The Black Umbrella

The little house stood on the edge of the city and belonged to Eliza, a black woman. For many years she had been a kitchen maid and washerwoman in the house of a rich merchant. From Monday morning to Sunday morning she worked and slept in the large, beautiful house, but she spent Sunday afternoon and the night from Sunday to Monday in her little house in the suburbs. There she usually sat by the window, because that way she could hear and see what was happening outside. The Black Umbrella One evening, when she had fallen asleep by the window, she was awakened by a strange singing. "A bird doesn't sing like that," thought Eliza, and she opened her eyes. In the twilight she could see behind the low wall of the churchyard a number of stooped figures dressed in black. And she listened to the song with which people were accustomed to accompany their dead to the grave: No more tears will come to your eyes; you are now forever at home, where no more tears flow. Eliza the kitchen maid had often sung that song herself, when a neighbor from the neighborhood was brought to their last resting place. Eliza liked to sing: sad and happy songs, but sad ones the most. She now closed the window, put on her shoes, put on her hat and went outside. In the cemetery she knelt down beside the mourners and sang along with them. It grew dark, the rain fell from the low-hanging clouds, the wind roared above the cemetery. Eliza pulled her hat lower over her forehead and turned up the collar of her coat. The rain ran down her back, but she continued to sing. And a tall, thin man in a black frock coat stood up to give the kitchen maid a large black umbrella. "Take it, sister," he said, "such a good singer must not get wet." And he opened the umbrella for her. The kitchen maid hid under it and continued to sing the funeral song for the poor negroes with the others. When the song ended, the thin man stood up once more and began to pray. Everyone joined in his prayers in a low voice. But when the kitchen maid finally said "Amen," a violent wind arose, which thundered over the churchyard like the wings of a gigantic bird. Eliza looked up and saw that she was kneeling beside a grave overgrown with grass and weeds, and that there was no one in the churchyard except her. Frightened, she stood up and fled home. After she had closed the front door behind her, she noticed that she was still holding the large black umbrella in her hand. She put it in a corner and spent the night trembling and awake. Would the spirits of the dead not come to fetch the umbrella? But no one appeared, only the rain rustled down monotonously and the branches whipped by the wind beat against the window. For many years that large black umbrella stood in the cottage of kitchen maid Eliza. When it rained, she took it out of the corner, and when she came home, she put it back in its place. But she never lent it out. And no one ever laughed at her when Eliza told how she had sung the death song for poor Negroes in the rain with the ghosts.

https://dorpenstedennederland.blogspot.com/

https://fieggentrio.blogspot.com/