“It is Moving Day,” he said, a fact I already knew, so I only nodded my head. “All the streets and alleys are garbage pails—marvelous, big trash bins. As for me, a cartload will do. I remember one I saw on a raw, cold, windy day, shortly after Christmas.—It was just the kind of day to catch cold on.—The garbage wagon was filled to the brim with just the sort of things that are dirtying up the city streets today. In the back of the wagon there was a Christmas tree. It still had some green needles, and gold and silver tinsel hung from its branches. The garbage collector had stuck it on top of the load for everyone to see. It was a sight that made one either cry or laugh, according to one’s disposition. It made me think. And I am sure it made some of the inhabitants of the garbage pile think, too; or could have made them think, which is about the same thing. There was a worn lady’s glove. What were its thoughts? Would you like to know? The little finger was pointing right at the Christmas tree. ‘I am moved by the sight of that tree,’ she thought. ‘I, too, was once at a feast, when all the candles in the chandeliers were lighted. My whole life was one night at a ball. A handshake and I split; I tore. There my memories end, and I have nothing more to live for.’ That is what the glove thought, or could have thought.
“ ‘It is embarrassing to have to ride with that old pine tree,’ said some broken pieces of pottery, but they always found everything embarrassing. ‘When one has ended up on the garbage wagon, the least one can do is not to show off by wearing tinsel. We know that we have been a great deal more useful in our life than that old green stick.’ That was their opinion, and I am sure that it was shared by quite a few others. Still the Christmas tree looked pretty; it was a bit of poetry right in the middle of the trash. And trash and garbage there are too much of in the streets on Moving Day, or on any other day; that is why I like to stay in my tower. From here I can look down without losing my good humor.
“They are all playing let-us-switch-houses, carting and carrying their belongings about. But their pixy moves along with them. The troubles in the household: their griefs, worries, and afflictions, they move from their old apartment to the new; and what is to be gained from the exchange? There was a line in a poem, written a long time ago and printed in the newspaper, that read: ‘Think of Death’s great moving day.’
“It is serious thought, a sobering thought; I hope it does not upset you that I speak of it. Death, you know, is one of the most trustworthy of all our public officials; and that in spite of all the small jobs he has besides his main one. Have you ever thought about it?
“He drives the stagecoach for our last journey, writes out our passports, and signs our report cards. He is the director of the great savings bank of life. Are you aware that all the deeds we have done throughout our lives have been deposited in an account there? When Death comes with his great vehicle and we—whether we like it or not—have to board it as passengers and go to the land of eternity, he gives us a report card, which we will use as a passport at the border. For traveling expenses, he withdraws from the savings bank a deed or two that is most typical of our life. It can be something amusing or something horrible.
“No one as yet has missed that ride, although they tell of one—Jerusalem’s shoemaker—who had to run behind the omnibus. If Death had allowed him into his coach, he would have been spared the ill treatment he has received from the poets. Look for a moment at the passengers in the coach, use your imagination as eyes. The company is mixed. There they all are, sitting one next to the other: the king and the beggar, the genius and the idiot. Their richness and power have been taken from them, all they have left are their report cards and their traveling expenses, drawn from their account. What kind of deed will Death give us to take along? Maybe one as small as a pea; but from a pea, a vine can grow and flowers bloom.
“The poor scapegoat who sat on his little footstool near the fire and had to bear many an unjust word and unearned beating, maybe he receives his footstool as a symbol with which to pay his traveling expenses. And the footstool becomes a comfortable sedan chair in which he will be carried to the eternal land, where it will change into a throne, bright and beautiful as if it were made of gold, fragrant and flowering as a bower.
“That fellow who was always tippling, drinking the spiced wine of amusement, to forget every wrong that he had done, he will get a wooden cup to sip from on his trip, but the drink in it will be pure and clear. His thoughts will become clearer; all the emotions that are good and honest will be aroused within him. He will look at and understand all that he had not taken the trouble to see or understand before. His punishment will be the gnawing worm that cannot die. On the glass he drank out of during his life was written ‘Forgetfulness’; on the glass he now holds is engraved ‘Remembrance.’
“Whenever I read a book of history, I cannot help wondering which deed the person I am reading about will receive from Death as traveling money. There was once a French king, I have forgotten his name. One is always forgetting the names of the virtuous; but maybe it will come to me later. This king had reigned during a period of famine and had by his charity saved his people. They, in turn, erected a monument in his honor made out of snow. On it was written: ‘More quickly than this will melt did you help us.’ I think that Death gave him, because of the monument, one unmeltable snowflake; perhaps it flew over his royal head, like a white butterfly, as he entered the eternal land.
“Then there was Louis XI, I remember his name. The names of the evil persons in history we do not forget. I often think of one of his deeds and then I wish that I could call history a liar. He ordered his chief councilor to be executed; that he had the power to do, whether the man was guilty of anything or not. The councilor’s two children—one was eight and the other seven years old—he ordered to witness the execution at so close a range that the father’s warm blood sprayed and splashed on his own children. Then the innocent ones were taken to the Bastille and imprisoned in an iron cage and not even given a blanket to cover themselves. Once a week King Louis sent his executioner to the jail to pull out one tooth from each of the children’s mouths, so that they should not think it a pleasure to be imprisoned by him. The oldest of them, when he was told of the penalty, said, ‘My mother would die of sorrow if she knew how much my little brother is suffering. Pull two of my teeth and let him go free.’ A tear fell from the executioner’s eye when he heard those words, but the command of the king had to be obeyed, for it was stronger than any tears. Once a week two children’s teeth on a silver plate were presented to the king; he had demanded them and he received them. I think Death must have withdrawn two teeth from life’s great savings bank and given them to King Louis XI for his traveling expenses to the eternal land. The teeth of two innocent children must have flown in front of him, burning brightly, nipping and pinching him.
“It is a grave journey, the one taken in Death’s stagecoach on the great Moving Day. When will it happen?
“Yes, that is a serious thing to think about: any day, any hour, any minute, the stagecoach can arrive. What deed that we have done will Death withdraw from the savings bank and give us to take along? Yes, let us think about that. Your Moving Day is not printed in the calendar, you can’t look it up.”
129
The Snowdrop
It was winter. The air was cold and the wind was sharp, but indoors it was comfortable and warm, and the flower was indoors. It lay inside its bulb, underneath the snow and earth.
One day it started to rain. The drops of water penetrated the snow and the earth and touched the bulb, bringing a message from the world above. Soon a sun ray found its way down through the snow to the bulb and pricked it.
“Come in,” said the flower.
“I cannot,” answered the sun ray. “I am not strong enough yet to open your door; but I will be, come summer.”
“And when is it summer?” asked the flower, and it repeated its question each time a sun ray touched it. But it was long to summer. Snow still lay on the ground and every night the puddles of wate
r froze.
“Oh, how long it takes, how long,” sighed the flower. “It is prickling and tingling inside me. I have to stretch myself, I want to get out, I must! I want to nod good morning to the summer; it is going to be delightful!”
And the flower stretched itself inside the bulb and broke through the thin skin, which the water had softened and the earth and snow had warmed and the sun rays had touched. Out through the earth, under the snow, it came, with a white bud on its green stalk, and its long, narrow, thick leaves that hugged the flower to protect it. The snow was cold but porous; the light came through it and the flower felt that the sun rays were more powerful.
“Welcome, welcome!” they sang; and the flower lifted its head through the snow into the world of light. The sun rays petted it and kissed it so much that it opened. It was as white as the snow with some fine green lines in it. Because of its happiness and because of its humbleness, it bent its head.
“Sweet flower,” said the sun rays, “you are fresh and pure, you are the first, you are the only flower. We love you! Your little white bell shall ring that summer has come, that the snow will melt and the cold wind cease to blow. We, the sun rays, shall govern the world and everything will become green, and your little flower shall have company. The lilacs and laburnum will bloom, and last of all the roses. You, little snowdrop, are the first flower, so pure and bright.”
It was a great pleasure. The little flower felt as though the air itself sang to it, while the sun rays penetrated its leaves and its stalk. There it stood, so delicate, so fragile, and yet so powerful in all the beauty of its youth. Dressed in its white dress with green ribbons, it praised the coming of summer.
But it was long to summer yet; the clouds obscured the sun and the bitter cold winds blew. “You have come a little too early,” they grumbled. “We are still powerful and we will make you feel it. You should have stayed indoors; this is not the time for running about in such finery.”
The weather turned bitterly cold. The days that came were so dark that not one sun ray was seen. It was proper weather to freeze to death, for such a little flower. But it had more strength within itself than it had realized. Its faith that the summer, which it longed and cared for, would come had once been confirmed by the warm sun; so there it stood, confident in its white dress amid the white snow, bending its head as the heavy snowflakes fell around it and the cold winds flew above it.
“You are going to break!” screamed the winds. “First you will freeze, then you will wither. Why did you let the sun rays tempt you to bloom? They have tricked you. They have made you a summer fool in winter weather.”
“Summer fool,” the little snowdrop repeated the words in the cold morning air.
“Summer fool!” shouted some children who had come into the garden and spied the flower. They gave it the same name as the winds had, which was not so strange, for a snowdrop is called a summer fool in Danish.
“It is so beautiful, so graceful. It is the first flower of the year and the only one in the garden.” The children said these words, too; and to the flower they felt as sweet as the sun rays had. She was so happy that she did not even feel that she was being picked.
A little child’s hand closed around the flower; it was kissed and carried into the house. There in the warm room the snowdrop was put in a glass of water and that was very refreshing. The flower thought that summer had suddenly come.
The daughter of the family was a very sweet girl; she was fourteen and had just been confirmed. She had a friend, a boy; he, too, had just been confirmed, but he was not living at home, he was in the town studying. “He shall be my summer fool,” said the girl, and took the little flower and put it inside a folded paper on which she had written a poem. For in Denmark it is a custom that the young people send the first snowdrops of the year to one another, together with a verse. But the letters are never signed, the receiver has to guess who has sent them.
It was very dark inside the envelope, as dark as it had been inside the bulb. The letter was put in the postbox and started on its journey. The snowdrop wasn’t very comfortable. Several times it was squeezed, but everything, even the unpleasant, comes to an end.
The journey was over. The letter was opened and read by a young man. He was pleased. He kissed the flower and put it with the letter, down in the drawer of his writing desk. There were many other letters in the drawer, but only one had a flower in it. It was still the first, the only flower, as the sun rays had called it, and that was pleasant to think about. And the snowdrop was given a long time to think about it, for it lay there all summer and all winter. Only when it again became summer was it taken out. But this time the young man was not happy to see it. He crumpled up the poem and threw it across the room. The flower fell on the floor, and even though it was wizened by now, it was a pity that it should lie on the floor.
Still it was better than to be burned, and that was what happened to the letter. Into the stove went all the letters and the poem. What had happened? She had made a summer fool of him, and found another friend. This sort of thing happens quite often.
The next morning the sun shone through the windows and its rays fell on the little dried, pressed snowdrop; it looked as if it had been painted on the floor. The maid who came to sweep picked it up and put it between two leaves of a book that was lying on the table. Again the snowdrop was among poems, but this time they were printed, and they are more important than those that are written by hand, for they have involved expense.
Years went by. The book stood in the bookcase. Every once in a while it was taken down and read. It was a good book, the poems of Ambrosius Stub, a Danish poet well worth being acquainted with.
The man who was reading the book turned a page and then exclaimed, “Why, there is a snowdrop, a summer fool,” and then he said more thoughtfully, “A summer fool. Maybe there is a reason why it should lie in this book. Ambrosius Stub was a summer fool too: a jester, a poet. He, too, came too early, before summer; therefore, the sharp winds whipped him and snow and ice froze him. A winter fool, summer’s dupe, a joke of nature, out of season; but yet the first one, the only one of the Danish poets who is still summer-young. Yes, little snowdrop, you fit the book, I think someone has put you there for a reason.”
And the snowdrop was put back in the book; and it felt both honored and happy to know that it now was a bookmark in a volume of poems written by a poet who was the first to write about the snowdrop; a poet who, like the flower, had stood in the bitter, winter weather with a dream of summer in his soul: a summer fool. The snowdrop interpreted what she had heard her own way, as we all do.
That was the snowdrop’s tale.
130
Auntie
You should have known my mother’s sister! She was a lovely person; that is to say, she was not beautiful, but she was sweet and kind and, most important of all, she was so good to tell stories about. She could have been a character in a comedy, and that she wouldn’t have minded, for she loved and lived for the theater. Agent Pinjay, whom Auntie called Popinjay, said she was theater-crazy.
“I go to school in the theater,” Auntie would declare. “It is the well from which I draw my learning, it has even helped me to recollect what I learned in Sunday school. Moses and Joseph and His Brothers are both operas, and I have heard them. All that I know about history, geography, and human nature I have learned in the theater. From the French plays I know what life is like in Paris—it is obscene but interesting. Oh, how I cried when I saw The Family Rigquebourg. It is all about a poor man who has to drink himself to death so that his wife can marry her young lover.… Yes, I have shed many tear during the last fifty years that I have had a season ticket to the Royal Theater.”
Auntie knew every play, every backdrop and set, and every actor who was playing or had played on the stage. She only really lived when the theater was open. The summer months, when it was closed, aged her, while a performance that kept on well past midnight was a prolongation of her life. She did not say
, as other people did, “Now the newspaper says that the first strawberries are here.”
She was only interested in the arrival of the autumn. But she would not say something about it soon being fall; no, she would remark: “They have announced the auction of the boxes; soon the theater season will begin.”
The value of a house or an apartment she reckoned by its nearness to the theater. It was a great sorrow when she had been forced to move from her apartment in the little lane behind the Royal Theater to a broad street a little farther away. The street was so wide that she could not even see across it to watch what was going on in the houses on the other side.
“My window must be my theater. One can’t just sit at home and only be interested in oneself. One must see other human beings! The way I live now, I might as well have moved to the country. If I want to see other human beings I have to go out in the kitchen and sit down on the cupboard, for it is only in back I have neighbors. Now when I had an apartment in the lane I could look straight into the living room of the grocer across from me; and then, I had only three hundred steps to the theater, not three thousand as I have now.”
Sometimes Auntie was sick, but never so ill that she could not go to the theater. One day her doctor had prescribed an oatmeal plaster for her feet. She obeyed his order, but she still went to the theater, attending the performance wearing the oatmeal plaster. The death of the great Danish sculptor Thorvaldsen she called a “blessed departure”; he had died in the theater.