Читать книгу The Soul of a Child - Edwin Björkman - Страница 5

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"Why don't I remember when we came here," Keith asked his mother one day after she had let out the startling fact of his being born elsewhere.

"Because it happened before you began to remember things," she said a little warily.

As frequently was the case, her reply puzzled him more than the fact it was meant to explain, and so he asked no more questions that time.

On the whole, he lived completely in the present, and rather on the edge nearest the future, so that a teacher later said of him that he was in constant danger of "falling off forward." Highstrung and restless, sitting still did not come naturally until he had learned to read books all by himself, and he could hardly be called introspective. While prone to futile regrets, largely under the influence of his mother's morbid attitude, he gave little attention as a rule to what was past and gone.

Here was an exception, however--something concerning the past that stirred his curiosity powerfully--and it became his first subject for brooding.

He could remember all sorts of things, of course. And it seemed that he had always remembered them. Yet his mother was able to tell him things of which he knew nothing at all, although they had happened to himself. There might be any number of such things. What were they? Could he recall any of them by thinking hard enough?

When this problem laid hold of his mind he would retire to the corner between the big bureau and the right-hand window in the living-room, which, by formal conferment, was reserved for him as his own "play-room." The space in that nook was large enough to hold a small chair, a table to match, and a few toy boxes. There he would sit staring blindly at his toys until his mother anxiously inquired what was the matter with him.

The great question taking precedence of all the rest was: what was the very first thing he could remember?

With puckered brows and peering pupils he would send his gaze back into the misty past, and out of it emerged invariably the same image.

He saw himself seated on a small wooden horse fastened to a little platform with wheels under it. The horse was black with white spots, and possessed a nobly curved neck, a head with ears on top of it, and a pair of fiercely red nostrils.

The next thing recurring to his mind was a sense of swift, exhilarating movement. His father stood at one end of the living-room, his mother at the other, and the horse with himself on it was being pushed rapidly back and forth between them.

He could even hear his own joyous shouts as his father sent the horse careering across the floor by an extra strong push. The general impression left behind by the whole scene was one of happiness so acute that nothing else in his life compared with it.

Was it a real memory? If so, when did it happen? And what had become of the horse?

Finally the pressure from within became too strong and he blurted out the whole story to his mother in order to make sure of what it meant.

"You never had a horse large enough to sit on," she declared emphatically.

"You have been dreaming, child," Granny put in.

"What would the neighbours below have said," his mother continued. "And the rag carpets on the floor would have caught the wheels, anyhow."

Removing the rag carpets except for purposes of cleaning was one of the unforgivable sins, by the bye.

"And it isn't like your father either," Granny added after a while, not without a suggestion of bitterness in her voice.

"Carl is always tired when he comes home," Keith's mother rejoined in a tone that put an end to further discussion.

Granny's point made an impression on Keith's mind nevertheless. As far as he could actually remember, his father had on no occasion showed such a jolly spirit or done anything that could be used as basis for a belief in that one questionable recollection.

At all times of the day Keith was enjoined to keep quiet--because his mother was not well, or because of the neighbours, or just because "nice children should not make a noise"--but it was only after his father's return home that these injunctions must be taken quite seriously. The father's appearance brought an instantaneous change in the atmosphere of the place, the boy strove instinctly to be as little noticeable as possible. If his mercurial temperament lured him into temporary forgetfulness, a single stern word from the father sent him back into silence and the refuge of his own corner--or into bed.

But the more he considered and conceded the unlikeliness of the scene projected by some part of his mind with such persistency, the more passionately he craved it to be a real memory of something that had really happened to himself.

Perhaps it was merely a dream, as Granny had suggested. Perhaps it was something he had wished. …

Anyhow, he did wish that his father would let him come a little closer to himself at times--not in the same way his mother did, but as he did in the dream--or whatever it was. …

Once more he fell into a deep study of when he had begun to remember so hard that he could still remember it. Out of this he was awakened by his mother's voice:

"What is the matter, Keith?"

"I don't know what to play," he replied out of policy, as it might bring him something either in the way of a diversion or a treat. There were still some of mother's delectable ginger snaps left over from the Christmas baking.

"Your soldiers are right in front of you," his mother said in a voice holding out no hope.

So Keith returned to the tin soldiers that were his most cherished toys--perhaps because they drew fewer protests from above than anything else, as being least conductive to outbursts of youthful vivacity. Judging by the earnest attention with which he manoeuvred them on his own little table or, in moments of special dispensation, on the collapsible dining table placed against the wall between the two windows in the living-room, he ought to have ended as a general.