The burial was the next week, and Johannes followed the coffin closely. He could no longer see his kind father, who had loved him so much. He heard the earth falling on the coffin, and saw the last corner of it, but then the next shovelful covered it, and the coffin was gone. He was so sad that he thought his heart would break to pieces from grief. Those around him were singing a beautiful hymn, and tears came to his eyes. He cried, and it felt good to cry in his sorrow. The sun shone brightly on the green trees, as if it wanted to say, “You mustn’t be so sad, Johannes! Can’t you see how blue the sky is? Your father is up there now and is asking the good Lord to watch out for you.”
“I’ll always be good,” Johannes said, “then I’ll also go to heaven and be with my father, and what a joy it’ll be when we see each other again! There’s so much I have to tell him, and he’ll show me many things again, and teach me about the splendors of heaven, just as he taught me here on the earth. Oh, what a joy that will be!”
Johannes imagined this so clearly that he smiled, although the tears were still streaming down his face. Little birds sat in the chestnut trees and chirped, “tweet, tweet.” They were happy even though they were at a burial, but they probably knew that the dead man was in heaven now and had wings much more beautiful and larger than theirs. They knew he was happy because he had been good on earth, and that pleased them. Johannes saw how they flew from the green trees, way out into the world, and he felt a great desire to fly away with them. But first he cut a big wooden cross to place on his father’s grave, and when he brought it there in the evening, the grave was decorated with sand and flowers. Other people had done that, because they were all very fond of his dear departed father, who now was dead.
Early the next morning Johannes packed a little bundle. He put his inheritance in his belt—fifty dollars1 and a couple of silver coins. He was ready to wander out into the world. But first he went to the cemetery to his father’s grave, said the Lord’s Prayer, and then, “Good bye, dear father! I will always be a good person so you can ask God to take care of me.”
In the meadow where Johannes walked, all the flowers looked so beautiful in the warm sunshine, and they nodded in the wind as if they were saying, “Welcome into the green fields, isn’t it nice here?” But Johannes looked back one more time, to see the old church where he had been baptized as a little child, and where he and his old father had gone every Sunday to sing hymns. Way up in one of the little windows in the tower he saw the church pixie with his little pointed red cap. He was shielding his face with his bent arm, so the sun wouldn’t shine in his eyes. Johannes nodded good bye to him, and the little pixie waved his red cap, laid his hand on his heart, and blew kisses again and again to show that he wished him luck and a happy journey.
Johannes thought about all the wonders he would now see in the big marvelous world and walked further and further, further than he had ever been before. He didn’t know the towns he passed through, or the people he met. He was far away among strangers.
The first night he had to sleep in a haystack in a field; he had no other bed. But he thought it was just lovely. The king couldn’t have it any better. The whole field with the river, the haystack, and the blue sky above was a beautiful bedroom. The green grass with the small red and white flowers was the carpet, and the elderberry bushes and the wild rose hedges were flower bouquets. For a wash basin he had the whole river with the clear, fresh water where the rushes curtsied with both evening and morning greetings. The moon was a really big nightlight, high up under the blue roof, and it wouldn’t set the curtains on fire. Johannes could sleep peacefully, and that’s what he did. He didn’t wake up until the sun rose, and all the little birds were chirping, “Good morning! Good morning! Aren’t you up yet?”
The bells rang for church. It was Sunday, and people were going to hear the minister. Johannes went with them, sang a hymn, and heard the word of God. It was as if he were in his own church, where he had been baptized and where he had sung hymns with his father.
There were many graves in the churchyard, and tall grass was growing on some of them. Johannes thought of his father’s grave and that it would look like these too, now that he wasn’t there to weed and tend it. So he sat down and pulled the grass, set up wooden crosses that had fallen over, and laid the wreaths, which the wind had torn from the graves, back in place again. He thought that perhaps someone else would do the same for his father’s grave, now that he couldn’t.
Outside the cemetery gate an old beggar was standing supported by his crutch. Johannes gave him the silver coins he had and went happily on his way into the wide world.
Towards evening a terrible storm came up, and Johannes hurried to find a place of shelter, but soon it was completely dark. He finally reached a small church, standing quite apart on a hill. Fortunately the door was ajar, and he slipped inside. He would stay there until the storm passed.
“I’ll sit down here in a corner,” he said. “I’m pretty tired and need to rest a little.” He sat down, folded his hands, and said his evening prayers, and before he knew it, he slept and dreamed, while thunder and lightning raged outside.
When he awoke, it was the middle of the night, but the storm had passed, and the moonlight came shining through the windows. There was an open casket standing in the middle of the church floor with a dead man in it, soon to be buried. Since he had a clear conscience, Johannes wasn’t afraid at all, and he knew that the dead hurt no one; it’s evil living people who cause harm. Two such living, wicked people were standing by the casket, which had been placed in the church before the burial. They wanted to cause harm by throwing the poor dead man out of his casket and out the church doors.
“Why would you do that?!” asked Johannes. “That’s evil and wicked. Let him sleep in Jesus’ name.”
“Oh, rubbish!” said the two wicked men. “He fooled us and owes us money that he couldn’t repay. Now he’s dead as a doornail, and we won’t get a penny. We want revenge, and so he’ll lie like a dog outside the church doors!”
“I only have 50 dollars,” Johannes said. “That’s my whole inheritance, but I’ll gladly give it to you if you’ll promise me to leave the poor dead man in peace. I’ll manage without the money. I’m healthy and strong, and the Lord will surely help me.”
“Well,” the nasty men said, “If you’ll pay his debt, then we won’t do anything to him, you can be sure of that.” They took the money that Johannes gave them, laughed loudly at his kindness, and went on their way, but Johannes arranged the corpse again in the casket, folded its hands, said good bye, and went quite contentedly further into the big forest.
All around, where the moon shone in through the trees, he could see the lovely little elves playing happily. They weren’t bothered by him because they knew well enough that he was an innocent good person, and only wicked people aren’t allowed to see the elves. Some of them were no bigger than a finger, and their long yellow hair was fastened with golden combs. They seesawed two by two on the large dewdrops that lay on the leaves and high grass. Sometimes the dewdrops rolled so that they fell down between the long blades of grass, and then there was hilarious laughter from the other little ones. It was great fun! They sang, and Johannes recognized very well all the beautiful melodies he had learned as a small boy. Big motley spiders with silver crowns on their heads spun long suspension bridges from one hedge to another, and palaces that looked like glistening glass when the moonshine struck the dew. All this continued until sunrise. Then the little elves crept into the flower buds, and the wind took the bridges and castles, which flew up as great cobwebs into the air.
Johannes had just come out of the forest when he heard a man’s loud voice behind him. “Hello, comrade! Where are you headed?”
“Into the wide world!” Johannes said. “I have neither father nor mother and am a poor lad, but the Lord will surely help me.”
“I’m going into the wide world too,” the stranger said. “Shall we join forces?”
“Yes, let�
�s do that,” said Johannes, and so they did. They soon came to think very highly of each other since they were both good people. Johannes couldn’t help but notice that the stranger was much more clever than he was. He had been almost everywhere and could tell about all sorts of things that existed in the world.
The sun was already high in the sky when they sat down under a large tree to eat breakfast. All at once an old woman came by. She was very old and quite bent over, supporting herself with a crutch, and on her back she had a bundle of firewood that she had gathered in the forest. Her apron was folded up, and Johannes saw that three big bunches of ferns and willow branches stuck out from it. When she was quite close to them, her foot slipped, and she fell and uttered a loud cry, for she had broken her leg, the poor old thing.
Johannes immediately wanted to carry the old woman to her home. But the stranger opened his knapsack, took out a jar, and said that he had a salve that would heal her leg right away, so that she could walk home herself as though the leg had never been broken. But he wanted her to give him the three bundles she had in her apron.
“I’m going into the wide world too, ” the stranger said.
“That’s a stiff fee,” said the old woman and nodded her head oddly. She didn’t want to part with her bundles, but it wasn’t pleasant lying there with a broken leg either. So she gave him the bundles, and as soon as he smeared the salve on her leg, the old woman got up and walked better than before. That’s how well the salve worked, but you couldn’t get it at the drugstore either.
“What are you going to do with those bundles?” Johannes asked his traveling companion.
“These are three nice bouquets!” he said, “I like them because I’m an odd fellow.”
Then they walked quite a distance.
“There’s a storm brewing,” Johannes said and pointed straight ahead, “Those are some awfully thick clouds!”
“No,” the traveling companion said. “Those aren’t clouds, they’re mountains. Big beautiful mountains, where we’ll come way up over the clouds into the fresh air! You can imagine how marvelous that is! Tomorrow we’ll be that far up in the world!”
They were not as close as they looked. It took them a whole day of walking before they came to the mountains, where the dark forests grew right up towards the sky, and there were rocks as big as whole towns. It would be a long and hard journey over the mountains, so Johannes and his traveling companion went into an inn to rest and gather their strength for the next day’s march.
A whole group of people were gathered down in the big bar in the inn because there was a man there who was going to put on a puppet show. He had just set up his little theater, and people were sitting around waiting to see the play, but an old fat butcher had taken the best place right in front. His big bulldog—Oh, he looked so ferocious!—sat by his side wide-eyed like everyone else.
Then the play started, and it was a fine piece with a king and a queen. They sat on beautiful thrones and had gold crowns on their heads and long trains on their robes because they could afford it. The most gorgeous wooden puppets with glass eyes and big handlebar moustaches stood by all the doors and opened and closed them to let in fresh air. It was a lovely play, and not at all sad, but just as the queen stood up and walked across the floor, then—God knows what the bulldog was thinking, but since the big butcher didn’t keep a hold of him—he leaped right into the scene, and took the queen by her thin waist so it went “crack, crunch!” It was just terrible!
The poor man who directed the play was very frightened and upset about his queen, since it was the most beautiful puppet he had, and now the nasty bulldog had bitten her head off. But when all the people had left, Johannes’s traveling companion said that he could repair her, and he took out his jar and smeared the puppet with the salve he had used on the old woman with the broken leg. As soon as the salve was applied, the puppet was good as new. In fact, it could move its own arms and legs, and it wasn’t necessary to pull the strings any longer. The puppet was like a living person, except that it couldn’t talk. The man who owned the puppet show was very pleased that he didn’t have to hold that puppet any more; it could dance by itself. None of the others could do that.
Later during the night, when all the people in the inn had gone to bed, there was someone who was sighing so loudly and who kept it up for so long that everybody got up to see who it could be. The man who had produced the play went to his lit tle theater because the sighing was coming from there. All the puppets were lying there piled together, the king and all the henchmen, and they were the ones who were sighing so pitifully and starring with their big glass eyes because they desperately wanted to be smeared with the salve like the queen so that they could move by themselves. The queen got down on her knees and held her gold crown into the air, while she begged, “Just take this, but treat my consort and the courtiers!” The poor man who owned the puppet theater and all the puppets could not help crying because he felt so badly for them. He promised to give the traveling companion all the money from the next night’s performance if he would just smear the salve on four or five of the prettiest puppets, but the traveling companion said that he didn’t want anything except the big sword the man had at his side. After he had received it, he smeared the salve on six of the puppets, who right away began dancing, and so beautifully that all the girls, the living human girls, who were watching, started to dance along. The coachman danced with the cook, the waiter and the parlor maid danced, all the guests danced, and the fire shovel danced with the fire tongs, but those two fell over when they made their first leap—Oh, it was a merry night!
The next morning Johannes and his traveling companion left them all and climbed up the high mountains and through the deep spruce forests. They climbed so high up that at last the church steeples down below looked like small red berries, down among the greenery, and they could see far, far away, many, many miles, to where they had never been! Johannes had never seen so much of the beauty of the world at one time, and the sun shone warm in the fresh blue air, and he heard the hunters blowing on their horns in the hills, so gloriously that his eyes filled with tears of joy, and he could not help exclaiming : “Oh my dear God! I could kiss you because you are so good to us all and have given us all the beauties of the earth!”
The traveling companion also stood with his hands folded, looking out over the forests and towns, lying in the warm sunshine. Just then a delightful sound rang out right above their heads, and they looked up to see a big white swan hovering in the air. It was beautiful and sang like they had never heard a bird sing before. But the song became softer and softer as the swan bowed its head and sank quite slowly down by their feet, where the beautiful bird then lay quite dead.
“Two such beautiful wings as white and big as those the bird has are worth a lot,” said the traveling companion. “I’ll take them with me. See, it’s a good thing I have a sword!” Then with one stroke he cut both wings from the dead swan, for he wanted to keep them.
Then they traveled for many, many miles over the mountains until they finally saw a big city with over a hundred towers shining like silver in the sunshine. In the middle of the city was a magnificent marble castle with a roof of red gold, and that’s where the king lived.
Johannes and the traveling companion didn’t enter the city right away. Instead they stayed at an inn on the outskirts because they wanted to get dressed up before appearing in the streets. The innkeeper told them that the king was a very good man, who never did harm to anyone at all. However, his daughter, God help us, was a very wicked princess. She was marvelously beautiful. Indeed, no one was as beautiful and lovely as she was, but what good did that do when she was an evil, wicked witch, who was responsible for the deaths of so many fine princes? She had allowed all sorts of men to court her. Anyone could come, whether he was a prince or a tramp; it didn’t make any difference. He only had to guess three things she was thinking about. If he could do that, she would marry him, and he would become king of the whole
country when her father died. But if he couldn’t guess the three things, then she would have him hanged or beheaded. That’s how wicked and evil the beautiful princess was.
Her father, the old king, was very sad about all this, but he couldn’t forbid her from being so bad because he had once said that he didn’t want to have anything to do with her suitors. So, she could do as she pleased. Every time a prince came to claim the princess and make a guess to win her, he would lose, and so he was hanged or beheaded. He had been warned in time, after all. He didn’t have to court her! The old king was so upset about all the sorrow and misery that he kneeled with all his soldiers one whole day every year and prayed that the princess would become good and kind, but this she absolutely refused to do. Old women who drank strong spirits dyed their drinks quite black before they drank them. That’s how grieved they were, and more than that they couldn’t do.
“What a hideous princess!” Johannes said. “She really should have a spanking. That would be good for her. If I were the old king, I’d beat her till she bled!”
Just then they heard the people outside shouting “hurrah!” The princess was riding by, and truly she was so beautiful that everyone forgot how evil she was. That’s why they shouted “hurrah.” Riding beside her on coal-black horses were twelve lovely maidens, all in white silk dresses and holding a gold tulip. The princess herself was riding a chalk-white horse, decorated with diamonds and rubies, her riding outfit was made of pure gold, and the whip she had in her hand looked like a sunbeam. The gold crown on her head was like little stars from the sky, and her coat was sewn from thousands of lovely butterfly wings, but she was even more beautiful than all her clothes.
Fairy Tales Page 15
