Godfather looked so happy as he spoke, and his eyes sparkled. Once long ago those eyes had shed their tears. “That was good too,” he said. “It was during my days of trial; and then I wept out the tears that were within me. The older you get the clearer you see that God is with you—both in adversity and when fortune shines upon you—and that life is the very best fairy tale, and it is He who has given it to us for all eternity.”
“It is lovely to live,” said little Maria.
To this everyone agreed: her brothers, her parents, the grownup boys, and most of all Godfather, who said: “Life is the best fairy tale of all.”
148
“Dance, Dance, Dolly Mine!”
“That song must be for very tiny children,” said Aunt Malle. “I think it all nonsense, that ‘Dance, Dance, Dolly Mine.’ ”
Little Amalie didn’t feel the same way about it, but then she was only three years old and played with dolls. She was bringing them up to be just as clever as Aunt Malle.
There was a student who came to the house every day to help Amalie’s brothers with their homework, and he often spoke to the little girl and to her dolls. His manner of talking was entirely different from the other grownups, and Amalie thought him wonderfully funny. Aunt Malle claimed that the young man had no idea of how to treat children; she said that their little heads would burst from all the words he used. But Amalie’s head didn’t; it was he who had taught her to sing “Dance, Dance, Dolly Mine!” She knew it by heart and sang it for her dolls. She had three of them; two of them were new: a boy and a girl. The third was an old doll named Lise. She was mentioned in the song.
Dance, dance, dolly mine!
Oh, you look so very fine,
And your beau, too, is dressed,
Wears his flannels newly pressed.
His shoes are of patent leather
Made for summer weather.
He is fine and you are fine.
Dance, dance, dollies mine!
Lise is a dolly dear.
She is old, from last year.
Wears her hair in a braid,
And is timid and afraid.
Lise, come and join the dance,
Don’t look so askance.
Come, come and join the ball.
It is no fun to sit by the wall.
Dance, dance, dollies mine!
Light your steps, that is fine.
Turn about at the door,
Promenade across the floor.
There they dance, hand in hand,
Around and around as fast as they can.
Oh, how sweet, you will agree,
Are my dollies, all three.
The dolls understood the song, little Amalie understood it, and the student understood it; but then he ought to, for he had composed it himself. And he declared that it was an excellent song. Only Aunt Malle didn’t understand or appreciate it, but then she had long since climbed over the fence that divides the child’s world from the adult’s. Amalie hadn’t and she kept singing the song and taught it to me.
149
“It Is You the Fable Is About”
The wise men in ancient times had a way of telling people the truth without being rude. They held up in front of them a mirror, in which animals and the strangest things appeared. It was both amusing and edifying to look at. They called it a fable, and whatever foolish or wise deeds the animals did were meant as lessons to the men who saw it. They would realize this and say to themselves, “The fable is about me.” But no one had said this to them, and therefore there was no reason for anyone to become angry. Let me, as an example, tell you one.
There were two high mountains, and on top of each of them there was a castle. Down in the valley a dog ran sniffing about as if it were trying to find the scent of a mouse or a partridge to still its hunger. Suddenly, from one of the castles, the trumpet blew, which was a signal that dinner was served. The dog immediately ran up the mountain, hoping to get a few scraps too, but when it had come halfway up that trumpet call ceased. Then the trumpet from the other castle was being blown. Now the dog thought, “Here they will have finished eating by the time I get there; but in the other castle they are just sitting down to the table.” So it ran down again and started up the other mountain. But before it had gone halfway up, the first trumpet was sounded again, whereas the second one could be heard no more. The dog ran down and up again, and so kept changing mountains until both trumpets were silent and the meal was over in both of the castles before the dog arrived at either one.
Guess what the ancient wise men wanted to tell with this fable, and who is the fool that keeps running back and forth until he is tired, without ever gaining anything!
150
The Great Sea Serpent
There once was a little fish. He was of good family; his name I have forgotten—if you want to know it, you must ask someone learned in these matters. He had one thousand and eight hundred brothers and sisters, all born at the same time. They did not know their parents and had to take care of themselves. They swam around happily in the sea. They had enough water to drink—all the great oceans of the world. They did not speculate upon where their food would come from, that would come by itself. Each wanted to follow his own inclinations and live his own life; not that they gave much thought to that either.
The sun shone down into the sea and illuminated the water. It was a strange world, filled with the most fantastic creatures; some of them were so big and had such huge jaws that they could have swallowed all eighteen hundred of the little fish at once. But this, too, they did not worry about, for none of them had been eaten yet.
The little fishes swam close together, as herring or mackerel do. They were thinking about nothing except swimming. Suddenly they heard a terrible noise, and from the surface of the sea a great thing was cast among them. There was more and more of it; it was endless and had neither head nor tail. It was heavy and every one of the small fishes that it hit was either stunned and thrown aside or had its back broken.
The fishes—big and small, the ones who lived up near the waves and those who dwelled in the depths—all fled, while this monstrous serpent grew longer and longer as it sank deeper and deeper, until at last it was hundreds of miles long, and lay at the bottom of the sea, crossing the whole ocean.
All the fishes—yes, even the snails and all the other animals that live in the sea—saw or heard about the strange, gigantic, unknown eel that had descended into the sea from the air above.
What was it? We know that it was the telegraph cable, thousands of miles long, that human beings had laid to connect America and Europe.
All the inhabitants of the sea were frightened of this new huge animal that had come to live among them. The flying fishes leaped up from the sea and into the air; and the gurnard since it knew how, shot up out of the water like a bullet. Others went down into the depths of the ocean so fast that they were there before the telegraph cable. They frightened both the cod and the flounder, who were swimming around peacefully, hunting and eating their fellow creatures.
A couple of sea cucumbers were so petrified that they spat out their own stomachs in fright; but they survived, for they knew how to swallow them again. Lots of lobsters and crabs left their shells in the confusion. During all this, the eighteen hundred little fishes were separated; most of them never saw one another again, nor would they have recognized one another if they had. Only a dozen of them stayed in the same spot, and after they had lain still a couple of hours their worst fright was over and curiosity became stronger than fear.
They looked about, both above and below themselves, and there at the bottom of the sea they thought they saw the monster that had frightened them all. It looked thin, but who knew how big it could make itself or how strong it was. It lay very still, but it might be up to something.
The more timid of the small fish said, “Let it lie where it is, it is no concern of ours.” But the tiniest of them were determined to find out what it was. Since the monster had com
e from above, it was better to seek information about it up there. They swam up to the surface of the ocean. The wind was still and the sea was like a mirror.
They met a dolphin. He is a fellow who likes to jump and to turn somersaults in the sea. The dolphin has eyes to see with and ought to have seen what happened, and therefore the little fishes approached it. But a dolphin only thinks about himself and his somersaults; he didn’t know what to say, so he didn’t say anything, but looked very proud.
A seal came swimming by just at that moment, and even though it eats small fishes, it was more polite than the dolphin. Luckily it happened to be full, and it knew more than the jumping fish. “Many a night have I lain on a wet stone—miles and miles away from here—and looked toward land, where live those treacherous creatures who call themselves, in their own language, men. They are always hunting me and my kind, though usually we manage to escape. That is exactly what happened to the great sea serpent that you are asking about—it got away from them. They had had it in their power for ever so long, and kept it up on land. Now men wanted to transport it to another country, across the sea.—Why? you may ask, but I can’t answer.—They had a lot of trouble getting it on board the ship. But they finally succeeded; after all, it was weakened from its stay on land. They rolled it up, round and round into a coil. It wiggled and writhed, and what a lot of noise it made! I heard it. When the ship got out to sea, the great eel slipped overboard. They tried to stop it. I saw them, there were dozens of hands holding onto its body. But they couldn’t. Now it is lying down at the bottom of the sea, and I guess it will stay there for a while.”
“It looks awfully thin,” said the tiny fishes.
“They have starved it,” explained the seal. “But it will soon get its old figure and strength back. I am sure it is the great sea serpent: the one men are so afraid of that they talk about it all the time. I had not believed it existed, but now I do. And that was it.” With a flip of its tail, the seal dived and was gone.
“How much he knew and how well he talked,” said one of the little fishes admiringly. “I have never known so much as I do now—I just hope it wasn’t all lies.”
“We could swim down and look,” suggested the tiniest of the tiny fishes. “And on the way down we could hear what the other fishes think.”
“We wouldn’t move a fin to know anything more,” said all the other tiny fishes, turned, and swam away.
“But I will,” shouted the tiniest one, and swam down into the depths. But he was far away from where the great sea serpent had sunk. The little fish searched in every direction. Never had he realized that the world was so big. Great shoals of herring glided by like silver boats, and behind them came schools of mackerel that were even more splendid and brilliant. There were fishes of all shapes, with all kinds of markings and colors. Jellyfish, looking like transparent plants, floated by, carried by the currents. Down at the bottom of the sea the strangest things grew: tall grasses and palm-shaped trees whose every leaf was covered with crustaceans.
At last the tiny fish spied a long dark line far below it and swam down to it. It was not the giant serpent but the railing of a sunken ship, whose upper and lower decks had been torn in two by the pressure of the sea. The little fish entered the great cabin, where the terrified passengers had gathered as the ship went down; they had all drowned and the currents of the sea had carried their bodies away, except for two of them: a young woman who lay on a bench with her babe in her arms. The sea rocked them gently; they looked as though they were sleeping. The little fish grew frightened as he looked at them. What if they were to wake? The cabin was so quiet and so lonely that the tiny fish hurried away again, out into the light, where there were other fishes. It had not swum very far when it met a young whale; it was awfully big.
“Please don’t swallow me,” pleaded the little fish. “I am so little you could hardly taste me, and I find it such a great pleasure to live.”
“What are you doing down here?” grunted the whale. “It is much too deep for your kind.” Then the tiny fish told the whale about the great eel—or whatever it could be—that had come from the air and descended into the sea, frightening even the most courageous fishes.
“Ha, ha, ha!” laughed the whale, and swallowed so much water that it had to surface in order to breathe and spout the water out. “Ho-ho … ha-ha. That must have been the thing that tickled my back when I was turning over. I thought it was the mast of a ship and was just about to use it as a back scratcher; but it must have been that. It lies farther out. I think I will go and have a look at it; I haven’t anything else to do.”
The whale swam away and the tiny fish followed it, but not too closely for the great animal left a turbulent wake behind it.
They met a shark and an old sawfish. They, too, had heard about the strange great eel that was so thin and yet longer than any other fish. They hadn’t seen it but wanted to.
A catfish joined them. “If that sea serpent is not thicker than an anchor cable, then I will cut it in two, in one bite,” he said, and opened his monstrous jaws to show his six rows of teeth. “If I can make a mark in an anchor I guess I can bite a stem like that in two.”
“There it is,” cried the whale. “Look how it moves, twisting and turning.” The whale thought he had better eyesight than the others. As a matter of fact he hadn’t; what he had seen was merely an old conger eel, several yards long, that was swimming toward them.
“That fellow has never caused any commotion in the sea before, or frightened any other big fish,” said the catfish with disgust. “I have met him often.”
They told the conger about the new sea serpent and asked him if he wanted to go with them to discover what it was.
“I wonder if it is longer than I am,” said the conger eel, and stretched himself. “If it is, then it will be sorry.”
“It certainly will,” said the rest of the company. “There are enough of us so we don’t have to tolerate it if we don’t want to!” they exclaimed, and hurried on.
They saw something that looked like a floating island that was having trouble keeping itself from sinking. It was an old whale. His head was overgrown with seaweed, and on his back were so many mussels and oysters that its black skin looked as if it had white spots.
“Come on, old man,” the young whale said. “There is a new fish in the ocean and we won’t tolerate it!”
“Oh, let me stay where I am!” grumbled the old whale. “Peace is all I ask, to be left in peace. Ow! Ow! … I am very sick, it will be the death of me. My only comfort is to let my back emerge above the water, then the sea gulls scratch it: the sweet birds. That helps a lot as long as they don’t dig too deep with their bills and get into the blubber. There’s the skeleton of one still sitting on my back. It got stuck and couldn’t get loose when I had to submerge. The little fishes picked his bones clean. You can see it.… Look at him, and look at me.… Oh, I am very sick.”
“You are just imagining all that,” said the young whale. “I am not sick, no one that lives in the sea is ever sick.”
“I am sorry!” said the old whale. “The eels have skin diseases, the carp have smallpox, and we all suffer from worms.”
“Nonsense!” shouted the shark, who didn’t like to listen to that kind of talk. Neither did the others, so they all swam on.
At last they came to the place where part of the telegraph cable lies, that stretches from Europe to America across sand shoals and high mountains, through endless forests of seaweed and coral. The currents move as the winds do in the heavens above, and through them swim schools of fishes, more numerous than the flocks of migratory birds that fly through the air. There was a noise, a sound, a humming, the ghost of which you hear in the great conch shell when you hold it up to your ear.
“There is the serpent!” shouted the bigger fish and the little fishes too. They had caught sight of some of the telegraph cable but neither the beginning nor the end of it, for they were both lost in the far distance. Sponges, polyps, and
gorgonia swayed above it and leaned against it, sometimes hiding it from view. Sea urchins and snails climbed over it; and great crabs, like giant spiders, walked tightrope along it. Deep blue sea cucumbers—or whatever those creatures are called who eat with their whole body—lay next to it; one would think that they were trying to smell it. Flounders and cod kept turning from side to side, in order to be able to listen to what everyone was saying. The starfishes had dug themselves down in the mire; only two of their points were sticking up, but they had eyes on them and were staring at the black snake, hoping to see something come out of it.
The telegraph cable lay perfectly still, as if it were lifeless; but inside, it was filled with life: with thoughts, human thoughts.
“That thing is treacherous,” said the whale. “It might hit me in the stomach, and that is my weak point.”
“Let’s feel our way forward,” said one of the polyps. “I have long arms and flexible fingers. I’ve already touched it, but now I’ll take a firmer grasp.”
And it stuck out its arms and encircled the cable. “I have felt both its stomach and its back. It is not scaly. I don’t think it has any skin either. I don’t believe it lays eggs and I don’t think it gives birth to live children.”
The conger eel lay down beside the cable and stretched itself as far as it could. “It is longer than I am,” it admitted. “But length isn’t everything. One has to have skin, a good stomach and, above all, suppleness.”
The whale—the young strong whale!—bowed more deeply than it ever had before. “Are you a fish or a plant?” he asked. “Or are you a surface creation, one of those who can’t live down here?”
The telegraph didn’t answer, though it was filled with words. Thoughts traveled through it so fast that they took only seconds to move from one end to the other: hundreds of miles away.
The Complete Fairy Tales Page 113