第 五 章 · Metamorphosis of the Copying-Clerk
The watchman, whom we have certainly not forgotten, thought meanwhile
of the galoshes he had found and taken with him to the hospital; he now
went to fetch them; and as neither the lieutenant, nor anybody else in
the street, claimed them as his property, they were delivered over to
the police-office.*
*As on the continent, in all law and police practices nothing is verbal,
but any circumstance, however trifling, is reduced to writing, the
labor, as well as the number of papers that thus accumulate, is
enormous. In a police-office, consequently, we find copying-clerks among
many other scribes of various denominations, of which, it seems, our
hero was one.
“Why, I declare the Shoes look just like my own,” said one of the
clerks, eying the newly-found treasure, whose hidden powers, even he,
sharp as he was, was not able to discover. “One must have more than
the eye of a shoemaker to know one pair from the other,” said he,
soliloquizing; and putting, at the same time, the galoshes in search of
an owner, beside his own in the corner.
“Here, sir!” said one of the men, who panting brought him a tremendous
pile of papers.
The copying-clerk turned round and spoke awhile with the man about the
reports and legal documents in question; but when he had finished, and
his eye fell again on the Shoes, he was unable to say whether those to
the left or those to the right belonged to him. “At all events it must
be those which are wet,” thought he; but this time, in spite of his
cleverness, he guessed quite wrong, for it was just those of Fortune
which played as it were into his hands, or rather on his feet. And why,
I should like to know, are the police never to be wrong? So he put them
on quickly, stuck his papers in his pocket, and took besides a few under
his arm, intending to look them through at home to make the necessary
notes. It was noon; and the weather, that had threatened rain, began
to clear up, while gaily dressed holiday folks filled the streets. “A
little trip to Fredericksburg would do me no great harm,” thought he;
“for I, poor beast of burden that I am, have so much to annoy me, that I
don't know what a good appetite is. 'Tis a bitter crust, alas! at which
I am condemned to gnaw!”
Nobody could be more steady or quiet than this young man; we therefore
wish him joy of the excursion with all our heart; and it will certainly
be beneficial for a person who leads so sedentary a life. In the park
he met a friend, one of our young poets, who told him that the following
day he should set out on his long-intended tour.
“So you are going away again!” said the clerk. “You are a very free
and happy being; we others are chained by the leg and held fast to our
desk.”
“Yes; but it is a chain, friend, which ensures you the blessed bread
of existence,” answered the poet. “You need feel no care for the coming
morrow: when you are old, you receive a pension.”
“True,” said the clerk, shrugging his shoulders; “and yet you are
the better off. To sit at one's ease and poetise--that is a pleasure;
everybody has something agreeable to say to you, and you are always your
own master. No, friend, you should but try what it is to sit from one
year's end to the other occupied with and judging the most trivial
matters.”
The poet shook his head, the copying-clerk did the same. Each one kept
to his own opinion, and so they separated.
“It's a strange race, those poets!” said the clerk, who was very fond of
soliloquizing. “I should like some day, just for a trial, to take such
nature upon me, and be a poet myself; I am very sure I should make
no such miserable verses as the others. Today, methinks, is a most
delicious day for a poet. Nature seems anew to celebrate her awakening
into life. The air is so unusually clear, the clouds sail on so
buoyantly, and from the green herbage a fragrance is exhaled that fills
me with delight. For many a year have I not felt as at this moment.”
We see already, by the foregoing effusion, that he is become a poet; to
give further proof of it, however, would in most cases be insipid, for
it is a most foolish notion to fancy a poet different from other men.
Among the latter there may be far more poetical natures than many an
acknowledged poet, when examined more closely, could boast of; the
difference only is, that the poet possesses a better mental memory, on
which account he is able to retain the feeling and the thought till they
can be embodied by means of words; a faculty which the others do not
possess. But the transition from a commonplace nature to one that is
richly endowed, demands always a more or less breakneck leap over a
certain abyss which yawns threateningly below; and thus must the sudden
change with the clerk strike the reader.
“The sweet air!” continued he of the police-office, in his dreamy
imaginings; “how it reminds me of the violets in the garden of my aunt
Magdalena! Yes, then I was a little wild boy, who did not go to school
very regularly. O heavens! 'tis a long time since I have thought on
those times. The good old soul! She lived behind the Exchange. She
always had a few twigs or green shoots in water--let the winter rage
without as it might. The violets exhaled their sweet breath, whilst I
pressed against the windowpanes covered with fantastic frost-work the
copper coin I had heated on the stove, and so made peep-holes.
What splendid vistas were then opened to my view! What change--what
magnificence! Yonder in the canal lay the ships frozen up, and deserted
by their whole crews, with a screaming crow for the sole occupant. But
when the spring, with a gentle stirring motion, announced her arrival,
a new and busy life arose; with songs and hurrahs the ice was sawn
asunder, the ships were fresh tarred and rigged, that they might sail
away to distant lands. But I have remained here--must always remain
here, sitting at my desk in the office, and patiently see other people
fetch their passports to go abroad. Such is my fate! Alas!”--sighed he,
and was again silent. “Great Heaven! What is come to me! Never have I
thought or felt like this before! It must be the summer air that affects
me with feelings almost as disquieting as they are refreshing.”
He felt in his pocket for the papers. “These police-reports will soon
stem the torrent of my ideas, and effectually hinder any rebellious
overflowing of the time-worn banks of official duties”; he said to
himself consolingly, while his eye ran over the first page. “DAME
TIGBRITH, tragedy in five acts.” “What is that? And yet it is undeniably
my own handwriting. Have I written the tragedy? Wonderful, very
wonderful!--And this--what have I here? 'INTRIGUE ON THE RAMPARTS; or
THE DAY OF REPENTANCE: vaudeville with new songs to the most favorite
airs.' The deuce! Where did I get all this rubbish? Some one must have
slipped it slyly into my pocket for a joke. There is too a letter to me;
a crumpled letter and the seal broken.”
Yes; it was not a very polite epistle from the manager of a theatre, in
which both pieces were flatly refused.
“Hem! hem!” said the clerk breathlessly, and quite exhausted he seated
himself on a bank. His thoughts were so elastic, his heart so tender;
and involuntarily he picked one of the nearest flowers. It is a simple
daisy, just bursting out of the bud. What the botanist tells us after
a number of imperfect lectures, the flower proclaimed in a minute. It
related the mythus of its birth, told of the power of the sun-light that
spread out its delicate leaves, and forced them to impregnate the air
with their incense--and then he thought of the manifold struggles of
life, which in like manner awaken the budding flowers of feeling in our
bosom. Light and air contend with chivalric emulation for the love of
the fair flower that bestowed her chief favors on the latter; full of
longing she turned towards the light, and as soon as it vanished, rolled
her tender leaves together and slept in the embraces of the air. “It is
the light which adorns me,” said the flower.
“But 'tis the air which enables thee to breathe,” said the poet's voice.
Close by stood a boy who dashed his stick into a wet ditch. The drops of
water splashed up to the green leafy roof, and the clerk thought of the
million of ephemera which in a single drop were thrown up to a height,
that was as great doubtless for their size, as for us if we were to
be hurled above the clouds. While he thought of this and of the whole
metamorphosis he had undergone, he smiled and said, “I sleep and dream;
but it is wonderful how one can dream so naturally, and know besides so
exactly that it is but a dream. If only to-morrow on awaking, I could
again call all to mind so vividly! I seem in unusually good spirits; my
perception of things is clear, I feel as light and cheerful as though
I were in heaven; but I know for a certainty, that if to-morrow a dim
remembrance of it should swim before my mind, it will then seem nothing
but stupid nonsense, as I have often experienced already--especially
before I enlisted under the banner of the police, for that dispels like
a whirlwind all the visions of an unfettered imagination. All we hear
or say in a dream that is fair and beautiful is like the gold of the
subterranean spirits; it is rich and splendid when it is given us, but
viewed by daylight we find only withered leaves. Alas!” he sighed quite
sorrowful, and gazed at the chirping birds that hopped contentedly from
branch to branch, “they are much better off than I! To fly must be a
heavenly art; and happy do I prize that creature in which it is innate.
Yes! Could I exchange my nature with any other creature, I fain would be
such a happy little lark!”
He had hardly uttered these hasty words when the skirts and sleeves
of his coat folded themselves together into wings; the clothes became
feathers, and the galoshes claws. He observed it perfectly, and laughed
in his heart. “Now then, there is no doubt that I am dreaming; but I
never before was aware of such mad freaks as these.” And up he flew into
the green roof and sang; but in the song there was no poetry, for the
spirit of the poet was gone. The Shoes, as is the case with anybody who
does what he has to do properly, could only attend to one thing at a
time. He wanted to be a poet, and he was one; he now wished to be a
merry chirping bird: but when he was metamorphosed into one, the former
peculiarities ceased immediately. “It is really pleasant enough,” said
he: “the whole day long I sit in the office amid the driest
law-papers, and at night I fly in my dream as a lark in the gardens of
Fredericksburg; one might really write a very pretty comedy upon it.” He
now fluttered down into the grass, turned his head gracefully on every
side, and with his bill pecked the pliant blades of grass, which, in
comparison to his present size, seemed as majestic as the palm-branches
of northern Africa.
Unfortunately the pleasure lasted but a moment. Presently black night
overshadowed our enthusiast, who had so entirely missed his part of
copying-clerk at a police-office; some vast object seemed to be thrown
over him. It was a large oil-skin cap, which a sailor-boy of the quay
had thrown over the struggling bird; a coarse hand sought its way
carefully in under the broad rim, and seized the clerk over the back
and wings. In the first moment of fear, he called, indeed, as loud as
he could--“You impudent little blackguard! I am a copying-clerk at
the police-office; and you know you cannot insult any belonging to the
constabulary force without a chastisement. Besides, you good-for-nothing
rascal, it is strictly forbidden to catch birds in the royal gardens of
Fredericksburg; but your blue uniform betrays where you come from.”
This fine tirade sounded, however, to the ungodly sailor-boy like a mere
“Pippi-pi.” He gave the noisy bird a knock on his beak, and walked on.
He was soon met by two schoolboys of the upper class--that is to say as
individuals, for with regard to learning they were in the lowest class
in the school; and they bought the stupid bird. So the copying-clerk
came to Copenhagen as guest, or rather as prisoner in a family living in
Gother Street.
“'Tis well that I'm dreaming,” said the clerk, “or I really should get
angry. First I was a poet; now sold for a few pence as a lark; no doubt
it was that accursed poetical nature which has metamorphosed me
into such a poor harmless little creature. It is really pitiable,
particularly when one gets into the hands of a little blackguard,
perfect in all sorts of cruelty to animals: all I should like to know
is, how the story will end.”
The two schoolboys, the proprietors now of the transformed clerk,
carried him into an elegant room. A stout stately dame received them
with a smile; but she expressed much dissatisfaction that a common
field-bird, as she called the lark, should appear in such high society.
For to-day, however, she would allow it; and they must shut him in the
empty cage that was standing in the window. “Perhaps he will amuse my
good Polly,” added the lady, looking with a benignant smile at a large
green parrot that swung himself backwards and forwards most comfortably
in his ring, inside a magnificent brass-wired cage. “To-day is Polly's
birthday,” said she with stupid simplicity: “and the little brown
field-bird must wish him joy.”
Mr. Polly uttered not a syllable in reply, but swung to and fro with
dignified condescension; while a pretty canary, as yellow as gold, that
had lately been brought from his sunny fragrant home, began to sing
aloud.
“Noisy creature! Will you be quiet!” screamed the lady of the house,
covering the cage with an embroidered white pocket handkerchief.
“Chirp, chirp!” sighed he. “That was a dreadful snowstorm”; and he
sighed again, and was silent.
The copying-clerk, or, as the lady said, the brown field-bird, was
put into a small cage, close to the Canary, and not far from “my good
Polly.” The only human sounds that the Parrot could bawl out
were, “Come, let us be men!” Everything else that he said was as
unintelligible to everybody as the chirping of the Canary, except to the
clerk, who was now a bird too: he understood his companion perfectly.
“I flew about beneath the green palms and the blossoming almond-trees,”
sang the Canary; “I flew around, with my brothers and sisters, over
the beautiful flowers, and over the glassy lakes, where the bright
water-plants nodded to me from below. There, too, I saw many
splendidly-dressed paroquets, that told the drollest stories, and the
wildest fairy tales without end.”
“Oh! those were uncouth birds,” answered the Parrot. “They had no
education, and talked of whatever came into their head.
“If my mistress and all her friends can laugh at what I say, so may you
too, I should think. It is a great fault to have no taste for what is
witty or amusing--come, let us be men.”
“Ah, you have no remembrance of love for the charming maidens that
danced beneath the outspread tents beside the bright fragrant flowers?
Do you no longer remember the sweet fruits, and the cooling juice in
the wild plants of our never-to-be-forgotten home?” said the former
inhabitant of the Canary Isles, continuing his dithyrambic.
“Oh, yes,” said the Parrot; “but I am far better off here. I am well
fed, and get friendly treatment. I know I am a clever fellow; and that
is all I care about. Come, let us be men. You are of a poetical nature,
as it is called--I, on the contrary, possess profound knowledge and
inexhaustible wit. You have genius; but clear-sighted, calm discretion
does not take such lofty flights, and utter such high natural tones.
For this they have covered you over--they never do the like to me; for
I cost more. Besides, they are afraid of my beak; and I have always a
witty answer at hand. Come, let us be men!”
“O warm spicy land of my birth,” sang the Canary bird; “I will sing of
thy dark-green bowers, of the calm bays where the pendent boughs
kiss the surface of the water; I will sing of the rejoicing of all my
brothers and sisters where the cactus grows in wanton luxuriance.”
“Spare us your elegiac tones,” said the Parrot giggling. “Rather speak
of something at which one may laugh heartily. Laughing is an infallible
sign of the highest degree of mental development. Can a dog, or a horse
laugh? No, but they can cry. The gift of laughing was given to man
alone. Ha! ha! ha!” screamed Polly, and added his stereotype witticism.
“Come, let us be men!”
“Poor little Danish grey-bird,” said the Canary; “you have been caught
too. It is, no doubt, cold enough in your woods, but there at least
is the breath of liberty; therefore fly away. In the hurry they have
forgotten to shut your cage, and the upper window is open. Fly, my
friend; fly away. Farewell!”
Instinctively the Clerk obeyed; with a few strokes of his wings he was
out of the cage; but at the same moment the door, which was only ajar,
and which led to the next room, began to creak, and supple and creeping
came the large tomcat into the room, and began to pursue him. The
frightened Canary fluttered about in his cage; the Parrot flapped his
wings, and cried, “Come, let us be men!” The Clerk felt a mortal fright,
and flew through the window, far away over the houses and streets. At
last he was forced to rest a little.
The neighboring house had a something familiar about it; a window stood
open; he flew in; it was his own room. He perched upon the table.
“Come, let us be men!” said he, involuntarily imitating the chatter of
the Parrot, and at the same moment he was again a copying-clerk; but he
was sitting in the middle of the table.
“Heaven help me!” cried he. “How did I get up here--and so buried in
sleep, too? After all, that was a very unpleasant, disagreeable dream
that haunted me! The whole story is nothing but silly, stupid nonsense!”