daughter and grand-child. He warned his son-in-law not to show his
face at his house until he could pay his debts and make a home for his
wife and child. He said nothing to his daughter, but it seemed to him
that he was bringing home a girl who had been led astray. It was as if
he had lent his innocent child to a casual admirer and now received
her back “dishonoured.” She would have preferred to stay with her
husband, but he had no home to offer her.
And so the husband of one year’s standing was left behind to watch the
pillaging of his home, if he could call it his home, for he had paid
for nothing. The two men with spectacles carted away the beds and
bedclothes; the copper kettles and tin vessels; the dinner set, the
chandelier and the candlesticks; everything, everything!
He was left alone in the two empty, wretched rooms! If only _she_ had
been left to him! But what should she do here, in these empty rooms?
No, she was better off where she was! She was being taken care of.
Now the struggle for a livelihood began in bitter earnest. He found
work at a daily paper as a proof-corrector. He had to be at the office
at midnight; at three in the morning his work was done. He did not
lose his berth, for bankruptcy had been avoided, but he had lost all
chance of promotion.
Later on he is permitted to visit wife and child once a week, but he
is never allowed to see her alone. He spends Saturday night in a tiny
room, close to his father-in-law’s bedroom. On Sunday morning he has
to return to town, for the paper appears on Monday morning.... He says
good-bye to his wife and child who are allowed to accompany him as far
as the garden gate, he waves his hand to them once more from the
furthest hillock, and succumbs to his wretchedness, his misery, his
humiliation. And she is no less unhappy.
He has calculated that it will take him twenty years to pay his debts.
And then? Even then he cannot maintain a wife and child. And his
prospects? He has none! If his father-in-law should die, his wife and
child would be thrown on the street; he cannot venture to look forward
to the death of their only support.
Oh! How cruel it is of nature to provide food for all her creatures,
leaving the children of men alone to starve! Oh! How cruel, how cruel!
that life has not ptarmigans and strawberries to give to all men. How
cruel! How cruel!
COMPELLED TO
Punctually at half past nine on a winter evening he appears at the
door leading to the glass-roofed verandah of the restaurant. While,
with mathematical precision, he takes off his gloves, he peers over
his dim spectacles, first to the right, then to the left, to find out
whether any of his acquaintances are present. Then he hangs up his
overcoat on its special hook, the one to the right of the fireplace.
Gustav, the waiter, an old pupil of his, flies to his table and,
without waiting for an order, brushes the crumbs off the tablecloth,
stirs up the mustard, smooths the salt in the salt-cellar and turns
over the dinner napkin. Then he fetches, still without any order, a
bottle of Medhamra, opens half a bottle of Union beer and, merely for
appearance sake, hands the schoolmaster the bill of fare.
“Crabs?” he asks, more as a matter of form than because there is any
need of the question.
“Female crabs,” answers the schoolmaster.
“Large, female crabs,” repeats Gustav, walks to the speaking tube
which communicates with the kitchen, and shouts: “Large female crabs
for Mr. Blom, and plenty of dill.”
He fetches butter and cheese, cuts two very thin slices of rye-bread,
and places them on the schoolmaster’s table. The latter has in the
meantime searched the verandah for the evening papers, but has only
found the official _Post_. To make up for this very poor success, he
takes the _Daily Journal_, which he had not had time to finish at
lunch, and after first opening and refolding the _Post_, and putting
it on the top of the bread basket on his left, sits down to read it.
He ornaments the rye-bread with geometrical butter hieroglyphics, cuts
off a piece of cheese in the shape of a rectangle, fills his liqueur
glass three quarters full and raises it to his lips, hesitates as if
the little glass contained physic, throws back his head and says: Ugh!
He has done this for twelve years and will continue doing it until the
day of his death.
As soon as the crabs, six of them, have been put before him, he
examines them as to their sex, and everything being as it should be,
makes ready to enjoy himself. He tucks a corner of his dinner napkin
into his collar, places two slices of thin bread and cheese by the
side of his plate and pours out a glass of beer and half a glass of
liqueur. Then he takes the little crab-knife and business begins. He
is the only man in Sweden who knows how to eat a crab, and whenever he
sees anybody else engaged in the same pursuit, he tells him that he
has no idea how to do it. He makes an incision all round the head, and
a hole against which he presses his lips and begins to suck.
“This,” he says, “is the best part of the whole animal.”
He severs the thorax from the lower part, puts his teeth to the body
and drinks deep draughts; he sucks the little legs as if they were
asparagus, eats a bit of dill, and takes a drink of beer and a mouthful
of rye-bread. When he has carefully taken the shell off the claws and
sucked even the tiniest tubes, he eats the flesh; last of all he attacks
the lower part of the body. When he has eaten three crabs, he drinks half
a glass of liqueur and reads the promotions in the _Post_.
He has done this for twelve years and will continue doing it until he
dies.
He was just twenty years old when he first began to patronise the
restaurant, now he is thirty-two, and Gustav has been a waiter for ten
years in the same place. Not one of its frequenters has known the
restaurant longer than the school-master, not even the proprietor who
took it over eight years ago. He has watched generations of diners
come and go; some came for a year, some for two, some for five years;
then they disappeared, went to another restaurant, left the town or
got married. He feels very old, although he is only thirty-two! The
restaurant is his home, for his furnished room is nothing but the
place where he sleeps.
It is ten o’clock. He leaves his table and goes to the back room where
his grog awaits him. This is the time when the bookseller arrives.
They play a game of chess or talk about books. At half-past ten the
second violin from the Dramatic Theatre drops in. He is an old Pole
who, after 1864, escaped to Sweden, and now makes a living by his
former hobby. Both the Pole and the bookseller are over fifty, but
they get on with the schoolmaster as if he were a contemporary.
The proprietor has his place behind the counter. He is an old sea
captain who fell in love with the proprietress and married her. She
rules in the kitchen, but the sliding panel is always open, so that
she can keep an eye on the old man, lest he should take a glass too
much before closing time. Not until the gas has been turned out, and
the old man is ready to go to bed, is he allowed a nightcap in the
shape of a stiff glass of rum and water.
At eleven o’clock the young bloods begin to arrive; they approach the
counter diffidently and ask the proprietor in a whisper whether any of
the private rooms upstairs are disengaged, and then there is a rustling
of skirts in the hall and cautious footsteps are creeping upstairs.
“Well,” says the bookseller, who has suddenly found a topic of
conversation, “when are you going to be married, Blom, old man?”
“I haven’t the means to get married,” answered the school-master. “Why
don’t you take a wife to your bosom yourself?”
“No woman would have me, now that my head looks like an old,
leather-covered trunk,” says the bookseller. “And, moreover, there’s
my old Stafva, you know.”
Stafva was a legendary person in whom nobody believed. She was the
incarnation of the bookseller’s unrealised dreams.
“But you, Mr. Potocki?” suggested the schoolmaster.
“He’s been married once, that’s enough,” replies the bookseller.
The Pole nods his head like a metrometer.
“Yes, I was married very happily. Ugh!” he says and finishes his grog.
“Well,” continues the schoolmaster, “if women weren’t such fools, one
might consider the matter; but they are infernal fools.”
The Pole nods again and smiles; being a Pole, he doesn’t understand
what the word fool means.
“I have been married very happily, ugh!”
“And then there is the noise of the children, and children’s clothes
always drying near the stove; and servants, and all day long the smells
from the kitchen. No, thank you! And, perhaps, sleepless nights into the
bargain.”
“Ugh!” added the Pole, completing the sentence.
“Mr. Potocki says ‘ugh’ with the malice of the bachelor who listens to
the complaints of the married man,” remarked the bookseller.
“What did I say?” asks the astonished widower. “Ugh!” says the
bookseller, mimicking him, and the conversation degenerates into a
universal grinning and a cloud of tobacco smoke.
It is midnight. The piano upstairs, which has accompanied a mixed
choir of male and female voices, is silent. The waiter has finished
his countless journeys from the speaking tube to the verandah; the
proprietor enters into his daybook the last few bottles of champagne
which have been ordered upstairs. The three friends rise from their
chairs and go home, two to their “virgin couches,” and the bookseller
to his Stafva.
When schoolmaster Blom had reached his twentieth year, he was compelled
to interrupt his studies at Upsala and accept a post as assistant teacher
at Stockholm. As he, in addition, gave private lessons, he made quite a
good income. He did not ask much of life. All he wanted was peace and
cleanliness. An elderly lady let him a furnished room and there he found
more than a bachelor finds as a rule. She looked after him and was kind
to him; she gave him all the tenderness which nature had intended her to
bestow on the new generation that was to spring from her. She mended his
clothes and looked after him generally. He had lost his mother when he
was a little boy and had never been accustomed to gratuitous kindness;
therefore he was inclined to look upon her services as an interference
with his liberty, but he accepted them nevertheless. But all the same
the public house was his real home. There he paid for everything and
ran up no bills.
He was born in a small town in the interior of Sweden; consequently he
was a stranger in Stockholm. He knew nobody; was not on visiting terms
with any of the families and met his acquaintances nowhere but at the
public-house. He talked to them freely, but never gave them his
confidence, in fact he had no confidence to give. At school he taught
the third class and this gave him a feeling of having been stunted in
his growth. A very long time ago he had been in the third class
himself, had gradually crept up to the seventh, and had spent a few
terms at the University; now he had returned to the third; he had been
there for twelve years without being moved. He taught the second and
third books of Euclid; this was the course of instruction for the
whole year. He saw only a fragment of life; a fragment without
beginning or end; the second and third books. In his spare time he
read the newspapers and books on archaeology. Archaeology is a modern
science, one might almost say a disease of the time. And there is
danger in it, for it proves over and over again that human folly has
pretty nearly always been the same.
Politics was to him nothing but an interesting game of chess--played
for the king, for he was brought up like everybody else; it was an
article of faith with him that nothing which happened in the world,
concerned him, personally; let those look to it whom God had placed in
a position of power. This way of looking at things filled his soul
with peace and tranquillity; he troubled nobody and nothing troubled
him. When he found, as he did occasionally, that an unusually foolish
event had occurred, he consoled himself with the conviction that it
could not have been helped. His education had made him selfish, and
the catechism had taught him that if everybody did his duty, all
things would be well, whatever happened. He did his duty towards his
pupils in an exemplary fashion; he was never late; never ill. In his
private life, too, he was above reproach; he paid his rent on the day
it fell due, never ran up bills at his restaurant, and spent only one
evening a week on pleasure. His life glided along like a railway train
to the second and, being a clever man, he managed to avoid collisions.
He gave no thought to the future; a truly selfish man never does, for
the simple reason that the future belongs to him for no longer than
twenty or thirty years at the most.
And thus his days passed.
* * * * *
Midsummer morning dawned--radiant and sunny as mid-summer morning
should be. The schoolmaster was still in bed, reading a book on the
Art of Warfare in ancient Egypt, when Miss Augusta came into his room
with his breakfast. She had put on his tray some slices of saffron
bread, in honour of the festival, and on his dinner-napkin lay a spray
of elder blossoms. On the previous night she had decorated his room
with branches of the birch-tree, put clean sand and some cowslips in
the spittoon, and a bunch of lilies-of-the-valley on the dressing
table.
“Aren’t you going to make an excursion to-day, sir?” she asked, glancing
at the decorations, anxious for a word of thanks or approval.
But Mr. Blom had not even noticed the decorations, and therefore he
answered dryly:
“Haven’t you realised yet that I never make excursions? I hate elbowing
my way through a crowd, and the noise of the children gets on my nerves.”
“But surely you won’t stay in town on such a lovely day! You’ll at least
go to the Deer Park?”
“That would be the very last place I should go to, especially to-day,
when it will be crowded. Oh! no, I’m better off in town, and I wish to
goodness that this holiday nuisance would be stopped.”
“There are plenty of people who say that there aren’t half enough
holidays these days when everybody has to work so hard,” said the old
woman in a conciliatory tone. “But is there anything else you wish,
sir? My sister and I are making an excursion by steamer, and we shan’t
be back until ten o’clock to-night.”
“I hope you’ll enjoy yourselves, Miss Augusta. I want nothing, and am
quite able to look after myself. The caretaker can do my room when I
have gone out.”
Miss Augusta left him alone with his breakfast. When he had eaten it,
he lit a cigar and remained in bed with his _Egyptian Warfare_. The
open window shook softly in the southern breeze. At eight o’clock the
bells, large and small, of the nearest church began to ring, and those
of the other churches of Stockholm, St. Catherine’s, St. Mary’s and
St. Jacob’s, joined in; they tinkled and jingled, enough to make a
heathen tear his hair in despair. When the church bells stopped, a
military band on the bridge of a steamer began to play a set of
quadrilles from _The Weak Point_. The schoolmaster writhed between his
sheets, and would have got out of bed and shut the window if it had
not been so hot. Next there came a rolling of drums, which was
interrupted by the strains of a brass quintet which played, on another
steamer, the Hunter’s Chorus from the _Freischütz_. But the cursed
rolling of drums approached. They were marching at the head of the
Riflemen on their way to camp. Now he was subjected to a medley of
sounds: the Riflemen’s march, the signals, the bells and the brass
bands on the steamers, until at last the whole crash and din was
drowned by the throbbing of the screw.
At ten o’clock he lit his spirit lamp and boiled his shaving water.
His starched shirt lay on his chest of drawers, white and stiff as a
board. It took him a quarter of an hour to push the studs through the
button-holes. He spent half-an-hour in shaving himself. He brushed his
hair as if it were a matter of the utmost importance. When he put on
his trousers, he was careful that the lower ends should not touch the
floor and become dusty.
His room was simply furnished, extremely plain and tidy. It was
impersonal, neutral, like the room in a hotel. And yet he had spent in
it twelve years of his life. Most people collect no end of trifles
during such a period; presents, little superfluous nothings, ornaments.
Not a single engraving, not a supplement to an illustrated magazine
even, which at some time or other had appealed to him, hung on the walls;
no antimacassar, no rug worked by a loving sister, lay on the chairs;
no photograph of a beloved face stood on his writing-table, no
embroidered pen-wiper lay by the side of the ink-stand. Everything had
been bought as cheaply as possible with a view to avoiding unnecessary
expense which might have hampered the owner’s independence.
He leaned out of the window which gave him a view of the street and,
across Artillery Place, of the harbour. In the house opposite a woman
was dressing. He turned away as if something ugly had met his gaze, or
something which might disturb his peace of mind. The harbour was gay
with the fluttering flags on the steamers and sailing-ships, and the
water glittered in the sunshine. A few old women, prayer-book in hand,
passed his window on their way to church. A sentinel with drawn sword
was walking up and down before the Artillery Barracks, glancing
discontentedly at the clock on the tower every now and then to see how
much longer he would have to wait until the relieving guard arrived.
Otherwise the street lay empty and grey in the hot sunshine. His eyes
wandered back to the woman opposite. She was standing before her
looking-glass, powder puff in hand, intent on powdering the corners of
her nose, with a grimace which made her look like a monkey. He left the
window and sat down in his rocking chair.
He made his programme for the day, for he had a vague dread of
solitude. On week days he was surrounded by the school-boys, and
although he had no love for those wild beasts whose taming, or rather
whose efficient acquisition of the difficult art of dissembling, was
his life task, yet he felt a certain void when he was not with them.
Now, during the long summer vacations, he had established a holiday
school, but even so he had been compelled to give the boys short summer
holidays, and, with the exception of meal times when he could always
count on the bookseller and the second violin, he had been alone for
several days.
“At two o’clock,” he mused, “when the guard has been relieved, and the
crowds have dispersed, I’ll go to my restaurant to dine; then I’ll
invite the bookseller to Strömsborg; there won’t be a soul to-day; we
can have coffee there and punch, and stay till the evening when we’ll
return to town and to Rejner’s.” (Rejner’s was the name of his
restaurant in Berzelius Place.)
Punctually at two o’clock he took his hat, brushed himself carefully
and went out.
“I wonder whether there’ll be stewed perch to-day,” he thought. “And
mightn’t one treat oneself to asparagus, as it’s midsummer-day?”
He strolled past the high wall of the Government Bakery. In Berzelius
Park the seats which were usually occupied by the nursemaids of the
rich and their charges, were crowded with the families of the
labourers who had appeared in great numbers with their perambulators.
He saw a mother feeding her baby. She was a large, full-breasted
woman, and the baby’s dimpled hand almost disappeared in her bosom.
The schoolmaster turned away with a feeling of loathing. He was
annoyed to see these strangers in _his_ park. It was very much like
the servants using the drawing-room when their master and mistress had
gone out; moreover, he couldn’t forgive them their plainness.
He arrived at the glass verandah, and put his hand on the door handle,
thinking once more of the stewed perch “with lots of parsley,” when
his eyes fell on a notice on the door. There was no necessity to read
it, he knew its purport: the restaurant was closed on midsummer-day;
he had forgotten it. He felt as if he had run with his head into a
lamp-post. He was furious; first of all with the proprietor for
closing, then with himself for having forgotten that the restaurant
would be closed. It seemed to him so monstrous that he could have
forgotten an incident of such importance, that he couldn’t believe it
and racked his brain to find someone on whom he could lay the blame.
Of course, it was the fault of the proprietor. He had run off the
lines, come into collision. He was done. He sat down on the seat and
almost shed tears of rage.
Thump! a ball hit him right in the middle of his starched shirt front.
Like an infuriated wasp he rose from his seat to find the criminal; a
plain little girl’s face laughed into his; a labourer in his Sunday
clothes and straw hat appeared, took her by the hand and smilingly
expressed a hope that the child had not hurt him; a laughing crowd of
soldiers and servant girls stared at him. He looked round for a
constable for he felt that his rights as a human being had been
encroached upon. But when he saw the constable in familiar conversation
with the child’s mother, he dropped the idea of making a scene, went
straight to the nearest cab-stand, hired a cab, and told the driver
to drive him to the bookseller’s; he could not bear to be alone any
longer.
In the safe shelter of the cab he took out his handkerchief and flicked
the dust from his shirt front.
He dismissed the cab in Goten Street, for he felt sure that he would
find his friend at home. But as he walked upstairs his assurance left
him. Supposing he were out after all!
He was out. Not one of the tenants was at home. His knock sounded
through an empty house; his footsteps re-echoed on the deserted
stairs.
When he was again in the street he was at a loss to know what to do.
He did not know Potocki’s address, and where was he to find an address
book on a day when all the shops were closed?
Without knowing where he was going, he went down the street, past the
harbour, across the bridge. He did not meet a single man he knew. The
presence of the crowd which occupied the town during the absence of
their betters annoyed him, for, like the rest of us, the education
which he had received at school had made an aristocrat of him.
In his first anger he had forgotten his hunger, but now it re-asserted
itself. A new, terrible thought occurred to him, a thought which up to
now he had put away from him out of sheer cowardice: Where was he to
dine? He had started out with plenty of vouchers in his pocket, but
only one crown and fifty öre in coin. The vouchers were only used at
Rejner’s, for convenience sake, and he had spent a crown on his
cabfare.
He found himself again in Berzelius Park. Everywhere he met labourers
and their families, eating what they had brought with them in baskets;
hard-boiled eggs, crabs, pancakes. And the police did not interfere.
On the contrary, he saw a policeman with a sandwich in one hand and a
glass of beer in the other. But what irritated him more than anything
else was the fact that these people whom he despised had the advantage
of him. But why couldn’t he go into a dairy and appease his hunger?
Yes, why not? The very thought of it made him shudder.
After some little reflection he went down to the harbour, intending to
cross over to the Deer Park. He was bound to find acquaintances there
from whom he could borrow money (hateful thought!) for his dinner. And
if so, he would dine at “Hazelmount,” the best restaurant.
The steamer was so crowded that schoolmaster Blom had to stand close
to the engine; the heat at his back was intolerable; his morning coat
was being covered with grease spots, while he stood, with his gaze
rivetted on the untidy head of a servant girl and endured the rancid
smell of the hair-oil. But he did not see a single face he knew.
When he entered the restaurant in the Deer Park, he squared his
shoulders and tried to look as distinguished as possible.