France was so large and beautiful, as the dryad knew, and she could see only so small a part of it. The country was as wide as a world, with vineyards, forests, and great towns. The greatest of them all was Paris. The birds had been there; but she—the wood nymph—would never see it.
Among the children of the village was a little girl who was terribly poor; her clothes were only rags, but she was beautiful. She sang, laughed, and danced, and braided bright red flowers in her jet-black hair.
“You must never go to Paris,” said the old priest. “Poor child, if you ever go there, it will be your ruin.”
She went to Paris anyway, and the dryad often thought about her, for the wood nymph had the same longing as the girl had had for the great city.
A few years went by. The dryad’s tree blossomed for the first time and the birds sang about it. A fine carriage drove by; the horses were beautiful. An elegant lady held the reins herself, while the groom sat behind. The dryad recognized her, and so did the old priest. He shook his head sadly and said: “You went to Paris and it became your ruin, poor Marie.”
“She, poor!” thought the dryad. “Why, she is so different. She is dressed like a duchess, and the change was made by Paris; it must be a magic town. Oh, if only I could go there myself and see its glory, its splendors. Even the clouds are illuminated at night. I have seen it when I look in the direction of the city.”
Every night the dryad looked toward Paris and saw the golden fog on the horizon. On clear, moonlit nights, it could not be seen and she missed the great sailing clouds that told her stories of Paris. A child looks at her picture book, the dryad at the world of clouds, for it is her book of thoughts, from it she draws her inspiration.
It was summer and the cloudless sky was like an empty page. For days it had been like that. Every animal, every plant dozed from the heat, and so did the human beings. Then suddenly a great bank of clouds rose in the direction where Paris lay. The clouds grew and became a gigantic mountain landscape. Then they spread until they covered the horizon as far as the wood nymph could see. Like layer upon layer of great blue-black stone cliffs, the clouds rose higher and higher in the air. Then lightning burst from them.—“They, too, are the servants of God,” the old priest had said.—Suddenly a bolt of lightning, blue-white and as bright as the sun, emerged from the cliff of clouds. It struck the great oak tree and split it down to its roots; the trunk was cloven in two, as if it had wanted to embrace the messenger of light.
No brass cannon sounding at the birth of a prince has ever let forth such noise as the peal of thunder that rang out on the death of the old oak tree. The rain streamed down; then a mild wind blew: the storm was over. It was like a Sunday. The people of the village ran out to look at the old oak tree. The priest gave a little speech, and a painter made a drawing of the tree itself, so they would always be able to remember it.
“Everything passes,” said the dryad. “Passes as the clouds pass by in the sky: pass and never return.”
The old priest never came back. The “roof” of his schoolhouse was gone and so was the bench. The children, too, stayed away. But fall came, and winter was followed by spring and summer; and during all the changing seasons the wood nymph looked longingly at that spot on the horizon where the lights of Paris shone like a golden fog.
Trains rushed out of the city, great black locomotives running along the iron rails, both night and day. From all corners of the world people came to look at the new wonder of Paris. What was this new wonder?
“It is the flower of art and industry that now is blooming on the barren sandy soil of the Field of Mars. A gigantic sunflower on whose leaves one can read lessons in geography and statistics and become as clever as a schoolteacher. Knowledge, lifted up into the realm of poetry, to be the power and pride of nations.” That was one explanation.
Here is another: “A fairy tale flower, a lotus spreading its green leaves over the sandy ground, like a velvet carpet; it shot forth in spring and will be full grown in its magnificence come summer; but by fall it will be gone, it is a plant without roots.”
Outside the military school is an area that in times of peace is called the Field of Mars. It is a large sandy expanse without a blade of grass, as though it had been cut out of the Sahara Desert, there where the mirage exists, building castles and planting gardens in the air. Now on the Field of Mars such castles were built, such gardens grew, and they were real. It was the Paris World’s Fair of 1867.
“The palace of Aladdin is being constructed day by day; hour by hour, it grows more beautiful,” people say. The endless halls have been decorated with colorful marble. Master Bloodless has a round pavilion of his own, to exhibit his steel and iron limbs. Works of art in stone, metal, and weaving show the diversity of mind and spirit of the people of the world. Halls of painting, of flowers, of everything that human skill and intelligence have produced, from ancient times up to our own, have been collected here.
This enormous market place—this gaudy sight—has to be transformed into miniature, into toy size, before one can understand it in its entirety. The Field of Mars has become a gigantic Christmas table, decked with everything—knickknacks from everywhere, the bric-a-brac of greatness, each nation exhibiting what is peculiarly its own.
There is a royal Egyptian castle attended and guarded by Bedouins on camels from the land of the burning sun. Russian stables, with the horses from the great steppes, are there; and even a little thatched cottage, flying the Danish flag, which is next to Gustav Vasa’s house, carved in wood by the artisans from Dalarna. An American log cabin, English cottages, and French pavilions stand beside kiosks or theaters or churches in a strange and wonderful chaos. Before all these buildings there are green lawns, flowering bushes, rare trees, and little running streams of clear water. In great greenhouses tropical forests grow and magnificent roses brought from Damascus bloom. What fragrance! What color!
Artificial caves with stalactites have been placed around great pools of water—both fresh and salt—where almost all the fishes of the world can be observed. It is as if the spectator found himself on the bottom of the sea, among polyps and fishes. All of this can be seen on the Field of Mars. And upon this table decked for a feast, a swarm of ants—of human beings—perpetually moves, some walking and some drawn in little carts, for human legs soon get tired.
From morning to late in the evening, steamships filled with passengers sail up and down the Seine; every day brings more and more carriages, more coaches; and they are full. People come on horseback and on foot, and all of this stream of humanity has only one goal, the Paris Exposition.
The entrance is decorated with the flags of France, and from each of the buildings in this gigantic bazaar flies the flag of the exhibitor; the flags of all nations can be seen.
From the Hall of Technique, the machines clang, grind, and drone. From the towers, bells ring, and in the churches organs play. The sounds blend with the strange, monotonous songs coming from the oriental cafés. This is the Kingdom of Babel, where all the languages of Babel are spoken: a wonder of the world!
This is what was told about the Field of Mars, and the news spread far and wide. Who has not heard of it? It is the new wonder of the city of cities.
“Fly, little bird, and come back and tell me of it,” the wood nymph prayed.
Her desire swelled and became her lifelong dream, her only purpose in living. The full moon rose in the still silent night. Suddenly a spark flew from the luminous disk. The dryad saw it, it fell toward the earth like a falling star. The branches of the tree shook as if a storm were raging. In front of it stood a gigantic, radiant shape. It spoke softly and yet as penetratingly as the trumpet that will sound on Judgment Day.
“You shall enter the magic city. Your roots shall be buried in its soil and you shall sense the whirlwind and the air and the sun of Paris. But your life will be shortened by it. The many years you might have lived out here in nature will shrink to but a fraction. Poor dryad, it will be your ruin
. For your longing will not be satisfied. Instead it will grow, until your tree will seem to you a prison. Then if you leave, abandoning your tree, your life will be but half that of the mayfly: one single night. The leaves of your tree will fade and wither and never become green again.”
So spoke the specter and the light disappeared. But the longing of the dryad only increased. The tree rustled its leaves in wild, feverish expectancy.
“I will come to Paris, to the town of towns,” the dryad said jubilantly. “Life is beginning, it grows like the clouds; and no one knows where they are sailing.”
One morning, when the moon paled and the clouds in the horizon grew red, the moment came, the promise was fulfilled.
Workmen with spades and shovels began digging around the tree and deep down underneath it. With iron bars it was forced out of the earth. Mats woven of rushes were tied around its roots and the soil that clung to them. Then it was lifted up into a horse-drawn wagon and tied securely to its sides. Its journey to Paris, to the capital of France, had begun.
As the wagon lurched forward the branches of the chestnut tree shook with the passionate pleasure of expectancy. “Let’s go … let’s go,” the dryad’s pulse seemed to throb. “Gone … gone …” were the words whispered by the wind.
The dryad forgot to say good-by to the place where she had grown up: to the swaying grass, to the innocent daisies that lived beneath her shade and adored her as though she had been a princess playing at being a shepherdess.
The chestnut tree in the wagon waved its branches. Was it saying “Let’s go” or “Farewell”? The dryad didn’t notice. She was dreaming of all the new things she would see, that she already knew so well. No child’s heart, in innocent joy, was ever more expectant, and no sensuous mind more passionate in its longing, than the dryad’s were, as she started on her journey to Paris. That is why “Farewell” had become “Let’s go.”
The wagon wheels turned; the distant became the near and then disappeared. The landscape changed like the clouds in the sky: new vineyards, forests, villages, houses, and gardens came forward and were gone again, left behind. The locomotives passed, telling in the puffs of smoke from their stacks of the wonder that was Paris.
The chestnut tree traveled and the wood nymph journeyed inside it. She thought that everyone along the way knew where she was going. She thought that the trees along the road reached out their limbs and begged: “Take me with you! Take me with you!” Maybe they did, for in each of them lived a dryad.
The scene changed constantly. To the wood nymph, it seemed as though the houses sprouted up out of the ground. There were more and more of them, closer and closer together. On their roofs there were chimneys that looked like flowerpots set in a row. On the gables and the walls of the houses big letters—some of them several feet high—were painted; some places there were also figures.
“Where does Paris begin? When will I be there?” the dryad asked herself. The traffic increased, there seemed to be people everywhere: driving in carriages, walking, riding on horseback. More and more shops appeared. Music could be heard, song and the din of people talking, broken by loud shouts and curses from the carriage drivers. Finally the dryad, inside her tree, was in the very center of Paris.
The heavy wagon stopped at a little square. Trees were growing there, but it was surrounded by houses that were several stories high; every window was a door that opened onto a balcony, on which people stood and looked down upon the fresh, young tree that had been brought from the country into the city, where it was destined to replace the dead tree now lying on the ground.
As they walked across the square, people stopped to look at it, and they smiled happily at the spring-green tree. The older trees were still only in bud; they greeted the young tree by shaking their limbs: “Welcome! Welcome!” The fountain that shot its stream of water high into the air, only to let it fall and splash into its broad basin, let the wind carry a little of the water to the new tree as a toast of welcome.
The dryad felt her tree being lifted off the wagon and carefully planted. Its roots were again covered with soil, and fresh turf was placed on the scars in the lawn that the removal of the dead tree had caused. Fresh bushes and flowers were planted near the young tree. It was almost a little garden in the middle of the square.
The dead tree, which had been strangled by the foul, polluted air of the city, was loaded on the wagon and driven away. People were looking on. Young and old were sitting on benches together and admiring the new tree’s green leaves. The person who is telling the tale stood on one of the balconies and looked down into the square. I saw the messenger of spring that had come from the country where the air is sweet and fresh, and I said, as the old priest would have, “Poor dryad.… Poor little wood nymph!”
“Oh, this is bliss! This is truly happiness!” said the dryad. “Yet I cannot quite understand … cannot quite explain … why everything is as I imagined it, but not as I expected it would be.”
The houses were so tall and so very near. There was only one wall on which the sun really shone, and that was covered with signs and posters. There was always a great crowd of people there. The traffic was terrible: carriages and overcrowded coaches drove by the square all day. No one made way for anyone else, and everyone rushed as if only his business were of importance.
“I wish those tall houses would move a little, change shape like drifting clouds, and allow me to see Notre Dame or the pillars of Vendôme, and that great wonder that has attracted so many foreigners here, and that I am sure all those people who are rushing by are going to look at.”
But the buildings never moved. A little before nightfall, the lamps were lighted. From the shopwindows rays of gaslight shone upon the branches of the chestnut tree, almost as brightly as the sun. The stars came out, and they were the same ones that she knew in the country. The dryad recognized them and thought that a breath of fresh air came from them: a mild sweet breeze. She felt a new strength, as if she could see the world around her with the tips of her leaves and experience it with her tiny, fine roots. She felt a part of the living, human world, which she believed was kind. All about her were motion and sound, light and color.
From the streets that led into the square, music could be heard—horns and barrel organs—and the instruments seemed to call: “Dance … Dance … Enjoy! Enjoy!”
It was a music so gay that human beings, horses, carts, houses, and trees had to dance; that is, if they could. The dryad felt an intoxicating happiness fill her heart.
“How glorious! How lovely it is!” she shouted in joy. “I am in Paris!”
The next day and night and the day that followed were alike: the same traffic, the same people went by. Life on the square was ever changing and yet always the same.
“Now I know every tree, every flower around me, every house, every balcony, every store in this little dead corner that hides from me the great city. Where is the Arch of Triumph? Where are the boulevards? Where is that great wonder that has brought people from all over the world to the city? I see none of it. I am imprisoned here among the tall houses. I know them by heart; I have looked through their windows and read all the posters on their walls. They are candy and I have had enough of it. Where is all that I heard about and which I longed for? What have I gained, won, or found by coming here? My longing, my desires, are as overpowering now as they were before. There is a life, I can sense it; and that I must grasp. I must be alive among the living, be part of the human world, and fly like the birds. I would give up the years of boredom—the everyday life that wears you away slowly, till you disappear like a fog on the meadow—for one night of being alive. I want to shine like a cloud in the sunlight, see everything as the clouds do, float in every direction, and then disappear, who knows where.”
That was the sigh of the dryad and it was transformed into a prayer: “Take my life, my years, and give me instead half of a mayfly’s life. Free me from my jail, give me a human shape and human happiness, if only for one night.
Then punish me if you wish, for my courage, my spirit, the passionate longing that has filled my life, by destroying me. Let the young tree that was my body—my jail—die, wither and be cut down, used as firewood so that the wind can spread the ashes.”
A tremor went through the tree. Every leaf quivered and the tree felt as though fire had passed through it. Then a great gust of wind hit it; its boughs bent and the figure of a woman emerged: the dryad herself. She floated down upon the grass and sat underneath the gaslit leaves of the tree. She was as young and beautiful as Marie, of whom it had been said: “The great town will be her undoing.”
The dryad was leaning against the trunk of the tree, the door of her house; but she had locked it and thrown the key away. She was so young and so beautiful. The stars saw her and winked. The gas lamps saw her and seemed to wave and shine more brightly. Her body was slender and firm. She was both a child and a maiden. Her dress was as fine as silk, and as green as the tender leaves of the tree. In her nut-brown hair was a chestnut flower that had just begun to bloom. She looked like the Goddess of Spring.
Only for a moment did she rest beneath the tree, then she was up and gone. Like a gazelle, she ran around the corner, away from the square. She darted as the light of the sun skips across a mirror—here, there. And what could be seen of her, when one got a moment’s glimpse, was lovely. Wherever she tarried, her clothes changed to suit the place she was visiting and the light cast upon her.
She came to one of the grand boulevards. The gas lamps of the café and stores formed a sea of light. Here stood a row of trees, young and slender. Each of them hid its wood nymph from the artificial light. The seemingly never ending broad sidewalks were like one grand festival hall. Here tables were decked with all kinds of refreshments: coffee, chartreuse, champagne. Here were exhibitions of paintings, sculpture, flowers, and colorful fabrics.
From the crowd in front of the tall buildings the dryad looked at the terrifying stream of traffic: a river of carriages, coaches, horse-drawn buses, droshkies, horseback riders, and marching regiments of soldiers. Indeed, one had to be brave to cross to the opposite shore. A bengal light was lit and from somewhere a rocket rose high into the air and disappeared. Truly, the boulevard was the great highway of this city called Paris.
The Complete Fairy Tales and Stories Page 106