TEACHER JENSEN[17]
Karin Michaelis
If the school-children had cared to look about them while they were playing hide-and-seek during recess, they would have seen the sharp tower of a mighty building piercing the air beyond a distant clump of trees. Unless you knew better, you would have believed that it was a castle where knights and beautiful ladies ate game off golden plates and on Sundays regaled themselves with macaroons. But the school-children did know better. They knew, forgot, and remembered again, that it was a prison standing near them, where prisoners lived, each in his own cell, never seeing each other except at church, where black masks disguised their faces. They knew and forgot and remembered again.
Lauritz Thomsen belonged there. Not that he had done anything to be ashamed of—God forbid! But his father was the cook for the prison, and Lauritz knew what the prisoners got to eat—and what they did not get. He lived, so to speak, in prison, but apart from these men with the black masks. He was so accustomed to taking the short cut across the fields to the high red wall and walking through the entrance portal, which was immediately closed and bolted afterhim, that it all seemed like nothing extraordinary. He could see it in no other light. But if his schoolmates began to ask him questions he would hold his peace and blush to the roots of his hair.
His mother worried and grieved about the prison, and sought as best she could to forget what was going on. Filling her windows with flowers, she tried to silence her unpleasant thoughts about the poor creatures breathing the deathly cellar air behind those iron bars. She laid by penny upon penny in the hope of saving enough to buy a little country inn, or any kind of establishment far away from the Living Cemetery, as the prison was called. During her dreams she cried aloud, waking her children, for she always saw people with black masks on their faces swarming behind walls and windows and threatening to kill her. Evil dreams arise from evil thoughts, it is said, but Frau Thomsen could have no evil thoughts. She had only once in her life gone through the prison. It still froze her with terror to think of it, and she could not understand how her husband could sing and enjoy himself at the end of his day’s work. Nor could she comprehend how he could speak of the prisoners as if they were friends or comrades. When he began to carry on in this way she would leave the room and not come back until he had promised to talk about something else.
Children are children. They can accustom themselves to wading in a river where crocodiles sleep, or to playing in a jungle where snakes hang from the trees. Children become accustomed to living near aprison just as they get used to a father who drinks or a mother who scolds. They think of it, forget it, and remember it again. Thoughts glide across their minds like shadows; for a moment everything seems dark, and suddenly the sun shines once more.
Whenever a prisoner escaped, the school-children were thrown into a great commotion. They followed the pursuit from afar, listening to the shots, the alarm signals, the whistles. They leaned out of windows and saw the prison wardens rushing in all directions, on foot, and on horseback. Nothing was so exciting as a man hunt, either over winter snow or over green summer fields. When the fugitive was taken, peace descended upon all their souls. Now the only question was what punishment would be meted out to the victim, and all eyes were turned toward Lauritz. But Lauritz said nothing. He was ashamed without quite knowing why.
Prison and the prisoners would be forgotten save when a boy or girl at play would suddenly gape at the high towers to the east, jutting up there above the forest.
The children had a new teacher. He was called Teacher Jensen—nothing more. If he had a Christian name, he was never called by it. Just Teacher Jensen. And Teacher Jensen was little and frail, and Teacher Jensen’s voice was as little and frail as he. But there was a wonderful quality in his voice, like a violin that makes a much louder noise than anyone would believe possible. The children did not sleep in his classes. They were not even drowsy. In his classes theyforgot to write notes to each other or secretly to eat bread and butter behind their desks. They only listened and asked questions. Teacher Jensen had an answer for everything. They could ask Teacher Jensen all kinds of questions. But sometimes he would shake his head and say: “I seem to have forgotten it. Let me think a minute.” Or worse yet: “I don’t know. I never knew it. But I will look it up. It is to be found in some book, or a friend will tell me the answer.” The children found that there was something splendid about having a teacher of whom you could ask all kinds of questions and who sometimes did not know the answer offhand.
Teacher Jensen talked about new things and old, and his speech was not like pepper shaken from a pepper pot. Even while the children were playing in the fields, they would remember what he had said. Yes, it remained fast in their minds.
One day Teacher Jensen said that murder was by no means the worst thing a man could do, and that it was much worse to think or say or do evil to another human being, or to make a defenseless animal suffer. And the children were full of wonder. It seemed that a new door had been opened to them, and each passed through it, one after another. Yes, it was true, what he said. They understood his meaning clearly, but they cast their eyes down, for all of them knew they had often done what was much worse than murder. Perhaps they would do it again, but not willingly, never willingly. Yet there was another thing worse than murder, and that was to act without using your will.
One day Teacher Jensen brought with him a sick, whining little cat which he had found on his way to school. He had put it under his cloak to keep it warm, and he stroked its back and its sharp little head. It was an ugly, gray, dirty cat. Teacher Jensen did not tell the children what he was going to do with it, but simply sat with the cat in his lap and rubbed his cheek against its head. To the children this poor little sick gray cat was the whole world. They took a silent vow that they would cure it. Through Teacher Jensen’s little gray cat they had peered deep into the soul of an animal, and what they saw was more beautiful and more pure than a human soul.
Teacher Jensen often went on Sunday excursions with the children. Whoever wanted to could come, and all of them wanted to. It so happened that one Sunday morning in the autumn they were walking among falling leaves, and the earth clung to their shoes in little lumps. It had been raining, and was likely to rain again. Traversing a bit of open country, they soon entered the big forest in the distance. Ahead of them was the “castle” that was a prison. Lauritz ran in to get a scarf. Teacher Jensen saw him and drew his hand over his eyes, and as he cast down his eyes it was clear that he had been crying; but no one asked anything, no one spoke. They arrived at a vast grove of fir trees standing in long rows, with their evergreen branches above and their yellow trunks below. Teacher Jensen explained that such a forest could grow from a mere handful of tiny grains. The children knew this perfectly well; yet it sounded quite new.They suddenly understood that trees lived, breathed, and thought, that they strove for the light as poor people strive for bread.
“Now let’s begin the game,” said Teacher Jensen. “Let’s imagine that this forest of fir trees is a prison, and that we are all prisoners, each in his own cell. Let us do this for one hour. I am holding a watch in my hand. During that hour let no one speak, for we are prisoners, and speech is forbidden.”
This was a new game, a peculiar game. The rain had stopped some time ago, but drops were still falling from the high trees. The children stood, each under his own tree, and felt the water dripping and dripping on cheeks and hands. The children stood with the water dripping off them, laughing and shouting to each other side by side cell by cell. Slowly the laughter died and their faces became serious. All eyes were directed toward Teacher Jensen, who stood with the watch in his hand. He seemed to see nobody, and did not announce when the hour should begin.
The children felt as if they ought to hold their breath, for surely something important and serious was afoot. It was not like the times when they had gone out with other teachers, when hatred and pride cropped up as soon as the school door was closed. This was serious, and each breath was like a bucketful of water from a deep, deep well. Was time standing still? Had not many hours already passed? Were they really prisoners after all? They did not crawl away, though there was nothing to stop them. Teacher Jensen did not look around him at all, yet as soon asany of the children thought of creeping away they could not help remembering what happened when a prisoner escaped and they heard the shots ring out, the alarm bells clang, the whistles blow, and saw the wardens riding off in all directions hunting the fugitive. Their feet would not obey them—they were bound fast by Teacher Jensen’s word; the outstretched hand with the watch held them in their places. Yes, they were prisoners, each in his own cell, and darkness settled and a gentle mist descended, veil upon veil.
Was this what it was like being a prisoner?
The hour was up.
Every one sighed with relief, yet they all stood quiet for a moment, as if they could not really believe that they had regained their freedom. Then they sprang up and clustered around Teacher Jensen, asking him questions. It was growing dark, and he put his watch in his pocket, saying: “It is just as hard to be a prison watchman as to be a prisoner.”
The children had never thought of this before, and after a long pause Teacher Jensen added: “The lot of the prison warden is the hardest of all, for he can do nothing for the prisoners; and in his heart he wants to help them all he can, yet they are not able to read his thoughts.”
And after another pause he said: “I knew a man who spent seventeen years in prison and then died there.”
When Lauritz reached home his mother was sitting at the piano playing and singing. The smell of freshlybaked cake filled the room. On the table stood a glass bowl of apples. Lauritz’s father sat on a chair smoking his pipe. Without knowing just what he said or why he said it, Lauritz went up to the piano and whispered in his mother’s ear: “When I am a big man I shall be a prison warden.”
“What did you say?” she cried. “A prison warden, Lauritz? In there with those people? Never!”
Lauritz repeated: “When I am a big man I shall be a prison warden.”
And then something happened that was never explained. Who had the idea first no one knew. Perhaps it entered all those little heads at the same time, in that hour when they were standing, each a prisoner under his own tree, each in his own cell—just in a single hour.
When Teacher Jensen was told about the plan, he only nodded as if he had known about it long ago. But when they begged him to talk to the prison inspector, since their scheme was contrary to all regulations, he shook his head, saying: “It is your idea. You must carry it out. It is up to you, if you believe in yourselves, to stand fast by your beliefs.”
That was two months before Christmas, and all the school-children, big and little, boys and girls, were there. Money was the first necessity, and it had to be collected in modest amounts and earned in an honorable way. Teacher Jensen said that if the gift was not honest no good came of it. The children all saved the money that they would ordinarily have spent onsweets and on stamps for their albums. They went on little errands, chopped wood, carried water, and scrubbed milk cans, wooden buckets, and copper tubs. The money was put into a big earthenware pig that Teacher Jensen had put in the wardrobe at school. No one knew who gave the most or who gave the least.
Lauritz announced that, including the seventeen sick people, there were three hundred and ten prisoners in the jail.
In the middle of December the pig was broken and the money was counted over and over, but it did not amount to much. Then a little fellow came with his little private savings bank, and a girl with a little earthen receptacle in which she kept her spare pennies. That started them off. Many little hoardings destined for Christmas presents were emptied into the great common fund at school. See how it grew! Shiny paper was now brought, and flags and walnuts. Every day the whole school stayed until supper time cutting out and pasting. The little girls made white and red roses. They wove baskets, gilded walnuts, pasted flags on little sticks, and cut out cardboard stars, painting them gold and silver. The little ones made, out of clay, birds’ nests with eggs in them, and little horses and cows that they covered with bright colors so they looked like real live animals. The boys cut out photographs and made little boxes. With jig saws they fashioned napkin rings and paper weights.
Christmas trees were bought—three hundred and ten real fir trees, for which the gardener charged only twenty-five pfennigs apiece.
Teacher Jensen emptied his purse on the desk. It had once been black, but it had long since turned brown, and was full of cracks. “That belonged to the man who spent seventeen years in prison,” he announced. “He had it there with him. He kept it there for seventeen long years.”
No one asked who the man was, but the money had to be counted over many times, for the children’s eyes were moist and they had to keep wiping the tears away.
On the Sunday before Christmas the children went with Teacher Jensen to the local store and bought a lot of tobacco and chocolate, almonds and raisins, playing cards and brightly colored handkerchiefs, and writing paper. And they got a lot of old Christmas books too, which were given to them free because they were at the bottom of the pile and were out of date.
The parents of the children had to contribute whether they wanted to or not, and bags full of cookies and nuts, playing cards and books, came out of each house.
Lauritz’s father had spoken in all secrecy to the prison chaplain, who went as a representative to the inspector. But the inspector hemmed and hawed saying: “That goes against all regulations. It’s impossible. It can’t be allowed on any ground whatever.” The chaplain was to have told this to Lauritz’s father, and Lauritz was to have brought the news to the children that the plan had to be abandoned. But the chaplain said nothing to Lauritz’s father, and thechildren did not know that it was impossible and could never be allowed.
All the parents, no matter how much they had to do, made a point of going into the schoolhouse the day before Christmas and seeing the three hundred little sparkling Christmas trees, each laden with joy, each with its star on the top, each with its white and red roses, white and red flags, and white and red candles, each decorated with tinsel and hung with gifts. To every tree a little letter was fastened, written by a boy or a girl. What was in this letter only the writer and perhaps Teacher Jensen knew—for Teacher Jensen had to help the little ones who only knew how to print numbers and capital letters.
The church bells rang over the town and called the faithful to God’s worship. The prison bells rang out over the prison and called the prisoners to the prison church. Before the school was drawn up a row of wagons which had been laden with the little Christmas trees. Each child then took his tree under his arm and set out, following the wagons, singing as he went. It was a Christmas party without snow, but a Christmas party just the same.
Stopping before the prison, they rang the bell, and asked to speak to the inspector. He came out, and the moment he appeared Teacher Jensen and all the children began to sing: “O du fröhliche, o, du selige, gnaden-bringende Weihnachtszeit....”
The inspector shook his head sadly and raised his hands in the air. It was impossible, absolutely impossible—he had said so. But the children kept righton singing, and seemed not to hear him. As the inspector afterward said, when the director of all the prisons in that district demanded an explanation: “A man is only human, and had you been in my place, Mr. Director, you would have done as I did, even if it had cost you your position.”
Thus it came to pass that this one time Christmas was celebrated in each cell of the big prison—a good, happy, cheerful Christmas. When the prisoners came back from the worship of God with their black masks on their faces they found a Christmas tree in every cell, and the cell doors stood open until the candles had burned out, and the prisoners received permission to go freely from cell to cell all through the corridor to look at each other’s Christmas trees and gifts—to look at them and to compare them. But each prisoner thought that his little tree and his present were the most beautiful and the best of all.
When the last light had burned out, the doors were closed, and far into the night the prisoners sang the Christmas carols of their childhood, free from distress, grief, and all spitefulness.
And as the last light flickered out behind the high walls the thin figure of a man with his coat collar up over his ears and his hat pulled over his face crept along the prison wall. Through the night air he heard the voices singing, “Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht.”
Clasping his hands tightly together and raising them aloft into the darkness, he cried: “I thank thee, father. Thy guilt has been atoned for ten times over.”
FOOTNOTES:[17]Reprinted from the “Living Age” by permission.
[17]Reprinted from the “Living Age” by permission.
[17]Reprinted from the “Living Age” by permission.