Soup from a Sausage Stick

II

What the first little mouse had seen and heard on her journey

‘When I set out into the wide world,’ the little mouse said, ‘I thought, like so many of my age, that I had swallowed all the wisdom of the world, but that was not the case, it takes days and years before that happens. I immediately went to sea, on board a ship that was heading northwards; I had heard that when at sea the cook had to know how to look after himself, but it’s easy to do so when one has plenty of flitches of bacon, barrels of salted food and flour full of mites; one leads a savoury life! but one’s doesn’t learn anything about how to make a sausage stick produce soup. We sailed many days and nights, we had plenty of lurching and lashing waves. When we reached our destination, I left the vessel; it was far up in the North.

It feels strange to leave one’s own little nook, set out on board a ship, which is also a kind of little nook, and then suddenly be hundreds of miles away and standing in a foreign land. There were wild forests with pine and birch, they had such a strong smell, one I dislike! the strange herbs smelt so spicy, I sneezed, I thought of sausage. There were large forest lakes, the water looked clear up close, but seen from a distance was as black as ink, there wild swans floated, they lay so still I thought they were foam, but then I saw them fly and I saw them waddling and could recognise them; they belong to the geese species, you can see it from the way they move, no one can deny his kinship! I stuck to my own kind, I joined up with the wood and field mice, who by the way know precious little about preparing food, and that after all was the reason I was travelling abroad. To be able to make soup from a sausage stick was such an extraordinary idea to them that it immediately went through the whole forest, but that the task could be solved seemed to them to be quite impossible, so little did I think that here, and that very night, I was to be initiated into the preparation of it. It was midsummer, that was why the forest had such a powerful scent, they said, that was why the herbs were so spicy, the lakes so clear and yet so dark, with swans floating on the surface. At the edge of the forest, between three or four houses, a pole had been raised like a main mast, and at the very top hung garlands and ribbons, it was a maypole; young men and women danced round it and sang, trying to outdo the fiddler’s violin. Things got quite lively at sunset and in the moonlight, but I didn’t join them, what has a little mouse to do at a forest dance! I sat down in the soft moss and held onto my sausage stick. The moon shone in particular on a spot where there was a tree with a moss that was so fine – yes, I dare say it – as fine as the coat of the mouse king, but it had a green colour that was a sheer delight to behold. Then suddenly the loveliest small folk came along, they reached no higher than my knee, they looked like human beings but were better proportioned, they called themselves elves and had fine clothes made of flower petals with fly- and mosquito-wing trimmings, not bad at all. It immediately seemed as if they were looking for something, I didn’t know what, but then a couple of them came over to me, the more distinguished-looking of the two pointed at my sausage stick and said: ‘it’s exactly one like this that we need! it has been trimmed, it is excellent!’ and he grew more and more enchanted as he gazed at my walking staff.

‘You can borrow it, but not keep it!’ I said.

‘Not keep it!’ all of them said, took hold of the sausage stick, which I let go of, and danced with it over to the area of fine moss, raised the sausage stick there, in the middle of the green patch. They also wanted to have a maypole, and the one they had now was really tailor-made for them. Now it was decorated, yes, it was a fine sight!

Small spiders spun gold thread round it, hung up swaying veils and banners, so finely woven, bleached so snowy white in the moonlight that it hurt my eyes; they took the colour from butterfly’s wings and sprinkled it on the white linen and flowers and diamonds glittered, I could not recognise my sausage stick any more, such a maypole as it had now become was unrivalled anywhere in the world. And only now did the whole host of elves arrive, they weren’t wearing a stitch of clothing, it could not be more refined than that; I was invited to look at the spectacle, though from a distance for to them I seemed too big.

Now the playing started! it was as if thousands of glass bells were ringing, with such a rich, round sound that I thought it was the swans singing, yes, it seemed to me that I could also hear cuckoos and thrushes, finally it was as if the whole forest joined in, there were children’s voices, bells chiming and birds singing, the loveliest melodies, and all this delightful orchestra of sound came from the elves’ maypole, it was a whole carillon and yet it was my sausage stick. I would never have believed that so much could come from it, but it all depends on whose hands it is in. I was really so moved that I cried, as only a little mouse can, from sheer pleasure.

The night was much too short! but it doesn’t last any longer up there at that time of year. At daybreak a light breeze blew up, the surface of the forest lake became ruffled, all the finely waving veils and banners spread out in the air; the rocking traceries of spider’s web – suspension bridges and balustrades, or whatever they are called – were strung out from leaf to leaf, flew off as if nothing; six elves brought me back my sausage stick and at the same time asked me if I had a wish they could fulfil; then I asked them how one makes soup from a sausage stick.

‘How we set about it!’ the most distinguished of them said with a laugh, ‘well you’ve only just seen how! you could hardly recognise your sausage stick!’

‘Oh, that’s what you mean by it!’ I said, and told them exactly why I was on my travels, and what was expected when I returned home. ‘What use,’ I asked, ‘has the mouse king and all our great kingdom of the fact that I have seen such a lovely spectacle! I can’t shake it out of the sausage stick and say: look, here’s the stick, now comes the soup! For that would always be a kind of dish served when one had eaten one’s fill!’

Then the elf dipped his little finger in a blue violet and said to me: ‘watch out! I’m going to coat your walker’s staff and when you get back to the mouse king’s palace, then touch the king’s warm breast with the staff and violets will come into flower along the entire staff, even in the depths of winter. So now you’ve got something to take home with you, and a little more besides,’ but before the little mouse had said what this little more was, she turned her staff towards the king’s breast, and indeed, a beautiful bouquet of violets appeared that had so strong a fragrance that the mouse king ordered the mice who were closest to the chimney to stick their tails in the fire so that one could have a good smell of singeing, for the scent from the violets was unbearable, that wasn’t the kind of thing one was fond of.

‘But what was the little more besides you mentioned!’ the mouse king asked.

‘Well,’ the little mouse said, ‘it is what one could probably call the dramatic effect!’ and she twiddled the stick and there were no flowers any longer, she was holding the bare stick and she lifted it like a conductor’s baton.

‘Violets are for sight, smell and touch,’ the elf told me, ‘but there is something left for hearing and taste!’ And she started to beat time: there was music, but not like the sound in the forest at the elves’ festivities, no, like that which can be heard in the kitchen. Now that was some commotion! It was there suddenly, as if the wind was rushing down all the chimneys, pots and pans were boiling over, the fire shovel clanged against the brass kettle, and then suddenly everything went quiet; one could hear the faint singing of the tea kettle, so strange it was, one couldn’t make out if it was finishing or beginning; and the small pot boiled and the large pot boiled, the one took no notice of the other, it was as if they had not a thought between them. And the little mouse swung her baton increasingly wildly – the pots foamed, bubbled, boiled over, the wind roared, the chimney howled – hoo-hah! it became so terrifying that the little mouse even dropped her baton.

‘That was quite a pottage!’ the old mouse king said, ‘aren’t you going to serve it?’

‘That was all!’ the little mouse said, and curtseyed.

‘All?! well, let’s hear what the next mouse has to say, then!’ the mouse king said.