“The swan flew into the lonely forest, and rested there on the quiet dark lakes where the water lilies and the wild forest apples grow, and where the cuckoo and wood pigeon live.
“A poor woman was gathering firewood of broken branches, and carried them on her back. She had her little child by her breast and was walking home. She saw the golden swan, the swan of good fortune, lift off from the reed-covered shore. What was that shining there? A golden egg. She held it to her breast, and it was warm. There must have been life in the egg. Yes, there was pecking inside the shell! She felt it and thought it was her own heart beating.
“At home in her poor hovel she took the golden egg out. ‘Tick, tick!’ it said, as if it were an expensive gold watch, but it was an egg with life inside. The egg cracked, and a little swan, with feathers as of purest gold, stuck its head out. It had four rings around its neck, and since the poor woman had four sons, three at home and the fourth that she had carried with her in the forest, she immediately realized that there was a ring for each child. As she grasped that—and them—the little golden bird flew away.
“She kissed each ring and had each child kiss one of the rings, and laid them by the children’s hearts and then on their fingers.
“I saw it!” said the sunshine. “And I saw what happened afterwards.
“One boy sat in the clay pit, took a lump of clay in his hand, turned it with his fingers, and it became a statue of Jason,1 who had taken the golden fleece.
“The second boy ran out in the meadow where the flowers were blooming in every imaginable color. He picked a handful and squeezed them so tightly that the nectar sprayed into his eyes and wet the ring. His hands and thoughts were itching with it, and some years later they were talking in the big city about the great painter.
“The third boy held the ring so tightly in his mouth that it sang out, an echo from the heart. Thoughts and feelings arose in strains, arose like singing swans, and dived like swans into the deep sea, the deep sea of thought. He became a master of music, and every land can now think, ‘He belongs to me!’
“The fourth little one—well, he was an outcast. They said he was batty, had the ‘pip.’ He should be given pepper and whipped butter, like the sick chickens were. They said those words, ‘pepper and whipped butter’ with the stress on the whipped. And that’s what he got, but from me he got a sunshine’s kiss,” said the sunshine. “He got ten kisses instead of one. He had a poetic nature and was both knocked about and kissed, but he had the lucky ring from good fortune’s golden swan. His thoughts flew like golden butterflies, the symbol of immortality.”
“That was really a long story,” said the wind.
“And boring!” said the rain. “Blow on me, so I can freshen up.”
The wind blew, and the sunshine said:
“The swan of good fortune flew over the deep bay, where the fishermen had cast their nets. The poorest of them was thinking of getting married, and he did get married.
“The swan brought him a piece of amber. Amber pulls things towards it, and this pulled hearts to it. Amber is the loveliest incense. There was a fragrance as of a church, a scent from God’s nature. The two young people experienced the happiness of home life, contentment in straitened circumstances, and so their life was a whole sunshine story.”
“Can’t we break this off now?” said the wind. “Now the sunshine has talked long enough. I’ve been so bored.”
“Me too,” said the rain.
“And what do the rest of us who have heard the stories say?”
“We say: ‘That’s the end!’”
NOTE
1 In Greek mythology, the quest for the golden fleece is undertaken by Jason, who was the son of a Greek king, and the Argonauts, sailors in the ship Argo. Jason must obtain the fleece in order to reclaim his throne.
THE DROP OF WATER
I’M SURE YOU’RE FAMILIAR with a magnifying glass—one of those round lenses that makes everything look a hundred times bigger than it is? When you look through it at a drop of water from the pond, you see over a thousand strange animals that you otherwise wouldn’t see in the water, but they’re there and that’s the truth. It almost looks like a whole plate full of shrimp sprawling around each other, and they are so ravenous that they tear arms and legs, ends and pieces out of each other, and yet they seem happy and satisfied in their way.
There was once an old man whom everyone called Creepy Crawley because that was his name. He always wanted to get the best out of everything, and when something didn’t work, he used magic.
One day he was sitting and looking through his magnifying glass at a drop of water from a puddle in a ditch. My, how they were creeping and crawling in there! All of the thousands of little animals were hopping and jumping, pulling at each other and eating each other.
“Oh, but this is just disgusting!” said old Creepy Crawley. “Can’t we get them to live in peace and quiet and mind their own business?” And he thought and thought about it, but couldn’t come up with anything, so he had to use magic. “I’ll give them color so they are more visible,” he said, and he poured a little drop of what looked like red wine into the drop of water, but it was witch’s blood of the very best quality that costs two shillings. So then all the strange animals turned pink all over their bodies. It looked like an entire town of naked savages.
“What have you got there,” asked another old troll. He didn’t have a name, and that was the best thing about him.
“Well, if you can guess what it is,” said Creepy Crawley, “then I’ll give it to you, but it’s not easy to find out when you don’t know.”
And the troll who had no name looked through the magnifying glass. It really did look like an entire city, where all the people were running around without clothes! It was hideous, but even more hideous to see how they pulled and pushed against each other, how they nudged and nibbled, pinched and pounded at each other. What was on the bottom tried to get on top, and what was on top tried to get underneath. “Look, look—his leg is longer than mine! Snip! Away with it! There’s one who has a little lump behind its ear, a little innocent lump, but it bothers him, and it will bother him more!” and they hit at it, and they hacked at him, and they ate him because of that little lump. One was like a little maiden, sitting quite still, and wanted just peace and quiet, but then she came forward, and they pulled at her and tugged at her, and they ate her too!
“This is really fun,” said the troll.
“Well, but what do you think it is?” asked Creepy Crawley. “Can you figure it out?”
“That’s easy to see,” said the other, “It’s obviously Copenhagen or another big city. They’re all alike. A big city is what it is!”
“It’s ditch water!” said Creepy Crawley.
THE FLEA AND THE PROFESSOR
ONCE THERE WAS A balloonist who came to grief. The balloon burst, and the man fell and was smashed to pieces. He had sent his boy down two minutes earlier in a parachute, which was lucky for the boy. He was unhurt and had great knowledge of being a balloonist, but he had no balloon nor any means to obtain one.
He had to live, and so he learned magic tricks and how to talk with his stomach. That’s called being a ventriloquist. He was young and good looking, and when he grew a moustache and wore good clothes, he could be mistaken for a noble youth. The ladies thought he was attractive, and one maiden was even so taken with his appearance and magic arts that she followed him to foreign towns and countries. There he called himself Professor. Nothing less would do.
His constant thought was to get a hold of a hot air balloon and go into the air with his little wife, but they still didn’t have the means.
“It’ll come!” he said.
“If only it would,” she said.
“We are young people, you know, and now I’m a professor. Half a loaf is better than none.”
She helped him faithfully and sat by the door selling tickets to the performances, and that was cold pleasure during the winter. She also helpe
d him with one of the tricks. He put his wife in a table drawer—a big drawer—and then she crept into a back drawer and could not be seen in the front one. It was like an optical illusion.
But one evening when he pulled the drawer out, she had disappeared for him too. She was not in the front drawer, not in the back drawer, not in the whole house, not to be seen, not to be heard. That was her disappearing act. She never came back. She had gotten tired of it, and he was tired of it. He lost his good humor and couldn’t laugh or make jokes anymore, and people stopped coming. His earnings were poor, and so were his clothes. Finally all he owned was a big flea, inherited from his wife, and so he was very fond of it. He dressed it up, taught it some magic tricks, and even how to present arms and shoot off a cannon, but a small one.
The professor was proud of the flea, and it was proud of itself. It had learned something, carried human blood in its veins, and had been in the largest cities. Princes and princesses had seen it perform, and it had won their highest approval. It was written about in newspapers and appeared on posters. It knew that it was a celebrity and could support a professor, even an entire family.
Proud it was and famous it was, and yet when it and the professor traveled, they traveled fourth class on the trains. You arrive just as quickly as first class passengers. They had a tacit agreement that they would never separate, never get married. The flea would become a bachelor, and the professor a widower. It’s the same difference.
“Where you’ve had the greatest success, you mustn’t go back,” said the professor. He knew human nature, and that’s also knowledge.
Finally they had traveled to all countries, except to the uncivilized ones, and so then he wanted to go there. They ate Christian people there, the professor knew, but he was not exactly a Christian, and the flea was not exactly a person so he thought they could travel there and make a good profit.
They traveled by steamship and by sail. The flea did his tricks, and so they traveled for free and then came to the land of the cannibals.
A little princess ruled there. She was only eight years old, but she was the ruler. She had taken power from her father and mother, for she had a strong will and was so exceptionally lovely and naughty.
Immediately when the flea presented arms and shot off the cannon, she was so completely entranced by him that she said, “Him or no one!” She was wild with love for him, and, of course, she was already wild from before.
“Dear sweet, sensible little child,” said her own father. “If one could just make a human being out of him!”
“Leave that to me, old thing,” she said, and that wasn’t nicely said of a little princess talking to her father, but then she was wild.
She placed the flea on her little hand.
“Now you’re a human being, and you’ll rule with me. But you must do what I want, or I’ll kill you and eat the professor.”
The professor was given a large chamber to live in. The walls were of sugar cane, and he could lick them, but he didn’t have a sweet tooth. He got a hammock to sleep in, and it was as if he were lying in the balloon which he had always wished for, and which was his constant thought.
The flea stayed with the princess, sat on her little hand and on her delicate neck. She had taken a hair from her head, and the professor had to tie it around the flea’s leg. The other end she tied to the big piece of coral that she wore in her earlobe.
What a lovely time that was for the princess, and for the flea too, she thought. But the professor was not satisfied. He was a traveling man, and he liked moving from town to town, liked reading about his perseverance in the newspapers, and about his cleverness in teaching a flea human actions. He lay in the hammock day in and day out, lazy and eating good food—fresh bird eggs, elephant eyes, and roasted leg of giraffe. The cannibals didn’t just live off of human flesh. That was a delicacy to them. “Shoulder of child with a pungent sauce,” said the princess’ mother, “is the most delicious.”
The professor was bored and wanted to get away from the uncivilized country, but he had to have the flea with him. That was his wonder child and means of support. How could he catch and keep it? It wasn’t so easy.
He exerted all his mental faculties, and then he said, “I’ve got it!”
“Father of the Princess, let me do something. May I drill the country’s residents in presenting arms? That’s what’s considered culture in the world’s greatest countries.”
“And what can you teach me?” asked the princess’ father.
“My greatest trick,” said the professor, “that of firing a cannon so the whole earth moves, and all of the sky’s most gorgeous birds fall cooked from the sky. There’s some noise to that!”
“Bring the cannon!” said the princess’ father.
But there was no cannon in the whole country except the one the flea had brought, and that one was too small.
“I’ll make a bigger one,” said the professor. “Just give me the means! I must have fine silk material, needle and thread, ropes and cords, and stomach drops for air balloonists—they blow it up so light and airy, and give the bang in the stomach of the cannon.”
And he got everything he requested.
The whole country assembled to see the big cannon. The professor didn’t call them together until he had the balloon completely ready to fill and ascend.
The flea sat on the princess’s hand and watched. The balloon was filled. It billowed and could hardly be held, it was so wild.
“I must have it up in the air to cool it down,” said the professor and got into the basket that hung under it. “I can’t steer it by myself. I have to have a knowledgeable companion along to help me. No one here can do it except the flea.”
“I’ll allow it but not willingly,” said the princess and handed the flea to the professor who set it on his hand.
“Let go of the ropes and cords,” he said. “Up goes the balloon!”
They thought he said, “Let’s make a boom.”
And the balloon rose higher and higher, up over the clouds, away from the uncivilized country.
The little princess, her mother and father, and all the people stood and waited. They are still waiting, and if you don’t believe it, then travel to that uncivilized country. Every child there talks about the flea and the professor and believes that they will come again when the cannon has cooled off. But they won’t come; they are home with us. They’re in their native land, riding on the trains, first class, not fourth. They have good earnings and a big balloon, and no one asks how or where they got it. They are well-to-do folks, honorable folks—the flea and the professor.
THE SNOWMAN
“I’M CREAKING ALL OVER in this delightfully cold weather!” said the snowman. “The wind bites life into you, that’s for sure. And how that glowing one is glowering!” He meant the sun that was just about to set. “She won’t get me to blink. I know how to hang on to my bits and pieces!” These were two big triangular pieces of roof tile that he had for eyes. His mouth was a piece of an old rake, and so he had teeth. He had been born to the shouts of “hurrah” from the boys, and greeted by the ringing bells and cracking whips of the sleighs.
The sun went down, and the full moon came up, round and huge, clear and lovely in the blue sky.
“There she is again from a different direction,” said the snowman. He thought it was the sun again. “I’ve broken her of glaring! Now she can just hang there and give some light so I can see myself. If I only knew how one goes about moving. I would so dearly like to move! If I could do that, I would go down and slide on the ice like I saw the boys doing. But I don’t know how to run!”
“Be gone! Gone!” barked the old watchdog. He was a little hoarse and had been ever since he was a house dog and lay under the stove. “The sun will teach you how to run, I’m sure. I saw that with your predecessor last year and his predecessor too. Gone! Gone! And they’re all gone.”
“I don’t understand you, buddy,” said the snowman. “Shall that thing up th
ere teach me how to run?” He meant the moon. “Well she ran before, it’s true, when I stared at her. Now she’s sneaking up from another direction.”
“You don’t know anything,” said the watchdog, “but, of course, you’ve just been slapped up. The one you see there is called the moon. The one who went was the sun. She’ll come back tomorrow and certainly teach you to run down to the moat. There’ll soon be a change in the weather. I can tell by my left hind leg—it has a shooting pain in it. We’ll have a weather change!”
“I don’t understand him,” said the snowman, “but I have the impression that he’s saying something unpleasant. The one who glared and went away, the one he calls the sun—she’s not my friend. I have a feeling about that!”
“Be gone! Gone!” barked the watchdog, turned around three times, and went into his kennel to sleep.
There actually was a change in the weather. A fog, thick and dank, lay over the whole neighborhood in the early hours, and at dawn a wind came up. The wind was so icy, and there was a heavy frost. But what a sight to see when the sun came up! All the trees and bushes were covered with hoar-frost. It was like an entire forest of white coral, as if all the branches were heaped with gleaming white flowers. Each and every one of the countless fine little branches that you couldn’t see in the summer because of the leaves, now stood out. It looked like lace, and was so shiny white that it was as if every branch shone with a dazzling white radiance. The weeping birch stirred in the wind. There was life in it, as there is in the trees in summer. It was all incomparably beautiful. And when the sun shone, how everything sparkled as if it were powdered with diamond dust, and across the snow-cover big diamonds glittered, or you could have imagined that there were innumerable tiny little candles burning, whiter even than the white snow.
“What matchless beauty!” said a young girl, who stepped out into the garden with a young man. They stopped right by the snowman and looked at the brilliant trees. “There’s no more beautiful sight in the summer,” she said, her eyes shining.
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