AWAY FROM HOME
Now he stands on the deck of a steamer far out at sea. He has had so much to look at on the journey that he has not felt any tedium. But now it is afternoon, which is always melancholy, like the beginning of old age. The shadows of the sun fall and alter everything without hiding everything, like the night. He begins to miss something. He has a feeling of emptiness, of being deserted, broken off. He wants to go home, but the consciousness that he cannot do so at once fills him with terror and despair and he weeps. When his brothers ask him why, he says he wants to go home to his mother. They laugh at him, but her image recurs to his mind, serious, mild, and smiling. He hears her last words at parting: "Be obedient and respectful to all, take care of your clothes, and don't forget your evening prayer." He thinks how disobedient he has been to her, and wonders whether she may be ill. Her image seems glorified, and draws him with unbreakable cords of longing. This feeling of loneliness and longing after his mother followed him all through his life. Had he come perhaps too early and incomplete into the world? What held him so closely bound to his mother?
To this question he found no answer either in books or in life. But the fact remained: he never became himself, was never liberated, never a complete individuality. He remained, as it were, a mistletoe, which could not grow except upon a tree; he was a climbing plant which must seek a support. He was naturally weak and timid, but he took part in all physical exercises; he was a good gymnast, could mount a horse when on the run, was skilled in the use of all sorts of weapons, was a bold shot, swimmer, and sailor, but only in order not to appear inferior to others. If no one watched him when bathing, he merely slipped into the water; but if anyone was watching, he plunged into it, head-over-heels, from the roof of the bathing-shed. He was conscious of his timidity, and wished to conceal it. He never attacked his school-fellows, but if anyone attacked him, he would strike back even a stronger boy than himself. He seemed to have been born frightened, and lived in continual fear of life and of men.
The ship steams out of the bay and there opens before them a blue stretch of sea without a shore. The novelty of the spectacle, the fresh wind, the liveliness of his brothers, cheer him up. It has just occurred to him that they have come eighteen miles by sea when the steamboat turns into the Nykopingså river.
When the gangway has been run out, there appears a middle-aged man with blond whiskers, who, after a short conversation with the captain, takes over charge of the boys. He looks friendly, and is cheerful. It is the parish clerk of Vidala. On the shore there stands a waggon with a black mare, and soon they are above in the town and stop at a shopkeeper's house which is also an inn for the country people. It smells of herrings and small beer, and they get weary of waiting. The boy cries again. At last Herr Linden comes in a country cart with their baggage, and after many handshakes and a few glasses of beer they leave the town. Fallow fields and hedges stretch in a long desolate perspective, and over some red roofs there rises the edge of a wood in the distance. The sun sets, and they have to drive for three miles through the dark wood. Herr Linden talks briskly in order to keep up their spirits. He tells them about their future school-fellows, the bathing-places, and strawberry-picking. John sleeps till they have reached an inn where there are drunken peasants. The horses are taken out and watered. Then they continue their journey through dark woods. In one place they have to get down and climb up a hill. The horses steam with perspiration and snort, the peasants on the baggage-cart joke and drink, the parish clerk chats with them and tells funny stories. Still they go on sleeping and waking, getting down and resting alternately. Still there are more woods, which used to be haunted by robbers, black pine woods under the starry sky, cottages and hedges. The boy is quite alarmed, and approaches the unknown with trembling.
At last they are on a level road; the day dawns, and the waggon stops before a red house. Opposite it is a tall dark building—a church—once more a church. An old woman, as she appears to him, tall and thin, comes out, receives the boys, and conducts them into a large room on the ground-floor, where there is a cover-table. She has a sharp voice which does not sound friendly, and John is afraid. They eat in the gloom, but do not relish the unusual food, and one of them has to choke down tears. Then they are led in the dark into an attic. No lamp is lit. The room is narrow; pallets and beds are laid across chairs and on the floor, and there is a terrible odor. There is a stirring in the beds, and one head rises, and then another. There are whispers and murmurs, but the new-comers can see no faces. The eldest brother gets a bed to himself, but John and the second brother lie foot to foot. It is a new thing for them, but they creep into bed and draw the blankets over them. His elder brother stretches himself out at his ease, but John protests against this encroachment. They push each other with their feet, and John is struck. He weeps at once. The eldest brother is already asleep. Then there comes a voice from a corner on the ground: "Lie still, you young devils, and don't fight!"
"What do you say?" answers his brother, who is inclined to be impudent.
The bass voice answers, "What do I say? I say—Leave the youngster alone."
"What have you to do with that?"
"A good deal. Come here, and I'll thrash you."
"You thrash me!"
His brother stands up in his night-shirt. The owner of the bass voice comes towards him. All that one can see is a short sturdy figure with broad shoulders. A number of spectators sit upright in their beds.
They fight, and the elder brother gets the worst of it.
"No! don't hit him! don't hit him!"
The small brother throws himself between the combatants. He could not see anyone of his own flesh and blood being beaten or suffering without feeling it in all his nerves. It was another instance of his want of independence and consciousness of the closeness of the blood-tie.
Then there is silence and dreamless sleep, which Death is said to resemble, and therefore entices so many to premature rest.
Now there begins a new little section of life—an education without his parents, for the boy is out in the world among strangers. He is timid, and carefully avoids every occasion of being blamed. He attacks no one, but defends himself against bullies. There are, however, too many of them for the equilibrium to be maintained. Justice is administered by the broad-shouldered boy mentioned above, who is humpbacked, and always takes the weaker one's part when unrighteously attacked.
In the morning they do their lessons, bathe before dinner, and do manual labour in the afternoon. They weed the garden, fetch water from the spring, and keep the stable clean. It is their father's wish that the boys should do physical work, although they pay the usual fees.
But John's obedience and conscientiousness do not suffice to render his life tolerable. His brothers incur all kinds of reprimands, and under them he also suffers much. He is keenly conscious of their solidarity, and is in this summer only as it were the third part of a person. There are no other punishments except detention, but even the reprimands disquiet him. Manual labour makes him physically strong, but his nerves are just as sensitive as before. Sometimes he pines for his mother, sometimes he is in extremely high spirits and indulges in risky amusements, such as piling up stones in a limestone quarry and lighting a fire at the bottom of it, or sliding down steep hills on a board. He is alternately timid and daring, overflowing with spirits or brooding, but without proper balance.
The church stands on the opposite side of the way, and with its black roof and white walls throws a shadow across the summer-like picture. Daily from his window he sees monumental crosses which rise above the churchyard wall. The church clock does not strike day and night as that in the Clara Church did, but in the evenings at six o'clock one of the boys is allowed to pull the bell-rope which hangs in the tower. It was a solemn moment when, for the first time, his turn came. He felt like a church official, and when he counted three times the three bell-strokes, he thought that God, the pastor, and the congregation would suffer harm if he rang one too many. On Sundays the bigger boys were allowed to ring the bells. Then John stood on the dark wooden staircase and wondered.
In the course of the summer there arrived a black-bordered proclamation which caused great commotion when read aloud in church. King Oscar was dead. Many good things were reported of him, even if no one mourned him. And now the bells rang daily between twelve and one o'clock. In fact, church-bells seemed to follow him.
The boys played in the churchyard among the graves and soon grew familiar with the church. On Sundays they were all assembled in the organ-loft. When the parish clerk struck up the psalm, they took their places by the organ-stops, and when he gave them a sign, all the stops were drawn out and they marched into the choir. That always made a great impression on the congregation.
But the fact of his having to come in such proximity to holy things, and of his handling the requisites of worship, etc., made him familiar with them, and his respect for them diminished. For instance, he did not find the Lord's Supper edifying when on Saturday evening he had eaten some of the holy bread in the parish clerk's kitchen, where it was baked and stamped with the impression of a crucifix. The boys ate these pieces of bread, and called them wafers. Once after the Holy Communion he and the churchwarden were offered the rest of the wine in the vestry.
Nevertheless, after he had been parted from his mother, and felt himself surrounded by unknown threatening powers, he felt a profound need of having recourse to some refuge and of keeping watch. He prayed his evening prayer with a fair amount of devotion; in the morning, when the sun shone, and he was well rested, he did not feel the need of it.
One day when the church was being aired the boys were playing in it. In an access of high spirits they stormed the altar. But John, who was egged on to something more daring, ran up into the pulpit, reversed the hour-glass, and began to preach out of the Bible. This made a great sensation. Then he descended, and ran along the tops of the pews through the whole church. When he had reached the pew next to the altar, which belonged to a count's family, he stepped too heavily on the reading-desk, which fell with a crash to the ground. There was a panic, and all the boys rushed out of church. He stood alone and desolate. In other circumstances he would have run to his mother, acknowledged his fault, and implored her help. But she was not there. Then he thought of God; he fell on his knees before the altar, and prayed through the Paternoster. Then, as though inspired with a thought from above, he arose calmed and strengthened, examined the desk, and found that its joints were not broken. He took a clamp, dovetailed the joints together, and, using his boot as a hammer, with a few well-directed blows repaired the desk. He tried it, and found it firm. Then he went greatly relieved out of the church. "How simple!" he thought to himself, and felt ashamed of having prayed the Lord's Prayer. Why? Perhaps he felt dimly that in this obscure complex which we call the soul there lives a power which, summoned to self-defence at the hour of need, possesses a considerable power of extricating itself. He did not fall on his knees and thank God, and this showed that he did not believe it was He who had helped him. That obscure feeling of shame probably arose from the fact of his perceiving that he had crossed a river to fetch water, i.e., that his prayer had been superfluous.
But this was only a passing moment of self-consciousness. He continued to be variable and capricious. Moodiness, caprice, or diables noirs, as the French call it, is a not completely explained phenomenon. The victim of them is like one possessed; he wants something, but does the opposite; he suffers from the desire to do himself an injury, and finds almost a pleasure in self-torment. It is a sickness of the soul and of the will, and former psychologists tried to explain it by the hypothesis of a duality in the brain, the two hemispheres of which, they thought, under certain conditions could operate independently each for itself and against the other. But this explanation has been rejected. Many have observed the phenomenon of duplex personality, and Goethe has handled this theme in Faust. In capricious children who "do not know what they want," as the saying is, the nerve-tension ends in tears. They "beg for a whipping," and it is strange that on such occasions a slight chastisement restores the nervous equilibrium and is almost welcomed by the child, who is at once pacified, appeased, and not at all embittered by the punishment, which in its view must have been unjust. It really had asked for a beating as a medicine. But there is also another way of expelling the "black dog." One takes the child in one's arms so that it feels the magnetism of friendship and is quieted. That is the best way of all.
John suffered from similar attacks of caprice. When some treat was proposed to him, a strawberry-picking expedition for example, he asked to be allowed to remain at home, though he knew he would be bored to death there. He would have gladly gone, but he insisted on remaining at home. Another will stronger than his own commanded him to do so. The more they tried to persuade him, the stronger was his resistance. But then if someone came along jovially and with a jest seized him by the collar, and threw him into the haycart, he obeyed and was relieved to be thus liberated from the mysterious will that mastered him. Generally speaking, he obeyed gladly and never wished to put himself forward or be prominent. So much of the slave was in his nature. His mother had served and obeyed in her youth, and as a waitress had been polite towards everyone.
One Sunday they were in the parsonage, where there were young girls. He liked them, but he feared them. All the children went out to pluck strawberries. Someone suggested that they should collect the berries without eating them, in order to eat them at home with sugar. John plucked diligently and kept the agreement; he did not eat one, but honestly delivered up his share, though he saw others cheating. On their return home the berries were divided by the pastor's daughter, and the children pressed round her in order that each might get a full spoonful. John kept as far away as possible; he was forgotten and berryless.
He had been passed over! Full of the bitter consciousness of this, he went into the garden and concealed himself in an arbour. He felt himself to be the last and meanest. He did not weep, however, but was conscious of something hard and cold rising within, like a skeleton of steel. After he had passed the whole company under critical review, he found that he was the most honest, because he had not eaten a single strawberry outside; and then came the false inference—he had been passed over because he was better than the rest. The result was that he really regarded himself as such, and felt a deep satisfaction at having been overlooked.
He had also a special skill in making himself invisible, or keeping concealed so as to be passed over. One evening his father brought home a peach. Each child received a slice of the rare fruit, with the exception of John, and his otherwise just father did not notice it. He felt so proud at this new reminder of his gloomy destiny that later in the evening he boasted of it to his brothers. They did not believe him, regarding his story as improbable. The more improbable the better, he thought. He was also plagued by antipathies. One Sunday in the country a cart full of boys came to the parish clerk's. A brown-complexioned boy with a mischievous and impudent face alighted from it. John ran away at the first sight of him, and hid himself in the attic. They found him out: the parish clerk cajoled him, but he remained sitting in his corner and listened to the children playing till the brown-complexioned boy had gone away.
Neither cold baths, wild games, nor hard physical labour could harden his sensitive nerves, which at certain moments became strung up to the highest possible pitch. He had a good memory, and learned his lessons well, especially practical subjects such as geography and natural science. He liked arithmetic, but hated geometry; a science which seemed to deal with unrealities disquieted him. It was not till later, when a book of land mensuration came into his hands and he had obtained an insight into the practical value of geometry, that the subject interested him. He then measured trees and houses, the garden and its avenues, and constructed cardboard models.
He was now entering his tenth year. He was broad-shouldered, with a sunburnt complexion; his hair was fair, and hung over a sickly looking high and prominent forehead, which often formed a subject of conversation and caused his relatives to give him the nickname of "the professor." He was no more an automaton, but began to make his own observations and to draw inferences. He was approaching the time when he would be severed from his surroundings and go alone. Solitude had to take for him the place of desert-wandering, for he had not a strong enough individuality to go his own way. His sympathies for men were doomed not to be reciprocated, because their thoughts did not keep pace with his. He was destined to go about and offer his heart to the first comer; but no one would take it, because it was strange to them, and so he would retire into himself, wounded, humbled, overlooked, and passed by.
The summer came to an end, and when the school-term began he returned to Stockholm. The gloomy house by the Clara churchyard seemed doubly depressing to him now, and when he saw the long row of class-rooms through which he must work his way in a fixed number of years in order to do laboriously the same through another row of class-rooms in the High School, life did not seem to him particularly inviting. At the same time his self-opinionatedness began to revolt against the lessons, and consequently he got bad reports. A term later, when he had been placed lower in his class, his father took him from the Clara School and placed him in the Jacob School. At the same time they left the Norrtullsgata and took a suburban house in the Stora Grabergsgata near the Sabbatsberg.