Now there once was an old manor house where no one ate the snails; the custom had died there long ago, as had most of the snails; but the burdock, it thrived. They spread out all over the paths, and some of the lawns, for burdocks are not easy to get rid of. A good part of the park was a jungle of burdock leaves; and if a solitary plum or apple tree had not survived, no one would ever have believed that there once had been a garden there. In the very center of this forest lived the last survivors of the white snails. They were a couple and very, very old.
Exactly how old they were they didn’t know, but they could remember that once their family had been numerous, and that their ancestors had come from some foreign land. That the burdock forest had been planted for their sake they knew too; and that they were proud of it. They had never been outside, but they knew vaguely that there was a world outside; it was called the manor house. There snails were cooked until they turned black and then they were served on a silver dish. What happened afterward was not clear to them. They didn’t have any idea either what it was like to be “cooked” or “served on a silver dish.” But that the whole ceremony was extremely elegant and distinguished they had no doubt. Neither the toad, nor the dung beetle, nor the earthworm—all of whom had been asked—could tell them anything about it, since none of their family had ever been “cooked” or “served on a silver dish.”
The old white snails knew that they were the most distinguished beings in the whole world, that the forest of burdocks had been planted for their sake, and that the manor house stood merely so that they someday could be brought there, to be cooked and put on a silver dish.
They lived a lonely yet happy life; as they had no children of their own, they had adopted an ordinary garden snail. They had brought him up carefully, as though he were their own; their only disappointment had been that he wouldn’t grow. However, the mother snail was always imagining that he was becoming fatter—in spite of his being just an ordinary snail—and she would beg her husband, who hadn’t noticed it, to just feel their son’s house. This the father snail would do, and then he would agree with her.
One day the rain was pouring down!
“Listen to how it is drumming on the burdock leaves,” said the father snail.
“It is raining through,” cried his wife. “Look how the water is running down the stalks. Everything will be soaked down here. But we have our houses and even the little one has his. Certainly, we were created superior to all other creatures in the world. We are the true aristocrats, born with houses on our backs, and with a whole forest of burdock leaves especially sprouting and growing for our sake. I wonder how far our forest stretches and what is beyond it?”
“Nothing,” replied her husband. “There can be no better place than this, and what is beyond does not interest me.”
“Oh, I am not sure of that,” argued his wife. “I wouldn’t mind being taken up to the manor house to be boiled and served on a silver plate. All our ancestors have been; I am sure it is something very special, to have that happen to one.”
“I believe it possible that the manor house has fallen apart and become a ruin,” said the father snail. “Or possibly the burdocks have grown so large around it that the people inside it can’t get out. But all that is of no importance! You are always fretting. I am afraid our son takes after you, he is so restless. For the last three days he has been crawling up that stalk there, it gives me a headache just to look at him.”
“Don’t scold him!” said the mother snail. “He keeps a dignified pace, I am sure he will be a credit to us. After all, what have we old people to live for but our children? Have you thought about where we are going to find a wife for him? I wonder if anywhere in this forest there lives anyone of our own kind.”
“Black slugs there are enough of; but they are not real snails, they have no houses of their own. Although they are common they think a lot of themselves. But we could ask the ants, they are always running about as if they had something important to do; they may have come across a snail that would make a wife for our little son.”
“Oh yes! We know of the sweetest one,” said the ants. “But it may be difficult to arrange; you see, she is a queen.”
“That is of no importance,” said the old snails. “Does she have a house of her own?”
“She has a castle,” replied the ants proudly. “The loveliest ant castle with seven hundred corridors.”
“Thank you,” said the snail mother but she didn’t mean it. “Our son is not going to live in an anthill. If you have nothing better to suggest, then we will ask the mosquitoes, they fly about everywhere.”
“We have found a wife for him,” buzzed the mosquitoes. “About a hundred yards from here there lives, on a gooseberry bush, a little snail. She has a house of her own; she lives all alone and is old enough to get married.”
“I think she should come to him,” said the father snail. “It is more fitting, since she only has a gooseberry bush; whereas, our son has a whole burdock forest.”
The mosquitoes flew to make the proposal; it took her a whole week to come; but that only proved that she was a proper snail.
A wedding was held. Six glowworms shone as brightly as they could, but otherwise the affair passed off very quietly, for the old folks could not endure riotous merriment. The mother of the bridegroom made the speech, for her husband was much too overcome by emotion to say a word. The young people were given the burdock forest as their inheritance; and both of the old snails declared that it was the best place in the whole world. The old snail mother promised them that if they lived a decent and upright life, and multiplied, then they and their children would be taken to the manor house to be cooked and served on a silver dish.
After the speech, the two old snails crept inside their houses and slept; and that so deeply that they never came out again.
The young couple reigned over the burdock forest and had a very, very large family. But none of them was ever boiled or served on a silver dish, which made them believe that the manor house had fallen into ruin and that all the human beings in the world had died. Since no one ever contradicted them, it was true. The rain drummed down on the burdock leaves to make music for them, and the sun shone on the forest for their sake; and every little snail in the whole family was very, very happy.
49
The Story of a Mother
A mother sat by the bedside of her little child; she was very sorrowful, for she feared that her little one was dying. The face of the child was pale and his little eyes were closed; he breathed softly and gently; every once in a while he would gasp for breath and it sounded as if he were sighing; then his mother would look even more grief-stricken.
Someone knocked at the door and an old man entered. He was poorly dressed and had a big horse blanket wrapped around him to keep himself warm. It was winter and bitterly cold outside. The earth was covered with snow and ice, and the wind blew hard enough to make one’s face smart.
The old man was shivering from cold, and when the mother saw that her child had fallen asleep, she walked over to the stove to warm a little beer for the old man. He sat down beside the cradle and rocked it, and the mother took a chair and sat down near him. She looked at her sick child. The baby took a deep breath and raised one of his little hands.
“I will be allowed to keep him, won’t I? Our Lord wouldn’t take him from me!”
The old man nodded so curiously, it could as easily have meant yes as no. It was Death himself who had come into her room. The mother looked down at the folds of her skirt, and tears ran down her face. Her head was so heavy—she had not slept for three days and three nights—for a moment her eyes closed.
She woke with a start, trembling from the cold. “What happened?” she cried, and looked about her. The old man was gone and her little boy was gone; he had taken the child with him. In the corner, the hands of the grandfather clock whirled around, Boom! The heavy weights hit the floor and the clock stood still.
The mother ran out of
the house and into the darkness, calling her son’s name.
There sat a woman dressed all in black. “Death has been in your house,” said the strange woman. “I saw him hurrying off with your child. He runs swifter than the wind, and what he takes he never brings back.”
“Tell me which way he went,” pleaded the mother. “Just tell me that and I shall catch up with him.”
“I know which way he went,” the woman in the black dress answered. “And I shall point it out to you as soon as you have sung all the lullabies that you sang to your baby. I have heard them before, and I am very fond of them. I am Night, and I have watched the tears running down your cheeks while you sang them.”
“I shall sing them all, every one of them,” said the mother. “But not now! I must catch up with Death and get my child back.”
But Night sat silently and the mother wrung her hands in despair. She sang all the songs that she had sung to her boy, while she wept more tears than there were verses. Then Night said to her, “Go to the right when you come to the dark pine forest; that was the road I saw Death take with your child.”
Deep inside the woods two roads met, and the mother did not know which to take. At the crossroad grew a bush full of thorns; it stood naked in the winter cold, and its branches were covered by ice.
“Have you seen Death go by with my little child?” the mother asked.
“Yes,” answered the rosebush, “but I will not tell you which way he went unless you warm me with your heart. I am freezing to death! I will turn into ice!”
The mother pressed the bush to her breast in order to warm it, and the thorns pierced her, so that drops of blood fell. But the rosebush shot new leaves and flowers bloomed in the cold winter night, so warm was the heart of the grieving mother; and the rosebush told her which of the roads to take.
She came to a large lake, and there was no boat for her to sail across it. The water had not frozen to ice yet, and the lake was too deep for her to wade across. Yet she had to get to the other side if she were to see her child again. She lay down at the edge of the lake and tried to drink it dry; this no human being could do, but the mother in her sorrow hoped that a miracle would happen.
“No, that will never work,” said the lake. “Let us two come to an agreement instead; I like to collect pearls, and your eyes are the clearest that I have ever seen. If you will cry them out, and give them to me, then I shall carry you over to the place where Death has his greenhouse. It is filled with plants and trees; each of them is a human life, and Death tends them.”
“I will give anything to be with my child,” said the weeping mother, and wept even harder; and her eyes sank to the bottom of the waters and became two precious pearls.
The lake lifted her and swung her across to the other side, where the strangest house stood. It was miles wide and miles long and looked more like a mountain covered with forest and filled with caves than a house. But the poor mother couldn’t see it, for she had cried her eyes out.
“Where shall I find Death? He has taken my child away with him,” she called.
“He hasn’t come back yet,” explained an old woman who guarded Death’s great greenhouse while he was away. “How have you found your way here and who helped you?”
“God has helped me, for He is merciful, and you will help me too, won’t you? Where is my child?”
“I don’t know your child,” said the woman, “and you cannot see to find it. So many flowers and trees have withered tonight. Soon death will come and transplant them. You know, of course, that every human being has his life-tree or life-flower. The trees and flowers here look like trees and flowers anywhere else; the only difference is that they have heartbeats. Even an infant’s heart has a particular beat. Try to find your child’s. But what will you give me if I tell you what to do when you have found it?”
“I have nothing to give,” said the grieving mother, “but I will walk to the end of the world for you.”
“There is nothing you could fetch for me there,” said the old woman, “but you can give me your long black hair. I think you know, yourself, how beautiful it is and I like it! You can have my white hair in exchange; it is better than nothing.”
“Is that all you want!” she exclaimed. “That I will give up gladly.” And she gave away her long black hair and received the old woman’s snow-white hair in return.
Together they walked into Death’s greenhouse where the flowers and trees grew next to each other in the strangest manner. There were lovely hyacinths under glass bells and big healthy peonies. In basins, waterplants grew; some of them looked fresh and healthy, others were sickly: water snakes had wound themselves around them and the black crayfish pinched their stems and roots. There were palm trees, oak and plane trees, and parsley and flowering thyme as well. Every flower or tree had a name, for each was a human life. They were people who were still alive: one in China, another in Greenland, all over the world. There were big trees in small pots; they looked cowed and subdued, while their roots were about to burst the crockery. There were also dull little flowers growing in rich soil, surrounded by moss and most carefully tended. The poor mother went from one to another of the tiniest plants and listened to the heartbeats inside them, and among millions she knew her own child’s.
“This is his!” she cried, and stretched out her hands protectively toward a little blue crocus whose flower hung sickly to one side.
“Do not touch the flower!” said the old woman. “But stay where you are. When Death comes—and I am expecting him any minute—prevent him from pulling it up. Threaten him, say that you will pull up some of the other flowers if he touches your little crocus. That will frighten him, for he has to answer to Our Lord for every one of them; and none may be pulled up before God has given His permission.”
An ice-cold wind blew through the room and the blind mother knew that Death had come.
“How did you find your way here?” demanded Death. “And how did you travel faster than I can?”
“I am a mother,” she replied.
And Death reached out toward the delicate flower, but she protected it by covering the little crocus with her hands, without touching a single leaf.
Death blew on her hands; and his breath was colder than the coldest wind and her hands fell to her sides.
“Against me you can do nothing!” said Death.
“But Our Lord can,” she replied.
“I am only doing His bidding,” Death said. “I am His gardener. I uproot His flowers and trees and plant them again in the garden of paradise, in the unknown land. How they grow there and what that land is like I do not dare tell you.”
“Give me back my child!” cried the mother, and wept and prayed. All at once she grabbed the two flowers nearest her, one in each hand, and screamed at Death, “I will tear up all your flowers, for I don’t know what else to do!”
“Don’t touch them!” said Death. “You say that you are so unhappy, and yet now you will make another mother as unhappy as you are.”
“Another mother,” the poor woman whispered, and let go of both flowers.
“Here are your eyes,” said Death. “I fished them up from the bottom of the lake; they shone so brightly. I didn’t know they were yours, but here, take them back; you will be able to see even more clearly now than you could before. Look down into the well over there, and I shall whisper the names of the two plants that you were about to pull up. You shall see their future, their whole lives, so that you will understand what you were about to destroy.”
The mother looked down into the well; and the first life she saw was a blessed one for the world, bringing happiness and joy. The second life was all sorrow, distress, and wretched misery.
“Both are the will of God,” said Death.
“Which is the flower of sorrow and misery, and which is the blessed one?” she asked.
“That I shall not tell you,” Death replied. “But this much you shall know: one of the flowers was your own child’s; it was his
fate that you saw, his future.”
In terror the poor woman cried, “Which one was my child? Tell me! He is innocent! Save my child from such suffering! Carry him away with you, carry him up to God! Forget my tears! Forget my prayers! Forget everything that I have said and done!”
“I do not understand you,” said Death. “Do you want your child back, or shall I carry him into that land which you do not know?”
The mother wrung her hands in despair and fell on her knees and prayed: “Oh, God, do not listen to me when my prayers are against Your will, for that is always for the best. Do not listen to me! Do not listen to me!”
She bowed her head into her lap while Death carried her child into the unknown land.
50
The Collar
Once upon a time there was a fine gentleman whose only worldly possessions were a bootjack, a comb, and a loose collar; but that was such a fine one that it would have enhanced the best shirt in the world; and this story is about the collar. He was old enough to begin thinking about marriage when, by chance, he found himself being washed in the same tub as a lady’s garter.
“Ah,” sighed the collar. “Never have I met anyone so soft and dainty, with so slender and lovely a figure. May I ask your name?”
“I won’t tell you,” snapped the garter.
“Where exactly do you … belong?” asked the collar.
The garter, who was by nature shy, found the question indiscreet and didn’t answer.
“I think you must be a kind of waistband,” continued the collar. “Something that is worn on the inside. I see that you are both useful and decorative, Miss … Miss …”