Once in a faraway city there was born a baby who was completely transparent. You could see through his arms and legs just as if they were air or water. He was made of flesh and bone but he looked as if he were made of glass. If by chance he happened to fall he didn’t break into pieces. At most there would be a transparent bump on his forehead.
You could see his heart beating, and his thoughts flickering like colored fish in their tank.
One time by mistake, the boy told a lie. Right away the people could see it like a ball of fire just behind his forehead: then he told the truth and the ball of fire dissolved. All the rest of his life he never told a lie.
Another time a friend told him a secret and right away everyone could see a black ball which rolled without stopping in his breast, and the secret wasn’t secret any more.
The boy grew, became a youth, then a man, and everyone could read his thoughts. When they asked him a question, they could guess his answers before he could even open his mouth.
His name was Giacomo, but people called him “Giacomo-of- Crystal” and loved him for his loyalty. Everyone become kind when they were around him.
Unhappily in that country there came to power a ferocious dictator who began a time of bullying, injustice and poverty for the people. Whoever dared to protest disappeared without a trace. Whoever rebelled was shot. The poor were persecuted, and humiliated in a hundred different ways.
People kept quiet and suffered, afraid of what might happen otherwise.
But Giacomo couldn’t keep quiet. Even if he didn’t open his mouth, his thoughts spoke for him: he was transparent and everyone could read behind his forehead angry thoughts and condemnation for the injustice and outrageousness of the tyrant. In secret, then, people began to repeat the thoughts of Giacomo and they took hope.
The tyrant had Giacomo-of-Crystal arrested and ordered him thrown into the darkest prison.
But then an extraordinary thing happened. The walls of the cell in which Giacomo had been shut became transparent, then the inner walls of the prison and at last the outermost walls. The people who walked near the prison saw Giacomo seated on his stool, as if the prison were made of crystal and they continued to read his thoughts. At night a great light poured out of the prison and the tyrant in his palace had all the curtains drawn so that he wouldn’t see it, but all the same he wasn’t able to sleep. Giacomo-of-Crystal, even in chains, was stronger than he, because the truth is stronger than any other thing, brighter than day and more terrible than a hurricane.
translated Bart Anderson
