Читать книгу Ditte: Girl Alive! - Martin Andersen Nexø - Страница 8

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There are a milliard and a half of stars in the heavens, and—as far as we know—a milliard and a half of human beings on the earth. Exactly the same number of both! One would almost think the old saying was right,—that every human being was born under his own star. In hundreds of costly observatories all over the world, on plain and mountain, talented scientists are adjusting the finest instruments and peering out into the heavens. They watch and take photographic plates, their whole life taken up with the one idea: to make themselves immortal with having discovered a new star. Another celestial body—added to the milliard and a half already moving gracefully round.

Every second a human soul is born into the world. A new flame is lit, a star which perhaps may come to shine with unusual beauty, which in any case has its own unseen spectrum. A new being, fated, perhaps, to bestow genius, perhaps beauty around it, kisses the earth; the unseen becomes flesh and blood. No human being is a repetition of another, nor is any ever reproduced; each new being is like a comet which only once in all eternity touches the path of the earth, and for a brief time takes its luminous way over it—a phosphorescent body between two eternities of darkness. No doubt there is joy amongst human beings for every newly lit soul! And, no doubt they will stand round the cradle with questioning eyes, wondering what this new one will bring forth.

Alas, a human being is no star, bringing fame to him who discovers and records it! More often, it is a parasite which comes upon peaceful and unsuspecting people, sneaking itself into the world—through months of purgatory. God help it, if into the bargain it has not its papers in order.

Sörine's little one had bravely pushed itself into the light of day, surmounting all obstacles, denial, tears and preventatives, as a salmon springs against the stream. Now she lay in the daylight, red and wrinkled, trying to soften all hearts.

The whole of the community had done with her, she was a parasite and nothing else. A newly born human being is a figure in the transaction which implies proper marriage and settling down, and the next step which means a cradle and perambulator and—as it grows up—an engagement ring, marriage and children again. Much of this procedure is upset when a child like Sörine's little one is vulgar enough to allow itself to be born without marriage.

She was from the very first treated accordingly, without maudlin consideration for her tender helplessness. "Born out of wedlock" was entered on her certificate of birth which the midwife handed to the schoolmaster when she had helped the little one into the world, and the same was noted on the baptismal certificate. It was as if they all, the midwife, the schoolmaster and the parson, leaders of the community, in righteous vengeance were striking the babe with all their might. What matter if the little soul were begotten by the son of a farmer, when he refused to acknowledge it, and bought himself out of the marriage? A nuisance she was, and a blot on the industrious orderly community.

She was just as much of an inconvenience to her mother as to all the others. When Sörine was up and about again, she announced that she might just as well go out to service as all her sisters had done. Her fear of strangers had quite disappeared: she took a place a little further inland. The child remained with the grandparents.

No one in the wide world cared for the little one, not even the old people for that matter. But all the same Maren went up into the attic and brought out an old wooden cradle which had for many years been used for yarn and all kinds of lumber; Sören put new rockers, and once more Maren's old, swollen legs had to accustom themselves to rocking a cradle again.

A blot the little one was to her grandparents too—perhaps, when all is said and done, on them alone. They had promised themselves such great things of the girl—and there lay their hopes—an illegitimate child in the cradle! It was brought home to them by the women running to Maren, saying: "Well, how do you like having little ones again in your old days?" And by the other fishermen when Sören Man came to the harbor or the inn. His old comrades poked fun at him good-naturedly and said: "All very well for him—strong as a young man and all, Sören, you ought to stand treat all round."

But it had to be borne—and, after all, it could be got over. And the child was—when one got one's hand in again—a little creature who recalled so much that otherwise belonged to the past. It was just as if one had her oneself—in a way she brought youth to the house.

It was utterly impossible not to care for such a helpless little creature.