خیاطی که با مرگ دست و پنجه نرم کرد

The Tailor Who Bargained with Death

In A Coruña there once lived a young tailor named Mateo Hilodoro, who was happily married to Carmen Cardoso, a woman he had loved since childhood. He felt like the richest man on earth when she gave birth to their daughter, who he loved as much as his wife. They called the girl Ofelia. Mateo sewed all her clothes himself and made dresses for her dolls, copying the robes the princesses wore in his daughter’s fairy-tale books.

Mateo Hilodoro was indeed a very happy man. But on the night of Ofelia’s birthday his hand cast the shadow of a skull onto the green linen he was cutting to tailor a new dress for her. Hilodoro stepped back from his workbench to find Death standing behind him. Her face was as white as her dress.

“Mateo,” she said. “Your time is up. The queen of the Underground Kingdom needs a tailor, and she chooses you.” “Tell her I am no good!” he pleaded. “Tell her my hands shake and my seams dissolve after just a few days!” Death shook her head, though her pale face betrayed a trace of compassion.

“Your stitches are more perfect than a nightingale’s song, Mateo,” she said. “And there can be no such perfection in this world.” “If you take me I’ll cut off my fingers!” the tailor exclaimed. “And what use will I be to her then?”

“You won’t need this body where I’ll take you,” Death said. “All you need is your craft—and you can’t cut that out of you, for it is your very essence. An immortal spark, you might say.” Hilodoro hung his head and cursed the gift he’d believed to be a blessing all his life. His tears dropped onto the fabric he had been cutting for his daughter’s new dress. Ofelia would have looked so beautiful in it, with her mother’s dark hair and her wide and thoughtful, ever-questioning eyes.

“Just let me finish this dress!” he begged. “I promise once I’ve sewn the last stitch, I’ll come with you willingly and I’ll tailor the most beautiful clothes for the queen of the Underground Kingdom.” Death sighed. She was used to men begging for another few years or months, sometimes even hours. There was always something unfinished, something undone, unlived. Mortals don’t understand life is not a book you close only after you read the last page. There is no last page in the Book of Life, for the last one is always the first page of another story. But the tailor moved her. There was so much love in him . . . and kindness—a quality Death had found to be rare among men.

“So be it. Finish the dress,” she said with a slight hint of impatience—mostly impatience with herself for giving in to his pleas. “I will be back.” Hilodoro’s hands shook when he returned to his workbench, and his stitches were uneven. He had to undo them all as they mirrored his despair the way they had once mirrored his happiness. While he cut the thread and plucked it out of the delicate fabric, a bold thought caused him to lift his head.

What if he didn’t finish the dress? What if he never finished the dress?

He began to stay up every night and wouldn’t listen when Carmen asked him to get some sleep, for he wanted to make sure that Death believed he was working on the dress by day and by night. For every stitch he finished, he secretly undid another, so secretly that he hoped not even Death would catch him.

Six weeks later his hand once again cast a skull’s shadow onto the green linen of the still-unfinished dress. Death was standing behind him, but this time she wore a red dress.

“Mateo!” she said, her voice cold as a grave. “Finish the dress before the sun rises or I will take the child you sew it for as well.” Hilodoro felt how the needle pierced his skin as he clenched it in his hand, and a drop of blood fell onto the sleeve he was sewing. His daughter, Ofelia, would wonder where that dark spot came from.

“I will finish it before the sun rises,” he whispered. “I swear. But please don’t touch my child. She is so young.” “I can’t promise that,” Death replied. “But I will make you another promise: if you finish this dress tonight, it will wrap her in your love. Whenever she wears it and as long as it fits her, I will not come for her.”