The Troll and the Watchmaker. The fairy tale

Illustrations leonardo.ai

© Leo Lubavitch, 2026

ISBN 978-5-0069-5541-7

Создано в интеллектуальной издательской системе Ridero

Now, listen here. I am going to tell you a story that happened up where the clouds cling to the sharp peaks of the mountains, just like sheep’s wool snared on a bramble bush.

High up in the Tyrolean Alps, where the air is so clear you feel as though you could reach out and touch the sky, there lived a watchmaker named Johannes.

He was a small man, quiet and so thin that on windy days he had to put stones in his pockets just to keep from blowing away after the dry leaves. Johannes’s soul was a delicate mechanism, full of tiny cogs and springs, and there was one thing he loved more than anything in the world: the sound of tick-tock. It was the sound of order, the sound of peace.

But, alas! In his own home, there wasn’t a penny’s worth of peace to be found.

Johannes had a wife named Greta. Oh, she was a woman of substance! When she stepped out onto the porch, the sun seemed to hide behind a cloud out of sheer embarrassment. But the trouble wasn’t her stature; it was her voice. Greta didn’t know how to speak – she only knew how to thunder. Her words tumbled down like rocks in a landslide. She scolded Johannes for being too quiet, for breathing too loudly, and even for letting the shadow of his nose fall in the wrong direction.

They say the milk in the pitcher on Johannes’s table didn’t sour from the heat, but from pure terror the moment it heard Greta begin her morning sermon. Even the house cat walked around in velvet slippers, just to avoid catching her eye.

Poor Johannes! The only creature who understood him was the little wooden cuckoo in his old Black Forest clock.

«Cuckoo!» the little bird would chirp timidly whenever Greta left for the market.

«Ah, my dear,» Johannes would whisper, polishing his spectacles. «Tell me, will there ever be silence? Is there a place on earth where one cannot hear a scolding?»

«Cuckoo…» the bird would reply sadly, slamming its little door shut in a hurry, as if afraid Greta might return and boil it into soup.

Johannes dreamed of the «Great Silence.» He imagined it as a soft, fluffy quilt that he could pull right over his head.

One day, when the echo in the valley was particularly diligent in carrying Greta’s shouting (she was scolding the flour for being too white), Johannes’s heart trembled. The spring of his patience, tempered over many years, suddenly snapped with a quiet ping.

He took a long, sturdy rope, a coil of twine, and his travel sack.

«Where are you off to, you loafer?» thundered Greta, planting hands on her hips that looked like two millstones.

Johannes, without raising his eyes, answered quietly:

«I am going to the Bottomless Crevasse. They say that at the very bottom lie rare mountain crystals that shine like stars. I want to retrieve them.»

This was only half the truth. Johannes really was going to the Crevasse, but not for crystals. He wanted to descend into that damp, gloomy depth for one reason only: to sit there for an hour or two and listen to the stones be silent.

Greta’s eyes lit up with an unkind fire. Crystals! she thought. That means money. That means a new dress and a gold brooch! And this blunderer will surely lose them, or the gnomes will trick him!

«I’m coming with you!» she barked. «I can’t trust you to take out the trash, let alone hunt for treasure!»

They walked for a long time. Johannes stepped lightly, like a shadow, while Greta puffed behind him like an overheated steam engine, every word she spoke bouncing off the cliffs and returning as a hundredfold echo.

At last, they arrived. The Bottomless Crevasse was terrible and beautiful. It was a wound in the body of the mountain, plunging into a blackness that seemed to have no floor. The chill of eternity drafted up from the deep.

Johannes began to tie the rope to a cedar tree that had been gnarled and twisted by the winds.

«Why are you fumbling like a beetle in syrup?!» screamed Greta. She shoved her husband with her hip so hard he barely stayed on his feet. «Give me that rope! I’ll go down myself! You can’t see past the end of your own nose; you’ll miss the biggest stones!»

«But, Greta,» Johannes tried to object, «it’s dangerous…»

«Silence! I know better what is dangerous and what is not! I will get the treasure, and you stand here and hold the end of the rope – and see that you don’t fall asleep!»

Greed is a poor counselor, and anger is a bad companion on the edge of a cliff. Greta snatched the rope, hurriedly tied it around herself, but in her haste, she stepped on the hem of her wide skirt.

Her foot slipped on the loose gravel. She flailed her arms, trying to grab hold of the air, but the mountain air is thin and does not hold up those whose souls are heavy with malice.

«Aaaaah!» was all she managed to scream.

Greta tumbled over the edge. The rope went taut, humming like a violin string, and then… then came the Silence.

Johannes stood there, paralyzed. He didn’t hear an impact – the Crevasse was truly bottomless. He stood and listened. The wind stopped howling. The birds seemed to hold their breath. Even the echo, exhausted from repeating her insults, curled up and went to sleep.

It was here. The Great Silence.

It was sweet as honey and light as down feathers. Johannes closed his eyes and breathed in the peace. His hand, as if living a life of its own, reached into his pocket and found the small penknife he used to sharpen his pencils.

The rope, trailing off into the darkness, trembled ever so slightly. Someone was down there. But down there, there was also noise. Up here, however, there was peace.

Johannes wasn’t a wicked man. Truly, he wouldn’t hurt a fly. But in this moment, he was like a sleepwalker. It seemed to him that this rope was not a lifeline, but an umbilical cord binding him to eternal suffering.

«Forgive me,» he whispered, barely audible. «But it is so quiet… so wonderfully quiet.»

Snip!

The knife sliced through the taut hemp with ease. The end of the rope slithered like a snake into the abyss and vanished.

Johannes stood there a moment longer, listening to the beating of his own heart – tick-tock, tick-tock, steady and calm. Then he adjusted his hat, turned around, and walked home. And never had the flowers of the Alpine meadows smelled so sweet, nor the sun shone so affectionately, as on that lonely, blessed day.

Silence is a curious thing. Oh, how our poor Johannes had dreamed of it when his wife’s shrieks rang in his ears! But once silence actually took up residence in his house, it turned out to be not such a cozy guest after all.

A week passed. It was so quiet in the clockmaker’s house that you could hear a spider spinning its web in the corner, humming a thin little tune to itself. All the clocks – the pendulum clocks, the cuckoo clocks, the pocket onions – ticked in unison: «Tick-tock, all is well. Tick-tock, you are safe.» Johannes sat by the window, sipping his coffee (which no one called «slop» anymore) and gazing at the distant Alpine peaks.

You’d think he would just live and be happy! But good people have one small, very inconvenient mechanism inside them. It is called a conscience. And this mechanism ticks louder than any clock tower.

«Ah,» thought Johannes, looking at his wife’s empty chair. «Of course, Greta’s temper was, frankly, like vinegar mixed with pepper. But she is a living soul! Perhaps, down there in the darkness of the Bottomless Crevice, she has become frightened? Perhaps loneliness has softened her heart, just as water wears away stone? What if she is sitting at the bottom right now, weeping softly, dreaming only of saying one kind word to me?»

A kind heart always attributes its own feelings to others. Johannes sighed, took the strongest rope he could find in the pantry, and set off for the mountains.

The journey wasn’t short. The wind whistled through the gorges, and the old spruce trees shook their heads as if whispering: «Where are you going, foolish Johannes? Let sleeping dogs lie.» But the clockmaker was stubborn in his kindness.

Approaching the edge of the precipice, he peered down. The darkness there was thick and black as soot.

«Greta!» he shouted. «Are you there?»

The echo answered him mockingly: "…there… there… ere…»

Johannes tied the rope to an old oak tree, crossed himself, and threw the other end into the abyss. The rope unspooled for a long time until it pulled taut as a guitar string. And suddenly – yank! Someone down below grabbed hold of it with such force that the oak tree creaked in its roots.

«Oho!» thought Johannes, bracing his feet against the rocky ground. «She’s heavy! Greta must have filled her pockets with stones out of fear. Or perhaps grief simply weighs a great deal?»

He pulled and pulled. Sweat rolled off him in hail-sized drops. His hands burned. But he did not give up, imagining how his wife’s white bonnet would appear any moment, and how she, tear-stained and meek, would throw herself around his neck.

And then, finally, a head appeared over the edge of the abyss.

But, Good Lord! That was no bonnet!

It was a massive, lumpy head, like a boulder overgrown with gray moss. On its forehead burned a single eye, green and murky as stagnant bog water. Its ears were like burdock leaves, and its nose like a knotty branch.

Johannes, struck with horror, let go of the rope, but the creature scrambled over the edge as numbly as a spider and flopped onto the grass. It was a real Mountain Troll, an ancient spirit of the underground. He was filthy, ragged, and trembling like an aspen leaf in the wind.

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