A beautiful young woman plucked a rose and pinned it to her blouse. The sparrows, who had been watching everything that went on, decided that the whole house had been built for the sake of the roses. They thought that so much respect was rather overdoing it, but since the human beings seemed to care so much for roses, the sparrows didn’t voice their opinion.
“Peep … Peep,” they said, and even swept the grave with their little tails, while they glanced, with one eye, up at the rose tree.
They hadn’t looked at it long before they decided that it was their old neighbor; and they were right. The painter who had drawn the sketch of the ruined cottage and the rose tree in full bloom had got permission to dig the rose tree up, because he thought it was so beautiful, and have it planted on Thorvaldsen’s grave. And here it grew, with its fragrant red flowers, the personification of beauty.
“Have you got a permanent appointment?” asked the sparrows. And the roses nodded, for they recognized their little gray neighbors and were happy to see them again.
“How lovely it is to be alive and to be in flower! How lovely it is to see kind faces around you and have your old friends come to visit you! Every day here is like a high holy day.”
“Peep!” said the sparrows. “Here are our old neighbors. We remember them from the time when they grew by the village pond. They have come far. See how they are honored now. But it is all chance, not merit. What is so marvelous in a red blotch? We can’t see it. But there is a dead leaf, we can see that.”
One of the sparrows flew up and pecked at the withered leaf until it fell off; and the rose tree was even greener and lovelier than it had been before. It bloomed on the grave of the artist, and its beauty and fragrance mingled in men’s memory with his immortal name.
44
Little Tuck
This is a story about a little boy named Tuck. His real name was Carl, but when he was very tiny he had pronounced it “Tuck” and the name had stuck. Such things are always nice to know.
Now Tuck had to take care of his sister Gustava, who was much younger than he was, and study his lessons at the same time. These are two jobs that are not easily combined. The poor boy was singing little rhymes to his sister, who was sitting in his lap, and trying to read his geography book at the same time. The book lay open on the table beside him. He was supposed to learn where all the towns of Zealand were, and everything else that was important about them. The only one that he knew anything about at all was Copenhagen.
At last his mother came home and took little Gustava from him. But now it was almost dark and they could not afford to light a candle just so he could study. Little Tuck sat by the window, trying to read in the fading light.
“There is the old washerwoman from the alley,” said his mother, who was looking out of the window. “She can hardly walk and yet she must carry water all the way from the pump in the square. Be a good boy, Tuck, and go and carry it for her.”
Little Tuck ran at once to help the old woman. When he got home it was dark; there was no point in even asking for a candle, for it was Tuck’s bedtime. His bed was a bench in the living room; and there he lay trying to recall everything the teacher had said about the cities and towns of Zealand. He had put the geography book under his pillow, for someone had told him that this could help him learn his lessons—though that kind of advice one shouldn’t put much faith in.
He was thinking as hard as he could, when suddenly it felt as though someone were kissing him gently on his eyes and then on his mouth. He felt as if he were awake and asleep, both at the same time. There was the old washerwoman looking down at him kindly. “It would be a sin and a shame,” she said, “if you did not know your lesson tomorrow in school because you helped me. Now I shall help you and the Lord will help us both.”
The book under his pillow began to move about as if it were alive; and then a hen crawled out of it.
“Cluck! Cluck!” said the hen. “I come from the town of Køge! Cluck! Cluck!” And the hen told him the number of inhabitants the town had and all about the battle that had been fought there, though she added that it wasn’t worth talking about.
“Bang! Bang! Bang!” A parrot made out of wood fell from the sky and landed in little Tuck’s bed. It was the popinjay from the fairgrounds of Praestø; the one that the good citizens shot at when they held their famous marksmanship competition. The popinjay claimed that he had as many nails in his body as the town of Praestø had inhabitants; and that he was very proud of. “Thorvaldsen lived right outside me, and my location is superb,” the popinjay remarked as if he were the town itself.
All at once little Tuck was no longer in bed; he was riding along on a handsome horse; sitting behind him was a knight who was holding onto him so he wouldn’t fall. Away they galloped. The gaily colored plumes on the knight’s helmet streamed in the wind; they were riding through the forest toward Vordingborg. Here, in his royal castle, King Valdemar was holding court. The town was filled with people; banners flew from the high towers; and in the great hall musicians were playing; and the king, his courtiers, and the ladies of the court were dancing. Without warning, the sun began to rise; the night was over and the towers of the castle disappeared one after the other, until only one remained standing. The town was no longer a city but had shrunk to being a large hamlet, poor and wretched. Some school children, with books under their arms, were passing in one of the streets. “Two thousand inhabitants,” they remarked. But they were bragging; the formerly so important royal city was even smaller than that.
Little Tuck was back in bed: half dreaming, half awake. Someone was approaching his bed.
“Little Tuck, little Tuck,” cried a voice. It was a sailor boy who looked young enough to be a cadet or a cabin boy; but he was neither. “I bring you greetings from Korsør. It is a new town, a town that is growing! The mail coach from Copenhagen stops here, and steamships are moored in our harbor. Once people thought that Korsør was a horrid, vulgar place, but that was only prejudice. Listen to what Korsør says about itself: ‘I am surrounded by green forests and blue sea. Inside my walls a poet was born, who is amusing to read—which is more than most poets are. I thought of sending a ship around the world. I didn’t, but I could have if I had wanted to. My city gate is covered with roses, which smell so sweetly.…’ ”
Little Tuck thought he saw the roses; but then the colors blended and the roses were gone. Green, forest-clad banks rose above a blue fjord. The tall spires of an old cathedral stretched upward toward the sky. On one of the sloping hills, water splashed in broad streams; they came from a spring, and near it sat an old man with long white hair and a golden crown on his head. It was old King Hroar. In olden times the town was called “Hroar’s spring”; today the Danes call it Roskilde (kilde is the Danish word for “spring”). In the cathedral, all the kings and queens of Denmark are buried. Little Tuck seemed to be able to see them all as they walked hand in hand, with golden crowns on their heads, into the cathedral; and he could hear the organ playing, mixed with the sound of the water rushing from the spring. “Don’t forget that here the Estates assemble!” called King Hroar.
Suddenly the cathedral was gone; as if someone had turned the pages of a picture book, a woman now stood before him. She looked like a gardener’s helper. Indeed, that’s what she must have been, for she was busy weeding the town square of Sorø, where grass grows between the cobblestones. She had draped her gray linen apron over her head. It must have just rained, for she was all wet. “In Sorø it always rains,” she commented. She knew stories about both King Valdemar and Bishop Absalon, and could recite long, amusing passages from Holberg’s plays. But then, without warning, she hunched her shoulders, her head began to bob, and she looked like a frog. “One has to dress according to the weather.… Croak! Croak! … It is as wet and as peaceful as the grave in this town. Croak! Croak.… That is, except when the boys from the academy are here reciting Greek, Latin, and Hebrew.… Croak! Croak!” And the old woman who was a frog—or the frog who
was an old woman—kept making the same sound: “Croak! Croak!” The monotone made Tuck sleep even more deeply.
But still dreams came to him. His little sister Gustava, with her big blue eyes and long, curly, yellow hair, had grown up; and even though neither of them had wings, they were both able to fly. Hand in hand, Tuck and Gustava flew above the fields and green forests of Zealand.
“Listen to the cock crowing, little Tuck,” she said. “See the hens fly up from Køge. You shall have a henyard so big, so huge, that you will never know hunger or want. When you aim at the popinjay, you shall hit the mark and become a rich and happy man. Your house shall rise as proudly as King Valdemar’s castle once did in Vordingborg; and in your garden there will stand marble sculptures like those of Thorvaldsen near Praestø. Your name will be praised around the world, just as far as the ship from Korsør could have sailed. ‘Remember the assembling of the Estates, Little Tuck,’ says King Hroar, for there you shall give wise and good counsel. Finally, you will become old and die; then you shall sleep peacefully.…”
“As though I were lying in Sorø,” said little Tuck, and woke up. It was a lovely morning and all his dreams were immediately forgotten—and that was just as well, for it is not good for us to know the future.
Tuck jumped out of bed and quickly took his geography book out from underneath his pillow and began to study.
The old washerwoman stuck her head in through the door and nodded kindly to him. “Thank you for the help yesterday, little Tuck. May the Lord bless you and make your best dreams come true.”
Little Tuck didn’t remember what he had dreamed; but Our Lord did.
45
The Shadow
On the shores of the Mediterranean the sun really knows how to shine. It is so powerful that it tans the people a mahogany brown; and the young scholar who came from the north, where all the people are as white as bakers’ apprentices, soon learned to regard his old friend with suspicion. In the south one stays inside during most of the day with the doors and shutters closed. The houses look as if everyone was asleep or no one was at home. The young foreigner felt as if he were in prison, and his shadow rolled itself up until it was smaller than it had ever been before. But as soon as the sun set and a candle lighted the room, out came the shadow again. It was truly a pleasure to watch it grow; up the wall it would stretch itself until its head almost reached the ceiling.
“The stars seem so much brighter here,” thought the scholar, and he walked out onto his balcony where he stretched himself just as his shadow had done. And on all the balconies throughout the city people came out to enjoy the cool evening. Had the town appeared dead and deserted at noon, certainly now it was alive! People were flocking into the streets. The tailors and the shoemakers moved their workbenches outside; the women came with their straight-backed chairs to sit and gossip. Donkeys heavily laden with wares tripped along like little maids. Children were everywhere. They laughed, played, and sometimes cried as children will do, for children can run so fast that they are not certain whether it is a tragedy or a comedy they are enacting. And the lights! Thousands of lamps burned like so many falling stars. A funeral procession, led by little choir boys in black and white, passed with mournful but not sad-looking people following the black-draped horse and wagon. The church bells were ringing. “This is life!” thought the young foreigner, and he tried to take it all in.
Only the house directly across from his own was as quiet now as it had been at midday. The street was very narrow and the opposite balcony was only a few yards away. Often he stood and stared at it, but no one ever came out. Yet there were flowers there and they seemed to be flourishing, which meant that they were cared for or else the sun would long since have withered them. “Yes,” he concluded, “they must be watered by someone.” Besides, the shutters were opened, and while he never saw any light, he sometimes heard music. The scholar thought this music “exquisite,” but that may be only because all young northerners think everything “exquisite” the first time they are in the south.
He asked his landlord if he knew who lived across the street, but the old man replied that he did not and, in fact, had never seen anyone enter or leave. As for the music, he could hardly express how terrible he thought it. “It’s as if someone were practicing,” he said. “The same piece, over and over and over again! And it’s never played all the way through! It’s unbearable!”
One night the young foreigner, who slept with his balcony door open, awakened with a start. A breeze had lifted his drapes so that he caught a glimpse of the opposite balcony. The flowers were ablaze with the most beautiful colors and in their midst stood a lovely maiden. For an instant the scholar closed his eyes to make sure that he had had them open. In a single leap he was standing in front of the drapes. Cautiously, he parted them; but the girl had vanished, the light had disappeared, and the flowers looked as they always did. The door, however, had been left open, and from far inside he could hear music; its gentle strains seemed to cast a spell over him, for never before had he taken such delight in his own thoughts. How does one get into that apartment? he wondered; and he perused the street below. There was no private entrance whatever, only a group of small shops; surely one could not enter a home through a store.
The next evening the scholar was sitting as usual on his balcony. From his room the lamp burned brightly, and since his shadow was very shy of light, it had stretched itself until it reached the opposite balcony. When the young man moved, his shadow moved. “I believe my shadow is the only living thing over there,” he muttered. “See how it has sat down among the flowers. The balcony door is ajar. Now if my shadow were clever, it would go inside and take a look around; then it would come back and tell me what it had seen. Yes, you ought to earn your keep,” he said jokingly. “Now go inside. Did you hear me? Go!” And he nodded to his shadow and his shadow nodded back at him. “Yes, go! But remember to come back again.” There the scholar’s conversation with his shadow ended. The young man rose, and the shadow on the opposite balcony rose; the young man turned around and the shadow also turned around; but then there happened something that no one saw. The shadow went through the half-open door of the other balcony, while the scholar went into his own room and closed the drapes behind him.
The next morning on his way to the café where he had his breakfast and read the newspapers, the scholar discovered that he had no shadow. “So it really went away last night!” he marveled. More than anything else, the young man was embarrassed; people were certain to notice, and might demand that he explain or, worse than that, might make up explanations of their own. He returned at once to his room and there he remained for the rest of the day. That evening he walked out onto his balcony for a bit of fresh air. The light streamed from behind him as it had on the evening before. He sat down, stood up, stretched himself; still there was no shadow, and though it was doubtful that anyone could see him, he hurried inside again almost immediately
But in the warm countries everything grows much faster than it does in the north, and less than a week had passed before a shadow began to sprout from the scholar’s feet. “The old one must have left its roots behind, what a pleasant surprise!” he thought happily. Within a month he walked the streets unconcerned; his shadow, though a little small, was quite respectable. During the long trip, for the scholar was going home, it continued to grow until even a very big man, which the scholar was not, would not have complained about its size.
Settled once more in his own country, the scholar wrote books about all that is true and beautiful and good. The days became years. The scholar was now a philosopher; and the years became many. One evening when he was sitting alone in his room there was a very gentle knock at the door.
“Come in,” he called. But no one came, so the philosopher opened the door himself. Before him stood the thinnest man that he had ever seen but, judging from his clothes, a person of some importance. “Whom do I have the honor of addressing?” the philosopher asked.
“I thought as much,” replied the stranger. “You don’t recognize me, now that I have a body of my own and clothes to boot. You never would have believed that you would meet your old shadow again. Things have gone well for me since we parted. If need be, I can buy my freedom!” The shadow jiggled its purse, which was filled with gold pieces, and touched the heavy gold chain that it wore around its neck. On all of its fingers were diamond rings, and every one was genuine.
“I must be dreaming!” exclaimed the philosopher. “What is happening?”
“Well, it isn’t something that happens every day,” said the shadow, “but then, you’re not an ordinary person. Nobody knows that better than I do, didn’t I walk in your first footsteps? … As soon as you found that I could stand alone in the world, you let me go. The results are obvious. Without bragging, I can say few could have done better.… Of late, a longing has come over me to talk with you before you die—you must die, you know. Besides, I wanted to see this country again, only a rogue does not love his native land.… I know that you have a new shadow. If I owe you or it anything, you will be so kind as to tell me.”
“Is it really you?” cried the philosopher. “It’s so incredible! I wouldn’t have believed that one’s shadow could come back to one as a human being!”
“Tell me how much I owe you,” insisted the shadow. “I hate to be in debt”
“How can you talk like that?” replied the philosopher. “What debt could there be to pay? Be as free as you wish! I am only happy to see you again. And I rejoice in your good luck. Sit down, old friend,” he invited most cordially. “Tell me how all this came about, and what you saw that night in the house across the street.”