THERE was once a young girl and a very young man. They sat on a stone on a promontory that ran out into the lake, and the waves splashed at their feet. They sat silent, each wrapped in thought, and watched the sun go down.
Hethought that he should very much like to kiss her. When he looked at her mouth, it occurred to him that this was just what it was meant for. He had, to be sure, seen girls prettier than she was, and he was really in love with someone else; but this other he could surely never kiss, because she was an ideal, a star, and what availed “the desire of the moth for the star”?
Shethought that she should very much like to have him kiss her, so that she might have occasion to be downright angry with him and show how deeply she despised him. She would get up, pull her skirts tightly round her, give him a glance brimmed with icy contempt, and go off, erect and calm, without any unnecessary haste. But in order that he might not divine what she thought, she asked in a low, soft voice, “Do you think there is another life after this?”
He thought it would be easier to kiss her if he said yes. But he could not remember for certain what he might have said on other occasions about the same subject, and he was afraid of contradicting himself. He therefore looked her deep in the eyes and answered, “There are times when I think so.”
This answer pleased her extraordinarily, and she thought: At least I like his hair—and his forehead, too. It’s only a pity his nose is so ugly, and then of course he has no standing—he’s just a student who is reading for his examinations. That was not the sort of beau to vex her friends with.
He thought: Now I can certainly kiss her. He was, nevertheless, terribly afraid; he had never before kissed a girl of good family, and he wondered if it might not be dangerous. Her father was lying asleep in a hammock a little way off, and he was the mayor of the town.
She thought: Perhaps it will be still better if I give him a box on the ear when he kisses me.
And she thought again: Why doesn’t he kiss me? Am I so ugly and disagreeable?
She leaned forward over the water to see her reflection, but her image was broken by the splashing of the water.
She thought again: I wonder how it will feel when he kisses me. As a matter of fact she hadonly been kissed once, by a lieutenant after a ball at the town hotel. He had smelt so abominably of punch and cigars that she had felt but little flattered, although to be sure he was a lieutenant, but otherwise she had not much cared for the kiss. Furthermore she hated him because he had not been attentive to her afterwards or indeed shown any interest in her at all.
While they sat so, each engrossed in private thoughts, the sun went down and it grew dark.
And he thought: Seeing that she is still sitting with me, though the sun is gone and it has become dark, it may be that she wouldn’t so much object to my kissing her.
Then he laid his arm softly around her neck.
She had not expected this at all. She had imagined he would merely kiss her and nothing more, and with that she would give him a box on the ear and go off like a princess. Now she didn’t know what she should do; she wanted of course to be angry with him, but at the same time she didn’t want to lose the kiss. She therefore sat quite still.
Thereupon he kissed her.
It felt much more strange than she had supposed. She felt that she was growing pale and faint, she entirely forgot that she was to give him a box on the ear and that he was only a student reading for his examination.
But he thought of a passage in a book by a religious physician on “The Sex Life of Woman,” which read: “One must guard against letting the marital embrace come under the dominion of sensuality.” And he thought that this must be very difficult to guard against, if even a kiss could do so much.
When the moon came up, they were still sitting there and kissing.
She whispered into his ear: “I loved you from the first hour I saw you.”
And he replied: “There has never been anyone in the world for me but you.”
WHILE I was still very young I believed with entire certainty that I had an immortal soul. I regarded this as a holy and precious gift and was both happy and proud over it.
I often said to myself: “The life I am living is a dark and troubled dream. Some time I shall awaken to another dream which stands closer to reality and has a deeper meaning than this. Out of that dream I shall awaken to a third and afterwards to a fourth, and every new dream will stand nearer the truth than the one before. This approaching toward truth constitutes the meaning of life, which is subtle and profound.”
With the joy of knowing that in my immortal soul I possessed a capital which could not be lost in play or distrained upon for debt, I carried on a dissipated life and squandered like a prince both what was mine and what was not mine.
But one evening I found myself with some of my cronies in a large hall, which glittered with gilt and electric light, while from its flooring rose a smell of decay. Two young girls with paintedfaces and an old woman whose wrinkles were filled with plaster were dancing there on a platform, accompanied by the wail of the orchestra, cries of applause, and the clink of broken glass. We watched the women, drank a great deal, and conversed on the immortality of the soul.
“It’s foolish,” said one of my comrades who was older than I, “it’s foolish to believe that it would be a blessing to have an immortal soul. Look at that old harridan dancing there, whose head and hands tremble if she stays still a moment. One sees directly that she is wicked and ugly and entirely worthless, and that she’s getting more and more so every day. How ridiculous it would be to imagine that she had an immortal soul! But the case is just the same with you and me and all of us. What a mean joke it would be to give us immortality!”
“The thing that I dislike most in what you say,” I answered, “isn’t that you deny the immortality of the soul, but the fact that you find a pleasure in denying it. Human beings are like children that play in a garden surrounded by a high wall. Time and again a door is opened in the wall, and one of the children disappears through the door. People then tell them that it is taken to another garden bigger and more beautiful than this, whereupon they listen a moment in silence and afterwards continue to play amongthe flowers. Assume now that one of the boys is more inquisitive than the others and climbs up on the wall so as to see where his comrades go, and when he comes down again tells the rest what he has seen; namely, that outside the gate sits a giant who devours the children when they are taken out. And they all have to be taken out through the gate in due turn! You are that boy, Martin, and I find it unspeakably ridiculous that you tell what you think you’ve seen, not in a spirit of despair, but as if you were proud and glad of knowing more than the rest.”
“The younger of those girls is very pretty,” replied Martin.
“It’s dreadful to be annihilated, and it’s also dreadful not to be able to be annihilated,” remarked another of my friends.
Martin continued this line of argument.
“Yes,” he said, “one should be able to find a middle course. Gird up your loins and go out to look for a midway degree between time and eternity. He who finds it may found a new religion, for he’ll then have the most enticing bait that a fisher of men ever possessed.”
The orchestra stopped with a clash. The gold of the hall glittered more faintly through the tobacco smoke and through the floor boards pressed continuously a smell of decay.
The party broke up and we separated, eachin his own direction. I wandered a long while back and forth on the streets; I came upon streets which I did not recognize and which I have never seen since, remarkably desolate and empty streets, where the houses seemed to open their lines to give me space whithersoever I turned my steps, and then to close up again behind my back. I did not know where I had got to, before all of a sudden I stood in front of my own door. It stood wide open. I went in through the door and up the stairs. At one of the stair windows I stopped and looked at the moon: I had not previously noticed that there was moonlight that evening.
But I have never either before or after seen the moon look so. One could not say that it shone. It was ashen-gray and pallid and unnaturally big. I stood a long while and stared at yonder moon, despite the fact that I was dreadfully tired and longed to get to sleep.
I lived in the third story. When I had gone up two flights I thanked God there was only one left. But as I came up this flight, it struck me that the corridor was not dark, as it had always used to be, but faintly lighted like the other corridors where the moon glimmered in through the stair windows. But there were only three flights of stairs in the house besides the attic stairs; for that reason the uppermost corridor was always dark.
“The door of the attic is open,” I said to myself. “The light is coming from the attic stairway. It’s unexcusable of the servants to leave the door of the attic open, for thieves might get up into the attic.”
But there was no attic door. There was only an ordinary stairway like the others.
I had counted wrong, then; I had still a flight to go up.
But when I had mounted this flight and stood in the corridor, I had to control myself so as not to shriek aloud. For this corridor, too, was light, neither was there any attic door open, but a new stairway led up just as before. Through the stair window the moon glimmered in, and it was ashen-gray and lustreless and unnaturally big.
I rushed up the stairway. I could no longer think. I tottered up another, and yet another; I did not count them any longer.
I wanted to cry out, I wanted to wake that accursed house and see human beings around me; but my throat was constricted.
Suddenly it occurred to me to try if I could read the names on the door-plates. What kind of people could it be that lived in this tower of Babel? The moonlight was too faint; I struck a match and held it close to a brass plate.
I read there the name of one of my friends who was dead.
Then the bonds of my tongue were loosed and I shrieked: “Help! help! help!”
That cry was my salvation, for it waked me up out of the terrible dream of eternity.
AUTUMN is here again with its dismal days, and the sun is hiding himself in the darkest corner of the heavens so that no one shall see how pale and aged and worn he has grown in this latter time. But while the wind whistles in the window-chinks and the rain purls in the rain-spouts and a wet dog howls in front of a closed gate down below on the street and before the fire has burned down in our tile stove, I will tell you a story about the drizzle.
Listen now!
For some time back the good God had become so angered over the wickedness of men that he resolved to punish them by making them still wickeder. He should, in his great goodness, have liked above all things to have drowned them all together in a new Deluge: he had not forgotten how agreeable was the sight when all living creatures perished in the flood. But unfortunately in a sentimental moment he had promised Noah never to do so again.
“Harken, my friend!” he therefore said to the Devil one day. “You are assuredly no saint, but occasionally you have good ideas, and one cantalk things over with you. The children of men are wicked and do not want to improve. My patience, which is infinite, has now come to an end, and I have resolved to punish them by making them wickeder still. The fact is I hope they will then collectively destroy each other and themselves. It occurs to me that our interests—otherwise so far apart—should here for once find a point of contact. What advice can you give me?”
The Devil bit the end of his tail reflectively.
“Lord,” he answered finally, “Thy wisdom is as great as Thy goodness. Statistics show that the greatest number of crimes are committed in the autumn, when the days are dismal, the sky is gray, and the earth is enveloped in rain and mist.”
The good God pondered these words a long while.
“I understand,” he said finally. “Your advice is good, and I will follow it. You have good gifts, my friend, but you should make better use of them.”
The Devil smiled and wagged his tail, for he was flattered and touched. He then limped home.
But the good God said to himself: “Hereafter it shall always drizzle. The clouds shall never clear; the mist never lift, the sun never shine more. It shall be dark and gray to the end of time.”
The umbrella makers and the overshoes manufacturers were happy at the start, but it was not long before the smile froze upon even their lips. People do not know what importance fair weather has for them until they are for once compelled to do without it. The gay became melancholy. The melancholy became mad and hanged themselves in long rows or assembled to hold prayer-meetings. Soon no one worked any more, and the need became great. Crime increased in a dizzying scale; the prisons were overcrowded, the madhouses afforded room for only the clever. The number of the living decreased, and their dwellings stood deserted. They instituted capital punishment for suicide; nothing did any good.
Mankind, who for so many generations had dreamed and poetized about an eternal spring, now went to meet their last days through an eternal autumn.
Day by day the destruction went on. Countrysides were laid waste, cities fell in ruins. Dogs gathered in the squares and howled; but in the alleys an old lame man went about from house to house with a sack on his back and collected souls. And every evening he limped home with his sack full.
But one evening he did not limp home. He went instead to the gate of heaven and straighton to the good God’s throne. There he stood still, bowed, and said:
“Lord, Thou hast aged in these latter days. We have both of us aged, and it is for that reason we are so dull. Ah! Lord, that was bad advice I gave Thee. The sins that interest me need a bit of sunlight once in a while in order to flourish. Look here! you’ve made me into a miserable rubbish-gatherer.”
With these words he flung his dirty sack so violently against the steps of the throne that the cord broke and the souls fluttered out. They were not black, but gray.
“That’s the last of the human souls,” said the Devil. “I give them to Thee, Lord. But beware of using them, if Thou intendest to create a new world!”
The wind whistles in the window chinks, the rain purls in the rain-spouts, and the story is done. He who has not understood it may console himself with the thought that it will be fair weather tomorrow.
ONE day in April many years ago, in the time when I still wondered about the meaning of life, I went into a little cigar booth on a back street to buy a cigar. I selected a dark and angular El Zelo, stuffed it into my case, paid for it, and made ready to go. But at that moment it occurred to me to show the young girl who stood in the booth, and of whom I used often to buy my cigars, a little sketch in India ink, which I happened to have lying in a portfolio. I had got it from a young artist, and to my thinking it was very fine.
“Look here,” said I, handing it to her. “What do you think of that?”
She took it in her hand with interested curiosity and looked at it very long and closely. She turned it in various directions, and her face took on an expression of strained mental activity.
“Well, what does it mean?” she asked finally with an inquisitive glance.
I was a little surprised.
“It doesn’t mean anything in particular,” I answered. “It’s just a landscape. That’s theground and that’s the sky and that there is a road—an ordinary road——”
“Yes, I can see that,” she interrupted in a somewhat unfriendly tone; “but I want to know what itmeans.”
I stood there embarrassed and irresolute; I had never happened to think that it ought to mean anything. But her idea was not to be removed; she had now got it into her head that the picture must be some sort of “Where is the cat?” affair. Why otherwise should I have shown it to her? At last she set it up against the window-pane so as to make it transparent. Presumably someone had once shown her a peculiar kind of playing card, which in an ordinary light represents a nine of diamonds or a knave of spades, but which, when one holds it up against the light, displays something indecent.
But her investigation brought no result. She gave back the sketch, and I prepared to leave. Then all at once the poor girl grew very red in the face and burst out, with a sob in her throat:
“Shame on you! it’s real mean of you to make a fool of me like that. I know very well I’m a poor girl, and haven’t been able to get myself a better education, but still you don’t need to make a fool of me. Can’t you tell me what your picture means?”
What was I to answer? I should have givenmuch to be able to tell her what it meant; but I could not, for it meant precisely nothing.
Ah, well, that was many years ago. I now smoke other cigars, which I buy in another shop, and I no longer wonder about the meaning of life—but that is not because I think I have found it.
THIS is the story of a young girl and an apothecary with a white vest.
She was young and slim, she smelled of pine woods and heather, and her complexion was sunburned and a trifle freckled. So she was when I knew her. But the apothecary was a quite ordinary apothecary; he wore a white vest on Sundays, and on a Sunday this attracted attention. It attracted attention in a place in the country so far away from the world that no one in that region was so sophisticated as to wear a white vest on Sundays except the apothecary.
This, you see, was how it happened that one Sunday morning there was a knock at my door, and when I opened it, the apothecary stood outside in his white vest and bowed several times. He was very polite and very much embarrassed.
“I beg your most humble pardon,” he said, “but Miss Erika was here yesterday with her sisters while you were away, and when she went, she left her poetry book for you and me to write something in it. Here it is. But I don’t know at all what to write. Could you perhapskindly——?” And he bowed again several times.
“We will think the matter over,” I answered in a friendly tone.
I took the book therefore and for my own share inscribed a translation of “Du bist wie eine Blume,” which I had made myself and which I always use for that purpose. I then began to search among my papers to see if by any chance I had some old verses from my school days which would suit for the apothecary. Finally I came upon the following bad poem:
You set my thoughts in turmoil,I wither in longing’s blight.In solitude you haunt me,I dreamed of you in the night.I dreamed that we walked togetherSide by side in the twilight dim,And through your lowered lashesI saw the bright tear swim.I kissed your cheek and your eyelids,I saw the tear-drop fall,But oh, your red, red lips, love—I kissed them most of all.One cannot always dream sweetly.Small rest since then have I known,For, sorrowful oft and weary,I watch through the night-hours alone.Alas! your cheeks so soft, love,I touch but with glances trist,And those red lips, my darling,I never, never have kissed.
You set my thoughts in turmoil,I wither in longing’s blight.In solitude you haunt me,I dreamed of you in the night.I dreamed that we walked togetherSide by side in the twilight dim,And through your lowered lashesI saw the bright tear swim.I kissed your cheek and your eyelids,I saw the tear-drop fall,But oh, your red, red lips, love—I kissed them most of all.One cannot always dream sweetly.Small rest since then have I known,For, sorrowful oft and weary,I watch through the night-hours alone.Alas! your cheeks so soft, love,I touch but with glances trist,And those red lips, my darling,I never, never have kissed.
You set my thoughts in turmoil,I wither in longing’s blight.In solitude you haunt me,I dreamed of you in the night.
I dreamed that we walked togetherSide by side in the twilight dim,And through your lowered lashesI saw the bright tear swim.
I kissed your cheek and your eyelids,I saw the tear-drop fall,But oh, your red, red lips, love—I kissed them most of all.
One cannot always dream sweetly.Small rest since then have I known,For, sorrowful oft and weary,I watch through the night-hours alone.
Alas! your cheeks so soft, love,I touch but with glances trist,And those red lips, my darling,I never, never have kissed.
I showed the apothecary this poem and offered to let him use it. He read it through attentively twice and blushed all over with delight.
“Did you really write that yourself?” he inquired in his simplicity of heart.
“Yes, I’m sorry to admit.”
He thanked me very warmly for the permission to use the poem, and when he went out of the room I imagine we both had the feeling that we must drop the formality of “mister” at the first opportunity.
That evening there was a little party at the girl’s house. Young folks were there. We drank cherry syrup on a veranda festooned with hop-vines.
I sat and looked at the young girl.
No, she was not like herself. Her eyes were bigger and more restless than usual and her mouth was redder. And she could not sit still on her chair.
From time to time she cast a furtive glance at me, but more often she looked at the apothecary. And the apothecary looked that evening like a turkey-cock.
When the punch was passed around, we dropped the “mister.”
We young people went down on the meadow to play games. We tossed rings and played other games, and meanwhile the sun went down behind the hills and it grew dark.
We had laid the rings and the sword in a heap on the ground and were now standing in groups, whispering and smiling, while the dusk came on. But the young girl came up to me through the dusk and took me aside behind a shed.
“You must answer me a question,” said she. “Did the druggist really write his verses himself?” Her voice trembled, and she tried to look away as she spoke.
“Yes,” I said. “He wrote them last night. I heard him going back and forth in his room all night.”
But when I had said that, I felt a sting in my conscience, for I saw that she was a pretty and lovable child and that it was a great sin to deceive her so.
Who knows, I said to myself, who knows? Perhaps this is the sin of which the Scripture says that it cannot be forgiven.
The twilight deepened, it became night, and a star burned between the trees in the wood, where we were walking in pairs.
But I was alone.
I do not remember any more where I went that evening. I separated from the others and went deeper into the wood.
But deep within the wood among the firs I saw a birch with a shining white stem. By the stem stood two young people kissing, and I saw that one of them was the young girl who smelled of pine woods and heather. But the other was the apothecary, and he was a quite ordinary apothecary with a white vest. He held her pressed against the white stem of the birch and kissed her.
But when he had kissed her three times, I went away and wept bitterly.
IT happened when I was hardly more than a boy.
It was on a blustering autumn evening on board a coast steamer. We had not yet come in from the country, and I had to go in and out of town to school. I had been lazy as usual and was to be examined in several subjects in order to be promoted into a higher class.
I went back and forward on the deck in the darkness, with collar turned up and hands in my coat pockets, thinking of my reverses at school. I was almost sure to flunk. As I leaned forward over the railing and saw how the foam hissed whitely and the starboard lantern threw sparkling green reflections on the black water, I felt tempted to jump overboard. Then at least the mathematics teacher would be sorry for the way he had tormented me—then, when it was too late——
But in the end it grew cold outside, and when I thought I had been freezing long enough, I went into the smoking cabin.
In my imagination I can still see the warm, comfortable interior which met my view when Iopened the door. The lighted ceiling-lamp swung slowly back and forth like a pendulum. On the table steamed four whiskey toddies, four cigars puffed, and four gentlemen were telling smutty stories. I recognized them all as neighbors of our summer sojourn: a company director, an old clergyman, a leading actor, and a button dealer. I bowed politely and threw myself down in a corner. I had, to be sure, a slight feeling that my presence might perhaps be superfluous; but on the other hand it would have been asking too much of me to go out into the wind and freeze when there was so much room in the cabin. Furthermore I knew within myself that I might very well contribute to the entertainment if necessary.
The four men looked askance at me with a certain coolness, and there was a pause.
I was sixteen and had recently been confirmed. People have told me that at that time I had a guileless and innocent appearance.
The pause, however, was not long. A few swallows from the glasses, a few puffs at the cigars, and the exchange of opinions was once more in full swing. A peculiar circumstance struck me, though: all the stories that were told I had already heard innumerable times, and for my part I found them comparatively flat. Smutty stories may, as is well known, be divided into two chief groups, one of which concentrates itselfmostly about digestive processes and circumstances related to them, whereas, on the contrary, the other, which stands incomparably higher in degree, has preferably to do with woman. I and my schoolmates had long since left the former group behind us; I was therefore the more surprised to hear these mature gentlemen give it their liveliest interest, while the other, much more appealing group was passed over in silence. I did not understand it. Could this possibly be out of any undue consideration for me? I need not say to what extent the suspicion of such a thing provoked me. The lively tone of the cabin had affected me and made me venturesome, so that I resolved to put an end to this childishness.
“Look here, uncle,” I burst out quite impulsively during a silence after a story which was so harmless that even the clergyman guffawed at it, “don’t you remember the story the captain told day before yesterday?”
“Uncle” was the company director, who was a friend of my father.
I continued undismayed: “That was the choicest I’ve heard in all my days. Couldn’t you please tell it?”
Four pairs of astonished eyes were directed upon me, and a painful silence set in. I already regretted my rash courage.
The company director broke the ice with askittish little chuckle, which was but a faint echo of the thunder he had allowed to roll out a couple of days before when the captain had told the story.
“Tee-hee!—yes, that wasn’t so bad——”
He then began to tell it. It was very highly seasoned and had to do with woman.
The leading actor at first hid his feelings behind his customary mask of dignified seriousness, whereas on the other hand the button dealer, an old buck who had grown gray in sin, regarded me with a sort of furtive interest, in which was an element of increased respect for my personality.
But when the anecdote began to take a somewhat precarious turn, it was suddenly interrupted by the clergyman, a kindly old man with a pious and childlike expression on his elderly smooth-shaven countenance.
“Pardon the interruption, my good brother, but”—and he turned a little in his chair so that he could direct his words at me—“how old, may I ask, is this young man? Has he been to Our Lord’s—to Communion?”
I felt that I flushed blood-red. I had forgotten that there was a clergyman in the company.
“Y-yes,” I stammered almost inaudibly. “I was confirmed last winter.”
“Indeed!” returned the old clergyman, while he slowly stirred his glass of toddy.
Then without looking up, in a voice which forty years of mediation between God and the world had impressed with the mild tone of tolerance and indulgence, he continued:
“Go on, my dear brother! Excuse the interruption!”
YESTERDAY a familiar face flitted by me on the street. It was pale and had a tired expression, but the features were sharp and strongly marked.
I did not recall his name. I was sure I had seen him sometime, perhaps a long while ago, but I could not remember when or under what circumstances. His face had aroused my interest without my being able to explain why, and I dug all sorts of old recollections out of the junk-room of my memory in order to identify him, but in vain.
In the evening I was at the theatre. There to my surprise I found him again on the stage in a minor rôle. He was but little disguised; I recognized him at once and looked for his name on the program. I found it, but it was unknown to me. I followed his acting with tense interest. He took the part of a miserably stupid and ridiculous servant, whom everybody made fun of. The rôle was as wretched as the piece, and he played it mechanically and conventionally; but in certain intonations his voice assumed a sharp and bitter character which did not belong to the part.
They re-echoed in my ear, those tones, till late into the night, as I went back and forth in my room. And with their help I at last succeeded in digging up the recollection with which they belonged. I discovered that we had been schoolmates, but he was many years younger than I; when I was in the highest class, he was in one of the lowest.
When I was in the top class of the school, I was one day standing at the window toward the end of a lunch recess. Recesses at the school were an especial abomination of mine; I could never find anything to do. I knew that I did not know my lesson, and I could not set myself to going over it. The slight vexation I felt about the coming lesson always faded before a greater: a vexation about life, a gnawing premonition that the days to follow would be as empty and meaningless as those which had passed.
So I was walking back and forth with my hands in my jacket pockets, now and then stopping at the window, which was open. As I stood there, my attention was caught by a peculiar occurrence which was taking place down in the yard just below the window. A little boy in one of the lowest classes, a lad of ten or eleven, lay stretched on his back, surrounded by a crowd of other boys in a ring. Their faces, most of them at any rate, hadthe expression of evil curiosity which children and uncultured people do not know how to conceal. A little broad-shouldered fellow with high cheekbones, who gave the impression of being very strong for his age, stood in the ring with a whip in his hand.
“You are my slave,” he said to the boy on the ground, “aren’t you? Say: ‘I am your slave!’”
“I am your slave,” answered the child without hesitating; which indicated that this was not the first time he had said it.
“Get up,” ordered the other.
The boy got up.
“Imitate B., the way he looks when he comes into class!”
B. was a teacher who went on crutches. The boy went a couple of steps outside the ring, which opened to give him space; then he came back on the improvised stage and executed as he did so the movements of a man walking on crutches. He did his part very well; the illusion was complete, and the onlookers applauded, but the little actor stood there with a serious expression. He had a pallid little face and black clothes; perhaps he had just lost his father or mother.
“Laugh!” ordered the other with a light flick of the whip which he had in his hand.
The boy tried to obey, but it did not come easily. The laugh sounded forced at the start,but it was not long before he succeeded in laughing himself into a genuine, quite natural guffaw, and with that he turned toward his “master,” as if it was at him that he laughed. But the latter already desired to have his slave show off new accomplishments.
“Say: ‘My farsher is a damned scoundrel!’”
The boy looked around the circle with a helpless glance. When he saw that no one gave a semblance of wanting to help him, and that, on the contrary, all stood in eager expectation of something really amusing, he said as low as he dared:
“My farsher is a damned scoundrel.”
That drew unbounded applause.
“Laugh—Cry!”
The child began to simulate weeping, but with that he now came into the mood he was ordered to imagine. The weeping stuck in his throat, and he shed actual tears.
“Let him be!” said an older boy in the circle, “he’s crying in earnest.”
And with that the school bell rang.
Some days afterwards he ran past me on the way from school. I noticed that his jacket was ripped open in the back.
“Wait a bit!” I said to him, “your jacket has split open in the back.”
“No,” he said, “it hasn’t split open, they have cut it open with a penknife.”
“Have they dirtied your book for you, too?” I asked.
“Yes, they’ve laid it in the gutter.”
“Why are they so mean to you?”
“I don’t know. They are stronger than I am.”
He knew of no other reason. But of course that was not the only one; they must have found something in him that irritated them. I saw it in him that he was not like the others. The exceptional, the divergent always irritates children and mobs. A school-boy’s eccentricities are punished by the teacher with a well-intended monition or a dry satiric smile; but by his comrades they are punished with kicks and cuffs and a bloody nose, with a torn jacket, a cap carefully laid under a rain-spout, and his best book thrown into the gutter.
Well, he is an actor now; that was surely his natural predestination. He now talks from the stage to a large public. It would be strange if sometime he did not make his way; I believe he has talent. Perhaps he will gradually transform his peculiarity to a pattern, according to which others try to conform as to an inoffensive regular verb.
SIGNY was a little girl about as old as I, with a pink dress and a pink ribbon in her hair. Her hair was dark, with curly locks, and she had dark blue starry eyes with long lashes. She was not at all angelic. I didn’t care a great deal for angels, perhaps in especial because they always had fair hair. I had fair hair myself at that time, like most children, and light hair wasn’t much, I thought.
But I thought an awful lot of Signy. I could go about thinking of her for whole days. It was not seldom that she did something naughty, which I was blamed for, and sometimes I myself took the blame voluntarily. I cared no less for her on that account, but only wished that she would do more naughty things and I get the blame for them. But what was that bit of deviltry she hit upon? Let me think.—She ran off and hid somewhere where we were forbidden to go, in some dangerous place where there might be trolls and spooks. One time I remember clearly that she wheedled me into playing with matches—playing with fire, the most dangerous and most strictly forbidden thingthere was. Didn’t she set fire to an old dry bush in the garden? Why, to be sure she did; and I got the switch from mother. Oh, how I cared for Signy. And sometimes she said words that shouldn’t be said. The shivers went up and down my back, but I only wanted her to say them again.
I don’t know just where she lived. It wasn’t in the same house as we did; the other children whom I played with didn’t know her. But she must have lived in the same street—I suppose—in a little home with a garden surrounded by a fence. Or did she live in a garret cupola obliquely across the street, with flowers on the window-sill?—I may just as well say right out that she didn’t live anywhere. She existed only in my imagination.
Signy was the first creation of my fancy, at least the first I can recall. I was a good six or seven years old, and at the age (just as, besides, at sixty, seventy or more) one often thinks aloud. To be brief, I went about prattling to myself as I imagined things about Signy, and one fine day it happened, of course, that my mother heard me.
“Listen to the boy,” she said to my father. “Listen how he goes around talking to himself!”
And to me she said, “What is it you go around talking about? What are you thinking about?”
Grown-ups have a terrible passion for asking children the most inconsiderate questions. I ran off and hid.
Another day it was the same story, and still another day. Pain and embarrassment, questions that couldn’t be answered.
My father said to me, “Other children talk to themselves up to four and five years old; you are too big for that.”
I perceived that things couldn’t go on any longer so; something must be done. It occurred to me that it was the sibilant sound that betrayed me: Signy, Signy; that wouldn’t do. So I changed Signy’s name to Ida. In that way I succeeded in having her sometimes in peace, but Ida never really got the same power of enchantment over me as Signy. One fine day we became enemies, I quarreled with her and called her a silly girl, and perhaps I even went so far as to scratch her. I regretted it to be sure but wouldn’t ask her pardon, and soon after I let her go to the deuce. At the same time I learned to think in silence—and with a few exceptions have continued to do so.
But whence had I got Signy? In the same house with us lived a little girl, with whom I sometimes played. Her mother was in the ballet, and once she dressed herself in one of her mother’s ballet skirts. But she was neither Signy nor Ida, she performed no deviltries and had none of Signy’s magic power over my heart. I must, then, at the age of seven have created Signy asthe German creates a camel: out of the depths of my consciousness.
Then, too, I was predestined.
After that the years rolled on, and my genuinely literary impulses arrived, only quite late. The first strong urge came when one of my schoolmates—it was the present Professor Almqvist at the Caroline Institute—during a lesson in Mother Tongue declaimed with powerful effect Viktor Rydberg’s “Flying Dutchman.” I became wild with enthusiasm and for months afterwards dreamed of nothing else than being able at some period in the remote future to write something equally fine.
So far I haven’t succeeded, but why should one give up hope?
AMAN died, and after he was dead no one looked after his black dog. The dog mourned him long and bitterly. He did not, however, lie down to die on his master’s grave; possibly because he did not know where it was; possibly, too, because he was at bottom a young and happy dog, who considered that there was still something left for him in life.
There are two kinds of dogs: dogs that have a master, and dogs that have none. Outwardly the difference is not material; a masterless dog may be as fat as others, often fatter. No, the difference lies in another direction. Mankind is for dogs the infinite, providence. To obey a master, to follow him, rely upon him—that is, so to speak, the meaning of a dog’s existence. To be sure, he has not his master in his thoughts every minute of the day, nor does he always follow close at his heels. No, he often runs about of his own accord with business-like intent, sniffs around the corners of houses, makes alliance with his kind, snatches a bone, if it comes in his way, and concerns himself about much. Yet on the instant that his masterwhistles, all this is out of his canine head more quickly than the scourge drove the hucksters out of the temple, for he knows that there is but one thing he must attend to. So forgetting his house-corner and his bone and his companions, he hurries to his master.
The dog whose master died without the dog’s knowing how, and who was buried without the dog’s knowing where, mourned him long; but as the days passed and nothing occurred to remind him of his master, he forgot him. He no longer perceived the scent of his master’s footsteps on the street where he lived. As he rolled about on a grass plot with a comrade, it often happened that a whistle pierced the air, and in that instant his comrade had vanished like the wind. Then he pricked up his ears, but no whistle resembled his master’s. So he forgot him, and he forgot still more: he forgot that he had ever had a master. He forgot that there had ever been a time when he would not have regarded it as possible for a dog to live without a master. He became what one would call a dog that had seen better days, though it was in the inner meaning of the expression, for outwardly he got along fairly well. He lived as a dog does live: he now and then stole a good meal in the square, and got beaten, and had love affairs, and lay down to sleep when he was tired. He made friends and enemies. Oneday he thoroughly thrashed a dog that was weaker than he, and another day he was badly handled by one that was stronger. Early in the morning one might see him run out along his master’s street, where out of habit he mostly continued to resort. He ran straight forward with an air of having something important to attend to; smelt in passing a dog that he met, but was not eager to follow up the acquaintance; then continued his journey; but all at once sat down and scratched himself behind the ear with intense energy. The next moment he started up and flew right across the street to chase a red cat down into a cellar window; whereupon, re-assuming his business manner, he proceeded on his way and vanished around the corner.
So his day was spent. One year followed close in the track of another, and he grew old without noticing it.
Then there came at last a gloomy evening. It was wet and cold, and now and then there came a shower. The old dog had been all day on an expedition down in the city. He walked slowly along the street, limping a little; a couple of times he stood still and shook his black hide, which with the years had become sprinkled with gray about the head and neck. According to his wont he walked and sniffed, now to right, now to left. He took an excursion in at a gateway, and when hecame out had another dog in his company. Next moment came a third. They were young and sportive dogs that wanted to entice him to play, but he was in a bad humor, and furthermore it began to sleet. Then a whistle pierced the air, a long and sharp whistle. The old dog looked at both the young ones, but they paid no attention; it was not one of their masters that whistled. Then the old masterless dog pricked up his ears; he felt all at once so strange. There was a fresh whistle, and the old dog sprang irresolutely first to one side, then to the other. It was his master that whistled, and he surely had to follow! For the third time someone whistled, sharply and persistently as before. Where is he then, in what direction? How could I have been separated from my master? And when did it happen, yesterday or day before yesterday, or perhaps only a little while ago? And what did my master look like, and what sort of smell had he, and where is he, where is he? He sprang about and sniffed at all the passers-by, but none of them was his master, and none wanted to be. Then he turned and bounded along the street; at the corner he stood still and looked around in all directions. His master was not there. Then he went back down the street at a gallop; the mud spattered about him and the rain dripped from his fur. He stood at all the corners, but nowhere was his master.Then he sat down on his haunches at a street crossing, stretched his shaggy head toward heaven, and howled.
Have you ever seen, have you ever heard such a forgotten, masterless dog, when he stretches his neck toward heaven and howls, howls? The other dogs slink softly away with their tails between their legs; for they cannot comfort him and they cannot help him.
THE little town slept in the noonday sunlight. Even the flowers leaned slumberously against the lowered blinds of the open windows. Not a human being remained in the courthouse square. Down at the harbor it was equally quiet. A little beyond the big bridge lay a lumber barge with limp sail. It seemed that it would be hours before she could get in.
From a dressing room of the bath-house came a middle-aged man of rather spare figure, with a very white and delicate skin. He carefully hung his eye-glasses on a nail, sat down on the sunny side of a bench, blinked at the light and smiled to himself.
With that, there emerged into the vista toward the bay a veritable walrus head; a coarse, hairy body shone through the green shimmering water; and with several sharp, panting strokes the giant plunged forward to the stairway, climbed up, and threw himself blinking upon the hot bridge of the bath-house.
The small white-skinned man surveyed anxiously but with interest the face of the other;the eagle nose, the bushy eyebrows, and the bristly drooping mustache.
Where the deuce had he seen that face before?
Thereupon the walrus suddenly got up and stretched out his flipper.
“Why, devil’s in it if that isn’t little Modin!”
“Yes, I surely thought it was someone I knew. Good-day, Brother Axelson! Lord! but it’s hard to recognize folks out of their clothes.”
“Aye, your own dog barks at you when you’re naked. I’m scared to death of myself when I look at myself in a glass.”—Axelson surveyed his new-found acquaintance with the critical look of a doctor.—“You seem to be in good condition, Modin. Aren’t you going to plunge in?”
“No, thanks; I’m just enjoying a sun bath. I love to sit here like this and take in the special bath-house smell of water and sun-steeped wood. It has a holiday scent, don’t you think?—Well, do you know, I hadn’t a notion it was in this town you were a doctor. That’s how folks lose sight of each other.”
“Aye, I’ve stuck it out here these seventeen years now, you faithless little devil.—And you’ve taken over your father’s big antiquarian book business.”
“Oh, you know everything of course. The same horse’s memory as ever. I taught a while,but that didn’t suit me at all. And so when my father died”——
“Your catalog is always prized by connoisseurs.”
“The first assistant, old Salin, deserves the credit of that. He’s a faithful martinet. It’s really the etchings and engravings that interest me. There’s certainly a bad feeling among our regular customers because I can’t let the finest things go away from me. I’m here to look at the collection of the deceased banker. I was here once fifteen years ago, while I was still a teacher. I didn’t suspect then either that you were in the neighborhood. That visit is connected with an exquisite memory, a fleeting yet pervasive experience, which I can only compare with the fragrance of certain delicate perfumes.”
“You’re very keen about perfumes, my dear Modin; I remember that from of old. Is it because the sense of smell is the weakest of the senses?”
Modin made the gesture of pushing up his absent spectacles.
“The weakest? On the contrary, smell is an extraordinarily fine sense. We can distinguish the smallest nuances with it. The truth of the matter is simply this, that we have only fixed a few of these nuances in words.”
“True. But at any rate smell belongs to those senses which have least to do with our thought.”
“It has infinitely much to do with all that lies above or below our comprehension. It is in the highest degree a poetic sense, and I am sorry for anyone who has a weak power of smell.”
Axelson turned over with a grunt so as to be burnt evenly all over.
“Well, my dear Modin, now for your experience! This isn’t ordinarily a town for great experiences.”
“Very good. I came here by accident on a vacation trip. The ticket was good for a longer journey, but the train stopped, it looked pretty, and I got off. I left my knapsack at the hotel of Comfort and betook myself to strolling along the select avenues of Peace.”
“Hm! Traveling is nothing but trying to get away from yourself with lies.”
Modin seemed not to hear. He looked down into the water, which tossed up a thousand splinters of sunlight.
“It was a royal day in June: lofty blue heavens, a light breeze, transfiguration in the air. The gardens blossomed within their red palings and the daws cried merrily around the high church steeple. It was a day when one suddenly stands still in the blue shade, looks over the crosses inthe churchyard grass, and finds that even death is gentle.”
“Hm, hm!”
“Well, so I ate a light dinner and adventured out along the road into the wide land of summer leafage. I have never in my life seen so much white bloom: hedge, sloe, apple, pear, cherry. I recall too a linden avenue—the gravel was quite yellow with the rain of blossoms—and the branches murmured solemnly.”
Axelson twisted himself over on his back again.
“Excuse me, my dear brother, but did you meet anything?”
“Everything and nothing, old friend. Without meeting a living soul I had got out into a landscape of billowy grain fields and meadows with islets of splendid old oaks. I walked along a blossoming ditch side and sat down on a mossy stone close to a fence that ran around one of the knolls of oak. It began to draw on a bit towards evening. The light had not yet the garish colors of sunset; it was merely a thought more golden than before. And in the low, warm light the green of the fields took on a full-toned richness, a vehement intensity, which I shall never forget. One speaks more often of an intense blue, but green too can take on such a tone toward evening.
“I don’t know how long I had sat absorbed inall this, when for some reason or other I turned around and on the other side of the half-dilapidated fence discovered a young lady dressed in white who was sitting on the same slope with me. She had let the book she had been reading sink down on her knees and was gazing similarly out into the wondrous living sea of color.
“At first I was almost taken aback at not being absolutely alone with my emotion, which was so overpowering. But I soon came to myself. Very good, thought I, at any rate there are at this moment no more than two persons in the world, she and I. And—can you imagine it?—I, who am ordinarily so shy and embarrassed in ladies’ society, began a conversation: ‘Here we are sitting, we two, asstaffagefor the loveliest picture in the world.’ Words glided off my tongue of themselves with a sort of gentle irresistibility which I have never felt before or since. Perhaps my words fitted in in some way with what she had just read in her book. She nodded with a slight smile: ‘Yes, it’s wonderfully lovely.’ I leaned against the fence. ‘How insignificant is all thathappensin life compared to such a moment of afternoon as this?’ I said. ‘Even fate seems old and dusty, dusty with stage dust.’
“This was the introduction to a long conversation, at the beginning very lively—a conversation about everything and nothing, of various colors,of flowers and perfumes, of the flight of the swallows that wheeled above our heads.”
Axelson pricked up his ears.
“Swallows,” he muttered; “then there was a barn or a dwelling-house in the neighborhood.”
But Modin meanwhile heard only his own voice.
“Gradually the evening grew utterly quiet. I can still hear the soft incessant rustling among the dry leaves heaped up in the ditch, a rustling that told of minute unknown lives. And I can still see her white skirt against the green hillside. Behind her the thick blossoms of the hawthorn shone mysteriously under black, dead branches in the green half-darkness of the oak wood. It was in truth a wood for the imagination, a Shakespeare’s Forest of Arden. And the young woman I talked with was Rosalind. I told her so, and she seemed to appreciate it.
“Gradually our conversation grew more serious. We spoke of special, intimate, personal memories and of our common interests in life. We weighed life and death with swift, light sensitive words. What we said was simple, frank, stamped with the most eager and honest wish to give a living impression of our true character. It was a genuine contact of soul with soul.
“Well, then the shadows of the trees on the field began to grow long and contemplative, sowe said good-bye. She picked up her book and gave me her hand across the fence, for I had kept on standing on the other side. ‘Thanks and good evening,’ she murmured, ‘thanks and farewell.’ With that she was gone into the woods. As for me, I went home to the hotel and lay down in my clothes with my hands under my head, and there I lay awake all night. That was the loveliest night of my life, I may tell you. I felt myself marvelously cleansed and exalted, lonely and yet not alone.—Next day I went on where my ticket was made out for. And that was the whole thing.”
Axelson smiled:
“That wasn’t so terribly much.”
“It was much to me, my dear friend. You have, to be sure, a more robust appetite.”
“But why the devil did you go on? Why didn’t you go back to your Forest of Arden?”
Modin blinked at the sun with a smile of quiet fanaticism:
“I am no fool.”
“But it might have been something for your whole life.”
“As it is it’s something for my whole life, though of course you can’t understand it. I dare affirm that never has a meeting of two persons been so unconstrained, so deep and free. Peopletalk of intuitive thought, but here was an intuitive companionship without selfish purpose or social barrier. Never a second time would such a flood of clear and radiant ideas have surged through my consciousness. I tell you, the most involved concatenation arranged itself automatically with lightning speed like nodal figures at the stroke of the bow. And the memory of our communion remains always equally fresh and pure just because I did not wear it stale with further acquaintance. I don’t lie when I say that I have lived in a sort of spiritual wedlock with that unknown woman. Who can prove that the long years give more than one exquisite hour? Humanity is so brittle and changeful that a long life together must always be precarious. I have no idea whether she was married or became married later. But it may very well be that I know that woman better than her husband does. Strong impressions wear away. People can’t be true to each other over a long period. For truth the great requisite is freshness, immediateness. Truth must always be new, according to my philosophy. Habit is truth’s worst enemy. How then can a lifelong marriage be true?”
Axelson raised his eyebrows:
“Wait a bit. I must strike in and put a few questions before I get angry. For instance, itwould be nice to hear a closer description of this lady with whom you have lived in such a remarkable wedlock.”
“Very good, I can answer you, since I’m fully armed against all sarcasms. She was a woman of an altogether unusual feminine spirit. In her archness there was a delicate acknowledgment of her womanly limitations. And he who knows his bounds is already beyond them. She had, perhaps, no thoughts that were actually her own, but she had a quick, gentle receptivity which gave one the pleasant feeling that everything fell upon good ground and bore fruit a hundredfold. I begot thoughts and dreams upon her and enjoyed a sort of intellectual fertilization.”
“But may I permit myself to doubt whether this glorified bridal mood really made such a permanent impression on the other person?”
“What right have you to do that?”
“Oh, one might suppose it was only for a moment that she reverted to the usual flighty sentimentality which lies like a broken husk around a woman’s realism. The realism is genuine because it is rooted in suffering and the hard limitations of nature. No, woman is not what the bachelor thinks, not what either the ethereal or the crude bachelors think. It may well be that her instinct was whispering all the time in thedepths: Look out for this man, because he is in reality a damned little egoist.”
Modin did not seem to be impressed.
“That’s just like you, Axelson,” he muttered. “You were in the landscape then, too. You were the corncrake. Just a harsh, obstinate noise.”
Axelson grew all the more contentious. He strode back and forth over the hot bridge, unconsciously holding his fists where his trousers pockets should have been. At last he halted in front of Modin:
“My dear brother, we have come into a condition of moral nakedness. Permit me to be wholly frank. It looks from your body as if you had never tried a tussle with life. I take back the term bachelor, for, with your pardon, there is more of the old maid about you. Yes, don’t be angry. But, you see, you keep irritating me damnably with your misuse of the word marriage. For me marriage is a deep word, deeper even than the word love. Marriage is something big, hard; even rough, if you like. It is brimmed with sweetness and suffering and bitter necessity as inescapable as the fact that you as a little delicate creature have lain crumpled up in your tortured mother’s body. One may say in a certain manner that a fleeting, loose relation is purer and finer than marriage, but that is a desertion fromreality, an unorganic arabesque, a petty splendor. Marriage is an heroic word. Yes, because man and woman must inflict heavy suffering upon each other. Sex, which frets them both, must at certain times be felt as a curse. Between even the best and most sober couples there are times of despair and hate. There is a disease of hatred which is inborn in man. But still it is great to endure together. And an honest and deep despair is something quite different from a little cold and limp aversion without marrow in its bones. Everything that’s honest, everything that doesn’t falsify the fundamentals of life, has a worth, let it look as devilish bitter as it may.”
Modin looked away, troubled by the other’s confidence.
“My dear friend, I haven’t desired to hear all this. From your experience you will hardly succeed in making an apology for marriage.”
Axelson gave a jump.
“On the contrary, you little idiot, my marriage is an uncommonly good one. We have five children and are inseparable till death. I tell you this: Cut out woman from your life and you are only half a man! But that’s enough of this. I’m now—deuce take it!—roasted through. Shall we get dressed?”
“All right.”
Axelson dove into his cabin. But he hadscarcely got on his shirt and trousers before he came rushing into Modin’s compartment.
“Listen! Excuse a question. You were telling about an avenue of lindens and a grove of oaks. Do you happen to remember anything more definite about the road out?”
“I don’t know of what use all this is. For the matter of that I remember less about localities than of my own feelings.”
“Come, try now, or I’ll think you are tricking me.”
“I’ve a notion that I passed over a little bridge and under a high red shaky gable, that somehow made me think of Almkvist’s story,The Mill. That was surely just before my digression.”
Axelson’s eyes gleamed.
“My good fellow, you must have taken a remarkable circuit, because the mill lies just two and a half minutes’ journey outside the town. Do you by any chance remember a giant oak almost dead, which stood down on the slope away from the others?”
“Yes, I think I do.”
“Good, good! Then I may tell you that about a hundred yards from the place of your meeting stood a dwelling-house, though you could not see it; an ordinary, white-plastered, fire-insured, fairly well mortgaged, decent two-story house with young folks and servants and a croquetground. So the wonderful loneliness didn’t amount to much.”
Modin carefully tied his necktie.
“You’re making a fantastically vain attempt to rob me of my illusions.”
“Just one more question: Do you remember something special in the white lady’s appearance?”
“By something special you mean of course a blemish. Yes, I was really fascinated by a little scar she had on her forehead. It was a very decorative scar, because it drew up one eyebrow a trifle and at first glance gave her a lively and somewhat mocking appearance.”
Axelson’s whole countenance glowed.
“Splendid, splendid! I sewed that scar together. I know as much as you like of the lady in question. The doctor is the whole town’s father confessor.”
Modin made a gesture of refusal with both hands.
“I wish to know absolutely nothing, I beg you, nothing!”
But Axelson was merciless.
“This much you must know at any rate, that she got the scar when she fell off a bicycle. And that she lived with her parents in the white-plastered two-story house. And that she worked at the post office from nine to one. And furthermore that she had probably just been betrothed in that very dress. You see that I know my community.”
“But all this is most uninteresting, my dear Axelson.”
“Not altogether, my dear brother, not altogether.”
Axelson dived back into his cabin.
The two men were soon ready. Despite the summer heat Modin was attired in black, and very jauntily; Axelson on the other hand wore a gray check suit. The walrus looked very masterful and imposing when he was dressed. One understood directly that he amounted to something in his community. He stood forth on the quay and slapped the other man on the shoulder.
“Hope you’ll do me the honor of eating dinner with me.”
Modin as a matter of fact was much disinclined but did not see how he could refuse. Axelson lived a little way out of the town. They passed through an avenue of lindens. The doctor from time to time ogled his friend sidewise. Modin walked slowly and often looked about him. He seemed irresolute. They passed a bridge and the high red gable of a mill. They branched off on a somewhat narrower by-road by the side of the pond. They rounded a hillside with oaks and soon stood before a fruit orchard,behind which rose a white-plastered two-story house. Axelson hastened to open a gate at the gable end.