by Alex Flinn
“You are right. Sometimes, I stay up all night reading book after book, for I have no family to object, and when I wake in the morning, slumped over a table or fallen off a chair, back aching, cold because no one thought to cover me with a blanket or tell me to come to bed, I feel very fortunate.”
Silence except for the whirring of the wheel, the tap of his foot upon the treadle.
“You have no family?” I start to open the book.
“I grew up in a foundling home. There is one in town where women can leave their babies if they do not want them.”
I feel his eyes upon me, but when I look up, he is staring at the wheel again, concentrating.
“They . . . leave them there?”
“It is a sort of contraption, a wheel. There is a door on the outside, and the woman, the mother, opens it and places the baby in a sort of bed on a shelf. Then she closes the door and turns a crank and—no more baby.”
“Where does it go?” I feel breathless. Are there many women, women like me, women in my situation? I have never known such a girl, but maybe I did and just didn’t realize it.
“Inside, where someone finds it. Hence the term foundling, I suppose.”
“And they care for it? They . . . ?” Someone had raised him. It must, therefore, be a safe place. Better than the alternative, for both of us to die in the river.
“Many of the babies die soon after.” At my intake of breath, he adds, “But for those who live, I suppose it is not a bad existence. It was there that I learned to read, after all. Had I grown up on a farm with plenty of area to run and play, I might have been illiterate.”
He is trying to cast a good light on it but not doing a very good job. “Did you have many friends among the boys there?”
He laughs, a rueful little laugh. “What? Oh, no. I was always an odd one, I suppose, not fast or good at the games. But there were brothers who taught us, and since I was not interested in playing with a ball or running about like a fool, I got the lion’s share of the teaching. One day, when a lady came around looking for an assistant for her shop, I was hired. I was very lucky that day. Kendra allowed me to sleep in the back of the store until I found a place, and she let me read to my heart’s content.”
I wonder if it was she who taught him his talent for spinning. It seems an impertinent question, though, so I do not ask.
I remember the food I had saved from dinner. “I have something for you.” I walk over and set the basket before him, careful to put down the book before I do.
He looks at it and smiles, though his smile does not reach his eyes. “You are kind.” He stops spinning, lifts the fork, and takes a bite of the cake. But I can tell he is only being polite.
This is confirmed when, after only the one bite, he says, “I must work. There is so much more straw than yesterday.”
I sigh. I know. And I know not why Karl failed to visit me.
He sets the wheel to spinning again. “Read.”
I pick up the book. Faust: A Tragedy does not sound like an enjoyable story but, at first, it is, and a very imaginative one. The elderly scholar, Faust, realizing he has wasted his life, makes a bargain with the devil (signed in blood!) to enable him to once again be young and handsome and seduce the lovely maiden, Gretchen, who falls into his evil clutches.
Oh, how I sympathize with Gretchen! Especially in scene fifteen when, alone after her encounter with Faust, Gretchen spins upon her spinning wheel, sighing that she will never find peace without him. As the man’s spinning wheel clacks in the background, so does Gretchen’s spinning wheel clack in my mind. I read her words:
Only to see him do I look out the window.
Only to find him do I leave the house.
I remember those days when I wanted to run away, to find Karl no matter what, for my life was otherwise worthless.
His tall carriage;
His noble figure;
His smile;
The power of his glance.
I stare at the page. Karl’s eyes meet mine through the lines. The spinning wheel clacks and clacks, turning and turning. Did he really love me? Ever? Or was he merely a seducer, sent by the devil to ruin me, as Faust had ruined Gretchen?
His magical voice!
My own voice breaks into a thousand pieces.
The clasp of his hand!
And, oh! His kiss!
The book falls from my hand as I imagine it. Karl’s face, coming toward me. His beautiful face. Was it ever real?
I do not want to know the answer, and as I think upon it, collapsed upon myself, unable to go on, I hear the clacks of the wheel, endless and desperate as the river, exhorting me to its waters just as the clacks of Gretchen’s spinning wheel exhorted her, just like the whirring of Gretchen’s mind as she considered, as she thought, as she knew that Faust would not return.
But the clacks become irregular now. They slow. They stop.
“Is it too dark to read then?” a gentle voice whispers beside me.
I look at him, for it is not too dark, not quite. I can see his face. I had thought it so ugly, but in the dimness, his eyes are gentle and kind. He had thought to spare me embarrassment by pretending my failure was due to outside influences. My failure was my own, only my own.
I draw in a breath, a shaky one, but at least it is not a sob. I let it out, then draw in another before speaking.
“It is . . . a bit dark . . . I suppose . . . and . . .” I stop again.
In the grayness, I see him nod. “You do not like tragedies, I think.” Before I can answer, he says, “Perhaps, then, you can sit beside me and feed straw into the spinning wheel. And since it is too dark to read, you can tell me a story you do like.”
“I do not know very many stories.” A lie. I want him to tell me one, a happier one, for he knows so many more. But I move off my seat and gather a quantity of straw. The scratchy feel of it takes my mind from other things.
“How about that history book? The one you say your beloved sent you?”
The one you say your beloved sent you. There is a tartness in his voice as he says it, and I know he does not think much of Karl. Nor should he.
“Have you read it?” he asks. “If ’tis too dark to read, perhaps we can discuss. What is your favorite part?”
I am still pondering his words, but finally, I say, “I do not have a favorite part.”
I think I hear him sigh in the darkness.
“I mean,” I say, “I read all of it. It was as if I had been starving, and someone placed a feast before me. I devoured it. I like knowing about things, people I’ll never meet, things other people don’t care about, like Queen Elizabeth or Charlemagne, great rulers or terrible ones. They just seem so . . . real, more real than people I actually know.”
As I say the last, he says at the same moment, “Exactly. More real than people you actually know.”
The spinning wheel vibrates beside me. I reach over and, careful not to upset the lantern, lest the entire barn go up in flames, I pick up some more straw. I give it to the wheel.
“I do not know many people,” I say. “Just Father and a few of his friends. Karl was . . .”
“Me either.” His voice is rhythmic with the clacking. “Books and the people in them are the only friends I have. I always wanted someone to discuss them with. That is why . . .” He broke off.
“What?”
“Nothing. You are very lucky to have your Karl to talk with.”
I nod, not feeling very lucky to have Karl, if I have Karl. I wonder where Karl has been all day, who he was with. I can see him if I use Kendra’s mirror. Yet I do not want to know. I fear to know.
He says, “When I read that book, I pictured the War of the Roses taking place in the wheat field near where I once lived.”
I laugh, for I did the same thing. Unable to visualize places I had never seen, I pictured Joan of Arc in our little church and Queen Elizabeth at the mill. Probably, she lived in a palace like this palace, but I had never been inside one before.
>
“You have read the book I have?” I ask the man.
“Of course. It was at our shop. You saw it there.”
“So did you sell it to Karl then?”
He does not answer for a moment, but when he does, he says, “I do not remember. Perhaps Kendra sold it to him.” He rises and picks up the lantern, placing it closer to me. “I do not need the light to see. Perhaps if I put it here, you will be able to read.”
So I do. I find the book in my satchel and open it to where it will fall, reading about the Thirty Years War and Martin Luther and witch persecutions while the spinning continues.
It is the last that makes me ask, “How is it you can do this, that you can spin straw into gold?”
He stops what he is doing and stares ahead, as if dreaming. Finally, he shrugs.
“I suppose we each have our gifts and abilities. Some people get to be princes or great artists or lead armies. Others get this.”
“But how did you realize it?”
“That is an interesting story. When I lived at the foundling home, people would come occasionally looking to adopt an orphan. Typically, they wanted a baby. If they chose an older child, it was because they needed a robust lad to help on their farm, or their business, or a girl for the washing. I lived there for many years, and I was never chosen, but one day, a man came in, a farmer. He was looking for a boy, someone to help him. He had three daughters, but he wanted a son.”
“And he chose you?” As soon as I say it, I slap my hand to my mouth, to push back the incredulous, insulting words.
But he laughs. “Oh, I know. All the bigger, stronger boys had been taken by the smart farmers who had arrived earlier. But my farmer was stupid, so all he got was me. Also, they told him I was nine when I was twelve, so he thought I would grow more. I did not, as you might guess, excel at farmwork. I was too weak to push a plow, too slow at picking, useless even at milking the cows, a chore his daughter, a girl of only eight, could do.”
“It requires a great deal of strength in the lower arms,” I say, still trying to make up for my prior comment.
“I was afraid of cows. With each failure, the farmer beat me, and then he assigned me what he believed to be an easier task. The last of these was merely to care for the chickens, a task which, he said, his six-year-old daughter could do.”
“You could not have been afraid of the chickens,” I say, trying to lighten up the mood, and as I do, one of the chickens clucks loudly, as if she has heard. I can well imagine his disappointment in his failures. I felt it myself, trying to keep up with my older sisters. But I was not beaten.
“I could well have been afraid of the chickens,” he says. “They were quite threatening, I assure you. But no. For the first days, I was all right. I fed the chickens and gathered the eggs and cleaned the coop, all just as well as the six-year-old did. But, on the third day, the farmer’s wife instructed me that I should spend the night in the barn, watching the chickens. The boy who used to do it had been let go, and this would be my new chore. ‘Surely,’ she said, ‘even one as stupid as you can sit and watch sleeping chickens so they do not get eaten by a fox.’”
I know what is coming. “You could not?”
He shakes his head sadly, his foot moving the treadle more quickly. “The problem was I had been up all day. So though, in the farmer’s eyes, I had accomplished nothing, after a full day in the summer sun, I was tired. I struggled to stay awake, but I eventually succumbed to the sandman’s sprinklings. When I woke, two of the chickens were gone. I knew a fox had gotten them.
“It was the farmer’s wife who discovered me crying in the barn, crying because I loved the chickens. I had never owned a pet. But I was also crying because I had failed again, and I knew what that meant. The farmer’s wife said, ‘When my husband returns, he will give you the beating of your life and send you back to where you came from.’”
“But it was not your fault!” I say, feeling my stomach clench at the injustice of it.
He laughs and, for a second, with his eyes crinkling and his mouth upturned, he is almost—almost—handsome. Not handsome like Karl, but pleasant-looking. I look at his face a moment longer than I need to, for I quite like it.
“Fault is a relative concept. Do you suppose people often care whether scrawny foundling boys are at fault for their transgressions?” When I shake my head no, he says, “I did not mind being sent back to the foundling home. The food was poor, and I was not loved. But these things could be said of the farm as well. It was merely the beating I wished to avoid. So, when the farmer’s wife locked the barn door, I hoped to escape through the window high above me. But how could I reach it? First, I tried to pile up the straw to climb upon it. But it was too thin. I fell through it, and there was not enough to reach the window anyway. I was sad and tired and hungry. I tried to eat eggs from the chickens that clucked around me—the ones I had not carelessly allowed to die. And, in so doing, I spied a spinning wheel in the corner.
“Spinning was something I actually could do. There had been a spinning wheel at the foundling home, and one of the women had taught me to use it. I often helped them. I had not thought to tell the farmer of this ability, for I knew it to be women’s work. But now I thought if I could weave a rope of the straw, perhaps I could pull myself up on it and escape.”
I sigh at this. I know enough about straw to know this would never work. Such a rope would be flimsy and fall apart much like the daisy chains I made with my sisters. It would not lift even his slight weight.
“Of course it did not work, and as I saw the sun grow high in the sky and then sink again, I knew the farmer would be back soon. I spun furiously and wished and concentrated and wanted the chain to be made of a stronger material, and suddenly a rope of gold began to fall from the spinning wheel and onto the floor. I did not know what I had done other than wanting it—desperately—but I put in straw and out came gold! Gold!”
“Had anything like this happened to you before?”
“No. Maybe. Little things like wanting a pfennig to buy a sweet, then finding one.”
“Then can you get everything you want that way, just by wishing?”
He stops spinning then and turns toward me. His gray eyes sweep from my face to my toe, then back again. Finally, he says, “No. No, I cannot get everything I want by wishing.”
He begins to spin again, faster than before, and I think I hear him say something under his breath.
“What?”
“Nothing.” The wheel turns furiously. “To finish my story, I climbed the golden rope to the window by swinging it over a nail I saw. That I was able to climb it was as miraculous as being able to spin straw into gold, for I was quite weak at such pursuits. When I reached the window, I could see the farmer, coming in from the fields, so I knew I had no time. I swung down upon it, then I gathered it to take with me. It proved too heavy, though, and I left it in the wheat field, a good surprise for whoever found it. I ran back to town, fast as I could. I likely need not have bothered. No one there wanted me. I made my way back to the foundling home, where they were none too delighted to see me either. So that is how I happened to be there when Kendra came in a few months later.
“‘I seek a child with special abilities to work in my shop,’ she said. ‘Do you know such a child?’
“She looked at me when she said it, and I thought I knew what she meant.
“‘I can read,’ I said. ‘I mean, I enjoy reading.’ This could be said for few boys I knew.
“‘Reading is a marvelous ability,’ she said with a smile, ‘but it is not the one I seek, not the only one. Has, perhaps, anything unusual happened in your life, in any of your lives?’ She looked at all of us, but she started and ended with me. Some of the others raised their hands, volunteering their skills: They were hard workers. They were the fastest runners. One of the boys said he was an expert pickpocket, so he could catch thieves in her store. Kendra smiled pleasantly at each, but finally, she turned to leave.
“I co
uld not believe it! The opportunity to work in a bookseller’s stall, gone forever. Squandered! I had to say something, do something to make her stay, to make her choose me.
“As her hand reached for the doorknob, I jolted up and barreled toward her. When I say I barreled, I mean I literally went as fast as a rolling beer barrel, knocking against two other boys in the process. I arrived at her side, breathless.
“‘I . . . I . . . ,’ I stammered.
“‘What is it, young man? You have already told me your accomplishments, that you can read. Have you any other, less tiresome abilities?’ But, despite the cruelty in her voice, the gleam in her eyes said she knew I had. ‘You can whisper it in my ear.’
“With my hand, I beckoned to her to lean down. Then, I whispered, ‘I can spin straw into gold!’
“A boy who had been standing nearby heard and repeated it loudly. This caused all the assembled boys to roar with laughter. I started to slink away. But I felt Kendra’s hand upon my shoulder, turning me back toward her.
“‘You have done this?’ she whispered, and when I nodded, to the boys’ further laughter and the disapproving sneers of the other adults, she pulled me away, out the door into an alley, where she said, ‘Where? Under what circumstances?’
“So I told her about the farmer and the barn and the chickens and my marvelous escape. And when I finished, she appeared interested. Not only interested but smiling.
“‘And you believe you could do this again?’ she asked.
“Away from my taunting peers, I said, ‘I think so. If I needed to enough.’
“She nodded and took my hand in hers. ‘You need to.’ She took me back in to the matron in charge and said, ‘I will take this boy on trial.’ She squeezed my hand, then took me away, and from that moment on, I was no longer a foundling but an employee. I was special.”
I smile at this, then frown. “But if you can spin straw into gold, why work at a bookseller’s stall or anywhere else? Why not travel, see the world?”
“I did, a bit, but then I came back. After a while, a man wants a home. I have that, a little flat and lonely, but still a home. A man wants to feel useful to someone. A man wants . . .” He looks down at his shoes. “I may travel again someday.”
