Year 2, edition 2

THE TEAPOT AND THE CUP

Once, many years ago, a teapot lived inside the cabinet of a little poor seamstress. He was already old and without a lid. Every evening he was taken out of the cabinet to keep the tea warm the seamstress had made, he reminded her of it.

“Oh, how can I always forget you don’t have a lid. I promise the next time I visit the flea market, I’ll think of you.”

But because she always forgot, it never happened. The teapot remained without a lid and the seamstress drank lukewarm tea every evening together with her biscuit.

On an evil day, it was sometime in November, the seamstress broke her very last teacup during washing it.

“How imprudent of me!” She said. “Now I have to go to the flea market to buy a new cup. Soon the market will be closed. What do I drink my tea from tonight?”

So the seamstress hastened on her slippers to the flea market and forgot the promise she had made to the teapot.

“Finally!” The fat sugar bowl standing next to the teapot in the cupboard shouted.   “Now it does not take much longer anymore. Teapot! Your days are counted. Just wait and see! Soon she will come home with a new teapot and two new cups. Then I’ll be rid of you. What is the use of a teapot without a lid? Look at me! I have a lid to make sure the sugar remain dry, without lumps.”

But the teapot did not react and thought back to the time when he himself had a lid.

It did not take long before the seamstress returned home, this time delighted.

“Look what I found!” She exclaimed happily to the teapot. “A cup. It is not the most beautiful cup of the whole market but at least she has a rose so she fits you well. And she also has a slight lack, just like you.”

Because teapots and cups belong together she put it next to the teapot and the angry sugar bowl got another place, a little away from the two.

At first the teapot could not see anything different on the cup but after looking another time he saw it. The porcelain of her ear was on one spot a little thinner and there was a small crack on the bottom.

Now everyone knows teapots and cups can not really talk, but in this story it happened. As a matter of fact, they chatted all day.

The two turned out to be able to find each other very well, so good that the seamstress occasionally became mad.

“Lady, Sir, it has been nice again but now it’s enough for today,” she said, cheered by the conceited sugar bowl. “Tomorrow you two can talk further.”

“You hear it,” the sugar bowl said, jealous. ‘I like to philosophize about life. Because of you two I can not even hear myself thinking anymore.”

The month of November passed and it became December.

Like every other day, the teapot and the cup talked for hours together. They talked about life and how well they did with the seamstress.

“You see,” the sugar bowl fired when the seamstress put the teapot back in the cupboard at eight o’clock in the evening. “Nobody wants to listen to chatter from a bunch of mismatched. A teapot without a lid and a cup with a limp ear. Who wants them now?”

But the handsome teapot which had long ago been made by a crafty potter from the Black Forest did not agree with him. In contrast to the inflated sugar bowl he had beautiful lines and spoke with a decent English accent, as if a tea leaf had stuck in his spout. From the place where his butt was, a long slender spout stuck out in a graceful curl and on his back he had two roses. That he no longer had a lid did not bother him.

The cup on the other hand, was simple. Except for a too thin little ear which was because the potter only had a little bit of clay left over, she was not as beautifully decorated as the teapot and had only one instead of two roses. Nevertheless, the teapot and the cup loved each other in spite of their faults.

“For every cup there’s a lid,” said the cup named Amalia, named after her aunt, an antique pastry plate when the teapot dropped its spout again. “That counts also for you. I am not a lid, but I always love you, no matter what happens.”

Then the teapot blushed and he wished he was a saucer. And when the sugar bowl had once again turned her mockery onto his girlfriend, he comforted her.

“Oh Edouard,” because that was his name, Amalia called. “What would we have to do without each other? The seamstress is already old. Soon she will die and only the two of us are left. What will then happen to us?”

Then the teapot wanted to say something appropriate but was interrupted by the cheeky sugar bowl.

“You’re the ones left? Really. Don’t make me laugh. Soon it will be over with the two of you. Then I am the boss here. Look at me! I am well fed and I am not short of anything which I cannot say about you two. One can not keep the tea warm and the other is too weak to be lifted.”

Then the teapot and the cup were silent because they knew deep down the sugar bowl was right.

It was a night the seamstress died, very quietly, in her sleep.

“Look,” the sugar bowl called triumphantly. “Now it will be your turn. Tomorrow the buyer will come and I will be released of you for good!”

But the sugar bowl had counted outside of itself. Already the next morning he was taken away and came into the service of an angry farmer as an ashtray. The teapot and the cup on the other hand ended up with a merchant who took them to the market.

“Brrr,” the cup shivered. “See us. We had such a good life at the seamstress. Now we are here, freezing to death on the market, waiting for someone to take us home.”

“Please stop shivering,” the teapot complained. “You’ll break yourself in two. If that happens we are even in bigger trouble than ever.”

One day, it was already past the first Advent’s day, when a woman, a teacher and her daughter walked past the market stall and saw the teapot.

“Look!” the girl called. “This teapot does not have a lid, like the one we had before. Maybe it’ll fit ours. Let’s buy him, Mama.”

But her mother had no eye for the teapot. She had used all her money to buy food and there was nothing left.

“Maybe the next time at the end of the month,” she said. “If he is still there.”

The girl knew the chance was very small the teapot was still there by then, so she turned her piggy bank upside down where exactly two quarters were in and ran back to the market, secretly.

“How much does it cost,” she asked the merchant, pointing to Edouard. “Our teapot has broken and the only thing left of it is the lid.”

“Now it’s going to happened, Amalia,” the teapot cried sadly. “Farewell, we will be separated from each other.”

“I know,” the cup called back. “You will be fine, Edouard. Remember whatever happens, I will always love you.”

The merchant rolled the teapot into a piece of paper and went with the girl to her house where she put him under her bed. But the lack of his beloved made the teapot sadder than ever.

“I better fall myself into pieces,” he thought. “If I can no longer be together with my great love, what is the use of life? There is nothing left for me.” Then he wept silently, meanwhile thinking of the good old time.

One evening, just after the lady lifted the teacup to take a sip, her cat Ophelia jumped onto her lap, causing the cup to slip off the saucer and landed on the floor where the cup fell into pieces.

“Dumb, dumb Ophelia,” she said. “What are you after all, a rough cat? Now I also have to look for another cup. Where can I find one before tonight?”

“At the flea market, mommy,” the girl said. “Maybe the merchant has a cup which suits him.”

“Alas, ma’am,” the merchant said. “I had one but did it away. It had a crack in the bottom and the ear was too thin. Nobody wants such a cup.”

Disappointed, the madam and the girl returned home.

“Don’t worry mama. We’ll find something” the girl said. ‘There are more market vendors selling such cups.”

“Wait,” the merchant called after them. “Give me your address. Whenever I come across something, I’ll let you know immediately.”

It was Christmas morning. Full of expectation the girl laid the teapot beautifully wrapped by herself under the Christmas tree.

It did not take long before the mother came down and saw the package lying there.

“How nice,” she said happily after unpacking. “Thank you Santa! Now we have a teapot again. With a bit of luck we will find a suitable cup.”

The same morning the teapot was the center of the Christmas breakfast. But there, between the fresh croissants, the Christmas roll baked by the lady and next to the Ardennes pâté, Edouard could only think of the cup which would probably no longer exist.

When the doorbell rang at eleven o’clock in the morning and when the girl opened the door, she was surprised to find the merchant standing there.

“A Merry Christmas to you all!” He said cheerfully. “I know I come inconvenient, but because I live in the neighborhood I thought you might like this.”

In his hand was a dirt-stained teacup. The bottom was slightly cracked and the earpiece had a thin spot.

“It’s a bit of a weird story and I still do not understand,” he replied. “I thought I had it thrown it away first, but this morning I found it suddenly in my cart again. It is as if she has her own will. ”

“A cup!” the girl exclaimed. “Look ma, it has just such a rose as our new teapot!”

“Amalia,” the teapot cried when he saw the cup, this time with tears of happiness. ‘You are still there!”

“You too it seems, Edouard!” The teacup laughed at him. “Let’s promise each other we will never be separated again, even if we fall apart into a thousand pieces.”

“Agreed,” Edouard promised solemnly. “Then we still have each other. For good.”

From the sugar bowl no one ever heard something anymore. The last time he was seen in a thrift store. Without a lid.

The end