The Mouse and His Child Read online

  These pages are dedicated to the memory of three fathers:

  A. T. HOBAN,

  EDWARD LEWIS WALLANT,

  and

  HARVEY CUSHMAN, under whose Christmas tree I first saw the mouse and his child dance.

  — R. H.

  FEBRUARY 1967

  To RANDY, my friend

  To HAROLD, my healer

  To SARAH, my soul

  — D. S.

  SEPTEMBER 2001

  CONTENTS

  TITLE PAGE

  DEDICATION

  EPIGRAPH

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR & ILLUSTRATOR

  COPYRIGHT

  The sense of danger must not disappear:

  The way is certainly both short and steep,

  However gradual it looks from here;

  Look if you like, but you will have to leap.

  — W. H. AUDEN

  THE TRAMP was big and squarely built, and he walked with the rolling stride of the long road, his steps too big for the little streets of the little town. Shivering in his thin coat, he passed aimlessly through the crowd while rosy-faced Christmas shoppers quickened their steps and moved aside to give him room.

  The sound of music made him stop at a toyshop where the door, continually swinging open and shut in a moving stream of people, jangled its bell and sent warm air and Christmas carols out into the street. “Deck the halls with boughs of holly,” sang the loudspeakers in the shop, and the tramp smelled Christmas in the pine wreaths, in the bright paint and varnish, in the shining metal and fresh pasteboard of the new toys.

  He put his face close to the window, and looking past the toys displayed there, peered into the shop. Under the wreaths and winking colored lights a little train clattered through sparkling tunnels and over painted mountains on a green table, the tiny clacking of its wheels circling in and out of the music. Beyond it the shelves were packed with tin toys and wooden toys and plush toys — dolls, teddy bears, games and puzzles, fire engines and boats and wagons, and row on row of closed boxes, each printed with a fascinating picture of the toy it hid from sight.

  On the counter, rising grandly above the heads of the children clustered before it, was a splendid dollhouse. It was very large and expensive, a full three stories high, and a marvel of its kind. The porches and balconies were elegant with scrollwork brackets, and the mansard roof with its dormers and cross gables was topped by tall brick chimneys and a handsome lookout. In front of the house stood a clockwork elephant wearing a purple headcloth, and when the saleslady wound her up for the watching children, she walked slowly up and down, swinging her trunk and flapping her ears. Near the elephant a little tin seal balanced a red-and-yellow ball on her nose and kept it spinning while her reflection in the glass countertop smiled up at her and spun its own red-and-yellow ball.

  As the tramp watched, the saleslady opened a box and took out two toy mice, a large one and a small one, who stood upright with outstretched arms and joined hands. They wore blue velveteen trousers and patent leather shoes, and they had glass-bead eyes, white thread whiskers, and black rubber tails. When the saleslady wound the key in the mouse father’s back he danced in a circle, swinging his little son up off the counter and down again while the children laughed and reached out to touch them. Around and around they danced gravely, and more and more slowly as the spring unwound, until the mouse father came to a stop holding the child high in his upraised arms.

  The saleslady, looking up as she wound the toy again, saw the tramp’s whiskered staring face on the other side of the glass. She pursed her mouth and looked away, and the tramp turned from the window back to the street. The gray sky had begun to let down its snow, and the ragged man stood in the middle of the pavement while the soft flakes fell around him and the people quickstepped past him.

  Then, with his big broken shoes printing his footsteps in the fresh snow, he solemnly danced in a circle, swinging his empty arms up and down. A little black-and-white spotted dog trotting past stopped and sat down to look at him, and for a moment the man and the dog were the only two creatures on the street not moving in a fixed direction. People laughed, shook their heads, and hurried on. The tramp stopped with empty arms upraised. Then he lowered his head, jammed his hands into his pockets, and lurched away down the street, around a corner, and into the evening and the lamplight on the snow. The dog sniffed at his footprints, then trotted on where they led.

  The store closed. The customers and clerks went home. The music was silent. The wreaths were dim, the shop was dark except for the dollhouse on the counter. Light streamed from all its windows out into the shadows around it, and the toys before it stood up silhouetted black and motionless as the hours slowly passed.

  Then, “Midnight!” said the old store clock. Its pendulum swung gleaming in the shadows as it counted twelve thin chimes into the silence, folded its hands together, and stared out through the dark window at the thick snow sifting through the light of the street lamp. Far away and muffled by the snow the town hall clock struck midnight with its deeper note.

  “Where are we?” the mouse child asked his father. His voice was tiny in the stillness of the night.

  “I don’t know,” the father answered.

  “What are we, Papa?”

  “I don’t know. We must wait and see.”

  “What astonishing ignorance!” said the clockwork elephant. “But of course you’re new. I’ve been here such a long time that I’d forgotten how it was. Now, then,” she said, “this place is a toyshop, and you are toy mice. People are going to come and buy you for children, because it’s almost a time called Christmas.”

  “Why haven’t they bought you?” asked the little tin seal. “How come you’ve stayed here so long?”

  “It isn’t quite the same for me, my dear,” replied the elephant. “I’m part of the establishment, you see, and this is my house.”

  The house was certainly grand enough for her, or indeed for anyone. The very cornices and carven brackets bespoke a residence of dignity and style, and the dolls never set foot outside it. They had no need to; everything they could possibly want was there, from the covered platters and silver chafing dishes on the sideboard to the ebony grand piano among the potted ferns in the conservatory. No expense had been spared, and no detail was wanting. The house had rooms for every purpose, all opulently furnished and appropriately occupied: There were a piano-teacher doll and a young-lady-pupil doll in the conservatory, a nursemaid doll for the children dolls in the nursery, and a cook and butler doll in the kitchen. Interminable-weekend-guest dolls lay in all the guest room beds, sporting dolls played billiards in the billiard room, and a scholar doll in the library never ceased perusal of the book he held, although he kept in touch with the world by the hand he lightly rested on the globe that stood beside him. There was even an astronomer doll in the lookout observatory, who tirelessly aimed his little telescope at one of the automatic fire sprinklers in the ceiling of the shop. In the dining room, beneath a glittering chandelier, a party of lady and gentleman dolls sat perpetually around a table. Whatever the cook and butler might hope to serve them, they had never taken anything but tea, and that from empty cups, while plaster cakes and pastry, defying time, stood by the silver teapot on the white damask cloth.

  It was the elephant’s constant delight to watch that tea party through the window, and as the hostess she took great pride in the quality of her hospitality. “Have another cup of tea,” she said to one of the ladies. “Try a little pastry.”

  “HIGH-SOCIE
TY SCANDAL, changing to cloudy, with a possibility of BARGAINS GALORE!” replied the lady. Her papier-mâché head being made of paste and newsprint, she always spoke in scraps of news and advertising, in whatever order they came to mind.

  “Bucket seats,” remarked the gentleman next to her. “Power steering optional. GOVERNMENT FALLS.”

  The mouse child was still thinking of what the elephant had said before. “What happens when they buy you?” he asked her.

  “That, of course, is outside of my experience,” said the elephant, “but I should think that one simply goes out into the world and does whatever one does. One dances or balances a ball, as the case may be.”

  The child remembered the bitter wind that had blown in through the door, and the great staring face of the tramp at the window with the gray winter sky behind him. Now that sky was a silent darkness beyond the street lamp and the white flakes falling. The dollhouse was bright and warm; the teapot gleamed upon the dazzling cloth. “I don’t want to go out into the world,” he said.

  “Obviously the child isn’t being properly brought up,” said the elephant to the gentleman doll nearest her. “But then how could he be, poor thing, without a mother’s guidance.”

  “PRICES SLASHED,” said the gentleman. “EVERYTHING MUST GO.”

  “You’re quite right,” said the elephant. “Everything must, in one way or another, go. One does what one is wound to do. It is expected of me that I walk up and down in front of my house; it is expected of you that you drink tea. And it is expected of this young mouse that he go out into the world with his father and dance in a circle.”

  “But I don’t want to,” said the mouse child, and he began to cry. It was an odd little tinny rasping sound, and father and son both rattled with it.

  “There, there,” said the father, “don’t cry. Please don’t.” Toys all around the shop were listening. “He’d better stop that,” they said.

  It was the clock that spoke next, startling them with his flat brass voice. “I might remind you of the rules of clockwork,” he said. “No talking before midnight and after dawn, and no crying on the job.”

  “He’s not on the job,” said the seal. “We’re on our own time now.”

  “Toys that cry on their own time sometimes cry on the job,” said the clock, “and no good ever comes of it. A word to the wise.”

  “Do be quiet,” said the elephant to the mouse child. “I’ll sing you a lullaby. Pay attention now.” The mouse child stopped crying, and listened while the elephant sang:

  Hush, hush, little plush,

  Mama’s near you through the night.

  Hush, hush, little plush,

  Everything will be all right.

  “Are you my mama?” asked the child. He had no idea what a mama might be, but he knew at once that he needed one badly.

  “Good heavens!” said the elephant. “Of course I’m not your mama. I was simply singing words I once heard a large teddy bear sing to a small one.”

  “Will you be my mama,” said the child, “and will you sing to me all the time? And can we all stay here together and live in the beautiful house where the party is and not go out into the world?”

  “Certainly not!” snorted the elephant. “Really,” she said to the gentleman doll, “this is intolerable. One is polite to the transient element on the counter, and see what comes of it.”

  “Twenty-one-inch color television,” offered the gentleman. “Nagging backaches and muscle tension. A HEARTWARMING LOVE STORY THE WHOLE FAMILY WILL ENJOY.”

  “You’re an idiot,” snapped the elephant, and no one on the counter said another word for the rest of the night. Outside the window the snowflakes whirled into the lamplight and out into the darkness again; inside the shop the clock ticked slowly through the long dim hours, and the tea party in the dollhouse silently continued.

  The next day the mouse and his child were sold. While the elephant walked back and forth and the seal balanced her ball and the ladies and gentlemen sat over their teacups, the father and son were put into a box, wrapped up, and carried off.

  They came out of their wrappings to find the store gone and themselves under a Christmas tree with other toys around them. The tree was hung with lights and angels, and smelled of the pine woods. The fire crackled and sang on the hearth, and the children curled up on the rug with the family cat to watch the toys perform. A furry white rabbit struck his cymbals together with a tiny clash; a tin monkey played “La Golondrina” on a little violin; a tin bird pecked steadily at the floor. And the mouse and his child danced.

  Presents in bright wrappings were piled all around them, but the windup toys were not presents for the children; the grown-ups brought them down from the attic every year with the Christmas ornaments, and every year after Christmas they were packed away again. “You may look at them,” said the grown-ups to the children, “but we must wind them for you. Then they will not be broken, and we can enjoy them for many Christmases.”

  So the mouse and his child danced under the tree every evening, and every night when the family was asleep they talked with the other toys. The monkey complained of being made to play the same tune over and over on a cheap fiddle; the bird complained of having to peck at a bare floor; the rabbit complained that there was no meaning in his cymbals. And soon the mouse and his child complained of the futility of dancing in an endless circle that led nowhere.

  Every evening the toys performed, and every day the pine tree shed more needles on the floor around them until Christmas was gone. Then the tree was thrown out and the toys were packed off to the attic with the ornaments. There they lay jumbled in a box together, in the warm, sharp, dry smell of the attic beams and the dim light of the clouded, cobwebbed windows. Through long days and nights they listened to the rain on the roof and the wind in the trees, but the sound of the living room clock striking midnight could not reach them; they never had permission to speak at all, and they lay in silence until another year had passed and they stood once more beneath the tree.

  So it was that four Christmases came and went, until there came a fifth Christmas that was different from the others.

  * * *

  “WIND UP THE TOYS FOR US!” said the children as they lay on the rug by the fire and leaned their cheeks on their hands.

  When the mouse father was wound up, he danced in a circle as he always did, swinging the child up and down. The room, the tree, and the faces in the firelight whirled past the child as always, but this time he saw something new: among the other presents stood a dollhouse, a little one-room affair with a red-brick pattern printed on its fiberboard walls.

  As the mouse child danced by with his father, he looked through the dollhouse window and saw a very small teddy bear and a pink china baby doll sitting at a table on which was a tea set bigger than both of them. Around and around the mouse child danced, rising and falling as his father swung him up and down, while the little tea party in the window circled past him.

  How far away that other dollhouse seemed now! How far away that other tea party with its elegant ladies and gentlemen, and the elephant he had wanted for a mama! The mouse child was on the job and he knew it, but he began to cry.

  No one noticed his outbreak but the family cat. She had grown used to the mechanical toys and no longer paid any attention to them, but the strange little sound of the mouse child’s sobbing startled and upset her. She dabbed at the toy, arched her back, jumped suddenly sidewise, and leaping onto a table, knocked over a heavy vase of flowers. It fell with a crash, landing squarely on the mouse and his child. The vase was shattered to bits, and the toy was smashed.

  * * *

  EARLY THE NEXT MORNING the tramp came through the town, as he did each winter. With the little dog still at his heels he walked the snowy street past the house where the children and the grown-ups lived. He looked into the trash can to see what he might be able to use, took an empty coffee can and a bundle of newspapers, and went back to the junkyard where he had slept the night bef
ore in a wrecked car. Only then did he find the mouse and his child inside the papers, crushed almost flat but still holding fast to each other.

  The tramp looked at the battered wrecks around him in the cold, clear sunlight. He looked down at himself in his ragged clothes. Then he sat down in the car he had slept in, and reached into his pocket for a little screwdriver. While the dog watched quietly, he took the mouse and his child apart to see if he could make them dance again. The junkyard lay silent, its wrecks upheaved like rusty islands in the sparkling snow; the only sounds were the bells of Christmas ringing in the town and the cawing of some crows, hoarse and sharp in the cold air.

  All that day the tramp sat in the junkyard laboring over the broken toy, stopping only to eat some bread and meat that he took from his pocket and shared with the dog. He was able to bend the tin bodies almost back into their original shapes, but he had a great deal of trouble with the clockwork motor. When he wound it up, the mechanism jammed, and in trying to clear it he broke some of the little cogs and bars that had made the mouse father dance in a circle and swing the child up and down. The tramp removed those parts and put the toy together as well as he could. Their patent leather shoes had been lost in the trash can; their blue velveteen trousers hung wrinkled and awry; their fur had come unglued in several places, but the mouse and his child were whole again.

  Now when it was wound up the motor worked without jamming, but the mouse and his child danced no more. The father, his legs somewhat bent, lurched straight ahead with a rolling stride, pushing the child backward before him. The little dog sat and watched them with his head cocked to one side. The ragged man smiled and threw away the leftover parts. Then he put the toy in his pocket and walked out to the highway.

  High on a ridge above the town where snowy fields sloped off on either side, the road crossed a bridge over the railroad tracks, went past the town dump, and stretched away to the horizon. The tramp set the mouse and his child down at the edge of the road and wound up the father.