That was the book, it had gone anyway now; Grimm was the children’s Bible, Mama used to say. It was fairy tales, but so was the Greek myth Tanglewood Tales that Miss Helen read in school. It was the same kind of thing, it was real. It went on happening, it did not stop.
It was like the old man on Church Street. He was on the other side of Church Street across the alley; the alley was really a lane with bushes; the bushes ran up one side to the street where Miss Macmullen who had the kindergarten lived, past the Williams’ house. It was the Williamses who said that Papalie was our grandfather.
I was running along the other side of the street with Gilbert and some of the cousins and some of the boys that Gilbert played with. We all stood outside the iron rails where the old man lived. He was with his gardener, the young man who had a knife or a pair of garden scissors in his belt. The old man looked at us. The garden was narrow with a path between the wall of the next house and his own house.
He was a tall old man with a white beard. He said, “Let the girl in.” I was the only girl in the crowd of Gilbert and the cousins and the other boys. So I stood at the gate and looked at the path and felt strange, but I was the only girl so I stepped across the gate-stone to the path in the garden.
The old man said, “What do you want, you can have whatever you want from my garden.” I looked around and I saw a tall lily plant; I said, “I want a lily,” so the gardener or whoever he was, the young man took a knife from his belt or his pocket and cut off a white lily.
Then I went back, but the boys had all gone, Church Street was empty. I went in our front door and Mamalie and Mama were sitting in our sitting room like they did, talking and sewing. I showed them the lily, it was just the lily with hardly any stem; they said, “But it would be lovely on Papalie’s grave,” so I stuck it in the earth that was not yet grown over with grass, on Papalie’s grave.
Then the old man said he would send his sleigh whenever the girl wanted it, so the gardener who was the coachman, came with the sleigh. The streets were all empty, but we drove round the town. I sat with my back to the driver and Mama sat with one boy on either side, under the fur rugs. “Whenever you want the sleigh, just ask me,” said the old man. “It is because the girl asks; if she asks, I will send the sleigh.”
One day I said to Mama, “What has become of the old man on Church Street who sent me a sleigh?” Mama said there was no old man on Church Street who sent us a sleigh. I said, “But don’t you remember, I sat with my back to the driver who was the young man who cut off the lily for me that you and Mamalie told me to put on Papalie’s grave, that I did put on Papalie’s grave.” Mama said no, she didn’t tell me anything like that. Anyhow … when I came to think about it, this was the odd thing; the lily was flowering and the streets were full of snow. It could not be worked out. But it happened. I had the lily, in my hand.
Now Papa’s hand was in my hand.
He called me Töcterlein and I couldn’t help it. It made a deep cave, it made a long tunnel inside me with things rushing through.
There was another book with a picture; Mama cut it out. Because Mama cut it out, it was there always. People do not cut out pictures from their books; sometimes the pictures work loose, but they can be pasted back with that sort of paper that Uncle Hartley showed us that Papalie had for his special plates that had to be put in the book when he was making up the book he wrote about water-things that grow in water, that he showed us under the microscope. You could see what Papalie showed you. You could not see what it was that Papa went out to look at.
The picture was a girl lying on her back, she was asleep, she might be dead but no, Ida said she was asleep. She had a white dress on like the dress the baby wore in the photograph Aunt Rosa sent Mama, that Mama tried to hide from us, of Aunt Rosa’s baby in a long white dress in a box, lying on a pillow. The baby looked as if it were asleep, the girl in the picture looked as if she were dead, but the baby was dead and the girl was asleep and the picture was called Nightmare.
The book was about Simple Science, someone gave it to us when we could not read, but Ida told us what the pictures were about. We knew about the snow anyway, we knew the snow was stars, that each snowflake had a different shape; we knew that and we knew about the kettle, at least we had seen the kettle in the kitchen with steam coming out. It seemed a funny thing to put in the book, but it was, Ida said, to explain how the steam happened, but I did not care about that. What I wanted to know was, what was a nightmare, was the nightmare real?
It was like an old witch on a broomstick, it was a horrible old woman with her hair streaming out and she was riding on a stick, it was a witch on a broomstick, but the book was science, they said it was to explain real things. Then a witch was real; in Grimm it was a fairy tale but a witch in a book called Simple Science that someone gave us must be real because Ida said that was what science was. Papa and Papalie were working at real things, called science; the old witch was riding straight at the girl who was asleep. It was a dream; Ida said, “Nightmare is a dream. That picture is to explain what a nightmare is.”
We did not like that book, we did not notice when it was lost or given away. It was only the one picture. Mama said one of the children had screamed in the night that a nightmare was coming. It must have been Harold, for I do not remember that I screamed. But somebody screamed, it could not have been Gilbert, Harold said it was not him.
It was only a picture, I cut it out,” she said; you could see how she had cut it, the picture was gone.
“What is a nightmare?”
“It’s a name for a bad dream.”
“Why is it a mare? Uncle Hartley said a mare is a mother horse.”
“I don’t know.”
“Is it a night horse?”
“Well, no, I don’t know, it’s only a dream anyhow.”
A nightmare is a mare in the night, it is a dream, it is something terrible with hooves rushing out to trample you to death. It is death. It is the child with the ruffles on her nightgown who they say is asleep, but she is dead. Or is it Aunt Rosa’s baby who they said is dead, but maybe it is asleep?
He goes out in the night.
“What does he do there? Why does he go across the bridge to his observatory?”
“I’ve told you and told you and told you, he goes out to look at the stars.”
“Why?”
“Because that is his work, it is his — work — well he is a professor, isn’t he? They give him money for teaching students, if he did not make money, where would you be, you wouldn’t have a house, you would have no clothes to wear.”
That is what he does. He goes out to look at the stars. Of course, now we are so much older, it is very simple; anyhow his transit house is here just across the field that will be a lawn next spring and they will put up the sundial that says Tempus Fugit which Mama says is time flies. Time flies. He goes out to look at stars that have something to do with time flying, Mr. Evans said, that has something to do with winter and summer and the way the earth goes round the sun. “The earth goes round the sun,” said Mr. Evans. As if we didn’t know that. If people tell you things like that, they talk to you as if you were in Sunday school.