in the mountains with the wind as my company.’

Eric took his sunglasses off, revealing clear rocket blue eyes and smiled a great big smile to me, then put on his sunglasses back on and put out his right hand to the crowds again, which had died a bit now. ‘One day the mountain spirit may come to me too, or maybe some other fortune. I’m sure of it and until that day I keep believing,’ murmured Eric and a lady dropped a coin into his cup. He took out another cigarette.