Selected Tales of the Brothers Grimm(11)

A FAIRY TALE ABOUT A BOY WHO SET OUT TO LEARN FEAR





A father had two sons. The elder one was savvy and smart and able to attend to every task at hand. But the younger one was a fool unable to grasp or learn anything. When people saw him, they said, “The poor father’s sure got his hands full with that one!” And whenever there was anything that needed to be done, the elder one always had to do it. But when it was late in the day, or night had already fallen and the father wanted him to fetch something that forced him to pass in front of a graveyard or some other scary place, the elder son said, “Oh, no, Father, I won’t go there, it gives me the creeps!” for he was fearful. Or when stories were told by the fire at night that made your skin crawl, he would often remark, “Lord, it gives me the willies!” But the younger son sat in his corner and had no idea what they were talking about. “People always say It gives me the creeps, it gives me the willies! But nothing scares me – it’s probably another thing I know nothing about.”

One day the father said to him, “You there in your corner, you’re getting big and strong, and it’s time you learned something that’ll let you earn your daily bread. See how your brother applies himself to everything he does, but with you, it’s a lost cause.”

“Oh, Father,” he replied, “I would gladly learn something. If it’s all right with you, I’d like to learn fear. That’s something I just don’t understand.”

The elder son laughed out loud when he heard this, and thought to himself, Dear God, my brother is a hopeless case, he’ll never amount to anything – as the twig is bent, so it grows.

The father sighed and said, “Fear, my son, is something you’ll learn by and by, but you won’t earn your bread with it.”

Not long after that the sexton happened to drop by; the father poured out his heart to him and told him how his younger son was such a ne’er-do-well, he couldn’t learn a thing. “Can you imagine, when I asked him how he hoped to earn his bread, he asked to learn fear.”

“If that’s your only worry,” replied the sexton, “he can learn it from me. Just send him over, I’ll set him straight.”

The father was pleased, since he thought to himself, He’ll sharpen that dull blade for me. So the sexton took the boy with him and had him ring the church bells. A few days later the sexton awakened him at midnight and told him to get up, climb the belfry, and ring the bells. You’ll learn fear all right, he thought to himself, then snuck on ahead of him, and when the lad had climbed the tower and turned around, he saw a white figure standing before him on the steps opposite the resonance chamber.

“Who’s there?” he called, but the figure made no reply and didn’t stir or budge. “Answer me,” cried the boy, “or begone. You have no business being here.”

But the sexton didn’t budge, so that the simpleton would think he was a ghost. The boy cried out a second time, “What business do you have here? Speak, if you’re an honest man, or I’ll throw you down the steps.”

The sexton thought, He can’t be serious. So he made no reply, and stood there as still as a stone.

Now the boy addressed him a third time, and when this too was to no avail, he lunged at him and shoved the ghost down the stairs, so that he landed in a corner ten steps below. Whereupon he calmly rang the bell, headed home, lay down without another word, and went back to sleep.

The sexton’s wife waited a long time for her husband, but he didn’t return. Finally she got frightened, woke the boy, and asked him, “Don’t you know where my husband is? He climbed the belfry before you.”

“No,” replied the boy, “but I did see somebody standing on the stairs in front of the resonance chamber, and since he didn’t answer when spoken to, and wouldn’t go away, I took him for a thief and threw him down. Better go there and see if it was him or not. I’m awful sorry if it was.”

The woman made haste and found her husband lying in a corner with a broken leg, wailing.

She helped him down the belfry steps, and then hurried off in a huff to have it out with the boy’s father. “Your son,” she yelled, “did a terrible thing. He threw my husband down the steps, so that he broke a leg – get that good-for-nothing out of our house!”

Horrified, the father came running over and bawled the boy out. “What a dumb-ass thing to do. The devil himself must have made you do it.”

“But Father,” the boy replied, “just listen, I’m completely innocent – he stood there in the dark like someone with evil intentions. I had no idea who it was, and warned him three times to speak up or begone.”