The
Apple
Over in England a little boy and a little
girl were sitting, they were playing with an apple, they shook it and listened
to how the pips rattled inside; they divided the apple and got one piece each,
they divided the pips between them and ate them, all but one, this they should plant
in the ground, the little boy thought, ‘then you will see what comes out of it!’
he said, ‘something will come that you simply can’t imagine! a complete apple
tree will come out of it! but not straight away!’ he happened to be so intelligent.
And the pip was planted in a flower pot, both of them were equally eager about
this; the boy poked a hole in the soil with his finger, the little girl placed
the pip in the hole and both of them covered it over again.
‘Now you
mustn’t take it up tomorrow to see if it’s “putting down roots”,’ the boy said,
‘you mustn’t do that, I did that with my flowers last year, only twice, I
wanted to see if they were growing, I didn’t know better then and the flowers
died.’
The flower
pot stayed in the little girl’s room, every morning throughout the winter she took
a look at it, but all there was to see was the black soil, now spring came, the
sun shone so warmly and then two small green leaves peeped out of the flower
pot, ‘that’s lovely, ‘that’s wonderful,’ the little girl cried out with joy,
‘now the apple tree’s coming!’ and with every day and week that passed more
became visible, it became a tiny tree, bigger year by year, but the little girl
did not see it blossom, Our Lord called her from this earth. The little boy was
still alive, but the tree was not with him and he had also quite forgotten it
and the game they played when placing the apple pip in the soil of the flower
pot, so that it could turn into something she simply couldn’t imagine. He
himself had left his parents’ house to go to school so that something could
become of him – he took such great pleasure in reading, in learning, in finding
things out, he forgot all his games, and he naturally didn’t think any longer
about the apple pip and what could become of it; it was already a little tree,
large enough to be planted out in the garden, which was where it ended up – it
too came out into the world to see if anything could come of it and there it
stood in the fresh air, the dew fell on it, the sun shone warmly, it gained
strength to withstand the winter, and after the winter’s severe trial it was as
if it blossomed in the spring out of sheer joy, and when autumn came it really
did have a couple of apples. And the years came and went, on the grave of the
little girl the grass grew, but out of school year by year a man moved forwards
with faith in his heart, with strong thoughts in his mind, one day he was going
to be mentioned among the greatest thinkers in the world, he did not think at
all about his apple tree, did not remember how as a young boy he and a little
girl had played with the apple, divided it and even eaten all the pips except
one which they had planted so that she should see: something she simply
couldn’t imagine.
And over
the years heavy days, days of tribulation had passed through the house where
the children had played. The little girl’s parents became poverty-stricken, house
and home were sold, the new owner started building and digging, a new gravel
road was laid across the corner of the former garden plot and this meant that
the apple tree came to stand outside on the far side of the road; but the sun
shone on it as before, and the dew fell on it as before, it bore much blossom
and yielded plenty of fruit that caused the branches to bend down, and many of
them got broken, for wanton hands came and grabbed the fruit, after all the
tree stood by a public highway where everyone passed by, it stood there for
many years, the tree by the highway, blossoms were broken off it without a word
of thanks, people stole the fruit and snapped the branches as well, one could
say that the prospects sung of at its cradle were not fulfilled, if one can say
such a thing about a tree as one can for a human; – its story had begun so well
– and what became of it, abandoned and forgotten, a garden tree by a ditch
between field and road, where it stood without shelter, shaken and broken, it
admittedly did not wither away, but as the years passed it bore fewer blossoms
and even fewer apples, it could well be done without, finally one year only
three apples were hanging on the whole tree in the autumn, clustered close
together on one branch, just as in the first year when it was little, young and
happy at its first abundance, then too only three or four apples, but now these
was the last ones, and when they fell, the story of the tree would be at an
end. – Was that perhaps the thought that preoccupied the elderly man who came
along the road, stood still, cogitated and stared fixedly at the final apple on
the tree, it was at any rate most reasonable, for this man was none other than
the the little boy who had planted the apple pip, but had not seen it grow, had
not seen what came out of it. – Something that he didn’t know, a God’s look for
his thoughts which at that moment were pondering the coherence of creation,
God’s thoughts – that which we call natural forces – the riddle of the world,
all this he wanted to solve – a gentle breeze rustled the tree’s leaves – God’s
spirit hovered and hovers over everything – the apple fell from the tree – the
law of gravity solved a problem, it was Newton.
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