MODERN SWEDISH MASTERPIECES
MODERN
SWEDISH MASTERPIECES
_SHORT STORIES SELECTED AND TRANSLATED_
BY
CHARLES WHARTON STORK
TRANSLATOR OF “ANTHOLOGY OF SWEDISH LYRICS,” “SELECTED POEMS
BY GUSTAF FRÖDING,” ETC.
Editor of _Contemporary Verse_
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY
681 FIFTH AVENUE
COPYRIGHT, 1923
BY E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY
_All Rights Reserved_
Printed in the United States of America
TO
THORSTEN LAURIN
FRIEND OF ARTISTS
PATRON OF THE ARTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The special thanks of the translator are due to the
American-Scandinavian Foundation of New York City for permission to
include the stories by Verner von Heidenstam from the two volumes of
_The Charles Men_, as well as for stories by Söderberg and Siwertz which
appeared in the _American Scandinavian Review_.
Three stories by Söderberg were published in _Hearst’s Magazine_, and
others in _The Freeman_, _The Bookman_, _World Fiction_ and _The Wave_.
Hallström’s “Out of the Dark” appeared in _The Double Dealer_. We gladly
acknowledge our debt to the proprietors of these magazines for allowing
us to reprint from their pages.
Our chief debt is, however, to the original authors and to A. Bonnier
and Co., Stockholm, for the right to translate these specimens of
Swedish genius into another language.
PREFACE
It is curious that, despite the rapid growth of interest in Scandinavian
literature through the English-speaking world, there has been up to now
no book to represent one of the most brilliant fields of achievement,
the Swedish short story. The work of Selma Lagerlof is well known and a
volume of Per Hallström has appeared recently, but no attempt has been
made to represent a group of the leading masters. The present
collection, whatever its failings, will at least indicate the power and
variety of the Scandinavian genius in a new and important phase of its
expression.
The four authors here included are all living and active, from which it
may be rightly inferred that the Swedish short story is of recent
development. Verner von Heidenstam, born in 1859, winner of the Nobel
Prize for Literature in 1916, has an international reputation but is not
as yet widely known in America. The stories here selected are from his
historical novel, _The Charles Men_, set in the time of Charles XII; for
though the book has a clear unity, the separate chapters can be
understood perfectly by themselves. Per Hallström, somewhat younger, is
ranked even higher by Swedish critics as a master of short stories. The
volume of translations just published omits, quite unaccountably, the
two specimens here given which belong to his very best style. Hjalmar
Söderberg, also a writer in his fifties, has been called the Anatole
France of Sweden. Unknown in America up to now, his stories have won
marked favor on their appearance in magazines. Sigfrid Siwertz, but
slightly over forty, is the most promising of the younger generation.
Less outstanding than the others, he has nevertheless a fine balance and
much grace of detail. His chief novel, under the title _Downstream_, has
just appeared in translation.
As to the varying characteristics of these stories it seems best to
leave everyone to form his own opinions. It is not likely that writers
of such strong individuality will appeal equally to the general public.
Such authors, however, need no apology. This volume is, unless the
translator has failed badly, a challenge to American literary taste. It
is not the book that is on trial but the reader.
C. W. S.
CONTENTS
HJALMAR SÖDERBERG
PAGE
THE CHIMNEY-SWEEPER’S WIFE 3
BLOOM 14
THE FUR COAT 28
THE BLUE ANCHOR 34
THE KISS 44
THE DREAM OF ETERNITY 48
THE DRIZZLE 54
THE DRAWING IN INDIA INK 58
THE WAGES OF SIN 61
COMMUNION 66
THE CLOWN 71
SIGNY 76
A MASTERLESS DOG 80
SIGFRID SIWERTZ
THE LADY IN WHITE 87
LEONARD AND THE FISHERMAN 104
VERNER VON HEIDENSTAM
WHEN THE BELLS RING 125
THE FORTIFIED HOUSE 145
THE QUEEN OF THE MARAUDERS 168
CAPTURED 190
PER HALLSTRÖM
THE FALCON 221
OUT OF THE DARK 237
STORIES BY
HJALMAR SÖDERBERG
THE CHIMNEY-SWEEPER’S WIFE
This is a grim and sad story. I heard it told more than once in my
childhood, and it made me wonder and shudder.
In a side street stands an old middle-class house with a smooth gray
façade. Through a large round-arched door without any decorations--there
is, to be sure, a date, and perhaps too a couple of garlands with
fruit--one comes upon a narrow courtyard paved with cobblestones, and a
dark, stone-paved fountain like so many of its kind, where the sun never
strikes the path. An old linden with pollarded branches, blackened bark,
and leafage thinned with age stands in one corner; it is as old as the
house, older indeed, and is always a favorite resort for the children
and cats of the courtyard.
This was of old the yard of Wetzmann, the master chimney-sweep.
Sweeper Wetzmann must have been a very good-natured old fellow. He had
had success in life and had got together quite a large property. He was
kind to the poor, harsh to his prentices--for such was the custom; so
perhaps it needed to be, too--and drank toddy in the tavern every
evening, for he had a poor life at home.
His wife was likewise harsh to the prentices, but she was not kind to
the poor or to anyone else either. She had worked as maid-servant in
sweeper Wetzmann’s house before she became his second wife. At that time
Envy and Lust were the two of the seven deadly sins which were nearest
her nature; now it was rather Wrath and Pride.
She was large and strongly built and in her earlier days must have been
handsome.
The son Frederick was slim and pale. He was born of the first marriage,
and it was said that he resembled his mother. He had a good head and a
cheerful disposition, and was studying to be a minister. He had just
become a student when he fell into a long and severe illness which held
him to his bed a whole winter.
In a wing of the court lived a charwoman with her daughter Magda. Was
her name really Magda? I do not know, but I always called her so to
myself when as a child I heard the older people tell of her on a winter
evening in the twilight; and I pictured to myself a pale, shy little
child’s face, flooded about with an abundance of bright hair, and with a
very red mouth. She was fifteen and had just been confirmed. Perhaps it
was that “being confirmed” which made me represent her to myself as
serious and quiet, like the young girls I used to see in church on
Sunday, and which caused me to think of her as clad in a long shiny
black dress.
In the spring, when the student began to convalesce, the charwoman’s
daughter came by his desire to sit at his bedside a while in the
afternoon and read aloud.
Mrs. Wetzmann did not approve of this. She was afraid a liking might
grow up between them. Her stepson, for all she cared, might fall in love
with whomsoever he wished and might betroth himself, too--that did not
concern her; but at least it must not be with a charwoman’s daughter!
She kept a mistrustful eye on Magda, but had to put up with the
arrangement. An invalid should of course be diverted in some way or
other; and the doctor had forbidden him to read in bed, because he had
weak eyes and was not to overstrain himself.
So the girl sat by his bedside and read aloud both religious and secular
books, and the student lay there pale and weak, listening to her voice
and looking at her, too, in which he found pleasure.
Such a red mouth she had!
They were nearly of the same age--he was not over seventeen or
eighteen--and they had often played together as children. Soon enough
they grew confidential.
As often as possible Mrs. Wetzmann found some excuse to go into the
sick-room to see how things were getting on there. The two young folks
ought to have noticed this and been on their guard; but then one does
not always do as one ought. One day, when she noiselessly and cautiously
opened the door, matters were in the following state: Magda had left her
chair, which had been set at some distance from the bed, and now stood
leaning over the head-board with her arms around the young man’s neck.
He in turn had raised himself half up with his elbows propped on the
pillow and was caressing her hair with a thin white hand, while they
kissed each other fervently. From time to time, also, they whispered
certain broken words without meaning.
The sweeper’s wife grew dark red. Notwithstanding, she could not keep
from smiling inwardly: hadn’t everything turned out exactly as she knew
it would! But now there was going to be an end to it. Wrath and Pride
rose up within her, till they swelled and glowed from her cheeks and
eyes, which sent out sparks; and who knows--while she stood there silent
and unseen, regarding the two young people, who had neither eyes nor
ears for anything but each other--who knows if Envy and Lust, too, did
not covertly slink forth from their retreat and play each on its own
hidden string within her soul?
She did not reflect long, but stepped hastily forward to the bed, seized
the girl’s slender wrist in an iron grasp, gave her a disgraceful
epithet, and flung her out of the door with a stream of the foulest
abuse. Afterwards, in the interested presence of the servants and
prentices, she swore a solemn and luscious oath that if the young girl
ever again dared to set foot within her threshold, she should get her
skin full of so many blows that she would not be able to stir a fin for
fourteen days.
There was no one who doubted that she meant to keep her word.
The invalid made no reproaches to his stepmother. Every time she went
through the room he turned his face to the wall; he did not wish to see
or speak to her after her performance with Magda. But one day he
confided to his father in private that he could not live unless Magda
might be his bride. The old chimney-sweeper was surprised and vexed, but
dared not immediately set up any serious opposition: his son was the one
person he cared for and who showed him any tenderness in return, and he
could not endure the thought of losing him.
He put the matter aside for future action and gave his wife a share in
his anxiety.
* * * * *
How can I describe what occurred next? It sounds like an evil dream or
a story made to frighten children when they are naughty, and yet it is
true.
It is supposed to have been on a Sunday evening in May that it happened.
The courtyard is still, the street is still. Maybe someone hums a song
through a kitchen window, or some children play down in the alley....
The invalid is alone in his room. He is counting the quarter-hours and
the minutes. It is spring outside now. Soon it will be summer. Shall he
never get up from his bed, never again hear the woods murmur and rustle,
never as before be able to measure the day in periods of activity and
periods of rest? And Magda.... If only he did not always see before him
her face with the wild alarm in her look that came there when his
stepmother seized her by the wrist! She had not needed to be afraid. The
wicked woman would not have dared to do her any serious harm, for she
knew that he had chosen her for his bride.
So he lies there dreaming, now awake, now half-awake, while he lets his
pupils suck in the light of the sunbeam on the white door. When he shuts
his eyes, there swims out an archipelago of poisonously green islands
surrounded by an inky black sea. And as he dozes, the green passes over
into blue, the black brightens to bluish red with ragged dark edges,
and at last everything grows black together....
He feels a light hand stroking his forehead, and he starts up in bed.
It is Magda. Magda stands before him, small and slender, with a smiling
red mouth, and lays a bunch of spring flowers in front of him on the
cover. Anemones and almond blossoms and violets.
Is it true, is it really she?
“How did you dare?” he whispers.
“Your stepmother is away,” she answers. “I saw her go just now, dressed
to go out. I heard she was to go to South Stockholm, and it will surely
be long before she comes home. So then I slipped up the stairs and in to
you.”
She stays a long while with him, telling of the woods where she has
walked alone and listened to the birds and picked spring flowers for him
whom she loves. And they kiss each other as often as possible and caress
like two children, and both are happy, while the hours run and the
sunbeam on the floor becomes burning gold and then red, then pales and
fades away.
“Perhaps you ought to go,” says Frederick. “She may soon be home. What
should I do if she wanted to beat you, I who am lying here sick and
weak, who grow dizzy if I get up out of bed. Perhaps you ought to go.”
“I’m not afraid,” says Magda.
For she wants to show unmistakably that she loves him and that she will
gladly suffer for her love’s sake.
Only when twilight comes does she kiss him for the last time and steal
out of the house. She stops a minute in the courtyard and looks up at
the window of the room where he is lying with her almond blossoms and
violets on the bed-cover. When she turns to the little room in the wing
of the court, she stands face to face with Mrs. Wetzmann, and she utters
a little scream.
There is no living human being in the courtyard, none but these two.
Round about stand the walls, staring at them in the darkness with empty,
black windows, and the old linden trembles in its corner.
“You’ve been up there!” says the sweeper’s wife.
As a child I always believed that she smiled when she said this, and
that her teeth shone as white in the darkness as those of her husband’s
prentices.
“Yes, I have been with him,” Magda may perhaps have answered, defiant
and erect even in her chalk-pale terror.
What happened then? No one really knows, but probably there was a
desperate pursuit round the courtyard. At the foot of the old linden
the girl tripped and fell. She dared not call for help, for fear the
invalid might hear; and besides, who would have helped her? Her mother
was away at work. The infuriated woman was above her--she had meanwhile
got hold of a weapon, a broomstick or something of the sort,--and blow
followed blow. A couple of half-strangled screams from a throat
constricted by the dread of death, and then nothing more.
A couple of prentices who had just come home stood down in the dark
doorway and looked on; they did not move a finger to help the girl.
Perhaps they did not dare; perhaps, too, they were led by a faint hope
of seeing their mistress carried off in a police wagon some day.
When Mrs. Wetzmann went into the house after exercising her right of
mastery--for she felt by instinct that she naturally had proprietary
right to all over whom she could and would exercise it--she stumbled
against something soft in the stairway. It was Frederick. He had heard
the faint screams, had sprung from bed and gone out, and had fallen on
the stairs.
Magda lived three days; she then died and was buried.
Sweeper Wetzmann paid a sum of money to the charwoman, her mother, and
there were no legal proceedings on the matter. Nevertheless the old man
took it hard. He went no more to the tavern to drink toddy, but
generally sat at home in a leather-covered chair and spelled in an old
Bible. He fell into a decline, grew silent and peculiar, and it was not
a year before he too was dead and laid in earth.
The son Frederick grew slowly better; but he never passed his
examination as minister, for both his grasp of intellect and his memory
had become weakened. He was often seen going with flowers to Magda’s
grave; he walked leaning forward and very rapidly, indeed he almost ran,
as if he had many important errands to attend to, and he mostly had a
couple of books under his arm. To the end he remained wholly
weak-minded.
And the sweeper’s wife? She seems to have had a strong nature. There are
people who are not exactly conscienceless, but who never of their own
accord hit upon the idea that they have done anything wrong. It may
happen that a fellow with bright buttons on his coat may clap them on
the shoulder and request them to come along with him; then their
conscience awakens. But no one came to Mrs. Wetzmann. She sent her
stepson to an asylum when he became too troublesome at home, she mourned
her husband, as was proper and customary, and then she married again.
When she drove to church on the bridal day, she wore a jacket of
lilac-colored silk with gold braid and was “fixed up fit to kill”--so
said my grandmother, who was sitting at her window in the house
opposite and saw the whole display while she was turning a leaf in her
book of sermons.
BLOOM
On a brilliant August morning at eight o’clock precisely the gates of
the establishment of Langholm were opened for three boarders of the
establishment, who had come there for various causes and sojourned for
various periods. These periods were exactly suited to the grade and kind
of their differences with the law-abiding community as proved by their
conduct. They did not know each other, and having no feeling of
brotherhood through their common misfortune, they said to one another
neither good-morning nor good-bye.
The man who came out first was a thick-set fellow with a beast-like
forehead and heavy wrists. One dark evening he had fallen upon an old
workman whom he did not like, knocked out some of his teeth, and kicked
him in the chest so that he coughed blood for several days. He had been
given a month for assault and battery, which did him little harm, and he
betook himself hastily to the nearest tavern.
Next came a man who had swindled an impersonal entity known as a bank of
a fairly large sum of money. The three months he had spent indoors had
not overly bleached his fresh brandy complexion. He had a well-fitting
summer suit of dark blue with narrow white edgings; on his feet he wore
new yellow shoes, and in his hand he held an elegant little satchel of
the same color as the shoes, so that he most nearly resembled a
traveling salesman who comes whistling softly out of a hotel. He did
not, however, whistle, but mounted into a cab with a lowered hood, under
which a black-clad woman with pale and anxious features awaited him. He
then tossed an address to the coachman, and vanished in a cloud of dust.
Last came the former tailor’s apprentice Bloom, Oscar Valdemar Napoleon.
His complexion inclined more to gray, for he had had to atone with a
nine months’ sentence for the theft of a jacket hung out for show--this
being, to be sure, his second trip to the establishment. He had in his
right breast pocket, besides his birth certificate with its less
flattering annotations, the sum of eighty crowns inserted in a blue
envelope, together with a certificate of good conduct at Langholm from
the prison director.
That was not much to represent nine months’ work, but he had also had
his board and lodging meanwhile. For him it was in any case a
considerable sum, and it had been besides a lever for many future plans,
most of which rested on clear improbabilities, for many dreams of a new
life, for happiness and prosperity and general respect. This had been
especially the case during those last weeks when, in consideration of
his rapidly approaching freedom, he had been spared the humiliation of
being shaved, for he had felt his manly self-esteem sprout afresh and
grow in rivalry with the bristles on his upper lip and chin. But now,
when he was actually free, when he felt the light, cool breeze of the
summer morning fan about his temples and heard it rustling in the big
trees, all of these plans were pushed somewhat into the background as if
of themselves, of course only until a later time, only for a few hours
or perhaps a day, and a single great emotion of happiness rose up in him
and swept him along as though in a vertigo. Furthermore he was very
hungry, because he had hardly touched his Langholm fare on that last
morning, and he thought with yearning and satisfaction of a little
restaurant on Brenchurch Street which he knew from of old, and of a
great beefsteak with onions and one or maybe two bottles of beer--only
think of it, beer!
On the Langholm Bridge stood a guard off duty, fishing for roach with
small bits of saffron bread. Bloom stood with his arms on the railing
and watched: it amused him to pretend that he was not in a hurry. Down
there in the deep green of the quiet water, in the shadow under the
bridge, big red-eyed roach swam back and forth around the bait, pointing
at it a while, turning around in hesitation and coming back again; now
and then came a rudd or two with red fins and yellow back, beautiful
fish, but tasting a little of clay, and once in a while came a glint
from the broad silver side of a bream. On both sides of the narrow
Langholm Bay large bending willows dipped their gray-green leaves into
the water, and the reeds waved gently in the morning wind. In the
background far away, the churches and towers of Stockholm stood in the
blue sun-haze as if cut with a fine needle.
“Yes,” remarked Bloom to the guard, “now one can begin to live again.”
“Yes, good luck to you, Bloom!” answered the guard without taking his
eyes from the float, which just then took a dip under the water. “That
was a bite, but the fish only took the bread and left the hook to the
landlord.”
A steam sloop came sputtering up under the bridge on its way to the city
and lay to at the nearest landing. For a moment Bloom was tempted to go
with it, but came back directly to his first idea: the restaurant on
Brenchurch Street, beefsteak, onions and beer, so he said good-bye to
the guard and went ahead on the Langholm Road. He felt himself from of
old most at home in the section of South Stockholm between
Skinnarviksberg, Lilyholm Bridge and Langholm.
* * * * *
When Bloom emerged, full-fed and contented, from his restaurant, his
first impulse was to buy a new black felt hat, for the old one inclined
too much to yellow-brown, and he had heard sometime or other that the
hat makes the gentleman. After that he went to the nearest barber shop
on Horn Street and had them remove the stubble from his chin, together
with part of that on his cheeks; retaining, however--besides his
mustaches, of course--a couple of small mutton-chop whiskers next the
ears. After that he went slantwise across the street to a general
outfitter’s, whence he came out attired in a clean white collar, a
blue-edged dickey, and a brilliant light-blue necktie. A few steps
further up the street he stopped before a photographer’s show-case and
looked at himself in the glass. He was greatly moved at the
transformation he had undergone. A ribbon-like strip of paper was
picturesquely wound among portraits of serving-maids, dressmakers,
Salvation Army soldiers, recruits, and a parson with a parson’s collar;
and when he read on this that he could have half-a-dozen card-sized
pictures made for two and a half crowns, he felt an irresistible
temptation to go up and be photographed. It was partly that the day was
significant for him, so that the likeness he had taken now would be a
memento for the rest of his life; partly, too, that he had a dark
foreboding, which he tried to put by, that it might be long before he
would again be in a condition equally worthy to be immortalized in a
picture. Furthermore, he had had himself photographed at various times
previously, and he remembered with satisfaction the agreeable feeling he
had experienced in seeing his ego in an, as it were, glorified aspect,
without spots on his coat or damaging inequalities in his complexion,
handsomely shaved and with a dignified and engaging expression. He went
up to the photographer, combed his hair solicitously before a mirror,
and sat down motionless before the camera with his hands on his knees.
“Will it be good?” he asked, when the sitting was over.
“The gentleman will look like a bank director,” answered the
photographer after he had glanced at the plate.
When he stood on the street again, he became conscious of his good
intentions calling more strongly and clearly than before. He ought to go
down to the city, look up a couple of God-fearing and kindly people to
whom the prison director and the pastor had given him directions, get
work, and procure himself a cheap lodging. But it was still early in the
day, the clock-maker’s time-piece over there on the corner did not yet
point quite to ten, the sun shone heart-warmingly in the blue heavens,
and the air was mild and still. He could give himself a little time, he
could go a piece toward Lilyholm out in the woods.
Yes, the woods--he had thought of them many times while he sat caged off
there behind the grating.
He had grown up in a village on a wooded slope half a mile south of
Stockholm. After he had been confirmed, he had been set as prentice to a
pious little tailor in South Stockholm. The tailor was a Baptist; Bloom
also became a Baptist and submitted to total immersion. But when he went
to another tailor, who belonged to the national church and constantly
misused the name of the Devil, his new faith gradually waned. He made
new acquaintances and became the betrothed of a middle-aged serving-maid
who had a bank-book and gave him money. In that way he grew accustomed
to amusements, not great, but nevertheless more than are good for poor
folks. On fine summer evenings he often sat in Mosebacke’s café or on
the river terrace drinking punch, sometimes with his intended, but
sometimes with a little dark-haired dressmaker, whom he had got to know
at Tekla’s one afternoon when she had given a tea in the maid’s room.
She was called Edith; she had thick dark hair and very red lips. She
went for long periods without work, but always knew how to provide for
herself notwithstanding. Bloom often wished that Tekla’s faithful love
for him, together with her bank-book, might by some magic means be
transferred to Edith. But Edith’s heart was inconstant and never to be
relied upon, and the bank-book still remained Tekla’s. So, as the case
was, he at least got a little enjoyment from the money of the one and
the red lips of the other.
But then came the end. The tailor with whom he worked went bankrupt, and
he was out of work. Tekla promised to help him and took out money from
the bank; he was to have the loan of thirty crowns till he found work.
On the evening when he was to get the money she forced him to stay
longer than he cared to, and when at last he was to go and only waited
for the money, the crash came. She was all the more angry because she
had to speak low for fear of waking the family. Edith had been up in her
room that afternoon, they had fallen out about something, and Edith had
talked about all manner of things with Bloom to spite and annoy her. But
Tekla was not the kind to let anybody make fun of her. She called him a
cur and many other names, waving the three tenners under his nose and
declaring that he should never again get a farthing from her. Thereupon
he snatched them with a sudden grab and went off. He knew that she dared
not make any disturbance at night; the family might wake.
But next day in court she accused him of theft. He first denied it, but
afterwards confessed and related the circumstances. The plaintiff’s
version of the affair, however, was altogether different: the thirty
crowns had lain on the table, he had taken them without her seeing it,
and she had never promised them to him. The one thing that became wholly
clear was that he had taken them.
That gave him his first trip.
Afterwards he had lived as best he could--had worked sometimes, and
sometimes starved and begged, till one evening he got the idea of
stealing a jacket on East Street so as to escape the poor-house.
* * * * *
He had come down to Lilyholm Bridge. Milk-wagons rattled and shaggy
peasant horses toiled painfully with their home-made carts up the steep
abutment. From the hundred factory chimneys around the shore of Arstavik
the smoke ascended quietly toward the welkin in straight columns, as
from a sacrifice well-pleasing to the Lord. The Continental Express
rushed southward along the railway embankment, its dining car full of
breakfasting travelers with anchovies on their forks. But in the
peaceful nook between the bridge and the shore a family of ducks swam to
and fro; some white, some speckled with the suggestion of a wild duck’s
plumage, while in the middle of the flock the drake stood on a floating
plank on one foot with his head under his wing, asleep.
Bloom took a roll that he had brought with him from the restaurant on
Brenchurch Street, crumbled it to pieces, and threw the pieces to the
ducks. The flock at once grew more lively; even the drake lifted his
head and opened one eye, but shut it again. He was quite white, and his
shut eyelid was also white, so that Bloom had to think of the blank,
uncanny marble eyes he had seen in the National Museum one Sunday many
years ago. The others snapped among the bits of roll. One of them had
got hold of a piece that was too big, so she dipped it into the water
time after time in order to soften it and break it. Meanwhile another
followed all her motions constantly with watchful eyes, and when at last
the bit of roll slipped from the bill of the first, the other was
instantly there and got it. There was no conflict; the first contented
herself with following in turn and watching for a chance to recover the
lost piece.
Bloom laughed aloud with delight.
Yes, that’s right, he thought; he who has got something must look out
for what he has, or someone else will come and take it. He felt it
almost as a consolation to see the innocent white creature perform with
impunity and entire naturalness an act which in the language of mankind
is known as theft, and for which he had had to suffer severely.
A speckled duck, enticed by the bits of roll, came swimming out from the
shore at the apex of a flock of little ones, gray-brown fellows with
hairy fluff and small, black, pearly-bright eyes like rats. Several
small girls on the way to school with books in their hands stopped and
surveyed them with delight and astonishment. “Look there! are those
rats?” “No, can’t you see? They’re birds.” “Only think, they aren’t
afraid of the water!”
“Those are ducklings,” explained Bloom, adding a didactic tone: “They
are formed to go in the water. It’s no more remarkable for them to go in
the water than for fish to swim.”
“Really!” said the largest girl. And they bounded off on their way with
little skips.
Bloom recalled a story which he had once read in a school book about an
ugly duckling that was transformed into a swan. He sought for an
application of this to himself and partly found it in his recent
transformation at the barber shop and the photographer’s, but it did
not seem to him fully satisfactory, and he muttered to himself as he
passed on over the bridge: “Wait, I’ll show them! Just wait.”
It was very warm, and when he came to the other side of the bridge where
nettles and burdocks were standing, gray with dust, by the edge of the
road, he took off his jacket, stuck the crook of his stick through the
loop, slung it over his shoulder, and went on out along the Lilyholm
Road whistling a cheerful tune.
A little in front of him went a young woman with a bundle in her hand,
and he hurried his steps so as to see how she looked from in front. As
he came nearer, all at once his heart nearly stood still in his breast,
for he thought it must be Edith. At the same moment she turned.
“No, if it isn’t Valdemar!”
After the first expression of surprise had vanished from her face, she
smiled affably and seemed not unpleasantly affected at seeing him. She
was going to see an acquaintance who lived a little further out, and
they went on together. He found her changed, fuller than before and
redder in complexion, as if she had drunk a good deal of beer. She asked
where he had been all the long time that they had not seen each other.
He felt a certain satisfaction in her not seeming to know of his
“second trip,” and he improvised something about a lengthy illness and
employment for a while with a tailor in a neighboring town.
Edith chattered incessantly. She talked of common acquaintances and
lamented over wrongs she had suffered. Tekla had been worst of all to
her. But now she was married to a street-cleaner who had already drunk
up her money and who beat her every day; and it served her right. She
related besides a great deal about herself, but in a style that hardly
seemed to make any pretence to veracity.
Bloom let her prattle and for his own part did not say much. He thought
of the nine months he had spent in solitude.
He took her gently by the arm and guided her in on a path that led into
the wood, and she grew silent in the midst of her talk and followed him
without saying anything. The path led into a deep covert along a fence
and hedge that enclosed a solitary orchard. From this orchard several
big silver poplars spread their wide and lofty crowns. On the other side
rose a fir-clad slope with mosses and ferns and dusky thickets. Over the
tops of the firs a white summer cloud sailed slowly.
* * * * *
Bloom was awakened by a big raindrop which fell heavily on his right
eyelid. He half raised himself and rubbed his eyes--had he been asleep?
He was alone, and it was raining. It did not rain hard as yet; these
were only the first big drops, but a black cloud was hanging directly
over him.
Where was Edith?
He had thrown his jacket with the stick a little to one side; he got up
and put it on. Suddenly a horrible thought came over him and he made a
swift grab at the breast pocket.
It was empty. The blue envelope was gone--the envelope with the money
and the prison director’s recommendations.
He felt a choking in his throat and a difficulty in breathing.
A sudden gust of wind shot through the leafage of the poplars like a
lightning flash, and a raging squall of rain whipped him in the face.
THE FUR COAT
It was a cold winter that year. People shrank up in the chill and grew
smaller, all except those who had furs. Judge Richardt had a big fur
coat. It almost belonged, moreover, to his official position, for he was
managing director of a brand-new company. His old friend Dr. Henck, on
the contrary, had no fur coat: he had instead a pretty wife and three
children. Dr. Henck was thin and pale. Some people grow fat with
marriage, others grow thin. Dr. Henck had grown thin, and remained so on
this particular Christmas Eve.
I’ve had a bad year this year, said Dr. Henck to himself, as he was on
his way to his old friend John Richardt to borrow money. It was three
o’clock of Christmas Eve, just the hour of the mid-day twilight.--I’ve
had a very bad year. My health is fragile, not to say broken. My
patients, on the contrary, have picked up, almost the whole lot of them,
I see them so seldom nowadays. Presumably I’m going to die soon. My wife
thinks so, too; I’ve seen it in her looks. In such a case it would be
desirable that the event should happen before the end of January, when
the cursed life insurance premium has to be paid.
By the time he had reached this point in the process of his thoughts he
found himself on the corner of Government and Harbor Street. As he was
about to pass the street-crossing in order to proceed down Government
Street, he slipped on a smooth sleigh track and fell, and at the same
moment a sleigh drove up at full speed. The driver swore and the horse
instinctively turned aside, but Dr. Henck received a blow on the
shoulder from one of the runners, and furthermore a screw or nail or
some similar projection caught his overcoat and tore a big rent in it.
People gathered around him. A policeman helped him to his feet, a young
girl brushed the snow off him, an old woman gesticulated over his torn
overcoat in a way that indicated she would have liked to sew it up on
the spot if she could, and a prince of the royal house, who happened to
be going by, picked up his cap and set it on his head. So everything was
all right again except the coat.
“Lord! what a sight you are, Gustav,” said Judge Richardt, when Henck
came up to his office.
“Yes, I’ve been run over,” answered Henck.
“That’s just like you,” said Richardt, laughing good-humoredly. “But you
can’t go home like that. You may gladly have the loan of my fur coat,
and I’ll send a boy home after my ulster.”
“Thanks,” said Dr. Henck. And after he had borrowed the hundred krona he
needed, he added, “We shall be glad to have you for dinner.”
Richardt was a bachelor and was accustomed to spend Christmas Eve with
Henck.
* * * * *
On the way home Henck was in a better humor than he had been for a long
time.
That’s on account of the fur coat, he said to himself. If I had been
smart, I should have got myself a fur coat on credit long ago. It would
have strengthened my self-esteem and raised me in the popular opinion.
One can’t pay such a small fee to a doctor in a fur coat as to a doctor
in an ordinary overcoat with worn button-holes. It’s a bother that I
didn’t happen to think of that before. Now it’s too late.
He walked a stretch through King’s Garden. It was dark already, it had
begun to snow again, and the acquaintances he met did not recognize him.
Who knows, though, whether it’s too late, Henck went on to himself. I’m
not old yet, and I may have been mistaken about the question of my
health. I’m poor as a little fox in the woods; but so was John Richardt
not so long since. My wife has grown cold and unfriendly toward me in
these latter times. She would surely begin to love me afresh, if I could
earn more money and if I were dressed in furs. It has seemed to me that
she cared more for John since he got himself a fur coat than she did
before. She was certainly a bit sweet on him when she was a young girl,
too; but he never courted her. On the contrary he said to her and to
everybody that he wouldn’t dare to marry on less than ten thousand a
year. But I dared, and Ellen was a poor girl who wanted to marry. I
don’t believe she was so much in love with me that I should have been
able to seduce her if I had wished to. But I didn’t want to, either; how
could I have dreamed of that sort of love? I haven’t thought of that
since I was sixteen and saw Faust the first time at the opera with
Arnoldson. I’m sure, though, she was fond of me when we were first
married; one can’t be mistaken about such a thing as that. Why couldn’t
she be again? In the first days after our marriage she always said
spiteful things to John whenever they met. But then he built up a
company, invited us often to the theatre, and got himself a fur coat.
And so naturally in time my wife grew tired of saying spiteful things to
him.
* * * * *
Henck had still several errands to do before dinner. It was already half
past five when he came home laden with parcels. He felt very tender in
his left shoulder, otherwise there was nothing that reminded him of his
mishap in the afternoon except the fur coat.
It’ll be fun to see what my wife will do when she sees me in a fur coat,
said Dr. Henck to himself.
The hall was quite dark; the lamp was never lighted unless visitors were
expected.
I hear her in the parlor now, thought Dr. Henck. She walks as lightly as
a little bird. It’s remarkable that I still get warm around the heart
every time I hear her step in the next room.
Dr. Henck was right in his supposition that his wife would give him a
more loving reception when he had on a fur coat than she was otherwise
wont to do. She stole up close to him in the darkest corner of the hall,
twined her arms about his neck, and kissed him warmly and intensively.
Then she burrowed her head into the collar of his fur coat and
whispered: “Gustav isn’t home yet.”
“Yes,” answered Dr. Henck in a voice that trembled slightly, while he
caressed her hair with both hands, “yes, he’s home.”
* * * * *
A big fire flamed in Dr. Henck’s work-room. Whisky and water stood on
the table.
Judge Richardt lay stretched out in a large leather easy-chair and
smoked a cigar. Dr. Henck sat huddled in a corner of the sofa. The door
was open on the hall, where Mrs. Henck and the children were busy
lighting the Christmas tree.
Dinner had been very quiet. Only the children had twittered and prattled
to one another and been happy.
“You’re not saying anything, old fellow,” said Richardt. “Is it that
you’re sitting worrying over your torn overcoat?”
“No,” answered Henck, “it’s rather over the fur coat.”
There was a few minutes’ silence before he continued:
“I’m thinking of something else, too. I’m sitting thinking that this is
the last Christmas we shall celebrate together. I’m a doctor and I know
I’ve not many days left. I know it now with full certainty. I want,
therefore, to thank you for all the kindness you’ve shown me and my wife
in these last times.”
“Oh, you’re mistaken,” muttered Richardt, looking away.
“No,” replied Henck, “I’m not mistaken. And I want also to thank you for
lending me your fur coat. It has given me the last seconds of happiness
I have known in my life.”
THE BLUE ANCHOR
I
There was dancing in the salon, but in the darkened smoking-room sat
several men who did not dance. The younger ones had white flowers in
their button-holes, the older ones had decorations. In the corner of a
sofa sat a man a little apart from the others; he sat very silent and
smiled as at a happy dream. His face was brown, but his forehead was
white. His frock coat was as correct as anyone else’s, and he had also a
white flower in his button-hole; but his left hand, which hung over the
arm of the sofa, was tattooed with a blue anchor.
As a matter of fact it was not a ball; there had merely been a dinner,
and afterwards there was dancing.
A man with a decoration was standing in front of him.
“You don’t dance, Mr. Fant?” he inquired.
Fant replied, “I’ve just been dancing with Miss Gabel.”
But as he said this, he felt that he blushed. Why should he have added
“with Miss Gabel.” It was surely a matter of indifference with whom he
had danced. Because he believed he had said something stupid, he was
annoyed with the man to whom he had said it, and set to staring at his
decoration without saying anything. Since this was a bogus foreign
decoration of the worst sort, the man grew embarrassed, coughed drily,
and passed on.
Fant remained seated and stared into a mirror which faced him on an
oblique wall. But it was not himself that he saw in the mirror, it was
the flooding light of the dancing hall and the sinuous lines of the
women. They seemed to move silently in time with the music. Look at
their red lips, look at the white curves of their arms!--
There she was again! For the third time she glided past across the
mirror. It was her cousin she was dancing with, a boy, lately a
student--ah, well!
No, he could not sit still, he could not look on any more. It surely
signified nothing that the boy danced with his own cousin, but he could
not look on. He rose and went out of the room.
Someone asked, “Who is this Mr. Fant?”
“He has invented something--a gas-burner, I believe. He is already on
the way to make a fortune.”
“But did you see,” said the man with the foreign order, “did you see
that he has a blue anchor tattooed on one hand?”
They suddenly burst into guffaws.
II
He sauntered back and forth through the rooms. He went out into the
corridor. A couple of Knights of Vasa were sitting on the wood-box
talking about business while they gesticulated with two big cigars, on
which they had left the labels. They grew silent as he passed.
He came into a greenish room that was half dark. From the roof on a
narrow cord hung a single electric light, its glow shaded by blue and
green fringes. On a dressing-table with a marble top an old Chinese
mandarin of porcelain sat sleeping on his crossed legs.
How strangely far off the music sounded, as if from underneath!
He set the mandarin’s head in motion with a little punch of his little
finger. Two mirrors repeated in unending succession the pale and
lethargic nods of the yellow head.
Now it was quiet, the music.
All at once she stood there, in the middle of the room. He had not heard
her enter. She held out both hands to him. He took them and drew her to
him for a kiss, but she freed herself almost immediately.
“Somebody’s coming,” she said.
They listened. Voices approached and moved away again.
When all was quiet around them, he pressed her to him in a long kiss.
And he thought while she kissed him: This is life! This is eternity!
Far away in the green darkness nodded the pale head of the mandarin.
“No one kisses like you,” he muttered.
“Many kiss like you,” she responded, smiling.
He thought to himself: she’s smiling so that I shall know she’s jesting
and that she has never kissed anyone else.
While he caressed her two small hands between his, he noticed that she
was looking at his left hand.
“You are looking at the anchor,” he said. “It’s true that it is not
handsome. And it won’t come off.”
She took his hand and surveyed inquisitively the blue dots that formed
an anchor. But she said nothing.
“It was in Hamburg that was done,” he said. “I was a ship’s boy on a
vessel. We had come ashore and gone into a tavern by the harbor. I
remember it all so well: the fog, the many masts in the harbor, and the
smell of the grease. My comrades were tattooed, on the hands, arms and
body, and they thought I ought to have myself tattooed also. I couldn’t
refuse, or they would have thought I was afraid of the pain, for it hurt
a great deal. But I thought, too, it was stylish; I was hardly fourteen,
you know.”
“Are you tattooed on the body as well?” she asked.
Smilingly and somewhat unwillingly he answered, “Yes, I have on the
breast a ship and a bird, which is supposed to be an eagle, though it’s
more like a rooster.”
She looked long into his eyes, then slowly raised his hand to her lips
and kissed the blue anchor.
III
Years passed, and one day Richard Fant said to his wife as they were
dressing to go out to dinner, “Do you know, I think the blue anchor is
beginning to fade. Perhaps it’s on the way to vanish entirely.”
“Oh, it’s not as bad as that,” she answered.
In reality her thoughts were in another direction. She was thinking of
her cousin, Tom Gabel, who was an attaché at the embassy in Madrid. He
had now been home for two months on a visit and had promised to come and
fetch them so as to go together to the dinner.
“Hurry up,” she said, “so that Tom won’t have to wait for you.”
“I’m all ready,” he replied.
He had sat down in a corner in the shadow, fully dressed. She turned and
scanned his attire.
“You’ve forgotten your decoration,” she remarked.
“I don’t want my decoration,” he responded.
“But Richard! could you be so discourteous to Tom, who got it for you?”
He went after his decoration. It was not one of the very worst, not an
order of Christus or a Nichan Iftikar; it was a medium good decoration,
a quite nice decoration. He fastened it on the lapel of his coat with
the feeling that perhaps he really needed it, seeing that he had a blue
anchor on his left hand.
IV
There was a dance after the dinner, but Fant remained sitting in a sofa
corner of the smoking-room. By his side sat the man whom he had formerly
annoyed by staring at his foreign decoration, but he was now a Knight
Commander. They had become good friends and called each other by their
first names when they said anything to each other, but they said
nothing. They merely sat each in his corner of the sofa and smoked big
cigars with labels and understood each other perfectly.
The doctors had forbidden Fant to smoke strong cigars, because he had a
bad heart. But he had just lighted the third since dinner.
In the mirror on the middle of the opposite wall he saw the revolving of
the dancers and the flood of light from the hall. He had often wondered
how it was that they seemed to dance as though on felt or soft
greensward, soundlessly. He understood now that it came from his seeing
them in the mirror. Because the picture struck him from another quarter
than the clatter and the music, he did not connect them, and over the
flooring reflected in the mirror the dance appeared to go without noise.
Look at the girls’ white dresses! behold their panting bosoms!----
He recollected that he had once seen her who was now his wife float
past, as they did, in a girl’s plain white ball-dress. She was
differently clad now.
See! there she was, sure enough, with him, her cousin. She remained
standing a moment in the doorway, erect, slender, and delicate as
always. She seemed as if quite naked under the stiff, variegated silk in
which she had wrapped her body, and which was only held together by
clasps at the shoulders and waist. They bent their heads together and
whispered.
No, he must move about a bit, stretch his legs a little.--It is not good
to sit still too long after a big dinner and smoke three black cigars.
He lighted the fourth and began to saunter back and forward through the
room.