Читать книгу When I Was a Child - Vilhelm Moberg - Страница 11

Valter went with his father to the forest to peel fence posts. Now he was big enough to do useful work. And being seven years of age, he was supposed to earn his food. During the spring his schoolwork prevented him from helping Father, but during the fall he attended school only on Fridays and could help in the forest other weekdays.

It was a nuisance that school took so much of the children’s work time. And Valter preferred the forest. He used a debarking-knife almost as long as himself. Father piled the posts on sawhorses and Valter peeled off the bark until they lay there like skinned calves on a slaughter bench. The posts were used for the railroad fence; between the beautiful posts that his hands had peeled the trains would rush. The travelers on their soft seats would perhaps look out through the windows and see his posts. “They’re peeled well,” they might say. “Wonder who did it.”

When Valter came home evenings he now smelled like Father. He smelled of pitch, pine needles, wood, and sap, a manfolk smell that made him proud. Now all would recognize his smell and know that he performed a man’s work and earned his food. One must earn one’s food before eating it to enjoy its blessing. If he spent the day in school and made no use of himself, he would not relish his food in the evening. Then he would sit and swallow his unearned bites with the knowledge of denied blessing.

He was growing up. He was his father’s working-comrade. On the way to or from the forest he would trudge a little behind Father, but this was not because his legs were so short, but rather because Father’s were so long. But Father never left him behind entirely; he would stop at intervals to let Valter catch up; then he would walk slower. Returning home in the evenings, it might sometimes happen that Soldier-Sträng would pick up his son and carry him on his shoulder. Valter held on to Father’s neck; Father could carry a whole tree on his shoulder as easily as a hazel branch; he could splinter a thick log with a single ax-cut.

They walked together along the timber-drivers’ road in the winter, following the white sled marks in the snow with its glittering frost stars. The timber road was two bright lines through the forest, like the White Star Line that crossed the sea to America. And tall forest crowns soughed softly, protecting the workers below busy peeling posts.

Valter and his father were comrades. “Confidence, friendship, assistance must exist between comrades,” read a paragraph in the Instruction for the Infantry. This was the soldiers’ catechism, and Valter had read it from cover to cover many times. It gave advice as to those things a soldier must guard against: dishonesty, debt, drunkenness, debauchery, swearing. Yet Valter had heard his father as well as his father’s soldier-comrades use swear words, like the devil and hell. If the Crown had heard this, they might have been discharged. And the soldiers drank brännvin—Flink in Sutaremåla used to vomit on the stoop at the Christmas parties. If the Crown had known this, he might have been discharged. What did Father think of this?

“Flink would not have been discharged,” said Father. “It didn’t happen in the service. He vomited in civvies.”

However, Flink had recently been given a year’s probation.

Well, perhaps the soldiers could swear and carry on when not in the service. But there were other things that were forbidden in the Instruction. Valter knew whole paragraphs by heart: “Insubordinate speech and intercourse with base and lewd people disgrace the soldier and might lead to bad reputation, punishment, and finally dishonorable discharge.” Who were those people called base and lewd?

“It means they must stay away from bad women while on the maneuvers,” said Soldier-Sträng.

“Those women at the maneuvers—are they bad?”

“Some of them are. Some are even dangerous. Don’t have anything to do with them when you grow up! They might make you sick.”

“Those women, are they sick?”

“Well, some are sick. They’re not bedridden, exactly, but they are dangerous.”

Now Father had warned Valter against sick women who were not exactly bedridden. They were base and lewd. Hereabouts were no such women, said Father, but they looked so much like decent, fine women that one could easily make a mistake.

The soldier and his youngest son talked like comrades—“in confidence, friendship, assistance”—and Valter was proud of being a comrade to his father. He really wasn’t old enough for that yet. But as soon as his legs grew a little more he would be able to keep up with Father. Meanwhile, when he lagged behind, his father slowed down his pace until his son caught up with him. Father would wait, however great his hurry.

So it should be between comrades. Valter knew Father would never leave him behind.

Soldier-Sträng usually returned from the maneuvers the second week in October, but in the fall of 1905 he failed to return when expected. There was talk of war with Norway, and he was ordered to remain. Those troublesome Norwegians, they always wanted things their way. They were a different people from the Swedes. Colloquially they were called the Norwegian “rams,” and Valter thought of them as having one horn in the middle of the forehead; this wasn’t true, of course, but they butted in and annoyed the patient and good-natured Swedes.

A Norwegian ram. Well, they had had a ram at Soldier-Sträng’s last summer, and he was a most stubborn and impossible animal. However much Valter had pushed and pulled him, the ram had refused to budge. He had remained in the place he himself had chosen. Valter had beaten him with a stick, but the ram had only retaliated with his stone-hard forehead. It had not gone any better for Valter’s mother or brothers. If they annoyed the ram too much, he would take after them with his horns.

Norwegians were like that ram. If they decided to jump on the Swedes, there would be a war. And what would happen to Father in a war? Father who must defend the King and the Crown?

Mother said that God and King Oscar had Father’s welfare in their hands, but if all of them helped in the work, particularly at the potato-picking, then this, too, would aid.

And late one evening Samuel’s wagon drove up at the cottage with the returning soldier. The children were already in bed, but they quickly woke up and jumped to the floor. Father had brought home a mysterious parcel, a large, pyramid-shaped object in thick gray paper with heavy strings. It was nothing less—nothing less indeed—than a whole ten-pound sugarloaf! In his joy at getting home, the soldier had bought a sugarloaf at Hultsfred. He himself liked sugar, and now for once all of them were allowed to stuff themselves with sugar.

Father took the hand ax and cut the loaf in six more or less equal pieces—one for Mother, one for himself, and one for each of the children. The pieces were as large as two fisted hands. The sugar-eating began, and for a long while all you could hear was the crunching of sugar. Mother was toothless and had trouble with the chewing; she saved most of her piece to use for sweetening in cooking. And Father carried part of his piece in his pocket for several days.

The peace with Norway was celebrated in the soldier-cottage with this sugarloaf.

It was King Oscar who had averted war, said Father. King Oscar had said he would not shed one drop of Swedish blood while he held the scepter and reigned. He would rather lose Norway. King Oscar would lose half his salary now that one of his kingdoms was lost, but he cared not a bit about that. He would rather reign for half pay than sacrifice his soldiers’ blood. It had been said at Hultsfred that Crown Prince Gustaf was much bolder, because he was worrying about his inheritance, but he couldn’t do a thing about his father. It was evil of the Norwegian rams, though, to shove out King Oscar in his old age, said Father.

So ended that year, and a new almanac was bought. In the year 1906 the following events took place in the world: King Christian of Denmark died and was buried, the robber Aberg was sentenced to death for murder, there was an earthquake in San Francisco, and a revolution in Russia because they had lost the war with Japan. At the Strängshult soldier-cottage, at long last a privy was built. The family had long complained about the dungditch, particularly this last cold and windy winter. Soldier-Sträng had spoken to the villagers, but when all papers and contracts and regulations had been looked into, it was discovered that the village was not obliged to furnish a privy for its soldier. That miser Johannes in Kvarn, who was Alderman that year, had said that if their soldier wanted such a house then he must foot the bill.

And Nils Sträng did build the privy. He bought a load of one-inch boards and nailed together a house among the alder bushes below the yard. Suddenly there stood a building for two people, with a door and hasp, and the old dungditch went into disuse. He also built a new stoop, and his wife Hulda papered the kitchen and nailed cardboard to the ceiling in the big room to hide the ugly old beams. Things improved; when their cow bore a heifer calf, they decided to keep it; in a few years they would have two cows, and if they could manage rightly with the bull so that one calved in the spring and one in the fall, they would have milk and butter the year round.

Yes, things improved for Soldier-Sträng and tongues began wagging from envy in the neighbor cottages: they had an easy life. There were no longer so many brats in the family. Fredrik, now the eldest one at home, would be confirmed next winter. Dagmar—in service with Aldo Samuel in the village—was seventeen. She was well developed and capable of heavy work, and Aldo bragged about her and said he had never had such a good maid before; she could load her end of the dung-wagon as quickly as he filled his, and this was quite remarkable in a girl of her age. But this last year he had also paid her a grown woman’s wages—eight crowns a month.

Then, in April, Dagmar left her service and came home. She began to sew new clothes for herself—the America-ticket from Ivar was expected any day now. It was her turn to emigrate. Albin and Ivar had already sent their pictures, which were now part of the collection on the bureau; Albin and Ivar had become America-relatives.

Yes, it was Dagmar’s turn. She had bought a hat, a handbag of shiny oilcloth, a muff for her hands, and a brooch for her neck like Aunt Anna in the picture. And she bought hair in big wads, which she pushed under her own hair until it stood up in the air and looked real fine and upper-class. Her mother asked if the way she bought and decked herself without shame or decency meant that she was trying to ape upper-class people. Soldier-Hulda was afraid that her only daughter might grow vain if she carried on like this.

“I’ve earned the money myself,” said Dagmar.

Indeed, she had served for three years, and saved and gone without.

To Valter, Dagmar had never meant anything special when she had come home before, but now he eyed his sister in admiration: she had a hat, and a shiny handbag, and much hair. She was his only sister, and he approved of her being like better-people.

She was kind to her young brothers now while waiting for the America-ticket. When Valter was a little tyke and she took care of him she used to call him a brat and box his ears and spank his behind. At that time he had decided bitterly and definitely that he would repay her in like manner when he grew up. Now he was a manfolk and worked in the forest and felt that he could have repaid her. But nobler feelings made him refrain from vengeance. Dagmar seemed to regret her earlier bad behavior and was kind to him. Furthermore, no man could be such a coward as to take revenge on a woman.

He was thinking about the fact that his only sister was going to America, and the more he pondered over it, the sadder he grew. Mother, too, looked serious as she helped Dagmar with the sewing of her traveling-clothes. At last her thoughts came out: Dagmar was their only girl—she ought to stay at home.

“You have enough of brats without me,” said Dagmar.

It was true, there would still be four children at home after she had left.

“You’re so young, only seventeen,” said Soldier-Hulda.

“Ivar wasn’t older when he left.”

“It’s different with boys.”

“What is the difference?”

“They can take better care of themselves than girls.”

“I have taken care of myself here at home, slaving for the farmers. I can take care of myself in America,” said Dagmar with confidence.

Seventeen-year-old Dagmar stood there proudly, displaying her work-developed, round arms, her breasts bulging under the blouse. Health shone in her blossoming cheeks. She was tested in hard service, she was strong. She could lift almost as much as a man; Valter thought his sister was beautiful.

There was a well-known song that warned beautiful girls against going to America:

… but the rose might wither on your cheek—

In A-me-ri-ca!

was the refrain. The rosy-cheeked Dagmar only laughed at this ditty.

“You might have waited another year,” said Mother.

“I’m tired of slaving for the farmers,” replied Dagmar.

“You might get a job with better-people.”

“I don’t want to work for anyone. Life has other things to offer.”

Valter understood and guessed that his sister wanted to become upper-class herself, and he did not understand why Mother was against it. Three things were degrading: to beg, to be lazy, to have vermin. But what was there against being upper-class? He asked his mother about this.

“Each to his own,” said Soldier-Hulda. “Upper-class is upper-class. The others should never mix with them.”

“In this country, yes,” said Dagmar. “But in America all are equal.”

That was the reason so many went to America: to be considered as equals.

One evening Aldo Samuel came to call to persuade Dagmar to forget the America-journey and return to his service. He had not been able to find another maid, and a better one than Dagmar he would never find. The farmer praised and lauded her beyond reason. Then he promised to raise her wages: he would pay her ten crowns a month if she stayed one more year.

“Ten crowns a month!” repeated Hulda and took a step backward.

It was indeed high pay for a seventeen-year-old girl. Hulda had in her youth served a whole year for twelve crowns and a shift.

Dagmar did not answer, and Aldo Samuel increased his offer with one crown after another. Besides, he would be willing to give her two whole days free so she could attend the fair.

“No!” said Dagmar.

“Your conceit has grown beyond rhyme and reason,” said the farmer.

“I’m tired of spreading manure for you, Aldo Samuel.”

At this the peasant turned angry and began to argue so loudly that Valter got scared. Aldo Samuel swore at youth in general. Nowadays they had grown so uppity that they couldn’t even stand the smell of dung. Dagmar and her ilk had never learned respect and decency. And before he left he cursed America, which had turned the heads of servants. America was taking the best manpower from the land; what a pity that country in its entirety hadn’t sunk below with the city of San Francisco!

Afterward Father reproached Dagmar for having aroused Aldo Samuel; he was the most decent of the villagers; his bite wasn’t so bad as his bark.

Dagmar left on a spring evening when the crabapple tree had begun to shed its blooms. Gunnar and Valter each had picked a bouquet of flowers for their sister—buttercups, bluebells, fragrant lilies of the valley. Dagmar said she would keep them as a remembrance of her home, if they didn’t wither away on the Atlantic Ocean.

Aldo Samuel had not refused his wagon to Dagmar, and his hired hand drove the red mare that had pulled the wagon when Ivar and Albin left for America. Father and Mother stood at the wagon and looked solemn. His sister hugged Valter so hard that he almost felt ashamed of her farewell. Then Dagmar’s little America-chest was lifted up behind, while the restless mare pushed and pulled the wagon back and forth.

“Don’t let any menfolk fool you,” admonished Soldier-Sträng.

“I’ll take care of myself! I’m strong enough!”

But her voice was not quite so sure or so light as usual. She stepped up and sat down beside the driver. Mother turned for a moment toward the gooseberry bushes as the wheels began to roll.

And the wagon with Valter’s only sister moved slowly down the road and disappeared at the bend near the Little Field.

Soldier-Valter now wrote with pen and ink as he related his life’s experiences. He read the installment stories in the American papers and relived their happenings all alone. Then he himself wrote several novels. When he ran short of paper, he would pull off a piece of the wallpaper; he confined himself to spots behind the beds where it wouldn’t be noticed. He was writing a big novel entitled The Million-Dollar Inheritance. It was along the lines of the installment story he had read in The Swedish-American Weekly, about Count Eberhard in the Castle Waldhof, whose inheritance had been stolen by a swindler and who now must live in a forester’s poor cottage. The Million-Dollar Inheritance, Original Swedish Novel by Valter Sträng, was also about a count who had been swindled out of his inheritance and now lived in a cottage, hunting and fishing.

He hid his work well, against the roof bark in the attic. No outsider must see it. But there was a leak in the sod roof, water dripped through the bark exactly in the place where he had hidden his papers, and after a persistent rain he discovered that The Million-Dollar Inheritance had rained to pieces. No outsider ever saw his original novel.

Soldier-Valter demanded true answers to all questions and wanted to know the truth about all things. He wanted to know the truth about himself. He thought about this at times: he was Valter, the soldier’s son, one of seven children in this family. But this knowledge was not enough, now that he had grown. Mustn’t he be something more than Soldier-Valter?

God had created him, with the aid of Father and Mother; the circumstances that brought a child into the world he had discovered by himself. But why had God created him? Why had Father and Mother brought him into the world? He had asked them about this, but had not received a satisfactory answer; his parents only looked embarrassed. Perhaps they themselves did not know. They had only meant that he should live, that he should become Soldier-Valter. And he would live and grow old and die. It was not as he wished. Was he nothing beyond Soldier-Valter?

He thought and thought to discover himself. He must be someone in himself, not only someone else’s, not only the soldier’s. He wanted to be someone or something that no one else was. And he wanted to do something in this world that no one else had done.

Carpenter-Elof came to mend the roof that the wind and the rain had torn, and Valter helped him by handing up the sod. The religious Elof spoke to him about something no one else had spoken of before: man’s soul.

Carpenter-Elof said that Valter had a soul, and a soul was something that never died, that lived for all eternity. The most precious and most valuable human possession was the soul.

And this—the most precious and most valuable—he carried inside himself. Soldier-Valter was visible, but his soul was invisible. Soldier-Valter could die, but not his soul. Because he carried it invisibly within himself, he was something more.

Carpenter-Elof said that Valter had a white and innocent child-soul which could be compared with a newly washed and ironed shirt that had been given him by God and that God would someday take back. As he grew up, his shirt would become spotted and soiled with sins and vices. But God demanded that his soul must be pure and white when He took it back, as pure and unsoiled as when He had given it to Valter. Therefore the spots must first be removed with Christ’s blood. His soul must be washed in the Lamb’s blood and ironed with blueing of Grace, exactly as one washed a dirty shirt in lye soap and then put it on Sunday morning, starched and ironed.

Valter asked: How did it feel when the soul began to get dirty?

Old Carpenter-Elof pulled his red timberman’s-pencil from his mouth. “One feels it. It aches in one’s conscience.”

Thus Valter learned that it was his conscience that hurt him in his breast when he had done something wrong. It pained and ached as it did when one coughed with a bad cold. One’s conscience sat in there some place like a sensitive wound, a place that hurt. The greater a person’s sins, the greater the sensitive place. In cruel murderers, like the Atorp murderer he had read about in the papers, the whole inside of the breast was one great big wound, one sensitive conscience. That was why Atorp had been unable to endure living but had hanged himself in his cell, said Elof. It was because of his conscience.

Valter had a soul, but it was not his, for God owned it. His body that he walked about in was his own. His body he himself could make decisions for. It was divided—in his schoolbook—into head, body, and limbs, and it was in the head, body, or limbs that it hurt or felt good; it was the head, the body, and the limbs that worked and earned the food; it was they that became soldiers, or farmers, or shoemakers, or upper-class people, or traveled to America. This was the human body. But the human body died and turned to earth again, because, explained Carpenter-Elof: The body belonged to this earth.

Now Valter wondered what remained to himself. His soul belonged to the Creator, his body to the earth. Neither soul nor body was his own. And there was nothing more. Nothing that he owned himself. Himself was nothing, nobody. Everything that he had to live with here on this earth belonged to somebody else, to God or the earth.

But he was not satisfied with this explanation. He wanted to be someone himself, someone or something. He wanted to, he wanted to. He could not stop wanting to. He was not satisfied with a soul that God would take back, and a body that belonged to the earth.

He could never, never be satisfied with this. He strove for something more. There must be something that was his own, that he could make decisions for—something that was he himself.

When in the evenings he stood in the yard, his eyes following the mysterious twilight bird, or the woodcock which flew so swiftly across the sky and disappeared in its unhampered freedom, then he felt that there must be something more.