But they weren’t really proud of it. They felt that they were the owners and that they could dismiss Larsen if they wanted to. They didn’t, for they were decent people, and there are lots of their kind, which is fortunate for the Larsens.
That was the story of the gardener and his master. I have told it, now why don’t you think about it.
152
The Professor and the Flea
There once was a balloonist—that is, a captain of a balloon—who came to a bad end: his balloon ripped and he fell straight to the ground and was smashed. His son, who had been along on the trip, had parachuted down two minutes before the tragedy. That was the young man’s good luck. He landed safe and sound, with invaluable experience in ballooning and a great desire to make use of it; but he didn’t have a balloon or any money to buy one with.
He had to make a living, so he taught himself how to talk with his stomach; that is called being a ventriloquist. He was young and handsome, and when he had bought new clothes and grown a mustache he had such a noble look that he might have been mistaken for the younger son of a count. All the ladies found him handsome; and one of them so much so that she ran away from home to follow him. They traveled to distant towns and foreign lands, and there he called himself professor, no less would do.
His greatest desire was still to get a balloon and then ascend into the sky with his wife, but balloons are expensive.
“Our day will come,” he declared.
“I hope it will be soon,” said his wife.
“We can wait; we are young. Now I am a professor. Crumbs are not slices, but they are bread,” he said, quoting an old proverb.
His wife helped him. She sat at the door and sold tickets, which was no fun in the winter when it was cold. She also took part in the act. She climbed into a chest and then vanished. The chest had a double bottom; it was a matter of agility, and was called an optical illusion.
One evening after the performance, when he opened the false bottom, she wasn’t there. He looked everywhere but she was gone. Too much dexterity. She never came back. She had been sorry and now he was sorry. He lost his spirit, couldn’t laugh or clown, and then he lost his audience. His earnings went from bad to worse and so did his clothes. At last the only thing he owned was a big flea. He had inherited the animal from his wife and therefore was fond of it. He trained the flea, taught it the art of dexterity: how to present arms and to shoot off a cannon; the latter was very small.
The professor was proud of the flea and the flea was proud of himself. After all, he had human blood in his stomach, if not in his veins. He had visited the grand capitals of Europe and performed before kings and queens, at least that was what was printed in the playbill and the newspapers. He knew he was famous and could support a professor—or a whole family if he had had one.
The flea was proud and famous; and yet, when he and the professor traveled, they always went fourth class—it gets you to your destination just as quickly as first. They had a silent agreement that they would never part; the flea would remain a bachelor and the professor a widower, which amounts to the same thing.
“A place where one has had a great success one should never revisit,” said the professor. He knew human nature and that is not the poorest sort of knowledge.
At last they had traveled in all the civilized parts of the world; only the lands of the savages were left. The professor knew that there were cannibals who ate Christian human beings. But he was not a real Christian and the flea not a human being, so he thought that there was no reason not to go there, and he expected it to be a profitable trip.
They traveled by steamer and sailing ship. The flea performed and that paid for their passage.
At last they came to the land of the savages. Here a little princess reigned. She had overthrown her own parents, for though she was only eight years old she had a will of her own and was marvelously charming and naughty.
As soon as she had seen the flea present arms and shoot off his little cannon, she fell wildly in love with him. As love can make a civilized man into a savage, imagine what it can do to one who is already a savage. She screamed, stamped her feet, and said, “It is him or no one!”
“My sweet little sensible girl, we shall have to make him into a human first,” said her father.
“You leave that to me, old man,” she answered, and that was not a very nice way to speak to her own father, but she was a savage.
The professor put the flea in her little hand.
“Now you are a human being,” declared the princess. “You shall reign together with me, but you will have to obey or I shall kill you and eat the professor.”
The professor got a room for himself. The walls were made of sugar cane; if he had had a sweet tooth, he could have licked them; but he didn’t. He got a hammock for a bed, and lying in that was almost like being in the balloon he still dreamed about.
The flea stayed with the princess, sat on her hand and on her sweet neck. She pulled a long hair out of her head and made the professor tie one end around the leg of the flea; the other end was fastened to her coral earring.
The princess was happy, and she thought that if she was happy, then the flea ought to be happy too. But the one who was not happy was the professor. He was used to traveling, sleeping one night in one town and the next in another. He loved reading in the newspaper about himself, how clever he was at teaching a flea human accomplishments; but there were no newspapers among the savages. Day after day he lay in his hammock, lazy and idle. He was well fed. He was given fresh birds’ eggs, stewed elephants’ eyes, and roasted leg of giraffe, for the cannibals did not eat human flesh every day, it was a delicacy. “A child’s shoulder in a spicy gravy with peppers is the most delicious dish there is,” claimed the princess.
The professor was bored. He wanted to leave the land of the savages but he had to take the flea along; it was his protégé and the supplier of his daily bread.
He strained his power of thought as much as he could, and then he jumped out of the hammock and exclaimed, “I’ve got it!”
He went to the princess’ father and said, “Please allow me to work. I want to introduce your people to what we, in the great world, call culture.”
“And what can you teach me?” asked the father of the princess.
“My greatest accomplishment,” answered the professor, “is a cannon which when fired makes such a bang that the earth trembles and all the birds in the air fall down roasted and ready to eat.”
“Bring on that cannon,” said the king.
But the only cannon in the whole country was the little one the flea could fire, and that was much too small.
“I will make a bigger one,” said the professor. “I need lots of silk material, ropes, strings, needles, and thread. Besides some oil of camphor, which is good against airsickness.”
All that he asked for, he got. Not until he was finished and the balloon was ready to be filled with hot air and sent up did he call the people together to see his cannon.
The flea was sitting on the princess’ hand, watching the balloon being blown up. And the balloon stretched itself and grew fatter and swelled. It was so wild it was difficult to hold.
“I have to take the cannon up in the air to cool it off. Alone, I cannot manage it, I have to have someone who knows something about cannons along to help me, and here only the flea will do.”
“I hate giving him permission to go,” said the princess as she held out the flea to the professor, who took it on his hand.
“Let go of the ropes, up goes the balloon!” he cried.
The savages thought he said “up goes the cannon,” and the balloon rose up into the air above the clouds and flew away from the land of the savages.
The little princess, her father and her mother, and all their people stood and waited. They are waiting still and if you don’t believe me you can travel to the land of the savages. Every child there will tell you the story of the flea and the professor. They are expect
ing him back as soon as the “cannon” has cooled off. But he will never return, he is back home. When he travels on the railroad he always goes first class, not fourth. He has done well for himself, with the help of the balloon, and nobody asks him where or how he got it. The flea and the professor are wealthy and respectable, and that kind of people are never asked embarrassing questions.
153
The Story Old Johanna Told
The wind is blowing through the branches of the old willow. Listen, it sounds like a song; the wind is singing it, the tree is telling it. If you cannot understand the words, then ask old Johanna, who lives in the poorhouse. She was born in the village and has lived here all her life.
Many, many years ago, when the old King’s Highway was still in use, the willow tree was already full grown. It stood where it stands now, near the tailor’s whitewashed half-timbered cottage, close to the pond where the cows were watered and on warm summer days naked little peasant boys bathed. Next to the tree was a milestone, but it has fallen down and is covered by brambles now.
When the new King’s Highway, which passes on the far side of the rich farmer’s fields, was constructed, the old one became a path, then only a track, and now all sign of it is gone. The pond is overgrown with duckweed. When a frog jumps into it, the green surface parts and you can see the black water beneath. Reeds, cattails, and yellow irises grow along the shore.
The tailor’s house became crooked with age. On the thatched roof moss grew. The pigeon coop was so dilapidated that the starlings took it over to build their home in. In the gables of the house, swallows’ nests stood in a row, as if this were the most ideal place to live.
Once the house had been filled with life, but now it was silent and lonely. But it was still inhabited. Inside lived “poor Rasmus,” as he was called. He had been born in the house, played there as a child, splashed in the pond, and climbed in the willow tree.
Then the tree lifted its great branches toward the sky as it does now, but a storm split and twisted its trunk. In the crevice the wind deposited dirt, then grass grew there, and finally a rowan tree planted itself.
In the spring when the swallows returned, they flew about busily repairing their old nests. “Poor Rasmus” had let his nest go to ruin; its walls were never repaired or whitewashed. “What is the use?” he would say. That was his proverb, as it had been his father’s. Every autumn the birds flew away, but Rasmus stayed at home. And the birds returned faithfully, once winter was over. The starlings whistled their songs. Once Rasmus had been able to whistle as loudly as they, but he neither whistled nor sang any more.
The wind blew through the branches of the old willow—and it blows through them still. It sounds as though the wind were singing a song. If you cannot understand the words, then go and ask old Johanna, who lives in the poorhouse. She is wise and knows what happened long ago; she is like an old story book: the keeper of memory.
Once, when it was new, it had been a good house. That was when the village tailor, Ivar Olse, had moved into it with his wife Maren. Hard-working and honest folk they were.
Old Johanna had been only a child then. She was the daughter of the clogmaker, who was one of the poorest men in the village. Many a good sandwich did Maren give little Johanna, for although Ivar and Maren were poor they always had enough to eat, because Maren was on friendly terms with the noblewoman who was the mistress of the castle nearby.
Maren was happy. She sang and talked all day long and always was cheerful, although she was never idle. She sewed almost as well as her husband, and kept both the house and her children neat and clean. She had almost a dozen of them: eleven to be exact, the twelfth never arrived.
“The poor have too many chicks in their nests,” grumbled the noble owner of the castle. “If they could drown some of them, as one does with kittens, and only keep one or two of the strongest, they would be better off.”
“God preserve us!” said Maren. “Why, children are a blessing sent by God. Every child is one more prayer rising to heaven. For each little new mouth to be fed, one works a little harder, tries a little more. God will not desert one if one does not desert Him.”
The noble lady agreed with Maren, not with her husband. She nodded to Maren and held her hand. That she had done many times and kissed her as well, for Maren had been her nurse when she was small and that bound them together.
Every year at Christmas from the castle would come to the tailor’s house a cart with winter supplies: a barrel of flour, a pig, two geese, butter, cheese, and apples. It almost filled the larder. Ivar the tailor would smile for a moment, and there was reason to rejoice, but that did not keep him from repeating his old slogan, “What’s the use?”
The house was neat, the windows had curtains, and on the window sills were flowerpots with carnations and sweet peas. A framed sampler that Maren had embroidered herself hung on the wall. Next to it—and also framed—was a handwritten verse that Maren had composed when she became engaged. It rhymed at all the proper places. She had even found a rhyme for Olse; her married name was pronounced like the Danish word for sausage: polse. “It is always nice to possess something no one else has,” she would say about her husband’s odd name, and laugh. She never said, “What’s the use?” Her motto was “Trust in God and yourself.” And Maren did. It was she who held the family together. The children grew and flew from the nest. They traveled far and wide and did well.
Rasmus was the youngest. He was such a beautiful child that one of the painters from Copenhagen hired him as a model. Rasmus was painted with the same amount of clothes on that he had had when he was born. The painting hangs in the castle of the king; the noblewoman whom Maren had nursed saw it there and recognized Rasmus, even though he was naked.
As the years passed, their conditions grew worse. The tailor’s hands grew stiff from rheumatism and he could no longer sew. No doctor could help him, nor could the old “wise woman,” Stine, who was known to be so good at “doctoring.”
“There is no point in crying,” said Maren. “That has never helped anyone. If Father’s hands cannot work, then mine will have to make up for it. Little Rasmus is so clever, he can learn to sew too.”
Little Rasmus sat on the table, cross-legged, with a needle in his hand. He whistled and sang. He was a happy little lad. His mother would not keep him there all day. He, too, was sent outside to play like other children.
The daughter of the clogmaker, little Johanna, was his best friend. Her home was even poorer than Rasmus’ was. Beautiful she was not. She was always barelegged, even in winter. She had never owned a pair of warm stockings. Her clothes hung in tatters. There was no one to fix them at home, but she was happy as a bird in the sunshine.
By the milestone, under the willow tree, the two of them played. Rasmus’ dreams flew high. He wanted to be a master tailor, like the ones in the capital who have ten journeymen working for them. He had heard about them from his father, and as soon as he was old enough he would apprentice himself to one of them. Then, in due time, he himself would become a master tailor, and then Johanna could come and visit him. She could make the food for all of them, and she would have a room for herself.
Johanna did not dare believe that all this would happen, but Rasmus felt certain that it would. The wind played in the branches and leaves of the tree. It was as though the wind sang a song and the tree told a story.
Autumn came, and every leaf fell from the tree. The rain dripped from its naked branches.
“It will soon be green again,” said Maren.
“What’s the use?” replied her husband. “Another year will only bring more unhappiness.”
“The larder is filled, thanks to the kindness of others. I am still well and can work. It is a sin to complain.”
The noblewoman and her husband celebrated Christmas in their castle; then they were to move to Copenhagen for the winter. There they would go to dances and parties. They were even invited to the king’s table. The lady had sent for two dresses from Franc
e. They were of such fine material, of such elegant design, and so beautifully made that Maren had never seen anything like them before, so she asked the gracious lady if her husband, Ivar, might see them, too, for it was rare that a village tailor ever saw such fine work.
Ivar was invited to examine the two fashionable Parisian dresses, but he didn’t comment at all: neither up in the castle nor on the way home. Finally, when he again sat in his chair by the stove, he said his usual “What’s the use?” This time, events proved his words to be correct.
No sooner had the family arrived in Copenhagen and the season, with its balls and dinners, begun, than the master fell sick and died. Her ladyship never did get to wear her fancy dresses from France. Instead she was dressed in mourning from her black hat to her little black shoes. Not so much as a bit of white embroidery was to be seen. All the servants, too, were dressed in black, even the family coach was upholstered in black. That had never been seen in the district before.
Everybody talked about all the “mourning finery” the whole winter through. It had been a really noble funeral. “It shows that if you are born well you are buried well,” was the comment most often repeated.
“What’s the use?” said Ivar. “Now he has neither his wealth nor his life. We, at least, have one of them.”
“You mustn’t say that!” said Maren, very disturbed. “He has an eternal life in paradise.”
“And who told you that, Maren?” asked her husband. “Dead men are good fertilizer. But this one is too fine for that, he lies in a stone tomb.”
“Don’t talk like that; one would think you weren’t a Christian.” Maren’s face grew red with anger. “I tell you he has an eternal life.”
“And who told you that?” the tailor repeated.