Auntie could not believe that there was no theater in heaven, although she admitted that there was no mention of one in the Scriptures. “But what about all the great actors and actresses who have departed from this world?” she argued. “What are they to do but act?”
Auntie had a “direct line” to the theater, as she called it. It came to her parlor for coffee on Sundays. The name of the “direct line” was Mr. Sivertsen. He was an assistant stage manager; it was he who gave the orders for the curtain to be drawn and the sets to be changed. From him, Auntie received a short—and very much to the point—critique of all the plays: “Shakespeare’s Tempest is a lot of nonsense, with too much stage business, and then, it starts with a storm and water in the first scene.” The rolling waves were the responsibility of Mr. Sivertsen. A well-written play, with “no nonsense,” was one that kept the same scenery throughout all five acts and did not require any “accessories.”
“In earlier times,” as Auntie called the period some thirty-odd years before, when she and Mr. Sivertsen had been young—he had already risen to be assistant stage manager and become Auntie’s “direct line”—the theater director had allowed a few people to watch the plays from the “attic,” above the stage. It was deemed so interesting to see it all from above—so to speak—that it was whispered that both a general and the wife of a king’s councilor had seen performances from there. What was most fascinating of all was to see how the actors looked and behaved when the curtain was down. The tickets to these “exclusive seats” could only be obtained from a friend who worked at the theater; even someone as insignificant as an assistant stage manager had the right to a seat or two.
Auntie had been there many times and seen both ballet and opera, for the performances that involved the greatest number of people were the most interesting to watch from the loft. One sat in almost complete darkness; and most of the spectators had brought their dinners with them. Once, three apples and half a sausage fell right down into Ugolino’s jail, to the great amusement of the paying public, on the other side of the curtain, since the prisoner, according to the plot, was starving to death. It was the sausage that caused the director of the theater to close the loft to the public.
“But I was there, thirty-seven times,” Auntie would declare. “And I am forever grateful to Mr. Sivertsen.”
As a matter of fact, it was on the last evening that the loft was open to the public that Auntie had managed to get a ticket for Agent Pinjay. They were playing Solomon’s Judgment. The agent had not deserved the ticket, for he always made fun of the theater, but Auntie had a kind heart. He went because he wanted to see the theater “turned inside out”—those were his own words.
And he saw Solomon’s Judgment from the inside and above; and fell asleep. One might suspect that he had come from a dinner where too many toasts had been drunk, for he slept so soundly that he did not even wake up when the performance was over.
When Agent Pinjay at last awoke, it was past midnight. The lights were out and the theater was empty; then, as he himself told the story—though Auntie never believed it—the real play began. It wasn’t Solomon’s Judgment that was performed. No, it was Judgment Day in the Theater.
Now listen to the story that Agent Pinjay tried to make Auntie believe, as thank you for her having been kind enough to get him a ticket:
“It was dark up in the loft,” began Agent Pinjay. “But then commenced the great magic play, Judgment Day in the Theater. The attendants stood by the doors and would not let the spectators in until they had shown their moral and spiritual report cards. Those with bad grades had their hands tied and their mouths muzzled so they couldn’t speak or applaud. Anyone who came late, as young people usually do—youth having no respect for time—had to wait until the first act was over.”
“What you are saying is all malice and wickedness; and that the good Lord never approves of,” interrupted Auntie; but Agent Pinjay did not pay any attention to her.
“Any scenery painter who wanted to get into heaven had to walk up the staircases that he had painted himself, and that no human legs could possibly climb; this was their punishment for having sinned against perspective. The stage managers—and all their assistants—had to return to their proper country or century all the plants and buildings that, through a lifetime in the theater, they had put in the wrong places. And it had to be done before the cock crowed, or the gate of heaven would remain forever closed for them.”
Mr. Pinjay had more to tell. He also listed what the actors and the dancers would have to do in order to get into heaven. But he should have worried more about how he himself would reach that destination: the Popinjay! Auntie was furious and declared that he had not deserved the privilege of having been in the loft and that she, at least, would never repeat his words. To this Agent Pinjay replied that he had written the whole affair down but would not have it published until after his death, because he did not want to be flayed alive.
Once Auntie had been in great dread and terror while attending her Temple of Joy. It had been a winter day, one of those days when daylight consists of two hours of gray twilight. It was cold and had been snowing, but they were performing Herman von Unna, a one-act opera, plus a grand ballet, with both a prologue and an epilogue. It would last until the small hours of the morning. Auntie just had to go! From the lodger who had rented her spare room she borrowed a pair of sled boots with sheepskin lining, though they were too big for her and reached all the way up to her knees.
But she managed to make her way to the Royal Theater and to her box: second circle on the left. It is the better side; and here, too, the royal family has their box. The scenery is arranged so that it looks more beautiful seen from there.
All at once someone screamed: “Fire!” And smoke poured out of the loft. Panic broke out! Auntie had kept the sled boots on during the performance because they were so nice and warm. And that they were, but they were not meant for running. Auntie was on her way to the door of the box when the terrified person in front of her slammed the door so hard that it locked. She couldn’t get out of the door of her own box, nor could she climb into any of the neighboring boxes, for the partitions were too high.
She screamed, but no one heard her. She looked down at the circle of boxes below her; it didn’t seem far. In her fear, Auntie felt all the agility of youth returning to her: she would jump down! She got one leg over the balustrade but could not manage to get the other one over. There she sat as if she were riding a horse, with her skirt tucked up under her and her long leg with the sled boot on it hanging in the air. It was a sight! And it was seen and Auntie was saved from a death in flames—which was not so strange, for the theater wasn’t burning at all.
It was the most memorable evening in her life, she often remarked; and it was a good thing that she could not have seen herself sitting on the balustrade, for if she had been able to she would have died of shame.
Her “direct line,” Mr. Sivertsen, the assistant stage manager, always came to visit her on Sunday. But from one Sunday to the next was a whole week; therefore Auntie, in later years, invited a child from the ballet for “leftovers” on Thursday. The little one was to come and feast on the remains of the dinner. The child was as hungry for food as Auntie was for news of the theater. The child had already played the parts of an elf and a page. Her most difficult role had been the hind end of a lion in The Magic Flute, but since she had last performed it, she had grown, and now she had to play the head of the lion, for which she only received three crowns. The rear end was better paid—she had earned five crowns—because she had had to walk bent over, and “there hadn’t been any fresh air to breathe.”
All this Auntie had found very interesting.
Auntie deserved to live as long as the Royal Theater stood, but few people get what they deserve. She didn’t die in her box either, but decently, at home, in her bed. Her last words are worth quoting: “What are they playing tomorrow?” she asked.
She must have left an estate
of about five hundred crowns, judging from the interest: twenty crowns a year. This sum was bequeathed for a seat in a box, in the second circle on the left on Saturday night—when the best plays are always performed—and it was to be given to any elderly, unmarried lady without family. The beneficiary’s only duty was to think—every Saturday, while she attended the performance—of Auntie, who lay in her grave.
The theater had been Auntie’s religion.
131
The Toad
The well was deep, and therefore the rope that held the bucket was long and the winch difficult to turn. Although the water was clear, the sun had never mirrored itself in it; but as far as its rays reached, green plants grew among the stones.
In the well lived a family of toads. They were immigrants and had arrived there—or rather the old mother toad, who was still alive, had arrived there—head over heels. The green frogs, who had been the earliest inhabitants and swam in the water, acknowledged the toads as part of the family and called them guests. The toads, however, had no thought of leaving. They lived in the “dry part” of the well; that is what they called the wet stones.
The mother frog had once been on a journey; she had traveled in the water bucket on its way up. The light had been too much for her, it had hurt her eyes; and happily, she had escaped. With a huge splash she had landed in the well again. She had survived the jump, but her back had ached for three days. She could not tell much about the world above, but that the well was not the whole world both she and her children knew. The old mother toad could have told them something about it, but she never answered any of the questions anyone asked her, which made the frogs tired of talking to her, but not about her.
“Fat and ugly, and ugly and fat, she is,” they said. “And her children will be just as ugly as she is.”
“It may be true,” grumbled the old toad. “But one of them has a precious stone—a gem—in his head; or maybe I have it.”
The young frogs heard her and stared at her but, not liking what they saw, they dived back down into the deep water. But the young toads stretched their back legs in pride and kept their heads perfectly still. After a while, when they had got tired of that, they asked their mother what it was they were proud of and what it meant to have a “precious stone” in one’s head.
“It is something so valuable, so costly,” said their mother, “that I cannot even describe it. One has it for one’s own pleasure, and everybody envies one for having it. But don’t ask any more questions, for I am not going to answer them.”
“I am sure I don’t have any precious stone in my head,” said the smallest of the toads, who was particularly ugly. “Such splendor is not for me. And if it made everyone envy me, then it wouldn’t give me any pleasure. I just wish that I could get up to the top of the well and look out, just once. That must be delightful!”
“You stay where you are,” croaked old mother toad. “You know the well, and what is familiar is best. Be careful of the bucket, so you don’t get hit by it. And if you should get caught inside it, jump! Though not everyone can be as lucky as I was and make such a great leap without breaking one of my legs or losing my eggs!”
“Croak,” said the little toad; and that in human language means, “Oh!”
Still its longing for the green world above did not cease, and the next morning, when the full bucket paused for a moment right near the stone that the little toad was sitting on, he jumped in and lay still at the bottom of the bucket.
“Pooh! What an ugly fellow!” said the young man who had drawn the water. “That is the most repulsive thing I have ever seen.” Then he poured the water out on the ground and tried to kick the little toad with his wooden shoes, but the little creature escaped among the nettles.
It looked at the stalks of the nettles and up above at the leaves; they were transparent and the sunlight sifted through them. For the little toad it was the same experience as we have when we come to a great forest and see the sunlight playing on the branches and leaves of very tall trees.
“It is much prettier here than it was in the well! I think I could stay here all my life!” said the little toad, and lay down in the nettle forest. It lay there for an hour, it lay for two. But then it started thinking, “I wonder what is beyond here. Since I have gotten this far, I might as well go on.”
He crept out of the nettles and onto a road. The sun baked down upon him and the dry dust of the road powdered his little body white. “This is really dry land, almost too much of a good thing. It makes my back itch,” the toad said to himself as he marched across the road. In the ditch on the other side, forget-me-nots and meadowsweet were in bloom; and on the bank of the ditch grew elderberry and hawthorn bushes; bindweed twined itself around their branches.
Here were colors to look at! A little butterfly flew up and the toad thought that it was a flower who had decided to fly out and see the world just as he had—and that was not an altogether stupid thought.
“If only one could fly like that flower,” said the little toad. “Croak! Oh, how beautiful it is here!”
The toad stayed for eight days and eight nights in the ditch and didn’t eat a thing during all that time. On the ninth day he thought, “I must go on,” though how anything could be more beautiful than the ditch was hard for him to imagine, unless it were toads or some frogs. The night before, the wind had blown, and he had heard his cousins’ voices.
“It is wonderful to live,” he said to himself. “It is wonderful to have come out of the well, to have lain in the the nettle forest and to have crawled across the dusty road, and to have rested in the damp ditch; but I must go on! I must find another toad or at least a frog, one cannot do without company. Nature is not enough!” And right then and there he set out on another journey.
He wandered across a great field until he came to a lake surrounded by a forest of reeds.
“It may be too wet for you here,” said the frogs, “but you are welcome. Are you a he or a she? Not that it matters, you are equally welcome whichever you are.”
That night he was invited to a concert, a family concert. You know what that kind of affair is like: there’s a great deal of enthusiasm with rather feeble voices. There was nothing to eat, but there were free drinks from the lake.
“I think I will move on,” said the little toad. He was always seeking something better.
He saw the stars blinking in the sky, the new moon, and he noticed how the sun rose higher and higher in the heavens. “I am still in a well,” he thought. “It is just a bigger one. I must try and get up higher. I feel so restless, there is a strange longing within me!”
Later, when the moon grew full and round, the poor animal thought, “I wonder if that is the bucket they will let down into the well. I will jump into it and rise even higher; or maybe the sun is the great bucket? It is so big and shines so brightly. I am sure there is room enough for all of us to get into it. I must watch for an opportunity. I have so many thoughts in my head; it feels as if a flame were burning there. I am sure it shines brighter than any precious stone. That gem I am sure I don’t have; and I won’t cry about it either. No, I just want to travel upward, upward to greater beauty and glory. I have faith in myself, and yet I am fearful. It is difficult to take the first step, but I must travel on: forward, straight ahead.”
And it took the kind of steps that such a little animal could take, and soon it was on the road again. And then it came to a place where human beings lived. There were both a flower and a vegetable garden; the toad rested under a cabbage.
“How many different creatures there are that I have never seen before. How huge and glorious is the world! One should look around in it and not stay in one place. It is so beautifully green here!”
“I should say it is!” said a caterpillar that was sitting on a cabbage leaf. “My leaf is the biggest in the whole garden; half the world is hidden by it: the half I don’t care about.”
“Cluck! Cluck!” said a couple of hens who were out for a walk among
the cabbages. The foremost of them was farsighted. She spied the caterpillar first, and pecked at the cabbage leaf so that the little creature fell. Once on the ground, the caterpillar twisted himself from one side to the other, while the hen looked at it, first with one eye and then with the other, wondering what it hoped to accomplish, by its acrobatics. “I don’t think it is doing it for pleasure,” thought the hen, while she lifted her head, in readiness for pecking it.
The toad was horrified at what he saw, and hopped over toward the hen.
“So it has auxiliary troops!” exclaimed the hen. “What a horrible crawling thing!” And she backed away and let the caterpillar be. “I really don’t care about that little green mouthful, it tickles your throat.” The other hen was of the same opinion and both of them left.
“I wiggled away from them!” shouted the caterpillar. “It is important to keep one’s presence of mind. But the most difficult problem is left. How do I get up on my cabbage leaf again? Where is it?”
The little toad was very happy that its ugliness had saved the caterpillar and offered his sympathy for its being so defenseless.
“What do you mean?” grumbled the caterpillar. “I twisted myself and managed to wiggle away from the hen. It is true that you are pretty horrible to look at, but I saved myself. I owe nothing to anyone. Where is my cabbage leaf? I smell it. Here is the stalk. There is nothing like one’s own property! But I must get up a little higher.”
“Yes, higher up!” echoed the little toad as he went away. “Higher up, I bet it feels just as I do. Such a frightful experience would put anyone out of humor. We all want to climb higher.” And the little toad looked up as high as it could.
On top of the roof of the farmer’s house was a stork’s nest. The male stork was chattering with his long bill, and his wife was answering him.
Inside the farmhouse lived two young students: one was a poet, the other a scientist. One sang and wrote joyfully about everything God had created that mirrored itself in his heart. He sang about it in brief powerful verses. The other examined the things themselves—yes, even cut them up at times, if he had to. He looked at God’s work as a huge mathematical formula; he added and divided, and wanted to understand everything with his mind—and it was an intelligent mind. He talked of nature with both understanding and appreciation. They were good young people, both of them.