The Nightingale

In China, as you know, the emperor is Chinese, and everyone he keeps about him is Chinese as well. It all happened many years ago, and that is just why the story is worth hearing now, before it is forgotten. The emperor’s palace was the finest in the world, built entirely of delicate porcelain, very costly, and so brittle and so difficult to touch that anyone near it had to take great care. In the garden grew the most wonderful flowers, and to the finest of them silver bells were tied, which rang so that nobody could walk past without noticing the flowers. Yes, everything in the emperor’s garden was thought out to the last detail, and it stretched so far that even the gardener did not know where it ended. If you kept on walking you came into a splendid forest with tall trees and deep lakes, and the forest ran straight down to the sea, which was blue and deep. Great ships could sail right in under the branches, and in one of those trees lived a nightingale. She sang so beautifully that even the poor fisherman, who had a great deal else to do, would lie still and listen when he had rowed out at night to set his nets and heard her.

“Heavens, how lovely that is,” he would say. But then he had to mind his work, and he forgot the bird. The next night, when she sang again and the fisherman came out to the same spot, he would say the very same thing: “Heavens, how lovely that is.”

Travellers came from every country in the world to the emperor’s city, and they admired the city, and the palace, and the garden. But when they got to hear the nightingale, every one of them said, “That is the best of all.”

The travellers told of her when they came home, and the scholars wrote many books about the city, the palace and the garden. They did not forget the nightingale either. She was placed highest of all, and those who could write poetry wrote the loveliest poems about the nightingale in the forest by the deep lake.

The books went round the world, and in time a few of them reached the emperor. He sat in his golden chair and read and read, nodding his head every moment, for it pleased him to find such splendid descriptions of his city, his palace and his garden. “But the nightingale is the best of all,” said the writing on the page.

“What is this?” said the emperor. “The nightingale? I know nothing at all about her. Is there such a bird in my empire, and in my own garden? I have never heard of her. To think that a man has to learn a thing like that out of a book.”

Then he called for his gentleman in waiting, who was so grand that when anyone of lower rank dared to speak to him or ask him a question, he answered nothing but “P,” which means nothing at all.

“They say there is a most remarkable bird here, called a nightingale,” said the emperor. “They say she is the best thing in my whole great empire. Why has nobody ever told me about her?”

“I have never heard her named before,” said the gentleman in waiting. “She has never been presented at court.”

“I wish her to come here this evening and sing for me,” said the emperor. “The whole world knows what I have, and I do not know it myself.”

“I have never heard her named before,” said the gentleman in waiting. “But I will look for her, and I will find her.”

Yet where was she to be found? The gentleman in waiting ran up and down every staircase, through halls and corridors, and not one of the people he met had ever heard anyone speak of the nightingale. So he ran back to the emperor and said that it must certainly be a fable, made up by the people who write books.

“Your Imperial Majesty must not believe everything that gets written down,” he said. “There are inventions in it, and something people call the black art.”

“But the book I read it in,” said the emperor, “was sent to me by the mighty emperor of Japan, so it cannot be untrue. I will hear the nightingale. She must be here this evening. She has my highest favour. And if she does not come, the whole court shall be trampled underfoot once supper is over.”

“Tsing-pe!” said the gentleman in waiting, and off he ran again, up and down all the stairs, through all the halls and corridors, and half the court ran with him, for none of them cared to be trampled underfoot. There was a great deal of asking after this remarkable nightingale, whom all the world knew and nobody at court.

At last they came upon a poor little girl in the kitchen. She said, “Oh, goodness, I know the nightingale well. How she can sing! Every evening I am allowed to carry the scraps from the table home to my poor sick mother. She lives down by the shore, and when I am walking back and stop to rest in the forest, I hear the nightingale sing. It brings tears to my eyes, and it is as if my mother were kissing me.”

“Little kitchen maid,” said the gentleman in waiting, “I will get you a proper place in the kitchen, and leave to watch the emperor at his dinner, if you can take us to the nightingale. She is expected this evening.”

So they all set off into the forest, where the nightingale liked to sing, and half the court went along. When they were well on their way, a cow began to bellow.

“Oh,” said the young courtiers, “now we have her. What a wonderful power for such a small creature. I am certain I have heard her before.”

“No, that is a cow bellowing,” said the little kitchen maid. “We are still a long way from the place.”

Then the frogs began to croak in the marsh.

“Beautiful,” said the court chaplain. “Now I hear her. It sounds just like little church bells.”

“No, those are frogs,” said the little kitchen maid. “But I think we shall hear her soon now.”

Then the nightingale began to sing.

“That is her,” said the little girl. “Listen. Listen. There she sits.” And she pointed to a small grey bird up among the branches.

“Is it possible?” said the gentleman in waiting. “I never pictured her like that. How plain she looks. She must have lost her colour at seeing so many distinguished people around her.”

“Little nightingale,” the kitchen maid called out, “our most gracious emperor wishes you to sing before him.”

“With the greatest pleasure,” said the nightingale, and she sang so that it was a joy to hear.

“It sounds just like glass bells,” said the gentleman in waiting. “And look at her little throat, how it works. It is remarkable that we have never heard her before. She will be a great success at court.”

“Shall I sing for the emperor again?” asked the nightingale, who thought the emperor was there.

“My excellent little nightingale,” said the gentleman in waiting, “I have the great pleasure of inviting you to a court festival this evening, where you will enchant His Imperial Majesty with your charming song.”

“It sounds best out among the green trees,” said the nightingale. But she came willingly all the same when she heard that the emperor wished it.

At the palace everything had been polished and made ready. The walls and the floor, which were of porcelain, shone in the light of many thousand golden lamps. The loveliest flowers, the ones that could really ring, had been set out along the corridors. There was such running to and fro, and such a draught, that all the bells rang and nobody could hear his own words.

In the middle of the great hall, where the emperor sat, a golden perch had been set up, and there the nightingale was to sit. The whole court was there, and the little kitchen maid had been given leave to stand behind the door, for she had now been given the title of a real court cook. Everyone was dressed in their very finest, and everyone looked at the little grey bird, to whom the emperor gave a nod.

The nightingale sang so beautifully that tears came into the emperor’s eyes and ran down his cheeks, and then she sang more beautifully still. It went straight to the heart. The emperor was so glad that he said the nightingale should have his golden slipper to wear round her neck. But the nightingale thanked him and said she had reward enough already.

“I have seen tears in an emperor’s eyes, and that is the richest treasure I know. An emperor’s tears have a strange power in them. Heaven knows I am rewarded enough.” And then she sang again with her sweet, glorious voice.

“That is the most charming coquetry I know of,” said the ladies standing round, and then they took water into their mouths so that they could gurgle whenever anyone spoke to them, for they believed that this made nightingales of them too. Even the footmen and the chambermaids sent word that they were satisfied, and that says a great deal, for they are the hardest of all to please. In short, the nightingale was a true success.

She was to stay at court now, with a cage of her own, and permission to go out twice by day and once by night. She was given twelve servants to go with her, each of them holding a silk ribbon tied round her leg, and they held on tight. There was no pleasure at all in an outing like that.

The whole city talked about the remarkable bird, and when two people met, one would say “Nightin,” and the other would say “gale,” and then they would sigh and understand each other perfectly. Eleven grocers’ children were named after her, but not one of them could sing a note.

One day the emperor received a large parcel with “The Nightingale” written on it.

“Here we have a new book about our famous bird,” said the emperor. But it was no book. It was a little work of art lying in a box, an artificial nightingale, made to look like the living one, only studded all over with diamonds, rubies and sapphires. As soon as you wound the artificial bird up, it could sing one of the pieces the real bird sang, and its tail moved up and down and glittered with silver and gold. Round its neck hung a little ribbon, and on it was written: “The Emperor of Japan’s nightingale is a poor thing beside the Emperor of China’s.”

“How splendid,” everyone said, and the man who had brought the artificial bird was given the title of Imperial Chief Nightingale Bringer on the spot.

“Now they must sing together. What a duet that will be.”

And so they had to sing together, but it would not do at all, for the real nightingale sang in her own way and the artificial bird ran on rollers.

“That is no fault of his,” said the music master. “He keeps perfect time and belongs entirely to my school.”

So the artificial bird had to sing alone. It was as great a success as the real one, and it was much prettier to look at besides, glittering like bracelets and brooches.

Three and thirty times it sang the same piece, and it was not tired. The people would gladly have heard it all over again, but the emperor thought that the living nightingale ought to sing something now. And where was she? Nobody had noticed her fly out of the open window, away to her green forests.

“Well, what is the meaning of this?” said the emperor. And all the courtiers scolded and said the nightingale was a most ungrateful creature. “Still, we have the better bird,” they said. So the artificial bird had to sing again, and that was the thirty-fourth time they had heard the same piece. Even so they did not know it by heart, for it was far too difficult. And the music master praised the bird beyond all measure. He even declared that it was better than a real nightingale, not only in its clothes and its many splendid diamonds, but inside as well.

“For you see, ladies and gentlemen, and Your Majesty above all, with a real nightingale one can never reckon what is coming, but with the artificial bird everything is settled. It can be explained. You can open it up and show people how the rollers lie, how they turn, and how one thing follows from another.”

“That is exactly what we think,” they all said, and the music master was given leave to show the bird to the people the following Sunday. They were to hear it sing as well, the emperor commanded. And they heard it, and they grew as merry as if they had made themselves tipsy on tea, which is the Chinese way. They all said “Oh,” and held one finger in the air and nodded. But the poor fisherman, who had heard the real nightingale, said, “It sounds pretty enough, and the tunes are like hers as well, but something is missing, and I cannot tell what it is.”

The real nightingale was banished from the country and the empire.

The artificial bird had its place on a silk cushion close beside the emperor’s bed. All the presents it had been given, the gold and the precious stones, lay round about it, and in title it had risen to High Imperial Bedside Singer, ranked Number One on the left hand side, for the emperor counted the side on which the heart lies as the nobler one, and even an emperor’s heart is on the left. And the music master wrote a work in twenty-five volumes about the artificial bird. It was so learned and so long, and so full of the hardest Chinese words, that everybody said they had read it and understood it, for otherwise they would have been stupid and would have been trampled underfoot.

So it went for a whole year. The emperor, the court and all the other Chinese knew every little cluck in the artificial bird’s song by heart, and that was exactly why they liked it best of all now. They could sing along with it, and they did. The street boys sang, “Zi-zi-zi, cluck, cluck, cluck,” and the emperor sang it too. Oh, it was splendid.

But one evening, when the artificial bird was singing its best and the emperor lay in bed listening, something inside the bird said “whizz.” Something snapped. “Whirr,” went all the wheels, running round, and then the music stopped.

The emperor jumped out of bed at once and sent for his own physician, but what could he do? Then they fetched the watchmaker, and after a great deal of talking and looking he got the bird into some sort of order. But he said it must be spared, for the pegs were worn, and it was impossible to put in new ones and be sure the music would run. That was a great sorrow. The artificial bird might be allowed to sing only once a year, and even that was almost too much. But then the music master made a little speech full of weighty words and said that it was quite as good as before, and so it was quite as good as before.

Five years went by, and then a real sorrow came upon the whole country. The Chinese were fond of their emperor at heart, and now he was ill, and it was said that he could not live much longer. A new emperor had already been chosen, and the people stood outside in the street and asked the gentleman in waiting how their old emperor was.

“P,” he said, and shook his head.

Cold and pale the emperor lay in his great, splendid bed. The whole court believed he was dead, and every one of them ran off to greet the new emperor. The chamberlains ran out to gossip about it, and the chambermaids held a great coffee party. Cloth had been laid down through all the halls and corridors so that no footstep should be heard, and so it was quiet in there, quite quiet. But the emperor was not dead yet. Stiff and pale he lay in the splendid bed with its long velvet curtains and heavy gold tassels. High above, a window stood open, and the moon shone in on the emperor and the artificial bird.

The poor emperor could hardly breathe. It was as though something were sitting on his chest. He opened his eyes, and he saw that it was Death sitting there, wearing the emperor’s golden crown, holding the emperor’s golden sword in one hand and his splendid banner in the other. And all around, out of the folds of the great velvet bed curtains, strange heads were looking out, some of them hideous, others lovely and mild. They were all the emperor’s bad deeds and good deeds, gazing at him now that Death sat upon his heart.

“Do you remember this?” they whispered, one after another. “Do you remember that?” And they told him so much that the sweat ran down his forehead.

“I never knew that,” said the emperor. “Music. Music. The great Chinese drum,” he cried, “so that I need not hear everything they are saying.”

But they went on, and Death nodded to everything they said, the way the Chinese nod.

“Music. Music,” shouted the emperor. “You dear little golden bird, sing, do sing. I have given you gold and treasures. I hung my own golden slipper round your neck. Sing, do sing.”

But the bird stood still. There was nobody there to wind it up, and it never sang otherwise. And Death went on staring at the emperor with his great hollow eyes, and it was quiet, dreadfully quiet.

Then all at once the loveliest singing came in through the window. It was the little living nightingale, sitting on a branch outside. She had heard of her emperor’s distress, and she had come to sing him comfort and hope. And as she sang, the ghostly faces grew paler and paler, the blood ran quicker and quicker through the emperor’s weak limbs, and even Death listened and said, “Go on, little nightingale. Go on.”

“Yes, if you will give me the splendid golden sword. Yes, if you will give me the rich banner. Yes, if you will give me the emperor’s crown.”

And Death gave up each treasure for a song, and the nightingale sang on. She sang of the quiet churchyard where the white roses grow, where the elder tree breathes out its scent and the fresh grass is watered by the tears of those left behind. Then Death began to long for his garden, and he floated out of the window like a cold white mist.

“Thank you, thank you,” said the emperor. “You heavenly little bird, I know you well. I drove you out of my country and my empire, and still you have sung the evil faces away from my bed and Death away from my heart. How can I repay you?”

“You have repaid me,” said the nightingale. “I drew tears from your eyes the first time I sang, and I shall never forget that. Those are the jewels that gladden a singer’s heart. But sleep now, and grow fresh and strong again. I will sing to you.”

And she sang, and the emperor sank into a sweet slumber. How mild and how kind that sleep was.

The sun was shining in through the windows when he woke, strong and well again. Not one of his servants had come back, for they believed he was dead. Only the nightingale still sat beside him and sang.

“You must stay with me always,” said the emperor. “You shall sing only when you please, and I will break the artificial bird into a thousand pieces.”

“Do not do that,” said the nightingale. “It did all the good it could, as long as it could. Keep it as you have kept it. I cannot build my nest in the palace and live there, but let me come when I wish to. Then in the evening I will sit on the branch by your window and sing to you, so that you may be glad and thoughtful at once. I will sing of the happy, and of those who suffer. I will sing of the good and the evil that stay hidden all around you. Your little singing bird flies far and wide, to the poor fisherman, to the farmer’s roof, to everyone who lives far away from you and your court. I love your heart more than your crown, and yet there is a scent of something holy about the crown as well. I will come, I will sing to you. But you must promise me one thing.”

“Anything,” said the emperor, standing there in his imperial robes, which he had put on himself, and pressing the sword, heavy with gold, against his heart.

“Only one thing I ask. Tell no one that you have a little bird who tells you everything, and then all will go better still.”

And with that the nightingale flew away.

The servants came in to look at their dead emperor. There they stood, and the emperor said, “Good morning.”