by Maria Gripe
Who was breaking the glasses? Who was screaming?
Where were the children?
The awful uproar continued. She slowed down. She realized she was very near to it now. Then Wise Wit came flying to meet her on his silent wings. Without a word he settled on her shoulder. This calmed her.
They met in front of a big window overlooking the whole town. It was springtime, about three in the afternoon. It should have been light outside, but an eternal grey rain drilled down on the road ruts and darkened the day.
“Did you find out anything, Wise Wit?” asked Flutter.
The raven nodded and looked toward the door to the next room.
“Are the children in there? Have you been in there?”
He nodded again and stayed on Flutter’s shoulder while she walked up to the half-open door. She opened it and paused for a moment in front of the thick, dark green curtain. Then she drew it aside with a firm hand and walked into the room.
The windows were closed. A green darkness filled the room. When she had accustomed herself to the darkness she noticed an enormous canopy bed by one wall, and, opposite it against the other wall, two children’s beds.
Chains ran across the room from the canopy bed to each child’s bed. They shone in the sickly light and rattled every time whoever lay in the canopy bed breathed.
Trembling, but not hesitating, Flutter walked right over to the big bed. The sound of her steps was lost in the storm around the sleeping figure.
Flutter turned pale, and even her eyes seemed to lose their color. They shone with a strangely distant light. The raven perched motionless on her shoulder.
High up in the canopy bed swung a cage in which a bird slept. Wise Wit looked up at it sharply while Flutter kept her eyes fixed on the person in the bed. First she thought a pair of eyes were beaming out at her from the dark, and then she saw it was only a pair of glasses.
At the same instant she recognized the person in the bed. She shut her eyes with an expression of the deepest pain and suffering.
She rubbed her forehead as if to brush away the sight, but then she looked up, leaned over the sleeping figure, and whispered sorrowfully, “I suspected as much. It really couldn’t have been anyone else but Nana. What have you been up to now, my poor sister?”
It was a terribly difficult moment for Flutter, who hadn’t seen her sister in a very long time and certainly would have wished their meeting to be different. This explained the despairing gentleness in her voice.
But now Nana turned restlessly in her sleep, the chains rattled, and Wise Wit flew up with a cry of warning and disappeared into the folds of the drapery.
Flutter gave Nana just one more glance full of compassion and agony before she slipped out of the room.
In the next instant, Nana and Mimi woke up and the House fell silent again. But it was a silence that seemed spooky to Flutter as she wandered back the way she had just come, with Wise Wit flying before her.
When she passed by a large ballroom, she saw an old coachman holding a broken bowl in his hands. His face had an extraordinarily stiff expression. He didn’t notice her.
In another room she saw him again. This time he was holding the shattered pieces of a vase. He didn’t see her there, either.
A third time she caught sight of him with a broken wine carafe. He had wine on his hands, and he didn’t look up.
She marveled how he could move so swiftly and still give the impression that he always stood fixed in the same spot. But then she forgot about him.
For she had other things on her mind.
Up in her tower room, she fell to pondering. The tower had windows on all sides, but the rain streamed down relentlessly until evening, when it stopped. The clouds dispersed and night brought back the stars.
Then Flutter went over to the telescope and aimed it at the heavens.
She wasn’t surprised to find the same kind of loops and patterns up there that she saw in her weaving at home, only these were much bigger and more beautiful.
Many clever people maintain that you can find a connection between people and the stars. She didn’t think that. She sniffed at the thought. That would be presumptuous. A likeness was what she could see, but not a connection.
No, everything in its place. And down here on earth people were her concern.
Up there the planets moved eternally. It comforted her to think that, however things might work out on earth, the stars would always be the same.
Wise Wit thought so, too.
“Every man lives his own life,” said he, “no matter what befalls the stars.”
17
A COUPLE OF days passed.
Color returned to the Lady’s fair cheeks, and she rose from her bed. Then she sent for Flutter Mild-weather and argued with her tirelessly. This arguing seemed to agree with her.
Now she was standing by an open window in her room. A gentle breeze played through her beautiful hair. The sun shone.
“Mademoiselle, what did you just call me? You know you must call me `my Lady,’ ” she said irritably.
Flutter Mildweather stood beside her. She was wearing her cloak, for she had been on her way out when the Lady had sent for her. She answered now, “Oh no, she who is not mistress of herself is not a Lady.” She spoke calmly and simply, without a trace of scolding.
It was such a beautiful day, the first fine day after so many dark and grey ones. Even up here in the north, finally even in All Wishes Town, summer had come. The mild weather could be felt especially here in the grim and dreary House.
Flutter lifted her face to the sky. She smiled and slipped far away in her thoughts.
“You have no manners at all,” she heard the Lady say. “When I want you to oppose me, you agree, and when I want approval, you disagree.”
“I only say what I think,” answered Flutter Mild-weather quietly and calmly, busy with her own thoughts. She felt bright and confident, ready for her task. She felt sure she could handle it today. It was a good day to travel.
“You mustn’t say what you think. You should say what you know others are thinking. Don’t you know that?”
“No.”
“Then I’ll have to teach you, Mademoiselle.”
“It’s not worth it.”
“Anyway, it’s not worth your trying to get me to wish anything,” sighed the Lady wearily.
Flutter searched for her voice as if from afar, for she had been miles away in her thoughts.
“No, I don’t think I’ll bother about that either. There are much more important things in life. . . .”
With a violent, angry movement, the Lady shouted, “How can you say that! What is? WHAT is more important?”
Flutter went on looking up at the sky. She didn’t answer straight away. A mist, a soft perfume of summer blossoms, of jasmine, reached her. . . .
Then she said, “Oh, so very much. Most everything is more important than a person’s wishes. What do they matter?”
The Lady was silent. She looked astonished but not angry. She didn’t know what to make of it. She didn’t understand this horribly dressed old lady . . . nor did she understand herself. She felt at the same time both weak and furious, sorrowful and aroused.
Life had been much simpler before. For several years now she had experienced only grief and mortification. These new emotions were so unfamiliar that she scarcely knew what to do about them or how to handle them. It was all the old woman’s fault. She wanted to hurt Flutter, to insult and sneer at her. But she couldn’t. Everything she said fell flat on the floor.
And now this old lady announced that her wishes weren’t important. That was inexcusable, not to be lightly dismissed or forgiven. But why didn’t it anger her?
Why did this great insult only make her feel very relieved? Here she was, unable to talk back.
She followed Flutter’s glance and said, indifferently, “I see you’re gaping up at the clouds. What are you staring at?”
“The clouds. They look like little white lamb
s wandering through the pastures of Paradise up there between the turrets.”
Suddenly the Lady looked like a little girl. She said nothing. The birds’ songs rose outside the window. She tilted her head gently to one side and looked up at the clouds.
Her voice had changed completely when she finally spoke. “Did you know that I was a shepherdess when I was a little girl? It was in a poor little pasture, not exactly a heavenly meadow, but beautiful, nevertheless. That was long, long ago. . . .”
The breeze lifted her hair and blew curls across her eyes. She brushed them aside and went on talking through the birdsong in the same serious voice. “Then I always longed to be rich and have everything I wanted. I never thought it would happen. It did. I got everything and then some. That’s why I have stopped wishing, you see. It isn’t only because I am wicked. . . .”
Then Flutter looked at the Lady. Their eyes met for the first time, and both realized that deep inside they were friends. Flutter was overjoyed, but the Lady was caught off guard and grew frightened. In her confusion she tried to look scornful when Flutter Mildweather said, “One almost always gets what one wishes—one just doesn’t know when or how—and that’s what makes wishing so frightening. One must wish for what one is able to accept, somehow or other. That’s very important to bear in mind. . . .”
The Lady left the window and walked to and fro impatiently.
“Anyway, I decided not to wish at all,” she said vehemently. “Why can no one understand that you can wish to keep your wishes just as they are? Here in the House, I never get to keep a single wish because they are fulfilled even before I’ve been able to feel I’m wishing, and that’s awfully cruel. . . .”
She came back to the window and took Flutter’s arm. Her eyes glistened.
“I turned wicked because of that. I want to be, I have to be wicked, especially to the Lord, because he’s the one who steals them. He steals them because he has no wishes of his own, so he doesn’t know what he’s missing.”
She dropped Flutter’s arm and looked desperately around for help.
“I like the Lord, Mademoiselle, and so I’ll be wicked to him until he understands. Yes, indeed I will.”
A servant slipped into the room like a shadow and put down a tray with tablets, a glass of water and the ear plugs, then rushed out again.
The Lady followed him with her eyes. She looked frightened and sighed.
“Nana is about to fall asleep again. Come with me for a drive, Mademoiselle. It’s so beautiful outside. I’ll ask the Lord to come along.”
She rang and ordered her coach. Her eyes took on the desperate, hunted expression they always had whenever Nana slept.
“Be quick about it now!” she shouted after the servant and then turned to Flutter. “I cannot harden myself to endure Nana’s sleep,” she said. “It drives me to despair.”
And then Flutter took the occasion to ask, quietly, “Why don’t you tell Nana to leave?”
The Lady looked bewildered and nervously guilty. She explained that Nana belonged to the House, and the children had to have a governess.
“Let the children go back to their parents,” said Flutter, emphasizing each word carefully, her eyes a very piercing blue.
“That’s easy enough to say,” replied the Lady impatiently. “They were actually the Lord’s discovery, and now they belong to the House, too. . . .”
“Ahah,” said Flutter. “So that’s it? And perhaps I belong to the House, too?”
“Of course you do; that’s obvious. Come along now, let’s be off.”
But Flutter Mildweather stood her ground. And the Lady, against her will, was held by the blue, blue eyes.
“When the time comes, I’ll show you who belongs to the House and who doesn’t,” said Flutter, as clear as moonlight.
In that moment, Nana’s sleep began, and the Lady fled from the House with Flutter following after her.
The Lord was already waiting in the coach.
They set off at great speed.
18
THE LORD HAD decided that he was going to be polite to Flutter Mildweather. The old lady obviously had some merit, for his Lady looked so much more cheerful now. And that was the main thing.
Noble and generous as he was, he didn’t intend to reveal that he could hardly stand the old woman.
They drove slowly down the streets and the Lord proudly showed off his town. He pointed out where the big square would be, where the church would stand, the town hall, the theatre, the public baths, the school.
He described each building in the smallest detail: he lost himself in pillars and columns, in vaults and curving bays. He rambled on about the parks in the town, what magnificent kinds of trees and flowers he would set on display there.
It was to be the world’s most beautiful and best town, he explained, and Flutter Mildweather understood right away that that was the very reason it would never be.
Meanwhile the Lady hunched down against the cushions in the coach and said nothing. She kept her eyes closed all the time until they had passed through the town’s gates and left it behind them.
She looked up for the first time when they came out into the countryside.
Round about them summer flourished. It had arrived suddenly, completely. At the same time it seemed overwhelming. Throughout the long winter, she always managed to forget how marvelous it was.
She saw once more the cloud lambs nibbling in the blissful, enclosed meadows, as Flutter had said. She tried to catch Flutter’s eyes and felt again that they were friends, and this no longer frightened her. She really didn’t understand how it had come about, how the two of them could be friends, but she didn’t mull over it any longer.
For a while she remained silent, and forgot everything around her. She breathed in the soft air and listened only to the birdsong.
She forgot All Wishes Town and the House and everything that had come to pass. She remembered only what it had been like when she was little and poor and barefoot, running through the grass gathering flowers. She tried to remember what flowers she used to pick, which ones she liked best, and suddenly she smiled and said in a soft, dreamy voice, right out of the blue, “I wish I had a bouquet of wild roses. But only the buds. When I was little, I always used to pick them before they came out. . . .”
The Lord, who had been sitting deep in his own broodings, turned and looked swiftly at Flutter Mildweather. His face lit up as if she had worked a miracle. Then he leaned forward to the Lady and announced ceremoniously,
“My dear . . . you have expressed a wish.”
Terrified, the Lady opened her eyes wide, and then slowly closed them again. She didn’t answer, but her lips trembled in surrender.
And then the Lord said with a proud and victorious smile, “Just as soon as we come to a wild rose bush, I’ll fulfill your wish, my dear.”
It was silent in the coach. Only birdsong could be heard. The horses galloped through the landscape, which grew more and more beautiful. They followed alongside a wandering stream, past meadows full of flowers and blooming hedges by the ditches. Everywhere blossoms nodded and swayed in the grass, but there were no wild roses to be seen.
A strange, intense excitement seized the three people in the coach. The Lord peered out anxiously but smiling all the while. The Lady kept her eyes tight shut, her face expressionless. And Flutter Mildweather sat bolt upright staring into the distance with her mint blue eyes.
No one dared say anything.
They seemed to be in a dream; the horses’ hoof-beats, the birdsong, and the cloudlike perfume of the blossoms separated them from reality.
When they came to the fringe of the woods where the wild rose bushes grew, the Lord bade the coachman stop. He stepped out and walked across the fields toward the woods.
The Lady didn’t watch him; she sat just as she had before, as did Flutter. They said nothing to each other while he was away, though nothing prevented them from speaking.
A long while passed before the L
ord returned. He was empty-handed. He walked slowly, hanging his head low.
Finally the Lady looked up. Her face was excited and very serious.
“Where is my bouquet?” she demanded.
“All the roses are already fully in bloom,” he answered dejectedly. “There wasn’t a single bud.”
“Don’t I get my bouquet?” she asked, surprised.
“No,” answered the Lord in great agony.
“Not at all?”
He looked completely crushed. He promised to send everyone out looking for wild rose buds, if only she would be patient.
But the Lady answered, “No, I want them now! From you!”
Then he begged her to wish for a bouquet of full-blooming wild roses instead, but she shook her head solemnly.
“Why should I wish that?” she said. “That I can have.”
Overwhelmed and contrite, he stood there on the road, but then she did something unexpected. She stretched out both her hands to him and smiled.
“Thank you, my friend,” she said gently. “Thank you for finally letting me keep my wish.”
He gazed at her in bewilderment, but happily, too; happy to hear her say the words he loved, “thank you.”
And then she smiled at him again and said, “Now you have given me something that no one can take away from me. If you had given me the wild rose buds I had wished for, then they would have come out fully before the evening and in the morning they would have dropped their petals. Now they will always stay closed, tiny rose buds that will never open and never drop their petals, just as I wished. Thank you for letting me keep them!”
The Lord climbed back up into the coach and looked at Flutter Mildweather. He didn’t know what to think, but she was smiling, too. He felt uncertain. It seemed as if he had done something good without knowing it.
A foolish thought came to him. Perhaps he could only do good things here in life. But then he instantly chased the thought away. Strangely enough, it didn’t interest him. Right now such thoughts neither tempted him nor held him in their power. He heard only the Lady’s voice.