“I think you must be a kind of waistband,” continued the collar. “Something that is worn on the inside. I see that you are both useful and decorative, Miss … Miss …”
“Please don’t talk to me!” said the garter. “I have given you neither cause nor permission to do so.”
“Your beauty is cause enough and gives its own permission,” replied the collar, who thought himself not only gallant but also witty.
“Don’t come near me!” screamed the garter. “There is something … something masculine about you.”
“I am a gentleman. I own both a bootjack and a comb,” boasted the collar, but he was lying: the comb and bootjack belonged to his master.
“Don’t come near me!” moaned the garter. “I am not used to such treatment.”
“Prude!” snapped the collar. Just at that moment he was taken out of the tub; then he was starched and hung over a chair out in the sunshine. A little bit later he was taken in and put on an ironing board.
“Madam,” began the collar as soon as he saw the warm iron, “I assume that you are a widow. The very sight of you makes me warm, and all my wrinkles disappear. Be careful not to burn a hole in me.… Please, will you marry me?”
“Rag!” snarled the iron as it passed proudly over the collar, imagining that it was a steam engine drawing a whole string of railway cars behind it. “Rag!” repeated the iron on its return journey.
The collar was found to be just a little frayed on the edges and the maid took a pair of scissors to cut off the few loose threads.
“Oh!” exclaimed the collar when he saw the scissors. “You must be a prima ballerina. What leg movement! Never have I seen anything so elegant; no human being could surpass you!”
“I know that,” said the scissors.
“You deserve to be a countess!” declared the collar. “All I have is a bootjack, a comb, and a gentleman to wait upon me; I wish I were a count!”
“Is he proposing?” snarled the scissors; she was angry, so she really cut the collar and then it was spoiled.
“I suppose I’d better propose to the comb!” thought the collar, and said, “How pretty your teeth look, miss, and you have not lost one of them. Tell me, have you never thought of marriage?”
“Didn’t you know,” said the comb, and blushed, “that I am engaged to the bootjack?”
“Engaged indeed!” sneered the collar. Now that there was no one to propose to, he had decided to become a cynic.
Time passed and finally the collar ended in the rag pile of the paper mill. There was a big rag party, and the fine linen stayed in one bunch and the coarse in another, as is the custom in this world. All the rags liked to talk and had a lot to tell, but the collar talked more than anyone else because he so loved to brag.
“I have had so many sweethearts! Women couldn’t leave me alone! But then, I was a gentleman and so well starched. I had both a comb and a bootjack though I never used either of them. You should have seen me then, when I was buttoned and lying on my side. I shall never forget my first fiancée. She was a waistband: so soft, so refined and beautiful, I was the cause of her death; she drowned herself in a washtub for my sake. Then there was the widow, she was red hot with passion but I abandoned her. My wound, which you can still see, was given me by a prima ballerina; she was infatuated and fierce. My own comb loved me. She lost all of her teeth because of it—I believe she cried them out. Oh yes, I have lived! And I have a great deal on my conscience. But what troubles me most is to think of the garter—I mean the waistband—and her unhappy end in the washtub. I deserve to be made into paper, that will atone for it.”
All the rags were made into paper, but the collar became the particular piece of paper that this story is printed on. This was his punishment for having bragged so much and told so many lies. The collar’s fate is worth remembering. How can you be sure that you won’t end in the rag pile, be made into paper, and have your whole life’s story—even the most intimate and secret parts—printed on you; and then, like the rag, have to run around the world telling everyone about it?
51
The Flax
The flax was blooming. It had the most beautiful blue flowers; their petals were as soft as the wings of a moth and even more delicate. The sun shone on the flax, and the rain clouds watered it, which is just as pleasant to the flax and just as good for it as it is for a child to be washed by his mother and given a kiss. Both flax and children thrive on such treatment.
“People say that this year’s crop will be the best for many a year,” said the flax. “They say that we are taller than our parents were, and that fine linen can be woven from our stalks. Oh, how happy I am! None can be happier than I am. I am well and strong and I know I shall become something. The sunshine’s kisses make me cheerful, the rain refreshes me. I am the most fortunate of all plants.”
“Take it easy,” mumbled the old fence. “You don’t know the world as I do. I am filled with knots and that is as good as having a memory.” Then the old wooden fence creaked a doleful song:
“Crack and break,
Snap and bend,
A song must end.”
“No, no!” shouted the flax. “The sun will shine tomorrow as well, and the dew will fall. I can hear myself growing, I can feel every flower. I am happy!”
But one day the farmer and the hired hands came and pulled the flax up, roots and all; and that hurt! Then it was thrown into a tub filled with water, as if they meant to drown it. And when the poor flax was finally taken out, it was only to be toasted over a fire. It was most terrifying.
“One cannot always be fortunate,” sighed the flax. “Suffering is a form of experience, and one can learn from it.”
But the suffering, the pains and aches grew worse. The flax was beaten and bruised, hacked and hackled, and then finally put on the spinning wheel. That was almost the worst of all: around and around it went, getting dizzier and dizzier, till it was not able to think at all.
“I was happy once,” moaned the flax amid all the tortures. “One must learn to appreciate the happy childhood and youth one has had, and be happy! Happy! … Oh!”
The flax had now been spun; and the farmer’s wife set the loom and wove a lovely large piece of linen out of it.
“Oh, this is truly marvelous! I never imagined that this could happen to me,” said the flax. “I am always fortunate! The fence was just talking nonsense with its
“Crack and break,
Snap and bend,
A song must end.”
“A song is never over. I think mine is just beginning now. I have suffered but I have also been rewarded for my suffering. I am most fortunate.… I am strong yet soft, white and ever so long. This is much superior to being merely an herb, even a flowering one. Then I wasn’t taken care of as I am now, I only got water to drink if it rained. Now the maid turns me over each morning so the sun can bleach me on both sides; and she sprinkles me with water when I get too dry. The minister’s wife has declared that I am the finest piece of linen in the whole county. I cannot become any happier.”
Now the linen was ready to be cut and sewn. Again it hurt; the scissors cut and the needle pricked, it was no pleasure! Well, what did it become? Something that all of us have use for but we never mention: twelve pairs of them.
“Now I have become something,” thought the linen. “Now I know what I was meant for. It is a blessing to be useful in this world; it is a true pleasure. Out of one we have become twelve, all alike, a whole dozen. Again how fortunate I am!”
Years went by; and even the strongest linen can’t last forever.
“Sooner or later the end must come,” said each of the twelve pieces of linen. “I would like to have lasted just a little bit longer, but one must not make impossible demands.”
The linen, that had become rags, was torn into tiny pieces, and now it thought that all was over, for it was chopped and hacked and finally boiled. It hardly was aware, itself, of all that it went through, and then it became fine white paper!
A very excellent story was written on the paper, and everyone who heard it or read it became both better and cleverer because of it. They were a real blessing: the words that had been written down on that paper.
“That is more than I ever dreamed possible when I was a little blue flower in the fields. How could I imagine then that I would ever become the messenger of happiness and knowledge to human beings? I can’t even understand it now. But it is so, even though God knows I have done little to deserve it; I have only lived. Yet each time that I have thought, ‘Now the song is over,’ it hasn’t been. It has merely started all over again: finer, better, more beautiful than before. I wonder if I shall travel now, be sent all over the world so that everyone can read me? I think it is very probable. For every flower that I used to have, I now have a thought that is equally beautiful. I am the most fortunate, the happiest thing in the whole world.”
But the paper was never sent on any journey, except a very short one, down to the printers. Every word written on the paper was set in type and then printed; hundreds of books were made and in each of them you could read exactly the same words as had been written down on the paper. This, after all, was much more sensible. Many more people could read it, while the poor paper would have worn itself out before it had got halfway around the world.
“Yes, I agree,” thought the paper, which now had become a manuscript. “It is far more sensible, I never thought about it. I will stay home like an old grandfather who is respected and honored, and the books will run about and do the work. After all, I am the original, it was on me that the words first were written. The ink flew from the pen down on me and penetrated me. I am most happy, most fortunate.”
Once the book was printed, the manuscript was put away on a shelf. “It is good to rest after such an achievement,” said the paper. “It is well to contemplate what one is and what one has inside one. It is as if I only realize now what is written on me. I am getting to know myself and that is half the way to wisdom. I wonder what will happen to me now? Something even better I am sure, even more wonderful.”
One day the manuscript was taken from its shelf to be burned, for the printer was not allowed to sell it to the grocer so that he could use it to wrap his wares in. It made quite a pile next to the fireplace. All the children in the house were there, they wanted to watch, see it flare up high and then slowly die until only a few embers, a few sparks, hopped out of the gray ashes, like school children hurrying home; then, when it was all over, a single last spark would fly past and that was the schoolteacher running after the children.
All the paper was thrown into the fire. Whish! the flames shot up, high up into the chimney. Never had the flax been as tall as it was now and never had it shone so brightly—not even when it had been white linen. All the black written letters became for a moment—as thought and words were burned—fiery red.
“Now I will become one with the sun,” said a thousand voices within the flame that shot up high above the chimney stack. Lighter even than the flames, too tiny to be seen, flew the little beings. There were as many as there once had been flowers on the flax. As the paper became black ashes, they ran across it, and their footsteps were those last sparks that the children said were “school children going home.” The last spark flared; it was the schoolmaster running after his pupils. The children clapped their hands and chanted:
“Crack and break,
Snap and bend.
A song must end.”
But the little invisible ones did not agree, they said: “No, the song never ends. That is the most wonderful part of it. We know it and that is why we are the happiest of all.”
But the children didn’t hear them, nor would they have understood if they had. And that is just as well, for children shouldn’t know everything.
52
The Bird Phoenix
In the garden of Eden, near the tree of knowledge, grew a rosebush, and here when the first rose bloomed a bird was hatched, whose flight was as swift as light, and whose colored feathers were as beautiful as its song was sweet.
But when Eve picked an apple from the tree and she and Adam were banished from the garden by an angel with a sword of flames, a spark from it fell into the bird’s nest and set it on fire. The bird died in the flames, but from one of the eggs, red hot from the heat, flew a new bird, the one and only bird Phoenix. Legends tell us that it nests in Arabia, and that every century it sets fire to its own nest and dies; but from the glowing egg a new bird Phoenix flies out into the world.
Swift as light does it fly; beautiful are its colored feathers and lovely its song. When a mother sits by the cradle of her child, the bird rests on the pillow and its bright feathers make a halo around the child’s head. It flies through the rooms of the poor, to shed some sunlight there and leave the fragrance of violets.
The bird Phoenix is not alone Arabia’s bird. No, it can be seen flying across the snow-covered plain of Lapland, where the northern lights burn. It hops between the little flowers that bloom even during Greenland’s short summer. Into the copper mines of Fahlun and the coal mines of England it flies too; in the shape of a moth, it is there when miners sing their songs and hymns. It has sailed on a lotus leaf down the holy waters of the Ganges River and the Hindu girl’s eyes brighten when she sees it.
The bird Peoenix! Don’t you know it? The bird of paradise, the holy bird of song. On the Thespian cart, it sat in the shape of a chattering raven and flapped its wings covered with filth. The harps of the Icelandic bards it struck disguised as a swan. On Shakespeare’s shoulder it sat as one of Odin’s ravens and whispered in his ears, “Immortality.” Through the halls of Wartburg it flew when songs were sung.
The bird Phoenix! Don’t you know it? He sang the Marseillaise for you and you kissed the bright feather that fell from his wing. He came in the glorious colors of paradise; but maybe you turned away to look at the sparrows instead.
The bird of paradise, reborn each century, created in flames to perish in flames, your picture hangs in the hall of the rich and the mighty, while you yourself fly lonely in the wilderness. A legend only, the bird Phoenix of Arabia.
In the garden of Eden, in paradise, you were born under the tree of knowledge while the first rose of the world bloomed. God kissed you and gave you your right name—Poetry.
53
A Story
In the garden all the apple trees were blooming; they had been in such hurry to flower that they didn’t have a green leaf yet. In the yard the little ducklings were waddling around; and in a corner sat the cat and licked his paws. The fields of grain were green and everywhere the sound of birds singing could be heard. Judging from their jubilant song, the day must have been a high holiday; and this was not altogether wrong, for it was Sunday. The bells in the church tower peeled and happy people dressed in their best clothes were on their way to church. The whole scene was one of joy and gaiety, and truly, on a spring day as beautiful as that day was, one could say, “How good and kind God is to man!”
But inside the church the minister stood in the pulpit preaching loudly and angrily about the impious and ungrateful behavior of men. He said that God would punish them: all men who had been evil would burn forever in the flames of hell. Their suffering would never end, eternal fires would roast them.
It was horrible to listen to; and he spoke so well, so convincingly. He described hell as a stinking cave where all the putrid waste of man was gathered; there no breezes blew to spread, even for a moment, the misty steam of sulphur. Endless, bottomless was the pit and the condemned sank slowly down through this mire in eternal silence. It was terrible to hear, but what made it worse was that the minister spoke from his heart; the whole congregation was frightened and horrified, although outside the birds were still singing as happily as before, a
nd the sun was shining. Each of the little flowers was preaching a sermon and every one was different from the minister’s; they said: “God is good and kind toward us all.”
Later that evening, just before bedtime, the minister noticed that his wife looked very sad; she was sitting in a chair, staring thoughtfully down at her hands.
“What ails you?” he asked.
“What ails me?” repeated his wife, and smiled forlornly. “I cannot understand your sermon, that is what is the matter with me. No matter how much I add and subtract I do not get the same sum as you do. You said that evil men—the sinners—would burn in hell eternally; how terribly, terribly long that is. I am only a poor sinful human being and yet I could not bear to think that even the worst sinner in the whole world should burn eternally. How then do you think that God could bear it—He that is infinitely good and knows how we are tempted by evil, both from inside ourselves and from the world? I cannot imagine it, even though you have told me that it is true.”
It was fall; the leaves had fallen from the trees. The minister sat by a dying woman’s bed; she was his wife.
“If anyone deserved God’s grace it is you, and peacefully you shall sleep in your grave,” he mumbled. The woman died and he closed her eyes and folded her hands as though in prayer. Then he sang a psalm and prayed.
She was carried to her grave, and two tears ran down the cheeks of the earnest rector. His home was silent and still, there was no sunshine there, for she whom he loved had died.
It was the middle of the night; a whiff of cold air blew across the minister’s face and woke him. It was as if the room were filled with moonshine, but the moon was not yet up. A specter stood by his bed, the ghost of his wife. She looked so sorrowfully at him, the minister felt that she wanted to ask him something.
The Complete Fairy Tales and Stories Page 43