The Waistcoat

The Waistcoat

Dear Princess Celestia.

Some ponies have the desire to collect more or less expensive items, according to what one can afford. I also have a collection albeit very modest as is usual in the beginning. There is my play, which I have written, while still at School for Gifted Unicorns during Fancy language lessons. There are some dried out flowers, which will have to be replaced with new ones, there are…

It seems, that there is nothing more, except a certain very old and well worn vest.

There it is. Very faded in front and worn thin at the back. Many spots, no buttons, a hole in the side undoubtedly burned through by a cigarette. But the most interesting items on it are the adjusting bands. The one with the buckle is shortened and crudely sewn on, and the second almost it’s entire length pierced by the buckle.

Looking at it one immediately comes to the conclusion, that the owner of this piece of clothing was becoming thinner daily until he reached a stage were the waistcoat ceased to be indispensable, and instead of it a buttoned to the neck coat and tails from a funeral parlour was needed.

I admit, that today I would gladly give this piece of rag away, as it is a bit of a problem. I haven’t got a wardrobe for my collection, and I wouldn’t like to keep such a waistcoat among my own things. However there was a time, that I bought it for a significantly higher price then it’s worth, and would give even more if they knew how to trade.

There are moments in pony’s lives in which they like to surround themselves with items, which recall past sad experiences.

One such sad experience did not involve myself, but my close neighbors. From window in my studyroom I could look into one of their rooms every day.

In April there were three of them: the Master, Lady and a small domestic mare, who slept, as far as I know, on a chest behind the wardrobe. The wardrobe was dark-cherry red. In July, if my memory doesn’t fail me, only two were left: the Lady and Master, as the servant moved to a family, who paid her hundred bits a year and cooked meal daily. That reminds me, I have to find a way to ask politely how much Pinkie is getting for her work with Cakes.

In October there was only the Lady left all by herself. That means not completely alone, as there were a lot of things left in the room: two beds, a table and wardrobe. However in the beginning of November the unnecessary pieces were sold at auction, and with the Lady remained only the waistcoat of which I am the owner now.

One day, towards the end of November, the Lady called in a dealer of old unnecessary left overs to whom she sold her umbrella for two bits and her husband’s waistcoat for four bits. After which she locked her house and slowly crossed the Library courtyard. At the corner of the street waited for her mayor of Ponyville. She gave her the keys to the house, for a while looked at what used to be her window on which snowflakes were falling, then disappeared in the dark of winter night.

In the Library courtyard remained only the old stuff trader. He thrust  the recently bought umbrella and waistcoat into one of his saddlebags and loudly mumbled:

“Trade gentlepony’s, trade!”

I called him to me.

“Have you, kind Miss, something to sell,”  he asked entering the library.

“No, I want to buy something from you.”

“Surely, kind Miss does want the umbrella?”  asked the trader.

He pulled the umbrella and waistcoat from his saddlebags. Then he threw the waistcoat to the ground, and began to open the umbrella.

“What a lovely umbrella “he said.” For such snow, only one like that will do. I know, that kind Miss can have one or two silk umbrellas. But they are only good for summer!”

“How much do you want for the waistcoat?” I asked.

“What waistcoat?” the trader replied surprised, but he quickly recovered and picked it up from the ground. “For this waistcoat ? Kind Miss is asking about this waistcoat?”

Then his suspicion aroused, he asked:

“Why does kind Miss want this waistcoat?”

“How much do you want for it?”

The trader pony eyes lit up and the end of his long nose reddened even more.

“Would the kind Miss give hundred bits!” he replied spreading the waistcoat in front of my eyes, in such way, as to show all of it’s virtues.

“I will give you fifty bits.”

“Fifty bits!? For such a piece of clothing ? It can’t be.” said the dealer.

“Not a bit more.”

“Please kind Miss don’t joke about it!” he said, patting me on the arm.” You see yourself how much this item is worth. This article of clothing is not for a child, it is for adults.”

“If you can’t sell for fifty bits, then go. I won’t give you any more.”

“If only kind miss will not become angry!” he interrupted softening.

“It is against my conscience to give it away for fifty bits, but I will go along with your reasoning. You tell me yourself: how much it’s worth and I shall agree! I would rather add to it, as long as it’s to your liking.”

“The waistcoat is worth five bits and I’m giving you fifty.”

“Then let it be Fifty!”he sighed, shoving the waistcoat in my hooves. “Let it be my loss, before I catch a cold...”

Then he pointed with his hoof to the window, behind which the snow swirled furiously.

When I reached for the money the trader obviously suddenly remembering something, tore the waistcoat from my hooves and quickly began to search it’s pockets.

“What are you searching for?”

“Maybe I have left something in the pocket, I can’t remember,” he said in the most natural of voices. After short and fruitless search he gave the waistcoat and added:

“Could kind miss give at least ten more?”

“Farewell.” I opened the door and sent him on his way.

“I bow to you. I also have at home a very decent fur....”

And once again from behind the doorstep he poked his head inside and asked:

“Perhaps kind Miss would like to order some sheep’s milk cheese?”

A few minutes later he again called out in the courtyard:

"Trade! Trade,” and when I stood in the window, he bowed to me with a friendly smile.

The snow began to fall so heavily, that it was almost dark outside. I laid the waistcoat on the table and I began to think of the Lady, who went out into the darkness of the night, nobody knows where, then about their home standing empty next to mine, then again about the owner of the waistcoat, over whose grave a steadily thickening blanket of snow was building.

Only three month ago I heard, how on a sunny September day they were talking with each other. In May the Lady once even – hummed a song and he laughed reading the Equestria Daily. And today…

They moved in to Ponyville at the beginning of April. They woke up quite early, drank tea from a metal samovar and together went to work. She to give flying lessons, he to the mayor office.

He was an everyday office worker, who looked at his superiors with an admiration, of a tourist looking on Canterlot mountains. He had to spend long days at work. I even saw him bend over the table, by the lamp, as late as midnight. His wife, usually sat with him and sewed. Sometimes she looked at him, interrupted her work and admonished him:

“That’s enough for today, time to go to sleep.”

“And when will you go to sleep?” he asked her.

“I will just finish a few stitches.”

“Well then, I will write a few more lines.”

Again both bent their heads and did their work. After some time the wife said again:

“Go to bed! Go to bed!”

Sometimes, after her urging words my clock struck the hour of one. They were young ponies, neither beautiful, nor ugly, generally rather quiet. As I can remember, she was a lot slimmer then her husband, who was rather stout of built. I would say even too stout for such insignificant office worker. Every Sunday, about noon, they went arm in arm for a walk and returned home late in the evening. Probably they ate dinner in town. Once I met them at the Sugarcube Corner, they bought themselves two mugs of mineral water and two large pieces of ginger bread, wearing the quitet expressions of ponies used to eating simple hey and apple with tea. In general poor ponies don’t need a lot to retain a healthy mental balance. Some food, a lot of work and good health. The rest takes care of itself. My neighbors, it seemed, did not lack food nor work. But their health was not always the best.

In July somehow the stallion caught a cold, although not too badly. At the same time by a strange coincidence he suffered such a serious hemorrhage, as to lose consciousness. That was during the night. After making him comfortable in bed, the wife asked me if I could watch for over him while she ran for a doctor. She run in the direction of the Ponyville hospital, but before she reached it she found a doctor on the street.

The doctor, looking at her by the light of a street lantern, thought it necessary to calm her down, before anything else. As there was no-pony insight and she seemed to stagger from exhaustion, he put his arm under hers and walking explained, that a hemorrhage does not prove anything concrete.

“A hemorrhage can be from the throat, stomach, nose and rather rarely from the lungs. Anyway if a pony has always been healthy, never coughed....”

“Oh, only sometimes!” whispered the Lady, stopping to take a breath.

“Sometimes, that’s nothing. He could have bronchitis.”

“Yes ! Yes ! It’s bronchitis.”

“Did he ever have pneumonia?”

“Yes!” she answered stopping again, her legs swaying under her.

“Yes, but certainly a long time ago?” queried the doctor.

“Yes ! A long time ago,” she answered hurriedly, “ during the last winter.”

“A year and a half ago.”

“No... But before the New Year.... Oh, a long time ago.”

“Oh ! What a dark street, and the sky is clouded over.” said the doctor.

They went in to the house. The Lady asked me fearfully:

“Anything new?” and she got to know, that nothing new happened.  The sick stallion was asleep.

The doctor gently woke him up, examined him and said, it was nothing.

“I said in the beginning it was nothing,” spoke up the patient.

“Oh, nothing!” repeated his wife squeezing his perspiring hooves. “I know, that it might be a stomach or nose hemorrhage. Yours is surely coming from the nose. You are so stout, that you need to move more, but you are constantly sitting at work. That’s true doctor isn’t it, that he needs to move more?”

“Yes! Yes! Movement is absolutely necessary, but your husband has to lie in bed a few days. Can he move to a place in the countryside?”

“He can’t...” she whispered sadly.

“Oh, well! Then he has to remain in Ponyville. I shall be visiting him, and in the meantime – let him lie and rest. But if the hemorrhage should return...” added the doctor.

“What then doctor?” asked the mare, her face turning pale.

“Oh, nothing. Your husband will rest up, and the bleeding should stop.”

“There in his nose?” said the Lady, wringing her hooves in despair.

“Yes of course, in his nose ! Please calm down. Goodnight.”

After the doctor’s words the Lady calmed down somewhat, so that despite the fright she experienced during the last few hours, she felt almost silly.

“Well it isn’t quite so bad!” she told herself crying and laughing a little.

She knelt by her husband’s bed and began kissing him.

“Why so much ado!” her husband repeated quietly and smiled.” Ponies get injured or attacked by wild animals and  lose so much blood, yet they become healthy again!”

“Just don’t say anything more,” she begged him.

Outside it began to dawn.

The illness lasted a lot longer, then it was thought. The husband stopped going to his office, to which he could return when he wanted provided his place was still vacant. As staying at home seemed beneficial to his health, the Lady managed to get a few additional lessons with the help of which she kept their house budget a flout.

She usually went to town at eight in the morning. About one o’clock she returned for a few hours at home, to cook her husband’s dinner, and then left again for some time. The evenings they spent together. The Lady, so as not to waste that time took on more sewing. One day towards the end of August, she met the doctor in the street. They walked for a while together. In the end she grabbed the doctor’s hoof and said in a pleading voice:

“In any case please come and visit us. Your visit always calms him down a lot.”

The doctor promised, and the Lady returned home looking as if she had been crying. Her husband, as a result of continual sitting, became sensitive and somehow doubtful. He began to complain to his wife, that she exaggerates in her care for him, that he despite it will die anyway, and in the end asked:

“Didn’t the doctor tell you, that I shall not live longer then a few months ?”

The Lady looked shocked.

“What are you saying?” she said.“ Why are you thinking so?”

The sick stallion became angry.

“Oh, come here!” he shouted, grabbing her hooves. “Look into my eyes and answer! Didn’t the doctor tell you that?”

Then he buried a feverish look into her eyes. His look was so intense, that it seemed even a stone wall would give up it’s secret, if it had one.

A strange calm appeared on the mare’s face. She smiled gently in answer to his wild glare. Only her eyes seemed to have become glassy.

“The doctor said,” she answered,” that it is nothing, but you have to rest.”

The husband suddenly released her hooves, began to tremble and laugh then waving his legs as if it were nothing, said:

“Well, there you see, how nervous I’m! Somehow it seemed to me, that the doctor had doubts about me. However you have convinced me. Now I feel assured.”

Then he laughed more and more at his forebodings. In any case such bout of suspicion never occurred again. His wife’s gentle calmness was the sick stallion’s best indication, that the state of his illness was not too bad.

There was of course a cough, but – that was due to inflammation of his bronchial tubes. Sometimes, as result of long sitting there appeared some blood – from his nose. And, he also suffered from fever, but of course that was due to his state of nervousness. In general, he felt better and better. He felt a great desire to go on long hikes, but – he lacked the strength to do so. There even were times, that during the daytime, he didn’t want to stay in bed, but set in an armchair fully dressed, ready to go, once the weakness has left him.

Only one detail worried him. One day, when putting on his waistcoat, it felt to be very loose.

“Have I lost as much weight as that?” he whispered to himself.

“Of course, it’s natural, that you had to lose some weight. But one mustn’t exaggerate.”

The husband looked at her sharply. She didn’t even lift her eyes from her work. No, that calm could not be simulated. His wife has been told by the doctor, that he is not too ill to worry about.

In the beginning of September, symptoms like fever, where appearing more often almost for whole days.

“That’s stupidity,” the sick stallion told himself.” During the change from summer to outom even the healthiest pony may not feel himself. But I will be ready for the Running of the Leaves. Only thing that worries me: why does my waistcoat seem to be bigger and bigger. I must have lost lot of weight and naturally until I get well, I want to put on weight.”

His wife was keenly listening to his talk and had to admit he was right. Every day, the sick stallion got up from bed and dressed, although he couldn’t dress himself without the help of his wife. She insisted that he put on an overcoat instead of the usual jacket.

“Isn’t it strange,” he would sometimes say looking in to the mirror.” that I have no strength. But then just look at the way I’m.”

“Well, a face can easily change,” his wife would comment.

“True, but I seem to waist within me.”

“Aren’t you imagining it?” she would ask doubtfully.

“Well, maybe you are right, but even so the last few days I noticed, that my waistcoat...”

“Leave it be,” she interrupted,” you certainly haven’t put on weight...”

“Who knows... Because judging by the waistcoat, then...”

“In that case you should be regaining your strength.”

“Oh, but not at once...First of all, I have to increase my bodyweight. I can tell you, that even when I regain my bodyweight, then I may not regain my strength at once. And what are you doing behind the wardrobe?” he suddenly asked.

“I’m looking in the chest for a towel, and don’t know if there is a clean one.”

“Don’t exert yourself too much, because the chest is terribly heavy...”

And indeed the chest must have been very heavy, for her face became very red from the exertion. But she seemed somewhat calmed. Since that time, the patient paid more attention to his waistcoat. Every few days he would call his wife to him and say:

“Look at that. Convince yourself: yesterday I could put a hoof in here, and today I can’t. And indeed I’m beginning to regain my bodyweight.”

One day, the sick stallion’s joy knew no limits. When his wife returned from giving flying  lessons, he greeted her with shinning eyes and said deeply moved:

“I will tell you a secret.. You see about that waistcoat, I did cheat a little. To allay your fears I was tightening the adjusting buckle every day – so that it would look tight on me. In that way I used the buckle to the end yesterday. I was worried by the thought, that you would spot it, when today... Can you guess what I’m going to tell you now ? Yes, today, on my word of honor, instead of tightening the buckle, I had to loosen it a bit. It was simply too tight, although yesterday it was somewhat looser. Even I know I’m going to get well... Let the doctor think what he wants.”

His long speech weakened him to such an extent, that he had to go to bed. There, however, as a pony, who is really gaining weight, he didn’t lay down, but leaned on his wife’s arm.

“Well, well!” he whispered. “who would expect such a thing... Over the last two weeks I have been cheating my wife, pretending that the waistcoat was too tight, and today it really is so! Well, well!”

And so they set clinging to each other all evening. The sick stallion was moved like never before.

“And I thought I’m going to go on wasting to... the end. “ he whispered kissing his wife.” For the first time, in the last two months I believe, that I’m going to get well. As we know everypony tells lies, at a sickbed, and the wife most of all. But a waistcoat – it can not lie.”

Today, looking at the old waistcoat, I can see, that two ponies where continually adjusting it. The husband moved the buckle to calm his wife, and the wife was shortening the adjusting belt, to give her husband hope of getting better.

Hope.

I haven’t befriended them. They were just my neighbors but I hope, with all my heart, that those two will one day find each other to tell the whole secret about the waistcoat.

I have learned a lot this year. I learned that things don't always turn out the way you planned, or the way you think they should. And I've learned that there are things that go wrong that don't always get fixed or get put back together the way they were before. I've learned that some broken things stay broken, and I've learned that you can get through bad times and keep looking for better ones, as long as you have friends around you who love you.

Your faithful student Twilight Sparkle.