But the apothecary did, and sent a letter to his relative, the councilor’s wife. “It was too marvelous,” he wrote. “If I had had the councilor’s key in my pocket, I would have taken it out and whistled through it. She deserved it; and the key, too, for having lied to the poor girl. ‘Victory and Happiness,’ indeed!”
The councilor read the letter and declared that it was inspired by “key-hatred” and that it was mean to poke fun at Lotte-Lene. As soon as he was out of bed he wrote a “poisonous” note to the young apothecary, who did not notice the poison, perhaps because he was used to being in contact with it.
He replied in the best of humors. He began by saying that he was always happy to receive the latest news about keyology, and held this modern science in high esteem. Then he confessed that he was writing what we Danes call a “keyhole” novel. But instead of revealing family secrets it would be about keys. Whatever time the apothecary had to spare from his profession was devoted to this book. All the characters would be keys. The key to the front door would, naturally, be the main character. He said that he had been inspired by the councilor’s front door key, for its ability to look into the future was awe-inspiring. It was the greatest of all keys, and to it all other keys would have to pay homage: even the key of the chamberlain that knows its way around the court; the watch key that was so elegant, slim-waisted, and tiny; the key to the family pew that thought itself a cleric, because it had spent a single night in church, once when its owner had forgotten it, and there had seen a ghost; larder keys; cellar keys —both to the coal and the wine closet—all would have to be humble. The whole novel was to be one eulogy to the key of the front door. The sun was to shine on it and make it appear as if it were made of silver, and all the spirits of the world, like gusts of wind, were to whistle through it. It was to be proclaimed the key of all keys, and it was the councilor’s key to his front door, but it was to become the key to heaven, as infallible as the key of the Pope.
“It is wicked,” declared the councilor when he read it. “A pyramid of malice.” He saw the apothecary only once after that; at the funeral of his wife, for she died first.
Sorrow invaded the house, even the newly cut cherry branches refused to bloom. The other flowers hung their heads; they were used to careful nursing and their mistress had died. The apothecary and the councilor walked side by side behind the hearse. It was not the moment for quarrels.
Lotte-Lene tied the black crepe around the councilor’s hat. She was back, without the “Victory and Happiness” on the stage that the key had predicted. But it could still happen, Lotte-Lene had a future; both the key and the councilor had foreseen it.
She often visited the councilor; they talked about his late wife, and Lotte-Lene, who had a sensitive soul, cried. They talked about the theater and Lotte-Lene tempered her heart. “The theater is sinful,” she declared. “It is filled with envy. I shall go my own way. First life, then art.” She now realized that what Knigge had said in his chapter about actors had been perfectly correct. That the key had lied was something she never discussed with the councilor, for she was fond of him.
During the year of mourning the key was the good councilor’s only comfort and consolation. He asked it questions and it answered.
After the year was over, he and Lotte-Lene were sitting alone one lovely evening when he asked the key, “Shall I ever marry again? And if so whom?”
No one pushed him; but he pushed the key, and it answered, “Lotte-Lene.” The words were said. He had proposed; Lotte-Lene accepted and became a city councilor’s wife. The front door key had predicted it long ago: “Victory and Happiness.”
155
The Cripple
Once upon a time there was a big farm with a manor house. The master and mistress were rich, young, and happy. Fortune had smiled on them and they smiled back; they wanted everyone to be as happy as they were.
On Christmas Eve a large, beautifully decorated Christmas tree stood in the grand hall. A log fire burned in the fireplace and all the old paintings had their frames decorated with spruce branches. Here there were to be dancing and gaiety on the happiest night of the year, for the wealthy couple and their friends.
In the big dining room where the farm hands ate, Christmas was already being celebrated. Here, too, stood a Christmas tree, with red and white candles, tinsel, little Danish flags, and hearts woven from glossy paper which were filled with sweets. All the poor children in the countryside had been invited; they had come with their mothers. The grownups did not look long at the tree, they were more interested in the table where the presents were laid out. There were linen and woolen cloth, from which little girls’ dresses and boys’ pants could be sewn. Only the little children stretched out their hands toward the candles, flags, and tinsel.
They had come early in the afternoon and had been served the traditional Christmas dinner, which began with rice porridge and whose main course was roast goose and red cabbage. Afterward the candles on the tree were lit, and when the children had emptied the little paper baskets of their sweets, the presents were distributed. Finally everyone was given a glass of punch and apple fritters. Then it was time for the guests to go back to their own poor cottages; there the gifts were evaluated once more and the dinner discussed.
“Garden-Kirsten” and “Garden-Ole”—they were called by these names because they did the hoeing and the weeding in the park—were a married couple who had five children. Every year they received their share of gifts.
“Both the master and mistress are generous,” they would say. “But they can afford to be; and besides, they enjoy it.”
“There are clothes enough for the four children, but haven’t they given anything to the cripple? They don’t usually forget him even though he can’t come to the party.”
By the “cripple” Garden-Ole meant his oldest son; his name was Hans. He was a clever boy and once had been very active, but then his legs had suddenly “grown wobbly,” as his mother said. For the last five years he had been bedridden.
“Well, I did get something,” said his mother. “But it wasn’t anything much, only a book he could read.”
“He won’t get fat from that!” his father remarked.
But the gift made Hans happy. He was a very alert child and loved to read. Not that he didn’t work, for even though he was confined to bed he had lots to do: he knitted socks and even bedspreads. The young mistress had praised his work and bought two of the bedspreads. The book was a collection of fairy tales. It was thick; there was a lot to read and think about.
“It is useless!” said his parents. “But let him read; it helps him pass the time, and he can’t always be knitting.”
Spring came. The cherries bloomed and flowers came up from the ground; weeds did too, which meant that there was plenty of work in the park, not only for the gardener and his apprentices but for Garden-Ole and Garden-Kirsten as well.
“It is drudgery!” they both complained. “As soon as we have raked the garden paths, the guests come walking on them and spoil our work. The master must be rich to be able to afford to have so many strangers here.”
“Yes, the blessings of the world are strangely distributed,” said Ole. “The minister said that we are all God’s children, but then why do some get everything and so many almost nothing?”
“It is all because of man’s fall from grace,” replied his wife.
That evening, when they returned to their cottage, they had the same discussion. Hans was lying in his bed reading his book of fairy tales.
Life had not dealt easily with them. Hard work had made not only their hands hard but also their opinions and judgments. Their situation was beyond their own power to change it; they had not been able to get along; life was too difficult. As they talked they grew angrier and more bitter.
“Some people have wealth and happiness and others only poverty. Why should we suffer for Adam’s and Eve’s disobedience? Had we been in their place we wouldn’t have behaved as they did.”
“But we would have,” exclaimed Cripple-Hans. “It is all written down here in this book.”
“What is written down in the book?” asked his father.
Hans read aloud for them the old fairy tale about the woodcutter and his wife. They, too, had been complaining about Adam’s and Eve’s curiosity being the cause of their misery, and claiming that, had they been in their stead, then the apple would have stayed on the tree. The king, who had been riding past, heard what they said. “Come with me to the palace,” he offered, “and you shall live as well as I do. You will be served seven courses at every meal plus dessert; but the tureen that stands in the middle of the table you must never touch, for then your life of leisure will be over.”
They followed the king to the castle and the very first day the wife said, “I wonder what is in that tureen.”
“That is no concern of ours,” replied her husband.
“Oh, I am only curious,” exclaimed his wife. “I would just like to know what is inside.… If only I dared lift the lid a bit. I am sure it is a great delicacy.”
“It may have a mechanical attachment, like a pistol, so that it goes off the moment you touch it, and then everybody in the whole place can hear it,” said the woodcutter thoughtfully.
“Ugh!” cried the wife, and she didn’t touch the tureen. But she dreamed about it that night. In her dream the lid of the tureen lifted itself and she smelled the loveliest punch, the kind one gets at weddings and funerals. Next to the tureen lay a silver coin and on it was inscribed: “Drink, and you will become the richest person in the world, and all others will become paupers.” When she awoke, she told her husband about her dream.
“You shouldn’t think so much about the tureen,” was his comment.
“We could just lift the lid a little, ever so gently,” pleaded the wife.
“Very, very gently,” agreed her husband.
And the wife lifted the lid the tiniest bit, and out jumped two little mice and ran away, down into a mousehole.
“That was it!” said the king, who had been watching them. “Now you can go back where you came from, and don’t be bitter about Adam and Eve. You have been just as curious and ungrateful as they were.”
“I wonder how such a story has become known and printed,” said Garden-Ole. “It might have been us! Such a tale is worth thinking about.”
The next day they went to work. The sun scorched them and the rain soaked them; and they grumbled. All the disgruntled thoughts they had during the day they chewed on in the evening.
It was still light when they had finished supper and Ole asked his son to read the story of the woodcutter once more.
“But there are many other stories in the book,” Hans replied. “Stories you don’t know.”
“Those I don’t care about,” said Garden-Ole. “I want to hear the one I know.”
And Hans read the story again, and that was not the only evening he had to read it, or that it was discussed.
“It still does not explain everything,” Ole said one evening. “Human beings are like milk. Some are churned into sweet butter and some become whey. Why should some always be lucky, be born to a high station, and never experience sorrow or want?”
Cripple-Hans was listening to what his father said and, though his legs were wobbly, his mind wasn’t. He read another story from his book of fairy tales, the story of the man who had never known sorrow or want:
The king lay dying and could only be cured by being given the shirt of a man of whom it could truthfully be said that he had never known sorrow or want.
Messengers were sent to all the corners of the world, to all kings and noblemen, who one might suppose were happy; but every one of them had experienced, at some time or other, sorrow and want.
“But I haven’t!” said the swineherd who was sitting in the ditch. “I have been happy all my life.” And as if to prove it he both laughed and sang.
“Then give me your shirt,” ordered the messenger. “You shall have half the kingdom for it.”
But the swineherd did not own a shirt, even though he called himself the happiest person in the world.
“That was a fellow,” shouted Ole; and he and his wife laughed as they hadn’t for years.
“What are you all so happy about?” asked the schoolteacher, who had just entered the cottage. “Laughter is new with you. Have you won in the lottery?”
“No, nothing like that,” explained Ole. “Hans has been reading to us the story of the man who had never known sorrow or want. That fellow was so poor he didn’t even have a shirt on his back. When you hear a story like that it is hard not to laugh. Imagine, it is printed in a book of fairy tales. Well, everyone has their load to bear, and hearing about others makes your own lighter.”
“Where have you got the book from?” asked the schoolteacher, and smiled.
“Hans got it at Christmastime over a year ago. The mistress gave it to him because he is a cripple and has a liking for reading. Then we would have preferred a new shirt; but the book is strange, it can give answers to the questions you’ve been thinking about.”
The schoolteacher picked up the book and started to leaf through it.
“Let’s listen to the same story all over again!” exclaimed Garden-Ole. “And when you’ve finished that one, we can hear about the woodcutter and his wife.” Those two stories remained enough for Ole. They were like two sun rays in the low-ceilinged rooms of the cottage, in the warped, cowed soul of the man.
Hans had read the whole book, not only once, but countless times. The fairy tales carried him where his legs refused to go—out into the
world beyond the cottage walls. From that day on the schoolmaster came often during the afternoons, when the cripple lay alone in the house. Such visits were a feast to the boy. The old man told him about the size of the earth and its strange lands; how the sun was almost half a million times as big as the earth, and so far away that it would take a cannon ball twenty-five years to reach it: a journey that the rays of the sun could make in eight minutes. These were things that any school child knew, but to Hans it was all new and even more wonderful than the stories in the book of fairy tales.
Once or twice a year the schoolteacher dined at the manor house, and here he told what a blessing the gift of the fairy-tale book had been, not only to the boy but to the whole family. As the schoolteacher was leaving, the mistress gave him a silver mark to give to Hans when next he visited him.
“That my parents can have,” said Hans when the schoolmaster gave him the money.
And they were most happy to receive it. “Cripple-Hans can be both a blessing and of use,” they commented. It sounded harsh but wasn’t meant so.
A few days after the schoolteacher’s visit to the manor house, the carriage of the young mistress stopped in front of the cottage. The sweet, tender-hearted woman had come to pay a visit to the boy, because she was so pleased that her Christmas gift had brought so much happiness to both the child and his family. She had a basket with her that contained a fine wheat bread, fruits, and a bottle of black currant juice. But for Hans she had something really amusing: a wire cage, painted gold, in which sat a little black bird that whistled ever so prettily. The cage was put on a chest at a distance from the boy’s bed.
Hans could lie in bed and look at it and listen to it. The bird sang so loudly that even the passers-by could hear it.
Garden-Ole and Garden-Kirsten did not get home until long after the lady of the manor had departed. They saw how happy Hans was, but they were not happy; the gift seemed to them nothing but trouble.
“The rich never think about things like that, having servants at their beck and call,” they said. “Cripple-Hans can’t take care of it, so we’ll have to. In the end the cat will get it.”
One week went by and then another. The cat had been in the room many times without scaring the bird or harming it. Then one afternoon, while Hans was reading his book of fairy tales, it happened. The boy was reading the story of th
e fisherman’s wife who wished that she was king and then became it; then she desired to be Pope and also that wish was granted; but when she wished that she was God Himself, she was put right back into the muddy ditch where she had come from. From this story no moral can be drawn about the cat and the bird, it just happened by chance to be the one Hans was reading.
The cage stood on the chest; the cat sat on the floor and looked with its yellow-green eyes up at the bird. The animal’s expression said, “You are so beautiful, I would love to eat you.” Hans guessed its intentions; he read it on the face of the cat and screamed.
“Go away, cat! Go outside!” The cat tightened its muscles, ready to jump. Hans could not reach it and he had nothing to throw at the animal but his treasure, the book of fairy tales.
He threw it! But the binding was loose. Half of it went one way and half another, and neither hit the cat.
The cat turned and looked at the boy as if to say: “Don’t mix in my affairs, little Hans, I can run and leap and you can do neither.”
Hans kept staring at the cat. The bird was beginning to be frightened now. There was no one whom Hans could call; he was alone in the house. It was as if the cat knew it. Again it got ready to leap. Hans waved his bedcover and finally threw that at the cat, but the cat didn’t mind, it jumped up on a chair and then onto the window sill. Now it was nearer the chest and the cage.
Hans could feel the pulsing of his heart, though he did not give it a thought; all his attention was on his bird and the cat. He could not get out of bed, he could not walk, for his legs could not carry him.
It felt as if a hand were squeezing his heart when the cat leaped from the window sill to the chest, pushing over the cage so it fell on the floor. The bird screeched and flapped its wings against the wires of the cage. With a scream Hans jumped out of bed and ran over to pick up the cage and chase the cat away. He was not aware of what he was doing until he stood with the cage in his hand; then he ran out of the house to the road. Tears streamed down his face and he kept repeating as loudly as he could: “I can walk! I can walk!”
The Complete Fairy Tales and Stories Page 118