The green, succulent, poisonous leaf of the hemlock should symbolize Athens, not the olive leaf.
Seven towns fought and quarreled over the honor of being Homer’s birthplace; that is, long after he was dead. Watch him while he was alive: in the streets of these cities he walks, reciting his verses for bread. The fear for tomorrow has made his hair gray. The greatest seer of them all is blind and lonely; the thorns have torn the mantle of the poet king into rags.
His songs live still and with them live the gods and the heroes of antiquity.
Picture upon picture follow one another like waves; some are from times just passed, others from ages which the sun has long since set upon. Different in time and place and yet all part of the same thorny path, that road where the thistle does not bloom before it decorates a tomb.
A train of camels, loaded with treasures, moves beneath the palms. They have been sent by the ruler of the country as a gift to the poet whose songs have delighted his people and who is the glory of his country, the one whom envy and lies had driven into exile. The caravan draws near a small city, the town where he found refuge. Just then the body of a poor man is being carried through the city gate, the train of camels stop. The dead man is he whom the caravan has come for; now they have found him: Firdausi. For him the path of thorns has ended.
A Negro sits on the marble stairs of a palace in the capital of Portugal; the dark-skinned man mumbles pleading words to passers-by. He is Camoëns’ faithful slave. Without him and the coins that were flung to him, the beggar, Portugal’s greatest poet would have died of hunger. Now a costly tomb covers Camoëns’ grave.
Yet another picture: Behind the bars of a cell stands a man; his face is deadly pale, his beard is long and dirty. “I have made the greatest discovery in centuries!” he shouts. “More than twenty years you have kept me locked up here!”
“Who is he?” you ask.
“A madman,” answers his keeper in the asylum. “He is insane, he believes that there is power locked within steam—”
Salomon de Caus, the discoverer of the power of steam, was not understood but imprisoned in a lunatic asylum where he died.
Here is Columbus, whom every street urchin made fun of. He discovered the New World and the bells sounded jubilantly when he returned; but the bells of envy were struck, too, and their tones are deeper and more powerful than those of joy. The man who discovered a world, who lifted the golden continent from the seas and gave it to his king, was rewarded with iron chains. He wanted these prison chains to be put in his coffin when he died, as proof of how the world and his times had appreciated him.
Picture after picture appears; the thorny road has been well traveled.
In pitch-darkness sits he who had measured the height of the mountains on the moon, whose spirit had traveled far out into space among planets and stars. The great one who understood Nature’s order and spirit, and could feel that the world beneath him moved. Galilei, blind and deaf, in his old age, sits transfixed on the thorn of suffering. Weak and powerless in his debasement, with hardly the strength left to move that foot with which he once—when truth was blotted out—stamped the earth and said, “It still moves.”
Here stands a woman with a child’s nature, enthusiasm, and faith. She carries a banner in her hand; she is leading an army. She saved her country and brought it victory. The shouts of joy had hardly faded away before the stake was lit. Jeanne d’Arc, the witch, was burned. Yes, even a later century spat on the while lily; Voltaire, that satyr of wit, sang about “La pucelle.”
At Viborg the nobles are burning the king’s laws. The flames shoot up, reflecting the times, the laws, and the man who made them. They cast a halo around the head of the prisoner in the dark prison tower. Gray-haired, bent, and old, he sits by the stone table which he has walked around so long that his thumb has made a groove in it. He was once ruler of three kingdoms: the people’s monarch, friend of farmers and merchants, King Christian II. His character was harsh and severe, but so were the times. Besides, his enemies wrote his biography. Twenty-seven years he spent in prison; we should not forget that when we remember the blood he spilled.
A ship is sailing from Denmark, the man standing before the mast looks toward the island of Hveen for the last time. Tvcho Brahe, who lifted Denmark’s name high up among the stars—and who received as reward only insults and injury—is sailing into exile in foreign lands. “The heavens are everywhere, and I need nothing else,” were his words. Denmark’s most famous son is leaving, sailing to another country to be honored.
Now we are in America, near one of the great rivers. Along its shores, crowds have gathered; they have come to watch a ship that can sail against the wind. Robert Fulton is the name of its inventor. The ship starts its voyage, but soon it stops. The crowd laughs and jeers. Fulton’s own father is among those who whistle and scream. “Pride! Foolishness! Serves you right. You’re mad!” they cry to the young man.
A small nail lost in the machinery has stopped it; now the nail breaks and the great paddle wheels turn again, the ship is sailing! Steam has conjured with time and distance, transformed hours into minutes, and brought the continents nearer to each other.
Humanity! Can you understand the bliss of such a moment, when your spirit, your art, knows its mission? The moment when all the pain endured along the thorny path—even that self-inflicted—becomes knowledge, truth, power, clearness, and health? The disharmony becomes harmony, and this revelation that God grants one man, he, in turn, gives to all of humanity.
The thorny path becomes a halo around the world; and fortunate are those who have been chosen to travel it. They are the builders of the bridge between man and God.
On giant wings flies the spirit of history through time, casting its brilliant picture against a background dark as night. The story of the thorny path does not end as a fairy tale in bliss and happiness here on earth, it reaches out into space and into eternity.
78
The Servant
Among the pupils of the School for the Poor there was a Jewish girl; she was always attentive and well-behaved; she was, indeed, the nicest of all the children. But during one hour of the day she wasn’t supposed to pay attention, for it was a Christian school and the teacher was required to instruct in religion. Then she would be told to take out her geography book or do her arithmetic; but a few examples of arithmetic took no time at all and the geography lesson was always short. For the remainder of the hour she would have an open book in front of her, but she did not read it. She was listening to the teacher more attentively than any of the other children.
“Read your book,” he would say gently but seriously.
She would glance up at him with her dark, glistening eyes; and if he asked her any questions about what he had read aloud, she replied better than the other pupils. She had heard, understood, and remembered the whole lesson.
Her father was a very kind and poor man. He had let his daughter attend school on one condition: that she not be taught anything about Christianity. At first the teacher had thought of sending her out to play during the hour of religious instruction, but he feared that this would make the other children envious. “Then they might begin to think about certain things,” he reasoned. “And that might create an atmosphere.…” So she was allowed to remain, although this was no solution.
Finally the teacher went to visit her father. “If your daughter is to continue in school, then she must become a Christian,” he began, and then he tried to explain. “I see in her eyes such longing; it’s as if her very soul sought Christ’s teaching. It’s unbearable to watch.”
The poor father said sadly, “There is nothing to be done. I know very little about Judaism, but my wife was different. She kept alive the faith of our fathers, and on her deathbed she made me promise that our daughter would never be converted to Christianity. I gave my word and God was my witness.” So the little Jewish girl no longer attended the Christian school.
Years later in one of the more mode
st homes in a small town in Jutland, there was a poor servant of the Jewish faith. Her name was Sara. Her hair was as black as ebony, and her eyes shone with the brilliance and luster of a daughter of the Orient. Her glance still possessed that same pensive, searching expression it had had when she attended the school.
Every Sunday the sound of the organ and the singing of the congregation could be heard in the house across the street from the church where the Jewish girl faithfully did her work.
“Remember the Sabbath to keep it holy,” was the law she should obey; but her Sabbath was an ordinary working day for the Christians, and she could only keep it holy in her heart. Often she had asked herself whether it was enough; and she had not been fully convinced that it was, until one day it occurred to her that, to God, hours and days could not possibly have the same meaning as they do to us. From then on she listened peacefully to the playing of the organ and the singing of the psalms that came each Sunday morning from the church; and it seemed to her that also where she stood, in the kitchen next to the sink, it was holy.
Sara read the Old Testament, which was her people’s property and treasure; and only that, for she had been present when her father and the schoolteacher had the conversation that resulted in her being taken out of school. And it had made a deep impression on her, to know of the vow her father had made to her dying mother that she must not abandon the faith of her ancestors.
One evening while she sat in her usual corner of the parlor, which the light of the lamps hardly reached, the master of the house took down an old book and began to read aloud. It was not a religious book, so Sara thought there was no reason not to listen. The story had taken place a long time ago. It was about a Hungarian who had been captured by a Turk: a pasha of such cruelty that he had ordered that the poor knight be treated as a beast of burden; and like a horse or a mule, the Hungarian had been hitched in front of a plow and driven forward with curses and the lash of a whip.
The nobleman’s wife sold all her jewelry, mortgaged their castle and their ancestral lands, and with the help of generous friends, finally succeeded in collecting the incredible sum that the pasha had demanded as ransom. Thus, a sick and suffering creature was freed from slavery and inhuman mistreatment. He had been home only a short time when the usual cry was heard again: the Christians were being threatened by their enemies. Weak as he was, the knight put on his armor and demanded to be lifted upon his war horse. To the pleading of his wife he replied, “But I cannot rest when there is no peace in my soul.” And as he spoke the color appeared in his cheeks, his former strength came back. This time he returned from the campaign victorious. Such are the accidents of fate that the very pasha who had so mercilessly debased him became his captive. The knight had been home only a few hours when he approached his prisoner.
“Tell me,” the knight said, “what do you expect will happen to you now?”
“I know!” cried the Turk. “Vengeance!”
“Yes,” the knight replied, “Christian revenge. Christ taught us to forgive our enemies and love our neighbors as ourselves. Our God is merciful! Go in peace back to your home and loved ones. In the future, be gentle and kind to those who are suffering.”
The prisoner burst into tears. “How could I have known! How could I have guessed that, after the horrible way I treated you, anything but the most unbearable misery awaited me? I have taken poison, a deadly poison, against which there is no antidote; in a few hours it will kill me. But before I die, tell me of that teaching that has so much love and mercy, for it has the strength of God. I must die, but let me become a Christian first!” And his wish was granted.
It was a legend, a story; everyone had listened attentively and appreciated it, but none of them as much as Sara, the Jewish girl, the servant who sat in the corner. For her it had become alive, and large tears appeared in her bright, dark eyes. There she sat with the same childish faith that she had had when she listened to the New Testament in school. Down her cheeks the tears flowed.
“My child must never be a Christian!” had been her mother’s dying wish. And Sara’s very being resounded with the words: “Honor your father and mother!”
“I am not a Christian,” she cried. “Didn’t the neighbor’s son call me Jew, with his voice filled with scorn, when I was standing before the open portal of the church, looking at the lights of the altar and listening to the singing of the congregation? From my schooldays until this moment Christianity has had a power over me; it is like the sun; even though I close my eyes, it shines in my heart. But I shall not betray you, Mother. I shall not break that vow my father gave you. I will not read the Christians’ Bible. I have my father’s God to live by.”
The years passed. The master of the house died. The family was badly off. They could not afford a servant, but Sara stayed. She helped them, now that they needed her. It was she who held the family together. She worked at night to earn enough money to buy food for them. None of the relatives offered to help, even though the wife grew weaker day by day, and for months had not been able to leave her bed. Sara sat by her bed, took care of her, and worked. Gentle and kind Sara was a blessing to that poor family.
One night the widow begged Sara to read from the Bible. “Read a little for me; the night is long and I need to hear God’s words.”
Sara bowed her head, folded her hands over the Bible, and read aloud for the sick woman. Tears appeared in Sara’s eyes, but her sight was clearer and her soul was clearer.
“Mother, your child has not been baptized. Among the Christians, she is known as a Jew. That promise which was made to you on earth has been kept. But to keep God’s word is greater: ‘He will be with us in death! … He visits the earth and makes of it a desert, and turns it into a fruitful place.…’ I understand! Although I don’t know where my understanding comes from! It is Christ’s work!”
When she said the holy name she trembled. She felt a shock go through her body, and she fell forward; now she was weaker than the invalid she had been reading to.
“Poor Sara,” people said. “She overworked herself, taking care of others.”
She was brought to the charity ward and there she died. From there she was buried.
She was not buried in hallowed ground, for that was not the place for a Jewish girl. No, outside the churchyard, next to the wall, was her grave.
And when God’s sunshine shone on the Christian graves, it also shone on the grave of the Jewish girl, outside. And the singing from the Christian churchyard reached her grave; also out there could the words be heard: “The resurrection will come! In the name of Christ!” He who had said to his disciples: “John has baptized with water; but you shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost!”
79
The Bottle
In a crooked alley, among other ill-repaired houses, stood one that was particularly narrow and tall. It was a half-timbered house, and many of the beams were rotten. Only very poor people lived there. Outside the garret window hung a bird cage; it was as decrepit as the house, and its inhabitant did not even have a proper bath: the neck of a broken bottle, corked and hung upside down, had to suffice. The old maid who lived in the garret was standing by the open window, enjoying the warm sunshine. She had just fed the little linnet, and the songbird was hopping back and forth in the cage, singing merrily.
“Yes, you may sing,” said the bottleneck. It didn’t really speak, for bottlenecks can’t talk, but it thought all this inside itself, as we all do sometimes. “Yes, you can sing. You are healthy and well, not an invalid like me. You don’t know what it’s like to lose your whole lower parts and be left with only a neck and mouth; and then, on top of it, to have a cork stuffed into you. Then you wouldn’t sing so loud! But it is good that someone is happy. I have nothing to sing about, and I can’t sing. But I have lived an exciting life! I remember when the tanner took me along on a picnic and his daughter got engaged. I was a whole and proper bottle then. Goodness me, it seems just like yesterday.… Oh yes, I have experienced a lot. I wa
s created in fire and heat, have sailed across the ocean, lain in the dark earth, and been higher up in the sky than most people. Now I am perched above the street in the sunshine; yes, my story bears repeating. But I am not going to tell it out loud, because I can’t.”
But the bottleneck could reminisce and it did. The bird sang, and the passers-by down in the alley thought about their own problems or didn’t think at all, while the bottleneck reflected upon its life.
It remembered the great oven in the factory, where it had been blown into life. As soon as it had been formed, while it was still burning hot, it had been able to look into the burning red oven. It had felt a desire to jump back into it and be melted down again, but as it cooled that fancy had disappeared. The bottle had stood in a row together with all his sisters and brothers; there had been a whole regiment of them. They had all come from the same oven, but some had been blown into champagne bottles and others into beer bottles, and that makes a difference. Although later on, after they have come out into the world and the beer or the champagne has been drunk, then a beer bottle can be refilled with the costly wine from Vesuvius, Lachryma Christi, and the champagne bottle with boot blacking. But birth still counts and that you can tell from the shape. Nobility remains nobility, even when it contains only boot blacking.
All the bottles were put into cases, and so was the bottle that this story is about. It never occurred to him then that he would end as a useless bottleneck, and then have to work his way up to becoming a bird’s bath—for that is better than being nothing at all.
The Complete Fairy Tales and Stories Page 55