The Glassblower's Children

  THIS IS A NEW YORK REVIEW BOOK

  PUBLISHED BY THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS

  435 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014

  www.nyrb.com

  Copyright © 1964 by Maria Gripe

  All rights reserved.

  Originally published in Swedish as Glasbåsarns barn

  by Albert Bonners Füorlag, Stockholm

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  is on file at the Library of Congress

  ISBN 978-1-59017-745-7

  v1.0

  Cover design by Louise Fili Ltd.

  For a complete list of books in the New York Review Children's Collection, visit www.nyrb.com or write to:

  Catalog Requests, NYRB, 435 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014

  CONTENTS

  Title page

  Copyright and More Information

  Part One

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  Part Two

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  Part Three

  20

  Biographical Notes

  Part

  One

  “He who does not

  foresee his fate

  can live lightheartedly.”

  HAVAMAL

  1

  THEY LIVED IN a poor old village called Nöoda, which doesn’t exist any more, in the misty county of Diseberga. Albert the glassblower had been born nearby, but his wife came from the north. Her name was Sofia and she was truly as beautiful to look upon as a rose.

  Their children were given the names Klas and Klara. It was Albert who named them to remind him of his work, because Klas rhymed with glass and Klara turned his thoughts to clarity.

  Albert was very poor, but he owned the cottage they lived in and the glassmaking workshop, too. It was a terribly small cottage. All the space along one wall inside was taken up by a sofa and an old clock. On the other side of the room stood a chest of drawers and a cupboard and between them a table in front of the window. Albert and Sofia slept on the sofa and the children in the chest of drawers.

  The open fireplace was very wide and took up a lot of room. Here by the hearth Sofia kept her spinning wheel. Over it a cradle hung from two iron hooks in the ceiling. The children had rocked in that cradle when they were tiny, but now it was where Sofia hid things she wanted to keep for herself.

  Right next to the fireplace a door opened into a room containing a clothes chest and a stool. That was all.

  Nor was the workshop much bigger, but both Albert and his assistant had enough space to work in, and Klas and Klara too, when they came to watch, and that was all that mattered.

  Now, the glassware blown here was the finest you would ever see. Albert was a great artist with glass. However, when it came to selling any, he wasn’t very successful. He traveled to the market place both in the autumn and the spring, but he never sold much. So it turned out that they were always struggling to make ends meet and never had a crumb left over.

  When autumn came around, Sofia would go to the neighboring farmers and beat their harvested flax. She would take the children with her, and all three of them would be fed during the day. Sofia received a sheaf of flax and a round loaf of bread in payment for a day’s work, and then they would live extravagantly.

  Klas was the younger child, only a year old. He couldn’t walk yet, but he would sit for hours watching his father blow glass. As easily as a child will blow soap bubbles, Albert shaped shimmering goblets and glittering bowls. But they didn’t break like soap bubbles, they lasted: They were displayed in long rows on the shelves, and how they shone! It was like a miracle.

  Klas sat still as a mouse in his corner and watched one glistening bubble after another swell up, conjured out of Albert’s long glassblowing pipe. Klas thought about them as they were swung over his head, taking shape, growing large. A gaze full of longing brightened his eyes as if he’d seen something far, far away. What could he see? What was he thinking about? Was it the heavens or the ocean, perhaps? He didn’t know, he was too little to find the right words. But Albert smiled. He knew, it was the same with him. It was the beauty they saw.

  Klara was some years older. She also liked to be in the workshop, but she never wanted to sit still. So this or that piece of glass fell to the floor when she was there, and crashed into a thousand pieces. It didn’t bother her very much, she’d dance right out of the hut and run off home. At home hung the blond lengths of flax that Klara thought were most wonderful.

  But Klas was beside himself every time a piece of glass broke. First he was delighted by the jingling crash, then he looked terrified and started crying when he saw the fragments on the floor. He was heart-broken and had to be carried away from there. Sometimes Albert even lost his temper because he thought Klas really should be getting used to the idea that glass does, sometimes, break. But Klas didn’t. Quite the contrary. He sobbed and sobbed more each time, and finally Albert hardly dared let him visit the workshop.

  So this was Klas’ odd weakness, but no one paid too much attention to it because there were other things to think about.

  Albert thought about glass. Only about glass. Glass in all shapes. Glass of all descriptions. Glittering, lustrous, mirroring, tinkling, ringing, crystal-pure . . . glass. Always GLASS.

  In fact, Sofia thought that Albert thought too much about glass. She thought he liked glass more than he liked her. The sun could rise and set, and the moon too, with Albert still in his workshop blowing glass. She would sit by the window staring out, waiting. Yes, that often happened. . . .

  But Klara was always happy. How could she not be, for she was Klara, who had a length of flax to braid and a piece of a broken mirror to see herself in. This was more than enough for her.

  And so Klas’ odd little weakness was kept to himself. No one understood the simple truth: Klas had realized that what is most beautiful must also be most fragile. Now this is scary and hard to bear when you are little and don’t know anything about the nature of glass. For it is very upsetting that the most beautiful things in life shatter so easily.

  But no one else was brooding over it. Least of all Sofia, who began to think dangerous thoughts. Discouragement and displeasure grew within her. One night when Albert came home from the workshop he found her crying by the window. She was sitting in the dark—she hadn’t even lit a candle. The moonlight shone dimly upon her, and her tears glistened on the windowsill. She didn’t look up.

  “What in heavens! You’re sitting here crying!” Albert said, distressed.

  She sniffled her answer, “I feel so lonely when you’re never home.”

  Then Albert explained that he was making a very special bowl. She just had to be patient a little longer and then he would be able to stay at home more often.

  But Sofia sighed. She knew very well how it would be, she said. When the wonderful bowl was finished, Albert would think up something even more wonderful. She knew him by now. He would never make a bowl beautiful enough; he would never have time for her. . . .

  Albert didn’t know what to tell her. He stood there, completely at a loss, and realized there was some truth in what Sofia said.

  “But you’ve got the children,” he finally replied. “After all, you’re not really alone.” But he shouldn’t have said that. And then Sofia shouldn’t have let herself answer as she did.

  “The children!” she spat out angrily. “What kind of company do you think they are?
They’re more trouble than anything else. . . .”

  She didn’t really mean what she said—no mother could—she regretted her words immediately. She was so proud and happy about her children. She only said it because, for just that moment, the dangerous thoughts had taken over. Albert looked grim, despairing, and neither of them said any more.

  But Sofia reproached herself bitterly. She never forgot what she had said, and she was convinced that everything that happened afterwards was a punishment for those frightful words that had slipped out of her.

  2

  A LITTLE WAY outside the village there rose a pretty green hill. You could see it whichever way you walked; the village seemed to be resting comfortably in its protection.

  An ancient apple tree grew on the hill. It drew everyone’s attention; spring, summer, fall, and winter, it patterned itself against the sky, turned green, blossomed, burdened its branches with fruit, or sketched them bare, cold black. Everyone gazed up at it and thought how peaceful it looked.

  And yet people said that it was a weird and terrible place. At one time it had been a Gallows Hill. Criminals had been brought there to be punished. And people said that as many criminals had met their fates on that hill as the tree bore fruit. Every autumn it was heavy with shiny red apples, but no one had ever succeeded in counting them.

  The apples were delicious, and it was very, very long ago that the place had been a Gallows Hill.

  Now someone lived there, though no one could understand why she wanted to or how she dared. You could just catch a glimpse of the little cottage. The apple tree hid it, but at night you could see a light up there.

  This person was old, and wonderfully odd. Her name was Flutter Mildweather, or so she was called, for no one knew what she had been christened.

  She got the name Flutter from the fact that she always walked about wearing a big indigo cloak with a shoulder cape. The deep, scalloped edge flapped like huge wings on her shoulders. And on her head she wore a very remarkable hat. Its flower-strewn brim belled out beneath a high violet peak decorated with butterflies.

  She got the name Mildweather simply because people thought she promised and brought mild winds and gentle thaw. And, indeed, she rarely walked outside in winter time: Weeks could go by without her being seen. But then, suddenly, she would appear, fluttering down the hillside in her odd cape and flower-strewn hat, and then everyone knew they could expect mild weather. For though it might be thirty degrees below freezing, and the snow packed deep and firm, when Flutter Mildweather came, days of thaw were bound to follow. She was the surest sign of spring in the whole district.

  Yes, Flutter was extraordinary in many ways. She could also tell fortunes. She scorned cards, but willingly predicted the future from people’s hands and in the dregs of their coffee cups. And many people braved the terrors of Gallows Hill to creep up after dark and ask about their fates.

  But fortune-telling wasn’t Flutter Mildweather’s task in life. Her real work was weaving. She wove carpets. The patterns of these she invented herself, and each had its own special theme. She sat at her loom day in and day out, brooding somewhat anxiously about the people and the life down in the village. And then one day she discovered that she knew what was going to happen to them. She could see it in the carpet design that grew under her hands. There she sat, looking into the future. It was like reading in a book, so plainly and clearly could she follow the events.

  Now she thought all this was just as it should be, for such things didn’t astonish Flutter Mildweather. Why, if she could sit down and predict the future by tracing the lines in a person’s hand or staring into coffee dregs, should she be surprised to see patterns of the future in her carpets? So it came about that suddenly she would know how to go on weaving the pattern on which she was working. And in this way each task contributed to the other. The weaving and the fortune-telling blended together and, in a mysterious way, became two sides of the same thing.

  But she would never tell from what secret source she received her knowledge about a person’s fate or a carpet’s design. Perhaps she didn’t know herself. Whatever the truth might be, everyone in the village got on well with Flutter Mildweather.

  Now it must be said that she neither wove nor told fortunes just to make money. She supported herself, and anything beyond that didn’t interest her.

  Though she sat at her loom constantly, she never had more than a few completely finished carpets on hand. But these were always very beautiful and special. And at the country fairs she always sat in her little tent and told fortunes, with the carpets hanging out on view.

  And much could be said about Flutter Mild-weather’s eyes, for they were changing all the time and had great power over people. The most incredible, improbable quality of her eyes was gentleness, for they were like flowers; but their gentleness made it clear that they were not dangerous to look upon. Actually, she fixed the world and its people with a stare that was blue as wild mint flowers, those fragile little blossoms one finds in the grass in June. That was what Flutter Mildweather’s eyes were like.

  Yes, she was a most unusual person. . . .

  People often have cats in the country as house pets. Or dogs. Flutter Mildweather had a raven. Wise Wit was his name. It is not known how she got hold of him—whether she caught him herself, for instance—but she’d always had him, and he was a very remarkable creature.

  He could talk. And he didn’t chatter just any old nonsense, either. He answered directly and very wisely—that is, if he felt like it. Sometimes he didn’t want to talk, for he could be quite temperamental. And sometimes he talked in riddles so that ordinary people couldn’t make any sense out of it—but Flutter understood everything.

  Now, for a long time, Wise Wit had been missing one eye. Strange rumors went about that he had lost his eye in the well of wisdom. Flutter was disturbed about it, but not because Wise Wit couldn’t manage with only one eye. He could cope very well, but his character had changed. And, seriously, a raven ought to have two eyes—certainly a raven like Wise Wit.

  Because each eye had a different kind of vision.

  One was a daytime eye. With this he saw the sun, and everything was colored by the sun. He saw the light and the bright, warm colors. He saw the joy in life, the smiles and laughter, the cheerful thoughts, the good. That eye also looked far into the future, and saw what would happen.

  But the other eye was a night eye that saw everything colored by the moon. The dark and cold colors. He saw with this the clouds and sorrow; the grim, bleak thoughts, the ugly and the evil. And that eye looked back in time: it could focus far, far back into the past.

  Wise Wit had lost his nighttime eye, the moon eye, the primeval eye. The bad eye, as it was called. And it certainly had changed him. Now he saw life only in rosy colors. He could grasp only the happy and the good. And he couldn’t see a single shadow any more. He didn’t even see his own shadow. The question is whether, at one time, he even couldn’t see himself, since he was so black. All this had made him a trifle lighthearted. It wasn’t exactly suitable for a raven, but naturally he couldn’t be held responsible. Flutter understood that.

  And, indeed, she also thought luck could be found even in bad luck, for at least he had not lost his good eye. Then the whole of life would have looked black to him. But on the other hand, she wondered if Wise Wit really was the proper name for him now.

  It is beautiful, of course, to be able to see the day-side of life, truly it is, but those who tell the real truth are those who can see the shadowy side too.

  And, in fact, she thought that Wise Wit had become a bit superficial.

  3

  NOW IT WAS time for the autumn fair in Blekeryd, and the roads were crowded with folk. Many came from far away in wagons; others walked or pushed and pulled their loaded carts.

  Wandering gypsies came, splendid to see, gay with windblown curls and shining eyes. Foreign voices echoed along the roads where they passed with their music and playfulness; their bright skirts f
lashed, and their jewelry twinkled.

  Watching them pass, everyone was seized with excitement.

  Sofia sat next to Albert on the driver’s seat, with Klara between them, holding Klas on her lap. They drove slowly and enjoyed the ride.

  The morning was clear and soft. Sunlight slipped between the tops of the pines, bringing little warmth for it was autumn. Thistle down drifted over the road and made the air mysteriously silver.

  Albert and Sofia smiled at each other, and the children laughed.

  At the market place, Albert had rented a shop with a shingle roof. He shared it, as usual, with another glassblower. There he arranged his glassware. It was more beautiful than the other man’s, but that didn’t help very much, for the other was a better salesman, good at talking, and already busy selling.

  And so it went as usual: people looked a long time at Albert’s glassware, but bought from his neighbor. It seemed as though fate were against him, and Albert came near to losing hope and courage. Sofia, who had been so full of expectation all morning, grew even paler.

  What was the point of striving so hard, of making the most beautiful crystal, if no one wanted it?

  Why couldn’t Albert make glass that people wanted?

  How would they ever manage?

  They’d had to borrow the wagon and they’d had to hire the shop for a lot of money. And so far he hadn’t sold a single glass. No one even wanted to make an exchange. The day passed.

  It was already well into the afternoon. They couldn’t afford to stay overnight. They had to start on their way home with their mission unaccomplished.

  The children began to grow fretful. Klara, who had run around the streets of the fairground playing with other children, now sat behind the shop with Klas. They were warm enough with a rug over them and they didn’t really need anything, but their parents’ anxiety affected them, too. They followed everything that happened with big eyes and they looked scared.

  Then, suddenly, everything changed.