The Potato Fool

More about The Potato Fool

For many years the village believed the world ended at the edge of the potato field. Beyond it lay a fog so ancient that even the crows refused to cross it. The oldest woman in town claimed the fog was made from forgotten thoughts that had drifted loose from sleeping people.

One autumn morning, a potato appeared in the square.

It stood on four thin white legs, wore raisin shoes polished black as moonless ponds, and carried two spirals of yellow pasta growing from its head like ceremonial horns. No one saw it arrive. It was simply there, waiting beside the well.

The baker offered it bread. The priest offered it blessings. The mayor demanded identification papers. The potato accepted none of these things. Instead, it wandered slowly through the village, leaving tiny footprints that smelled faintly of rain.

At dusk it stopped beneath the clock tower and gazed upward. The clock, which had been broken for forty-three years, began ticking again.

The villagers followed the creature for weeks. Wherever it paused, forgotten memories emerged from the ground like mushrooms. A widow remembered the exact sound of her husband’s laughter. A fisherman recalled a song he had lost in childhood. Even the mayor remembered that once, before power and speeches, he had wanted to become a painter of clouds.

No one understood how the potato accomplished these miracles.

Then one evening, as the first winter snow drifted down, the little being walked calmly into the fog beyond the fields.

The villagers ran after it, but the fog swallowed everything except a single spiral of pasta.

Years later, children still found raisin footprints appearing after rainstorms.

And whenever someone remembered something precious they thought was lost forever, they would smile and say:

“The Potato Fool has passed this way again.”