The Nutcracker

by E T A Hoffman

  “Felix, Christlieb,” said the strange child, looking around with the loveliest expression, “Felix, Christlieb, you hear how everything in the wood loves us. But the sun is beginning to go down in the rose-red sky behind the mountains, and the nightingale is calling me home.”

  “Oh, do let us fly a little first,” begged Felix.

  “But not too high, because that makes me feel dizzy,” said Christlieb.

  Then the strange child took Felix and Christlieb by the hand and they hovered through the air towards the gilded red of sunset just as they had done the day before, with brightly feathered birds flying and singing around them in joy and jubilation. Felix saw wonderful castles that might have been made of rubies and other sparkling jewels rise in the glowing clouds. “Look, Christlieb!” he cried in delight. “Look at those wonderful buildings, let’s fly boldly on and we’re sure to reach them.”

  Christlieb too saw the castles, and forgot all her fears now that she wasn’t looking down at the ground, but only into the distance.

  “Those are my beloved castles in the air,” said the strange child. “But we won’t get as far as that today!”

  And Felix and Christlieb, dazed as if in a dream, didn’t know just how it happened, but suddenly they were back at home with their mother and father.

  ABOUT THE STRANGE CHILD’S HOME

  ANOTHER DAY THE STRANGE CHILD had built a beautiful pavilion of tall, slender lilies, glowing roses and brightly coloured tulips in the most delightful clearing in the wood, among rustling bushes and not far from the brook. Felix and Christlieb were sitting in this pavilion with their friend, listening to all the strange stories the brook told as it babbled away.

  “I don’t quite understand what the brook down there is telling us, dear boy,” said Felix to the child, “and it seems to me that if you wanted, you yourself could tell us clearly all that it murmurs so indistinctly. And another thing—I’d like to know where you come from, and where you go when you disappear so suddenly that we can never be sure quite what’s happening?”

  “And do you know what, dear little girl?” interrupted Christlieb. “Mama thinks you’re Gottlieb the schoolmaster’s son!”

  “Oh, be quiet, you silly thing,” Felix told his sister. “Mama has never seen this nice boy, or she’d never have said anything about the schoolmaster’s son Gottlieb! Now, my dear fellow, do tell me where you live, and then we can go to see you in your house in wintertime, when it’s stormy and snowing and no one can find a way through the wood.”

  “Oh yes!” said Christlieb. “Please do tell us where you live, who your parents are, and most important of all what your name is!”

  The strange child gazed into the distance, looking very grave, almost sad, sighed deeply and then, after a moment’s silence, began, “Oh, dear children, why ask where I live? Isn’t it enough for me to come to meet you and play with you every day? I could tell you I live beyond the blue mountains that look like billowing or jagged clouds, but if you were to walk for days, always going on and on, until you reached the mountains, then you would see another mountain range just as far away, and you would have to look for my home beyond it, and so it would go on and on for ever and you would never reach the place where I live.”

  “Oh dear,” said Christlieb, near tears, “then you live hundreds and hundreds of miles away and you’re only in these parts on a visit?”

  “Listen, dear Christlieb,” the strange child went on, “if you really long to see me with all your heart then I’ll be with you at once, bringing all the games, all the marvels from my native land with me, and isn’t that just as good as if we were sitting together playing in my own land itself?”

  “Not quite,” said Felix, “because I think your home must be a wonderful place if it’s full of the marvellous things that you bring here. You can make the journey sound as hard as you like, but as soon as I can I’m setting off to go there. Passing through forests and along overgrown paths, climbing mountains, wading streams, travelling cross-country on rough, stony ground and through thorny thickets, that’s all part of a huntsman’s craft—I’ll get there somehow.”

  “So you will,” said the strange child, with a merry laugh, “and if you are so firmly determined then it’s as good as being there already. And it’s a fact that the country where I live is more wonderful and beautiful than I could ever describe. My mother is queen there and rules that glorious, splendid domain.”

  “Then you’re a prince!”—“Then you’re a princess!” cried Felix and Christlieb at the same time, amazed and almost alarmed.

  “Yes, indeed,” replied the strange child.

  “And do you live in a beautiful palace?” Felix went on.

  “Yes,” said the strange child, “my mother’s palace is even more beautiful than those shining castles you saw in the clouds, for its slender columns of pure crystal rise high, high into the blue of the sky that rests on them like a great vault. Under the arch of the vault gleaming clouds sail back and forth on golden wings, the sun rises and sets in rosy light, and the sparkling stars move dancing in their rounds, chiming all the while. I’m sure you have heard of fairies, my dear playmates, beings who can conjure up marvels beyond the ability of any human soul, and you must already have realised that my mother herself is a fairy. Indeed, she is the most powerful fairy of all. Everything that lives and moves on the earth is enveloped by her love, but to her great sorrow many human beings don’t want to know about her. However, my mother loves children more than anything else, and so it is that the parties she gives for them in her kingdom are the best and most wonderful parties ever seen. Her courtier spirits fly boldly through the clouds, stretching a rainbow shimmering in many colours from end to end of the palace. Under this rainbow they set up my mother’s throne, which is made of diamonds, although they look like lilies, pinks and roses, and smell as sweet. As soon as my mother sits on her throne the spirits play their golden harps and crystal cymbals, and the chamber musicians sing with such wonderful voices that you almost faint away with sheer pleasure. These singers are lovely birds even bigger than eagles, with purple feathers—you’ve never seen anything like them. And as soon as the music strikes up everything in the palace, the woods nearby and the garden comes to life. Thousands of prettily dressed children romp and play, shouting for joy. Sometimes they chase each other through the bushes, throwing flowers in a mock fight, sometimes they climb slender trees and let the wind rock them back and forth, then again they pick the gleaming golden fruits that taste sweeter and better than anything on earth, or they play with tame deer and other pretty animals who come running out of the bushes towards them. Or then again they boldly run up and down the rainbow, or even climb on the back of golden pheasants that carry them through the shining clouds.”

  “Oh, how wonderful that must be,” cried Felix and Christlieb in delight. “Do take us to your home with you, and we’ll stay there for ever.” But the strange child said, “I can’t take you to my home, it’s too far away. You’d have to be able to fly, never tiring, as well as I do.”

  That made Felix and Christlieb very sad, and they looked at the ground in silence.

  ABOUT THE TWO MINISTERS AT THE FAIRY QUEEN’S COURT

  “AND ANYWAY,” THE STRANGE CHILD CONTINUED, “anyway my country might not suit you as well as you imagine from what I’ve told you. In fact staying there might even do you harm. Some children can’t bear the singing of the purple birds, wonderful as it is, so that their hearts break and they die at once. Others run boldly along the rainbow, but they slip off and fall, and some are even silly enough to hurt the golden pheasants carrying them as they fly through the air. The pheasants are usually placid, but a golden pheasant will turn on any stupid child who harms it and tear his breast open with its sharp beak, and then the child falls from the clouds bleeding. My mother is grief-stricken when children have such accidents, even when it is their own fault. She wishes so much that all the children in the world could enjoy the pleasures of her country, but alth
ough many of them learn to fly very well they may become either too bold or too timid later, and they cause her sorrow and anxiety. That is why she lets me fly away from my home and take all kinds of lovely playthings from it to good children like you.”

  “Oh,” cried Christlieb, “I could never hurt a beautiful bird, I know I couldn’t, but I wouldn’t like to run along the rainbow.”

  “That’s just what I would like to do,” Felix interrupted her. “So I’d really, really love to visit your mother the Queen. Can’t you bring the rainbow with you one day?”

  “No,” said the strange child, “that can’t be done, and I have to tell you that I can only steal away to see you in secret. Once I was as safe everywhere as in my mother’s country, and it was as if her wonderful domains covered the whole world. But since the time when a terrible enemy of my mother’s, whom she had banished from her kingdom, began roaming at large I am not safe from his pursuit of me.”

  “I’d like to see,” said Felix, jumping up and waving the thorn-wood stick he had carved for himself in the air, “I’d like to see anyone who tried to do you any harm here. First he’d have me to deal with, and then I’d call Papa to come to our aid, and he would have the fellow caught and locked up in the tower.”

  “Ah,” said the strange child, “little as my mother’s fierce enemy can harm me in my own country, he is very dangerous to me outside it. He is extremely powerful, and neither your stick nor any tower would be any use against him.”

  “Who is this nasty enemy who can frighten you so much?” asked Christlieb.

  “I told you,” the strange child began, “that my mother is a powerful queen, and you know that queens, like kings, have a court and ministers around them.”

  “Yes,” said Felix. “Our uncle his lordship the Count is a minister, and he wears a star on his breast. I expect your mother’s ministers wear really sparkling stars?”

  “No,” replied the strange child, “no, they don’t do that, because most of them are sparkling stars themselves, and others have nothing to which such a star could be fastened. I must tell you that all my mother’s ministers are powerful spirits. Some of them live hovering in the air, some in the flames of the fire, some in water, and everywhere they do as my mother tells them. Long ago a strange spirit came to our country. He called himself Pepasilio and claimed to be a great scholar, saying he knew more and would do greater things than any of the other spirits. So my mother made him one of her ministers, but his true malicious nature soon came to light. In addition, he tried to destroy everything the other ministers had done, and he also intended to spoil the children’s happy parties. He had pretended to the Queen that he would make sure the children had a good time, but instead he hung heavy as a ton weight to the pheasants’ tails, so that they couldn’t fly up into the air, and when children had climbed into rose bushes he pulled them down by their legs, so they fell to the ground with nosebleeds. As for the children who wanted to run and jump about and have a good time, he made them crawl on all fours on the ground with their heads bent. He stuffed all kinds of harmful stuff into the beaks of the singing birds to stop them singing, for he couldn’t bear the sound of music, and instead of playing with the tame animals he wanted to eat the poor things because that, he said, was what animals were for. But worst of all, he and his companions covered the beautiful sparkling jewels of the palace, the shimmering brightly coloured flowers, the roses and the lilies, even the gleaming rainbow, with a layer of disgusting black fluid, so that all the beauty was gone and everything looked dead and dismal. And when he had done all this, he burst into a peal of laughter and said that now everything was just as it should be, exactly as he had described it. Next he announced that he didn’t recognise my mother as queen, he alone ought to rule the country, and he rose into the air in the shape of a monstrous fly with flashing eyes and a long, sharp proboscis and settled on my mother’s throne, buzzing horribly. Then she and everyone else recognised the wicked minister who had entered the country under the pretty name of Pepasilio as none other than Pepser, the dark and sinister King of the Gnomes.

  “But Pepser had rashly overestimated the power and courage of his own supporters. The ministers of the Department of Air surrounded the Queen and fanned her with sweet fragrance, while the ministers of the Department of Fire kept the flames going and moving up and down, and once the beaks of the singing birds had been cleaned they struck up their songs, loud and clear, so that the Queen neither saw nor heard the ugly gnome Pepser, nor could she feel the effects of his venomous and evil-smelling breath. At that moment the Pheasant Prince took the wicked Pepser in his shining beak, closed it on him so hard that the gnome cried out in rage and pain, and then let him fall to earth from a height of three thousand ells above the ground. Pepser couldn’t move at all until, in answer to his furious cries, his aunt the big blue toad came hopping along, took him on her back and carried him home. Five hundred bold and cheerful children were given fly swatters to strike dead Pepser’s ugly companions, who were still buzzing about and trying to spoil the beautiful flowers. As soon as Pepser had gone, the black liquid that he had used to cover everything that looked pretty flowed away of its own accord, and soon it was all flowering and gleaming and shining as beautifully as before. As you can imagine, the nasty gnome Pepser doesn’t want to come back to my mother’s kingdom, but he knows that I often venture out of it, and he is always following me in all kinds of shapes, so that in flight from him I don’t know, poor child that I am, where to hide, and that, my dear playmates, is why I often fly away so fast that you don’t know where I have gone. However, that’s how it is, and I can tell you that if I were to try flying to my native land with you Pepser would certainly be on the watch to kill us.”

  Christlieb shed bitter tears when she thought of the danger in which the strange child always lived. But Felix said, “If that nasty Pepser is nothing but a big fly, I’ll knock him down with Papa’s big fly swatter, and once I’ve put his nose well and truly out of joint then Auntie Toad is welcome to come and see about carrying him home.”

  HOW THE TUTOR ARRIVED AND SCARED THE CHILDREN

  FELIX AND CHRISTLIEB RAN home at full speed, shouting out loud all the time, “Oh, the strange child is a handsome prince!”—“Oh, the strange child is a beautiful princess!” In their excitement, they were going to tell their parents the story, but they stopped dead at the doorway of the house when Sir Thaddeus von Brakel came to meet them with a strange, odd-looking man beside him. This man was muttering to himself under his breath, but audibly, “A fine couple of brats, I must say!”

  “This is your tutor,” said Sir Thaddeus, “this is the tutor sent by his lordship your kind uncle. Welcome him politely!”

  But the children cast sideways glances at the man, and they were rooted to the spot, because they had never set eyes on such a strange figure before. He wasn’t very much taller than Felix, and he was squat in shape as well, while his spidery little legs contrasted oddly with his strong, broad body. His misshapen head could almost be described as rectangular, and his face was terribly ugly, for in addition to the fact that his fat, reddish-brown cheeks and his broad mouth didn’t look right with his long pointed nose, his small, glassy pop-eyes gleamed so unpleasantly that the children didn’t like to look at him. The man also wore a pitch-black wig on his head, he was dressed in black from head to foot, and his name was Master Inkblot.

  When the children still made no move, Lady von Brakel was vexed and said, “Good gracious me, children, what’s all this? Master Inkblot will think you are very rude, uncouth peasant children. Come along, shake hands with your tutor.”

  The children steeled themselves to do as their mother told them, but when Master Inkblot took their hands they shrank away, screaming, “Ow! Ouch!” The tutor laughed out loud and showed a needle that he was holding hidden in his hand on purpose to prick the children when they shook hands. Christlieb was crying, but Felix muttered under his breath, looking sideways at the tutor, “Just you try that again
, fatty!”

  “What was the idea of that, sir?” asked Sir Thaddeus von Brakel, rather put out.

  “Oh, just my little joke,” replied Master Inkblot, “and I can’t seem to rid myself of the habit.” So saying, he put both hands on his hips and went on laughing heartily. His laughter sounded as unpleasant as a cracked rattle.

  “Well, you seem to have quite a sense of humour, my dear Master Inkblot,” said Sir Thaddeus, but neither he nor his wife, and least of all the children, felt quite at their ease with the new arrival.

  “Now then,” said the tutor, “how far advanced are these little shrimps in the natural sciences? Know a lot already, do you? Let’s see!” And he began firing off questions at Felix and Christlieb just as their uncle the Count had interrogated his own children. However, when they both told the tutor that they didn’t yet know the natural sciences by heart, Master Inkblot clapped his hands together above his head with a sharp sound and cried out angrily, “Well, here’s a fine thing! No natural sciences at all! I can see I’ll have my work cut out for me! But we’ll do it, we’ll do it yet!”

  Both Felix and Christlieb had good neat handwriting, and they could tell a great many excellent stories out of the old books that Sir Thaddeus had given them. They had read the books eagerly, but Master Inkblot thought such stories weren’t worth anything, and said they were all stupid stuff and nonsense. There was to be no more running off to the wood now! Instead, the children had to spend almost all day indoors, repeating things that they didn’t understand after Master Inkblot. It nearly broke their hearts. They looked out at the wood with such longing, and they thought that in the middle of the beautiful birdsong and in the rustling of the trees they could hear the strange child’s voice calling, “Where are you, Felix, Christlieb, where are you, dear children? Don’t you want to play with me any more? Oh do come out and play! I’ve built you a lovely palace of flowers. We can sit in it, and I’ll give you the best and most brightly coloured little stones, and then we can fly up to the clouds and build our own sparkling castles in the air! Come out, oh do come out and play!”