Sivert stood in the smithy, trembling in every limb each time the
hammer clanged on the iron plate. His mother had just gone, and he was
alone. The hammer crashed like thunder, and he expected every moment to
be struck by lightning.
“Look to your work,” said the blacksmith.
Fru Egholm had shaken her head at first, when she saw there was a boy
wanted at Dorn’s smithy. Sivert a blacksmith? Never. But as there was
no other job to be found in all Odense, and when Dorn explained that he
wasn’t a blacksmith really, but a locksmith and general metal worker,
she agreed, albeit with some mistrust.
The boy stood holding a metal plate, his master cutting through it
along chalked-out lines. It was to be a weathercock, in the shape of a
horse. Suddenly--just at an awkward turn--the plate slipped, and the
smith snipped off one lifted foreleg.
For a second or two he seethed like a glowing bar of iron thrust into
water. A box on the ears was not enough....
“Here, Valdemar!” he cried to his man. “Take hold of the little beast,
and we’ll cut his fingers off. That’s it. So!”
Sivert wriggled and screamed, and even tried to kick. But the man
behind only crushed him the harder in his blouse-clad arms, till the
boy’s limbs hung limply down and his voice died to a hoarse gasp.
The smith opened the little white-knuckled hand with a grip as if
shelling peas, and drew one finger between the shears, but managing
carefully so that the boy could wrench it away at the critical moment.
This, of course, prolonged the joke, and made it all the funnier.
The man, too, began to find it interesting; his dull eyes glittered
like molten metal newly set. There was a kind of anticipation in his
mind--he realised that he would find considerable enjoyment in having
Sivert all to himself when they went up to the bedroom they were to
share at nights. It was but a vague thought as yet, a blind and pale
Proteus moving uncertainly in the secret passages of his mind.
At dinner, while master and man sat over their porridge, Sivert was
busy peeling potatoes for the next course. He sat on the wood box out
in the kitchen, a tiny place, which was filled with the odour of Madam
Dorn. She was the hugest piece of womankind Sivert had ever seen, and
full of curious noises. Every other moment there came a threatening
rumble from within like an approaching hurricane--perhaps she was
hungry, too--then she would clear her throat with a thick, full sound,
that seemed to rise from unknown depths. Sivert made the surprising
discovery that her posterior part resembled a huge heart when she bent
down. Was that perhaps an indication of general kindliness?
Now and again she came over to where he sat, and thrust her fingers
down among the potatoes, to see if there were enough done yet.
It was a long, long time before the kitchen door opened, and the two
superior beings within said, “_Tak for Mad_.”[3] Not till then could
Sivert fall to upon the crumbs from their richer table--a draggled
herring and a few diseased potatoes.
[3] “Thanks for the meal”--a formality addressed to housewife or
hostess on rising from table, used more especially among working people.
“It’s a funny big world,” thought Sivert, “but seems mainly alike in
most things.” His father’s thrashings had been delivered with more
solemnity than his present master’s clouts, but then, on the other
hand, Father would never have left a whole herring.
He had just finished washing up when the smith woke from his afternoon
nap. “Kept up with him that time,” thought Sivert, with some pride.
Evening came, after an endless day. Sivert had had his supper, and was
standing with the bucket of leavings out by the pigs’ trough, when he
saw the journeyman striding out through the gate--a sight to see,
with his hat down over his eyes and a cigar between his teeth pointing
upwards. The boy wept with emotion at seeing him go--_that strangling
brute_. Ah, the day was over now. He would have peace at last. He could
go to bed.
The pigs sniffed at the empty bucket, and grunted encouragingly. Sivert
was overjoyed with the pigs--he had made friends with them already,
after dinner. There were two of them, one black.
He clambered up on the partition, and talked confidentially to them
about the events of the day.
“Now, don’t you think I’m crying, because I’m not. Not a bit of it. I
promised mother I wouldn’t. I was only wiping my nose, and you thought
I was crying--ha ha, I did you there! And I’m not homesick, no; only
making a little invisible sound, the same as when you’re homesick.
It’s a trick I’ve learnt, and it’s not everybody can do it. Just
listen.... No; you’ve got to be quiet. You make worse noises than Madam
Dorn. Homesick? What for, I should like to know? Father in Knarreby?
I tell you I’m not fretting for him a single bit. Still, he couldn’t
do anything to me about the bag; he never said I was to put it in the
train.
“Homesick? For Hedvig, perhaps? She’s not really warm to sleep with,
you know, and she always pulls the clothes off me. Oh, but of course
you don’t know Hedvig. She’s my sister--a girl, you understand....”
Sivert realised on a sudden that between his knowledge and that of his
hearers was a great gulf fixed. He fell to laughing, and then shook his
head contemptuously.
“As like as not you don’t even know what sort of thing a girl is at
all. Poor silly pigs that you are. Now, I know all the things there are
in the world. But I was stupid myself once.”
A little before eleven he clambered up to the attic, his own bedroom,
the one thing that had tempted him most of all when his mother had
pointed out what he would gain by going out into the world, instead of
staying at home.
“And you’ll have your own room, with a big bed you can turn about in
whenever you like and as much as you like, with no one to pinch you for
being a nuisance. And you can cut out pictures and stick them up on the
walls, and on Sundays you can pick flowers and put them in water to
last all the week. And then when the mistress comes up to make the bed,
she’ll say: ‘Why, what a nice lad we’ve got, now. Picking flowers....’”
He was much puzzled to find that there were _two_ beds, and neither of
them made. Mistress must have forgotten it. And what on earth was he
to do with two beds? Perhaps the boy they had had before used to lie
in one of them till it got warm; and then shift over to the other.
That way, of course, you could keep them both warm. But.... No. Sivert
decided not. Much better to save the wear of them, and only sleep in
one. Mistress, no doubt, would appreciate that, and praise him for it.
He noticed, certainly, that there were some clothes on a chair, and a
trunk between one bed and the window, but all unused as he was to the
ways of out-in-the-world, he thought nothing of it. There were often
things lying about at home here and there. After much consideration, he
chose one of the beds, and sank to sleep.
Late that night came journeyman locksmith Valdemar August Olsen home,
quite appreciably drunk. He stopped singing as he entered the gate, and
took off his boots at the foot of the stairs, moved, no doubt, by some
vestige of respect from his apprentice days.
He did not seem to need a light, but sat down on Sivert’s bed,
talking softly to himself. Suddenly he felt something alive under the
bedclothes, and started up, almost sobered by the fright. He fumbled
for matches, and a moment later was staring into the face of a pale,
whitish-haired boy, who sat up in bed with wide, terror-stricken eyes.
Olsen waved the match till it went out, and threw away the stump. The
boy must not see him quake. That bed there--it had been empty for three
months past, ever since Boy Sofus ran away.
“Ha, frightened you, what?”
“Yes.”
Olsen called vaguely to mind the interesting episode of the morning; he
lit the lamp, and sat down again on the edge of Sivert’s bed.
“No need to be frightened of me. I shan’t hurt you.”
He thrust his hand under the bedclothes, and stroked the child’s knobby
spine. It gave him a curious sensation, something promising and yet
uncanny. He had felt like that once before, when he had bought a bottle
of spirits for the night, but mislaid it.
Drowsy as he was, but still obstinate, he sat like a beast of prey,
watching his time. Now and again he sniffed at Sivert’s scalp--he had
noticed the smell of it that morning when he was holding him.
“What d’you want to have long hair like that for?” he asked.
Sivert felt it would be dangerous to be at a loss for an answer. And,
diving swiftly into the primeval forest growth of his mind, he snatched
the first fruit that came to hand.
“That’s for the executioner to hold on by, when he’s cut off the body,”
he said.
“Executioner--what the devil!--cut off the body. It’s the head that’s
cut off, stupid.”
“Oh,” said Sivert. “Not the body, then?”
But Valdemar August felt strangely confused in his mind. He tried
again and again to see that curious question clearly, but in vain. Then
he gave it up, and began talking at random of the days when he was out
on his travels, after ending his apprenticeship, some ten years before.
He had passed through no end of towns, lodged in all sorts of places.
He told of it all in short, descriptive sentences, always beginning
with the words: “And then....”
“And then we came over to Jutland--and then we went down to
Kolding--and then my mate said ... and then said I....”
He had set out on his travels with a receptive mind, and had seen and
experienced much. It was not just ordinary things such as the position
and “sights” of the different towns that had impressed him, but each
place was associated with some new and remarkable experience, vicious
for the most part, that came to his mind anew as soon as he named the
scene.
Sivert dropped off to sleep for a second at a time, between the
intervals of Olsen’s recurrent “And then....” He understood but little
of it all, but was grateful to find no immediate prospect of thrashing
or strangling. If only he weren’t so sleepy, and so horribly cold. And
how long was it to last? Olsen was telling now of an inn where they had
found a dead rat in a steaming dish of cabbage, and of how they had
paid the host in his own coin.
He laughed at the joyous recollection, and nudged the boy in the ribs.
His imagination grew more fertile, he used ever stranger words, until
at last Sivert began to wake up, and feel amused. Evidently this Olsen
was a merry soul, though it was hard to make him out at first.
Suddenly Olsen jumped up, and began dancing about in the half-dark in
his ill-mended socks, making the queerest antics. Sivert took advantage
of a burst of laughter to bury his tired head among the pillows, but a
sudden silence made him open one eye warily and peer out into the room.
Olsen was standing over him, looking wilder and more incomprehensible
than ever. Sivert was paralysed with fear. He was about to scream, but
thought better of it--perhaps, after all, it was not so bad but that he
could turn it off with a grin. And with an utmost effort, he broke into
a fine imitation of a hiccuping laugh.
Then Olsen’s rough hand closed over his mouth.