[The beggar] Behind the scenes

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Part five
Part six
Behind the scenes!


A few readers asked for clarifications, and details about "The beggar", so I thought you might want to know more about this story, including interesting facts about how I came to write it.

Outline of the epic line and additional info:
The prologue is temporally equivalent to the epilogue.
Prologue & epilogue: Susan enters her father's room but doesn't know it at first. The reader learns only that she (not impersonated until the epilogue) has decided to buy the room, and has found a notebook. The notebook proves to be her own, written while she was raised by her idealistic parents (who believe love is the most important part of our lives) and lost during her desperate wandering.
Plot: She eventually ends up on a bench, exhausted and suffering, and the next morning Andrew finds her.
I wont reenter their parents' lives and stories, but the main point is that of love, life and communication: Susan is a special person, mainly due to the love of her parents, while Andrew and his father are somehow strangers. Meanwhile, the life of a beggar emerges...
Ending: Andrew and Susan fall in love and live together, finally getting married. The surprise, revealed in the epilogue is that they have lived next to her father for ten years and weren't aware of it. The ending illustrates the artistic behavior of love, and the world of a "beggar".

Extra facts:
When she becomes eighteen, her parents explain that Susan is now capable of watching out for herself, so she somehow understood the accident, and she thought they might have sacrificed their lives for somebody.
Although the summary may be simple and easy to comprehend, the "inside" of people's hearts and minds never is. Think of that when you ponder about yourself and others: you have to see it every way to get it right... and there's always a way you don't see (but at least you get pretty close to the real thing!).

The accident: Turns out that her father DID survive the accident. Her mother saved Andrew's father's life, and got stuck under a vehicle and killed. So, not knowing that her dad lived, Susan does not return home, and her father has no way of finding her.

The idealism of characters: Sometimes, when people abandon a sad life, and endure into a happy one, they tend to run away from their sufferince. Susan and Andrew have a magical way of communicating which puts every feeling of despair second, making them seem less desperate at the loss of each one's father.

Fun facts:
The title of the story, and the idea of the beggar himself was inspired by a real fact I have witnessed: a poor man wishing to sell a cheap watch for money to the tram driver, who invited him to his tram cabin for a chat that lasted... more than just a few stops (I got off before the beggar did).

The actual epic of the story I developed along the way, and I confess that the other five characters (Susan and her mom, Andrew and his dad and sister) were not known until mentioned.

I'm most fascinated by the beggar's life and his room, and his interpretation of life and the many paintings of his daughter, but Andrew and Susan will remain as the first love couple I thought of placing in a story.

At one point I had thought of including two other (real) facts:
- One time, the tram I took was being checked by the ticket collector (I don't ever have a ticket and there's a big fine for that) and he checked other people for tickets, but not me - how lucky! I was scared and took the next tram from the first stop. But, unluckily, that had 3 other ticket collectors in it - oops. As the doors was closing, some guy (accompanied by his girlfriend) yelled out, right in front of the door: "Who's got no ticket better get off now!"... and I did, at the last moment, because I didn't see them myself.
- One day I went to my driving lessons by tram, and returned 2 hours later with the same tram, and I had that strange sense of deja vu, realized along the way, not when I got in... The tram was driven by an old lady, and had particular signs and posters, compared to other trams.

Hope you've enjoyed this "Behind the scenes"!