His journey back to Eisenach did not take even a day, but his horse would never be able to be ridden again. “Of what importance is a horse?” he said. “I am ruined and that is worse. I shall destroy everything that reminds me of Molly: Frau Holle! Frau Venus, you heathen woman! I shall tear the apple tree up by the root and break all its branches; they shall never be allowed to bloom again!”
But the apple tree was not destroyed, it was Anton whom fever and sickness almost destroyed. What could cure him? Only the bitterest medicine, the one that can make both the sick soul and body tremble; and he tasted it. Anton’s father lost all his money, he was no longer a rich merchant’s son. Now came the days of trial, when suffering and poverty knocked on his door. One misfortune followed another. Like great waves on an ocean, they broke over the once so wealthy house. His father was crushed by his losses, he became ill, lamed by adversity; and Anton had to become the head of the family. Now there was no time to be angry at Molly, he had to decide what was to be done; and finally, when all was lost, he had to go out into the wide world to seek work for his daily bread.
He went to Bremen, but there his trials were not over. Sorrow and distress had marked him for their own, and this can make your soul grow either hard or soft—often all too soft. How strange and different were now the world and the people in it from what he had known in his childhood. “The minnesingers’ songs were nothing but idle chatter!” he sometimes mumbled, but at other moments the echo of their songs calmed him.
“God’s will be done,” he thought. “It was fortunate that Molly did not love me. For what kind of a life could I have given her now, when fortune has turned its back on me? She refused me while I was still rich, and that was God’s grace toward both her and me. If everything else had to happen, then that was for the best. It was not her fault that she did not love me, but I chose to hate her.”
Years passed, Anton’s father died, and strangers lived in his old home. Yet he was to see it once more. His master, the rich merchant, sent him on a business trip, and he passed through Eisenach. The old fortress of Wartburg stood unchanged high up on the cliffs, and the old oak trees spread their branches over the craggy rocks, just as they had when he was a child. The mountain of Venus, gray and barren, rose up from the valley. Now Anton would gladly have called, “Frau Holle, Frau Holle, open up your mountain!” for then, at least, he could have stayed in his native land.
The thought frightened Anton: it was sinful and he crossed himself. Just at that moment a little bird sang in a bush nearby and he remembered the old song:
“By the forest, in the quiet dale,
Tandaradai!
Sang the nightingale.”
There was so much here that reminded him of his childood and youth. His parents’ house had not changed, but the garden was different. A road now passed through a corner of it, and the old apple tree—the one he had not destroyed though he had wanted to—stood no longer in the garden but on the other side of the new road. Still, the sun shone on it and the dew fell on its leaves in the morning, and its branches bore so much fruit in autumn that they bent toward the earth.
“It thrives,” he said. “It is luckier than I.”
But one of the big branches had been broken off, probably in play; the tree stood by a public road.
“People steal its flowers and its fruits without ever saying thank you,” thought Anton. “They break its branches in play, for it no longer belongs in the garden. The tree’s story began so full of beauty, but how will it end? Alone, forgotten, standing by the side of the road, where there is no protection from wind and weather; and no hands to prune it or take care of it. It won’t die yet, but as the years pass the flowers will be fewer and the apples smaller, until its story is over.”
This Anton thought as he sat underneath the tree and these same thoughts he had often many, many years later in the lonely room of the wooden shed on the street of the little houses, in Copenhagen. Here his master, the merchant in Bremen, had sent him to sell wares, on the condition that he never married.
“Marry, ha-ha,” laughed Anton bitterly.
The winter came early that year. There was a great snowstorm in November. Everyone who was not forced to go out stayed inside. That was the reason that none of Anton’s neighbors noticed that he had not opened his store for two days.
The days were dark and gray. Inside the little store that did not have proper glass windows, twilight became as black as pitch. Anton had not left his bed for the last two days; he did not have the strength to get up. It was as if the evil weather outside had entered his weak old limbs. Forsaken lay the old pepperman; he was so feeble that he could hardly reach for the jug of water he had put beside his bed. This was not sickness, he had no fever; it was old age that had enfeebled him. In the eternal night of the little hut he lay. A spider spun a web from the dying man to the wall; it would do as mourning crepe.
Time moved slowly, in empty drowsiness. He felt no pain and had no more tears to shed. No longer did he think of Molly. He felt that the world and he had parted company. All its sounds and activities were no longer his. For a while he felt thirst and hunger, but since no one came to help that passed too. He thought of the Blessed Elisabeth, the saint of his homeland and his childhood. While she lived here on earth, this noble lady, a princess of Thuringia, had visited the poor and the sick in their hovels. He recounted her blessed deeds: how she had talked of hope to those who suffered, how she had washed and cleaned the sores of the sick, and brought food to those who starved. Her deeds had made her husband angry, and he had forbidden her to leave the castle. An old legend tells that once, when she was on her way with a basket filled with food and wine to some poor starving family, her husband stopped her and demanded to know what was in her basket. She became so frightened that she lied and said, “Only some roses I have picked in the garden.” Her husband tore off the linen cloth that hid the food and wine, but God had performed a miracle to save the pious woman. He had transformed the bread and wine into roses.
The more old Anton thought about the saint, the more real she became to him, until at last he thought he saw her standing at the foot of his bed. He took off his nightcap to show his respect, and she smiled kindly as she looked down at him. The whole room seemed filled with roses but the fragrance was not that of roses but of apple blossoms. Above him he saw the flowering branches of a big apple tree, and he knew that it was the very tree that had grown from the seed that he and Molly had planted.
The petals from the blossoms fell on his forehead and on his parched lips, and they felt like wine and quenched his thirst. They fell on his breast and he breathed like a child, so confidently and freely.
“Now I shall sleep,” he whispered. “The sleep will do me good. Tomorrow I shall be well again and be able to get up. I am glad to have seen once more the tree that we planted with love.” And he slept.
The next day was the third one that the booth hadn’t been opened. The snow had stopped falling and the wind had died down. One of Anton’s neighbors came to see what had happened and he found Anton dead, still holding the nightcap in his hand. That wasn’t the nightcap he was buried in. The clean one was taken out of his drawer and put on his head when he was laid in his coffin.
Where were all the tears he had cried? Where were those pearls? They were in the nightcap, for real pearls are not destroyed in the washtub. They stayed in the pepperman’s nightcap together with his old dreams and his long, sad thoughts. Don’t wish that cap on your head: it would make you sweat and your pulse would beat faster. It would bring dreams that would be too real. One man tried it, and that fifty years after the old pepperman had died. It was the mayor of Copenhagen, who had a wife and twelve children and plenty of money; but that night he dreamed about unhappy love, bankruptcy, and starvation!
“Huh! That nightcap is too warm!” he shouted, and tore it off his head; and a few pearls fell out of it and rolled down on the floor. “It must be my rheumatism,” said the mayor. “I see sparks i
n front of my eyes.”
Those pearls were the tears shed by old Anton from Eisenach, more than fifty years before, but the mayor didn’t know that.
Those who have worn the nightcap since had had the same nightmares. They became Anton and had to relive his story in their dreams. And that is why I will repeat the advice I gave in the beginning of the story: don’t ever wish to wear the pepperman’s nightcap.
83
“Something”
“I want to become something!” declared the oldest of five brothers. “I want to do something useful in this world. It does not matter whether I reach a high position, so long as the work that I have done has been done well. I want to make bricks—the world can’t get along without them—and then I can say I have done something!”
“But much too little,” said the second brother. “The work you want to do is nothing; it is unskilled, the kind of work a machine could do just as well. No, it is better to become a mason, that’s what I shall become. That is a trade. Masons have their own guild and are honorable citizens of the town; they have their own banner and a guildhall where they meet. Maybe I can become a master mason and have other masons work for me; and my wife will be able to wear a silk dress on weekdays.”
“That is nothing!” declared the third brother. “You will belong to the lower middle class at best. There are many classes in our society and most of them are above a master mason’s. You will still belong to what is called the ‘common people.’ No, I want to become something better than that! I want to be a builder, construct houses; be concerned about art and beauty, and belong to the intellectuals. I know I have to start from the bottom. I might as well face it: I have to learn carpentry first, and that means I shall have to be an apprentice, wear a cap on my head instead of a silk hat, and run errands for the journeymen—and they are not polite. But I will just make believe that I am taking part in a masquerade, for you gain freedom by wearing a mask. Then when I have finished my apprenticeship I shall forget those simple fellows and their insults. I shall attend the academy and learn to draw, and then I shall become an architect. And that, I know, is something! I can become respectable and be entitled to be called ‘Sir.’ I shall build houses like our fathers did, solid and sturdy buildings. That is something!”
“If that is something, then I don’t care for it!” said the fourth brother. “I don’t want to sail in the wake of other ships, copy what others have already made. I want to be a genius! I want to be cleverer than all the rest of you put together! I will invent a new style, make buildings that fit our climate. I shall use new materials, give expression to our national spirit and the new age! On the very top of my largest building I shall put an extra story, just to prove my own genius.”
“But what if neither the style nor the materials are any good?” asked the fifth brother. “That wouldn’t do, would it? As for the national spirit, that is affectation. A new age! Bah! What does that mean? Progress is as often as not a runaway horse, just like youth. I see that none of you will ever become something, even though you all think you will. But you can do whatever you want to, it is no concern of mine. I shan’t copy you. I want to stand apart. I will contemplate and criticize what you do. There is always something wrong with anything man makes. I shall point it out so all can see it. That is something!”
He did exactly what he had said he would do, and everyone said about the fifth brother: “He is really something. He has got a good head on his shoulders and can make something into nothing.” It was especially the latter that made him “something.”
That was a very short story; and yet it will never end before the world does.
But what happened to the five brothers? After all, what we have heard wasn’t everything. Well, listen and I will tell you more, it is almost a fairy tale.
The oldest brother made bricks and every finished brick brought him a little copper coin. It wasn’t worth much, but if you added them up they became a silver coin, and if you knock on the door of the butcher, the baker, or the tailor with such a coin, then their doors open right away. As a matter of fact, there is hardly a door in the whole world that a silver coin can’t open; it is the very best key. The bricks gave him what we call a living and that is not so poor a reward; some of them were cracked or had split in two, but even the broken bricks could be used.
There was a poor woman called Mother Margrethe—“Mother” was the title that poor people used to give to old women of whom they were fond. Well, Mother Margrethe wanted to build a house for herself down at the shore, on the dike. She got all the broken bricks free from the oldest brother, who had a kind heart, even though he never rose above being a brickmaker. The poor woman built her house herself. Narrow it was, the window was crooked, the door was low, and the thatch on the roof could have been laid better; but still it was a house; and it kept out wind and weather, even when the storms came and the waves broke against the dike, sending showers of salt water up over the house. When the brickmaker died, it was still standing.
The second brother—the one who became a mason—knew his craft well. As soon as he had finished his apprenticeship he packed his knapsack and set out to see how life was led in foreign lands. When he returned, he set himself up as a master mason and built a whole street full of houses; then all the houses, in turn, built a small house for him. But how can houses build a house? If you ask them, they won’t answer; SO ask instead the people in any town and they will tell you how it is done. It was a small house with an earthen floor, but when the master mason swung his bride in a dance across it, it got polished. Every stone in the wall seemed to the mason and his wife as pretty as a flower, and they thought that whitewash was as beautiful as the finest wallpaper. It was a lovely little house and a happy couple who lived there. The banner of the guild hung outside, and on their wedding day the apprentices and journeymen had shouted, “Hurrah!” Yes, that was something. Finally he died; and that was something too.
Now we come to the architect, the third brother—the one who first had to be a carpenter’s apprentice, wear a cap, and run errands. He graduated from the academy and became a master builder. Now the houses on the street that had built a small house for the brother who had become a mason built a big one, the largest in the street, for the architect; and not only that, but the street itself bore his name. That was something and he had become something. He had a title both in front and behind his name; his children were called “children of good family” and when he died his widow became “a widow of good family.” That is something! His name can still be read on the street sign and that, too, is something!
Then there was the fourth brother, the genius, who wanted to build something new and different, with an extra story. Well, it fell down; and so did he, and broke his neck. But he got a splendid funeral, with both guild banners and music in the funeral procession, and flowers on the coffin, as well as in the newspaper. Three funeral sermons were held over him, one longer than the other, and that would have made him happy, for he loved to be talked about. He got a monument on his grave; it was only one story, but still it was something.
Now four of the brothers had died, the only surviving one was the critic. He had the last word, and that was very important to him. He had a good head on his shoulders, as everybody said; but at last he too died and was on his way to heaven.
Now people always enter heaven in pairs, that is the custom. And that’s how the fifth brother happened to be standing before the heavenly gate with another soul, who hoped to be able to enter paradise. And who should that be but old Mother Margrethe, who had built her little house down on the dike.
“I suppose it is for the sake of the contrast that this poor miserable soul and I have to wait here together,” thought the critic. “Who are you? Poor thing, do you want to enter too?” he asked.
The old lady curtsied as well as she knew how. She thought that St. Peter himself was speaking to her. “I am just a poor old woman without any family: old Margrethe from the house down by the dike.
”
“Hm, and what have you accomplished down there?”
“Accomplished? Nothing, I guess,” answered old Mother Margrethe, “nothing that can open this portal for me. It will only be because of God’s grace if I am allowed in.”
“And why did you have to leave the world?” asked the critic just to make conversation; he was bored with waiting.
“Exactly why I don’t know,” answered the old woman. “I have been ill for the last two years; and I guess the cold and the frost killed me, while I lay outside, after I had climbed out of my bed. It was a hard winter this year; but now I don’t feel any pains at all. You remember, sir, the two bitterly cold days we had. Not a wind moved and the sea froze as far as you could see. Everyone from town came down to look at it, and they skated on the ice. I think they danced, too, for I could hear music. They were selling beer out there. I could hear all the rumpus right up in my room, where I lay in my bed. It was toward evening; the full moon was out, but it was kind of pale and weak yet. My bed stood right by the window and I could look down on the beach and out on the ice. Suddenly I noticed that out where the sky and the sea met there was a strange white cloud. I was lying there watching it and I noticed that a little black point in the center of it kept growing bigger and bigger. And I knew what that meant.
“I have lived a long time and experienced much, but it is not often you see such a cloud. I knew what it meant and it filled me with horror. Twice before in my life had I seen the same sign in the sky. I knew that it forewarned a storm, and that the spring tide would be coming. It would catch all the poor people out there on the ice by surprise, in the midst of their gaiety and drinking. The young and the old, it looked like the whole town were out there. How could they be warned? I think none of them knew what that white cloud with the black center meant even if they had seen it. I was so frightened that some of my strength came back to me. I got to the window and managed to open it, and then I could do no more. I could see all the people on the ice. Some of them had gone out far. The booth that sold beer had little flags around it and all the children were screaming and shouting, and the young men and girls were singing. It was a gay scene, but behind them rose the white cloud with the black spot looking like a big bag inside it.