When Franz Kafka the writer was a young man, he contracted tuberculosis. On days when he felt well enough, he went for a walk in a nearby park. On one of those days, when he was sitting on a bench and enjoying the sunshine, he noticed a mother and daughter on the next bench over. The child was crying as only a heart freshly broken can cry.
Gail Rosen begins this tale in a small church meeting room on a day not long before Halloween, when the late afternoon light cast shadows the color of brewed tea.
There is food on the table, cookies and trail mix, and a cranberry-red beverage of some kind, but no one bothers to eat. A lot of people are piled into that little room, jammed thigh to thigh on the worn couches, or inadequately contained by armless folding chairs. No one is especially comfortable, but no one notices.
They are all too busy listening to Rosen unspool her Kafka fable. In turn, Rosen, a woman of 50 with curly silver hair, listens to the others tell their tales. Each is more mesmerizing than the next.
Barbara Woodey tells an Appalachian folk tale about foolish Jack, who tries to follow his mother's advice, but always ends in a muddle. Beth Vaughan wraps herself in a shawl and a brogue and transforms herself into a wise old Biddy O'Byrne, who lives in the Middle Ages and sells medicinal herbs. Accompanying himself on a bodhran, a type of drum, Michael Gaudreau relates a Celtic legend. Tracy Radosevic recounts her experiences telling biblical stories in South African churches.
Some stories are versions of ancient folktales that have sprung up in all cultures and across the ages, while some were invented the previous week. Some are factually and historically accurate. Still others, like Rosen's Kafka story, occupy an uncertain middle ground; it's not clear if they really happened, but they might have.
The dozen or so people in the room include librarians and educators, a musician and a few social workers. One man has a Ph.D. in history. Until this year, Rosen owned a retail business. She sold children's gifts, Judaica and most recently, Christmas ornaments, from market carts set up in local malls.
All are members of The Fourth at Four (so-called because they meet the 4th Sunday of each month at 4 p.m.) They've been swapping tales and techniques for seven years, ever since Woodey and Diane Friedman met in an adult education class at the Johns Hopkins University taught by renowned storyteller Mellis Bunce.
Once they started telling stories they couldn't stop, and before they knew it, they were part of an oral tradition dating back at least as far as Homer. "I grew up surrounded by storytelling," Friedman says. "My father shared imaginative stories every night at the dinner table, and both my grandmothers were superb storytellers. When I was 12 years old, I started telling pirate stories to my classmates in Connecticut. I have always admired good storytellers."
Rosen has been telling stories professionally for 10 years, though it's only been in the past year that she took the plunge and sold her business, so she could devote herself to the career she most loves. She often dresses in sweaters and scarves as tightly woven and colorful as her tales.
The little girl had lost her doll in the park, and her mother was trying to comfort her. She told the child, "I'll buy you a new doll." But the little girl said: "I don't want a new doll. I want Briggitte."
Kafka came over to the mother and child, and pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket. "Excuse me," he said. "I saw your doll before she left, and she gave me a note for you. Would you like me to read it to you?"
The little girl nodded, and he read: "Your little room is lovely. But I look outside, and I see a great, wide world, and I would like to see some of that world. I will stay in touch with you through this nice man who comes to the park."
In that great, wide world there many great amateur and professional storytellers; the National Storytelling Network based in Jonesborough, Tenn., has 3,000 members. Tonight, Rosen and 13 other local spellbinders will come together, as they have for the past 15 years on the Saturday before Thanksgiving, for a storytelling festival called "Tellabration!" Baltimore's event is part of a global celebration; 300 festivals, all called "Tellabration!" will be held today in 42 states and nine countries. Most of the programs will be divided equally between children's and adult stories.
For the youngest audience members, the event may be a revelation. There may be a prop or two, but nothing like the detailed costumes they see in movies and on television. There will be no special effects. No screens. Just one person at a time, talking. And instead of seeing the story unfold before their eyes, they will see it behind their eyelids, peopled by their imaginations.
Nancy Kavanaugh, the Storytelling Network's executive director, likens it to a "theater of the mind" that draws its power from the contact between a live narrator and audience. "The oral tradition is still relevant today because it involves a personal relationship," she says.
She means that both the teller and listeners shape the story. The teller spins out the story, the listeners react, the teller monitors their reactions and changes the tale accordingly. "Storytelling is active and energetic," Woodey says. "No two tellers tell the same story the same way. No storyteller tells a story the same way twice. And no two listeners hear exactly the same things in it."
The oral tradition crosses ages, religions, genders and races. Last weekend, about 200 black storytellers, or griots, congregated in Baltimore to participate in the National Association of Black Storytellers' 20th anniversary convention. Whether the story springs from the cotton fields or Norway's fjords, this much is certain: The narrators are talking to themselves as much as they are talking to the audience.
When Rosen is struggling with a tough decision, she often will find herself telling the same story over and over again to various groups. After perhaps a dozen recitations, she will realize that embedded in the story is the answer to her problems. "Storytellers are very fond of saying that we tell only those stories that we ourselves need to hear," she says. Kafka made other trips to the park, and each time he would read the little girl a new "letter" from Briggitte. The letters told the child about the dancing in Spain, the delicious bread in France, and the colors of the tulips in Holland.
Kafka's health grew worse, and it was clear he would not be going to the park very much longer. The last time he went, the child ran up to him as usual, and he said: "There's someone here to see you." He was holding something behind his back. "Is it Briggitte?" the little girl asked. "Yes," he said, presenting her with a doll. "She's changed. But then, so have you."
Rosen often tells this story about loss in hospices, because she finds it helps the terminally ill and their loved ones cope with their grief. Among other tales, she tells true stories based on the life of Hilda, an elderly Holocaust survivor.
When asked about the losses in her own life, Rosen laughs and says that there really haven't been many - at least, nothing out of the ordinary.
There was her divorce five years ago, after 22 years of marriage. And her parents are in poor health. Her mother has muscular dystrophy and Alzheimer's disease, and her father has Parkinson's disease.
"There are times when it feels hard and sad and dreadful," Rosen says. "Their health is declining, and it's only going in one direction."
Still, she says, it is "my right and my privilege to worry about them the way they worried about us."
She would not want that right taken from her. She says that she's noticed that her sadness for her parents has made her appreciate her own good health. She is beginning to realize that the keener her sense of loss, the more intense her appreciation for beauty. The more she grieves, the more she loves.
"What's happened," Rosen says, "is that I've left the garden." She's referring to the Garden of Eden, and she means that her new, firsthand knowledge of the good and the evil that life has to offer has been traded for a certain peace of mind.
The child grew up, and began to visit some of the places she'd heard about in Briggitte's letters. One day, when she returned from her travels, she noticed the doll sitting on the shelf, and remembered that man, and those letters. As took the doll down, she found a piece of paper tucked in the waistband that she'd never noticed before. She carefully unfolded it, and found one final note from Franz Kafka.
It said: "Everything you love will someday go away. But it will return to love you in some other way."
Call 410-366-0808 or more information about the Baltimore area "Tellebration!"