The time traveller, landing on my floor made me wonder…
I found William Tell on my floor.
Small. Green. Rather flat.
For a legendary marksman, his landing could have been better.
There he was on an old Swiss stamp, wearing a postmark across his face and offering absolutely no explanation.
HELVETIA, it said.
Switzerland. A clue.
The stamp appears to be a ten-centime William Tell, a green issue first released in 1921. Suddenly, the little scrap at my feet had opened a door into another century.
And behind that door stood a man with a crossbow.
According to the legend, Tell refused to bow to a hat placed on a pole by the governor Gessler. His punishment was to shoot an apple from his own son’s head.
A remarkably unpleasant way to discover that someone dislikes your hat.
Tell hit the apple. His story became a lasting Swiss symbol of resistance to tyranny. Whether the man himself existed remains unproven; the legend certainly found its feet.
Eventually, it found perforations.
And now, somehow, my floor.
I wonder what the stamp once carried. A birthday greeting? A bill? A few carefully chosen words from someone who missed someone else?
Was the envelope opened eagerly? Put aside? Kept in a drawer?
I have no idea. The letter is gone. The tiny passenger remains.
Someone once needed this stamp to send a thought across a distance. Years later, it has delivered a different thought to me.
About the things we keep. The things we lose. The stories lying around while we look for something else.
Apparently, it is a common stamp.
It still managed a rather special delivery.
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