PAGE 7
What Sami Sings with the Birds
by
The man of the house had bread and eggs brought for Sami and when he said he wasn’t hungry, he put everything kindly into the boy’s pocket. Then he led the boy out. Outside stood a large coach with two horses and high up on the top sat the driver. No one was inside. Sami was lifted up, the driver placed him next himself and drove away. At any other time this would have pleased Sami very much, but now he was too sad. He kept thinking of his grandmother, who could no longer talk with him and would never wake again. After some time the driver began to talk to him. Sami had to tell him where he came from and to whom he was going. He told him everything, how he had lived with his grandmother, how she had fallen asleep early that day, and did not wake up again; and that he was going to find a cousin in Zweisimmen and would have to live with him. Sami’s childish description touched the driver so deeply that he finally said:
“It will be too late when we reach there, you must stay with me to-night.”
Then when he saw Sami’s eyes close with the approaching twilight and only open again when they went over a stone, and the two of them up on the box were jounced almost dangerously against each other, he grasped the boy firmly, lifted him up and slipped him backwards into the coach. Here he fell at once fast asleep and when he finally opened his eyes again, the sun was shining brightly in his face. He was lying in his clothes on a huge, big bed in a room with white walls. In all his life he had never seen such walls. He looked around in consternation. Then the coachman of the day before came in the door.
The tinker was very much pleased with Sami’s harvest and his wife said very kindly, if he kept on doing like that, he would get along all right, but he must sit down at once and have some supper. The four little children were no longer there. Sami guessed that they were lying out in the wagon asleep. On the fire a pot was now standing. It was bubbling merrily inside and from under the cover came forth a very inviting odor. Sami had never been so hungry in his life before, for he had had nothing the whole day but the rest of the piece of bread which the driver had given him the day before in Chateau d’AEux.
The woman took the cover off the pot and filled three dishes with the good-smelling soup. Each of the three now placed his dish before him on the ground, and the meal began.
Nothing had ever tasted so good to Sami in all his life as this soup. It was not a thin soup, it was as thick as pulp, of cooked peas and potatoes, and with this quite large lumps of meat came into his spoon.
When he had finished, the woman said:
“You can go to sleep whenever you want to. In the back of the wagon there is room, and your bundle will make a good pillow.”
This seemed a little strange to Sami, and he said:
“Must I sleep in my clothes?”
The woman thought he would find that he would not be too warm in the night. He would be ready all the sooner in the morning. Then he could wash his face quickly down in the lake and be all in order again for the next day.
Sami was tired. He went immediately to the wagon and climbed up from the back, and was able to slip in under the big cover. There was a little room where he could lie down, and next him came the four little children, one after another. Sami sat down and said his evening prayer. Then he thought of his grandmother for a while, and what she would say if she could see him thus in the wagon, and know that he would have to sleep all the time in his clothes, and if only she could see how it looked in the wagon, so dirty and in disorder. She had been so neat and orderly about everything and had kept him so clean from a baby up. But she had never spoken to him about this, as about other things which he must avoid, and perhaps the people were quite God-fearing; then he ought to stay with them. That would be as his grandmother wished. Then he placed his bundle under his head, and went peacefully to sleep.