As we can see, it is also an essential element of the working of the story that the Burghers of Hamlin fail to value the gift of the Pied Piper in ridding their town of the plague of rats. One wonders; if the adults had kept to their side of the bargain and paid up in a bag of gold, what then? The tune of time would have stood still.
But they dont, the adults leak on the deal, and the Piper pipes their unabashed boys and girls away. Leaking is what the story is all about. Whatever value was there before while the rats were marrauding the town, leaked away once the undesired vermin were removed. From the adult viewpoint, the value can not now be seen. As we can no longer see it, they say, it is no longer there.
Except it is, and the grown-ups will be filled with remorse, will rage and quake and wail, and the children whose attention also leaks when the tune begins to play again, will be unable to resist following the Pied Piper. Sidetracked and seduced, they will follow. It is not as if they can choose not to, a choice does not arise, the leaking cannot be stopped.
The tune plays on, and where does the Pied Piper lead the children? Out through the town walls and down to the river, but then it is not clear, they disappear. More leakage, and now even closer to home, it is the story itself that has begun to leak. In the river, under it, or beside it, we are not being told and are unable to see exactly where they have gone.
Or about the river and on to marshy ground, the essence of which is to leak, – "Or indeed, another human essence than self". Which is how Anne Carson puts it at the end of The Gender of Sound (in Glass, Irony and God), her essay about – "leakages of all kinds – somatic, vocal, emotional, sexual -".
The story has come home. And how we deal with the leaky ground, and the history of how have dealt with them since our time began, the silences we have caused when face to face. Go there and explore at the margin of the wet and dry, stand where the hot and cold of love’s remorse, rage, wail and quake. Also fast there.
mmj