In a narrow, crooked street, in the midst of many poor dwellings, there was a very small, but tall wooden house. It was collapsing on all sides. The house was full of poor people, and those who lived on the top floor were the poorest. In front of the only small window in this room hung a crooked, broken birdcage. It had not even a proper water-cup; there was only the neck of a bottle turned upside down, with a stopper in the mouth, and filled with water. An old lady stood by this open window, and she had just dressed the bird-cage with luxuriant wisps of grass. A little pale-headed swallow-finch hopped from this beam to that, singing with great vigor.
"Yes, you can sing instead!" The bottleneck said - it wasn't speaking as we do, of course, for bottlenecks don't speak. But it was thinking this in its mind, just as we people speak quietly in our minds. "Yes, you can sing instead! Because your limbs are intact ah. You should experience the situation: no body, just a neck and a mouth, and a gag in the mouth like me. Then you won't be able to sing. But it's a good thing to be able to have fun! I don't have any reason to sing, and I can't. Yes, when I was a full bottle I could have sung if someone had rubbed a cork on me a few times. People call me the ten full lark, the great lark! Ah, when I was on an outing picnic with a fur trader's family! When his daughter was getting engaged! Yes, I remember that scene as if it were yesterday. I've been through a lot, if I only recall. I've been through fire and water, been inside black clay, and have climbed higher than most things. And now I'm hanging out of this birdcage, hanging in the air, in the sunlight! My story is worth hearing; but I do not tell it aloud, for I cannot tell it aloud."
So the bottleneck told its story, and it was a very strange story. It told this story in its mind, or you could say it was thinking of its own story in its mind. That little bird sang happily. The people in the street were riding in cars, or hurrying on foot; each was thinking of his own business, or perhaps of nothing at all. But the bottleneck was thinking.
It was thinking about the furnace in the factory, where the flames were soaring. It was there that it was blown into the shape of a bottle. It remembered that it was hot, and it had glanced toward the sizzling furnace - its old home. It would have liked to have jumped back into it again; but it had slowly grown colder since then, and it thought it looked pretty good the way it did then. It was standing in the middle of a great line of brothers and sisters-all born from one furnace. But some were blown into champagne bottles and some into beer bottles, and there was a difference! After they have gone out into the world, a beer-bottle is likely to contain the most valuable "Lacrimaeus Christi, "1 while a champagne-bottle is likely to contain only black shoe polish. But what a man is by nature, he will always be - an aristocrat is an aristocrat, even if his belly is full of black shoe polish.
All the bottles were soon packed, and this one of ours was among them. At that point in time, it had no idea that it would become a bottleneck and serve as a water goblet for birds - which was an honorable thing to do, exactly, because it showed that it was still somewhat useful! It never got to see the light of day again, until finally it was taken out of its case along with other friends from a wine merchant's cellar and washed in water for the first time - a very funny feeling.
It lay there, empty and uncorked. It felt very unhappy that it lacked one thing - what it was, exactly, it could not tell. At last it was filled with the precious wine, fitted with a cork, and sealed. It had a note attached to it, "Superior." It felt as if it had gotten a superior grade on a test. But the wine was indeed not bad, and neither was the bottle. One's youth is the age of poetry! There were beautiful songs in them that it did not know: green, sunlit mountains, on which grew grapes, and many happy women and glad men, singing and dancing. Indeed, how beautiful life is! There was this beautiful song in the body of this bottle now, as in the hearts of many young poets - and often they did not know what it was that they were singing in their hearts.
One morning the bottle was bought. The fur trader's apprentice was sent to buy a bottle of the finest wine. The bottle then went into a basket with the ham, cheese and sausage. There was also the finest butter and the finest bread in there - which the fur trader's daughter had put in with her own hands. She was so young and so beautiful. She had smiling brown eyes, and a smile was always floating on her lips-a smile as expressive as her eyes. Her soft hands were lovely white, and her neck even whiter. One could tell at a glance that she was the most beautiful woman in the whole town; and she was not yet engaged to be married.
When the family went to the forest for a picnic, the basket rested in this young lady's lap. The neck of the bottle protruded from the sharp corners of the white napkin. The stopper was sealed with red wax, and the bottle kept looking toward the girl's face, and toward a young sailor sitting next to the girl. He was her childhood friend, the son of a portrait painter. He had recently gotten a distinction in his exams and had become a first mate; tomorrow he would be sailing a ship to a distant land. They were talking about the trip when the bottles went in the basket. At that time, indeed, the pair of eyes and lips of the pretty daughter of the fur trader showed little cheerfulness.
The young pair strolled among the green trees, talking. What were they talking about? Yes, the bottle could not hear, for it was in a basket of vegetables. It was taken out after a long time. But when it was taken out, everyone was already happy, for all were laughing, and the daughter of the fur trader was also laughing. But she spoke very few words, while her two cheeks were red as two roses.
The father held the bottle in one hand, and in the other he clutched the corkscrew drill for pulling the cork. Yes, it was indeed a strange feeling to be plucked, especially for the first time. The neck of the bottle will never forget the moment that made the deepest impression on it. Indeed, when that cork flew out, it mentally said "Puff!" It clucked and sang once or twice as the wine poured into the glass.
"To the health of this engaged pair!" Dad said. It was always a toast every time. The young sailor kissed his beautiful fiancée.
"May you be happy and joyful!" The older couple said.
The young man poured another glass full.
"Come home and get married this time next year!" He said. As he drained the bottle, he raised it high in the air and said, "You happened to be present on one of the most enjoyable days of my life; I would hate for you to serve anyone else!"
So he threw the bottle into the air. The fur trader's daughter was surely convinced that she would never have another chance to see the bottle, yet she did. It landed in the thick reeds by a small pool in the woods. The bottle remembered vividly the scene as it lay there. It thought:
"I gave them wine and they gave me pool water, but they had meant well!"
It never saw the engaged young people or the happy old couple again. But for a few moments it could still hear their joy and song. At last two peasant children came along; they looked into the reeds, found the bottle, and picked it up. Now it had a home of sorts.
They lived in a wooden house, *** with three brothers. Their oldest brother is a sailor. He came home yesterday to say goodbye because he was going on a long trip. His mother was busy packing some odds and ends for him to use on the trip. This evening his father was taking his luggage to the city, wanting to see his son one more time before he left, and to say a few words of farewell on behalf of his mother and himself. There was also a bottle of medicinal liquor in the baggage, when the boys happened to walk in with the larger, sturdier bottle they had found. This bottle was capable of holding more liquor than the smaller one, and it was still good shochu for indigestion, steeped in herbs. Instead of good red wine, as before, the bottle contained bitter medicinal wine, but this was sometimes good - good for stomach aches. It is this new big bottle that is now going into the carrion instead of the original little bottle. So this bottle started traveling again. It went on board with Peter Evanson. It was one of the boats in which the young first mate was traveling. But he did not see the bottle. Indeed, he would not have known, or thought, that it was the same bottle that had once poured out wine and blessed his engagement and safe return home.
Of course it contained no good wine, but it still held something just as good. Whenever Peter Evanson took it out, his friends used to call it "the pharmacy". It contained good medicine - medicine for abdominal pain. As long as there was a drop left in it, it was always useful. This was to be its happy time. When the plug rubbed against it, it sang. That's why it was called "The Great Lark - Peter Born's Lark".
Long years passed. The bottle sat in a corner, empty. Then something happened - whether it happened on the voyage out, or on the way home, it could not quite say, for it had never been ashore. The storm was up, the waves were lurching heavily and gloomily, and the ship was rising and falling. The mainmast was breaking; the huge waves were knocking the boards apart; the pumping engines were now powerless. It was pitch-black night. The ship was sinking. But at the last instant the young first mate wrote on a page these words, "Blessed be Jesus! We're sinking now!" And having written down his fiancée's name, and his own name and the name of the ship, he stuffed the note in this empty bottle at hand, and corked it, and threw it out into this rough sea. Little did he know that it had once poured out a wine of happiness and hope for him and her. Now it drifted through the waves with his blessing and the blessing of death.
The ship sank, and the crew with it. The bottle flew like a bird, for it carried a heart and a dear letter in its body; the sun rose and set. To the bottle it seemed like the red-hot furnace it had seen when it was born - how it wished then that it could jump into it again!
It went through fine weather and new storms. But it didn't hit a rocky reef or get swallowed by some shark. It drifted like this for who knows how many years, sometimes to the north, sometimes to the south, completely at the mercy of the flow of the waves. Other than that, it could be considered independent; but one sometimes gets tired of this freedom.
The note--that note which represented a lover's last farewell to his betrothed--would have brought her nothing but sorrow, if it had reached her; but where were now the white, tender hands that had spread the tablecloth on the new-born grass in the woods on the day of the engagement? Where was that furrier's daughter? Yea, where was that land, that land nearest to her dwelling? The bottle did not know in the least; it drifted onward, and onward; and at last drifted weary of it, for drifting is not the purpose of life after all. But it had to drift, until at last it reached land--a strange land. It could not understand a word of what the people here said, for it was not a language it had ever heard before. It is a great loss for a man not to know the language of the land.
The bottle was retrieved and examined. The note it contained was also found, and was taken out, while it was looked over and over, but no one could read the words written on it. They knew that the bottle must have been thrown from the ship-the note must have said something of the sort. But what were the words written on the paper? The question was a mystery. So the note was stuffed back into the bottle, and the bottle was put into a big cupboard. They are now all in one big room in a big house.
Every time a living person visited, the note was taken out and looked over and over, so that the pencil writing on it became even more blurred, and at last no one could even read the letters on it.
The bottle stayed in the cupboard for a year, and then it was put into storage on the top floor, covered in dust and cobwebs. Then it remembered its happy times, of pouring out red wine in the woods, of drifting at sea with a secret, a sound, a parting sigh.
It stayed in the penthouse for twenty whole years. It might have stayed even longer if the house hadn't been rebuilt. The roof was torn off and the bottle was found. People talked about it, but it didn't understand them, because a man locked in a penthouse never learns a language, not even if he stays there for 20 years.
"If I had lived in the room below," thought the bottle, "I might have learned that language!"
It was now scrubbed. This was indeed necessary. It felt translucent and refreshed, truly rejuvenated. But the note it had so faithfully brought with it had been destroyed in the scrubbing.
The bottle was full of seeds: it did not know what they were. It was corked and wrapped. It could see neither lantern nor candle, let alone moon or sun. But it thought: when one travels, it is only right that one should see something. But it saw nothing, but it finally did the most important thing of all - it traveled to its destination and was taken out of the bag.
"How much trouble those foreigners must have had to pack that bottle!" It heard people speak; "It should have been damaged long ago." But it was not damaged.
The bottle now knew every word the people spoke: it was the only, dear language of the kind it had heard in the furnace, in the wine merchant's store, in the woods, on the ship, that it could understand. It had now come back home, and to it that language was a sign of welcome. Out of momentary delight it was tempted to jump out of people's hands. Before it could feel it, the stopper was taken out, the contents poured out, and it sent itself to the cellar, where it was thrown away to be forgotten. Nothing was as good as home, not even staying in the basement! The bottle never thought about how long it had been here: because it felt so comfortable here, it lay there for many years. Eventually people came to the basement and cleared out the bottles - including this one.
There was a great celebration going on in the garden. Glittering lamps hung like garlands of flowers; paper lanterns shot out their light like great transparent tulips. It was a beautiful evening, the weather was clear and peaceful, the stars were winking. It was the time of the upper moon; but in fact the whole moon appeared, like a dark gray disk framed by a half circle of gold - a beautiful sight for those with good eyes.
The lights reached even the most hidden paths in the garden: at least, so bright as to enable one to find one's way. A number of bottles stood among the leaves on the hedge, each containing a bright light. The bottle with which we are acquainted was among these bottles. It was destined one day to become a bottleneck, a little goblet of water for the birds.
But for a moment, it finds everything beautiful: it is back in the grove of green trees, again taking in the sights of joy and celebration. It heard singing and music, the sounds of many people's words and whispers - especially in the part of the garden that was lit with glass lamps and paper lanterns of all different colors. It stood far up a path, not at all bad, but that was what made it remarkable. A fire lit in a bottle is both practical and beautiful. It was certainly right. A bell like that could make it forget the 20 years it had spent on the top floor - and it would be nice to put it out of its mind.
Two men walked past it. They were arm in arm, like a pair of betrothed lovers in those woods so many years ago - the daughter of a sailor and a fur trader. The bottle seemed to revert to that scene. There were not only guests strolling in the garden, but many others had come here to visit this fine scene. Among them was an old lady who had no relatives, though she was not in the service of having friends. Like the bottle, she was remembering the green grove, and the young men who were engaged to be married. These young people involved her, and were very close to her, for she was one of the two. It was the happiest moment of her life-the kind of moment one never forgets, not even when one becomes such an old lady. But she didn't know the bottle, and the bottle didn't know her; and in this world we just pass by and run into each other again and again. And so it was with the two of them, who were now inside the same city again.
The bottle went again from this garden to a wine merchant's store. It was filled with wine again and was sold to an aviator. This man was to fly into the air in a balloon the following Sunday. A large crowd came to see this spectacle; there was a marching band and many other arrangements. The bottle, which was staying in a basket with a live rabbit, saw the whole sight. The rabbit was terrified because he knew he was going to rise into the air and then fall down again with a parachute. But the bottle did not know anything about "going up" or "coming down"; it only saw the balloon grow bigger and bigger, and when it was no longer bulging, it began to rise, higher and higher, and to fluctuate. The string that held it was then cut. Thus it sailed on with the aviator, the basket, the bottle, and the rabbit. The music played and everyone shouted, "Yes!"
"It is wonderful to sail through the air like this!" Bottle thought. "It's a new kind of sailing; you can't hit any reefs up here anyway."
Thousands of people were looking at the balloon. The old lady gazed up at it, too. She stood at a top-floor window. Here hung a birdcage with a little pale-headed swallow-finch in it. It had not yet a water-cup, and for the present had to content itself with using an old cup. There was a pot of myrtle on the window. The old lady moved it a little to the side, lest it should fall, for she was about to put her head out of the window to look in. She saw the aviator in the balloon distinctly, saw him let the rabbit fall with the parachute, saw him toast the audience, and finally throw the bottle into the air. It didn't occur to her that in her youth, on that joyous day in the greenwood, she had long ago seen the bottle thrown into the air at one point in celebration of her and her boyfriend.
The bottle couldn't think of anything else, for suddenly and at once it rose to such a peak of life that it was simply stunned. Church towers and roofs lay far below, and the crowd looked downright tiny.
Then it began to fall, and the descent was much faster than a rabbit. The bottle turned several times in the air, feeling very young and very free. It still held half a bottle of wine, although it wouldn't hold much longer. It was a marvelous trip! The sun was shining on the bottle; many people were watching it. The balloon had flown far away, and the bottle had fallen far away. It landed on a roof, and thus fell to pieces. But the fragments created a momentum that made them simply stand still. They jumped and rolled and fell all the way across the yard into smaller pieces. Only the neck of the bottle sort of stayed intact, like it had been sawed off with a diamond drill.
"It would be perfect to use it as a water bowl for birds!" One of the men who lived in the basement said. But he had neither a bird nor a birdcage. It would be impractical to buy a bird and a birdcage just because there was a bottle neck that could be used as a water bowl. But the old lady who lived on the top floor might need it. So the neck of the bottle was brought upstairs, and there was a stopper. The part that had been facing upwards was now facing downwards - as is often the case when circumstances change. It was filled with fresh water and tied to the cage, facing the bird. The bird was singing now, and singing beautifully.
"Yes, you can sing instead!" Bottleneck said.
It was indeed marvelous. For it had been in a balloon - that was all anyone knew about its history. Now it was a bird's water-pot, hanging there, listening to the noise and murmur of the street below and the speech of the old lady in the room: an old friend had just come to visit her, and they had been talking for a while-not about the bottleneck, but about the myrtle tree in the window.
"No, indeed, there is no need to spend two ducats on a wedding wreath for your daughter!" The old lady said. "Let me give you a blooming, beautiful bouquet. You see how lovely the tree grows! Yes, it was planted by a single myrtle branch. This branch was given to me by you on the first day of my engagement. After that year had passed, I should have used it to make a wedding wreath for myself. But that day never came! The eyes that should have been my life's joy and happiness② were closed. He, my dear one, now sleeps in the depths of the sea. This myrtle has become an old tree, and I an even older man. When it had withered away, I plucked its last green branch and stuck it in the earth, and now it has grown into a tree. Now you can use it to weave a wedding wreath for your daughter; it always happens to have some use for a wedding ③!"
The old lady's eyes contained teardrops. She talked of the lovers of her youth, and of their betrothal in the woods. She couldn't help but think of the many toasts, of that first kiss - something she wouldn't speak of now, for she was an old lady. She thought of so many things, but it never occurred to her that near her, in front of this window, there was a memento of those times: a bottle-neck-a bottle that had given a joyful cheer when its stopper had been pulled out for the sake of everyone's cup. But the bottle-neck hadn't recognized her either, because it hadn't listened to her - mostly because it was always thinking about itself.
1) This is the name of a wine, originally Lacrymae christi.
2) It refers to her fiancé.
③According to Danish custom, when a woman marries, she wears a wreath made of myrtle