When the commissioner, after a dead sleep induced by the efforts of the
preceding day and the strong sea air, awoke the next morning and looked
out of the blankets, he observed first an incomprehensible silence, and
found that his ear caught slight sounds that otherwise he would have
paid no attention to. He could hear each little movement of the sheet
as it rose and fell from his respiration, the friction of his locks
of hair against the pillow-case, the pulsations in the neck arteries,
the rickety bed repeating the heart beat on a small scale. He felt the
silence because the wind had gone down, and only the swell beat against
the compressed air in the hollows of the strand and returned once every
half minute. From the bed which was placed opposite the window he saw,
through the lower pane, something like a blue draw-curtain, bluer than
the air, and it kept moving toward him slowly, as though it would come
in through the window and overflow the room. He knew it was the sea,
but it looked so small,--and it rose like a perpendicular wall instead
of expanding as a horizontal surface, because the long breakers were
fully lighted by the sun and cast no shadows from which the eye could
form a perspective image.
He arose, and partly dressing himself opened the window. The raw, moist
air in the chamber rushed out, and from the sea came a warm green-house
air, warmed several hours by the radiant May sun. Below the window he
saw only low, jagged rocks in the crevices of which lay small dusty
drifts of snow, and near by bloomed small white rye-flowers, well
protected in beds of moss, and the poor wild pansies, pale yellow as
from famine, and blue as from chill, hoisting their poor country's
poor colors to the first spring sun. Lower down crept the heath and
the crowberry vine, looking down over the precipice, below which lay a
windrow of white sand, pulverized by the sea, and in which were stuck
scattered sand-oat stalks; then came the kelp belt as a dark sash or
braid on the white sand, highest up it was almost ivory black from last
year's kelp in which were sticking shells, leaves of fir, twigs, fish
bones, and toward the sea it was olive-brown from the last fresh kelp,
which with its curled and knotted fronds formed a garniture like a
chenille cord. Inside on the sandy side walk lay the top of a barkless
pine, sand scrubbed, washed by the water, polished by the wind,
bleached by the sun, resembling the ribs of a mammoth skeleton, and
around it a whole osteologist's museum of like skeletons or fragments
of the same.
A beacon, which had shown ships the way for years, lay thrown up, and
with its thick end looked like the thigh bone and condyle of a giraffe;
in another place a juniper shrub, like the carcass of a drowned cat,
with its white small roots stretching out for the tail.
Outside the strand lay reefs and rocks which one moment glanced wet in
the sunshine, the next were submerged by the swell which passed over
them with a splash, or if it had not sufficient power, rose, burst, and
threw a water-fall of foam into the air.
Outside the island lay the shining sea, that great flat, as the
fishermen called it, and now in the morning hour it stretched like
a blue canvas without a wrinkle but undulating like a flag. The big
round surface would have been tiresome had not a red buoy been anchored
outside the reef, and brightened up the monotony of the surface with
its minium spot like the seal on a letter.
This was the sea, certainly nothing new to Commissioner Borg who had
seen several corners of the world. Still it was the desolate sea seen
as it were in a _tête-à-tête_. It did not terrify like the forest with
its gloomy hiding places, it was quieting like an open, big, faithful
blue eye. Everything could be seen at once, no ambush, no lurking
place. It flattered the spectator when he saw this circle round him,
where he himself ever remained the center. The big water surface was
as a corporeity radiating from the beholder existing only in and with
the beholder. As long as he stood on shore, he felt himself intimate
with the now harmless power and superior to its enormous might, for he
was beyond its reach. When he reminded himself of the dangers he had
undergone the evening before, the agony and wrath he had endured in his
combat against this brutal enemy, which he had succeeded in eluding,
he smiled in magnanimity toward the vanquished and beaten foe, which
was after all only a blind tool at the wind's service, and was now
stretching itself out to resume its rest in the sunlight.
This was East Skerries, the classical, for they have their old history,
have lived long, flourished, and declined, the old East Skerries that
in the Middle Ages were a great fishing port where that important
article stromling was caught, and for which a special law of guild
was given and is still maintained up to to-day. The stromling serve
the same purpose in middle Sweden and Norrland as the herring does on
the west coast and in Norway, being only a kind of herring, a product
of the Baltic Sea, and suited to its small resources. It was sought
during the time when herring were scarce and dear, and less sought
after when they were plentiful. It has been for ages the winter food
for middle Sweden, and was eaten so continually that a song is still
preserved from the days of Queen Christina's enticing Frenchmen into
the country, who complained of the eternal hard bread and infinite
stromling. A man's age ago the great land-owners paid their laborers'
wages in natural products which consisted mostly of herring; after
herring-fishing declined they substituted salt stromling. The price
rose and the fishing which previously had been managed moderately and
for domestic use, now became an eager speculation. The shoals of the
East Skerries which are the richest on the coast of Sodermanland, began
to be used on a large scale, the fish were disturbed during spawning
time, the meshes of the nets were made closer and closer, and as a
natural consequence the fish diminished, not so much from extermination
perhaps as from the fact that they left their former spawning places
and sought the depths where as yet no fisherman has had the resolution
to search for the flown prey.
The learned puzzled long with investigations over the cause of the
diminution of the stromling supply, but the Academy of Agriculture took
the initiative, by appointing skillful fish commissioners, both to
learn the cause and find a remedy.
This was now Commissioner Borg's mission at the East Skerries for the
summer. The place was not lively as the Skerries are not situated on
one of the main courses to Stockholm. The big vessels from the south
usually pass by Landsort, Dalaro and Vaxholm, those from the east,
and during certain winds, even those from the south, seek passage by
Sandham and Vaxholm, while the merchants' vessels from Norrland and
Finland pass between Furusund and Vaxholm.
The eastern route is mostly used in case of necessity by the
Esthonians, who as a rule come from south-east, and by others in case
of wind, current and storm, who lie over at Landsort and Sandham.
Therefore the place has only a third-class custom house station under
one surveyor, and a little department of pilots who are under control
of Dalaro.
It is the end of the world--quiet, still, abandoned, except during
fishing time, fall and spring, and if there comes only a single
pleasure yacht during mid-summer it is greeted as an apparition from
a lighter, gayer world; but fish commissioner Borg, who had come on
another errand--to "spy," as the people called it--was greeted with
a noticeable coolness which had found its first utterance in the
indifference of the past evening and now took its expression in a
miserable and cold coffee which was brought to his chamber.
Although gifted with a keen sense of taste, he had acquired through
strong exercise an ability to restrain unpleasant perceptions,
therefore he swallowed the drink at a draught and arising went down to
see his environment and greet the people.
When he passed the custom-house man's cottage everything was hushed
and it seemed as though the occupants would make themselves invisible
--they shut the doors, and stopped talking in order not to be betrayed.
With this unpleasant impression of being unwelcome, he continued his
promenade out on the rock and came down to the harbor. There was a
group of small huts all of the simplest construction just as though
piled from pickings of stone shingles with a little smattering of
mortar here and there; the chimney alone was of brick, rising above the
fireplace. At one corner was a patched-up wooden addition for storage,
at another only a shed of driftwood and twigs, a harbor for swine,
which were shipped here during the fishing season for fattening. The
windows seemed to have been taken from shipwrecks, and the roof was
covered with everything that had length and width, and would absorb or
shed rain--kelp, sand-oats, moss, peat, earth. These were the shelters
now standing deserted, each of which housed about twenty sleepers
during the big fishing season, when every hut was a kitchen bar.
Outside the most prominent shanty stood the head man of the island,
fisherman Oman, scratching out a flounder net with a whip. He did not
in the least consider himself beneath a fish commissioner, nevertheless
he felt a pressure from this presence and bristling up, prepared to
answer sharply.
"Is the fishing good?" greeted the instructor.
"Not yet, but it may be now that the government has come to do it,"
answered Oman impolitely.
"Where do the stromling shoals lie?" asked the commissioner,
relinquishing the government to its fate.
"Oh! we thought the instructor knew better than we did, as he is paid
to teach us," said Oman.
"See here, you only know where the shoals lie, but I know where the
stromling are, which is a straw nearer."
"So," rallied Oman. "If we dip into the sea we shall get fish!--well
one is never too old to learn."
The wife came out of the cottage and began a lively talk with her
husband, so that the commissioner found it unprofitable to confer
longer with the hostile fisherman, and started toward the harbor.
Some pilots were sitting on the pier who zealously increased their
conversation and seemed inclined not to notice him.
He would not turn back but continued toward the strand, leaving the
habitations behind. The naked rock lay waste, without a tree, without
a bush, for everything that fire could burn was destroyed. He walked
along the water's edge, sometimes in fine soft sand, sometimes on
stones. When he had continued an hour, always turning to the right,
he found himself in the same place from which he had started, with a
feeling of being in captivity. The hillock of the little island crushed
him, and the sea's horizontal circle oppressed him, the old feeling of
not having room enough came over him, and he climbed to the highest
plateau of the hillock, which was about fifty feet above the sea level.
There he lay down on his back and looked up into space. Now when his
eyes could behold nothing, neither land nor sea, and he saw only the
blue cupola over him, he felt free, isolated, as a cosmic particle
floating in the ether only obeying the law of gravitation. He fancied
he was perfectly alone upon the globe, the earth was only a vehicle in
which he rode on its orbit, and he heard in the wind's faint rustle
only the air draft that the planet in its speed would awake in the
ether, and in the din of the waves he perceived the splashing which
the liquid must make as the big reservoir rolled round its axle. All
reminiscences of fellow creatures, community, law, customs, had blown
away, now that he did not see a single fragment of the earth to which
he was bound. He let his thoughts run like calves let loose, dashing
over all obstacles, all considerations, and therewith intoxicated
himself to stupefaction, as the India navel reverencers, who forgot
both heaven and earth in contemplating an inferior external part of
themselves.
Commissioner Borg was not a nature worshiper any more than were those
navel worshipers of India. On the contrary he was a self-conscious
being, standing highest in the terrestrial chain of creation and
entertained certain contempt for the lower forms of existence,
understanding very well that what the self-conscious spirit produces
is partly more subtle than that of the unconscious nature, and above
all else has more advantages to man, who creates his creations with
regard to the usefulness and beauty they may afford to their creator.
Out of nature he brought forth raw material for his work, and although
both light and air could be produced by machine, he preferred the sun's
unexcellable ether vibrations, and the atmosphere's inexhaustible well
of oxygen. He loved nature as an assistant, as an inferior who could
serve him, and it pleased him that he was able to fool this powerful
adversary to place its resources at his disposal.
After having lain an uncertain time and felt the great rest of
absolute solitude, freedom from influences, from pressure, he arose and
went down to seek his room.
When he entered his empty chamber it reëchoed his footsteps and he felt
himself entrapped. The white quadrant and rectangles that enclosed the
room where he must dwell, reminded him of human hands, but of a low
order, mastering only the simple forms of inorganic nature. He was
enclosed in a crystal, a hexaëdron or the like, and the straight lines
and the congruent surfaces, shaped his thoughts into squares, and ruled
his soul in lines, simplifying it from the organic life's liberty of
forms, and reduced his brain's rich tropical vegetation of changing
perceptions to nature's first childish attempt at classifying.
After he had called to the girl and let her bring in his chests, he
began at once the transformation of the room.
His first care was to regulate the entrance of light by a pair of heavy
garnet Persian curtains, that instantly gave the room a softer tone.
He opened the two leaves of the big dining table and the emptiness
of the big white floor was filled at once, but the white surface of
the table was still disturbing, so he concealed it under an oilcloth
of a solid warm moss-green color which harmonized with the curtains
and was restful. Then he placed his book shelves against the poorest
wall. This certainly was not an improvement as they only striped it in
columns like a time-table, and the white plastering contrasted more
against the black walnut colored wood, but he would first outline the
whole before he went into details.
From a nail in the ceiling he hung his bed curtains, this made as it
were, a room within the room, and the dormitory was separated from the
sitting room, as though under a tent.
The long white floor planks with their black: parallel cracks, where
dirt from shoes, dust from furniture and clothes, tobacco ashes,
scrubbing water and broom splinters, formed hot beds for fungi and
hiding places for wood worms, he covered here and there with rugs of
different colors and patterns, which lay like verdant blooming islets
on the big white flat.
Now that there was color and warmth added to the space he began to give
the finishing touches. He had first to create a forge, an altar to
labor which would be the center round which everything would be grouped
and radiating from it. Therefore he placed his big lamp on the writing
table, it was two feet high and rose like a lighthouse upon the green
cloth, its painted china stand with arabesques, flowers and animals,
which bore no resemblance to ordinary ones, but gave a cheerful
coloring and reminded with their ornaments, of the human spirit's
power to outrage nature's unchangeable shapes. Here had the painter
transformed a stiff spear thistle to a clinging vine, and forced a
rabbit to stretch himself out like a crocodile, and with a gun between
his fore paws with their tiger claw nails, to aim at a hunter with a
fox's head.
Round the lamp he placed a microscope, diopter, scales, plumb bobs, and
a sounding rod, whose varnished brasses diffused a warm sunlight yellow.
The inkstand, a big cube of glass cut in facets, which gave it the
faint blue light of water or ice, the penholders of porcupine quills
which suggested animal life with their indefinite oily coloring, sticks
of sealing wax in loud cinnabar, pen boxes with variegated labels,
scissors with cold steel glance, cigar dishes in lac and gold, paper
knife of bronze, all that mass of small trifles of use and beauty soon
filled the big table abundantly with points on which the eye could rest
a moment getting an impression, a memory, an impulse, keeping it always
active and never fatiguing.
Now for filling the spaces in the book shelves, and blow the breath
of life into the vacuum between the dark boards. There soon stood row
upon row a variegated collection of reference and handbooks, from
which the owner could get enlightenment on all that had happened in
the past and present time. Encyclopedias, which like an air telegraph
answered with a pressure on the right letter. Text-books in history,
philosophy, archeology, and natural sciences, journeys in all lands
with maps, all of Baedeker's handbooks so that the owner could sit at
home and plan the shortest and cheapest route to this or that place,
and decide which hotel, and know how much to give in drink money. But
as all of these works have an inevitable seed of decay, he had manned
a special shelf with an observation corps of scientific journals from
which he could immediately obtain reports concerning even the smallest
advancements of knowledge, even the slightest discoveries. And at
last a whole collection of skeleton keys to all present knowledge,
in bibliographical notices, publishers' catalogues, book-sellers'
newspapers, so that he, shut up in his room, could see precisely how
high or low the barometer stood with all the science that concerned him.
When he regarded the wall with the book shelf, it seemed to him as
though the room was now for the first time inhabited by living beings.
These books gave the impression of individuals for there were not two
works of the same exterior. One was a Baedeker in scarlet and gold,
like one who on a Monday morning leaves all behind him and travels away
from sorrow.
Others solemn, dressed in black, a whole procession, like the
Encyclopedia Britannica, and all the many paper covered ones in light,
gay, easy, spring coats, the salmon red Revue des deux Mondes, the
lemon yellow Comtemporaine, the rush green Fortnightly, the grass green
Morgenländische. From the backs big names saluted him as acquaintances
whom he had in his chamber, and here he had the best part of them, more
than they could give a traveler who came on a visit to trouble their
dinner naps or breakfast.
With the writing table and the book shelves placed in order, he felt
himself recovered after the voyage's disturbing influences; his soul
regained its strength since his implements were accessible, these
instruments and books which had grown fast to his being as new senses,
as other organs stronger and finer than those nature had given him as
an inheritance.
The occasional attack of fear which was caused from isolation, solitude
and from being pent-up with enemies--for thus he considered the
fishermen, with reason--gave way before the quiet which the installment
must induce, and now, the headquarters being raised, he sat down as a
well-armed general to plan for the campaign.