Fairy Tales

was as if flames shone from his forehead. He threw the heavy stone laws tablets on the bridegroom’s feet which pinned them to the church floor.

“I can’t pick them up again!” Moses said. “You chopped my arms off! Stay as you are!”

Then came Adam and Eve, the three wise men from the East, and the four seasons. All of them hurled unpleasant truths at him. “Shame on you!”

But he wasn’t ashamed.

All of the figures that every hour had at its disposal stepped out of the clock, and all grew to a tremendous size. There almost wasn’t room for the real people. And when at the stroke of twelve, the watchman stepped out with his hat and spiked mace, there was a singular commotion. The watchman went right up to the bridegroom and struck him on the head with the spiked mace.

“Lie there!” he said. “Tit for tat! We are avenged, and so is our master! We’re leaving!”

And the whole great work of art disappeared. But the candles changed into big flowers of light throughout the church, and the gilded stars on the ceiling sent out long, clear rays. The organ played by itself. Everybody said that it was the most incredible thing they had ever experienced.

“Will you summon the right one?” said the princess. “The one who made the artwork—he shall be my husband and master.”

And he stood in the church with all the people as his attendants. Everyone rejoiced, and everyone blessed him. There wasn’t a person who was jealous. And that was really the most incredible thing!

AUNTIE TOOTHACHE

WHERE DID WE GET this story?

—Would you like to know?

We got it from the waste barrel in the store with all the old papers in it. Many good and rare books have ended up at the grocer’s and the greengrocer’s—not for reading, but as useful articles. They need paper to make paper cones for starch and coffee, and paper to wrap salt herring, butter, and cheese in. Handwritten materials can be used too.

Often things go into the barrel that shouldn’t go there.

I know a greengrocer’s apprentice, son of a grocer. He has advanced from the basement to the first floor store. He’s well-read, well-read in wrapping paper, both printed and handwritten. He has an interesting collection, including several important documents from the wastepaper baskets of one or another much too busy and absent- minded official, several confidential letters from girlfriend to girlfriend: scandalous stories which must not be revealed—not spoken of by anyone. He is a living salvage operation for a considerable amount of literature, and he has a large working area. He has both his parents’ and employer’s stores and has saved many a book or page of a book that probably deserve to be read twice.

He has shown me his collection of printed and written materials from the barrel, most of it from the grocer’s. There were a couple of pages of a good-sized notebook, and the especially beautiful clear handwriting drew my attention immediately.

“The student wrote this,” he said. “The student who lived across the street and died a month ago. They say he suffered a lot from toothaches. It’s quite amusing to read, but there’s only a little of it left now. There was a whole book plus some. My parents gave the student’s landlady half a pound of green soap for it. Here is what I’ve saved of it.”

I borrowed it, and read it, and now I’ll tell it. The title was:

AUNTIE TOOTHACHE

I.

—My aunt gave me candies when I was little. My teeth withstood it and weren’t ruined. Now I’m older and have become a college student, and she still spoils me with sweets. She says that I’m a poet.

I have something of the poet in me, but not enough. Often when I’m walking the city streets, it seems to me like I’m in a big library. The houses are bookcases and each story a shelf with books. There stands an everyday story. There a good old fashioned comedy. There are scientific works about all kinds of subjects. Here smut and good literature. I can fantasize and philosophize about all that literature.

There’s something of the poet in me, but not enough. Many people have just as much of it as I have and yet don’t carry a sign or a collar with poet written on it.

They and I have been given a gift from God, a blessing big enough for oneself, but much too small to be parceled out to others. It comes like a sunbeam and fills your soul and mind. It comes like a waft of flowers, like a melody you know but can’t remember from where.

The other evening I was sitting in my room and felt like reading. I had no magazine or book to leaf through. Suddenly a leaf fell fresh and green from the linden tree, and the breeze blew it in the window to me.

I looked at all the many branching veins. A little bug was moving across them, as if it were making a thorough inspection of the leaf. That made me think of human wisdom. We crawl around on the leaf too and know only that. But then we deliver lectures about the entire big tree, the root, trunk, and crown. The big tree—God, the world, and immortality, and of the whole we only know a little leaf!

Just then Aunt Mille came for a visit.

I showed her the leaf with the bug and told her my thoughts about it, and her eyes lit up.

“You’re a poet!” she said. “Maybe the greatest we have! I will gladly go to my grave if I can live to see that. You’ve always amazed me by your powerful imagination, ever since brewer Rasmussen’s funeral.”

That’s what Aunt Mille said, and she kissed me.

Who was Aunt Mille, and who was brewer Rasmussen?