A NEW YEAR'S FABLE
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my brief life I experienced no great happiness. And you? Has a
grateful man ever shaken your hand-shaken it so hard that
your heart was shaken out of its place? Have you ever seen at
close range a pair of eyes filled with tears of love?"
These thoughts stunned me. I had never experienced any–
thing like that. I had loved, but I had never yet seen such eyes.
I knew no great friendship, had not earned the gratitude of
men.... Lowering my head, I no longer heard the music, and
the city lights grew dim around me. But one thing I did hear–
the lively ticking.
It
was the watch, the bandit's present, doing
its work, counting off the time, my seconds: "You have your
whole life before you! A whole year! You have just been born!
You are younger now than you were! Run fast towards your
work! Everything
is
there-your friendship and your love!"
I broke into a run, leapt into a taxi-fast, fast to the
laboratory!-and the taxi driver, shifting into high gear, looked
around with amazement at his extraordinary fare.
Leaving the taxi waiting at the entrance, I dashed in and
mounted the stairs. In the corridor, beside the hot stove, the old
stovewoman, her head drooping, had fallen asleep. I shook her
awake.
"Quickly, hand me all my papers! Those I gave you this
morning! There was a basketful this morning ..."
"You should have thought of them earlier!"
At this I groaned and reached for the burning ash of the
stove.
"I burned them all, I did." The old woman explained.
"They burned well--only your papers burn so well. It made
me feel warm, as you see. I even fell asleep."
"Tick-tock, tick-tock," said the bandit's watch in my
pocket. Clenching my teeth, I opened my office and began to
carry out boxes of apparatus into the street towards the waiting
taxi. I had decided to open a branch of the laboratory at home
and to work nights. I could earn the highest gratitude of men,
but I had not yet even made a start!
