Fairy Tales

THE OLD HOUSE

UP THE STREET THERE was an old, old house. It was almost three hundred years old. You could read the year on the beam where it was carved, along with tulips and hop vines. There were whole verses spelled like in the old days, and over every window a grimacing face was carved in the beam. The upper story hung far out over the other one, and right under the roof was a lead gutter with a gargoyle on the end. Rain water was supposed to run out of its mouth, but it ran out of its stomach because there was a hole in the gutter.

All the other houses in the street were so new and neat looking, with wide windows and smooth walls. You could see that they didn’t want to have anything to do with the old house. They were probably thinking: “How long is that old eyesore going to stand here as an object of ridicule? The bay window sticks out so far that nobody can see from our windows what is going on in that direction. The stairs are as wide as for a castle, and as high as a church steeple. Why the iron railings look like the door to an old burial vault, and there are brass knobs! It’s totally tasteless!”

There were neat new houses right across the street too, and they thought the same as the others, but at one window sat a little boy with fresh, rosy cheeks and clear bright eyes. He certainly liked the old house best, both in sunshine and in moonlight. And when he looked over at the wall, where the plaster had come off, he could make out all kinds of odd pictures of how the street had looked before, with stairs, bay windows, and sharp gables. He could see soldiers with halberds and roof gutters that ran about as dragons and serpents. It was really a house to look at!

An old man lived there. He wore plush trousers, a coat with big brass buttons, and a wig that you could see was a real wig. Every morning an old fellow came by, and he cleaned up and ran errands. Otherwise, the old man in the plush trousers was all alone in the old house. Now and then he came to the window and looked out, and the little boy nodded to him, and the old man nodded back. In that way they became acquaintances and then friends, even though they had never talked to each other, but that didn’t matter.

The little boy heard his parents say, “That old man over there is well-off, but he is so awfully alone.”

The following Sunday the little boy wrapped something into a piece of paper, went down to the gate, and when the man who did errands came, the boy said to him, “Listen! Will you take this to the old man over there for me? I have two tin soldiers. This is one of them. He’s to have it because I know he’s so awfully alone.”

The old fellow looked pretty pleased, nodded, and took the tin soldier to the old house. Later a message came asking if the little boy would like to come over himself for a visit. He was allowed to do so by his parents, and so he went over to the old house.

The brass knobs on the iron railing were shining more brightly than usual. You would think that they had been polished in honor of the visit, and it seemed as if the carved trumpeters—because there were trumpeters among the tulips on the door—were blowing with all their might. Their cheeks looked fuller than usual. They were playing “Tra-ter-ah-tra! The little boy is coming, tra-ter-ah-tra!” and then the door opened. The hallway was full of portraits, knights in armor and women in silk gowns, and the armor rattled and the silk gowns rustled. There was a stairway that went up a long way and then down a little way again—and then you were on a balcony. It was admittedly very rickety, with big holes and long cracks, but grass and leaves grew up from all of them. The whole balcony out there and the walls were so overgrown with green that it looked like a garden even though it was only a balcony. There were old herb pots standing there, with faces and donkey ears on them. The flowers grew wherever they wanted. One pot was over-flowing on all sides with carnations, that is to say, with the green shoots, and seemed quite clearly to say, “The air has caressed me, and the sun has kissed me and promised me a little flower on Sunday—a little flower on Sunday.”

Then they went into a room where the walls were covered with pigskin with stamped-on golden flowers.“Gilding quickly dies

But pigskin survives!”

said the walls.

There were chairs there with such high backs and with carvings all over, and they had arms on both sides. “Sit down! sit down!” they said. “Oh, how I’m creaking! I guess now I’m getting arthritis like the old cabinet! Arthritis in my back, oh!”

Then the little boy came into the room where the bay window was and where the old man was sitting.

“Thank you for the tin soldier, my little friend,” said the old man. “And thank you for coming to visit me.”

“Many thanks” or “creaks, cranks” came from all the furniture. There was so much of it that they nearly fell over each other in order to see the little boy.

There was a picture of a beautiful woman hanging in the middle of the wall. She was very young and happy, but dressed like they did in the old days, with powder in her hair and stiff skirts. She said neither “many thanks” nor “creaks, cranks” but looked at the little boy with her gentle eyes. He immediately asked the old man, “Where did you get her?”

“At the second-hand shop,” said the old man. “There are so many pictures hanging there. No one knows or cares about them because they are all dead, but I knew her in the old days. She’s been dead and gone for half a hundred years.”

Under the picture a wilted bouquet of flowers was hanging under glass. They must have been half a hundred years old too, that’s how old they looked. And the pendulum on the big clock swung back and forth, and the hands turned, and everything in the room became even older, but they didn’t notice that.

“At home they say that you are so terribly alone,” said the little boy.

“Oh,” he said, “old memories, and everything they bring with them come to visit me, and now you came too!—I am doing just fine.”

And then he took a picture book down from the shelf. There were long parades of people, the strangest coaches that you don’t see nowadays, soldiers like the jack of clubs, and citizens carrying waving banners. The tailors’ banner had scissors on it, held up by two lions, and the shoemakers’ was an eagle with two heads, not a boot, since the shoemakers always have to have everything so they can say, “it’s a pair.” Yes, that was quite a picture book!

Then the old man went into the other room to get jam, apples, and nuts. Oh, what a treat it was to be in the old house!

“I can’t stand it,” said the tin soldier, who was standing on the chest of drawers. “It’s so lonely and sad here. When you’ve lived in a family, you can’t get used to this! I can’t stand it! The days are so long, and the nights are even longer. It’s not at all like it was at your house where your father and mother talked so pleasantly, and you and all the other children made such lovely noise. Oh, how lonely the old man is! Do you think anyone kisses him? Do you think anyone gives him a friendly look? Does he get a Christmas tree? He’ll get nothing except a funeral! —No, I can’t stand it!”

“Don’t take it so hard,” said the little boy. “I think it’s really nice here, and all the old memories with everything they bring come to visit, you know.”

“Well, I don’t see them and I don’t know them,” said the tin soldier. “I can’t stand it!”

“You must!” said the little boy.

And the old man came back with such a happy face and with the most lovely jam, apples, and nuts, so the little boy didn’t think any more about the tin soldier.

The little boy went home happy and satisfied, and weeks and days went by with nods to and from the old house, and then the little boy went there again.

And the carved trumpets blared “Tra-ter-ah-tra!! There’s the little boy. Tra-ter-ah-tra!” And the sword and armor in the knight’s pictures rattled, and the silk dresses rustled, the pigskin talked and the old chairs had arthritis in their backs: “ouch!” It was just like the first time, because over there one day and hour were just like the next.

“I can’t stand it!” said the tin soldier. “I have cried tears of tin. Everything is too sad here! Let me rather go to war and lose my arms or legs! That would be something different anyway. I can’t stand it! Now I know what it’s like to be visited by old memories, with everything they bring with them. I’ve been visited by mine, and believe me, there’s no pleasure in it in the long run. I was about to jump down off the chest. I saw all of you over there in the house so clearly as if I really was there. It was that Sunday morning, you remember. All you children were standing by the table singing your hymns like you do every morning. You were standing there with folded hands, and your father and mother were just as solemn. Then the door opened, and your little sister Maria, who isn’t even two years old yet, and always dances when she hears music or songs, no matter what kind they are, was let in—she shouldn’t have been—and started dancing. But she couldn’t get into the rhythm because the notes were so long. So first she stood on one leg and bent her head way forward, and then she stood on her other leg and bent her head way forward, but she couldn’t get it. You were all very serious, although that must have been hard, but I laughed to myself and because of that I fell off the table and got a bump, which I still have, since it wasn’t nice of me to laugh. But now it all comes back to me again, and everything similar I have experienced, and that must be the old memories with everything they bring. Tell me, do you still sing on Sundays? Tell me something about little Maria. And how is my comrade, the other tin soldier? He’s happy, I’m sure of that. I can’t stand it!”

“You’ve been given away,” said the little boy. “You have to stay here. Can’t you see that?”

The old man came in with a drawer in which there was much to see, both pencil, coin, and perfume boxes and old cards that were so big and gilded that you don’t see anything like them today. Then other drawers were opened, and the piano was opened too. It had a landscape painted inside the lid, and it sounded so hoarse when the old man played it and hummed a tune. “She could sing that one,” he said and nodded at the portrait he’d bought second-hand, and the old man’s eyes shone so brightly.

“I want to go to war! I want to go to war!” shouted the tin soldier as loudly as he could and threw himself right down on the floor.

What happened to him? The old man searched for him, and the little boy searched for him, but the tin soldier was gone, and gone he remained. “I’m sure I’ll find him,” said the old man, but he never did find him. The floor was cracked and had holes in it. The tin soldier had fallen through a crack and lay there as if in an open grave.

And that day passed by, and the little boy went home. The week passed and several more weeks went by. The windows were frosted over. The little boy had to breathe on them to get a little peep-hole where he could look over to the old house, and there the snow had drifted into all the scrolls and inscriptions. It covered up the steps as if there was no one at home, and there wasn’t anyone at home. The old man was dead!

A carriage stopped there in the evening, and they carried him out to it in his coffin. He was going to be buried out in the country, and the carriage drove away, but no one followed along. All of his friends were dead, you see. The little boy blew kisses to the coffin as it was driven away.

A few days later there was an auction at the old house, and the little boy watched from his window as things were carried away: the old knights and the old women, the herb pots with the long ears, the old chairs and the old cabinets. Some went to one place, some to another. The portrait of the woman that was found at the second-hand shop was returned there again, and there it would always hang, since no one knew her any longer. No one cared about the old picture.

In the spring the house itself was torn down, because people said it was a monstrosity. You could look right into the room with the pigskin wallpaper, which was tattered and torn. All the greenery around the balcony hung randomly on the fallen beams. And then it was cleaned up.

“That helped,” said the neighbor houses.

A beautiful house was built there with wide windows and smooth white walls. But in front, right where the old house had stood, they planted a little garden and wild grapevines grew up the neighbor’s walls. In front of the garden a big iron fence with an iron gate was built. It looked magnificent. People stood outside and peeked in. And scores of sparrows hung on the vines and chirped all at once as best they could, but they weren’t chattering about the old house because they couldn’t remember that. So many years had passed, and the little boy had grown up to be a good and capable man whom his parents were proud of. He had gotten married and with his young wife, had moved into the house where the garden was. He was there with her one day when she planted a wild flower that she thought was so lovely. She planted it with her little hand and patted the earth into place with her fingers. Oh! What was that? Something pricked her. Something sharp was sticking out of the soft soil.

“Let me see him,” said the young man.

It was—just think! It was the tin soldier, the one who had disappeared in the old man’s house, and who had been rumbled and tumbled about between beams and gravel and then finally had been lying for many years in the ground.

The young wife cleaned off the soldier, first with a green leaf and then with her fine handkerchief that had such a lovely fragrance! And for the tin soldier, it was as if he woke up from a trance.

“Let me see him,” said the young man, and he laughed and shook his head. “Well, it couldn’t be him, but he reminds me of a story about a tin soldier I once had when I was a little boy.” And then he told his wife about the old house, the old man, and the tin soldier he had sent over to him because he was so terribly alone. He told the story exactly as it had happened so that his young wife got tears in her eyes hearing about the old house and the old man.

“It’s possible that it’s the same tin soldier,” she said. “I’m going to save it and remember everything you’ve told me, but you have to show me the old man’s grave.”

“I don’t know where it is,” he said. “No one knows! All his friends were dead. No one looked after it, and I was just a little boy.”

“How terribly alone he must have been,” she said.

“Terribly alone,” said the tin soldier, “but it’s lovely not being forgotten!”

“Lovely,” shouted something near by, but no one but the tin soldier saw that it was a piece of the pigskin wallpaper. All the gold was gone, and it looked like wet earth, but it had an opinion and gave it:“Gilding quickly dies But pigskin survives!”

However the tin soldier didn’t believe it.