Prevod

Have you heard the story of the old street lamp? It is not so very entertaining, but you can always listen to it once. There was once a good old street lamp that had served for many, many years, but was now to be discarded. This was the last evening it would stand on its post and shine out into the street, and it felt rather like an old ballet dancer dancing on her final evening, knowing that tomorrow she would be put away in the attic. The lamp was terribly afraid of tomorrow, for it knew that it must go to the town hall for the first time and be inspected by the city’s “thirty-six men,” to see whether it was still fit for use. Then it would be decided whether to send it out to light one of the bridges, or into the country to a factory. Perhaps it would go straight to an ironfounder and be melted down. Then, of course, it might become anything at all, but it tormented the lamp not to know whether it would still remember having been a street lamp. Whatever happened, it would be parted from the watchman and his wife, whom it regarded as its own family. It had become a lamp when he became a watchman. His wife had been rather proud in those days: only in the evening, when she passed the lamp, would she glance at it, never in daylight. But now, in these last years, when all three had grown old—the watchman, his wife, and the lamp—she too had tended it, cleaned it, and filled it with oil. They were an honest couple; they had never cheated the lamp of a single drop. This was its last evening in the street, and tomorrow it must go to the town hall: those were two dark thoughts for the lamp, so you can well imagine how it burned. But other thoughts passed through it too. It had seen so much, had shed its light on so much, perhaps quite as much as “the thirty-six men”; but it did not say so, for it was a good old lamp and wished to offend no one, least of all the authorities. It remembered so many things, and now and then the flame flared up inside it, as though it felt: “Yes, people remember me too! There was that handsome young man—oh, it is many years ago now! He came with a letter, on rose-pink paper, so fine, so very fine, with a gilt edge. The handwriting was beautiful; it was a lady’s hand. He read it twice, and kissed it, and looked up at me with his two eyes, which said, ‘I am the happiest person alive!’ Yes, only he and I knew what was in that first letter from his sweetheart. I remember two other eyes as well. How strangely one’s thoughts can leap from one thing to another! There was a grand funeral here in the street. The beautiful young wife lay in her coffin on the velvet-draped hearse. There were so many flowers and wreaths, and so many blazing torches that my light was quite lost among them. The whole pavement was crowded with people, and they all followed the funeral procession. But when the torches were out of sight and I looked about me, there was still someone standing by my post, weeping. I shall never forget those two sorrowful eyes looking into me!” Many such thoughts passed through the old street lamp as it shone for the last time that evening. A sentry relieved of his watch at least knows his successor and can say a few words to him; but the lamp did not know who would take its place, though it could have given him a hint or two about rain and rough weather, about how far the moonlight reached across the pavement, and which way the wind blew.

On the plank across the gutter stood three applicants who had presented themselves to the lamp, believing it was the lamp that had the post to bestow. One was a herring’s head, which shines in the dark, and thought it would save a great deal of oil if it were put on the lamp-post. The second was a piece of rotten wood, which also glows, and always more brightly than a dried codfish, so it said itself; besides, it was the last piece of a tree that had once been the glory of the forest. The third was a glow-worm. Where it had come from the lamp could not imagine, but there it was, and it certainly shone. Yet the rotten wood and the herring’s head swore that it shone only at certain times, and therefore could never be considered.

The old lamp said that none of them gave enough light to be a street lamp, but none of them believed that. And when they heard that the lamp itself did not have the post to bestow, they said this was very fortunate, for it was much too decrepit to make the choice.

Just then the wind came round the street corner, whistled through the old lamp’s chimney hood, and said, “What is this I hear? Are you going away tomorrow? Is this the last evening I shall find you here? Then you must have a present! I shall air out your head, so that not only will you remember clearly and distinctly everything you have heard and seen, but whenever anything is told or read in your presence, your mind will be so clear that you will see that too!”

“That is a very great gift!” said the old street lamp. “Thank you kindly! If only I am not melted down!” “That will not happen just yet!” said the wind. “And now I shall blow fresh life into your memory. If you can get a few more presents like that, you may have quite a pleasant old age!”

“If only I am not melted down!” said the lamp. “Or can you preserve my memory even then?” “Old lamp, be sensible!” said the wind, and blew. Just then the Moon came out. “What will you give?” asked the wind.

“I shall give nothing!” it said. “I am on the wane, after all, and the lamps have never shone for me, while I have shone for the lamps.” And the Moon went behind the clouds again, for it did not wish to be bothered. Then a drop of water fell right onto the chimney hood. It was like a drip from the roof, but the drop said it came from the grey clouds and was a present too, perhaps the very best of all. “I shall work my way into you, giving you the power, whenever you wish, to turn to rust in a single night, so that you crumble away entirely and become dust.” But the lamp thought this a poor present, and the wind thought so too. “Is there nothing better? Is there nothing better?” it blustered as loudly as it could. Then a bright shooting star fell, leaving a long streak of light.

“What was that?” cried the herring’s head. “Didn’t a star fall straight down? I think it went into the lamp! Well, if such high-ranking folk are applying for the post, we may as well go to bed!” And so it did, and the others too. But the old lamp shone with a wonderfully bright light. “That was a lovely present!” it said. “The bright stars, which have always given me such pleasure, and which shine so beautifully, as I have never really been able to shine, though it was all I strove and longed for—they have noticed me, a poor old lamp, and sent one of their number down with a present for me. It gives me the power to let those I love see everything that I myself remember and see quite clearly! And that is the true pleasure, for when you cannot share it with others, it is only half a joy!”

“That is a very worthy thought!” said the wind. “But you probably do not know that you need a wax candle. Unless a wax candle is lit inside you, none of the others will be able to see anything in you. The stars did not think of that. They imagine that everything that shines has at least a wax candle inside it. But now I am tired!” said the wind. “Now I shall lie down!” And it lay down.

The next day—well, we can skip the next day. The following evening the lamp was lying in an armchair, and where do you think? At the old watchman’s. In return for his long and faithful service, he had asked “the thirty-six men” to let him keep the old lamp. They laughed at him when he asked, and then they gave it to him. And now the lamp lay in an armchair close to the warm stove, and it really seemed to have grown larger, for it filled almost the whole chair. The old couple were already sitting over their supper, casting kindly glances at the old lamp, for which they would gladly have made a place at the table too. They did indeed live in a cellar, two cubits below the ground; to reach their room, you had to pass through a stone-paved entrance hall. But it was snug in there, for strips of cloth kept the draught from the door. Everything was clean and tidy, with curtains round the bed and over the little windows, on whose high sills stood two curious flowerpots. Christian the sailor had brought them home from the East Indies or the West Indies. They were two earthenware elephants with their backs missing, and in place of those backs, out of the earth with which they had been filled, there grew in one the loveliest chives—that was the old couple’s kitchen garden—and in the other a great flowering geranium, which was their flower garden. On the wall hung a large coloured picture of “The Congress of Vienna”; there they had all the kings and emperors at once! A Bornholm clock with heavy lead weights went “Tick! Tock!” and always too fast, but that was better than going too slowly, the old couple said. They ate their supper, and the old street lamp lay, as we have said, in the armchair close to the warm stove. To the lamp, it seemed as though the whole world had been turned upside down. But when the old watchman looked at it and spoke of all the two of them had been through together, in rain and rough weather, in the clear, short summer nights, and when the snow blew so fiercely that it was good to get down into the shelter of the cellar, then everything was right again for the old lamp. It saw it all as though it were happening still. Yes, the wind had certainly lit up its mind! The old couple were so industrious and so capable; not an hour was simply dozed away. On Sunday afternoons a book would be brought out, preferably a travel book, and the old man would read aloud about Africa, about the great forests and the elephants roaming wild there. The old woman listened so intently, glancing now and then at the earthenware elephants that served as flowerpots. “I can almost picture it!” she said. And the lamp wished with all its heart that there were a wax candle to light and put inside it. Then she would see everything exactly as the lamp saw it: the tall trees, the thick branches intertwined, the naked black people on horseback, and whole herds of elephants crushing reeds and bushes beneath their broad feet.

“What use are all my powers when there is no wax candle?” sighed the lamp. “They have only oil and tallow candles, and those are not enough!” One day a whole bundle of wax candle ends was brought down to the cellar. The larger pieces were burned, and the old woman used the smaller ones to wax her thread when she sewed. There were wax candles, then, but it never occurred to them to put a little piece inside the lamp.

“Here I stand with my rare powers!” said the lamp. “I have everything inside me, but I cannot share it with them! They do not know that I can turn the white walls into the most beautiful tapestries, into rich forests, into anything they might wish for! They do not know!”

Otherwise, the lamp stood neatly scoured in a corner where it always caught the eye. People did say it was a piece of old junk, but the old couple did not mind; they loved the lamp.

One day, on the old watchman’s birthday, the old woman came over to the lamp, smiled a little, and said, “I shall light up in his honour!” And the lamp’s tin hood creaked, for it thought, “Now the light will dawn on them!” But it was given oil and no wax candle. It burned all evening, but now it knew that the gift the stars had given it, the best gift of all, would remain a buried treasure in this life. Then it dreamed—and with such powers, one certainly can dream—that the old couple were dead, and that it had been taken to an ironfounder to be melted down. It was just as frightened as when it had been sent to the town hall to be inspected by “the thirty-six men”; but although it had the power to crumble into rust and dust whenever it wished, it did not do so. And so it went into the furnace and became the loveliest iron candlestick, in which someone would put a wax candle. It was shaped like an angel carrying a bouquet, and the wax candle was set in the middle of the bouquet. The candlestick was placed on a green writing desk, in such a pleasant room, with many books and beautiful pictures on the walls. It was a poet’s room, and everything he thought and wrote unfolded all around. The room became deep, dark forests, sunlit meadows where the stork went strutting, and a ship’s deck high on the swelling sea! “What powers I have!” said the old lamp as it awoke. “I could almost long to be melted down! But no, that must not happen while the old couple are alive! They love me for myself! I am like a child to them, after all, and they have scoured me and given me oil! And I am just as well off as ‘The Congress,’ which is something very grand indeed!”

And from that time on it had greater peace within, as the good old street lamp well deserved.