In The Pond

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Title:     In The Pond
Author: Isaac Loeb Peretz [More Titles by Peretz]

Once upon a time there was a pond. It had a corner to itself, and lay quite apart from the rest of the field where beasts were wont to graze and herd-boys to fling stones.

A high bank, set with briars, screened it from the wind, and it had a slimy, shiny green covering, in which the breeze tore a hole once in twelve months. In the pond there dwelt (according to the order of nature) a colony of quite small worms which fed on still smaller ones.

The pond was neither long nor wide, not even deep, and if the little worms could neither discover a bottom nor swim to shore, they had only the thick slime and the water-weeds and the fallen twigs to thank for it.

The geography of the pond was in its infancy.

Conceit, on the other hand, flourished, and fancy had it all her own way beneath the green covering--and the two together sat spinning and weaving.

And they wove between them a legend of the beginning of things, a truly worm-like tradition.

The pond is the great sea, and the four streams of Paradise flow into it. Hiddekel brings gold (that is the slime in which they find their nourishment), and the other three bring flowers (the water-weeds among which they play hide-and-seek on holidays), pearls (frog-pawn), and corals (the little orange fungi on the rotting twigs).

The green cover, the slimy cap on the surface of the pond, is the heaven stretched out over the ocean, a special heaven for their own particular world. Fragments of egg-shell, which have fallen into it, play the part of stars, and a rotten pumpkin does duty for the sun.

The chance stones flung into the pond by the herd-boys are, of course, hailstones flung by heaven at the head of sinners!

And when their heaven opened, and a few beams of the real sun penetrated to a wormy brain, then they believed in hell!

But life in the pond was a pleasant thing!

People were satisfied with themselves and with one another.

When one lives in the great sea, one is as good as a fish oneself.

One worm would call another "Tench," "Pike;" "Crocodile" and "Leviathan" would be engraved on tombstones.

"Roach" was the greatest insult, and "Haddock" not to be forgiven, even on the Day of Atonement.

Meanwhile, astronomy, poetry, and philosophy blossomed like the rose!

The bits of egg-shell were counted over and over again, till everyone was convinced of the absurdity of the attempt.

Romantic poets harped on the Heavenly Academy in a thousand different keys.

Patriots were likened to the stars, stars to ladies' eyes, and the ladies themselves to Paradise--or else to Purgatory! Philosophy transferred the souls of the pious to the rotten pumpkin.

In short, nothing was wanting!

Life had all the colors of the rainbow. In due time a code of law was framed with hundreds of commentaries, they introduced a thousand rules and regulations, and if a worm had the slightest desire to make a change, he had but to remember what the world would think, blush, regret, and do penance!

Once, however, there was a catastrophe! It was caused by a herd of swine. Dreadful feet crashed through the heaven, stamped down the slime, bruised the corals, made havoc of the flowers, and plunged the entire little "world" back into chaos.

Some of the worms were asleep under the slime (and worms sleep fast and long).

These escaped.

When they rose out of the mud, the heavens had already swum together again and united; but whole heaps of squeezed, squashed, and suffocated worms were lying about unburied, witnesses in death of the past awful event!

"What has happened?" was the cry, and search was made for some living soul who should know the cause of the calamity.

But such a living soul was not easy to find!

It is no light thing to survive a heaven!

Those who were not stamped upon had died of fright, and those who were not killed by fright had died of a broken heart.

The remainder committed suicide. Without a heaven, what is life?

One had survived, but, when he had declared to them that the heaven they now saw was a new heaven, fresh, as it were, from the shop, and that the former heaven had been trodden in of beasts; when he asserted that a worm-heaven is not eternal--that only the universal heaven is, perhaps, eternal--then they saw clearly that his mind had become deranged.

He was assisted with the deepest compassion, and conveyed to an asylum for lunatics.

[The end]
Isaac Loeb Peretz's short story: In The Pond

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