Tale of the day: "nobody's story"

“The story of Nobody is the story of the ranks and ranks of the earth. They take their part in the battle; they have their part in the victory; they fall; they leave no name except in the mass. " The story was published in 1853, contained in Charles Dickens' Some Short Christmas Stories.

He lived on the bank of a mighty river, wide and deep, which always flowed silently towards a vast unknown ocean. It had been going on since the beginning of the world. Sometimes it had changed its course and transformed into new channels, leaving its old ways dry and bare; but it had always been on the flow, and it always should have flowed until Time passed. Against its strong and unfathomable flow, nothing has appeared. No living creature, no flower, no leaf, no particle of animate or inanimate existence, has ever departed from the uncharted ocean. The tide of the river approached without resistance; and the tide has never stopped, any more than the earth stops in its circle around the sun.

He lived in a busy place and worked very hard for a living. He had no hope of ever being rich enough to live a month without hard work, but he was happy enough, GOD knows, to work with a cheerful will. He was part of an immense family, whose sons and daughters earned their daily bread from daily work, which lasted from the moment they got up until they went to bed at night. Beyond this fate, he had no prospects, and he sought none.

In the neighborhood he lived in, there were too many drums, trumpets and speeches; but it had nothing to do with that. Such a clash and tumult came from the Bigwig family, for the inexplicable proceedings of which race, he was very surprised. They placed the strangest statues, in iron, marble, bronze and brass, in front of his door; and he obscured his house with the legs and tails of crude images of horses. He wondered what all this meant, smiled in a crude way of good humor he had and continued to work hard.

The Bigwig family (made up of all the most majestic people in the place, and all the loudest) had made a point of saving him the trouble of thinking for himself and managing him and his affairs. “Because really,” he said, “I have little time available; and if you are good enough to take care of me, in exchange for the money I will pay "- because the Bigwig family was no better than his money -" I will be relieved and very grateful, considering you know better. " Hence the sound of drums, trumpets and speeches and the ugly images of the horses that were expected to fall and worship.

“I don't understand all of this,” he said, confusedly rubbing his wrinkled forehead. "But it has a meaning, perhaps, if I could find out."

"It means," the Bigwig family replied, suspecting something of what they had said, "honor and glory in the highest, highest merit."

"Oh!" She said. And he was glad to hear it.

But when he looked through the iron, marble, bronze and brass images, he could not find a rather meritorious countryman, once the son of a Warwickshire wool merchant, or any such fellow countryman. He could not find any of the men whose knowledge had saved him and his children from a terrible and disfiguring disease, whose audacity had lifted his ancestors from the status of servants, whose wise imagination had opened a new and lofty existence to the humblest. , whose skill he had filled the worker's world with accumulated wonders. Instead, he found others he didn't know well about, and also others he knew very badly about.

"Humph!" She said. "I don't understand it well."

So, he went home and sat by the fireplace to get it out of his mind.

Now, his hearth was bare, all surrounded by blackened streets; but for him it was a precious place. His wife's hands were hard from work, and she was old before her time; but she was dear to him. His children, stunted in their growth, bore traces of bad education; but they had beauty before his eyes. Above all, it was a sincere desire of this man's soul that his children be educated. “If I am sometimes misled,” he said, “through lack of knowledge, at least let him know and avoid my mistakes. If it's hard for me to reap the harvest of pleasure and education that's stored in books, let it be easier for them. "

But the Bigwig family broke out in violent family quarrels over what was lawful to teach this man's children. Some of the family insisted that such a thing be primary and indispensable above all else; and others of the family insisted that something like this was primary and indispensable above all else; and the Bigwig family, divided into factions, wrote pamphlets, held summons, delivered accusations, orations and all kinds of speeches; kidnapped from each other in secular and ecclesiastical courts; they threw the earth, exchanged punches and fell together by the ears in incomprehensible hostility. Meanwhile, this man, in his short evenings by the fire, saw the demon of Ignorance rise there and take his children for himself. He saw his daughter transformed into a heavy, sloppy slut; he saw his son get depressed in the ways of low sensuality, brutality and crime; he saw the rising light of intelligence in his children's eyes turn so cunning and suspicion that he might rather have wished them idiots.

“I don't understand it better,” he said; “But I think it can't be right. Indeed, because of the clouded sky above me, I protest against this as my wrong! "

Becoming peaceful again (as his passion was usually short-lived and his nature kind), he looked around on his Sundays and holidays, and saw how much monotony and weariness there was, and from there how drunkenness arose. with all its following to spoil. Then he appealed to the Bigwig family and said, "We are a working people, and I have a shimmering suspicion that people who work under whatever conditions have been created - by an intelligence superior to yours, as I misunderstand it - to have need for mental refreshment and recreation. See what we fall into when we rest without it. Come! Play me harmlessly, show me something, give me an escape!

But here the Bigwig family fell into an absolutely deafening state of turmoil. When some voices were faintly heard asking him to show him the wonders of the world, the greatness of creation, the mighty changes of time, the functioning of nature and the beauties of art - to show him these things, that is to say, at any time of his life in which he could watch them - such a roar and delirium, such a petition, questioning and feeble response arose among the big boys - - where "I dare not" waited "I would" - that the poor man was amazed, staring wildly around.

“Have I provoked all of this,” he said, hands over his ears in fright, “with what must have been an innocent request, clearly stemming from my family experience and the common knowledge of all men who choose to open their eyes? I don't understand and I'm not understood. What will become of such a state of affairs! "

He was bent over his work, often asking the question, when news began to circulate that a plague had appeared among the workers and was killing them by the thousands. Moving on to look around, he soon discovered that it was true. The dying and the dead mingled in the neighboring and contaminated houses among which his life had passed. New poison was being distilled in the always murky and always disgusting air. The strong and the weak, old age and childhood, father and mother, were all affected equally.

What means of escape did he have? He stayed there, where he was, and saw those who were dearest to him die. A kind preacher came to him and would say some prayers to soften his heart in his sadness, but he replied:

"What good is it, missionary, to come to me, a man condemned to reside in this fetid place, where every sense given to me for my joy becomes a torment, and where every minute of my numbered days is new mud added to the heap below which I lie oppressed! But give me my first look at Heaven, through some of its light and air; give me pure water; help me to be clean; lighten this heavy atmosphere and the heavy life, in which our spirit sinks, and we become the indifferent and insensitive creatures that too often you see us; gently and gently we take the bodies of those who die among us, out of the small room where we grow up to be so familiar with the terrible change that even its sanctity is lost to us; and, Master, then I will listen - no one knows better than you, how willingly - - of the One whose thoughts were so much with the poor, and who had compassion for all human pain! "

He was back at work, lonely and sad, when his Master approached him and approached him dressed in black. He too had suffered a lot. His young wife, his beautiful and good young wife, was dead; so too his only son.

“Master, it is difficult to bear - I know - but be comforted. I would give you comfort, if I could. "

The Master thanked him heartily, but said to him: “O men who work! The calamity has begun between you. If only you had lived in a healthier and more decent way, I would not be the lifeless, weeping widower I am today. "

They will spread far and wide. They always do; they always have, just like the pestilence. I understood so much, I think, finally. "

But the Master said again: “O you workers! How many times do we hear about you, if not in relation to some problem! "

“Master,” he replied, “I am Nobody, and unlikely to be heard of (nor yet very much wanted to hear, perhaps), except when there is some problem. But it never starts with me, and it can never end with me. Sure as Death, it comes down to me and goes up to me. "

There were so many reasons in what he said, that the Bigwig family, upon learning of it and being horribly frightened by the late desolation, decided to join him in doing the right things - in any case, as far as the things said were associated with it. direct prevention, humanly speaking, of another pestilence. But, when their fear vanished, which it soon began to do, they resumed arguing with each other and did nothing. As a result, the scourge appeared again - below as before - and vengefully spread upwards as before, and carried off a large number of fighters. But no man among them has ever admitted, even if minimally he has noticed, that they have anything to do with all this.

So Nobody lived and died in the old, old, old way; and this, in essence, is the whole story of Nobody.

It had no name, you ask? Maybe it was Legion. It doesn't matter what his name was. Let's call it the Legion.

If you have ever been in the Belgian villages near the Waterloo field, you will have seen, in some quiet church, a monument erected by faithful comrades in arms to the memory of Colonel A, Major B, Captains C, D and E, Lieutenants F and G, Ensigns H, I and J, seven non-commissioned officers and one hundred and thirty ranks and ranks, who fell in the exercise of their duty on that memorable day. The story of Nobody is the story of the ranks of the earth. They bring their share of the battle; they have their part in the victory; they fall; they leave no name except in the mass. The march of the proudest of us leads to the dusty road for which they go. Oh! Let's think about them this year at the Christmas fire and don't forget them when it's out.