The Egholms managed to drag on into December without using their stove.
Fru Egholm pointed to the trees in Andreasen’s garden, showing how
the leaves broke away in the frost, and slid drowning one by one down
through the air, like naked yellowish bodies.
“Well, and what then?” asked her husband uncomprehendingly.
“Why, then--it’s winter, and time to be getting in fuel, unless you
want to perish with cold.”
“Why, as for that,” said Egholm, leaning over the kitchen table to get
a better view, “there’s one tree there that’s as green as ever. Look.”
“Green as ever it may be,” said his wife, “seeing it’s an evergreen.
That’s holly.”
“Holly’s a sacred tree,” said Egholm, “and we should take it as a
model.” It was not meant in jest. He really endeavoured to school
himself to endurance. He left one button of his coat undone, and made
long speeches about the unwarrantable luxury of having a fire in the
stove. When you went about wrapped up in clothes, and even lived in a
house, why....
Fru Egholm sighed. She made herself and Emanuel into bundles of
clothes, and hoped for the best.
At first it really seemed as if Egholm had conquered the ancient
prejudice in favour of warmth. He talked about pawning his overcoat,
and went about rejoicing at his excellent health. He expected to feel
even better as it grew colder, he said.
But cold was a strangely elusive enemy to fight against. Out in the
open, in a gale of wind, where one might expect to find it at its
worst, he could defeat it easily, and come home flushed and warm. Then,
before he knew it, it had crushed and left him exhausted in his own
comparatively sheltered room. His wrists grew thinner, and his fingers
curled like the fingers of a corpse.
One evening he gave in completely. Now he _would_ have a fire, and that
at once. And since there was nothing else in the place to burn, he
cut up his wife’s chopping-boards, tore out the stuffing from an old
straw mattress, and trampled Hedvig’s doll’s house flat. Fru Egholm
made piteous protest, but Hedvig simply looked on with a curious smile.
Next day Egholm himself was most eager to obtain credit at the coal
merchant’s.
This, then, was the state of things in the house. They had no money,
and very little credit; both difficult things to do without.
People seemed to have forgotten there was such a thing as having their
photograph taken.
The Egholms felt it in various ways: food and clothing, for instance.
Hedvig could manage all right as to food. She was always eating at
the baker’s, and cakes dropped out of her clothes when she undressed
at night; she brought them home for Emanuel. But even her existence
was touched with the ugly grey brush of poverty. Her boots were a
marvel; every schoolgirl in the town knew Hedvig’s boots. They had
an extraordinary number of buttons up the side, with springs, and a
sort of ventilation. They must have cost a great deal at one time.
There were no soles to them now, but that did not matter, said her
father--you don’t walk with your feet in the air! Hedvig admitted there
was something in that, and comforted herself further with the thought
that no one could see what her under things were like.
There was little gaiety about the Egholms’ life.
And yet there was one little being whose only longing day and night was
to share their lot in every way. This was Sivert in his smithy.
The day his mother had got into the train and glided out into the
morning mist, his organ of equilibrium had suffered a shock. One day he
would fall, and fall, moreover, in the direction of Knarreby.
He had always been keenly attached to his mother, and, now that she was
gone, his longing conjured up her picture into this or that piece of
bright metal he held, or he would hear her voice in the blowing of the
bellows. Then he would laugh and talk out loud, or stand up and swing
his arms in a joyful embrace towards his beloved mother.
Whereupon his master would immediately land out at him from one side,
and Olsen from the other, which was perhaps the reason why he retained
the same degree of crookedness.
His mother had given him to understand that there would be occasional
visits; either he should come to Knarreby, or she would come to him
there, but there came nothing more than a letter once a month, and even
these grew shorter and shorter. At last they contained hardly more than
the advice to be a good boy and do what he was told, and not to forget
his prayers.
Sivert read them with quivering mouth, and nodded; he would do as she
said.
Then, further, the letter reported that they were all well at home.
Sivert nodded at this likewise. But when he came to read the signature,
“Your own loving mother,” the tears began to trickle down, and, a
moment after, he was sobbing all over.
Each day was for the boy a ladder of a hundred toilsome steps, and
the ladder led to nights spent with Olsen. It was getting on towards
Christmas. Sivert realised it one day, as he came trotting along
through the street with a load of iron rods.
In one of the shop windows stood a Christmas tree decked out with
little baskets and paper horns and cottonwool on all the branches.
There was a crowd of children in front of the window. Sivert made a
sharp turn about, and stood there lost in admiration. Ho! That was a
Christmas tree! He knew it!
He was not suffered to stand there very long, for his iron rods barred
the whole footway. But for the rest of his journey back, he talked out
loud to himself of the wonderful vision.
It _was_ a Christmas tree. Then Christmas must be coming. It was put in
the window as a sign that Christmas would soon be here.
Already there was a taste of sweets in his mouth, just as he remembered
once before....
Then suddenly his mother’s letters, that he knew by heart, began
talking too.
“All well at home!”
At home--yes, at home ... with Mother, they were all well.
An indomitable craving, and a resolution, ripened within him.
His craving was that he, too, would share in that “all well” at home.
As to the resolution, he clenched his teeth upon it for the present,
and his eyes stared fixedly. In the evening, when he had seen Olsen go
out, he stood with shaking hands up in their room, and collected his
belongings. Yes, this was what he was going to do. He was going home.
And never come back any more. So he must be careful not to forget a
single thing.
There were his pictures all cut out, his letters and--under the
mattress--that indispensable tie-pin given him by the Eriksens at his
confirmation; he would find some use for it, no doubt, when he was
older.
And that was all. But still he wandered about the room, looking into
every corner.
In the washstand drawer was Olsen’s registration book--fancy Olsen’s
leaving it there! Suppose a thief....
In a moment of confusion, Sivert’s hand dipped into the drawer, closed
all five fingers on the book, and thrust it under his blouse, close
against his trembling heart.
Then, overcome by dizziness, he stole on all fours down the stairs.
The shop windows were ablaze, and the streets full of people. It was
all like some great festival, thought Sivert, as he trotted along in
the gutter.
Suddenly it struck him that he might encounter Olsen.
Wasn’t that Olsen coming round the corner there? Sivert did not stay to
make closer investigation, but raced off down the first turning. And
there--Heaven preserve him!--was Olsen himself, coming out of a tavern
not ten paces away. It _was_ Olsen this time. Leaning up against the
railing just as Olsen always did. Sivert turned round and fled, as if
the lightnings of retribution were at his heels, dodging in a zigzag
through a maze of intercrossing streets.
He came into quarters of the town where he had never been before, and
met four more Olsens on his way. Once with a girl on his arm, once in
the very gateway where he was hiding in fear of--yes, of that same
Olsen.
At last he found the road he sought--the road to Knarreby. The distance
between the houses increased, and the gale rose to a hurricane. It was
full in his face now, and beating against his cheeks with a torrent of
sand and stones, but he bent forward and drew his cap down over his
eyes, sighting at the next lamp-post through the split between the peak
and the cloth top, and keeping his hands behind his back.
Yes, he would manage it now!
Then suddenly there were no more lamp-posts to go by. The last one shed
its gleam a few yards round, a solitary figure of a lamp, the extreme
outpost, rattling its glass with a noise as of chattering teeth in the
cold, and its flame hopping from the wick at every gust. Sivert set his
back against it--he dared not give himself up entirely to the gaping
jaws of the black dark ahead.
He knew the place well, by the way; he had stood here many a Sunday
afternoon, staring out towards Knarreby. The tears welled up chokingly
within him now.
A little later, there came a man with a pole. He growled out something
or other, but Sivert drew away shyly out of the ring of light.
Well, well, the man put out the lamp, and turned in towards the town
again, leaving darkness behind him as he went.
Sivert stole on behind him, sobbing. The putting out of the lamps
entered into his consciousness as a picture of his own desolation.
Late that night he squeezed himself up in the doorway of the old home
in Nedergade, where he had not been since his mother left.
The gloomy place had something of homeliness about it; almost
instinctively he stole in through the door to the washing cellar. There
were tubs lying about, full of washing left to soak.
He stumbled in amongst them, and took a drink of water from the tap,
not so much from thirst, but more from a fancy to use his familiar
knowledge of the place. Then he recollected that it made a buzzing
sound in the tenements upstairs when that tap was turned on, and he
hurried away to the passage between the coal cellars. Egholms’ cellar
used to be the fifth. Could he manage now to tear open the padlock
with a smart twist? Wonderful--it was as easy as ever! That showed
that God was with him after all. Full of thankfulness, Sivert slipped
into the narrow space, and tried to concentrate his mind on the Lord’s
Prayer, but fell asleep despite his efforts, and did not wake until the
pale light of morning came filtering in to him through the cobwebbed
windows. His back was like a boil from the knobs and points of the
firewood he had been lying on.
Out in the washing cellars someone was rattling tubs and buckets, and
the water was running.
Sivert pressed himself closer up in a corner. He stood there a long
time, till his sense was dulled. There was a bottle in the window, that
looked as if it had been used for oil. A cork was stuck half-way down
the neck. And from among the broken lumps of peat and turf on the floor
a lump of old iron pipe was sticking out.
Sivert looked at the two things--first one, then the other, a hundred
times. Bottle--iron pipe--iron pipe--bottle. He thrust out his wooden
shoe and kicked at the pipe to make a change. There was a brass tap on
it. It emerged from the litter on the floor like a revelation.
“Father’s big tap,” he burst out in wondering recognition. They must
have forgotten it. No, not forgotten; it had been left here for him to
take with him.
Half an hour later he was clattering along at a sharp trot out of the
town, with the tap under his coat.
The poplars stood in two endless rows with their leafless branches
pointing stiffly heavenwards. Only one thing to do now--get along as
fast as he could. His heart might hop and thump as it pleased, like a
dry nut in its shell; he had no use for that now--only for his legs.
Villages showed up ahead of him and faded away behind, all nothing
to do with him. It did not enter his head to ask for food anywhere,
or even to rest. Only go on, on, along the road, past ditches where
the snow lay streaked with wind-borne dust, and tufts of withered
grass above; past flattened heaps of road-metal that lay like so
many nameless graves. Trotting or dragging his feet, he went on past
buzzing telegraph poles, passing or following heavy-laden milk-carts or
solitary peasants with kerchiefs bound over their ears as a protection
from the biting cold.
He spoke to no one until evening was drawing on; then, an old woman
told him there was but another mile to Knarreby.
This came to him as something of a shock; he felt there ought to be,
say, four or six miles more yet.
He slackened his pace, and at the same time his mind began working
again.
All the way till now, through those twenty-four icy miles, he had had a
feeling that he was running straight into his mother’s welcoming arms.
Now the picture changed incomprehensibly. Her open arms were turned to
clenched fists, and her gentle eyes gave place to his father’s glaring
fiery orbs. After all, perhaps it was not so simple a matter to run
away from one’s place and go home!
Thrashings, even kicks, he knew, but how should he ever be able to bear
his father’s thundering voice when he was angry? Sivert remembered how
he had once himself offered his father a brass ladle to beat him with,
just to get it over. His father had taken it--yes--and there were dints
in it still. Oh, his father’s voice was the most terrible thing in the
world. It was not thick like Olsen’s, or whinnying like the smith’s,
but a sort of voice that made one feel stiff all over.
By the time he reached Knarreby Mill it was pitch dark. The high
invisible sails flung rattling round past a little red window far
above. A little later, and the town itself blinked out to meet him,
but it was some time before he managed, with the help of a lad of
his own age, to find the way in through Andreasen’s yard, and stood,
with beating heart, looking in at the light behind the familiar green
curtains. Someone was standing outside the window, looking in from
one side where the curtain was folded. Someone in a blue blouse,
only a little bigger than Sivert himself. He did not look so very
dangerous.... When Sivert crept nearer, the other started, as if to run
away, but judging Sivert to be equally harmless, he thought better of
it, and soon the two had come to a whispered understanding.
The figure in the blue blouse was called Marinus. Yes, and Sivert could
stand there by the other window, if he liked, and look in, if he kept
quite still.
Inside, was Mother--yes, his mother--sitting over her work, making up
hair. Her practised fingers took up the piece, plaited it into the
three strands, thrust it into place, and then, wetting her fingers, she
reached for another. She nodded now and then as she worked. And the
lamp was reflected upside down in her spectacles.
Sivert began sniffing and swallowing something in his throat. Then he
tore himself away from that picture, and perceived his father sitting
in a big arm-chair, his fingers twined into his beard, reading the
Bible. Now he turned a page; now he lifted his eyes from the book and
fixed something or other in space, nailing it, as it were, to the
ceiling with his glance.
On the settee in the room behind, the light from the lamp shone on
Emanuel’s fair round head, and by the door sat Hedvig, undressed,
combing her hair. She had drawn one leg up under her, and leaned back
dreamily. A feeling of envy stole over Sivert at sight of those legs,
so thick and overfed they seemed, both here and there. And both legs,
too--oh, it was not fair.
Truly, all well at home.
His father was speaking. Hedvig answered, but with lips tight and
straight as a line, though her nose moved.
“Won’t?” cried her father. “You disobedient little devil! To bed with
you this instant!”
He slapped down the Bible on the table and shook his hand in the air.
“That’s Father’s voice; I know it. I know it’s the right one,” muttered
Sivert. His legs carried him staggering out through the gateway again,
and Marinus turned and watched him as he went.
After much aimless wandering, Sivert found his way at last into
the waiting-room of the railway station. It was naturally his last
resource, being the only place that showed a light still burning.
His wooden shoes echoed in the empty room, but no one came to turn him
out. He slept close to a lovely warm stove, and heard trains rushing
past, doors opening and slamming through his sleep; not till next
morning did anyone disturb him, and then it was an old peasant who
slipped the boy’s feet down to make room for himself on the bench.
There were a number of other people about.
One or two men in heavy travelling cloaks walked up and down, rubbing
their hands for warmth. A waitress with beautiful frills at her throat
had appeared; she took down the shutters from the buffet and set out
dishes of refreshments. A little later came the popping of corks.
Vehicles rolled up outside; and drivers with silver-tasseled hats
came in and hung over the bar. They talked with noisy humour of the
waitress, who, they declared, looked as if she had not slept well that
night. The lady in question, however, merely raised her eyebrows to
show that she had not even heard what they said. Now and again she
scratched her hair with the least little touch of one fourth finger.
Sivert understood this as evidence that so elegant a being had little
need to scratch at all.
Altogether, it was a morning rich in experience for Sivert. When the
trains and the passengers had gone, the head-scratching waitress sat
down to further cups of coffee. Sivert shifted a little closer, and
saw how deliciously ready to hand were the dishes of _smørrebrød_,[4]
whereat his mouth watered quite literally, down his blouse.
[4] Slices of bread and butter, with meat, cheese, etc., laid over.
“Are you going by train?”
“No,” said Sivert, dismayed at being noticed. Doubtless he would be
turned out at once.
“What are you doing, then?” said the waitress after a pause. She was
taking her hair down, and undoing the plaits.
What was he doing? Heaven only knew!
“Taking home the big tap. For Father,” he stammered.
The lady laughed--it sounded like a scream. A moment after she was
serious again, but anyhow, she _had_ laughed. She was sitting now,
bending forward, combing her back hair upward and forward in little
jerks, and observing the effect in a little round mirror with an
advertisement on the back. She laughed, though it evidently hurt badly
when the comb stuck.
A lovely creature, was that waitress.
“And who’s your father?”
“Egholm. I saw him eat one of those once. Just like that.” Sivert
nodded sideways towards the dish.
“One of what?”
“One of those!” said Sivert, springing up to the counter and pointing
to a piece with slices of sausage. “This one’s bigger, though, I’m
sure.”
Sivert could not say more; he stammered and hiccuped in a delirium of
hunger.
The waitress was combing back again now, till the comb fairly crackled;
she spread out her chest mightily, and shook her mane of hair.
“You can have that piece, if you like,” she said, with her mouth full
of hairpins. And added mysteriously: “Serve her right, too.”
Three further pieces were granted Sivert on the same grounds, of
serving somebody right. He laughed and cried and stuffed his mouth all
at the same time.
“You’re a funny sort of deaf-and-dumb lad, you are. What’s your name?”
“Well, I’m mostly Olsen, really,” said Sivert, fumbling at the place
where the precious book was hidden. “But I’m not all deaf and dumb. Not
quite....”
“Well, I said you were half a lunatic.”
“... Or I couldn’t sing, you know.”
“Let’s hear you sing.” The barmaiden surveyed her work of art in its
entirety, until it seemed as if her eyes would turn back to front in
their sockets.
“Well, I can, you know....” said Sivert hesitatingly.
The barmaid pointed to another piece--cheese it was this time--with her
little finger. Sivert pounced on it at once.
Then he wiped his mouth, wrinkled up his forehead thoughtfully, and
rattled off at a furious rate:
“The pretty bird upon the tree its merry notes doth sing....”
and all the rest of that verse. It sounded like an Eskimo letting off a
single word of a hundred syllables or so.
“That wasn’t singing, not yet; I was just trying if I knew all the
words,” explained Sivert apologetically, and proceeded to repeat the
words “with music.”
A porter and one or two others came up, and grouped themselves in an
attentive half-circle about the singing mannikin.
Sivert sang all the _smørrebrød_ off one dish, and then went out with
the porter to a little room where they cleaned the lamps, and here he
talked of many remarkable things, helping to clean lamps the while. At
last he brought out his brass tap, and polished that up till it shone.
Then suddenly he stole off unobserved.
Down the street and across Andreasen’s yard, walking awkwardly and
shuffling like an epileptic, his mouth running over all the time with
prayers and verses of hymns.
In the little entry he stood still and laid one ear to the crack of the
door, listening breathlessly.
Yes, there was Emanuel prattling away, and his mother answering with a
few low words.
Was it to be his luck to find them alone? He listened again, with his
head on one side, and heard now another sound--a long-drawn, sucking
sound, almost like a snore, and then the rattle of a cup, repeated at
regular intervals. Ah ... now he knew who was there besides!
Sivert knelt down where he stood, with his face against the door and
his hands folded piously. He had knelt that way once before, when he
had happened to upset a lamp. So, too, Knud, the Martyr-King, had knelt
waiting for death. It was the proper thing on such occasions, and no
doubt looked well. But was his hair all right?
He drew forth the brass tap, and tried to make out his own reflection
swimming unsteadily in the polished metal.
Perhaps he had spoken aloud. For suddenly his father appeared in the
open door. The first astonishment in his face changed to inflamed fury,
and he swung back his boot ready for a blow.
Sivert, terrified, held up the brass tap like a crucifix above his
head, as if to guard.
His thoughts were scattered in flight like sparrows at a shot, but
some instinct came to his aid, and he cried out in his cracked voice,
echoing through the house:
“Oh, Lord my God, I’ve brought your brass tap.”
Sivert’s ideas as to his father on earth and his Father in heaven had
always been somewhat vague; now, they seemed fused into one.
The effect of his words was beyond comprehension. The threatened kick
did not fall; his father snatched up the tap instead, and said:
“Wherever did you find it? I’ve been wanting it all the time.”
“In the cellar,” said Sivert. “But it wasn’t me that didn’t bring it
along.”
And with an idiot laugh he collapsed in his mother’s arms.
Egholm stood by the window overlooking the yard. He blew through the
tap, and turned it lovingly in his fingers. A great ship came throbbing
towards him and took him on board. And he mounted up, high, high, up to
the bridge.
“Full speed ahead! Stand by! Full speed astern!”
And the ship went astern till Captain Egholm felt the tears welling
into his eyes with delight. A little after, he went to the kitchen door.
“Sivert!”
A timorous “Yes” came from within.
“Did you really think I was God Himself?”
Sivert nodded.
His father turned on his heel and said calmly:
“Then you were wrong, boy, because I’m not.”