Pictor's Metamorphoses (22 page)

Our tree had long stood dark and a bit foolish on its little table, for some time the sober electric light had been burning as on any other evening, when we became aware of a different kind of brightness at the window. The day had been alternately clear and overcast; beyond the lake valley, on the slopes of the mountains, long, drawn-out, thin white clouds, all at the same altitude, had stood from time to time; they appeared fixed and immovable, and yet, whenever one looked out at them again, they had vanished or had assumed different shapes, and by nightfall it looked as if we would have no sky at all overnight, that we would be embedded in fog. But while we were busy with our celebration, our tree with its candles, our giving of gifts, and memories which came thicker and faster—outside, a great deal had gone on and run its course. When we became aware of this and turned off the lights in the room, we found that an exceedingly beautiful and mysterious world lay outside, shrouded in great stillness. The narrow valley at our feet was filled with fog, upon whose surface a pale but strong light played. Above this bale of fog, the snow-covered hills and mountains arose, all standing in the same uniformly distributed but strong light. And over all these white tablets, the bare trees and forests and snow-free rock formations were like letters of the alphabet, scrawled by a sharpened quill, numerous mute hieroglyphs and arabesques that concealed secrets. But on high, above all this, a mighty sky—white and opalescent—surged with swarms of clouds through which the full moon shone; a restless and undulating sky ruled by the light of the full moon, and the moon vanished and reappeared amid supernatural veils that dissolved and thickened again; and when the moon won itself a piece of clear sky, it was surrounded by elfin cool iridescent lunar rainbows, whose glistening, gliding series of colors repeated themselves in the rims of the irradiated clouds. Pearly and milky the exquisite light flowed and rippled through the sky, reflected more weakly down below in the fog, swelled and diminished as if alive and breathing.

Before I went to bed I lit the lamp again, cast another glance at my gift table, and like children who on Christmas Eve take a few of their presents to their rooms and if possible into bed with them, I, too, took a few things with me to have and to hold a little before going to sleep. These were the presents from my grandchildren: from Sibylle, the youngest, a duster; from Simeli a drawing, a farmhouse with a starry sky over it; from Christine two color illustrations for my story about the wolf; from Eva a painting executed with verve and force; and from her ten-year-old brother, Silver, a letter written on his father's typewriter. I took these things up to the study, where I read Silver's letter once again, then I let the things lie there, and fighting heavy weariness I went up the stairs to my bedroom. But I still could not fall asleep for some time, the experiences and images of the evening kept me awake, and my series of thoughts, not to be warded off, ended each time with the letter from my grandson, which read as follows:

Dear Nonno! Now I want to write a little story for you. It is called: For The Dear Lord. Paul was a pious boy. In school he had heard quite a lot about the dear Lord. Now he also wanted to give him something. Paul looked at all his toys but nothing seemed good enough. Then Paul's birthday came. He got a lot of new toys, and among them he saw a thaler. Then he cried out: That's what I'll give to the dear Lord. Paul said: I'll go out to the field, I know a nice place where the dear Lord will see it and come to get it. Paul went to the field. When he got there he saw a little old woman who could not walk without support. He was sorry for her and gave her the thaler. Paul said: Really it was meant for the dear Lord. Many greetings from Silver Hesse.

On that evening I was not successful in conjuring up still another memory, the one my grandson's story reminded me of. Not until the following day did it turn up of its own accord. In my childhood, when I was the same age my grandson is now—that is, ten—I had also once written a story as a present, for my younger sister's birthday. Aside from a few schoolboy's verses, it is the single poetic composition—or shall I say the sole poetic effort—that has been preserved from my childhood years. I myself had not given it a thought for decades; but a few years ago, I don't know on what occasion, this bit of juvenilia was returned to me, presumably by the hand of one of my sisters. And although I could only indistinctly remember it, still it seemed to me that it bore some similarity or kinship to the story which my grandson, some sixty years later, had written for me. But even if I was certain that my childhood story was in my possession, how would I ever find it? All our bureau drawers were chock-full; tied-up portfolios and stacks of letters with addresses that were no longer valid or no longer legible were everywhere; everywhere were handwritten or printed papers saved from years or decades ago, saved because one could not make up one's mind to throw them away, saved out of piety, out of conscientiousness, out of want of energy and decisiveness, out of an exaggerated esteem for the written word—this once “valuable material” which might one day be useful for some new project, saved and enshrined, just as lonely old ladies keep trunks and attics full of large and small boxes where they save letters, pressed flowers, locks of children's hair. Even if all year long one incinerates tons of paper, immense amounts pile up around a man of letters who only seldom has changed his place of residence and who is getting on in years.

But now I was obsessed by my wish to see that story again, if only to compare it with that of my contemporary colleague Silver, or perhaps to make a copy of it and send it to him as a present in return. I tormented myself and my wife with it for an entire day, and I actually found it in the most unlikely place. The story was written in 1887 in Calw and goes as follows:

THE TWO BROTHERS

[
for Marulla
]

Once upon a time there was a father who had two sons. One of them was handsome and strong, the other was small and crippled; thus, the bigger despised the smaller. The younger one did not like this at all and so he decided to go wandering in the wide wide world. When he had gone a ways, he met up with a carter, and when he asked the man where he was going, the carter replied that he had to transport the treasures of the dwarfs who lived in a mountain of glass. The little one asked him what he would be paid. The answer was that he would receive a few diamonds in payment. Then the little one also very much wanted to go to the dwarfs. And so he asked the carter if he thought the dwarfs would take him in. The carter said he did not know, but he took the little one with him. Finally they reached the Glass Mountain, and the overseer of the dwarfs paid the carter very well for his trouble and dismissed him. Then he noticed the little one and asked him what he wanted. The little one told him all. The dwarf said he had only to follow him. The dwarfs gladly accepted him and he led a splendid life.

Now, we also want to take a look at the other brother. For a long time, things went well for him at home. But when he got older he had to join the army and go to war. He lost the use of his right arm and had to beg. And so as a poor man he came upon the Glass Mountain and saw a cripple standing there, but he hadn't the faintest notion that the cripple was his brother. The latter, however, recognized him at once and asked what he wanted. “Oh, my good sir, I am so hungry that the least little crust of bread would make me happy.” “Come with me,” the little one said, and led him into a cave whose walls sparkled with countless diamonds. “You can have a handful of these, if you can get the stones out by yourself,” said the cripple. With his one good hand the beggar now tried to pry loose some of the diamonds, but of course he did not succeed. Then the little one said: “Perhaps you have a brother. I'll permit you to let him help you.” Then the beggar began to weep and said: “Indeed, I once had a brother, he was small and misshapen like you, but he was so good-natured and kind, he certainly would have helped me, but a long time ago I heartlessly drove him away from me, and it's been a long time since I've known anything of him.” Then the little one said: “I am your little brother. No longer need you suffer want, stay with me.”

That some similarity or affinity exists between my fairy tale and that of my grandson and colleague certainly is not the erroneous notion of a doting grandfather. The average psychologist would probably interpret the two childish attempts along the following lines. Obviously, each of the two storytellers—the pious boy Paul and the little cripple—identifies with the hero of his story; and each creates for himself a situation of double wish-fulfillment: to begin with, a massive receipt of gifts—be they toys or thalers or a whole mountain full of precious stones—and a secret life among the dwarfs, among his peers and far from the grownups, the adults, the “normal” ones. But, above and beyond this, each of the storytellers devises for his narrator a role of moral glory, a crown of virtue, for each of them compassionately gives his treasure to the poor (which in reality neither the ten-year-old old man nor the ten-year-old youth would have done). This may well be correct; I have nothing against it. But it also seems to me that the wish fulfillment comes to pass in the realm of the imaginary and the playful; at least for myself, I can say that at age ten I was neither a capitalist nor a jewel merchant, and never to my knowledge had I seen a diamond. On the other hand, at that age I was already acquainted with
Grimm's Fairy Tales
and perhaps also with the tale of
Aladdin's Lamp,
and for the child the conception of a mountain of jewels was less a notion of wealth than a dream of unspeakable beauty and magical power. And this time, too, it struck me as strange that the dear Lord was not in my fairy tale, though for me He was presumably more of a reality than He was for my grandson, who had only become curious about Him “in school.”

What a shame that life is so short and so full of pressing, apparently important and unavoidable duties and problems; some mornings one scarcely dares get out of bed, knowing that one's large desk is already piled high with unfinished business and that twice more in the course of the day the delivery of mail will further increase the height of the stack. Otherwise, it would be nice to play an amusing and contemplative game with the two children's manuscripts. To me, for example, nothing would be more absorbing than a comparative analysis of style and syntax in the two attempts. But our life is not long enough now for such delightful games. And, in the end, perhaps it would not be advisable to influence the development of the sixty-three-years-younger of the two authors through analysis and criticism, words of praise or rebuke. Because, circumstances permitting, something may still become of him, though not of the elder.

The Jackdaw

I
T HAS BEEN
a long time since, as a returning visitor to Baden to take the cure, I have gone there with the expectation of being surprised. The day will come when the last stretch of the Goldwand will be built over, the lovely spa park converted into factories, but I will not live to see this. And yet on this visit, on the ugly, lopsided bridge to Ennetbaden, a wonderful and charming surprise awaited me. I am in the habit of allowing myself a few moments of sheer pleasure each day when I stand on this bridge—it lies but a few steps from the spa hotel—and feed the gulls with some small pieces of bread. They are not at the bridge at all hours of the day, and when they are there one cannot talk to them. There are times when they sit in long rows on the roof of the city baths building, guarding the bridge and waiting for one of the passersby to stop, take some bread out of his pocket, and throw it to them. When someone tosses a bit of bread up into the air, the youthful and acrobatic gulls like to hover over the head of the bread-thrower as long as they can; one can watch each one and try to make sure that each gull will get its turn. Then one is besieged by a deafening roaring and flashing, a whirling and clattering swarm of feverish life; beleaguered and wooed, one stands amid a white-gray winged cloud, out of which, without pause, short, shrill shrieks shoot. But there are always a number of more prudent and less athletic gulls who keep their distance from the tumult and who leisurely cruise down below the bridge and over the streaming waters of the river Limmat, where it is calm and where some piece of bread, having escaped the clutches of the vying acrobats up above, is always sure to fall. At other times of day, there are no gulls here at all. Perhaps they have all gone on an outing together, a school or a club excursion; perhaps they have found an especially rich feeding place farther down the Limmat; in any event, they have all disappeared together. And then there are other hours when, to be sure, the whole flock of gulls is at hand, but they are not sitting on the rooftops or thronging over the head of the feeder; rather, they are swarming and raising a din importantly and excitedly just above the surface of the water a bit downstream. No amount of waving or bread-tossing will help, they don't give a hoot, busy as they are with their bird games, and perhaps their human games: gathering the tribes together, brawling, voting, trading stocks, who knows what else. And even with baskets full of the most delectable morsels you would not be able to draw them away from their uproarious and important transactions and games.

This time when I got to the bridge, seated on the railing was a black bird, a jackdaw of extremely small stature, and when it did not fly away at my nearer approach, I stalked it, more and more slowly inching closer to it, one small step after the other. It showed neither fear nor suspicion, only attentiveness and curiosity; it let me get within a half step of it, surveyed me with its blithe bird eyes, and tilted its powdery gray head to one side, as if to say: “Come now, old man, you certainly do stare!” Indeed, I was staring. This jackdaw was accustomed to having dealings with humans, you could talk to it, and a few people who knew him had already come by and greeted him, saying: “Salut, Jakob.” I tried to find out more about him, and since that time I've collected quite a bit of information, all of it contradictory. The main questions remain unanswered: where the bird made its home and how it came to be on intimate terms with human beings. One person told me the bird was tamed and that he belonged to a woman in Ennetbaden. Another said that he roamed freely, wherever it suited him, and sometimes he'd fly into a room through an open window, peck at something edible, or pluck to shreds some knitted garment left lying around. A man from one of the French-speaking cantons, obviously a bird specialist, asserted that this jackdaw belonged to a very rare species, which, as far as he knew, could be found only in the mountains of Fribourg, where it lived in the rocky cliffs.