61
The Swans’ Nest
Between the Baltic and the North Sea lies an old swans’ nest called Denmark. In that have been and will be hatched swans whose fame will never die.
In ancient times one flock of swans flew across the Alps down to the green plains of the land of eternal May, where it is pleasant to live. That flock of swans were called Lombards.
Another flock flew to Byzantium. Shiny white were their feathers and faithful their eyes; around the emperor’s throne they gathered and their great wings were like shields that guarded and protected him. They were given the name of Varangians.
From France came screams of terror and fear. Bloodthirsty swans with fiery wings had come from the north and the people prayed: “Free us, O Lord, from the wild Normans.”
On the green fields of England, by the open sea, stood the trebly crowned Danish swan, holding his golden scepter out over the country.
The heathens on the coast of Pomerania fell on their knees when the Danish swans came, sword in hand, carrying the flag of the cross.
“That was all in ancient, bygone times!” you may object.
But also in an age not so distant from our own has a swan flown from the nest, and as it flew through the air it illuminated it and the light spread over all countries. It was as if the beat of its wings caused a mist to disperse, and all the stars in the sky became clearer and more visible, as if the heavens had come closer to our earth. That swan was Tycho Brahe.
“That, too, is long ago!” I hear you say. “What about now in our times?” We have seen swans, too, fly with powerful wings high up in the sky. One touched, with his wings, the golden harp, and the music resounded through the north. The stark mountains of Norway rose high in the light from an ancient sun. The gods of the north and the heroes and heroines from the Viking age again walked in the deep green forest.
One swan beat with its wing on the marble cliff so hard that it broke, and the beauty locked in the stone became visible to all.
Another swan tied threads of thoughts from land to land, so that words with the speed of light could travel from country to country.
God still loves the swans’ nest that lies between the Baltic and the North Sea. Let giant birds of prey gather to destroy it; it shall survive. Even the little cygnets, with their downless chests, will make a ring around the nest and defend it with their bills and claws, as we have seen them do in our times.
Many centuries will pass and swans will fly from the nest, and be seen and heard around the world, before that time shall come when truthfully it can be said: “That was the last song, the last swan from the swans’ nest.”
62
A Happy Disposition
From my father I have inherited a happy disposition, a cheerful soul. And who was my father? Well, it is really not of any great importance; but he was lively, chubby, round, and plump, both inside and out. He personified the very opposite of his profession. And what was his profession? If one told that in the very beginning of a story, I am afraid that the reader would go no further; he would put the book aside saying, “That is much too depressing to read about.” Yet my father was not an executioner. No, on the contrary, his profession often let him assume a position ahead of the very best society. This elevated post was his by right, he had to be in front of bishops and princes.… He was the driver of a hearse!
Well, now it has been said! But this I can guarantee, that anyone who saw my father in his black cloak and three-cornered hat, sitting high up on a death stagecoach, would not have been reminded of sorrow and the grave. For my father’s face was round and smiling like the sun. It was a face that said without opening its mouth, “Don’t worry, everything is all right, everything is for the best.”
It is from him I have my happy disposition and the habit of visiting the churchyard on my afternoon walk. Such a place is not really depressing if you have a happy disposition and a cheerful soul. I also read the Copenhagen News just as he did.
I am not so young any more, I have neither wife nor children or library; but I do subscribe to the Copenhagen News. It is sufficient for me as it was for my father. It is useful and contains all the news of real importance, such as, who is preaching in which church on Sunday and who is preaching in which new book on weekdays. It is filled with ads if you happen to need a new house, a servant, new clothes, or food for your larder. It tells you who is having a sale and who has been sold, who is holding a charity ball and who was charitable enough to dance at it. It is also filled with the kind of sweet verses that do not offend anyone. Then there are the personal ads: marriages and engagements. Yes, one can live very happily reading the Copenhagen News; and one would even lie more comfortably in one’s grave if one’s coffin were lined with it. It is softer than wood shavings.
Yes, the Copenhagen News and the churchyard have always been the most edifying places for my mind to wander. They have been the bathing establishments of my soul, so to speak, and have kept me ever in good humor.
Now anybody can let his mind wander through the Copenhagen News, but please accompany me on a stroll through the churchyard. Let us choose a day when the sun is shining and trees and bushes are green. Each gravestone is like a book on a library shelf. You can only read the title, which usually tells everything and nothing about the book. But I know the stories, I know them from my father or learned them myself. I have written them down in my “grave book.” Here all the secrets of the graves are revealed; it is a useful and amusing book.
Here we are in the churchyard. Behind that little iron fence is the grave of a very unhappy man. There used to be a rosebush near his tombstone, but it died. The ivy that covers it now does not properly belong there but to the grave next to it. When he was alive he was, as the world calls it, well off. But he was a very unhappy man, and why? Because he took everything too seriously, especially art. If he went to the theater, could he enjoy the performance of a fine play with his whole heart and soul? No, he would find that the lighting was not quite right: the moon was a bit too bright. The stage designer had placed a palm tree in a scene taking place in Denmark or a beech tree in one from Norway. But do these things really matter? After all, a play is just amusement. Why worry about it? But he did, he could not help it. The audience applauded either too much or too little. “The wood is wet, it won’t catch fire,” he would say; and turn around to watch the other spectators. Then he would notice that they laughed at the wrong places, at something they shouldn’t have laughed at, and that irritated him. He was a very unhappy person and now he rests in his grave.
Here is buried a man who was both happy and fortunate. He came from a very good family, and in that he was fortunate, for otherwise nothing would ever have come of him. But everything in this world is so wisely arranged that it cannot help but put one in a good humor. He was, so to speak, “embroidered both in front and in back” and placed in the parlor. In the same manner that a valuable bellrope decorated with pearls is hung there. Behind the showy bellrope there is real rope, which you cannot see but which rings the bell. He had a big strong rope behind him that, unseen and unheard, did good service; and is, as a matter of fact, still doing it, behind another embroidered bellrope. Yes, everything is so wisely arranged that it is easy to be cheerful.
Here rests a man … This story is really too sad.… He lived sixty-seven years and during all that time had only one ambition, to say something witty. He finally thought of something that in his own opinion was witty and that made him so happy that he died of a stroke. He died from happiness because he had thought of something witty to say, and the irony of it was that no one ever heard it. I am sure he cannot even rest in his grave; after all, it might be a lunchtime joke; and according to popular belief, the dead can only rise around midnight. Imagine him telling it then; nobody would laugh and he would return to his silent tomb. Oh, it is a very unhappy grave.
Next to him lies a woman who was so miserly while she lived that she used to go out in her back yard at night and meo
w like a cat, so that her neighbors would think that she kept a pet. That is how tight she was!
And here rests an old maid of good family. She never attended a party without performing; she used to sing, “Mi manca la voce!” and that was the only time she ever told the truth.
Here is buried a maiden of a different nature! Whenever love’s canary bird twittered, she put the fingers of common sense in her ears. She wanted to get married but she never did. That is what one might call an everyday story. It could have been told more brutally, but let the dead sleep in peace.
Under this large tombstone lies a widow; she had the gall of an owl instead of a heart. She used to search out the failings of friends and acquaintances with the pains of a reformer visiting a slum.
This is what is called a family plot; even in death they keep as close as they did in life. If the whole world and the newspapers said that a certain thing had happened in a certain way, and then their youngest child came from a school and said, “I have heard a different story,” they would agree with him, for he was part of the family. If their cock crowed in the middle of the night, then they would declare that it was morning, even though all the clocks and night watchmen of the city said it was midnight.
The great Goethe ends his Faust with the sentence: “Can be continued.” Our little walk in the cemetery can be continued too. I come here often! If one of my friends or enemies makes life a little too hard for me, then I go out to the cemetery and find a nice unused plot and there I “bury” him or her. There they can lie peacefully and harmlessly until I resurrect them as new and better human beings. The story of their lives I write down in my grave book—seen from my point of view, naturally. This is what everyone else should do. Instead of being annoyed when someone harms you, you should bury him immediately and then write his obituary.
Keep cheerful, read the Copenhagen News, that paper which people are allowed to write themselves, as long as the journalists hold the pen. And remember to visit the cemeteries.
When my own time comes, and my life has to be bound in a tombstone, write this inscription on it:
A HAPPY DISPOSITION!
That was my story.
63
Grief
This is a story in two parts; the first is not really necessary but it provides background and that is always useful.
We were visiting friends who lived in a manor house out in the country and it so happened that my host was called away for a few days. A woman came from a nearby town; she had her lap dog along, which she carried under her arm. She had come in order to ask my host to buy stock in her tannery and she had all her papers with her. I advised her to put them in an envelope and write on the outside my friend’s name and his titles: War Commissary General, Knight of the Danish Flag, etc.
The woman grabbed the pen, began, and then stopped. She asked me to repeat what I had said a little more slowly. I did and she started to write once more; but in the middle of the word “Commissary” she sighed and said, “I am only a woman!”
Her lap dog, which she had put down on the floor, began to growl. He had been taken along for his health and his amusement, and so he thought he wasn’t supposed to be put down on the floor. He was fat and flat-nosed.
“He doesn’t bite,” said his mistress. “He hasn’t got a tooth left in his mouth. He is like a member of the family: faithful but bad-tempered; and that’s my grandchildren’s fault. They like to play ‘getting married’ and the dog has to be a bridesmaid, and that tires him out, the poor old thing!”
She left and took her little dog under her arm and went home. That was the first part of the story, the one that could have been skipped.
The lap dog died; that is the second part.
It was about a week later. We had come to the town and had taken a room in an inn. Our windows faced the back of the building and we had a view of the yard; it was divided in two by a fence. In one half hides had been hung to dry, both tanned and untanned ones; it was a tannery and belonged to a widow, the woman we had met at the manor house. Her lap dog had died that very morning and was being buried in the yard. The widow’s grandchildren—that is, the tannery owner’s widow, not the lap dog’s, for the dog had never been married—were busy patting the earth smooth on top of the grave. It was a beautiful grave, in which it must have been a pleasure to lie.
It was fenced in by broken flowerpots and covered with sand; as a tombstone there stood a beer bottle with its neck upward; it was not meant symbolically.
The children danced around the grave, and the oldest of the boys, an enterprising young lad of seven, suggested that they should exhibit the grave to anyone in the street who would care to see it. The entrance fee should be one button, for that was something that every boy who wore suspenders owned; and he could even pay for a girl without losing his trousers. The proposal was carried unanimously.
All the children in the street and in the alley behind the yard came and paid their buttons. Many a boy that day had to wear one suspender instead of two, but at least he had seen the little dog’s grave and that was worth it.
Outside the gate of the tannery yard stood a litle girl. Although she was dressed in rags she was lovely; she had the most beautiful curly hair, and eyes so clear and blue that it was a pleasure to look at them. She didn’t utter a word nor did she cry; but every time the gate was opened she peeked in. She didn’t own a button and therefore she stood dejected outside the gate all afternoon, until the last of the children had left. Then she burst out crying and, hiding her eyes in her little sunburned hands, she sat down upon the ground. She alone, of all the children in the street, had not seen the little lap dog’s grave! Now that was grief, a sorrow as sharp as a grownup’s can be!
We saw it from above; and the little girl’s sorrow—like many of our own—was laughable when seen from above. That is the story and if you haven’t understood it, then you can buy stock in the widow’s tannery.
64
Everything in Its Right Place
More than a hundred years ago there stood, near a forest, a manor house that had a moat around it, which made it look almost like a castle. In the moat reeds and bulrushes grew. To enter the farm you had to cross a bridge, and there, beside it, was an old willow tree that spread its branches out over the water.
From the road not far away came the sound of hunting horns and the trampling of horses’ hoofs. The girl who was tending the geese tried to hurry them over the bridge before the hunters came. But they were galloping so fast that she had to jump onto one of the big rocks next to the bridge in order not to be run down herself. She was no more than a child; finely built, with a blessedly sweet expression on her face, and two unusually clear eyes; but this the master of the manor house did not notice. As he galloped over the bridge, with the shaft of his riding whip he poked the girl’s chest so that she lost her balance.
“Everything in its right place!” he shouted. “Down in the mud you go!” And he laughed, for he thought that a wonderful joke; and so did his companions. They all laughed and shouted, and the hunting dogs barked. Just as it says in the nursery rhyme: “The rich bird came blustering …” But only God knows how rich he really was.
The poor girl had caught hold of one of the willow branches as she fell, and it saved her from landing in the mud. As soon as the hunting party and their dogs were out of sight she tried to pull herself up by the branch. But it broke off and she would have fallen into the moat had not a strong hand grabbed her and held her up. A peddler who had been watching the scene had come to her rescue.
“Everything in its right place,” he said jokingly, repeating her master’s words, and pulled her up on the bank. Then he took the branch and held it up to the limb from which it had broken off. “Not everything can be put back in its right place,” he said, smiling. He stuck the branch into the soft earth. “Grow if you can. And may there be cut from you a whistle that can play a tune your master will have to dance to.” What he meant was that he hoped that haughty master and
his friends would one day get a good whipping.
The peddler went up to the manor house; he did not go into the great hall but into the servants’ quarters. There he showed his wares: good woolen stockings and other knitted goods. While the servants bargained, they could hear above them their masters shouting, screaming, and singing: that was what they were best at. Laughter and the barking of dogs mixed with the sound of glasses breaking. It was a great party! There were wine and old beer in glasses and tankards. Their dogs ate from the table. One of the guests kissed his favorite dog; but first he wiped its snout with its own long, curly ears. The peddler was called up to the hall with his wares; they wanted to make fun of him. Wine had gone to their heads and pushed their brains out. They filled one of the peddler’s stockings with beer and ordered him to drink—but he had to be quick about it. Oh yes, it was really very, very funny. Later that night they played cards: horses, cows, and even farms changed hands.
“Everthing in its right place,” said the peddler as soon as he was well away from “Sodom and Gomorrah,” as he called the manor house. “And my right place is the open road. Up there in the hall, I certainly felt out of place.” The girl who tended the geese waved to him as he walked away.
Days went by and weeks went by. The broken willow branch, which the peddler had stuck down into the bank of the moat, did not die; fresh shoots appeared and the girl knew that it had taken root. It pleased her, for she felt that now she had a tree all her own.
Yes, the willow branch was prospering, but that was the only thing that thrived on the estate. Drink and gambling are two rollers that are not easy to balance on.