The Treasure Chest Page 5

  In a certain village that I could name there’s a path through the churchyard which then goes over a field belonging to the man who lives next to the church, and it’s a right of way. But whenever it rained and the field paths became slippery quagmires, people would walk a yard or two to the side and trample on the growing crop, so that when it rained for some time the path grew wider and the field smaller, and there was nothing right about that! Up to a point the owner was able to do something about it. In daytime, if he wasn’t busy at something else, he kept a strict lookout, and when a stupid fellow came along this path, one who cared more for his shoes than his neighbour’s barley, he rushed out and made him pay a forfeit or settled the matter on the spot by boxing his ears. But at night when there was most need for a good firm path underfoot things only got worse, and each time he marked the path with sticks and brushwood, within a few nights

  they were all pulled out or kicked over, and some people may have done it on purpose. But then something unusual came to his aid. Suddenly the churchyard through which the path passed became unsafe. Several times on dry starlit nights a tall white ghost was seen walking over the graves. When it rained or was pitch black a fearful groaning and whining was heard, or a rattling in the charnel house as if all the skulls and skeletons were coming back to life. Those who heard it all ran trembling back out through the nearest gate, and soon once dusk had fallen and the last swallow had disappeared from the sky no one was to be seen on the path in the churchyard, until one day a level-headed and plucky man from one of the nearby villages was held up in this village and took the shortest way home over the notorious churchyard and the barley field. For though his friends warned him of the danger and tried to dissuade him, he said finally, ‘If it is a ghost, God knows I am taking the quickest way home to my wife and children, I’ve done nothing wrong, and a ghost, even if it’s the worst of the lot, cannot harm me. But if it’s flesh and blood then I’ve got a pair of fists and know how to use them!’ So he set off. But as he was going through the churchyard and had just passed the second gravestone he heard a piteous moaning and groaning behind him, and when he looked round, there behind him, as if from one of the graves, rose a tall pale shape. The moon shone wanly on the tombstones. It was deathly quiet all around, only a couple of bats fluttered by. Our good man didn’t feel so sure of himself now, as he afterwards admitted, and he would gladly have turned around if that had not meant going back past the ghost. So what was he to do? He walked on slowly and silently between the graves and past several black crosses. To his horror, slowly, and still groaning, the ghost followed him to the edge of the churchyard, and that was as it should be, and then out of the churchyard, and that was silly.

  But that’s how things are. However sly a trickster, he always gives himself away. For as soon as our good man saw the ghost on the field he thought to himself: a proper ghost should remain at his post like a sentry, a spirit that belongs in the graveyard doesn’t go on to the farmer’s field! So suddenly his courage returned, he whisked round and with one hand grabbed hold of the white figure and immediately realized that he was gripping a shirt under a sheet and in it was a fellow who hadn’t yet taken up permanent residence in the graveyard. So with his other hand he set about giving him a thrashing until he grew tired of the sport, and since he couldn’t see where he was hitting under the sheet the poor ghost had to take a random beating.

  That was the end of the story and no more was heard of the matter, except that the owner of the barley field was black and blue in the face for a couple of weeks, and from that time on there was no ghost to be seen in the churchyard. You see, the likes of our sturdy gentleman, they are the only true exorcists, and it would be nice if every other trickster and fraud were to meet his match and get his deserts in the same way.

  A Short Stage

  The postmaster told a Jew who drove up to his relay station with two horses, ‘From here on you’ll have to take three! It’s a hard pull uphill and the surface is still soft. But that way you’ll be there in three hours.’ The Jew asked, ‘When will I get there if I take four?’ ‘In two hours.’ ‘And if I take six?’ ‘In one hour.’ ‘I’ll tell you what,’ said the Jew after a while, ‘Harness up eight. That way I shan’t have to set off at all!’

  The Careful Dreamer

  There certainly are some silly people in this world of ours!

  Once a stranger was spending the night in the little town of Witlisbach in the canton of Berne, and when he was going to bed and was already undressed but for his shirt he took a pair of slippers from his pack, put them on, tied them to his feet with his garters and climbed into bed thus shod. Another traveller, with whom he was sharing the room that night, said to him, ‘My dear fellow, why on earth are you doing that?’ ‘Just in case!’ was the reply. ‘You see, once I dreamt I trod on broken glass. And it hurt me so much in my sleep that nothing will ever persuade me to go to bed barefoot again.’

  A Bad Win

  A young fellow was boasting to a Jew how he could wield a knife with such accuracy he could split a pin lengthwise with one blow. ‘Cross my heart, Brother Abraham,’ he said, ‘I bet you half a sovereign I can trim back the black edge of your nail down to a hair’s breadth from two feet away and not spill a drop of blood!’ The bet was accepted, for the Jew didn’t think it possible, and the money put down on the table. The young fellow drew his knife and brought it down – and lost, for with one clumsy swipe he cut the poor Jew’s nail clean off, the black bit and the white bit, and the top finger joint with it. The Jew gave a loud shriek, took the money and said: ‘Alas, I have won!’

  All those who are tempted to risk more than they stand to gain should think of this Jew!

  How many of those who rushed to take their disputes to law might have said the same thing! Once a general announced his victory to his monarch with these words: ‘If I win another victory like this one I shall be the only one to come back home!’ He too meant: Alas, I have won!

  Strange Reckoning at the Inn

  Sometimes a cheeky trick comes off, sometimes it costs you your coat, often your skin as well. But in this case it was only coats. One day, you see, three merry students on their travels didn’t have a brass farthing left between them, they had spent everything on a good time, but nevertheless they went into another inn intending to leave without sneaking out by the back door, and it suited them fine that they found only the landlord’s nice young wife inside. They ate and drank merrily and talked very learnedly about the world being many thousands of years old and how it would last as long again, and how each year, to the day and the hour, everything that happened came to pass as it had done on that day and at that hour six thousand years before. Eventually one of them turned to the landlady, who was sitting on one side by the window knitting and listening attentively, and said, ‘That’s how it is, ma’am, we’ve had to learn that from our learned tomes.’ And one had the impudence to assert that he just about remembered their being there six thousand years ago, and he remembered the landlady’s pretty friendly face very well indeed. They carried on talking for some time, and the more the landlady seemed to believe everything they said the more the young gadabouts tucked into the wine and the meat and a fistful of pretzels, and in the end their bill stood chalked up at five guilders and sixteen kreuzers. They had eaten and drunk their fill, and now they came out with the trick they had planned.

  ‘Ma’am,’ said one, ‘this time we are short of money, for there are so many inns on the road. But since we know you’re a clever woman we hope that as old friends we can have credit here, and if you agree, in six thousand years’ time when we come again we’ll pay our old bill together with the new one.’ The sensible landlady was not upset by that, it was fine by her, she was delighted that the young gentlemen were well served. But before they had noticed her move she was standing in front of the door and was asking the gentlemen kindly just to settle now the bill of five guilders and sixteen kreuzers that they owed from six thousand years ago, since, as they sa
id, everything that happened now was an exact repetition of what had taken place before. Unfortunately just at that moment the village mayor came in with a couple of sturdy men to enjoy a glass of wine together. That didn’t suit our gay young dogs at all! For now the official verdict was pronounced and carried out: you had to give it to someone who had allowed credit for six thousand years! The gentlemen were therefore to pay their old debt immediately or leave their newish overcoats as a pledge. They were obliged to take the second option, and the landlady promised to return their coats in six thousand years’ time when they came again with a bit more money.

  This took place in 1805 on the 17th of April in the inn at Segringen.

  A Strange Walk and Ride

  A man was riding home on his donkey, with his son walking alongside on foot. A passer-by came up and said, ‘That’s not right, you shouldn’t be riding and making your son walk! Your legs are stronger than his!’ So he got down from the donkey and let his son ride. Now another passer-by came up and said, ‘That’s not right, young fellow, you shouldn’t be riding and making your father walk! Your legs are younger than his!’ So they both sat on the donkey and rode on a little way. Now a third passer-by came up and said, ‘What nonsense is this? Two men on a frail animal! I’ve a good mind to take a stick to you both and knock you off its back!’ So the two of them got down, and all three of them went on on foot, father and son to right and left, the donkey in the middle. Now a fourth passer-by came up and said, ‘A queer threesome

  you make! Must all of you tire yourselves out walking? Surely it’s easier if one of you saves his legs?’ So the father tied the donkey’s two front legs together and the son tied its back legs and they found a strong branch by the roadside and carried the donkey home slung between their shoulders.

  That’s what can happen if you try to please everybody!

  An Unusual Apology

  The remarkable thing is that a scoundrel isn’t at all pleased to be called an honest man, he only takes it as a greater insult.

  Two men were sitting in the inn in a nearby village. One of them had a thoroughly bad name, and he was as welcome as a polecat in anybody’s back yard! But nothing could be proved against him in court. The other man quarrelled with him in this inn, and in his anger and because a glass of wine too many had gone to his head he said to him, ‘You scoundrel!’ For one of that kind that should be enough. But this fellow wasn’t satisfied, he wanted more, returned the abuse and demanded proof. So one word led to another and to ‘You thief! You robber!’ And still he wasn’t satisfied and took the case to the magistrate. Now, of course, the man who had heaped the insults on him was in a fix. He didn’t want to eat his words, but he couldn’t prove they were justified because he had no witnesses to bear out what he knew, so he had to pay a fine of a guilder for calling an honest man a rogue and to apologize to him, and he thought to himself: That glass of wine cost me dear! But when he had paid the fine he said, ‘So, Your Honour, it costs you a guilder if you call an honest man a rogue, does it? What then does it cost you if absent-mindedly, say, or for some other reason, you call a rogue an honest man? The magistrate smiled and said, ‘It costs nothing, that’s no insult.’ So now the accused turned to his adversary and said, ‘I am sorry, my honest friend! Forgive me, my honest fellow! Goodbye, honest man!’ Hearing this, his opponent, knowing full well how it was meant, complained angrily that this only added to the previous insult. But the magistrate, who must after all have known he was a suspicious character, told him he could demand no further satisfaction.

  Unexpected Reunion

  At Falun in Sweden, a good fifty years ago, a young miner kissed his pretty young bride-to-be and said, ‘On the feast of Saint Lucia the parson will bless our love and we shall be man and wife and start a home of our own.’ ‘And may peace and love dwell there with us,’ said his lovely bride, and smiled sweetly, ‘for you are everything to me, and without you I’d sooner be in the grave than anywhere else.’ When however, before the feast of Saint Lucia, the parson had called out their names in church for the second time: ‘If any of you know cause, or just hindrance, why these two persons should not be joined together in holy Matrimony’ – Death paid a call. For the next day when the young man passed her house in his black miner’s suit (a miner is always dressed ready for his own funeral), he tapped at the window as usual and wished her good morning all right, but he did not wish her good evening. He did not return from the mine, and in vain that same morning she sewed a red border on a black neckerchief for him to wear on their wedding day, and when he did not come back she put it away, and she wept for him, and never forgot him.

  In the meantime the city of Lisbon in Portugal was destroyed by an earthquake, the Seven Years War came and went, the Emperor Francis I died, the Jesuits were dissolved, Poland was partitioned, the Empress Maria Theresa died, and Struensee was executed, and America became independent, and the combined French and Spanish force failed to take Gibraltar. The Turks cooped up General Stein in the Veterane Cave in Hungary, and the Emperor Joseph died too. King Gustavus of Sweden conquered Russian Finland, the French Revolution came and the long war began, and the Emperor Leopold II too was buried. Napoleon defeated Prussia, the English bombarded Copenhagen, and the farmers sowed and reaped. The millers ground the corn, the blacksmiths wielded their hammers, and the miners dug for seams of metal in their workplace under the ground.*.

  But in 1809, within a day or two of the feast of Saint John, when the miners at Falun were trying to open up a passage between two shafts, they dug out from the rubble and the vitriol water, a good three hundred yards below ground, the body of a young man soaked in ferrous vitriol but otherwise untouched by decay and unchanged, so that all his features and his age were still clearly recognizable, as if he had died only an hour before or had just nodded off at work. Yet when they brought him to the surface his father and mother and friends and acquaintances were all long since dead, and no one claimed to know the sleeping youth or to remember his misadventure, until the woman came who had once been promised to the miner who one day had gone below and had not returned. Grey and bent, she hobbled up on a crutch to where he lay and recognized her bridegroom; and, more in joyous rapture than in grief, she sank down over the beloved corpse, and it was some time before she had recovered from her fervent emotion. ‘It is my betrothed,’ she

  said at last, ‘whom I have mourned these past fifty years, and now God grants that I see him once more before I die. A week before our wedding he went under ground and never came up again.’ The hearts of all those there were moved to sadness and tears when they saw the former bride-to-be as an old woman whose beauty and strength had left her, and the groom still in the flower of his youth; and how the flame of young love was rekindled in her breast after fifty years, yet he did not open his mouth to smile, nor his eyes to recognize her; and how finally she, as the sole relative and the only person who had claim to him, had the miners carry him into her house until his grave was made ready for him in the churchyard.

  The next day when the grave lay ready in the churchyard and the miners came to fetch him she opened a casket and put the black silk neckerchief with the red stripes on him, and then she went with him in her best Sunday dress, as if it were her wedding day, not the day of his burial. You see, as they lowered him into his grave in the churchyard she said, ‘Sleep well for another day or a week or so longer in your cold wedding bed, and don’t let time weigh heavy on you! I have only a few things left to do, and I shall join you soon, and soon the day will dawn.’

  ‘What the earth has given back once it will not withhold again at the final call’, she said as she went away and looked back over her shoulder once more.

  The Great Sanhedrin in Paris*

  That the Jews have lived without a homeland and without citizens’ rights since the destruction of Jerusalem, that is for more than 1,700 years, and have been dispersed over all the earth; that most of them live on the labour of the other inhabitants without doing useful work thems
elves and are therefore also frequently despised, abused as aliens and persecuted: God knows this is a sorry state of affairs! Many in their folly therefore say, ‘They should all be driven out of our land!’ Others are more sensible and say, ‘They should be kept here in useful employment.’

  The great Emperor Napoleon made a start on this. What he decreed and arranged for the Jews in France and the Kingdom of Italy is worth noting, now and in the future.

  Already in the Revolution all the Jews who lived in France were given French citizenship and were addressed without further ado as Citizen Aaron, Citizen Levi and Citizen Rabbi, and people shook them by the hand as brothers. But what did that amount to? Christian citizens have one set of laws, Jewish citizens have another and don’t want to mix with the goys. But two laws and two wills in one body of citizens work like a whirlpool in a stream. The water tries to go both ways, and a mill at that spot doesn’t grind much corn.

  The great Emperor Napoleon understood that all right, and in 1806, before setting out on his long journey to Jena, Berlin, Warsaw and Eylau,* he had letters sent to all the Jews in France telling them to choose men of good sense and learning from their midst to come to him from all the regions of the empire. Now everyone wondered what that meant, one said this and another said that, for instance that the Emperor intended to send the Jews back to their old homeland on the mountain of Lebanon, by the river of Egypt and by the sea.

  But when the representatives and rabbis from all the regions where the Jews lived had come together, the Emperor put certain questions to them which they were to turn over in their hearts and answer according to the law, and it was clear that it wasn’t a matter of being banished from the country, but of staying there and of forging strong ties between the Jews and the other citizens in France and the Kingdom of Italy. For all the questions amounted to whether a Jew’s faith allowed him to regard the country where he lived as his homeland and its other citizens as his fellow citizens, and to keep the civil laws of that land.