--I--
Over Martin’s table in the office an electric light with a green shade
swung, like a pendulum, gently to and fro on its silken cord. It
had been set in motion just a moment ago when he had lighted it. He
stretched out his hand to stop it, but instead waited the time when
the swinging should subside and die down until it was imperceptible.
Lamps were likewise screwed up over the other tables, six shining
green triangles swung to and fro in the semi-darkness of the room, and
lean writers’ hands fumbled at the windows after the curtain cords to
pull them down and shut out the snow and the winter dusk. Martin loved
these green lamps, which gave out no heat or bad odor, and whose glow
had the pure and cold sheen of jewels; and he longed for the day when
electric light should be cheap enough to make its way down even into
the homes of the poor. And just here in this big low old room with
whitewashed walls, because the house was old and had a groined gateway
and low small-paned windows in the entrance hall where his office was,
these green lamps seemed to him to fit in even better; he saw in this
a symbol of continuous development, an unbroken chain of hands and
wills, from those which had wearied long since to those which were now
in embryo, the new inwoven with the old. Where all is old there enters
an atmosphere of wretchedness and decay, and where all is new only that
can thrive and feel at home which is itself new from top to toe, from
pocketbook to soul.
And Martin was not new, his clothes were not new, nor were his
thoughts. He thought and knew nothing great other than that which
others had taught him--various old gentlemen in England and France who
were now for the most part dead. If these thoughts still brought him
any joy, it was mainly because the times had seemingly forgotten them
long ago, as if they had been written in running water. Other winds
were blowing now, winds before which he preferred to draw up his collar
over his ears; everything came back and all the corpses peeped out, but
he did not care to see them.
The lamp had ceased to swing over his desk, and he returned to his
accounting. He no longer contented himself with putting down ticks;
he carefully scanned every item and added up every column. His first
youthful antipathy to a mechanical task was long since conquered, and
he had gradually come to learn that these figures were not, as he had
first believed, entirely free from the imperfections which are inherent
in everything human. On the contrary they were often encumbered with
inaccuracies and mistakes; and when he now and again discovered such
mistakes, he was glad at heart but felt at the same time a faint
sensation of sorrow. He was glad because he had occasion to show his
great zeal and because he could count upon his rightful percentage of
the sum which his alertness had saved the state treasury; and he felt
the dark memory of ancient sorrow when he recalled that he had desired
a quite different sort of joy from life. Sometimes, too, he thought of
the poor officials down at Landskrona, Ohus, or Haparanda, who had made
the wrong calculations, perhaps under the influence of last night’s
toddy, and who would now have to pay the difference. But this thought
left him cold, for the years had taught him he must set limits to his
sympathies.
It was warm in the room, the remains of a great birchwood fire glowed
in the porcelain stove, for there was no inducement to spare the
government’s wood in these times when one had to skimp one’s fuel at
home. Von Heringslake, the chief clerk, who had an income of forty-six
hundred crowns and performed his duties with the pleasant ease which
comes with an independence, sat squatted in front of the stove and
roasted apples over the embers. On his bald pate--which his mortal
enemy, Auditor Camin, asserted was the result of early dissipations but
which in reality shone with the innocence of early childhood--glinted
the triangular reflection of a green lamp. The fragrance of roasted
apples spread and stung Martin’s nostrils, and he was bitterly annoyed
that he had not in all ways the same views concerning this and the
future life as Heringslake, for then he would surely have been offered
an apple. From Auditor Camin’s place sounded for the hundredth time
the old pronouncement, «The country will never be right till we make
the farmers pay for shooting licenses.» And down at the bottom table
off by the door, where it was draughty and there was a wet odor of
umbrellas and overcoats, the youngest generation was eagerly at work
putting in ticks and trying at the same time to recount in whispers the
orgies of last night and the number of punch bottles emptied.
Martin was still young, for in government service one ages slowly,
but he was no longer one of the youngest and did not have to sit in
the draught of the door. He had drunk brotherhood with most of his
immediate superiors and in his turn did not neglect the duty of laying
aside formalities with those who were younger than he. These ceremonies
were wont to be performed at a general banquet in December. This was
to occur in a few days, and the list of subscriptions was now being
circulated in the department, but Martin did not sign it. He had other
uses for his money, and there was only one of the newcomers with whom
he would have cared to drink brotherhood, a young man who had a place
just opposite him at the same table and in whom there was something
familiar and appealing to his sympathy: namely, an absent and dreamy
glance and the mechanical gesture with which he set down the ticks.
Martin often used to talk to him about the way of the world and was
pleased when he sometimes received intelligent answers.
As he handed over the subscription list without writing on it himself,
the other looked up and asked in a tone which seemed to convey a touch
of disappointment, «Aren’t you coming to the banquet?»
«No,» answered Martin, «I have another engagement. But we who are above
conventional forms can assume that we have drunk brotherhood just the
same.»
The other blushed a little, and they shook hands across the table.
«Tell me,» the younger man asked after a while, «why does Auditor Camin
want to charge the farmers for shooting licenses?»
«I don’t really believe he wants that,» Martin replied. «He knows that
shooting licenses for the farmers would raise the price of necessities
even more than taxes. He is only repeating an old saw that he heard
in his youth when he was an assistant. It has stuck to him because it
expresses a collective antipathy, a class hatred; and commonplace
men always need to hate and love collectively. Look out for that, it
is one of the surest signs of an inferior point of view. He likes
women, officials, leading actors, and West Gothlanders, because he is
a West Gothlander himself; and he hates farmers, Jews, Northlanders,
and journalists. It is true that the farmers are a bit stingy in
recognizing the services which he and the rest of us perform for our
country, and that is why he hates them. But in that they observe
the same principle as all employers of labor: to pay as little as
competition will allow. If there was a shortage in clerks, they would
pay more.»
Von Heringslake, who had by now eaten his roasted apples and resumed
his place at the table next to Martin, turned on his chair and surveyed
him mournfully.
«You have no heart,» he said.
* * * * *
It was after three o’clock; here and there the men were gathering up
their papers and going off. Martin got up, took his coat and hat, put
out his green lamp, and departed. He had crape on his hat, for his
mother was dead.
--II--
He turned into Long Western Street. On snowy days such as this he
nearly always took that street, because in the narrow winding rift
between the tall old houses one was as if half indoors, in the lee of
the worst wind gusts.
«Winter, cold.... Strange there are people who assert that they like
this weather. Heringslake, who has a heart in his breast and loves his
native land, regards cold as preferable to heat. But when it’s cold,
he always puts on furs. The conception of hell as a very warm place
clearly originated in the torrid zone. If a northerner had invented
it, it would have been contrariwise a fearful place for draughts,
the breeding ground of influenza and chronic snuffles. But such as
the climate is, I have got used to it, and it has possibly done me
excellent service of which I myself am not aware. Provisions are laid
on ice in order to keep; everything is preserved longer in cold. Why
not human beings as well? I once longed to be consumed in the flame of
a great passion. It never came, whether because I was not deserving
of so great an honor, or whatever the reason may have been. But now,
afterwards, I have begun to misdoubt that such a conflagration may
rather be a bonfire to amuse the spectators than any real enjoyment for
the chief actor. Fire is, in any case, distinctly not my element. If a
real spring sun were ever to come into my life, I should go rotten at
once from being unused to the climate.»
He stopped a moment in front of a jeweler’s window. Most of the pieces
were distinguished by a commonplaceness which left him no regret that
he could not purchase any. Once, indeed, it was just a year ago to the
day, he had bought a little ring with a green emerald. She to whom it
had been given still wore it and never wanted to wear any other ring.
She said she shouldn’t ever want to wear a plain gold ring. Well, in
any case he couldn’t offer her such a specimen....
«I’m ungrateful,» he said to himself, «now that at last a little
sunlight has come into my life, more maybe than comes into most. But I
have been frozen too long; I haven’t been able to thaw out yet.»
He had come out on Mint Square, the northerly gale blew his eyes shut
with the snow, and he felt his way along, half blind, toward North
Bridge. He had to stop again to get breath at Looström’s bookstore,
where the celebrities of the day were exhibited in the window: Crispi,
King Milan, and Taine, while between an Excellency and a forger he
discovered a face that looked familiar. It was a Swedish poet, the
decadent who had expounded his ideas of life at the «Anglais» over
the green chartreuse. He was not there because he was a great man but
because he was dead.
Martin went on toward home.
«At last a man who has reached his goal! His goal was a bit unusual,
and he did not reach it quite as he imagined; he never got the general
paralysis of his dream, for he died simply and modestly of consumption.
But I don’t suppose he was so particular as to details; as a matter of
fact he only wanted to succumb, no matter how. Perhaps he was right;
that’s the sort of goal one ought to set for oneself if he hopes to
reach it in his lifetime. It is true one might also propose to oneself
to be a millionaire or a bishop or a member of the legislature, and
that goal too one can usually reach if he really wants to. Those who
know how to concentrate their will with sufficient intensity on a
single object are so extremely few that the competition is by no means
prohibitive. Everybody wants to be rich, but most men wish at the same
time to live as if they were rich already; they want to take things
easy, to have a nap after dinner, drink champagne with the girlies and
so on, and so they never get rich, never even become bishops or members
of the legislature. He who wants to stop on the road every now and then
and enjoy life a bit before he reaches his objective will never reach
it; and the others, the indefatigable pilgrims, the men of will who
arrive--what have they left afterwards when they get there?
«On the other hand it is possibly superfluous to expend any particular
effort on the objective: to succumb. That is a goal which can certainly
be attained at a cheaper price; it even comes near of itself, slowly
and surely. The best thing is perhaps that which the other dead man
over there in the bookshop window loved so much while he lived: a big
tree and tranquil thoughts. For it is not quite true, what Messer Guido
Cavalcanti said when he felt death approaching, that it is as vain to
think as to act. In one way it is no doubt true: namely, that the
final result will always be the same black pit, and as a meditation on
death Messer Guido’s words have their value. But looked at from another
point of view, it is clear that he who enjoys thinking is always in
this world of incalculables in a slightly better position than a man
of action. Because for him the minute has its worth in and for itself,
independent of the uncertainties of the future. He who wishes to
become a Knight of the Order of the Seraphim or a pope and gives up
everything, the pleasures both of thought and of love, to attain that
object--and the first sacrifice at least is inevitable--and then gets a
fishbone in his throat and dies before he has reached it, his life is a
nullity, an intention without performance. But he whose standard lies
in thought may have his life cut off at any point and it will be like
the snake of popular superstition, it will still live, it will have its
value even as a fragment; nay, it has never, properly speaking, assumed
that it wished to be anything but a fragment. For he who is measured by
the standard of thought can never set himself any human goal, or if he
does, this will be arbitrary and inessential, and it is a matter of no
significance whether he reaches it or not.»
* * * * *
Martin had got up to Östermalm and was almost home; he was hungry and
was eager for his dinner, yet he stopped at a street corner and looked
up toward a window high up in a fourth story.
Yes, there was a light there; she was home then. He knew that already,
anyhow, and he knew besides that she expected him after dinner. In the
evening they were to go to a theater together; they were to sit in a
stage box behind a screen where nobody could see them.
He had taken a mistress. Chance had brought them together. She worked
in a life insurance office in the morning counting money. She worked
for her living. She had, to be sure, an old father somewhere off in the
country, a pensioned forester who wrote her letters three times a year;
but she was self-supporting and depended upon no one. Like other young
girls she had dreamed of a happiness which should be correct, and had
guarded her jewel in the hope of being married. She had had her fancies
and been in love with men who had not even noticed it. But these small
flames had gone out when they had no fuel, and if a man not too
ridiculous or repulsive had wished to offer her his hand, she could
easily have persuaded herself that she loved him. But she had seen
the years run away; she had danced in the winter and bicycled in the
summer, and many men had let her divine by their looks and veiled words
that they would gladly possess her; but no one had wanted to marry her,
for she had no dowry and did not belong to a family with influence. The
more economical and diffident of the men, moreover, were frightened by
her elegance, for she had a sure and delicate taste and two industrious
hands, and many a night she sat up by her lamp and sewed cheap remnants
and old shreds into dresses, which later gave to inexperienced eyes the
impression of having cost a great deal, or to the more skeptical-minded
even suggested a doubt of her virtue. She was not, however, beautiful
enough for the men whose feelings were governed by their vanity, nor
did her nature have anything of the sweet and docile quality fitted
to attract men who wished to be lords in their own home, men who had
simply tired of bachelor life and therefore looked about for a nice
and charming and modest and obedient wife.
Both her own character and her outer circumstances were such that she
had no great prospect of being loved for any other reason than love,
and she had gradually begun to suspect that this feeling, of which so
much was said and written, was really scorned and put to one side so
that it was extremely rare. She had thought over all this, she had felt
the minutes running through her fingers like sand, and had decided
that the years to come would be still more wretched and worthless than
those before and that the jewel she guarded was losing its value every
day. Most of all she had been frightened at how quickly women age who
live without men, except those who are so fortunate as not to feel any
strong desire or lack. But she was not of these; no, she was a real
woman and she knew she was. The desire which in her first youth had
only been a sweet and indefinite longing, a dream of happiness of a
strange and unknown sort, now burned in her veins like poison; and her
first timid girlish fancy, which had hardly dared to look beyond a kiss
in the twilight between bushes of roses, had developed with years into
a hobgoblin much worse than those used in children’s picture-books to
frighten naughty boys. Her glance became wistful and yearning, and she
tried to bring herself to a decision.
She had almost given up hope of a husband; it was a lover she was
seeking, and even him she sought for long in vain. It was not that
there was a lack of men who would take her out to dance; there were
on the contrary many, and she could make a choice. She looked around
in her circle; she flirted right and left. She grew less afraid about
her reputation than before and went to secret rendezvous with men who
had been attentive to her some evening at a ball. But they remained
strange to her, and every time an understanding was in the air, she was
overcome with shame and became suddenly icy with fear and repugnance.
For every time when the critical moment came, she read in the man’s
eyes the ineradicable crudity of his heart. She read it as plainly as
if it had stood written on white paper that what was for her a wholly
new experience in life--perhaps ruin, perhaps salvation--was for him an
amorous adventure. She read that what she was about to do was in his
eyes merely a _faux pas_, which he could overlook only in so far as it
gave him pleasure; and she read that not only did he intend to give her
up very soon, but that he also meant to salve his conduct beforehand by
showing her his contempt. She saw all this and tired of the game before
it had begun, asking herself if she might not just as well follow the
path of virtue, which in any case was clearly the most convenient, and
wither into old age without will and without hope.
But when she met Martin all this became different, and when she gave
herself to him she felt no more fear, because she saw that he had
understood her, that his thoughts were not like those of the others,
and she felt that he loved her. With him she felt no shame, nor did
she feign any, for she had already sinned so much in her thoughts that
the reality seemed to her innocent and pure. She was no longer young;
she was getting on toward thirty, just as he was. Her complexion had
already been marked by the early frost, and vanished illusions had made
her bitter at heart and crude of speech. But the bitter heart beat warm
and fast when it rested on his, and the ugly words did not make her
mouth less sweet to kiss.
--III--
Martin sat alone with his father at the dinner table within the same
circle of yellow light which had enclosed the sleepy winter evenings
of his childhood. Martin Birck and his father had seldom anything to
say to each other. They thought differently about everything except the
taxes on food-stuffs. This lack of agreement did not, however, cause
them any sorrow; they attached no importance to it. They both knew that
different generations think differently, and they found this natural.
Nor did they find silence anything painful or oppressive; it was just
the self-evident expression of the fact that nothing had happened which
could give rise to an exchange of opinions. When they chatted together
it was mostly about the improvement of government work and about new
houses. For Martin’s father was interested in his city. On Sundays he
often went for long walks to distant parts of the city and saw how
new suburbs shot up out of the earth. He thought of how Stockholm had
developed since his youth, and he found all the new houses handsome,
especially if they were large and imposing with many windows and small
towers at the corners. And when Martin heard his father speak of all
these ugly houses and call them handsome, he thought of how unjust life
was, since it remorselessly closed the way to the inner regions of
beauty for the best and most useful members of the community. For the
way thither went through melancholy, there was no other, and it was not
idly that the Greek musician answered Alexander, «May the gods never
make you so unhappy, my lord, that you may learn to understand music
better than I.» Martin’s father had had a youth too full of worry and
a manhood too full of strenuous responsibility to know anything of the
mental depression with which life punishes those who think more about
beautiful and ugly and good and evil than they do about their daily
bread.
* * * * *
On this day, as usual, Martin’s father discoursed about one thing and
another over his coffee and cigar. He spoke of a men’s dinner he had
attended the day before, where he had felt embarrassed on account of
his Vasa decoration; for he had gone with the large official medal,
which was the only one he had, whereas the other men had had the small
miniatures.
«So,» he finished, «I looked like the biggest fool of the company.»
«Yes,» observed Martin, «appearances were clearly against you. But in
reality the miniature medals of the others gave the clearest proof that
their foolishness was greater, since because of their decoration they
went to more expense than was strictly necessary.»
«Yes,» his father answered, «I thought of that too, but I felt awkward,
anyhow.»
The conversation died down. Martin was thinking of various stories
about decorations which he had heard, such as that about a man who had
been given the Vasa medal because he had sent flowers to the royal
hospital on the days when the queen was to visit it, and about one who
got the North Star because he had bought a house. But it never occurred
to him to tell these, because when he thought the matter over he could
see that these stories, which he found so amusing, might not have
quite the same effect on the elder man, who had earned his decoration
by forty years of ill-paid work in the government service and could
therefore hardly fail to think of it without some respect, although in
conversation he might make fun of it.
Silence spread out around them; the father smoked his cigar and looked
out into the dark, and Martin sat in thought. He thought of the history
of his home, how it, like other homes, had come into existence, grown
and blossomed, and how afterwards the bonds had one after another been
broken: his sister married, his mother dead. The best time, the blossom
time, was mostly that when the children had just grown up and the
elders were not really old. It was true he had heard old women say that
the happiest time was when the children were small. Yes, that might
well be--for the mothers. But he remembered the years when his sister
had just grown up and was about to be married. Then everything was glad
in the home; they had youth, friends, music. The piano, which now was
dumb, still held the waltzes and opera selections of the bygone years;
and often when he lay awake at night, he could still hear the Norwegian
songs they sang then: «He Leaned above the Garden Bench» and «I Ask
Thee Not for Roses from thy Breast.» In these songs still lived a part
of his youth, and they now seemed full of all the strange melancholy
of the past. Then suddenly the house had became silent, more silent
with every year, till one day the father sat alone with the son in an
empty and shattered home.
Looking at his father, he asked himself, «What can I be to him?»
«Infinitely little,» he had to answer, «almost nothing.» She whom he
had loved from his youth up now lay under the earth, under a little
snow-covered gray stone, and could not warm his age. The fire on the
hearth was ready to die out. _He_ was the one whose duty it was to
kindle the new flame. He felt it was this which, in the normal course
of things, the elders of the family had the right to expect of the
young: to see the chain carried on, a new home, and grandchildren to
rock on their knees. It was so that nature had arranged, she tried
everywhere to hide the dead with new young life, as we ourselves cover
corpses under flowers. Dissolution was thus more easily approached; the
way went downward, to be sure, but one took it amid play and prattle,
as when one started the journey. But to that great and simple craving
he could answer nothing. It was true he could do several things: he
did not think there was any sort of beauty in the world that was
foreign to him, or any thought or shade of a thought that he could
not follow, and furthermore he could look over government ledgers and
inscribe signs in the margins, and drink a good deal of whisky without
losing control of his mind, and perhaps a few other small matters. But
he could not build a home. Not a chance, not a possibility of it. An
artisan, a day laborer could do it, but not he. He could not conjure
forth the four thousand crowns a year that a poor family of the middle
class needed to live. If he could ever get to that point, as he well
might with years, he would be old, his father dead, and she whom he
loved--what would have become of her?
But it was true, he realized, that the old man did not, at least not
consciously, make any such demand on him. On the contrary his father
understood clearly how impossible it was. He had no hope of seeing a
continuation of his line, of being able to grow old in an environment
of futurity and promise and new scions. But Martin realized that just
this, the fact that he could have no such hope, weighed upon him like
a dark sorrow and made his twilight even more gray and empty. He had
had grief enough without that. He had received small pleasure from
his daughter’s marriage. Her little boy was dead, and she had lately
written home that she wanted a divorce from her husband.
«The fire is dying on the hearth. Who is to kindle the new flame?»
His father went into his room for his after-dinner nap.
It was five, and Martin dressed to go to her who was waiting for
him. He put on an evening suit despite the fact that they were to be
alone and unseen. He had promised her that, for it was their bridal
anniversary.
--IV--
She stood at her dressing table, where two narrow candles burned before
the mirror. She had just arranged her rich brown hair, and before she
finished her toilet she touched her face with a powder puff to subdue
the color. He sat behind her in a corner of the sofa, but their glances
met in the mirror and were fixed on each other in a long smile. The
trembling of the candle flames and the distance, which the mirror
lengthened, made this smile dark and mysterious. And far within the
dusky depth behind the glass danced a green spark from the emerald on
her finger.
«Shall you be ready soon?» he asked. «It’s half-past seven. I’m afraid
we shall miss the ghost.»
[Illustration: Man in evening suit]
It was Hamlet they were to see.
She turned and stroked his cheek with the powder puff, so that he
became as white as a Pierrot.
«Silly Pierrette,» he said, wiping off the powder with her
handkerchief, «don’t you see I’m pale enough as it is?»
She leaned down, pressed his head to her breast, and kissed his hair.
«I am so happy,» she whispered, «because it is my bridal day today,
and because I am going to the theater with you to sit in a little nook
where no one can see us.»
He caressed her hand softly. He felt a secret stab in the heart when
he heard her speak so, for he knew almost to a certainty that if there
had been any chance of it she would much rather have sat with him in
a place where all could see them. But he did not believe that she had
been thinking of this just now. Never during the past year had she let
fall an allusion to marriage, and she knew only too well how impossible
it was. But he on his part could never cease to feel it as a secret
disgrace that it was not in his power to give her the happiness which
belonged to a secure and respected social position where she would not
need to conceal anything from the world. He felt thus not because there
remained in a corner of his soul any idea of a duty to be performed or
of any transgression that ought to be atoned for, but because he was
infinitely fond of her and could have wished to make life bright for
her eyes and smooth for her little foot, which had such stony paths to
go that it was not surprising if at last it had trodden a bit awry.
He dismissed these thoughts, however; he did not mean to attempt the
impossible; he was no strong man who could take her in his arms and
break a way for them both. And she had made her own choice. She had
known strong men too, the kind of men of whom women commonly say, «He’s
a real man»; if she had wished she might have given her love to one of
them, and he would not have despised it. But her deepest instinct had
held her back with forebodings of shame and unhappiness. For, strangely
enough, it was precisely the strong men who rarely acted as he could
have wished to do had he been able; they were strong just because in
the crisis, when there was really something at stake, their feelings
always formed an alliance with their profit, and they usually knew
where best to employ their strength. No, he and she had nothing else to
do, lonely and chilled as they were, than gratefully and without any
yearning for the impossible to warm themselves at the happiness which
had fallen into their hands, blessing the day when they were driven
together by the voice of their blood, which told them that they suited
each other and could bring each other joy. Secretly, however, he often
liked to dwell on the remote vision that some day many years hence he
might be able to give her a home. The thought that by then she would
be already an old woman did not frighten him. He had the feeling that,
no matter how fast time flew, even if she had gray hair and wrinkles
around her eyes, her young white body could never become old--it would
still remain young and warm as now; and no matter how the years passed
and winter after winter snowed under his youth and stung his soul and
his thoughts with needles of ice, his heart would always be warm as now
to the beating of hers, and that always when the two met there would
spring up a spark of the sacred fire which warms all the world.
While he was thinking all this, his eyes were following every motion
of her slender white arms before the mirror. Again his smile sought
hers, she nodded to him with a glimmer of secret happiness in her color
underneath the powder, and deep within the dusk he saw his own face,
the features sharpened to a mask-like quality by the candlelight,
nodding in answer like a Chinese doll.
«There’s no hurry,» she said. «In any case we can’t creep into our
little corner before a good bit of the first act is over; otherwise we
might meet acquaintances in the lobby.»
«That’s true, you are right,» he answered.
He had thought of that himself too.
«One must have one’s wits about one in such a position as ours,» she
nodded. «It’s a different thing from sitting with one’s nose down over
a book. But isn’t it almost like magic, when one thinks about it, that
we’ve actually been left in peace a whole year and that nobody knows
anything? I even think people speak less badly about me now than they
used to. Everybody has got so friendly toward me: the manager, the
clerks, and the girls in the office. But perhaps that’s because I’ve
become prettier--haven’t I? They certainly see I’m happy, and that
makes them kindly disposed, so that they are cheerful and nice to me
without suspecting why. If they knew!----»
Martin didn’t like to hear her talk of their happiness. It was a
different thing to read it in her eyes and her color and to feel it in
her kisses; he believed in it then, and no text could be more precious
to interpret than that. But when he heard her talk about it he felt on
his breast a weight of bitterness and oppression at the thought of how
little he had really given her and how full of faults and deficiencies
her poor happiness was. He knew that the short minutes she spent with
him took on such vivid color just because she had to pay for them with
long days and nights of fear, fear lest she should suddenly lose what
she had dared so much to win, fear that all of a sudden everything
might end some day, her golden happiness turn to withered leaves, and
she herself be left more poor and lonely than ever before. This fear
never really left her, he knew.
Once, it had not been so long ago, they had arranged to meet at his
house. The time was approaching, he was awaiting her, there was a ring
at the door, and he hurried to open it. But it was not she; it was
one of his friends who had come to sit and talk a while. He could not
say he was engaged or that he was expecting a visit, or the friend
would have met her on the stairs and taken in the whole thing. He said
instead that he was just going on an important errand, put on his hat
and coat, and they went out together. They had not gone far beyond the
gate before he saw her coming along the street. She cast a frightened
and uncertain glance at him and he raised his hat to her as he passed,
politely and a little distantly, as he had to do so as not to betray
her. He turned off into a side street to get rid of his friend and
after a couple of minutes came back circuitously to his gate. She was
walking in front of it in the rain and mud. He pressed her hand softly
and they went up. But when she was inside the door he saw she was
trembling with sobs.
There was no need of explanations; she had already understood the
situation, but his curt and chilly greeting as he passed, while he was
talking with a strange man, had been enough to rouse the secret fear in
her blood; she had to give it vent, she had to weep, and she wept long
and silently in his arms.
Ah! their poor happiness; it had given them much but it could not
bear the bright and arid illumination of words; it could not endure
being spoken of. All his tenderness could not give her the calm which
accompanies a life that can be shown to the multitude and approved
by them, nor could it in solitude prevent her from sometimes feeling
ashamed and conscience-stricken. For because life had shown her two
different aspects, between which she could not see any connection, she
had not one conscience but two. One told her she had acted rightly
and that the time would come some day when no one would be able to
understand any more why people had formerly concealed the love between
man and woman in shame and filth and called it sin. But the other
conscience said nothing about the future; it rose from the depths of
the past, speaking with the accents of her dead mother and with voices
from her home in the woods and from her childhood, when she knew
nothing of the world or of herself, when everything was simple and one
only needed to be good to have things go nicely.
On evenings when he had just left and she sat alone in her rented room
with strange stupid furniture, amid which the bureau with the Empire
mirror and the green stone top was the only thing that was hers and the
only object to remind her of her childhood home, the old conscience
would rise up and whisper many vulgar things into her ear. It whispered
that both the women who married men repugnant to them so as to be
provided for and the poor girls who sold their bodies from necessity
were better than she was, for they had at least a reason for their
conduct but she had none. It did not help that she thought of her great
love and defended her course with that; the old conscience was prepared
for such an argument and whispered in reply that it was not he who had
kindled the fire in her blood; her own desire had blown upon the flame;
the evil was in herself, and she was an abandoned creature who ought to
be whipped with rods in the town hall, as people used to treat women of
loose morals. Still worse things this conscience hit upon, whispering
that he whom she loved would soon tire of her, nay, that he had already
tired and despised her in his heart because she was always so willing
to sin and had never denied him anything.
He knew all this, for she always let him share her troubles. He in
turn always felt the same wonder and surprise at this philosophy:
namely, that the same desire which in a man was so natural and simple
and as easy to admit as hunger or thirst, should be for a woman a
burning shame which must be quenched or concealed; this philosophy,
which he never could comprehend emotionally, though he followed it
in his reflections all the way to its source in the dusk of ancient
times, when woman was still man’s property and when the sensual side
of her nature was permitted, even praised, as far as it expressed her
submission to the will of her master, but was considered criminal and
shameful if it came from her own will. This philosophy was still so
firmly rooted in woman that modest ladies often felt a secret shame in
loving their husbands and longing for their embraces. He even recalled
how he had once heard a woman of the streets divide her kind into the
decent and the sluts, meaning by the decent those who only thought of
giving themselves for money. As a matter of fact this division was more
just and profound than she herself imagined. It had its origin in the
policy of women inherited through millenniums from one generation to
another, as necessity had dictated it from the beginning. Necessity
bade a woman not to lower by generous prodigality the price of the
commodity which was the only means of power for the weaker sex, the
one thing which could save it from being wholly trampled down by the
stronger. If the poor streetwalker had known her Bible better, she
might in support of her classification have cited the savage anathemas
of the prophet Ezekiel against the lascivious Ahala, who was not as
other harlots, «whom a man must needs purchase with money.»
He realized all this quite well; life was too stingy to allow women to
be lavish, and he condemned none of them, not even the modest. But he
loved his generous mistress and consoled her as well as he might on
the days when the warning voices within her had frightened and filled
her with remorse. That was not hard for him to do, because when he was
with her she felt no fear. But he knew also that there were days, nay,
weeks, when she went about in consuming anxiety for fear she might have
a child in spite of everything. He did not conceal from himself that
this was the weak point in all secret love. He saw clearly how uneven
the game must always be when one approached this point, how all the
risk and danger lay on the side of the woman, and again he was secretly
ashamed that it was not in his power to share with her the bitter as he
shared the sweet. The risk of having a child was hers to begin with,
and if this was avoided she had still the lack and emptiness of not
being able to allow herself the happiness of motherhood. It cut him to
the heart when he once saw her at twilight take a strange child from
the street in her arms and kiss it. But motherhood for her would have
implied continual misery, as the world was now.
Neither of them had, however, been pampered by life; they had taught
themselves not to covet any complete and unblemished happiness, and
love had helped them to take all this as it had to be and ought to be
taken.
She was ready now; she put out the candles in front of the mirror and
waited a couple of minutes in the dark while he went ahead of her on
the street, so that no one might meet them together on the stairway.
On the street they sometimes ventured to walk together after it was
dark, especially if the weather was misty or if there was rain or snow.
On this particular evening the snow was falling so thick and white
that nobody could have recognized them. People passed them in the
white night like phantoms without name or distinction. Close together,
nameless themselves and somewhat like the silhouettes which children
cut out in pairs from folded paper, they made their way through the
snow. She held his arm pressed to her bosom and both were silent.
--V--
It was dark in the house, and Martin had pushed up the slatted shutters
of the box. No one could see them, nor from where he sat in his corner
could he see anything of what was happening on the stage. He only heard
lines and responses thrown out in the dark, and saw, or fancied he saw,
their effects on the curving rows of pale human masks--a sloping flower
bed full of large curious flowers, colorless as are plants that grow
without sunlight, and not exactly beautiful as they waved gently, as if
before an inaudible wind, or nodded on their stems from time to time.
He imagined he could recognize them all, whether because he had really
met them so often on the street and in public places, where he had been
one of them, that their faces had become fixed in his subconscious
memory; or because of the tendency of human faces to group themselves
into a few types, so that one rarely seems to encounter a really new
face.
Some of these faces, furthermore, he knew very well. Over yonder sat
Henrik Rissler, his friend from boyhood. They seldom met now, and that
was a pity, for Martin knew of no one with a better appreciation of
friendship, ideas, and cigars than he. But he had now been married for
several years and led a migratory life. He had not yet finished the
odyssey of the newly married couple from one damp abode to another,
always on the outside edge of the city, from the Vasa Quarter to South
Stockholm, and from there to Kungsholm. But Martin had the conviction
that they would find each other again, if life would only grant them
both a little more repose.
And there, a bit farther down, that little wrinkled face that reminded
one both of a child’s and of an old man’s--wasn’t that another old
schoolmate, wasn’t it Josef Marin? He had never become a clergyman as
he should have according to the ideas of his obstinate old mother.
But he never got firm in his faith. It is often with faith as with
appetite--it comes with eating; but he had never got to where the
eating began, and he had also at bottom perhaps a thirst for sincerity
which made his course a bit too difficult. Now he covered the music
halls and funerals for a large newspaper. He wrote unreservedly what
he thought and took pains to think as he supposed the editor did; and
the editor, who was the deuce of a fellow and could think whatever
he wanted to, was careful to think as he imagined the educated and
well-to-do folk of the community thought. And because these principles
had set the tone of the paper, it had become popular and respected
and very old, having a fixed reputation for incorruptible honesty and
unpartisan love of truth.
«I might really just as well have become a clergyman,» he had said one
day to Martin, rather mournfully, when they were exchanging a few words
at a street corner.
And there, far up in the center, that pale slender woman--was it not
she who had been his flame on certain spring evenings many years ago,
Harriet Skottë? He had written her a letter, too, which had never been
sent. Ah! those days.... Life had gone a bit poorly with her since
then; she did not look happy. She was married now, and her husband was
beside her. He was fat, very well dressed and looked as if he had been
varnished. Poor little child, she hadn’t been too lucky in her marriage
choice--one could tell that by a look at her husband....
And he saw other faces, those of women whom he knew slightly although
they didn’t know him, young women whom he kept in friendly remembrance
because sometime without their being aware he had been a little richer
and happier when they had floated past him on the street like sunlit
clouds.... Down there was one whom he remembered well, for she had once
noted his glance and had pulled her skirts around her and given him a
look as if he were a murderer of the Jack the Ripper type. Poor little
lady! the time had flown, she was no longer young, for she had then
been in her late bloom, and now she would get no more such glances when
she went down Sture Street....
He grew tired of looking at one thing and listening to another. The
deep and wonderful old words which sounded from the stage said nothing
to him at the moment, and he thought he could read by the masks in the
parquet that the words recoiled unheard from them too, and that they
scarcely comprehended more of what occurred on the stage than the mere
pantomime. It was the fifth act. He leaned back in his corner, letting
the two grave-diggers toss about skulls and witticisms as they chose,
while he sought in the dark the glance of his mistress. But he did not
catch it, because she could see everything from her place and never
took her eyes from the stage. Then once more the words took on color
and life to his ears, when he saw the eagerness in her face; and the
whole churchyard scene, which he could not see but which he knew so
well, seemed to be mirrored in her glance. He saw Hamlet stand there
in his mantle of night and mystery with Yorick’s skull in his hand, he
saw the funeral procession, the lowering of the coffin, and the queen
as she strewed flowers on the grave: «Sweets to the sweet.» He saw the
strange struggle in the grave, the two men wrestling down there, and he
heard Hamlet’s voice, «I loved Ophelia.»
What did he want--did he want to tear her out of the grave? Suppose she
were not dead, suppose she should arise from the coffin now as if after
a quiet sleep--wouldn’t he take her in his arms and carry her away and
love her to the end of days? No, it was not as he thought. He had said
while she was still alive, «Lady, I loved you once.» He was no ordinary
fickle cavalier, he had not forgotten her for another lady-in-waiting
with a slenderer waist and a deeper bosom, and still he could say,
«I loved you once.» He could possibly say that of many things. He had
loved the sun, and the flowers and the trees. The blue heavens he had
loved, and water and fire and the good brown earth. He had loved all
that; to all the four elements and to life itself he might have said,
«I loved you once.» But then things had changed, there was something
which stole in between all this and him, something which took him in
its grasp without asking any leave and drove away everything else,
the sun and the flowers and the women and Woman, far away, so that he
hardly saw it any more except as if through a mist.... And now when he
saw the funeral procession come, and heard that it was for her whom he
had had and had lost--but he also knew that he had lost her and all the
rest before she was dead, and the very loss seemed real to him only at
the first moment; at the next he saw it far off, through a mist.
* * * * *
Martin had shut his eyes, and when he opened them again, he himself saw
everything through a mist: the parquet and the white masks down there
and her whom he loved.
She took his hand and caressed it softly between her two warm hands
while she whispered to him, «Tell me, what are you thinking of?»
[Illustration: Man and woman in front of a window]
The winter night slept around them. It snowed no longer, and they
went home in a white moonlit mist through the snowdrifts, in through
her door and up the stairs. It got brighter and brighter the higher
they climbed. They stopped at a stairway window and looked out. The
greater part of the mist was now below them, it lay wrapped around the
yards and open spaces beneath, but in the upper regions of the air
everything was almost clear; it was bluish and bright as a night in
August. A wide ring of light was around the moon, and in the pale glow
the world lay as if ice-bound and petrified. Out of the ocean of mist
down there arose a lonely gable wall without a window, which absorbed
the cold glance of the moon and stared blindly and emptily back. A long
shiver went through them both, they pressed hard against each other,
closing their eyes, and everything was lost to them in a kiss.
It became a long and wonderful kiss. He felt all her being dissolve,
while he heard in his ears the sound of distant bells from a little
country church far away between hedges and wheat fields. It seemed
to be a Sunday morning: he saw a neat gravel plot, red peonies were
glowing from the flower beds, white and yellow butterflies were
fluttering about the bushes and the lawn, and he heard the rustling
of mighty trees. He was walking with her among the trees, but through
their murmur passed a breath of autumn, the yellow butterflies were
yellow leaves, and some were already dark with frost. The wind carried
with it broken accents and words, which were sometimes like the dry
words of everyday speech, sometimes like furtive whispers about
something that had to be kept secret, with all of which was blended
as it were the echo of the actor’s strange intonation a little while
before when he said, «I loved Ophelia.»
But he did not relinquish her mouth. They sank ever more deeply into
one another. He seemed to be voyaging through space: in the white
moon-mist burned a red star, first faint and expiring, then more
powerful and ever nearer, growing and broadening into a flaming
spring of fire, to which he fastened his lips tightly. He seemed to
burn without suffering, the flames cooled his tongue like a slightly
bitter wine, until he felt that he was drinking in everything: satiety
and hunger, thirst and coolness, the sun’s health and the midnight’s
anguish, the lucid thought of day and the morbid brooding of moonlit
dusk, all the joy and all the misery of the earth--from this one spring.
MARTIN BIRCK’S YOUTH BY HJALMAR
SÖDERBERG IS SET IN BODONI TYPE.
THE ILLUSTRATIONS ARE BY THEODORE
NADEJEN. FORMAT BY A. W. RUSHMORE.
MADE BY THE HADDON CRAFTSMEN.
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
· MCMXXX ·