Fairy Tales

fate! Alas.” He sighed deeply, but then stopped suddenly. “Dear God, what’s become of me? I have never thought or felt like this before! It must be the spring air. It’s both worrying and pleasant.” He grasped the papers in his pocket. “This will give me something else to think about,” he said and skimmed through the first page. “Mrs. Sigbrith, original tragedy in five acts,” he read. “What’s this? But it’s my own handwriting! Have I written this play? Intrigue on the Ramparts or Big Holiday. Comedy.—But where have I gotten this? Someone must have put it in my pocket. Here’s a letter.” It was from the theater director. Both pieces were rejected, and the letter itself was not at all polite. “Hm, hm,” the clerk said and sat down on a bench. His thoughts were so agitated, his heart so moved. Spontaneously he picked one of the closest flowers. It was a simple little daisy, and it proclaimed in a minute what the botanists tell us in many lectures. It told the myth of its birth and of the power of the sunshine that develops the fine petals and forces their scent. Then he thought about life’s struggles that awaken feelings in our breasts in the same way. The air and light were the flower’s lovers, but light was the favorite. It turned to the light, and if that disappeared, it rolled its petals together and slept in the embrace of the air. “It’s light that adorns me,” said the flower. “But the air lets you breathe,” whispered the poet’s voice.

A boy was standing nearby hitting a muddy ditch with a stick. Drops of water flew up into the green branches, and the clerk thought about the millions of invisible little animals in the drops that were hurled so high that, for their size, it would be as if we were flung high over the clouds. As the clerk was thinking about this and about the change that had happened to him, he smiled. “I’m sleeping and dreaming! But it’s remarkable anyway, that you can dream so naturally and still know that it’s a dream. I wish I could remember it tomorrow when I wake up! I seem to be in an unusually good mood right now. I have an open eye for everything and feel so fit, but I’m sure that when I remember parts of it tomorrow, it’ll all be nonsense. I’ve experienced that before. All the wisdom and magnificence you hear and see in dreams is like the gold of the mound people. When you get it, it’s splendid and glorious, but seen in the light of day, it’s just rocks and shriveled leaves, alas.” He sighed quite sadly and looked at the chirping birds hopping from branch to branch quite happily. “They are better off than I am. To be able to fly is a wonderful skill. How lucky they are who are born with that ability! If I were to be anything other than what I am, I’d be a little lark like that!”

At once his sleeves and arms changed into wings. His clothes became feathers, and the galoshes turned to claws. He noticed it all and laughed to himself. “Well, now I can see that I’m dreaming, but I’ve never dreamed anything so silly before.” Then he flew up into the branches and sang, but there was no poetry in the song because the poetic nature was gone. As is the case with anything done thoroughly, the galoshes could only do one thing at a time. He wanted to be a poet, and he became one. Then he wanted to be a little bird, but in becoming that, he gave up the former characteristic feature.

“This is good though,” he said. “During the day I sit at the police station in piles of prosaic papers, and at night I dream of flying like a lark in Frederiksberg Garden. You could actually write a whole play about it.”

Then he flew down into the grass and turned his head from side to side and pecked with his beak at the soft blades of grass that, in comparison to his size now, were as big as palm trees in North Africa.

Within a second everything was as black as midnight around him. Some monstrous object was thrown over him. It was a big cap that a boy from Nyboder had thrown over the bird. A hand came in and grabbed the clerk around his body and wings, so he peeped. In his first fright he called aloud, “You impertinent pup! I’m a clerk at the police department,” but to the boy it sounded just like chirping. He slapped the bird’s beak and wandered off.

On the street he met two upper-class schoolboys. Upper class as people, that is to say. From a spiritual point of view, they were among the school’s lowest. They bought the bird for 25 cents, and in this way the clerk came to Copenhagen, home to a family in Gothers Street.

“It’s a good thing I’m dreaming,” said the clerk, “otherwise I’d be really angry. First I was a poet, now a lark. It was my poetic nature that transported me into the little animal. But it’s a pitiful thing, especially when you fall into the hands of boys like these. I would like to know how this will end.”

The boys brought him into an extremely elegant living room where they were greeted by a fat, laughing woman. She was not at all happy that a simple field bird, as she called the lark, was brought in. She’d let it pass today, however, and told them to put the bird in the empty cage by the window. “Maybe it will amuse Poppy-boy,” she added and laughed at a big green parrot that was swinging proudly on his ring in a magnificent brass cage. “It’s Poppy-boy’s birthday,” she said childishly, “and the little field bird is here to congratulate him.”

Poppy-boy didn’t say a single word in reply, but just kept rocking in a dignified way back and forth. But, in contrast, a beautiful canary, which had been brought there the past summer from its warm, luxuriant native land, began to sing loudly.

“Loudmouth!” the woman said and threw a white handkerchief over its cage.

“Pip, pip,” it sighed, “What a terrible snowstorm,” and then it fell silent.

The clerk, or the field bird, as the woman called him, was placed in a little cage close to the canary and not far from the parrot. The only human sentence the parrot could prattle was, “Come, let’s now be human,” which was often quite comical. Everything else he said was as unintelligible as the song of the canary except to the clerk, who was now himself a bird and could understand his companions very well.

“I flew under the green palms and the flowering almond trees,” sang the canary. “I flew with my brothers and sisters above the splendid flowers and over the crystal clear sea with plants waving on the bottom. I also saw many lovely parrots who told the most amusing stories—long ones and so many of them!”

“Those were wild birds,” said the parrot. “They had no education. Come, let’s now be human! Why aren’t you laughing? If the woman and all the strangers can laugh, so can you. It’s a great flaw not to be able to appreciate the comical. Come, let’s now be human.”

“Oh, do you remember the beautiful girls who danced under the tents stretched from the flowering trees? Do you remember the soft fruit and the soothing juices of the wild herbs?”

“Yes, yes,” answered the parrot. “But I’m much better off here! I get good food and am treated very well. I know that I’m clever, and I don’t need anything more. Come, let’s now be human. You are a poetic soul, as they call it, but I have deep knowledge and wit. You have your genius but no moderation. You fly into these high natural raptures, and that’s why they cover you up. They don’t do that to me because I have cost them a lot more. I tell jokes by the beaker-full and impress them with that. Come, let’s now be human!”

“Oh, my warm, flowering native land!” the canary sang. “I’ll sing about your dark green trees, about your quiet coves, where the branches kiss the clear surface of the water. I’ll sing about all my brilliant brothers’ and sisters’ joy, where the desert’s plant source¹³ grows.”

“Lay off those whining notes,” said the parrot. “Say something we can laugh at. Laughter is a sign of the highest spiritual stage. See if a dog or a horse can laugh. No, they can cry, but laughter only belongs to people. Ho, ho, ho,” laughed Poppy-boy and added his joke, “Come, let’s now be human.”

“You little grey Danish bird,” said the canary. “You have also been captured. It must be cold in your forests, but