From then on, the old street lamp seemed to have acquired within him the peace that he deserved; he was, after all, a very respectable old street lamp.
43
The Neighbors
There was such a commotion in the duck pond that you would think some great event was taking place. It wasn’t; there is no accounting for ducks, you never know what they will do next. All the ducks who had been peacefully swimming or standing on their heads in the water—that is a trick that ducks know how to do—suddenly, all at the same time, swam toward land and ran away. In the mud on the shore you could see the imprint of their feet. One moment before, the pond had been like a mirror. In it you had been able to see every tree, every bush that grew along its banks, and in the background had been the gable of an old cottage with a swallow’s nest under the eaves, but clearest of all had been the rose tree whose branches hung out over the water. It had looked like a painting, but on its head, of course. Now all was in motion, all the colors were mixed, and the picture had disappeared. Two duck feathers that had fallen from a fleeing drake were sailing on the surface; they turned about as if the wind were blowing, but it wasn’t, so they soon lay still and the pond turned into a mirror again. Again the upside-down picture appeared: the gable of the cottage with its swallow’s nest and the rose tree. Every flowering rose was beautiful, but they didn’t know it themselves, for no one had told them about it. The sun shone among their leaves that were so fragrant, and every rose felt as we do when we are having the pleasantest daydreams.
“How lovely it is to be alive,” said one of the roses. “I wish I could kiss the sun, because it is so beautiful. The roses down in the water I would like to kiss too; they look exactly like us. And the sweet little birds in the nest. They are beginning to chirp, though they have no feathers like their mother and father yet. Both the nest in the water and the one above us on the gable are our good neighbors.… Oh, how lovely it is to be alive!”
The little birds in the nest—both the ones above and those below in the water, who were merely a reflection—were sparrows and so were their father and mother. They had found the empty swallow’s nest and made themselves at home in it.
“Are those ducklings swimming about?” asked the little sparrows when they saw the two duck feathers that were floating on the pond.
“Be sensible when you ask questions,” snapped the mother. “Can’t you see they are feathers, just like the ones I wear? You, too, will grow feathers; but ours are of a better quality than ducks’! I wish we had them up here in the nest though, they would be handy on a cold night. I wonder what frightened the ducks so? Probably something in the water. But it could also have been me; that last peep I said was awfully loud. Those fatheaded roses ought to be able to tell us, but they don’t know anything; nor do they ever do anything, all day long, but look at themselves in the mirror and smell.… I am bored with our neighbors.”
“Listen to the sweet little birds,” said the roses. “I think they are beginning to sing. They haven’t caught the tune yet; but they will. It must be nice to be musical. It’s lovely to have such happy neighbors.”
Just then two horses came galloping down to the pond to drink. A farmer’s boy was riding on one of them. He had taken off his clothes and was quite naked except for a broad-brimmed black hat on his head. He was whistling as if he, too, were a bird; and he rode right out to the deepest part of the pond. When he passed the rose tree he broke off a flower and stuck it in his hat. As he rode away the other roses wondered where she was going, but none of them could guess.
“I would like to travel out into the world too,” said the roses to each other, “but it is pleasant here at home. In the daytime the sun shines warmly down on us, and at night it shines even more beautifully through the holes in the sky.” It was the stars that the roses thought were holes in the sky; they did not know any better.
“It is amusing to have us around the house,” said the mother sparrow. “A swallow’s nest brings luck, people say; and therefore they are happy to have us. But a rose tree growing so close to the wall makes it damp. But they will probably cut it down; and then they could sow a little grain there. Roses are only something to look at, smell, or at best to stick in your hat. Every year they fall off, so my mother told me. The farmer’s wife preserves them with salt and then they are called something in French, which I cannot pronounce nor would I care to if I could; sometimes they are put in the fireplace to make a room smell nicely. That is their life, they are just something for the eyes and nose. And now you know all there is to know about them.”
In the evening when the mosquitoes were dancing above the waters of the pond, the nightingale came. He sang for the roses and his song was about the warm sunshine and how that which is beautiful never can die. But the roses thought that the nightingale sang about himself and that was not so strange. They did not think for a moment that the serenade was for them, but that did not make them appreciate it less. They wondered if all the little sparrows up in the nest might not turn out to be nightingales.
“We understood the whole song,” said the little sparrows, “except for one word: ‘beauty’! What does that mean?”
“Nothing!” said their mother. “It is merely appearance.… Up at the castle where the doves have their own house—there birds are fed peas and grain every afternoon; I sometimes dine with them, and I will take you up there as soon as you can fly, for it is important to be seen in good company: tell me who your friends are and I will tell you who you are.—Well, up at the castle, as I was about to say, they have two birds; each has a green tail and a crest on its head; the tails can be spread out like a big wheel; and then, it has so many bright colors that it hurts your eyes. They are peacocks, and they are called beautiful. But if you plucked them a bit, then they would look no different from the rest of us. I would pluck their feathers off if they weren’t so big.”
In the cottage lived a young couple who were very fond of each other. They were content, hard-working, and kept the cottage clean and cozy—everything about them was pleasant. Sunday morning the young wife picked a bouquet of roses and put them in a water glass, which she placed on the large chest in which their winter clothes were packed.
“Now I know that it’s Sunday,” laughed her husband, and kissed her. Later in the day he read to her from the Book of Psalms, and the two of them sat hand in hand, while the warm sun shone in through the windows.
“It is a bore to look at,” declared the mother sparrow, and flew away.
Next Sunday the same thing happened, for every summer Sunday the young woman plucked roses, though there never seemed to be fewer flowers on the tree afterward, nor was it less beautiful. For the young sparrows, however, this Sunday was different. They had feathers and wanted to follow their mother when she left the nest.
“You stay here!” she ordered; and then she flew away.
All at once, she was no longer flying, no matter how much she moved her wings. Unluckily, she had been caught in a bird snare of horsehair that some boys had suspended from the branch of a tree. The horsehair tightened around her legs; it felt as if it would cut her left leg off. It was very painful, and the poor sparrow beat wildly with her wings. The boys came running out of their hiding place, and one of them took hold of the bird and squeezed it.
“It is only a sparrow,” he said with disappointment to the others. But they did not let her go.
Every time the sparrow peeped, one of the boys hit it across its bill. When they arrived at the farmyard where one of them lived, there was a traveling hawker there. He knew the art of making soap: both the ordinary kinds and the ones used for shaving. He was a merry old man who still liked playing tricks as much as boys did. When he saw the sparrow and heard that the children didn’t care for it, he said: “Shall we make it beautiful?”
The mother sparrow shuddered when she heard that word. The old man took some powder for the making of bronze gilt, which he kept in his box of colors and paints. He sent the boys into the
farmhouse for an egg, of which he took only the white and smeared it on the bird, so that the gilt would stick to the poor creature’s feathers. From the red lining of his own old coat, the soapmaker cut a cock’s comb and stuck it on the sparrow’s head.
“Now let us see the golden bird fly,” he said, and let the poor bird free.
Terrified, the sparrow flew up into the clear sunshine. Goodness! How brightly it shone. The other sparrows and even an old crow, who was no fledgling, got so frightened at the sight that they fled, but not very far. Soon they were following the poor sparrow to see what would happen.
“Where do you come from? Where do you come from?” screamed the crow.
“Wait for us! Wait for us!” chirped the other sparrows.
But the poor mother sparrow would not wait; in terror, she was flying home to her nest. The gilding made it hard for her to fly and she sank closer and closer toward the earth. More and more birds were following her, both big ones and small ones; some of them flew up to her and pecked her with their bills and all of them screamed, “Look at her! Look at her!”
“Look at her! Look at her!” screamed her own little ones when the poor mother sparrow came near her nest. “It is a peacock chick! Look at her colors! They hurt our eyes just as Mother said they would. It is the beautiful!”
And the little sparrows pecked with their beaks at their own mother and prevented her from taking refuge in her own nest. She was so frightened that she could not even utter a peep to tell them who she was. The other birds pecked at her now too. Soon most of her feathers were gone and, bleeding, she fell down into the rose tree.
“Poor little bird,” said the roses. “We will hide you. Lean your head against us.”
The sparrow spread out her wings once more and then closed them tight against her body; and died among her neighbors, the roses.
“Peep … peep,” said the little sparrows in the nest. “Where is our mother? I wonder if this is a way of telling us that we can take care of ourselves. Well, she has left us the house; but which one of us is to keep it, to live in, when all four of us have a family?”
“I can’t have the rest of you here when I take myself a wife and have children,” said the smallest of them.
“I will have more wives and children than you will ever get,” said the second one.
“But I am the oldest,” said the third. The argument soon became a fight; they flapped their wings and pecked each other with their little beaks until three of them had fallen out of the nest. There they lay on the ground, as angry as could be, with their heads drawn in among their feathers, so that they looked as though they had no necks at all, and they blinked constantly, which was their way of looking sulky.
They could fly a little; and after they had practiced a bit, they decided that when they met out in the world they would say, “Peep,” and then scratch the earth three times with their left legs, so that they could recognize each other.
The sparrow who had won the fight spread himself out in the nest; after all, he was the owner of property now, though that honor did not last long. That very night the house burned. The flames shot out from underneath the thatch roof and soon the whole house was engulfed in fire. The swallow’s nest with the little sparrow in it burned to ashes, but the young people got out safely.
When the sun rose, after the mild summer night, all that was left of the cottage were a few charred beams leaning up against the chimney, who, being alone, was now his own master. The ruins were still smoking, but the rose tree had not been hurt. It stood as green and flowered as beautifully, and mirrored itself, as ever, in the still pond.
“How beautiful that rose tree is, in front of the house that burned down,” exclaimed a young man. “That is a beautiful picture.” And he took out his sketchbook, for he was a painter. He drew the charred beams, the naked chimney, and the smoke that rose from the ashes. In the foreground of the picture stood the rose tree in full bloom. It looked beautiful; but after all, it was the one who had inspired the painter.
Later in the day, two of the sparrows that had been born there came flying by. “Where is the nest?” they peeped. “Where is the house? Peep! … Everything has burned down and even our strong brother has burned; that is his punishment for wanting the nest. Only the roses escaped; look at their red cheeks, they are not mourning for their neighbors. We won’t talk to them. In our opinion this place is ugly!” And they flew away.
One warm fall afternoon, when the sun was shining as though it were summer and the courtyard of the castle had been newly raked, the doves were walking about, pecking at the ground, in front of the big granite steps that led to the entrance of the castle.
“Form groups! Form groups!” the pigeon mothers were continually admonishing their young ones. They believed they looked more beautiful that way.
“What are the little gray ones called, that are always running about among us?” asked a young dove.
“Small gray ones?” said an older pigeon with red and green speckled eyes. “Why, they are sparrows, harmless little things. We have a reputation for piety, that is why we don’t chase them away. But they know their station and they scrape so prettily with their little legs.”
Three little sparrows were standing nearby and they did scratch the ground three times with their left legs and say, “Peep!” Then they knew they were from the same nest.
“A very good place to eat,” remarked one of them.
The doves walked in circles around each other, throwing out their chests. Every one of them had an opinion of all the others; and not one was pleasant to hear.
“Look at her! How greedily she eats! She will get sick from all those peas.”
“Coo! She is losing her feathers; she will be bald soon! Coo! Coo!”
They glanced at each other with eyes red with rage, while they shouted to their young ones: “Form groups! Form groups!”
“Look at those little gray things! Coo!” they cried with contempt. Such was the pigeon talk then, and such it will be a thousand years hence.
The sparrows ate and listened, they even tried forming groups; but the result was not decorative. When they had eaten their fill, they flew in a flock far enough away not to be heard by the doves and there they expressed their opinion of them. Then they flew up on the garden wall and looked out over it. The broad glass french doors of one of the rooms stood open. One of the sparrows flew down and landed right on the doorstep. He had overeaten and that gave him courage. “Peep,” he said. “Look how bold I am!”
“Peep!” replied the second sparrow. “I dare do that too, and a little more.” And with those words he flew a few feet inside the castle.
The room was empty, and therefore the third sparrow flew in even farther, while it chirped, “All the way or it doesn’t count!”
“What a funny place the nest of a human being is. But what is that over there? Look at it!”
There was the flowering rose tree, the ruins of the house with the chimney still standing, and charred beams leaning against it. How had that got into the castle hall?
All three of them wanted to fly up to it, but the first one who did hit the wall, for it was only a painting, which the painter had made from the little sketch he had drawn. It was a lovely work of art.
“Peep,” said the sparrows. “It is nothing! It only appears to be something. It is what they call the beautiful, whatever that means; we don’t understand it!” And with those words the three sparrows flew out of the room, for they heard someone coming.
Days and years passed. The doves cooed, and the sparrows lived on the fat of the land in summer and froze through the winter. They had all become engaged or married or whatever such relationships are called between sparrows. Children they had, and each couple claimed that theirs were the prettiest, the cleverest little sparrows in the whole world. Whenever the three from the same nest met, they recognized each other by scratching three times with their left legs and saying, “Peep!” By now the oldest sparrow was so old that s
he no longer had a mate, nest, or children; and therefore she decided to move to a city to find out what that was like, so she flew to Copenhagen.
In Copenhagen there was a large castle too, and near it was a building with frescoed walls. It was in a pleasant area where there was a canal and one could see sloops laden with apples and earthenware pots. The old sparrow looked in through the windows of the strange house; and she thought she was looking down into a tulip every time, for each room was painted a different lovely color, and in the center stood some white figures. They were of marble—that is, some of them were; others were of plaster, but a sparrow cannot see the difference. On top of the building was the Goddess of Victory driving a chariot to which horses were harnessed; it was in bronze. The sparrow had landed on the Museum of Thorvaldsen, the great Danish sculptor.
“How it shines, how it shines!” chirped the sparrow. “I presume that it must be the beautiful! Well, it is bigger than a peacock at least.” The sparrow still remembered what her mother had told her about the nature of beauty. She flew down into the courtyard of the museum; here the outside walls of the building were decorated with paintings of palm trees. In the center of the yard grew a rose tree. Its branches hung down over a grave. There three sparrows were pecking at the ground trying to find a crumb; she flew over to them.
“Peep!” she said, and scratched the ground three times with her left leg. She did this out of habit; she was not really expecting to meet any of her family again; it would be mere chance if one did, and not very likely.
“Peep!” replied the other sparrows, and they scratched the ground just as she had done.
“Wonderful to see you again!” they all said to each other. Two of the sparrows were her brothers and the third was a young niece. “It is a grand place to meet! Peep! I think this must be the beautiful; there is not much to eat here. Peep!”
People came out of the side door of the museum, where they had been admiring the statues. Their faces still shining from what they had seen, they looked down at the grave of the sculptor who had created it. Some of the people bent down to pick one of the rose petals that had fallen on the grave, to take home as a memento. Many of the visitors came from far away: from France, Germany, and England.