Prevod

There was once a balloonist who came to a bad end: his balloon burst, and he fell to the ground and was dashed to pieces. Two minutes earlier he had sent his son down by parachute, which was the boy’s good fortune. He was unhurt and went about with all the knowledge he needed to become a balloonist, but he had no balloon and no money to get one.

He had to live, so he took to conjuring tricks and learned to speak from his belly, which is called being a ventriloquist. He was young and good-looking, and when he grew a moustache and acquired some fine clothes, he might have passed for a count’s son. The ladies thought him handsome; indeed, one young woman was so taken with his beauty and his clever tricks that she followed him to foreign towns and countries. There he called himself a professor; nothing less would do.

His constant thought was to get himself a balloon and sail into the sky with his little wife, but they did not yet have the money. “It will come!” he said. “If only it would!” she said.

“We’re young people, after all! And now I’m a professor. Even crumbs are bread!” She helped him faithfully, sitting at the door selling tickets to the performance, which was a chilly pleasure in winter. She also helped him with one of his tricks. He put his wife into a table drawer, a very large drawer. She crawled into the compartment at the back, and then she could not be seen in the one at the front. It was like an optical illusion.

But one evening, when he pulled out the drawer, she had vanished from his life as well. She was not in the front compartment, not in the back compartment, not anywhere in the house, neither to be seen nor heard. That was her conjuring trick. She never came back. She had grown tired of it all, and he grew miserable, lost his good spirits, and could no longer laugh and make jokes, so the audiences stopped coming. His earnings dwindled, and his clothes grew shabby. In the end he owned nothing but a large flea, a legacy from his wife, and that was why he was so fond of it. So he trained it, taught it clever tricks, taught it to present arms and fire a cannon—a little one, of course.

The professor was proud of the flea, and the flea was proud of himself. He had learned something, had human blood in him, and had been to the greatest cities, been seen by princes and princesses, and won their gracious applause. It had all been printed in newspapers and on posters. He knew that he was a celebrity and could support a professor, indeed a whole family.

Proud he was, and famous he was, and yet, when he and the professor travelled, they went fourth class on the railway. It arrives just as quickly as first. There was an unspoken vow between them that they would never part and never marry: the flea would remain a bachelor and the professor a widower. That made things even.

“Where you have had your greatest success,” said the professor, “you must never go twice!” He understood human nature, and that is a kind of knowledge too. At last he had travelled through every country except the land of the savages. So he decided to go to the land of the savages. It was true that they ate Christians there, as the professor knew, but he was not quite a Christian, and the flea was not quite a human being, so he thought they might safely travel there and make a good profit.

They travelled by steamship and sailing ship. The flea performed his tricks, which earned them free passage along the way, and they reached the land of the savages. A little princess ruled there. She was only eight years old, but she ruled all the same. She had taken power from her father and mother, for she had a will of her own and was quite wonderfully lovely and naughty.

The moment the flea presented arms and fired his cannon, she became so taken with him that she said, “Him or no one!” She went quite wild with love, and she was a savage already.

“Sweet, sensible little child!” said her father. “If only one could make a man of him first!” “Leave that to me, old man!” she said, which was not a nice way for a little princess to speak to her father, but she was a savage.

She set the flea on her little hand. “Now you are a man, and you shall rule with me, but you must do as I wish, or I shall kill you and eat the professor.”

The professor was given a great hall to live in. The walls were made of sugar cane, which he could walk about licking, but he had no sweet tooth. He was given a hammock to sleep in, and it was like lying in a balloon, the thing he had always longed for and constantly thought about.

The flea stayed with the princess, sitting on her little hand and on her delicate neck. She plucked a hair from her head and made the professor tie it round the flea’s leg, and so she kept him tethered to the large piece of coral she wore in her earlobe.

What a delightful time it was for the princess, and for the flea too, she thought. But the professor was not content. He was a traveller, and loved roaming from town to town and reading in the newspapers about his patience and ingenuity in teaching a flea every human accomplishment. Day in and day out he lay in his hammock, idling and eating his fine food: fresh birds’ eggs, elephants’ eyes, and roast legs of giraffe. Cannibals do not live on human flesh alone; that is a delicacy. “A child’s shoulder with a sharp sauce,” said the princess’s mother, “is the most delicate dish of all.”

The professor was bored and longed to leave the land of the savages, but he had to take the flea with him, for the flea was his marvel and his livelihood. How was he to catch him and get him away? That was not so easy.

He strained all his powers of thought, and then he said, “Now I have it!” “Father of the princess, grant me something to do! May I teach the people of this country to present arms? That is what they call culture in the greatest countries of the world!”

“And what can you teach me?” asked the princess’s father. “My greatest art,” said the professor, “to fire a cannon so that the whole earth trembles and all the most delicious birds in the sky fall down ready-roasted! That is what I call a bang!”

“Bring the cannon!” said the princess’s father. But there was no cannon in the whole country except the one the flea had brought, and that was too small. “I shall cast a larger one!” said the professor. “Only give me what I need! I must have fine silk, needle and thread, ropes and cords, and stomach drops for balloons; they make them swell and rise and soar. They provide the bang in the cannon’s belly.”

He was given everything he asked for. The whole country gathered to see the great cannon. The professor did not summon them until he had the balloon quite ready to be filled and sent aloft.

The flea sat on the princess’s hand and watched. The balloon was filled; it swelled and could scarcely be held down, so wild was it. “I must take it up into the air to cool it off,” said the professor, and he climbed into the basket hanging beneath it. “I cannot manage to steer it alone. I must take a knowledgeable companion to help me. There is no one here who can do that except the flea!”

“I am very reluctant to allow it!” said the princess, but she handed the flea to the professor all the same, and he set him on his hand. “Let go of the cords and ropes!” he said. “There goes the balloon!”

They thought he said, “The cannon!” And the balloon rose higher and higher, up above the clouds, away from the land of the savages. The little princess, her father and mother, and all the people stood waiting. They are waiting still, and if you do not believe it, travel to the land of the savages yourself. Every child there talks of the flea and the professor and believes they will return when the cannon has cooled down. But they will not return; they are at home here with us, in their native land, travelling by railway, first class, not fourth. They make a good living and have a large balloon. No one asks how they came by the balloon or where they got it. They are people of means, respected people, the flea and the professor.