And the pixie blew on the fire. It flamed up and burned. “Surri-rurri-rupp!” There the kettle boiled over!
“Now I’m going in to pick holes in father’s socks,” said the pixie. “I’ll unravel a big hole in the toe and the heel, so there’ll be something to darn, if she doesn’t start sprouting poetry then. Darn poet lady—darn father’s socks!”
The cat sneezed at that. He had a cold, even though he always wore a fur coat.
“I’ve opened the pantry door,” said the pixie. “There’s some boiled cream there, as thick as flour porridge. If you don’t want to lick it up, I will!”
“Since I will get the blame and the beating, I may as well lick the cream,” said the cat.
“First eating, then beating,” said the pixie. “But now I’m going to the seminarian’s room to hang his suspenders on the mirror and put his socks in the water basin. He’ll think the punch was too strong, and that his head’s swimming. Last night I sat on the wood pile by the doghouse. I really enjoy teasing the watchdog. I let my legs hang over and dangle. The dog couldn’t reach them, no matter how high he jumped. It made him mad. He barked and barked. My legs dangled and dangled. It was a riot, and woke the seminarian up. He peered out three times, but he didn’t see me, even though he was wearing glasses. He always wears them when he sleeps.”
“Miaow when the mistress comes,” said the cat. “I can’t hear so well. I’m sick today.”
“You’re lick-sick!” said the pixie. “Lick away! Lick the sickness away! But dry your whiskers so the cream doesn’t stick to them. Now I’ll go eavesdrop.”
And the pixie stood by the door, and the door was ajar. There was no one in the living room except Madame and the seminarian. They were talking about “gifts of the spirit.” Gifts that should be set above the pots and pans of every household, as the seminarian so beautifully put it.
“Mr. Kisserup,” said Madame. “In this connection I will show you something that I have never shown another human soul, least of all a man: my little poems, although some of them are quite long. I have called them Poems of a Danneqvinde.1 I am so very fond of old Danish words.”
“And they should be kept and used!” agreed the seminarian. “The language must be cleansed of all German.”
“I do that,” said Madame. “You’ll never hear me say Kleiner or Butterteig. I say donuts and butter pastry.”
And she took a notebook out of a drawer. It had a light-green cover with two ink spots on it.
“There’s a great deal of seriousness in this book,” she said. “I have the strongest sense for tragedy. Here’s ‘The Sigh in the Night,’ ‘My Sunset,’ and ‘When I married Klemmensen.’ Of course, that’s my husband. You can skip that one. But it’s deeply felt and thought-out. The best one is called ‘The Housewife’s Duties.’ They’re all very sad. That’s where my talent lies. Only one poem is humorous. There are some cheerful thoughts. It’s possible to have those too, of course. Thoughts about—you mustn’t laugh at me! Thoughts about being a poetess! This is only known to myself, my drawer, and now you too, Mr. Kisserup. I love poetry. It comes over me. It teases me, rules, and has me in its power. I have expressed it with the poem titled ‘Little Pixie.’ I’m sure you know the old folk belief about the house pixie, who’s always up to tricks around the house. I have imagined that I am the house and that poetry, the feelings in me, is the pixie, the spirit that controls me. I have sung about his power and greatness in ‘Little Pixie,’ but you must give me your hand and swear that you’ll never breathe a word of this to my husband or anyone. Read it aloud, so I can tell if you understand my handwriting.”
And the seminarian read, and Madame listened, and the little pixie listened. He was eavesdropping, you know, and had just come in time to hear the title: “Little Pixie.”
“Why, it’s about me!” he said. “What could she have written about me? Well, I’ll pinch her, pinch her eggs, pinch her chickens, and chase the fat off the fatted calf! You’d better look out, Madame!”
And he eavesdropped with pursed lips, but everything he heard about the pixie’s splendor and strength, and his power over the gardener’s wife made him smile more and more. She meant poetry, you know, but he took it literally, from the title. His eyes glistened with happiness. Quite a noble expression appeared around the corners of his mouth. He lifted his heels and stood on his toes and became a whole inch taller than before. He was delighted with what was said about “Little Pixie.”
“Madame has soul, and she is very cultured. How I have misjudged that woman! She has put me in her rhyme. It will be printed and read! I won’t let the cat drink her cream anymore. I’ll do it myself! One drinks less than two, and that’s a savings I’ll introduce to respect and honor Madame.”
“He’s sure like a human being, that pixie!” said the old cat. “Just one sweet miaow from the mistress, a miaow about himself, and he immediately changes his mind. She is clever, Madame.”
But she wasn’t clever. It was the pixie who was human.
If you can’t understand this story, ask about it, but don’t ask the pixie or the Madame.
NOTE
1. Dannequinde is an old spelling of the word for “Danish woman.”
THE PUPPETEER
THERE WAS AN ELDERLY man on the steamship with such a contented face. If it wasn’t lying, he must have been the happiest man on earth. He was too, he said. I heard it from his own mouth. He was Danish, a countryman of mine, and a traveling theater manager. He was a puppeteer, and had his whole personnel with him in a big box. His innate cheerfulness had been strengthened by a technology student, and from that experiment he had become completely happy. I didn’t understand him right away, but then he told me the whole story, and here it is.
“It happened in Slagelse,” he said. “I gave a performance at the coach inn and had an excellent audience, all young except for a couple of old ladies. Then a fellow who looked like a student, dressed in black, comes and sits down. He laughs in all the right places and claps when he should. He was an exceptional spectator! I had to know who he was, and then I hear that he’s a graduate candidate from the Polytechnical Institute, sent out to instruct the people in the provinces. My show was over at eight o‘clock because children have to go to bed early of course, and you have to be considerate of the public. At nine o’clock the candidate started his lecture and experiments, and then I was his spectator. It was remarkable to hear and see. Most of it was Greek to me, as the saying goes, but I did think this: If we humans can find out all this, we must also be able to exist longer than till we’re put in the ground. He just did small miracles, but all of it went slick as a whistle, and straight from nature. In the time of Moses and the Prophets such a technological student would have become a wise man of the land, and in the Middle Ages he would have been burned at the stake. I didn’t sleep all night, and when I gave another performance the next night and saw that the student was there again, I was really in a good mood. An actor once told me that when he played a lover he thought about just one person in the audience. He played to her and forgot the rest of the spectators. The technology candidate was my ‘her’—the only one I performed for.
“When the performance was over, all the puppets took their curtain call, and the technology student invited me to have a glass of wine with him in his room. He talked about my play, and I talked about his science, and I think we both enjoyed them equally, but I got the best of it because there was so much in his presentation that he couldn’t himself explain; for example, the fact that a piece of iron that goes through a coil becomes magnetic. What is this? The spirit comes over it, but where does it come from? It seems to me it’s like human beings here on earth. God lets them fall through the coil of time, and the spirit comes over them, and you have a Napoleon, a Luther, or another person like that. ‘The whole world is a series of miracles,’ said the candidate, ‘but we are so used to them that we take them for granted.’ And he talked and explained, and at last it was as if he lifted my skull, and I confessed truly that if I weren’t already an old fellow, I would at once go to the Polytechnical Institute and learn to see the world with a fine-toothed comb, and I’d do that even though I was one of the happiest of men.”