"A Jew boy? Were you licking him? What had he done?"
"Nothing. . . ."
His voice is not very certain, for I look so queer.
And that is only the beginning. For now I snatch my hat and run out of
the door as fast as I can and shout:
"Come . . . come . . . we must find him and beg his pardon!"
My little boy hurries after me. He does not understand a word of it, but
he is terribly in earnest. We look in the courtyard, we shout and call.
We rush into the street and round the corner, so eager are we to come up
with him. Breathlessly, we ask three passers-by if they have not seen a
poor, ill-used Jew boy.
All in vain: the Jew boy and all his persecutors are blown away into
space.
So we go and sit up in my room again, the laboratory where our soul is
crystallized out of the big events of our little life. My forehead is
wrinkled and I drum disconsolately with my fingers on the table. The boy
has both his hands in his pockets and does not take his eyes from my
face.
"Well," I say, decidedly, "there is nothing more to be done. I hope you
will meet that Jew boy one day, so that you can give him your hand and
ask him to forgive you. You must tell him that you did that only because
you were stupid. But if, another time, anyone does him any harm, I hope
you will help him and lick the other one as long as you can stir a
limb."
I can see by my little boy's face that he is ready to do what I wish.
For he is still a mercenary, who does not ask under which flag, so long
as there is a battle and booty to follow. It is my duty to train him to
be a brave recruit, who will defend his fair mother-land, and so I
continue:
"Let me tell you, the Jews are by way of being quite wonderful people.
You remember David, about whom Dirty reads at school: he was a Jew boy.
And the Child Jesus, Whom everybody worships and loves, although He died
two thousand years ago: He was a little Jew also."
My little boy stands with his arms on my knee and I go on with my story.
The old Hebrews rise before our eyes in all their splendour and power,
quite different from Dirty's Balslev. They ride on their camels in coats
of many colours and with long beards: Moses and Joseph and his brethren
and Samson and David and Saul. We hear wonderful stories. The walls of
Jericho fall at the sound of the trumpet.
"And what next?" says my little boy, using the expression which he
employed when he was much smaller and which still comes to his lips
whenever he is carried away.
We hear of the destruction of Jerusalem and how the Jews took their
little boys by the hand and wandered from place to place, scoffed at,
despised and ill-treated. How they were allowed to own neither house nor
land, but could only be merchants, and how the Christian robbers took
all the money which they had got together. How, nevertheless, they
remained true to their God and kept up their old sacred customs in the
midst of the strangers who hated and persecuted them.
The whole day is devoted to the Jews.
We look at old books on the shelves which I love best to read and which
are written by a Jew with a wonderful name, which a little boy can't
remember at all. We learn that the most famous man now living in Denmark
is a Jew.
And, when evening comes and Mother sits down at the piano and sings the
song which Father loves above all other songs, it appears that the words
were written by one Jew and the melody composed by another.
My little boy is hot and red when he falls to sleep that night. He turns
restlessly in bed and talks in his sleep.
"He is a little feverish," says his mother.
And I bend down and kiss his forehead and answer, calmly:
"That is not surprising. Today I have vaccinated him against the meanest
of all mean and vulgar diseases."