“It will drive me mad,” he muttered. “I can feel myself going insane. Oh, how I wish my head were free and it were all over and done with.”
It was a pity he hadn’t said that right away. As soon as his thoughts became words, his head was free. He ran into the hospital as quickly as he could. He was very disturbed by the scare the magic galoshes had given him.
The night passed and so did the next day, without anyone coming to the hospital to claim the galoshes.
There was a performance that evening in a little theater in Canon Street. There was not an empty seat in the theater. Among the recitations there was a new poem. We must hear it:
Grandmother’s Glasses
My grandmother’s head is cleverly turned;
Two hundred years ago she would have been burned.
She knows every joy and every sorrow
That will happen to people tomorrow.
She knows the future, what next year will bring,
For whom funeral bells will toll or wedding bells ring.
What is my future? Denmark’s? or art?
With such secrets my grandmother will not part.
I plagued her; first she was silent, then she got mad.
With downcast eyes I tried to look sorry and sad.
I am her favorite, her sweet little darling,
And so I became happy, as in springtime the starling.
For Grandmother handed me her glasses and said,
“I grant you your wish. Put these on your head.
Then go where people are gathered, to one of these places
Where you do not see one but a thousand faces.
Then look through my glasses and you will be able
To read their futures, like cards on the table.”
With joy I ran, feeling bold and free.
But where should I go, where would most people be?
To an amusement park? No, I might catch cold.
To a church? No, there gather only the very old.
To Main Street? Everyone walks there in such a haste.
To the theater? Yes, there people have time to waste.
So here I am, your futures to read and tell.
I will draw truth, like water from a well.
Permit me to put on Grandmother’s glasses
And we shall know the future as time passes.
Your silence as agreement I take
And into cards I you now make.
At this point the actor who was reciting put on an old pair of spectacles, then he continued:
It is true! How amazing! It makes me smile.
I wish you could see it, too, for a while.
There are no kings, but of knaves aplenty,
In spades and clubs I count more than twenty.
The little Queen of Spades, she has her part;
To the Jack of Diamonds, she has lost her heart.
Her passion is great. Oh, I must look away.
No wonder the Jack looks so happy and gay.
I see money inherited and spent in waste.
I see dark strangers arriving in haste.
Oh, it is all to me quite clear,
But other questions are to be answered here.
What will happen to Denmark next year?
I see it! Oh, my goodness! Oh dear!
If I tell, no newspaper will be sold, I fear.
It is better to wait the news to hear.
The theater, what is its future, its fate?
Silence! I seek the director’s friendship, not his hate.
As for my own future, which is nearest to my heart,
I see it clearly, but will not with that secret part.
Do you want me the happiest of all here to find?
It would be easy, but would it be kind?
Do you want me to tell which one will live the longest?
Oh, that kind of news will weaken the strongest.
Should I tell this, or that? With doubt I am filled,
I wish no hope in my neighbor killed.
Maybe it is best that I no one’s fortune tell
And leave each to his own heaven or hell,
And show my respect to God and to man
By not trying to do what no one can.
The actor had recited the poem very well and there was enthusiastic applause. Among the audience sat the young student, whom we know from the hospital. He had completely forgotten his misadventure of the night before. As no one had come to claim the galoshes and the weather had not changed, the student was wearing them.
He liked the poem very much, and he thought the idea interesting. He wouldn’t mind having such a pair of glasses; but he had no particular desire to see the future through them. What would interest him was to be able to see into other people’s hearts. “The future you’ll find out about soon enough anyway,” he thought. “But what goes on in another man’s soul, never. Now take the people who are sitting in the first row; if one could climb into their hearts, as if each one were a different store … oh, how my eyes would go shopping! Inside that lady over there”—he bent forward and glanced at a very well-dressed woman—“I’d find a fashion show.… The woman next to her has an empty store, in need of being cleaned.… Others would sell solider things, there’d be more than one hardware store, I am sure.” The student sighed. “I know one little store I’d love to visit; but the owner of that store has already hired a salesman and he’s the only bad thing in the whole store. Some owners will stand in their doorways, and, bowing politely, invite one to step in. Oh, how I wish I could!”
That was enough for the galoshes. The student became at once invisible and was sent on the most unusual journey that anyone has ever taken: a trip through the hearts of all the people in the front row of a theater.
The first was the heart of a lady; and the student thought he had entered an orthopedic institute, as the place where doctors remove and straighten bones is called. He was in a room filled with plaster casts of crooked backs, deformed limbs, misshapen bodies. Here the lady preserved all the faults of her friends. She had personally cast them and kept them as a museum, which she visited every day.
He got out as quickly as he could and entered the next person. He seemed to be in a great cathedral; innocent white doves flew above the altar. He would have liked to stay and fall on his knees to worship there, but he had to travel on. Yet even so short a visit had done him good. He could still hear the tones from the organ; he felt as if he were a better person, and not so undeserving to enter the next temple.
This was a garret where a poor, ill mother lay in bed; but God’s glorious sun shone in through the windows, and beautiful roses grew in boxes on the roof. Two bluebirds sang in childish joy, while the sick mother blessed her daughter.
Now he was crawling on his hands and knees through a butcher shop. Everywhere there was meat and more meat. He was in the heart of a very rich and highly respected man whose name was well known to all. Then he climbed into the heart of this prominent man’s wife. It was an old pigeon coop that was about to fall apart. Her husband’s portrait was a weather vane, which was connected to the doors of the coop in such a way that, when he turned, the doors opened or closed.
Now he was in a cabinet of mirrors like the one in Rosenborg Castle. But here the mirrors all greatly enlarged the objects they reflected. On the floor, sitting as still as the Dalai Lama, was this person’s tiny personality marveling at its own greatness.
He had entered a sewing box. The place was filled with sharp needles. “I’ll bet that this is the heart of an old maid I have gotten into,” he thought. But he was wrong. It was the heart of a young officer who had already been decorated several times. He was called a man of esprit!
Very confused, the student tumbled out of the hearts that he had wished to visit. He could not collect his thoughts, and decided that his too lively imagination was playing tricks on him.
“Oh, my God,” he sighed. “I think I must have a disposition for madness. Isn’t it hot in here
? I feel so flushed!” Then he recalled all that had happened to him the night before, how his head had been caught between the iron bars of the fence. “That’s where it happened,” he muttered. “You have to catch things like that at the outset. What I need is a Russian steam bath. I wish I were lying on the highest shelf in the hot room, right now.”
There he was on the top shelf of the steam bath with all his clothes on, including the galoshes. Drops of water dripped from the ceiling down on his face.
“Ow!” he shouted, and jumped down from the shelf and ran to the showers.
An attendant screamed: what was a fully dressed man doing in a steam bath?
The student was quick-witted enough to whisper, “It’s a bet.” But the first thing he did, when he got back home and into his own room, was to plaster a Spanish fly on his back, in the hope that it would draw out the madness.
The next morning he had a bloody back; and that was all he had got out of wearing the magic galoshes.
PART FIVE: THE COPYIST’S METAMORPHOSIS
The night watchman—have you forgotten him?—well, he had not forgotten the galoshes that he had found in the street. He went back to the hospital for them; and when neither the lieutenant nor anyone else in the neighborhood would claim them, he took them to the police station.
“Why, they look just like mine,” said one of the copyists who worked there. He put the galoshes down next to his own. “Not even a shoemaker could tell them apart.”
“Excuse me …” A policeman had entered; he had some papers that he wanted the copyist to make duplicates of. The two men talked for a while. When the policeman left and the copyist looked down once more at the two pairs of galoshes he didn’t know which were his. Was it the pair on the right or the one on the left?
“It must be the ones that are wet,” he thought. But that was wrong, for the wet pair were the magic galoshes. But why shouldn’t someone who works for the police be allowed to make a mistake? The scrivener put them on and stuck the papers he had just been given in his pocket. He had decided to do the rest of his work at home.
It was Sunday morning, and when he stepped outside the weather was so lovely that he changed his mind and set out for Frederiksberg. A walk would do him good. No one was more conscientious or hard-working than he was, and he deserved a little outing: didn’t he spend almost all his time behind a desk?
As he walked along, he thought of nothing at all; and therefore the galoshes had no opportunity to show their magic power.
In a park, along a shaded path, he met a friend, a young poet, who told him that on the following day he was going abroad.
“So you’re off again,” remarked the coypist. “You poets are so happy and free. You can fly wherever you want to; the rest of us have a chain around our ankles.”
“True,” the poet replied. “But the other end of that chain is fastened to a breadbox. You don’t have to worry about tomorrow; and when you grow old you’ll have a pension.”
“But you lead a better life,” said the copyist. “Both of us use the pen, but I only copy unimportant trivialities, while you write poetry and are complimented by the whole world. That must be a pleasure.”
The poet shook his head and so did the copyist. They parted, each with his own opinion intact.
“Poets are a queer lot,” thought the scrivener. “I wouldn’t mind being one. I am sure I shouldn’t write such whining verse as most of them do. This is a day for a poet. The spring air is clear; the clouds look newly washed; and there is the smell of greenness everywhere. I haven’t felt like this for many years.”
He had become a poet already. It wasn’t very noticeable; but the idea that poets are different from other human beings is very foolish. There are many people who are more poetic and more sensitive than some of our best poets. What makes the poet unique is that he has a spiritual memory. He can retain his thoughts and his feelings until he has clarified them in words; and this other people cannot do. This was the gift that had now been given to the copyist. But change needs a period of transition, and this was what the copyist had just gone through.
“How lovely the air smells,” mumbled the poet. “It reminds me of the smell of violets in my Aunt Lone’s apartment.… Strange, I haven’t thought of her for years. She was a very kind old maid who lived behind the Stock Exchange. No matter how cold the winter was, she always had something—a flower or a branch that was in bloom or just about to sprout—standing in a vase. In midwinter, I have seen violets in her home.
“I remember how I used to put a copper coin on her stove; and then when it was hot, take if off and put it up against the window where it would melt a hole in the ice on the frozen glass pane. Through that peephole I saw the world in a strange perspective! Down by the canals stood the icebound ships, deserted except for the screeching crows.
“When the first breeze of spring began to blow, everything changed. The port was filled with activity. People bustled about, and then they would sing and shout, ‘Hurrah!’ as the ice was sawn into pieces and the ships were made ready for their journeys to foreign lands.
“And I have sat behind a desk in the police station making out other people’s passports, but never my own. That is my fate.” He sighed deeply and stood still. “I have never felt like this before. It must be the spring air. I am uneasy and happy at the same time.”
From his pocket he took out a sheaf of papers. “These dry pages will give me something else to think about,” he said and held them up, so that he could read.
MOTHER SIGBRITH, a tragedy in five acts. That was what was written on the first sheet and it was in his own handwriting. “What’s this all about? How can I have written a tragedy?” He started to leaf through the pages.
THE INTRIGUES ON THE RAMPARTS OF THE CITY, a comedy. “Where did these plays come from? Somebody must have stuck them in my pocket,” he reasoned. “Why, there’s a letter, too.” It was a note from the director of a theater. His plays had been rejected and not very politely.
“Oh … Hum …” grumbled the copyist, who was now a playwright, and sat down on a bench.
His imagination was so alive; and he felt so tenderly toward the world. Without thinking, he bent down and picked a flower. It was only a little daisy that had been growing in the grass, yet it was able to explain to him, in one minute, what it would have taken a botanist long hours to tell. The little flower related the myth of its birth, told of the power of the sun: how it forced its petals to unfurl and give off their lovely scent. This made the poet think of how our lives, too, were a struggle and that it was this that aroused so many of the feelings we have. Sunlight and air, the flower explained, were her suitors, but sunlight was her favorite; and she obeyed it and always held her head up toward it. When it disappeared and night came, she closed her petals and slept in the air’s embrace.
“The sunlight makes me beautiful,” said the daisy.
“But it is the air that gives you breath, so you can live,” whispered the poet.
Nearby a boy was splashing the water in a ditch with a big stick; and green branches were being sprayed with muddy water. The copyist began to think of how each drop of water contained millions of tiny, invisible animals, which were so small, in comparison to himself, that their journey into the air, from the ditch to the bush, must have felt to them as he would feel if he were cast high above the clouds.
The copyist smiled at his own thoughts, and how he seemed to have changed. “I must be asleep and dreaming. How curious it is that I can be in a dream and yet feel so natural. I hope I shall be able to remember all that’s happened when I wake up. Now I feel so alive and see everything so clearly.… Tomorrow it will all seem like nonsense. I know. All the clever and beautiful things we dream about are like subterranean gold; when brought out into the light of day, they are merely stones.… Alas!”
Sadly, the copyist was looking at a little bird that sang as it jumped from branch to branch. “That bird is better off than I am. It is happier. To fly! That is the
greatest art. Lucky is he who was born with wings. I wish I were a little lark.”
No sooner had he uttered the wish than the sleeves of his jacket became wings; his clothers, feathers; and the magic galoshes, claws. The copyist, feeling the transformation, laughed. “I have never had a dream as foolish as this before.” He flew up into a tree and started to sing. But there was no poetry in his song. The magic galoshes were thorough; and like everyone else who does things thoroughly, the galoshes could only do one thing at a time. When the copyist wanted to be a poet, he became one; but when he decided that he would rather be a small bird, then he lost his poetic nature.
“This is a fine state of affairs,” he peeped. “In the daytime I work in the police station, copying the most unimaginative reports; and at night I fly as a lark, out here in the Frederiksberg Gardens. One could write a comedy about that.”
He flew down on the grass and turned his head in all directions before picking up a piece of straw that, considering his size, appeared as large as a North African palm tree.
Suddenly everything was black as night around him. Some huge thing had enveloped him. It was a boy’s cap, which an urchin had thrown over him. A hand creeped in under the hat and grabbed the bird around the back, pressing the wings tightly to its little body.
The lark peeped loudly, “You horrible, naughty little boy. I am a copyist in the Central Police Station!” To the child, it only sounded like the ordinary peeping of a bird. He hit its bill and walked off with it.
Along one of the shady paths he met two upper-class boys coming from school. That is, they were upper class by birth; but as far as their character and intelligence were concerned they belonged to the lowest class. For eight pennies they bought the lark from the poor boy; and that’s how the copyist was brought back into the city, to stay in an apartment on the Street of the Goths.
“It’s a good thing I’m dreaming, or else I’d be very angry,” twittered the copyist. “First I was a poet and now I am a lark. It must have been my poetic nature that transformed me into a bird. It’s not so much fun to be a bird, especially when you fall into the hands of boys. I wonder how this will end.”