Aunt Andersen's Fairy Tales

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Story Introduction

Aunt's Story

You should know my aunt! She's such a sweetheart! That is, not in the usual way. She's kind and affable, with a certain humor of her own. If anyone wants to have a little conversation, a joke, she's the subject of a joke. She could be a character in a play, because she lives solely for the theater and everything connected with it. She's a person of great stature. But the agent, Fab—my aunt pronounced him Frab—called her a "theater fan."

"The theater is my school," she said, "the source of my knowledge. Here I relearn the history of the Bible: Moses, Joseph and his brothers, all turned into operas! In the theater I learn world history, geography, and all about humanity! From French plays I learn about Parisian life—very unconventional, but very interesting! I shed so many tears over 'The Rieglberg Family': imagine a husband drinking himself to death to get his wife her young lover! Yes, I have been a regular at the theater for fifty years, and in that time I have shed so many tears!"

My aunt knew every play, every plot, every character who would appear or had appeared. She lived only for the nine months of the play. There were no plays in the summer—a time that aged her. Evening plays that lasted past midnight extended her life. She didn't say, as others did, "Spring is coming! The storks are here!" or "The newspaper says strawberries are in season!" Instead, she always said about the coming of autumn, "Didn't you see the theater is selling tickets now? The play is about to start!"

In her opinion, the value of a house depended entirely on its proximity to the theatre, and she was deeply distressed when she had to move from a side street behind the theatre to a house farther up the street with no neighbours opposite.

"My window should be my box! You can't just sit there all day thinking about your own things. You should see people. But now I live as if I were far away in the country. If I want to see people, I have to go into the kitchen and climb up to the sink so I can see my neighbors across the street. When I lived in my little alley, I could see right into the hemp vendor's shop, and it only took me three hundred steps to get to the theater. Now I have to take three thousand steps."

My aunt was sometimes ill, but no matter how ill she was, she never missed the theatre. Her doctor prescribed a medicated foot cream. She did as the doctor advised, but she would call a cab to the theatre and sit there with the medicated foot cream, watching the play. If she died there, it would be a happy death for her. Thorvaldsen died in the theatre—she called it her "happy death."

①Bertel Thorvaldsen (1768-1844) was a famous Danish sculptor.

It was unimaginable to her that there would be no theaters in Heaven. Of course, we will never go to Heaven, but we can imagine that famous actors and actresses who have passed away in the past must still be there to continue their careers.

My aunt had a private electric line in her room that went straight to the theatre. Every day while she was having her coffee she would receive a "telegram." Her line was to Mr. Siverson of the stage company. He was the one who gave the orders for the scenery to be set up or taken down, for the curtain to be raised or lowered.

She got from him the brief plot of each play. She called Shakespeare's The Tempest "a dreadful piece of work, because its scenery is too complicated, and there's water at the very beginning of the first scene!" She meant that the rough waves were too prominent on the stage. On the other hand, if the same interior setting remained unchanged throughout the five acts, she would consider the play to be clever and complete, a quiet play that flowed of its own accord without any scenery.

In the old days—more than thirty years ago, as my aunt called them—she and Mr. Siverson, as she had just mentioned, were still very young. He was already working in the equipment department and, as she put it, was already one of her "benefactors." In those days, there was only one large theater in the city, a single, unique one. During evening performances, many patrons would sit in the scenery room above the stage. Each carpenter backstage had one or two seats at his disposal. These seats were often filled with guests, and they were all celebrities: it was said that it was either the wife of a general or the wife of an alderman. It was very interesting to watch the play from behind the scenes and, after the curtain fell, to see how the actors stood and moved.

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