Telegrams of the Soul

In the Volksgarten

“I’d like to have a blue balloon! A blue balloon is what I’d like!”

“Here’s a blue balloon for you, Rosamunde!”

It was explained to her then that there was a gas inside that was lighter than the air in the atmosphere, as a consequence of which, etc. etc.

“I’d like to let it go—,” she said, just like that.

“Wouldn’t you rather give it to that poor little girl over there?”

“No, I want to let it go—!”

She lets the balloon go, keeps looking after it, till it disappears in the blue sky.

“Aren’t you sorry now you didn’t give it to the poor little girl?”

“Yes, I should’ve given it to the poor little girl.”

“Here’s another blue balloon, give her this one!”

“No, I want to let this one go too up into the blue sky!”—

She does so.

She is given a third blue balloon.

She goes over to the poor little girl on her own, gives this one to her, saying: “You let it go!”

“No,” says the poor little girl, peering enraptured at the balloon.

In her room it flew up to the ceiling, stayed there for three days, got darker, shriveled up and fell down dead, a little black sack.

Then the poor little girl thought to herself: “I should have let it go outside in the park, up into the blue sky, I’d’ve kept on looking after it, kept on looking—!”

In the meantime, the rich little girl gets another ten balloons, and one time Uncle Karl even buys her all thirty balloons in one batch. Twenty of them she lets fly up into the sky and gives ten to poor children. From then on she had absolutely no more interest in balloons.

“The stupid balloons—,” she said.

Whereupon Aunt Ida observed that she was rather advanced for her age!

The poor little girl dreamed: “I should have let it go up into the blue sky, I’d’ve kept on looking and looking—!”