the man who smiles.

It was not a big room. Many would consider it a cell. One, small, rectangular window above. The sun never shined inside. He was a tiny man, too tiny to even take a brief look out of the window. All he knew that this hazy, gray wallpaper was the sky. And the sun never shined.

He kneeled. 'I could kill myself,' he was thinking, 'If I was to see that bright light they promised us before death. If only I was sure.'

He was a tiny man. Thin, cheerful, calm and content. He never had much problems. He never had been in a fight. He was very lucky, some thought. As if there was a guardian angel looking over him.

He smiled to himself. It wasn't much of a problem. Even if he was too tiny to see the daylight, it existed. Knowing it was a relief. He was relieved. He was smiling. He still could.

"Hello," said a soft voice.

"Hello," he replied, as if expecting it. "How are you on this cloudy day? I suppose it might rain."

"Well, it does," said the soft voice. "You don't know what rain looks like. You don't even know how the sun shines."

"No, no," he laughed. "I don't. But you know, it's not much of a problem. I know it's there."

"How," the voice asked. "Can you be happy?"

"Why not?" he asked. "Why not be happy? Why be sad?"

"Because you are not free," the voice said. "The darkness you are building up inside will overwhelm you."

"It won't," he shook his head. "I am a strong man, do not be fooled by my looks. I am a very strong man."

"Strong?" the voice asked with a sarcastic tone. "This is what you call strong? You smile, your ignorance is cheerful. You do not know what it means to cry. This is a dark cell you live in, and yet you can be happy?"

"My world," he said, smiling. "Is this dark cell. And the outer world makes me happy as long as I do not face it. I am inside. Actually, they are inside. Locked in, left out; all the same. They don't know my world, I don't know theirs. But their world, its existence makes me happy. Do my little cell make them happy?"

"Because your world is built on this dark misery you call a life," the voice said angrily. "You can't die avoiding, ignoring."

He laughed.

"I think I should. Sometimes I see animals they call a bird. They fly over here. It is sad. I don't want sad."

"You will die without feeling sadness, sorrow?" the voice asked.

"Why feel it if it is sorrowful?"

"That's a part of life."

"Not mine, no."

Eventually, they say, they found the man who smiles dead in his cell, drowned in his tears.