One night the pixy was awakened by a terrible noise. People were banging on the shutters of the store, the whole street was as light as day from a fire. Everyone wanted to know whose house was burning. Was it his own or the neighbor’s? It was terrible! The grocer’s wife got so disconcerted that she took off her gold earrings and put them in her pocket, in order to save something.
The grocer hurriedly collected his bonds and the maid her silk shawl: that was her luxury, the one she could afford. All the people wanted to save what was dearest to them, and so did the pixy. He ran up the stairs and into the student’s room. The young man was standing calmly at the window looking at the fire in the house across the street. The little pixy grabbed the book that was lying on the table, put it into his red cap, and ran. He had saved the most valuable thing in the house.
He climbed out on the roof and up on the chimney stack; there, illuminated by the burning house, he sat holding his treasure tightly with both his hands.
Now he finally understood his heart’s desire, where his loyalty belonged! But when the fire in the house across the street had been put out, then he thought about it again. “I will share myself between them,” he said, “for I cannot leave the grocer altogether. I must stay there for the sake of the porridge.”
That was quite human! After all, we, too, go to the grocer for the porridge’s sake.
66
The Millennium
They will come on wings of steam, the young citizens of America will fly through the air, across the great ocean, to visit old Europe. They will come to see the monuments of bygone ages, the ruins of the great cities, just as we today visit Southeast Asia to stare at the crumbling glories of the past.
Thousands of years hence, they will come.
The Thames, the Danube, and the Rhine will still be flowing; Mount Blanc will stand with its snow-covered peak. The northern lights will be shining above the Scandinavian countries, though generations upon generations will have become dust. Many of those men, who to us seem so mighty, will be as nameless as the Vikings who rest in their grave chambers inside the hills, on top of which the farmers today like to place a bench, so that they can watch the wind make waves in the flat fields of grain.
“To Europe!” cry the young Americans. “To the land of our forefathers! To the wonders of an earlier civilization. To beautiful Europe!”
The airships will be crowded, for it is much faster to fly than to sail. The passengers will have already made their hotel reservations by telegraphing ahead. The first European coast to come into view will be Ireland’s, but the passengers will still be sleeping; they will have given orders not to be awakened before the airship is over England. The airship will land in Shakespeare’s country, as the more cultured of the passengers call it—others call England the “land of the machine” or the “land of politics.”
A whole day will these busy travelers give to England and Scotland; then they will be off via the tunnel under the Channel to France: the country of Charlemagne and Napoleon. The learned among them will discuss the Classicist and Romantic movements that so interested the Frenchmen of the distant past. Molière’s name will be mentioned. Heroes, scientists, and poets whom we have never heard of—they have yet to be born in that crater of Europe, Paris!—will be on the lips of these young people.
Then the airship will fly over that country from which Columbus sailed and where Cortes was born: Spain, the home of Calderón, who composed his dramas in perfect verse. Beautiful dark-eyed women will still inhabit its fertile dales; one will hear the names of el Cid and the Alhambra in the old songs that people will still be singing.
Through the air, across the sea to Italy, where the Eternal City of Rome once was. It will be gone; the Campagna will be a desert. Only one wall of St. Peter’s will still be standing, and there will be doubt as to its authenticity.
To Greece, to sleep one night in a luxury hotel on the top of Mount Olympus, so one will be able to say that one has been there; and then onward to the Bosporus, to rest for a few hours on the site of Byzantium. They will watch poor fishermen repairing their nets, while they listen to tales about Turkish harems of an all but forgotten age.
They will fly above ruins of great cities along the Danube, which in our times are still unknown. They will land to look at impressive monuments—accomplishments that lie in the future, but which will be admired as achievements of the fruitful past.
They will come to Germany, which once was crisscrossed by railroads and canals: the land where Luther spoke, Goethe sang, and Mozart once held the scepter of music. When they speak of science and the arts, they will mention other names that we do not know. One day will be the time they allot to Germany and one for all of Scandinavia: for the fatherlands of Oersted and Linnaeus, and for Norway, the young country of old heroes. Iceland will be visited on the homeward journey; the geyser will spout no longer, and the volcano Hekla will have died; but the cliff-bound island will stand in the turbulent sea as a memorial tablet to the sagas.
“There’s so much to see in Europe,” the young Americans will say. “And we have seen it all in a week, just as the famous guidebook promised we could.” Then they will discuss the author of the book which they all will have read: Europe Seen in Seven Days.
67
Under the Willow Tree
The countryside around Køge is very barren. True, the town is situated on the coast, and the seaside is always lovely, but it can be much prettier than it is there. The city is surrounded by flat fields and it is far to the nearest forest. And yet, if it is the place that you call home, you will find something beautiful about it: something that you will long for when, later on in life, you see places that are truly beautiful.
On the outskirts of Køge there is a little stream that ebbs out in the sands of a beach, and along its banks it is quite lovely, especially in summer. Knud and Johanna thought this place was as beautiful as any place could be. They were two children who lived next door to each other and whose gardens went right down to the stream. Both of the families were very poor, but there was an elderberry tree in one of the gardens and a willow tree in the other. The children had only to crawl under the hedge to be together. Sometimes they played under the elderberry tree but more often under the willow, even though this grew on the bank of the stream. Our Lord looks after all small creatures; otherwise, very few of them would survive. Besides, the children were careful, especially the boy, who was so frightened of the water that even in summer he never waded in the sea as all the other children did. He had had to bear a lot of teasing about it, until little Johanna had a dream that she was out sailing in a boat, on Køge Bay, and Knud walked out to meet her—first the water went up to his throat and then over his head, but he walked on. From then on, whenever the children teased him, he would refer to Johanna’s dream as proof of his courage. He was very proud of it; but he went no nearer the water.
The parents of the children often visited each other, and the children played together all the time, either in the gardens or out in the road. Along the sides of the road many willow trees grew, but they were stunted, for they had not been planted there to be looked at but for the sake of their branches, from which fences and baskets could be woven. The willow tree in the garden was allowed to grow as it wanted to, and under its widespread branches the children passed many happy hours.
On market day the great square in the center of Køge became a little city of tents. Here silk ribbons, boots, and many other kinds of wares were sold. There were always big crowds of people and usually there was rain. Every peasant for twenty miles around came to Køge. The smell of the damp woolen clothing blended with the delicious odor of gingerbread. There was a booth where gingerbread alone was sold, and the best part of it was that the man who owned it stayed with Knud’s parents whenever he was in town, so the boy was always given a piece of gingerbread which he shared with Johanna. There was another wonderful thing about the gingerbread baker, he knew how to tell stories. He could make them
up about almost everything, even his own gingerbread figures.
One evening he told a tale about a gingerbread man and a gingerbread woman that made such a deep impression on the two children that they never forgot it; so maybe it is a good idea that we hear it too, especially since it is short.
“Once there lay on the counter of my booth two gingerbread figures. One of them was a man with a hat on his head, the other a girl, who had no hat but did have a dab of gold for hair. Their faces were on the front of their heads just as human beings’ faces are; and they, too, shouldn’t be judged by how they look from behind. The man had a bitter almond on the left side of his chest and that was his heart. The gingerbread girl was just plain gingerbread. They were displayed on the counter as samples. And as the days went by they fell in love, but neither of them spoke of their love, and if you don’t do that, nothing will ever come of it.
“ ‘He is a man, it is only proper that he should speak first,’ thought the gingerbread girl, though she was dying to know whether her love was returned.
“His thoughts were more ferocious: men’s usually are. He dreamed that he was an urchin who had fourpence, so he could buy the little gingerbread girl and eat her up.
“For weeks they lay on the counter and became more and more dried out. The gingerbread girl’s ideas became more refined, more womanly. ‘It is enough to have lain on the same counter with him,’ she thought, and then she broke in two at the waist.
“ ‘If she had known of my love, she might have lasted longer,’ thought the gingerbread man.
“That was their story and here they are, both of them,” said the baker. “Theirs was an unhappy fate and proves that silent love leads to unhappiness.… Now look at them!” And he gave the gingerbread man to Johanna and the two pieces of the gingerbread girl to Knud, but the children were so touched by the story that they couldn’t eat the cakes.
The next day the children went to the churchyard. Its walls were so overgrown with ivy that they looked as if the red bricks were covered by a green carpet. Here among the greenery Knud and Johanna leaned the gingerbread man and the gingerbread woman up against the wall and told the other children the story of silent love and what a waste of time it was—the love, that is, not the story, for the children found that very amusing. They were all so absorbed in the tale that they didn’t notice that a bigger boy had stolen one of the gingerbread figures. It was the maiden and out of meanness he ate her all up. The children wept when they realized what had happened; and then they ate the gingerbread man—probably so that the poor fellow would not suffer from being alone in the world. They never forgot the story.
The two children were always together either under the elderberry tree or under the willow. Johanna had a voice that was as clear as a silver bell, and she would sing the loveliest songs. Knud had no voice at all, but he knew the words of all the songs by heart—and that is always something. The people of Køge, even the rich grocer’s wife, would stop when they passed the gardens, to listen to Johanna sing. “That little brat has a beautiful voice,” they would say.
Those were beautiful, happy days but they did not last. Little Johanna’s mother died and her father decided to move to Copenhagen. The neighbors had tears in their eyes when they parted, and the two children wept aloud. The grown-ups promised to write to each other at least once a year.
Shortly afterward Knud was apprenticed to a shoemaker—such a big boy could not spend all his time playing. In the autumn he was confirmed in the church in Køge. How Knud would have liked to go to Copenhagen on that solemn day, to see Johanna. He had never been in the capital, though the distance was not more than twenty miles. On a clear day you can see the towers of Copenhagen across the bay; and the morning he was confirmed, Knud saw the golden cross on the top of the steeple of the Church of Our Lady.
How often he thought of Johanna! But did she remember him?
At Christmas a letter arrived from Johanna’s father. All had turned out well for him and he had married again; but Johanna had had even greater good luck. Her lovely voice had won her a position in the theater. She sang in the kind of play in which there was music and she already earned quite a bit of money. That was why she was sending her “dear neighbors in Køge a silver mark, to buy wine for Christmas Eve and to toast my health—” that she had written herself; and she added: “My very best regards to Knud!”
They all wept. Everything was so wonderful and their tears came from happiness. Not a day passed without Knud thinking of Johanna, now that he could read in her letter that she thought of him.
The nearer the time came for his apprenticeship to end, the more certain he was that he loved Johanna and that one day she would become his wife.
He would think of Johanna; a smile would play on his lips and he would pull the leather even tighter to the last. Once he stuck the big needle right into his thumb; but it did not matter, he was so happy in his dreams. He was not going to be silent as the two gingerbread figures had been; from that story he had learned a lot.
Finally his apprenticeship was over and he packed his knapsack. He was going to Copenhagen for the first time in his life. He had already got a position there with a shoemaker. How surprised Johanna would be when she saw him. She was now seventeen and he was nineteen.
He had thought of buying a gold ring for her in Køge but had decided that he could probably buy a much more beautiful one in Copenhagen. He said good-by to his parents, took his knapsack on his back, and set out. It was a rainy and windy autumn day; he was wet to the skin by the time he had walked the twenty miles to the big city and found the home of the shoemaker he was to work for.
The very first Sunday he went to the address that he had copied from Johanna’s father’s letter. He had put on his new suit and was wearing the hat he had bought in Køge. He looked well in it; it was his first hat, until then he had always worn a cap.
He found the house. They lived on the top floor, and it almost made him dizzy to walk up so many flights of stairs. “How strangely people live in the huge lonesome city,” he thought, “all on top of each other.”
Johanna’s father greeted him kindly; his new wife, whom Knud had not met before, shook his hand and offered him coffee. Their apartment was neat and well furnished.
“Johanna will be so pleased to see you,” said the father. “You have grown up to be a nice-looking young man. I will call her. She is a girl that a father can be proud of; she has gone far. And with God’s help she will go even further. She has her own room and she pays me rent.”
Her father knocked on her door as if he were a stranger to his own daughter. They stepped inside. Oh, what a beautiful room she had! Knud felt certain that there was not a room so elegant in all of Køge. The queen could not have a better one. The floor was covered by a rug, and the curtains were so long that they almost reached the floor. There was a little upholstered chair covered with velvet, several pictures on the walls, and a mirror as big as a door. Knud noticed it all and yet he saw only Johanna! She looked quite different from what he had expected; she was much more beautiful than he had imagined she would be. There was not a girl in Køge as lovely as she, or as refined. For a moment she stared at him strangely as if she didn’t know him, but then she came running over to him. Knud thought that she was going to kiss him. But she didn’t, though she was happy to see him.
She had tears in her eyes when she looked at the friend from her childhood. And she asked so many questions: about Knud’s parents and everyone else in Køge, including the elderberry tree and the willow tree. She called them “mother elderberry” and “father willow,” and talked about them as if they were human beings. And why shouldn’t she? After all, they were as human as the two gingerbread cakes. Of those she talked too; about their silent love and how they lay on the counter beside each other, not daring to speak of it.
She laughed so warmly, so kindly. “No, she hasn’t changed,” thought Knud. His cheeks blushed and his heart beat so strangely. Knud also sensed that it was
for her sake that he was invited to stay all evening.
They had tea. Later she read aloud from a book, and Knud felt that every word she read was about him and his love for her. When she sang a little song for them, the song became more than a song, it was a little story that came from her heart. The tears ran down his cheeks; he could not stop them and to speak was impossible. He thought that he had behaved very stupidly, but when he left she shook his hand warmly and said: “You have a kind heart, Knud. Always stay as you are.”
After such a marvelous experience it was difficult to sleep, and Knud did not close his eyes all night. When he said good-by, Johanna’s father had remarked, “Now don’t let the whole winter pass before you visit us again.” Knud thought that this was as good as an invitation and decided to go back on the following Sunday.
In the meantime, every day when he was finished working for his master—and this could be quite late, for they also worked by lamplight—he would walk through the street on which Johanna lived. Beneath her window he would stop and look up. Once he saw her shadow against the curtains and that was a very pleasant evening. The shoemaker’s wife complained that he was always running about at night, but his master laughed and said, “Knud is a young man.”
“On Sunday I will see her again,” thought Knud. “Then I will tell her how she has always been in my thoughts. I will ask her to be my little wife! True, I am only a poor shoemaker, but I will work hard and one day I shall have my own shop. Yes, that is what I will say. Love must have a voice, the silent kind is of no use; that I learned from the gingerbread cakes.”
Sunday came and Knud along with it; but unfortunately Johanna and her family were all going out that day. Johanna took his hand in a most friendly way and asked him if he had ever been to the theater. “I will send you a ticket,” she said. “Next Wednesday I will be singing. My father knows where your master lives.”