The boy intended first to climb up on a sand dune to see what the country looked like beyond it. But when he had taken a few steps, the front edge of his wooden shoe bumped into something hard. He leaned over and saw that on the sand there was a small copper coin so corroded with verdigris it was almost transparent. It was in such poor condition that he did not even think about picking it up, but instead just kicked it away.
But when he was standing upright again, he was quite surprised, because two steps away rose a high, dark wall with a large gate topped by a tower.
The moment before, when the boy leaned down, the sea had spread out glistening and bright, and now it was concealed by a long wall with towers and pinnacles. And right in front of him, where before there had been only a few banks of seaweed, the large gate was opening.
The boy probably understood that there was spookery involved. But this was nothing to be afraid of, he thought. It was not some dangerous trolls or other evil, which he always feared encountering at night. Both the wall and the gate were so splendidly constructed that he had only a desire to see what might be behind them. ‘I have to find out what this might be,’ he thought, making his way through the gate.
In the deep archway sat watchmen dressed in motley, puffed clothing with long-shafted halberds beside them, playing dice. They were thinking only about the game and paid no attention to the boy, who quickly hurried past them.
Inside the gate he found an open plaza, paved with large, even slabs of stone. All around stood tall, magnificent houses, and between them were long, narrow streets.
The plaza before the gate was swarming with people. The men wore long, fur-lined coats over silk undergarments, plume-adorned berets sat askew on their heads, on their chests hung thick chains. All of them were so impressively dressed up that they could have been kings.
The women wore conical hats, long skirts and narrow sleeves. They were also grandly dressed, but their finery did not nearly approach the men’s.
This was just like in the old fairy-tale book that Mother took out of the chest once and showed him. The boy could simply not believe his eyes.
But what was more remarkable to see than the men and the women was the city itself. Every house was built so that one gable faced towards the street. And the gables were decorated so that you might believe that they wanted to compete with each other over who could show the loveliest decorations.
Anyone who suddenly sees so many new things cannot manage to preserve everything in memory. But afterwards the boy could still recall that he had seen stepped gables that bore pictures of Christ and his apostles on the various landings, gables where pictures stood in niches up the entire wall, gables that were inlaid with multicoloured pieces of glass, and gables that were striped and checked with white and black marble.
While the boy marvelled at all this, an intense urgency came over him. ‘My eyes have never seen anything like this before. They will never see anything like this again,’ he said to himself. And he started running into the city, up and down the streets.
The streets were cramped and narrow, but not empty and gloomy like in the cities he knew about. There were people everywhere. Old women sat by their doors spinning without spinning wheels, using only a spindle. The merchants’ shops were like market stalls, open to the street. All the craftsmen did their work outside. In one place cod-liver oil was being boiled, at another skins were being dressed, in a third was a long ropeyard.
If the boy had only had the time he could have learned to manufacture everything imaginable. Here he saw how armourers hammered out thin breastplates, how silversmiths set precious stones in rings and bracelets, how turners wielded their iron, how shoemakers soled soft red shoes, how the goldsmith twisted gold wire into thread, and how the weavers added silk and gold to their weavings.
But the boy did not have time to stop. He just rushed ahead to be able to see as much as possible, before all of it disappeared again.
The high wall ran around the whole city, enclosing it like a stone wall surrounds a field. At the end of every street he saw it, crowned with pinnacles and adorned with towers. Up on the wall the soldiers marched in shining breastplates and helmets.
When he had run straight through the whole city, he came to yet another gate in the wall. Beyond it was the sea with the harbour. The boy saw old-time ships with rowing benches in the middle and high structures fore and aft. Some were taking in cargo, others were just casting anchor. Carriers and merchants hurried past each other. Urgency and life prevailed everywhere.
But he did not think he had time to linger here, either. He hurried in towards the city again, and now he came up to the main square. There was the cathedral with three high towers and deep archways adorned with images. The walls were so ornamented by sculptors that there was not a stone that did not have a decoration. And such magnificence was glimpsed through the open gate: golden crosses and gilded altars and priests in golden vestments! Across from the church was a building that had pinnacles on the roof and a single, narrow, sky-high tower. It was probably the city hall. And between the church and the city hall, around the whole square, lovely gabled houses rose in the most varied decoration.
The boy had been running, so that he was hot and tired. He now thought he had seen what was most remarkable and so he started to walk more slowly. The street on to which he had turned was surely the one where the city-dwellers bought their magnificent clothing. He saw throngs of people standing in front of the small shops, where over the counters the merchants spread out flowery, stiff silk, thick gold cloth, shot velvet, light gauze and lace as thin as spider webs.
Before, when the boy ran so fast, no one paid any attention to him. The people probably thought it was just a little grey rat scampering past them. But now, when he was walking along the street quite slowly, one of the merchants caught sight of him and started waving.
The boy was anxious at first and wanted to hurry away, but the merchant just waved and smiled and spread a grand piece of silk damask out on the counter as if to entice him.
The boy shook his head. ‘I’ll never be so rich that I can buy a yard of that fabric,’ he thought.
But now they had caught sight of him in every shop all along the street. Wherever he looked a shopkeeper stood waving to him. They left their rich customers and only thought about him. He saw how they hurried into the most hidden corners of the shop to get the best they had to sell, and how their hands trembled with urgency and eagerness, while they set it out on the counter.
When the boy continued to walk ahead, one of the merchants threw himself over the counter, caught up with him and set down silver fabric and woven tapestries, radiant with colours, in front of him. The boy could do nothing but laugh. The shopkeeper must understand that a poor wretch like him could not buy such things. He stopped and held out his empty hands, so that they would understand that he had nothing and leave him in peace.
But the merchant raised one finger and nodded and pushed the whole pile of magnificent goods towards him.
‘Can he mean that he wants to sell all this for one gold coin?’ the boy thought.
The merchant took out a little, worn coin in poor condition, the most insignificant you could see, and showed it to him. And he was so eager to sell that he added to his pile a couple of large, heavy silver beakers.
Then the boy started digging in his pockets. He knew, of course, that he did not have a single coin, but he could not keep from looking.
All the other merchants stood trying to see how the transaction would turn out, and when they noticed that the boy was starting to dig in his pockets, they threw themselves over the counters, took handfuls of gold and silver jewellery and offered i
t to him. And they all showed him that what they requested in payment was only a single small coin.
But the boy turned both his vest and trouser pockets inside out, so that they would see he had nothing. Then they got tears in their eyes, all of these stately merchants, who were so much richer than he. At last he was so moved by their anxiety that he thought about whether he could not help them in some way. And then he happened to think about that patinated coin that he had just seen on the beach.
He took off running down the street, and luck was with him, so that he came to the same gate that he had first happened upon. He rushed through it and started searching for the little verdigris-green copper coin that had been lying on the shore a while ago.
He found it too, quite rightly, but when he had picked it up and wanted to hurry back into the city with it, he saw only the sea before him. No city wall, no gate, no watchmen, no streets, no buildings were seen now, only the sea.
The boy could not help getting tears in his eyes. To start with he had thought that what he saw was nothing but an optical illusion, but he had managed to forget that. He had only thought how beautiful everything was. He felt a very deep sorrow that the city had disappeared.
At the same moment Herr Ermenrich awakened and came up to him. But he did not hear him, instead the stork had to bump him with his beak to make himself noticed. ‘I think that you’re standing here sleeping, like me,’ said Herr Ermenrich.
‘Oh, Herr Ermenrich!’ the boy said. ‘What kind of city was it that was just here?’
‘Did you see a city?’ said the stork. ‘You fell asleep and were dreaming, like I said.’
‘No, I wasn’t dreaming,’ said Thumbkin, and he told the stork everything he had experienced.
Then Herr Ermenrich said, ‘For my part, Thumbkin, I think you fell asleep here on the beach and dreamed all this. But I don’t want to hide from you that Bataki, the raven, who is the most learned of all birds, once told me that on this shore in the past there was a city, which was called Vineta. It was so rich and fortunate that no city has even been more glorious, but unfortunately its inhabitants abandoned themselves to arrogance and a love of display. As punishment for this, says Bataki, the city of Vineta was flooded by a storm and sank into the sea. But its inhabitants cannot die, nor can their city be destroyed. And one night every hundred years it rises up in all its glory out of the sea and is on the earth’s surface for exactly one hour.’
‘Yes, it must be true,’ said Thumbkin, ‘because I saw it.’
‘But when the hour is past, it sinks down into the sea again if, during that time, a merchant in Vineta has not been able to sell something to a living being. If you, Thumbkin, only had ever so small a coin to pay the merchant, Vineta would have been able to stay here on the shore and its people would be able to live and die like other people.’
‘Herr Ermenrich,’ said the boy, ‘now I understand why you came and got me in the middle of the night. It was because you believed that I could save the old city. I’m so sorry it didn’t work out as you wanted, Herr Ermenrich.’
He put his hands before his eyes and wept. It was not easy to say who looked most distressed, the boy or Herr Ermenrich.
THE LIVING CITY
Monday, 11 April
In the afternoon on the day after Easter the wild geese and Thumbkin were out flying. They swept along over Gotland.
The large island was big and level below them. The ground was chequered just like in Skåne, and there were plenty of churches and farms. But the difference was that there were more forest meadows between the fields here, and the farms were not enclosed. And there were no large estates at all, with old castles, towers and extensive grounds.
The wild geese had taken the route over Gotland for Thumbkin’s sake. He had not been himself for two days and had not said a happy word. The reason for this was that he was thinking about that city, which in such a peculiar way had appeared to him. He had never seen anything so beautiful and magnificent, and he could not come to terms with the fact that he had not been able to rescue it. He was not sensitive by nature otherwise, but he really grieved over the lovely buildings and the stately people.
Both Akka and the gander tried to convince Thumbkin that he’d had a dream or an optical illusion, but the boy did not want to hear any such thing. He was so sure he had really seen what he saw that no one could budge him from this conviction. He was acting so distressed that his travelling companions became worried about him.
Just as the boy was at his most downhearted, old Kaksi returned to the flock. She had been thrown towards Gotland and had to travel across the whole island before she heard from some crows that her travelling companions were on Lilla Karlsön. When Kaksi found out what Thumbkin was missing, she said quite suddenly, ‘If Thumbkin is grieving over an old city, we can soon console him. Just come along, I will lead you to a place that I saw yesterday! He won’t have to be distressed for long.’
With that the geese said goodbye to the sheep, and now they were on their way to the place that Kaksi wanted to show Thumbkin. As sad as he was, he could not help looking down as usual at the land over which he was travelling.
He thought it looked as if the whole island to start with must have been a high, steep cliff like Karlsön, although much bigger, of course. But then it had somehow been flattened. Someone had taken a big rolling pin and rolled it out, as if it were a lump of dough. Not because it had become completely even and smooth like a loaf of bread, it definitely had not. While they had travelled along the coast, in several places he had seen high, white limestone walls with grottos and raukar, but in the majority of places they were erased and the shore sank humbly down to the sea.
On Gotland they had a beautiful, peaceful holiday afternoon. Mild spring weather prevailed, the trees had large buds, spring flowers covered the ground in the forest meadows, the long, thin curtains of the poplars swayed, and in the small gardens that were found by every cottage the gooseberry bushes were completely green.
The warmth and the budding spring had lured humans out on to roads and yards, and wherever any of them were gathered they were playing. It was not only the children who played but the grown-ups too. They threw stones at targets, and they hit balls up into the air so high that they almost reached the wild geese. It looked merry and pleasant to see big people playing, and the boy probably would have been happy about it if he could have forgotten his annoyance that he had not been able to save the old city.
He had to admit anyway that this was a lovely flight. There was so much song and sound in the air. Small children played a circle game and sang along. And the Salvation Army was out. He saw a whole crowd of people, dressed in black and red, sitting on a wooded hillside, playing guitars and brass instruments. There were Good Templars, who had been on a pleasure outing. He recognized them by the large banners with gold inscriptions that swayed over them. And they sang song after song, as long as he could hear them.
The boy could never remember Gotland later without also thinking of games and songs.
For a long time he sat looking down, but now he happened to raise his eyes. No one can describe how surprised he was. Without his having noticed it, the geese had left the interior of the island and travelled west towards the coast. Now the wide, blue sea lay before him. But it was not the sea that was remarkable, but a city that rose up from the seashore.
The boy came from the east and the sun had started to go down in the west. As he approached the city, its walls and towers and high-gabled houses and churches stood completely black against the light evening sky. For that reason he could not see what they were like in reality, and for a few moments he thought that it was as grand a city as the one he had see
n on Easter Eve.
When he really came up to it, he saw that it was both like and unlike that city from the bottom of the sea. It was the same difference as if on one day you saw a man dressed in purple and jewellery and another day saw him destitute and in rags.
Yes, this city had probably once been like the one he was thinking about. This one was also surrounded by a city wall with towers and gates. But the towers in this city, which had been able to remain on land, were roofless, hollow and empty. The gates were without doors, watchmen and soldiers were missing. All the shining splendour was gone. It was only the bare, grey stone structure that was there.
As the boy came farther in over the city, he saw that for the most part it was built up with small, low houses, but here and there some of the high-gabled houses were still there and some churches from the old times. The walls of the gabled houses were whitewashed and completely without decoration, but because he had so recently seen the sunken city, he thought he could understand how they had been adorned: some with statues and others with black-and-white marble. And it was the same way with the old churches. Most of them had no roof with bare interiors. The window openings stood empty, the floors were grass-covered, and ivy climbed up the walls. But now he knew how they had once looked, that they had been covered with images and paintings, that the chancel had decorated altars and gilded crosses, and that priests had moved about dressed in golden vestments.
The boy also saw the narrow streets, almost empty of people on the holiday afternoon. He knew what a stream of stately people had once swarmed on them. He knew that they had been like large workshops, full of all kinds of workers.
But what Nils Holgersson did not see was that even today the city was both beautiful and remarkable. He saw neither the pleasant cottages on the back streets with black walls, white corners and red geraniums behind the sparkling windowpanes, nor the many lovely gardens and lanes, nor the beauty of the ruins draped in creepers. His eyes were so filled by the magnificence of the past that he could not see anything good in the present.
The Wonderful Adventure of Nils Holgersson Page 16