That was a happy day in the little cottage. Both Garden-Ole and Garden-Kirsten agreed that it was the happiest day of their lives. Hans was asked to come to the manor, along the path he had not walked for many a year.
It seemed to the boy that the hazelnut bushes and the trees nodded to him and said, “Good day, Hans, welcome out here.” The sun shone in his face and his heart.
The young squire and his wife looked so happy that one would have thought that Hans was a member of the family. The young woman was the happier of the two, for she had given the child both the book of fairy tales and the little bird that had been the cause of his recovery.
The bird had died of fright, but the book the boy would keep and read, no matter how old he became. Now he would be able to learn a trade; perhaps he could become a bookbinder. “Then I would be able to read all the latest books.”
Later that day, his parents were called to the manor house. The young mistress explained to them that she and her husband thought that Hans was a very good and clever boy, who could read well, and understood what he read. “God always blesses a good cause,” she added.
That evening Garden-Ole and his wife were really happy, especially Garden-Kirsten. But not a week had passed before their eyes were filled with tears. Hans was a good boy, and he had new clothes, but now he was leaving, traveling across the water to the capital, to go to school, where he would learn such things as Latin. It would be several years before they would see him again.
The book of fairy tales Hans was not allowed to take with him. His parents wanted to keep it, and Ole often read from it, but only the same two stories that he knew.
Letters came from Hans, one happier than the next. The family he lived with were well to do and ever so nice, but the best of all was the school. There was so much to learn that he wished he could live to be a hundred and become a schoolmaster himself.
“It is so strange that it should happen to us,” said his parents, and held each other’s hands and looked as solemn as when they went to communion.
“That it should happen to Hans,” said Ole, “shows that God also remembers the poor man’s child; and his being a cripple makes it sound like one of the stories from Hans’s book of fairy tales.”
156
Auntie Toothache
Where did we get this story from?
Would you like to know?
We got it from the grocer’s paper barrel. Many good and even rare books have ended up in the paper barrel. When they are taken out again, it is not to be read but to be used as wrapping for coffee, sugar, cheese, butter, and pickled herrings—the latter gets a double portion—which proves that written matter has a practical value.
Often things go into the paper barrel that shouldn’t.
I have a friend who knows all about it, because he is not only the son of a greengrocer, who has a store in the basement; but he is apprenticed to a grocer. The young man had advanced himself from the cellar to the street floor. He is very well read in barrel literature: both the handwritten and the printed. He has a whole library of it, but he has two stores to choose from. It is an interesting collection. There are several love letters; official government communications that were thrown in a wastepaper basket by an absent-minded bureaucrat; and some long, gossipy letters filled with scandal that must never be told to a soul. My young friend is a rescuer of literature and has saved, if not books, then many pages of books that deserved to be read more than once.
He has shown me his collection, both of printed and handwritten documents. A few sheets of large folio paper caught my attention because of the beautiful handwriting.
“That belonged to the student,” my friend explained. “The one who lived across from us. He died last month. He suffered terribly from toothaches. It is amusing to read about. There are only a few pages left. There was a whole book, if not more, when my father bought it from his landlady. He paid half a pound of green soap for it. This is all I managed to save; the rest had already been used for wrapping.”
I borrowed it, I read it, and now I will let you read it. Its title was:
AUNTIE TOOTHACHE
When I was a little boy, Auntie always fed me sweets. My teeth survived it. Now when I am older and have become a student she still spoils me with sweets; she calls me a poet.
I have something of a poet in me, but not enough. Sometimes as I walk through the streets of the city it seems to me to be a giant library. All the houses are bookcases, each floor a shelf with books. Here is an everyday story, written realistically; there an old-fashioned comedy; and beside it, where the gauze curtains hang, a scientific treatise. Pornography and literature of real value are on the same shelf. I can daydream and philosophize while I walk through my “library.”
Yes, there is something of a poet in me, but not enough. I think many people have as much of a poet in them as I do, without calling themselves one. They are lucky and I am lucky too, for to have an imagination is a blessing, even when it is so small that it cannot be shared. It is like a sun ray that fills your soul and your mind. It comes as a sudden smell of flowers, a melody that one knows and remembers, but cannot recall where from.
The other evening as I sat in my room I had no book to read and was in need of one, when a leaf fell from the linden tree outside. The wind carried it through the open window into my room. I picked it up and looked at its green surface with its many veins. A little bug was studying it too; at least, it plodded across the leaf as if that were what it was doing. Suddenly it struck me that such was human wisdom. Don’t we study merely the leaf, and yet lecture about the whole tree: root, crown, and trunk—God, death, and immortality? And all we know anything about is the leaf.
Just at that moment Aunt Mille came to visit me. I told her my thoughts and showed her the leaf, upon which the insect was still crawling.
She clapped her hands. “You are a poet!” she exclaimed. “Maybe the greatest we have. If only I live to see you fulfill your destiny, then I shall die contented. Ever since the funeral of Brewer Rasmussen I have been amazed by your imagination!”
This is what Auntie said, word for word; and then she kissed me. But who was Auntie Mille and who was Brewer Rasmussen?
II
My mother’s aunt was called by us children simply Auntie, we had no other name for her.
She gave us jam and sugar sandwiches, though she knew it was bad for our teeth. As she said herself, she could not help indulging such sweet children. It seemed to her cruel to deny them something they so adored, and therefore we all loved Auntie.
She was an old maid. As long as I can remember, she had been old. It was as if her age had reached a certain point and then stood still. She used to suffer from toothaches, and talked about it a good deal; therefore her friend Brewer Rasmussen nicknamed her “Auntie Toothache.”
The brewer, who had sold his brewery and now lived on his savings, often visited Auntie. He was a little older than she, and he did not have a whole tooth in his mouth, only black stubs. He said that this was because he had eaten too much sugar as a child, and we children should be careful or the same thing would happen to us.
Auntie had obviously not eaten any sugar as a child, because she had the most beautiful white teeth.
“She takes such good care of her teeth that she won’t even sleep with them at night,” explained Brewer Rasmussen.
We knew that this was not a nice thing to say, but Auntie smiled and explained that he didn’t know what he was talking about.
Another time, when both she and Brewer Rasmussen were having lunch with us, Auntie mentioned that she had had a nightmare, in which she dreamed that one of her teeth fell out. “That means that I shall lose a true friend.”
“But if it was a false tooth,” said the brewer, and laughed, “then it must be a false friend.”
“You are a very rude old man!” Auntie replied. She was angrier than I have ever seen her, either before or since.
Later she said that it was only nonsense; her old
friend, who was one of the noblest persons she had ever known, had only been teasing her. When he died he would become one of God’s little angels up in heaven.
I thought a great deal about this transformation and wondered if I would be able to recognize Brewer Rasmussen in this new shape.
When Auntie was young, the brewer had proposed to her, but it had taken her too long to make up her mind. She had kept putting it off until she became an old maid, but they had remained faithful friends.
Brewer Rasmussen died. He was driven to his grave in a hearse with four black horses and followed by a great many mourners, among them several in uniform, wearing decorations.
Auntie stood at her window dressed in black, together with all her nieces and nephews, except for my little brother whom the stork had brought only three weeks before. When the hearse and the mourners had passed and the street was empty again, Auntie wanted to leave. But I didn’t, I was waiting for the little angel Brewer Rasmussen was supposed to become. I was sure that he would show up.
“Auntie,” I began, “don’t you think he’s coming now? Or maybe, when the stork brings us another little brother, it will be Angel Rasmussen?”
Auntie was so impressed by my great imagination that she said, “That child will become a great poet.” This she repeated all through my childhood, even after I was confirmed and right up to now, when I am a student.
She was and is my most compassionate friend, both when I suffer from poetry “pains” and when I suffer from toothaches. I have attacks of both.
“Write down all your thoughts,” she would say. “Put them in a drawer, that is what Jean Paul did, and he became a great author. Though I am not fond of him; he is too narrow-minded. You must be broad. You will broaden yourself!”
That night I lay sleepless and in agony because of my longing and desire to become the great poet that Auntie saw in me; that’s what I call “poet pain.” But there is a suffering that is more ferocious, and that is a toothache, for it pokes and squeezes you until you are no longer a man but a squirming worm, chewing on a spice bag.
“Oh, that pain I know,” said Auntie. Her lips smiled sorrowfully; her teeth were pure white.
But now I must begin the third section of the story of myself and Auntie.
III
I had moved to new lodgings and had lived there about a month and was telling Auntie about it.
“The family that I have rented my room from care so little what happens to me, I can ring the bell three times without anyone answering it. It just occurred to me that it could be because no one hears it, for the house is a circus of noises, from wind and weather and human beings. I live just above the entrance. Every cart or carriage that passes below makes the pictures on my walls dance. When the janitor finally shuts the gate at night, it sounds and feels like an earthquake. The whole house shakes. If I am already in bed, the jolt goes through every limb of my body, but they say that that is good for the nerves. If the wind blows—and when does it not blow in this country?—then the big iron hasps that hold the windows, when they are open, bang against the walls; and the bell above the neighbor’s portal tolls with every gust of wind.
“The other lodgers come home in bunches, at every hour of the night. The fellow who has rented the room above mine gives trombone lessons during the day; at night before he goes to bed, which is never before midnight, he always takes a brisk walk around his room, wearing his iron-shod alpine boots.
“There are no storm windows, but there is a broken window, the landlady has glued paper over it. When the winds blow it makes a noise like a bumblebee. That is good bedtime music. When I finally do fall asleep, I am awakened early by the cock crowing in a henyard that is in the back of the house. The hen and the rooster wish to let me know that it will soon be morning. My landlord has two small horses but no stables. He keeps the animals in a small room to the right of the gateway, underneath my room. The poor beasts have so little space that, in order to get exercise, they kick at the walls and the door.
“As soon as the sun is up the janitor, whose domicile is in the garret, puts on his wooden shoes and runs down the stairs. He opens the gate with a bang and the whole house shakes. When that is over the lodger above me starts his morning exercises; this physical-training act is accomplished with great iron balls. He holds one in each hand, but they are too heavy for him, and time and again they fall to the floor—which is my ceiling.
“Then it is time for children to go to school. They run through the house screaming and shouting as if they were being tortured. I open my window to get some fresh air for my health. But I am reminded that across the yard there is a tannery. All in all, it is a very nice house, and I live with a quiet family.”
This was about the way I described my lodgings to Auntie; possibly the spoken words were a little livelier than the written, I often find that that is so.
“You are a poet!” screamed Auntie. “Write it down, it is as good as Dickens. I think it is better; at least, I find it more interesting. You draw as you talk. I can see the house in front of me. I shudder! … You must begin to write. Just put some living creatures in that picture: human beings—lovely people, but preferably unhappy ones; they are the most interesting.”
Well, I wrote it down. I have described the house exactly as it is, with all its sounds and noises, but without any plot or characters except myself. They will come later!
IV
It was winter and late in the evening. It was terrible weather. There was a snowstorm and the wind was blowing so hard that I could hardly hold myself upright.
Auntie had been at the theater, and I had come to escort her home. I had trouble trying to keep myself from falling and I couldn’t get a cab, because they were all taken.
Auntie lived far from the theater, but my room was nearby. Had it been otherwise, we should have had to seek shelter in a sentry box.
We tramped through the deep snow with the snowflakes whirling about us. Auntie held onto my arm. I supported her like a buttress against the wind. Some places I even had to carry her. We only fell twice, and then we fell softly.
When we came to the entrance of the house where I lived we shook the snow off our clothes—or at least we tried to, but when we stood in the vestibule we noticed that we had covered the floor with snow. We took off our coats, hats, and shoes; we were wet to the skin. My landlady loaned Auntie stockings and a dressing gown. That was necessary, she said, or Auntie would catch a cold. Then she added that Auntie would not be able to get home that night, which was quite apparent. She offered Auntie the couch in their living room to sleep on. It stood next to the closed and locked door between that room and mine. Auntie agreed to stay.
The fire was burning in the stove. The samovar was on the table. My room appeared quite cozy, although not as cozy as Auntie’s, which in the winter has heavy curtains in front of all doors and windows and double carpets on the floor, with three layers of newspapers underneath. At Auntie’s one feels as if one were inside a properly corked bottle filled with hot air. But, as I said, even my poor room grew cozy, while the wind blew outside.
Auntie talked about her youth. She recounted her early years and Brewer Rasmussen’s; they were old memories.
She could remember when I had got my first tooth, and the family’s joy at this amazing achievement. The first tooth. The tooth of innocence, shining as white as milk: a milk tooth! If one arrived, then there would soon be a rank and file. But the beautiful baby teeth are only the avant-garde; later come the company that should last you all your life. The last to arrive are the wisdom teeth: one on every flank. They are born with great difficulty and in pain. Every tooth leaves you again, and that out of turn, before the need for its service is over. That day the last tooth leaves is no day of rejoicing; on the contrary, it is a day of mourning. Then one is old, even though one’s spirit may be young.
Such things are not a pleasure to talk about, and yet that’s what Auntie and I happened to discuss. We talked and talked, and it was
past midnight before Auntie went to bed in the room next door.
“Good night, my boy,” she called through the locked door. “Here I am as comfortable as in my own bed at home.”
She slept peacefully, though there was no peace in the house: neither inside nor out. The storm shook the windows, rattled the iron hasps, and rang the neighbor’s bell. The lodger upstairs had come home and was taking his constitutional around the room; finally he took off his boots, threw them across the floor, and went to bed. He slept well. I could hear his snoring through the ceiling.
There was no peace for me. I was restless. The storm didn’t rest either; it was most rudely alert. The wind kept blowing, singing through every crack it could find. It was very lively. So were my teeth. They whistled and sang in their own fashion, a toothache was brewing.
There was a draft from the window. The moonlight shone in and spilled its light upon the floor. It grew sharper and then disappeared, as the wind whipped the clouds across the sky. There was a commotion of light and shadow, and finally the shadow on the floor seemed to grow into a shape. At the same time I felt a gust of ice-cold air thrust itself against my face.
On the floor sat a figure. It looked like a person drawn by a child with chalk on a blackboard: something that is supposed to look like a man. The body is but one thin line, the legs and arms are a line each, and the head is only a circle. As the figure became more visible, I realized that it had a thin and very fine gown on, which showed that it was a female.
There was a humming noise. Where did it come from? Was it the wind that was playing with the broken window? Or was it the shadow on the floor that was talking?