Speaker 1: The Heavenly Christmas Tree by Fyodor Dostoevsky. I am a novelist,
and I suppose I have made up this story I write.
I suppose, though I know for a fact that I
have made it up. But yet I keep fancying that
it must have happened somewhere at some time, that it
must have happened on Christmas Eve, in some great town
and a time of terrible frost. I have a vision
of a boy, a little boy six years old or
even younger. This boy woke up that morning in a cold,
damp cellar. He was dressed in a sort of little
dressing gown, and was shivering with cold. There was a
cloud of white steam from his breath, and sitting on
a box in the corner, he blew the steam out
of his mouth and amused himself in his dullness, watching
it float away. But he was terribly hungry. Several times
that morning he went up to the plank bed where
his sick mother was lying on a mattress's thin as
a pancake, with some sort of bundle under her head
for a pillow. How had she come here? She must
have come with her boy from some other town, and
suddenly fallen ill. The landlady who let the corners had
been taken two days before to the police station. The
lodgers were out and about as the holiday was so near,
and the only one left had been lying for the
last twenty four hours, dead drunk, not having waited for Christmas.
In another corner of the room, a wretched old woman
of eighty, who had once been a children's nurse but
was now left to die friendless, was moaning and groaning
with rheumatism, scolding and grumbling at the boy, so that
he was afraid to go near her corner. He had
got a drink of water in the outer room, but
could not find a crust anywhere, and had been on
the point of waking his mother a dozen times. He
felt frightened at last in the darkness. It had long
been dusk, but no light was kindled. Touching his mother's face,
he was surprised that she did not move at all,
and that she was as cold as the wall. It
is very cold here, he thought. He stood a little, unconsciously,
letting his hands rest on the dead woman's should. Then
he breathed on his fingers to warm them, and then
quietly fumbling for his cap on the bed, he went
out of the cellar. He would have gone earlier, but
was afraid of the big dog which had been howling
all day at the neighbor's door at the top of
the stairs. But the dog was not there now, and
he went out into the street. Mercy on us. What
a town. He had never seen anything like it before
in the town from which he had come. It was
always such black darkness at night. There was one lamp
for the whole street. The little, low pitched wooden houses
were closed up with shutters. There was no one to
be seen in the street. After dusk. All the people
shut themselves up in their houses, and there was nothing
but the howling of a pack of dogs, hundreds and
thousands of them, barking and howling all night. But there
it was so warm, and he was given food. While here,
oh dear, if he only had something to eat, And
what a noise and rattle here? What light, and what people,
horses and carriages, And what a frost. The frozen steam
hung in clouds over the horses, over their warmly breathing mouths.
Their hoofs clanged against the stones through the powdery snow,
and everyone pushed so and oh dear, how he longed
for some morsel to eat, and how wretched he suddenly felt.
A policeman walked by and turned away to avoid seeing
the boy. Here was another street, Oh, what a wide one.
Here he would be run over for certain. How everyone
was shouting, racing, driving along, and the light, the light,
And what was this? A huge glass window and through
the window a tree reaching up to the ceiling. It
was a fir tree. And on it were ever so
many lights, gold papers, and apples, and little dolls and horses.
And there were children, clean and dressed in their best,
running about the room, laughing and playing and eating and
drinking and something. And then a little girl began dancing
with one of the boys. What a pretty little girl.
And he could hear the music through the window. The
boy looked and wondered and laughed through His toes were
aching with the cold, and his fingers were red and stiff,
so that it hurt him to move them. And all
at once the boy remembered how his toes and fingers
hurt him, and began crying, and ran on and again.
Through another window pane, he saw another Christmas tree, and
on a table cakes of all sorts, almond cakes, red cakes,
and yellow cakes. And three grand young ladies were sitting there,
and they gave the cakes to anyone who went up
to them, and the door kept opening. Lots of gentlemen
and ladies went in from the street. The boy crept
up suddenly opened the door and went in. Oh, how
they shouted at him and waved him back. One lady
went up to him hurriedly and slipped a kopeck in
his hand, and with her own hands opened the door
into the street for him. How frightened he was, And
the kopeck rolled away and clinked upon the steps. He
could not bend his red fingers to hold it tight.
The boy ran away and went on where he did
not know. He was ready to cry again, but he
was afraid, and ran on and on and blew his fingers,
and he was miserable because he felt suddenly so lonely
and terrified, and all at once mercy on us? What
was this again? People were standing in a crowd admiring
behind a glass window. There were three little dolls dressed
in red and green dresses, and exactly exactly as though
they were alive. One was a little old man sitting
and playing a big violin. The two others were standing
close by and playing little violins, and nodding in time
and looking at one another, and their lips moved. They
were speaking, actually speaking, only one couldn't hear through the glass,
And at first the boy thought they were alive, And
when he grasped that they were dolls, he laughed. He
had never seen such dolls before, and had no idea
there were such dolls, and he wanted to cry, but
he felt amused, amused by the dolls. All at once
he fancied that some one caught at his smock behind
A wicked big boy was standing beside him, and suddenly
hit him on the head, snatched off his cap, and
tripped him up. The boy fell down on the ground,
and at once there was a shout. He was numb
with fright. He jumped up and ran away. He ran, and,
not knowing where he was going, ran in at the
gate of some one's court yard, and sat down behind
a stack of wood. They won't find me here, besides
it's dark. He sat hurriedly up and was breathless from fright,
And all at once, quite suddenly he felt so happy
his hands and feet suddenly left off aching and grew
so warm, as warm as though he were on a stove.
Then he shivered all over. Then he gave a start.
Why he must have been asleep. How nice to have
a sleep here. I'll sit here a little and go
and look at the dolls again, said the boy, and smiled,
thinking of them just as though they were alive. And
suddenly he heard his mother singing over him. Mammy, I'm asleep.
How nice it is to sleep here. Come to my
Christmas tree, little one. A soft voice suddenly whispered over
his head. He thought that this was still his mother,
But no, it was not she. Who it was called
him He could not see. But some one bent over
and embraced him in the darkness, and he stretched out
his hands to him, and all at once, oh what
a bright light, Oh what a Christmas tree. And yet
it was not a fir tree. He had never seen
a tree like that. Where was he now? Everything was
bright and shining, and all round him were dolls. But no,
they were not dolls. They were little boys and girls,
only so bright and shining. They all came flying around him,
They all kissed him, took him and carried him along
with them, and he was flying himself, and he saw
that his mother was looking at him and laughing joyfully, Mammy, Mammy, Oh,
how nice it is here, Mammy. And again he kissed
the children and wanted to tell them at once of
those dolls in the shop window, who are you boys?
Who are you girls? He asked, laughing and admiring them.
This is Christ's Christmas tree, they answered. Christ always has
a Christmas tree on this day for the little children
who have no tree of their own. And he found
out that all these little boys and girls were children
just like himself. That some had been frozen in the
baskets in which they had as babies, been laid on
the doorsteps of well to do Petersburg people. Others had
been boarded out with Finnish women by the foundling and
had been suffocated. Others had died at their starved mother's
breasts in the Samara famine. Others had died in the
third class railway carriages from the foul air. And yet
they were all here. They were all like angels about Christ.
And he was in the middle of them and held
out his hands to them and blessed them and their
sinful mothers, and the mothers of these children stood on
one side weeping. Each one knew her boy or girl,
and the children flew up to them and kissed them,
and wiped away the tears with their little hands, and
begged them not to weep, because they were so happy.
And down below in the morning, the porter found the
little dead body of the frozen child on the woodstack.
They sought out his mother too, She had died before him,
They before the Lord God in heaven. Why have I
made up such a story so out of keeping with
an ordinary diary and a writer's above all, And I
promise two stories dealing with real events, But that is
just it. I keep fancying that all this may have happened. Really,
that is what took place in the cellar and on
the woodstack. But as for Christ's Christmas Tree, I cannot
tell you whether that could have happened or not. End
of the Heavenly Christmas Tree by Fyodor Dostoevsky