“Be gone! Gone!” barked the old watchdog. He was a little hoarse and had been ever since he was a house dog and lay under the stove. “The sun will teach you how to run, I’m sure. I saw that with your predecessor last year and his predecessor too. Gone! Gone! And they’re all gone.”
“I don’t understand you, buddy,” said the snowman. “Shall that thing up there teach me how to run?” He meant the moon. “Well she ran before, it’s true, when I stared at her. Now she’s sneaking up from another direction.”
“You don’t know anything,” said the watchdog, “but, of course, you’ve just been slapped up. The one you see there is called the moon. The one who went was the sun. She’ll come back tomorrow and certainly teach you to run down to the moat. There’ll soon be a change in the weather. I can tell by my left hind leg—it has a shooting pain in it. We’ll have a weather change!”
“I don’t understand him,” said the snowman, “but I have the impression that he’s saying something unpleasant. The one who glared and went away, the one he calls the sun—she’s not my friend. I have a feeling about that!”
“Be gone! Gone!” barked the watchdog, turned around three times, and went into his kennel to sleep.
There actually was a change in the weather. A fog, thick and dank, lay over the whole neighborhood in the early hours, and at dawn a wind came up. The wind was so icy, and there was a heavy frost. But what a sight to see when the sun came up! All the trees and bushes were covered with hoar-frost. It was like an entire forest of white coral, as if all the branches were heaped with gleaming white flowers. Each and every one of the countless fine little branches that you couldn’t see in the summer because of the leaves, now stood out. It looked like lace, and was so shiny white that it was as if every branch shone with a dazzling white radiance. The weeping birch stirred in the wind. There was life in it, as there is in the trees in summer. It was all incomparably beautiful. And when the sun shone, how everything sparkled as if it were powdered with diamond dust, and across the snow-cover big diamonds glittered, or you could have imagined that there were innumerable tiny little candles burning, whiter even than the white snow.
“What matchless beauty!” said a young girl, who stepped out into the garden with a young man. They stopped right by the snowman and looked at the brilliant trees. “There’s no more beautiful sight in the summer,” she said, her eyes shining.
“And you wouldn’t find such a fellow as that either,” said the young man, pointing at the snowman. “He’s splendid.”
The young girl laughed, nodded to the snowman, and danced with her friend across the snow, that crunched under their feet as if they were walking on starch.
“Who were those two?” the snowman asked the watchdog. “You’ve been here longer than I have. Do you know them?”
“Yes, I do,” said the watchdog. “She has petted me, and he gave me a bone. I wouldn’t bite them!”
“But what are they doing here?” asked the snowman.
“They’re sweethearrrrrrts,” growled the watchdog. “They are going to move into a doghouse and gnaw bones together. Be gone! Gone!”
“Are those two as important as you and I?” asked the snowman.
“Well, they belong to the family,” said the watchdog. “You sure don’t know much when you’re born yesterday! I can see that from you. I have age and wisdom and know everyone here! And I knew a time when I didn’t stand here in the cold in chains. Gone! Gone!”
“The cold is lovely,” said the snowman. “Tell me, tell me! But don’t rattle your chain because it makes me queasy.”
“Gone! Gone!” barked the watchdog. “I was a puppy once. Little and lovely, they said. At that time I lay in a velvet chair in the house, and in the lap of the master. I was kissed on the snout, and had my paws wiped with an embroidered handkerchief. I was called ‘the loveliest’ and ‘little doggy-woggy,’ but then I got too big for them! They gave me to the housekeeper, and I went down to the basement. You can see in there from where you’re standing. You can see the room where I was the master because that’s what I was at the housekeeper’s. I guess it was a poorer home than upstairs, but it was more comfortable. I wasn’t squeezed and carried around by the children like I was upstairs. The food was just as good as before, and there was more of it! I had my own pillow, and then there was the stove, which is the loveliest thing of all this time of year! I crawled way back under it, so I disappeared. Oh, I still dream about that stove! Gone! Gone!”
“Is a stove so lovely?” asked the snowman. “Does it look like me?”
“It’s the very opposite of you! It’s coal black. It has a long neck with a brass collar. It eats wood so flames come out of its mouth. You have to stay close to its side, very close, or under it. It’s a boundless pleasure! You should be able to see it through the window from where you’re standing.”
And the snowman looked, and he really did see a black shiny polished object with a brass collar. The fire was shining out from below. The snowman felt so strange. He had a sensation that he couldn’t himself account for. Unknown feelings came over him, but they were feelings that all human beings know, if they aren’t snowmen.
“And why did you leave her?” asked the snowman. He felt that it must be a female being. “How could you leave such a place?”
“I couldn’t help it,” said the watchdog. “They threw me out and put me here on a chain. I bit the youngest boy in the shank because he took a shank-bone I was gnawing on. A shank for a shank, I thought. But they took it badly, and from that time on I’ve been chained here. I’ve lost my clear voice. Listen to how hoarse I am: Gone! Gone! That was the end of it.”
The snowman wasn’t listening any longer. He stared steadily into the housekeeper’s basement, into the room where the stove stood on its four iron legs, about the same size as the snowman himself.
“There’s such a strange creaking inside me,” he said. “Will I never be able to get inside there? It’s an innocent wish, and our innocent wishes surely must be granted. It’s my greatest wish, my only wish, and it would really be injustice if it weren’t fulfilled. I must get in there. I must lean up against her, even if I have to break the window!”
“You’ll never get in there,” said the watchdog. “And if you did get to the stove, you’d be a goner. Gone!”
“I’m as good as gone,” said the snowman. “I think I’m breaking in two.”
All day the snowman stood looking in the window. At dusk the room was even more inviting. There was such a soft glow coming from the stove, not like the light of the moon or the sun. No, like only a stove can glow when there’s something in it. When someone opened the door, flames shot out of the stove, as was its habit. The snowman’s white face turned red, and the red glow spread across his chest.
“I can’t bear this,” he said. “How it becomes her to stick out her tongue!”
The night was very long, but not for the snowman. He stood there with his own lovely thoughts that all froze creaking hard.
In the morning the basement windows were frosted over. They had the most beautiful ice flowers on them that any snowman could wish for, but they hid the stove. The panes wouldn’t thaw out, and he couldn’t see her. There was creaking and crunching, and it was just the kind of frosty weather that should please a snowman, but he was not pleased. He could and should have felt so happy, but he wasn’t happy. He had Stuck-on-Stove Syndrome.
“That’s a very dangerous illness for a snowman,” said the watchdog. “I suffered from it myself, but I’ve recovered! Be gone! Gone! We’re going to have a change in the weather.”
And the weather did change. It changed to a thaw.
The thawing increased, and the snowman decreased. He didn’t say anything, and he didn’t complain, and that’s a sure sign.
One morning he collapsed. There was something that looked like a broomstick standing in the air where he had been. The boys had built him around it.
“Now I understand his longing,” said the watch
dog. “The snowman had a stove poker inside him! That’s what moved him so, but now it’s over. Gone! Gone!”
And soon the winter was gone too.
“Be gone! Gone!” barked the watchdog. But the little girls sang in the yard:
“Sweet woodruff, fresh and proud, now sprout.
And woolly willow, hang your mittens out.
Come larks and cuckoos, sing so airy—
Spring has sprung in February.
‘Cuckoo—tweet tweet’—I’ll sing along.
Come dear sun—shine soon and long!”
And then no one thinks of the snowman.
THE HUMANIZATION OF TOYS AND OBJECTS
THE STEADFAST TIN SOLDIER
ONCE UPON A TIME there were twenty-five tin soldiers. They were all brothers because they were made from the same old tin spoon. They held rifles on their shoulders, and their faces looked straight ahead, above their lovely red and blue uniforms. The very first thing they heard in this world, when the lid was taken off the box, was “Tin Soldiers!” shouted by a lit tle boy, clapping his hands. He had gotten them because it was his birthday, and he lined them up on the table. They all looked exactly alike, just one was a little different; he had only one leg, since he was made last, and there wasn’t enough tin left. But he stood just as steadily on his one leg as the others did on two, and he’s the one who turned out to be remarkable.
On the table where they were lined up, there were lots of other toys, but what really caught the eye was a beautiful paper castle. You could look right into the rooms through the little windows. There were small trees outside, around a little mirror that was supposed to be a lake. There were wax swans swimming there who were reflected in the glass. It was all just lovely, but the loveliest was a little maiden who stood in the middle of the castle door. She was cut out of paper too, but she had a skirt made of the clearest muslin and a narrow little blue ribbon over her shoulder like a scarf. There was a shining sequin right in the middle of it as large as her face. The little maiden had her arms stretched out because she was a dancer, and she had one leg lifted so high in the air that the tin soldier didn’t see it, and so he thought that she had one leg just like he did.
“That’s the wife for me!” he thought. “But she’s quite aristocratic. She lives in a palace, and I only have a box, and twenty-five of us live there. That’s no place for her. But I must meet her!” And he stretched out to his full length behind a snuffbox that was standing on the table. From there he could gaze at the fine little lady, who continued to stand on one leg without losing her balance.
Later in the evening, all the other tin soldiers were put into their box, and the people in the house went to bed. That’s when the toys started to play. They played house, fought wars, and went to balls. The tin soldiers rattled in their box because they wanted to play too, but they couldn’t get the lid off. The nutcracker turned somersaults, and the slate pencil wrote noisy pranks on the blackboard. There was so much noise that the canary woke up and started to sing along—and in rhyme at that. The only two who didn’t move were the tin soldier and the little dancer. She held herself straight on tiptoe with both arms outstretched, and he was just as firm on his one leg. He didn’t take his eyes off her for a second.
Then the clock struck twelve, and plunk! The lid flew off the snuffbox. But there was no tobacco in there. No, it was a little black troll. It was a jack-in-the-box.
“Tin soldier!” the troll said. “Keep your eyes to yourself!”
But the tin soldier pretended not to hear.
“Just wait until tomorrow!” the troll said.
When morning came and the children came in, the tin soldier was set on the windowsill. Now whether it was the troll or a draft, the window flew open right away, and the soldier fell out headfirst from the third floor. He fell terribly fast, his leg turned in the air, and he landed on his hat with his bayonet stuck in the cobblestones.
The maid and the little boy went down right away to look for the tin soldier, but, although they almost stepped on him, they didn’t see him. If the tin soldier had shouted, “Here I am!” they surely would have found him, but he didn’t think it was proper to shout when he was in uniform.
Then it started to rain, heavier and heavier, and it turned into a real downpour. When it was over, two street urchins came along.
“Look!” one said. “There’s a tin soldier! He’s going sailing.”
And they made a boat out of paper, set the tin soldier right in the middle of it, and he went sailing down the gutter while both boys ran along side and clapped their hands. Good grief, what waves there were in that gutter, and what a current! Of course, it had been a downpour. The paper boat seesawed up and down, and in between it spun around so quickly that the soldier trembled, but he remained steadfast, didn’t change his expression, looked straight ahead, and held his rifle on his shoulder.
“Tin soldier!” the troll said. “Keep your eyes to yourself!”
Suddenly the boat sailed into a culvert. It was just as dark as it was in his box.
“I wonder where I’m going?” he thought. “Well, it’s the troll’s fault. If only the little maiden were sitting here in the boat, too, it could be twice as dark!”
Just then a big water rat that lived in the culvert came along.
“Do you have a passport?” asked the rat. “Give me your passport!”
But the tin soldier kept still and held his rifle even tighter. The boat kept moving with the rat following after. Ugh, how he ground his teeth and screamed to sticks and straw: “Stop him! Stop him! He hasn’t paid his toll, and he didn’t show his passport!”
The current became stronger and faster! The tin soldier could already see the light where the culvert ended, but he also heard a roaring sound that was enough to frighten a brave man. Just imagine, right past the culvert, the gutter flowed into a big canal. That would be just as dangerous for him as going over a high waterfall would be for us.
He was too close to it, and it was impossible to stop. The boat rushed out, and the poor tin soldier held himself as erect as possible. No one should be able to say that he so much as blinked. The boat whirled around three or four times and filled with water up to the rim so that it had to sink. The tin soldier was up to his neck in water, and the boat sank deeper and deeper while the paper dissolved more and more. Then the water went over the soldier’s head, and he thought about the beautiful little dancer whom he would never see again, and he heard in his ears:
“Onward, Christian soldiers,
Marching as to war... ”
Then the paper fell apart, and the tin soldier fell through, but right away he was swallowed by a big fish.
Oh, how dark it was in there! It was even worse than in the culvert, and it was so cramped. But the tin soldier was steadfast and lay stretched out with his rifle on his shoulder.
The fish swam around and made the most horrendous movements. Finally the fish stopped moving, and then it was as if a bolt of lightning went through it. A light was shining brightly and a voice called out: “Tin soldier!” The fish had been caught, brought to market, and sold, and came into a kitchen, where the kitchen maid cut it open with a big knife. She took the tin soldier around the waist between two fingers and carried it into the living room, where everyone wanted to see the remarkable man who had traveled around in the stomach of a fish, but the tin soldier certainly wasn’t proud of it. They set him up on the table and there—Well, will wonders never cease! The tin soldier was back in the very same living room where he’d been before. He saw the same children, and the toys were standing on the table. There was the lovely castle with the beautiful little dancer who was still standing on one leg and had the other high in the air. She was steadfast too. The tin soldier was so moved that he almost cried tears of tin, but that wouldn’t be proper. He looked at her, and she looked at him, but they didn’t say anything.
Then one of the little boys grabbed the tin soldier and threw it into the stove without any reason, but it
was certainly the little troll in the snuffbox who was behind it.
The tin soldier stood there quite illuminated and felt a terrible heat, but whether it was from the actual fire, or from love, he didn’t know. The colors on his uniform had faded completely away, whether from the trip or from sorrow, no one could say. He looked at the little maiden, and she looked at him, and he felt himself melting, but still he stood steadfastly with his rifle on his shoulder. Then a door was opened, the wind caught the little dancer, and she flew like a sylph into the oven to the tin soldier, flared up in flames, and was gone. Then the tin soldier melted into a blob, and the next day when the maid took out the ashes, she found him as a little tin heart, but the only thing left of the dancer was the sequin, and that was burned to a crisp.
THE SHEPHERDESS AND THE CHIMNEY SWEEP
HAVE YOU EVER SEEN a really old wooden cabinet, the kind that’s dark with age and carved with scrolls and leaves? One just like this was standing in the living room. It had been inherited from Great Grandmother and carved with roses and tulips from top to bottom. It had the strangest flourishes, and in between them little stag heads with many antlers stuck out, but in the middle of the cabinet an entire man was carved. He was really funny to look at, and he made a funny face, but you couldn’t call it a laugh. He had goat’s legs, small horns on his forehead, and a long beard. The children in the house called him GeneralBillyGoatlegs-OverandUnderWarSergeantCommander because it was a hard name to say, and not many people have that title. To have carved him must have been hard too, but there he was now! He was always looking at the table under the mirror because there was a lovely little porcelain shepherdess standing there. Her shoes were gilded, and her dress was beautifully held up with a red rose. She had a golden hat and a shepherd’s crook. She was beautiful. Right beside her stood a little chimney sweep, black as coal, but made of porcelain too. He was as clean and attractive as anyone; the fact that he was a chimney sweep was just how he was cast, of course. The porcelain manufacturer could just as easily have cast him as a prince—it wouldn’t have made any difference.
Fairy Tales (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) Page 59
