I
A swarm of children was playing on the damp floor of the shaft. They
hung from the lower portions of the timber-work, or ran in and out
between the upright supports, humming tunes, with bread-and-dripping in
their hands; or they sat on the ground and pushed themselves forward
across the sticky flagstones. The air hung clammy and raw, as it does
in an old well, and already it had made the little voices husky, and
had marked their faces with the scars of scrofula. Yet out of the
tunnel- like passage which led to the street there blew now and again a
warm breath of air and the fragrance of budding trees—from the world
that lay behind those surrounding walls.
They had finished playing “Bro-bro-brille,” for the last rider had
entered the black cauldron; and Hansel and Gretel had crept safely out
of the dwarf Vinslev’s den, across the sewer-grating, and had reached
the pancake-house, which, marvelously enough, had also a grating in
front of the door, through which one could thrust a stick or a cabbage-
stalk, in order to stab the witch. Sticks of wood and cabbage-stalks
were to be found in plenty in the dustbins near the pancake-house, and
they knew very well who the witch was! Now and again she would pop up
out of the cellar and scatter the whole crowd with her kitchen tongs!
It was almost a little too lifelike; even the smell of pancakes came
drifting down from where the well-to-do Olsens lived, so that one could
hardly call it a real fairy tale. But then perhaps the dwarf Vinslev
would come out of his den, and would once again tell them the story of
how he had sailed off with the King’s gold and sunk it out yonder, in
the King’s Deep, when the Germans were in the land. A whole ship’s crew
took out the King’s treasure, but not one save Vinslev knew where it
was sunk, and even he did not know now. A terrible secret that, such as
well might make a man a bit queer in the head. He would explain the
whole chart on his double-breasted waistcoat; he had only to steer from
this button to that, and then down yonder, and he was close above the
treasure. But now some of the buttons had fallen off, and he could no
longer make out the chart. Day by day the children helped him to trace
it; this was an exciting bit of work, for the King was getting
impatient!
There were other wonderful things to do; for instance, one could lie
flat down on the slippery flagstones and play Hanne’s game—the “Glory”
game. You turned your eyes from the darkness down below, looking up
through the gloomy shaft at the sky overhead, which floated there
blazing with light, and then you suddenly looked down again, so that
everything was quite dark. And in the darkness floated blue and yellow
rings of color, where formerly there had been nothing but dustbins and
privies. This dizzy flux of colors before the eyes was the journey far
out to the land of happiness, in search of all the things that cannot
be told. “I can see something myself, and I know quite well what it is,
but I’m just not going to tell,” they murmured, blinking mysteriously
up into the blue.
However, one could have too much of a good thing…. But the round
grating under the timbers yonder, where Hanne’s father drowned himself,
was a thing one never grew weary of. The depths were forever bubbling
upward, filling the little children with a secret horror; and the half-
grown girls would stand a-straddle over the grating, shuddering at the
cold breath that came murmuring up from below. The grating was sure
enough the way down to hell, and if you gazed long enough you could see
the faintest glimmer of the inky stream that was flowing down below.
Every moment it sent its putrid breath up into your face; that was the
Devil, who sat panting down there in a corner. If you turned your eyes
away from the depths the twilight of the well had turned to brightest
day, so you could make the world light or dark just as you wished.
A few children always lay there, on all fours, gazing down with anxious
faces; and all summer through, directly over the grating, hung a cloud
of midges, swaying in the breath of the depths. They would rise to a
certain height, then suddenly fall, and rise again, just like a
juggler’s balls. Sometimes the breathing from below sucked the whole
swarm right down, but it rose up again, veering hither and thither like
a dancing wraith in the draught from the tunnel-like entry. The little
girls would gaze at it, lift their petticoats, and take a few graceful
steps. Olsen’s Elvira had learned her first dance-steps here, and now
she was dancing respectable citizens into the poor-house. And the
furniture broker’s daughter was in Petersburg, and was _almost_ a Grand
Duchess!
On the walls of the narrow shaft projecting porches hung crazily, so
that they left only a small free space, and here the clothes-lines ran
to and fro, loaded with dishclouts and children’s clothing. The
decaying wooden staircases ran zig-zag up the walls, disappearing into
the projecting porches and coming out again, until they reached the
very garrets.
From the projecting porches and the galleries, doors led into the
various tenements, or to long corridors that connected the inner
portions of the house. Only in Pipman’s side there were neither porches
nor galleries, from the second story upward; time had devoured them, so
that the stairs alone remained in place. The ends of the joists stuck
out of the wall like decaying tooth stumps, and a rope hung from above,
on which one could obtain a hold. It was black and smooth from the grip
of many hands.
On one of those hot June days when the heavens shone like a blazing
fire above the rift overhead, the heavy, mouldering timbers came to
life again, as if their forest days had returned. People swarmed in and
out on the stairs, shadows came and went, and an incessant chattering
filled the twilight. From porch to porch dropped the sour-smelling suds
from the children’s washing, until at last it reached the ground, where
the children were playing by the sluggish rivulets which ran from the
gutters. The timbers groaned continually, like ancient boughs that rub
together, and a clammy smell as of earth and moist vegetation saturated
the air, while all that one touched wore a coating of slime, as in
token of its exuberant fertility.
One’s gaze could not travel a couple of steps before it was checked by
wooden walls, but one felt conscious of the world that lay behind them.
When the doors of the long passages opened and shut, one heard the
rumor of the innumerable creatures that lived in the depths of the
“Ark”; the crying of little children, the peculiar fidgeting sound of
marred, eccentric individuals, for many a whole life’s history unfolded
itself within there, undisturbed, never daring the light of day. On
Pipman’s side the waste-pipes stuck straight out of the wall, like
wood-goblins grinning from the thicket with wide-open mouths, and long
gray beards, which bred rose-pink earthworms, and from time to time
fell with a heavy smack into the yard. Green hanging bushes grew out of
holes in the wall. The waste water trickled through them and dripped
continually as though from the wet locks of the forest. Inside, in the
greenish, dripping darkness, sat curiously marked toads, like little
water-nymphs, each in her grotto, shining with unwholesome humidity.
And up among the timbers of the third story hung Hanne’s canary,
singing quite preposterously, its beak pointing up toward the spot of
fiery light overhead. Across the floor of the courtyard went an endless
procession of people, light-shy creatures who emerged from the womb of
the “Ark” or disappeared into it. Most of them were women, weirdly
clad, unwholesomely pale, but with a layer of grime as though the
darkness had worked into their skins, with drowsy steps and fanatical,
glittering eyes.
Little old men, who commonly lay in their dark corners waiting for
death, came hobbling out on the galleries, lifted their noses toward
the blazing speck of sky overhead, and sneezed three times. “That’s the
sun!” they told one another, delighted. “Artishu! One don’t catch cold
so easy in winter!”