“SOMETHING”

“I WANT TO BE something!” said the eldest of five brothers. “I want to be of some use in the world, be it ever so humble a position. As long as I am doing something good, it will be something. I will make bricks. You can’t do without them! Then I will have done something anyway!”

“But an all-too-little something!” said the second brother. “What you’re doing is as good as nothing. It’s just a helping job, something that can be done by a machine. No, become a mason instead. That’s something I want to be. That’s a trade! With that I’ll get into a guild and become a middle-class citizen. I’ll have my own banner and my own public house. If I do well, I’ll be able to have journeymen, become a master, and my wife will become a Mrs. Master Mason! That is something!”

“That’s absolutely nothing!” said the third. “That’s completely outside of the middle-class structure, and there are many classes in town that are above the master Masons. You can be a worthy man, but as a master you are only what is called a ‘common’ worker. No! I know something better. I want to be a builder, and get into the artistic area, the theoretical, and rise up to the highest in the realm of the mind. Of course I have to start at the bottom. I might as well admit it straight out. I have to begin as a carpenter’s apprentice and wear a cap, even though I’m used to a silk hat, and run to get beer and spirits for the lowly journeymen. They’ll be familiar and say “du” to me, and that’s bad, but I’ll just imagine that it’s all a masquerade, and the masks will come off tomorrow—that is to say when I become a journeyman and go off on my own, it’ll be no business of theirs. I’ll go to the academy and learn to draw. I’ll become an architect! That’s something! That’s something big! I can become both high-born and well-born with a little something more in front and back of my name, and I’ll build and build like those who came before me. That’s something you can always rely on, and all of it is something!”

“But that’s something I don’t care about!” said the fourth. “I don’t want to ride in the wake, or be a copy of something. I want to be a genius, and more skillful than all of you! I’ll shape a new style, create the idea for a building that fits the country’s climate, materials, the national spirit, the developments of our age, and then another story for my own genius!”

“But if the climate and the materials aren’t any good,” said the fifth, “that would be too bad, and it would have an impact. National spirit can also easily develop into something affected, and the developments of the age can often cause you to run riot, just as adolescents often do. I can see that none of you will actually become something, no matter how much you may think so yourselves. But do as you want. I won’t copy you. I’ll place myself outside and criticize what you do. There is always something wrong with everything. I will point it out and discuss it. That is something!”

And that’s what he did, and people said about the fifth brother: “He’s really something! He’s got a good head, but he doesn’t do anything!”—Yet because of that he was something.

See that’s just a little story, and there’s no end to it as long as the world goes on.

Well, what happened to the five brothers? What we’ve heard wasn’t anything, was it? Listen further. It’s really a complete fairy tale.

The oldest brother, who made bricks, noticed that a little penny rolled out of each brick when it was finished. Only a copper penny, but many small copper pennies piled on top of each other become a shiny dollar, and wherever you knock on the door with that, whether it’s at the baker, the butcher, or the tailor—yes, at all of them—the doors fly open, and you get what you need. See, that’s what came from the bricks. Even though some fell to pieces or broke in the middle, they could be used too.

Up on the embankment a poor woman, old mother Margrethe, so badly wanted to slap up a little house. She got all the brick pieces and a couple of unbroken ones because the oldest brother had a good heart, even if he was only a brick maker. The poor woman built the house herself. It was narrow, and the one window was crooked. The door was much too low, and the straw roof could have been better laid, but it gave shelter against wind and weather, and you could see way out to sea, which broke against the dike in its might. The salty drops of water sprayed over the whole house, which was still standing when he who had made the bricks was dead and gone.

The second brother really knew the art of building. Well, he was trained for it. When he finished his apprenticeship, he packed his knapsack and sang the song of the craftsman:

While young I can the world traverse, 
And houses build out there. 
My craftsmanship becomes my purse, 
My youthfulness my flair. 
And if, again, I see home’s soil 
My sweetheart’s told “I’m able” 
For an active craftsman it’s no toil 
To populate the table!

And he did. When he came back and became a Master mason, he built house after house—a whole street full. When they were finished and looked good, they gave the city esteem, and then the houses built a little house for him that was to be his own. But how could houses build, you ask? Well, just ask them. They won’t answer, but people will answer, and they’ll say, “Yes indeed, that street built him his house!” It was small and had a dirt floor, but when he danced on it with his bride, the floor became shiny and polished. And a flower grew from every brick in the wall. That was just as good as expensive wallpaper. It was a lovely house and a happy couple. The banner of the guild waved outside and the journeymen and apprentices shouted “Hurrah!” Well, that was something! And then he died, and that was also something!

Then there was the architect, the third brother, who had been an apprentice first, worn a cap and run errands in the town, but from the academy he had worked his way up to a master builder “high-born” and “well-born.” If the houses in the street had built a house for his brother who was the mason, now the street itself was named after the architect and the most beautiful house in the street was his. That was something, and he was something—and with a long title in front and back of his name. His children were called aristocratic, and when he died, his wife was a widow of distinguished social status. That is something! And his name was up on the street sign and always on everyone’s lips as the street name—Well, that is something!

And then there was the genius, the fourth brother, who wanted to build something new, something different with a top story for himself. Well, it collapsed, and he fell and broke his neck—but he had a beautiful funeral, with guild banners and music, flowers on the street over the pavement, and flowery notices in the paper. There were three sermons for him, each longer than the one before, and that would have pleased him, because he liked being talked about. He got a monument on his grave, only one story, but even that’s something!

Now he was dead, like the other three, but the last one, the critic, outlived them all and that was only right, because then he got the final word, and it was of great importance to him to have the last word. He’s the one who had the good head, as everyone said! Then his time came too, and he died and went to the Pearly Gates. People always arrive there two by two, and there he was standing with another soul who also really wanted to get in. It was no one other than old mother Margrethe from the house by the dike.

“It must be for the sake of contrast that I and this miserable soul should arrive here at the same time,” said the critic. “So who are you, Granny? Do you want to get in here too?”

And the old woman curtsied as best she could. She thought it was St. Peter himself who was speaking to her. “I’m just a poor old woman without any family. Old Margrethe from the house by the dike.”

“What have you done, and what have you accomplished down there?”

“I haven’t accomplished anything at all in this world that can open up the door for me here! It would be a true act of grace if I were to be allowed inside the gate.”

“How did you come to leave the world?” he asked her to make conversation about something, since he was bored standing there and waiting.

“Well, how I left it, I don’t know! I’ve been sick and ailing for the last few years, so I guess I wasn’t able to tolerate crawling out of bed to go out in the cold and frost outdoors. It’s a hard winter, you know, but now I have escaped it. There were a few days when there was no wind, but bitterly cold, as Your Reverence probably knows. The ice had formed as far out from the beach as one could see. All the people from town went out on the ice and were skating and dancing too, I think. There was music and food and drink out there. I could hear it from where I was lying in my simple room. Evening was approaching, the moon was up, but it was a new moon. From my bed through the window I could see way out over the shore, and right there between sky and sea a strange white cloud appeared. I lay and looked at it, looked at the black dot in the middle of it that got bigger and bigger, and then I knew what it meant. I am old and experienced, but that sign you don’t see often. I recognized it and felt a horror! I had seen that thing coming twice before in my life and knew that there would be a terrible storm with a spring tide that would rush over the poor people out there who were drinking and running and frolicking. Young and old, the whole town was out there. Who would warn them if no one there saw and recognized what I now knew? I became so afraid, and I felt more life in me than I had felt for a long time! I got out of the bed and went to the window, but I couldn’t manage to get any further. I did get the window open. I could see the people running and jumping out there on the ice, see the neat flags and hear how the boys shouted ”hurrah,” and girls and boys sang. They were having a good time, but the white cloud with the black bag inside rose higher and higher! I shouted as loudly as I could, but no one heard me. I was too far away. Soon the storm would break out, the ice would break, and everyone out there would sink through without hope of rescue. They couldn’t hear me. I wasn’t able to reach them. If only I could get them to come on land! Then God gave me the idea of lighting fire to my bed, letting the whole house burn up, rather than that all those people should die so wretchedly. I lit the candle, saw the red flame—I was able to get out the door, but there I lay—I couldn’t get any further. The flames shot out behind me and out the window and across the roof. They saw me from out there, and they all ran as fast as they could to help me—poor old me—whom they thought was trapped inside. Every one of them came running. I heard them coming, but I also heard the sudden roaring in the air. I heard the rumbling that sounded like cannon fire. The spring tide lifted the ice, and it broke in pieces, but they reached the dike where the sparks were flying over me. They were all safe and sound, although I must not have been able to stand the cold and the fright, and so here I am at the Pearly Gates. They say they can be opened even for a poor person like me. Now I don’t have a house anymore there on the dike, although that doesn’t gain me entrance here.”

Then the Pearly Gates opened, and the angel let the old woman in. A straw from her bed fell outside the gates. It was one of those that had laid in her bed and that she had lit to save the many people, and it turned to the purest gold, but a gold that grew and that twined itself into the most beautiful decorations.

“See, that’s what the poor woman brought,” said the angel. “What are you bringing? Well, I know already that you didn’t accomplish anything. You didn’t even make a brick! If you could just go back and bring at least a brick that you had made, it would count for something. It wouldn’t be any good, since you made it, but if you made it with good will it would at least be something. But you can’t go back, and I can’t do anything for you!”

Then the poor soul, the woman from the embankment, pleaded for him. “His brother made and gave me all the bricks and broken bits that I slapped up my miserable little house with. That was a lot for a poor wretch like me. Can’t all those bits and broken bricks count as one brick’s worth for him? That would be an act of mercy, and he needs it, and this is the home of mercy, after all.”

“Your brother, the one you called the poorest, whose honest work you considered lowest, gives you his heavenly mite. You will not be turned away. You will be allowed to stand out here and think things over, try to promote your life down there, but you won’t get in before your good deeds have accomplished—something! ”

“I could have said that better,” thought the critic, but he didn’t say it out loud, and that was already really something.