--I--
When Martin Birck had got the white cap, his first errand was to go
into a cigar booth to buy a cane of cinnamon wood and a package of
cigarettes. The young girl who stood in the shop had black eyes and a
thick bang. Her exterior corresponded but imperfectly with the ideal of
his dreams, which belonged to a more blonde and Gretchen-like sphere;
but when she congratulated him pleasantly on his white cap and at the
same time regarded him with a look full of kindliness, despite the fact
that he had never before been in her shop, he suddenly felt all warm
about the heart, caught her dirty hand, which lay outstretched across
the counter display of Cameo and Duke of Durham, and tenderly kissed
it. However, he repented almost at once. He had no doubt behaved badly.
He did not, to be sure, imagine that the young girl was completely
innocent--she had no doubt a lover, possibly several; but that was no
reason why any one at all had the right to come in from the street
and kiss her hand just like that. He was embarrassed and didn’t know
what to say or do, till he finally plucked up courage to select a cane,
light a cigarette, and go out.
[Illustration: Village street]
Queen Street was still wet after the last shower, little ladies with
jogging bustles lifted their skirts to jump over puddles, which
mirrored the blue above; stylish gentlemen with thin angular legs
and canes like Martin’s swung their top-hats in pompous salutation,
revealing in the act heads so close-clipped that the scalp shone
through. Over the roofs and chimneys of the gray houses the restless
white spring clouds hurried in fluttering haste, and far down at the
bottom of the street the sunlight quivered between churches and towers.
Martin stopped in front of every store window to see the reflection of
his white cap. He could not understand how he had become a student.
Up to the last he had believed he would be flunked. His surprise was
the more joyous when he received his student certificate the same as
the others, and especially when he came to the closing lines, «In
consideration whereof the aforesaid M. Birck has been adjudged worthy
to receive the certificate: _Graduated with honor_.» These words caused
his heart to swell with deep gratitude toward his corps of teachers,
for although he considered himself fairly proficient, it was far beyond
his expectations to find this idea shared by his instructors. During
the last terms he had seldom known his lessons. Often he had not
even been able to bring himself to read them over in the ten-minute
intermission before classes or to slip a couple of loose leaves from
his textbook into his Bible so as to study them during morning prayers,
while the lector in theology stood on the platform and talked bosh--a
resource which ordinarily even the most frivolous of his comrades
would not fail to use. He would, however, have liked to gratify his
parents with good marks, although for his own part he had not any great
ambition in that direction; but during the last years there had come
over him a dull apathy for everything connected with school, against
which he could do nothing. It was so hard for him to take it in full
earnest. Whenever, contrary to his custom, he had distinguished himself
in this or that subject, he was almost ashamed within himself, as if
he had done something stupid. As often as he was supposed to dig down
into the paltry details in which textbooks delight, he felt himself as
ridiculous as the man who, when his house was on fire, saved the poker.
Now that the poker was saved, however, he was so overjoyed that he
could have sung; he felt that he was happy and free, as he hastened
home with his white cap, home to the blossoming street of his
childhood. But the street was no longer the same as before. From a
single plot the cherry tree still stretched its branches out over a
mossy board fence; everything else was great red brick buildings and
small commonplace meeting-houses. The rowdy Franz could no longer
disturb what idyllic atmosphere was still left, for he had grown up and
become big, and had now been for some time behind the bars of Langholm
jail.
--II--
Home was quieter and more empty than before. Maria, Martin’s sister,
had been married a year ago to a doctor who lived far away in the
country, and grandmother was no longer there.
In the evening Martin and his companions were to have a supper at
Hasselbacken. Martin’s father gave him five crowns to offer to the joy
of youth, and his mother took him aside and said: «Martin, Martin,
you must promise me to be careful tonight and not be led into any
foolishness. Don’t make a point of emptying your glass every time any
one drinks a toast with you, or you’ll lose your head. The best thing
would be just to pretend you drank. And I must tell you, Martin, that
there is a class of dreadful women who do nothing else but try to lead
young men to their destruction. You must beware of them especially.
Dear Martin, if I only knew you had given yourself to the Lord and
had your thoughts fixed on Him, I shouldn’t be anxious about you; but
I know you don’t do that. Their very breath is poisonous; if you only
stand on the street and talk to such a woman, you may catch the most
frightful diseases that no doctor in the world can cure.»
«Mother dear,» said Martin, «you’re always getting off on that.»
He took up his white cap, said good-by and went.
His mother followed him with troubled eyes, and when he was gone, sat
down in a dark corner and wept. For she knew she was going to lose him
as mothers always lose their sons.
--III--
Martin thought of his mother as he went along the Avenue on the way to
the Park. How could the relations between them have become what they
were? To her he was still a little child. When he first began to speak
to her of his religious doubts, she pretended to believe that it was
something he had got from outside, from bad comrades or some wicked
book. Later things reached such a point that he could no longer talk
to her about anything but the most ordinary subjects--about shirts
and socks and buttons to be sewed on. If their conversation ever took
a serious turn, they treated each other mutually as little children.
Thus, without his meaning it or noticing it before it was too late,
he got a condescending tone that hurt her, so that after such a
conversation a thorn remained in the heart of each.
She often lay awake at night weeping and sorrowing over his unbelief.
She herself, however, was of the earth in her thoughts, her hopes,
and the whole of her being. She believed in hell of course, because
she believed in the Bible; but she could never seriously imagine that
her son or any one at all whom she knew and associated with would go
to such a horrible place. It was not therefore on account of his soul
that she grieved most but for his future here on earth, since she had
observed that things did not ordinarily go well in the world with those
who contemned God and religion. Some of them got into prison, others
left their country to go among strangers, and all aroused distrust and
ill-will among respectable folk. She feared that her son might come to
be one of these, and it was this idea which kept her awake at night and
left her with swollen eyes. She had no more precious dream than that
he should be «like other folk,» as most people are, if possible better
and above all happier, but still on the whole as they were. She could
imagine that her son might become a poet, she could even wish it, for
she loved poetry; the tears came into her eyes when he read her some of
his poems; but she pictured it that he would sit at some office work on
weekdays, and only on Sundays or in his free hours write some verses
about sunsets, which he would send in to the Swedish Academy and get
a prize, so that he would become at the same time a great poet and a
respected business man with an assured income. She believed in full
seriousness that he would be more highly thought of among poets if he
was in an office and had a title than if he just wrote. That was how it
had been with all the real poets. Tegnér was a bishop, and even Bellman
had at least had a position in the lottery bureau. As an example that
Martin should especially take to follow, she used to mention a poet
whom she had known when she was young, who was now an auditor in the
Court of Exchequer and wrote verses about everything that was grand
and beautiful, about the sea and the sun and the king, and had been
decorated with the Order of Vasa. Such a life she considered noble and
to be emulated, and when her dreams of her son’s future were at their
highest, it was something of this sort she imagined.
But Martin dreamed other dreams. He wanted to be a poet. He would write
a book; a novel or a lyric sequence, or best of all a drama of ideas
in the same verse form as «Brand» or «Peer Gynt.» He would devote his
life to searching for the truth and giving to mankind what he found
or thought he had found of it. He would also become famous, a great
man; he would earn a lot of money, he would buy a little house for his
father and a new silk dress for his mother--her old one was worn and
faded. He would be envied by men and sought after by women, but of all
the women in the world he should not love more than one, and that one a
woman who loved another man. This unhappy love should give his thoughts
depth and bitterness and his poems wings. But he had a dark feeling
that while he sought for truth he should only find truths, and that
while he gave them to men in verse more wonderful than any music or in
a clear and cold prose with words like sharp teeth, he would despise
himself for reaping honor and gold for the morsels he had found by
accident while he was seeking for something else. This self-contempt
would eat into his soul and make of him an empty husk. But he would
not let the world note anything; he would paint his cheeks, pencil his
eyebrows and hold up his head, and at the very moment when he himself
most deeply despised his poetry and set it below the humblest manual
labor, he would inspire men most and be elected to the Swedish Academy
to succeed Wirsén. With a countenance immobile as a mask he would give
the usual flowery oration on his predecessor. Never again after that
would he set pen to paper. In a strangely colorful and disordered
life he would seek to deaden his despair. No sin should be unknown to
him; in broad daylight he would drive in an open carriage through the
streets with harlots and buffoons, and he would pass the nights in
drinking and play. Till one gloomy October night he wearied of his mad
and empty life, made a fire in his stove and burned his papers, emptied
a glass of dark red wine spiced with a strange herb, and went to sleep
to awake no more....
Or perhaps it was unnecessary that his life should end so tragically.
When he thought it over more carefully, this seemed to him even a
trifle banal. He might just as well move to a small town, to Strengness
or Grenna. There he could live alone with a parrot and a black cat. He
might also have an aquarium with goldfish. Behind closed shutters he
would dream away the day, but when night came he would light candles in
all the rooms and pace back and forth, back and forth, meditating on
the vanity of life. And when the townfolk passed his house on the way
home from their evening toddy at the rathskeller, they would stop to
point at his window and say: «There lives Martin Birck. He has taught
like a sage and lived like a fool, and he is very unhappy.»
* * * * *
All this and a lot more Martin Birck thought as he went out the Avenue
across the park on the way to Hasselbacken.
--IV--