Recollections of My Childhood and Youth

by Georg Brandes

IX.

On the whole, the world was friendly. It chiefly depended on whether one were good or not. If not, Karoline was especially prone to complain and Father and Mother were transformed into angry powers. Father was, of course, a much more serious power than Mother, a more distant, more hard-handed power. Neither of them, in an ordinary way, inspired any terror. They were in the main protecting powers.

The terrifying power at this first stage was supplied by the bogey-man. He came rushing suddenly out of a corner with a towel in front of his face and said: "Bo!" and you jumped. If the towel were taken away there soon emerged a laughing face from behind it. That at once made the bogey-man less terrible. And perhaps that was the reason Maren's threat: "Now, if you are not good, the bogey-man will come and take you," quickly lost its effect. And yet it was out of this same bogey-man, so cold-bloodedly shaken off, that at a later stage a personality with whom there was no jesting developed, one who was not to be thrust aside in the same way, a personality for whom you felt both fear and trembling-- the Devil himself.

But it was only later that he revealed himself to my ken. It was not he who succeeded first to the bogey-man. It was--the police. The police was the strange and dreadful power from which there was no refuge for a little boy. The police came and took him away from his parents, away from the nursery and the drawing-room, and put him in prison.

In the street the police wore a blue coat and had a large cane in his hand. Woe to the one who made the acquaintance of that cane!

My maternal grandfather was having his warehouse done up, a large warehouse, three stories high. Through doors at the top, just under the gable in the middle, there issued a crane, and from it hung down a tremendously thick rope at the end of which was a strong iron hook. By means of it the large barrels of sky-blue indigo, which were brought on waggons, were hoisted. Inside the warehouse the ropes passed through every storey, through holes in the floors. If you pulled from the inside at the one or the other of the ropes, the rope outside with the iron crook went up or down.

In the warehouse you found Jens; he was a big, strong, taciturn, majestic man with a red nose and a little pipe in his mouth, and his fingers were always blue from the indigo. If you had made sure of Jens' good-will, you could play in the warehouse for hours at a time, roll the empty barrels about, and--which was the greatest treat of all--pull the ropes. This last was a delight that kept all one's faculties at extreme tension. The marvellous thing about it was that you yourself stood inside the house and pulled, and yet at the same time you could watch through the open doors in the wall how the rope outside went up or down. How it came about was an enigma. But you had the refreshing consciousness of having accomplished something--saw the results of your efforts before your eyes.

Nor could I resist the temptation of pulling the ropes when Jens was out and the warehouse empty. My little brother had whooping cough, so I could not live at home, but had to be at my grandfather's. One day Jens surprised me and pretty angry he was. "A nice little boy you are! If you pull the rope at a wrong time you will cut the expensive rope through, and it cost 90 Rigsdaler! What do you think your grandfather will say?" [Footnote: A Rigsdaler was worth about two shillings and threepence, English money. It is a coin that has been out of use about 40 years.]

It was, of course, very alarming to think that I might destroy such a valuable thing. Not that I had any definite ideas of money and numbers. I was well up in the multiplication table and was constantly wrestling with large numbers, but they did not correspond to any actual conception in my mind. When I reckoned up what one number of several digits came to multiplied by another of much about the same value, I had not the least idea whether Father or Grandfather had so many Rigsdaler, or less, or more. There was only one of the uncles who took an interest in my gift for multiplication, and that was my stout, rich uncle with the crooked mouth, of whom it was said that he owned a million, and who was always thinking of figures. He was hardly at the door of Mother's drawing-room before he called out: "If you are a sharp boy and can tell me what 27,374 times 580,208 are, you shall have four skilling;" and quickly slate and pencil appeared and the sum was finished in a moment and the four skilling pocketed. [Footnote: Four skilling would be a sum equal to 1-1/2d. English money.]

I was at home then in the world of figures, but not in that of values. All the same, it would be a terrible thing to destroy such a value as 90 Rigsdaler seemed to be. But might it not be that Jens only said so? He surely could not see from the rope whether it had been pulled or not.

So I did it again, and one day when Jens began questioning me sternly could not deny my guilt. "I saw it," said Jens; "the rope is nearly cut in two, and now you will catch it, now the policeman will come and fetch you."

For weeks after that I did not have one easy hour. Wherever I went, or whatever I did, the fear of the police followed me. I dared not speak to anyone of what I had done and of what was awaiting me. I was too much ashamed, and I noticed, too, that my parents knew nothing. But if a door opened suddenly I would look anxiously at the incomer. When I was walking with the nurse and my little brother I looked all round on every side, and frequently peeped behind me, to see whether the police were after me. Even when I lay in my bed, shut in on all four sides by its trellis-work, the dread of the police was upon me still.

There was only one person to whom I dared mention it, and that was Jens. When a few weeks had gone by I tried to get an answer out of him. Then I perceived that Jens did not even know what I was talking about. Jens had evidently forgotten all about it. Jens had been making fun of me. If my relief was immense, my indignation was no less. So much torture for nothing at all! Older people, who had noticed how the word "police" was to me an epitome of all that was terrible, sometimes made use of it as an explanation of things that they thought were above my comprehension.

When I was six years old I heard the word "war" for the first time. I did not know what it was, and asked. "It means," said one of my aunts, "that the Germans have put police in Schleswig and forbidden the Danes to go there, and that they will beat them if they stay there." That I could understand, but afterwards I heard them talking about soldiers. "Are there soldiers as well?" I asked. "Police and soldiers," was the answer. But that confused me altogether, for the two things belonged in my mind to wholly different categories. Soldiers were beautiful, gay- coloured men with shakos, who kept guard and marched in step to the sound of drums and fifes and music, till you longed to go with them. That was why soldiers were copied in tin and you got them on your birthday in boxes. But police went by themselves, without music, without beautiful colours on their uniforms, looked stern and threatening, and had a stick in their hands. Nobody dreamt of copying them in tin. I was very much annoyed to find out, as I soon did, that I had been misled by the explanation and that it was a question of soldiers only.

Not a month had passed before I began to follow eagerly, when the grown- up people read aloud from the farthing newspaper sheets about the battles at Bov, Nybböl, etc. The Danes always won. At bottom, war was a cheerful thing.

Then one day an unexpected and overwhelming thing happened. Mother was sitting with her work on the little raised platform in the drawing-room, in front of the sewing-table with its many little compartments, in which, under the loose mahogany lid, there lay so many beautiful and wonderful things--rings and lovely earrings, with pearls in them--when the door to the kitchen opened and the maid came in. "Has Madame heard? The Christian VIII. has been blown up at Eckernförde and the Gefion is taken."

"Can it be possible?" said Mother. And she leaned over the sewing-table and burst into tears, positively sobbed. It impressed me as nothing had ever done before. I had never seen Mother cry. Grown-up people did not cry. I did not even know that they could. And now Mother was crying till the tears streamed down her face. I did not know what either the Christian VIII. or the Gefion were, and it was only now that the maid explained to me that they were ships. But I understood that a great misfortune had happened, and soon, too, how people were blown up with gunpowder, and what a good thing it was that one of our acquaintances, an active young man who was liked by everyone and always got on well, had escaped with a whole skin, and had reached Copenhagen in civilian's dress.