The German Lieutenant, and Other Stories

by August Strindberg

In his mother's room was a stone image of the Virgin and Child fixed to the wall; she regarded her Son with a look full of hope and without any foreboding that she held a future condemned prisoner upon her knees. Young Sten felt a vague depression and went on. Through a secret door he mounted up into the attic and went out upon the roof. Underneath him he saw the whole wide-stretching expanse of land which till lately he had called his own: these green fields which once formed the bottom of the sea, surrounded by small green hills once islands, but lately wore their verdure on his account—to support the poor who clothed him, brushed him, prepared his food, and tended his horses, his hounds, his falcons and his cattle. In the previous autumn he had stood here and watched them sow his corn; now others would come and cut and gather it in. A little while ago it was his to decide when the fishes in the streams should die, when the firs in the wood should be felled, and when the game should be shot. Even the birds in this huge space of air belonged to him, although they had flown hither from the realm of the Emperor of Austria.

He could not yet grasp the fact that he possessed nothing more of all this, for he had never missed anything and therefore did not know what possession was; he only felt a huge emptiness and thought that the landscape had a melancholy look. The swallows which had come that very day flew screaming about him and sought their old nests in the eaves; some found them, and others did not—the rains of autumn and snows of winter had destroyed their little clay dwellings so that they had fallen into the castle-moat.

But there was clay in the fields, water in the brooks and straw on every hillock; as long as they were homeless they could find shelter in every grove and under the thatch of every cottage. They hunted without hindrance in their airy hunting grounds; they paired and wedded in the blue spring weather which was full of the sweet scents of the newly sprung birches, the honey-perfumed catkins of the osiers, and all the invisible burgeonings of the spring. He went farther up on the roof and stood by the pole that supported the dog-vane. As he looked up to the white clouds of spring sailing by, it seemed to him as though he stood on the aerial ship of a fairy-tale and were sailing among the clouds, and when he looked down on the earth again it appeared like a collection of mole-hills, a mere rubbish-heap cast out of heaven. But he had a foreboding that he must go down and dig in the mole-hills in order to find a living; he felt that his feet stood firm upon the earth, although his glances wandered at will among the silver-gleaming clouds.

As he descended the narrow attic stairs it seemed to him as though an enormous gimlet were screwing him deeper and deeper into the earth. He entered the garden and looked at the apple trees in blossom. Who would pluck the fruits of these trees which he had cultivated and tended for years? He looked at the empty stable; all his horses were gone except a sorry nag, which he had never thought worth riding. He went into the dog-house and saw only ten empty leash-straps. Then his heart grew heavy, for he felt that he had been parted from the only living creatures who loved him. All others—friends, servants, farm-hands, tenants—had, as his poverty increased, gradually changed their demeanour, but these ten had always remained the same. He was astonished that he did not feel the blank so bitterly up there in the ancestral castle with its memories, for he forgot that that sense of loss had long been obliterated by his tears.

He went into the courtyard of the castle. There a sight met his eyes which made him realise his true situation. On a four-wheeled wagon, to which three pairs of oxen were yoked, lay a heap of furniture and household utensils; beneath all lay the great oak bedstead splendidly carved, mighty clothes and linen chests constructed like fortresses against thieves, his father's work-table, the family dining-table, the chairs from the sitting-room with fragments of torn-down, gaudy-coloured curtains, his mother's embroidery-frame, his grandfather's chair with the cushioned arms and the high back, and on the top of all his own cradle and the praying stool at which his mother had so often prayed for her little one. Beside them were bundles of lances, swords, and shields with which his forefathers had once acquired and defended these goods which he must now leave behind in order to go out into the world and earn his bread in the sweat of his brow. All these dead things which, when in their places, had formed parts of his own self lay there like corpses and up-torn trees showing their roots; it was an enormous funeral pile of memories, which he would have liked to set fire to.

Just then the gates grated on their hinges, the drawbridge was lowered, the driver cracked his whip over the first pair of oxen, the ropes and shafts of the cart creaked, and the heavily laden vehicle rattled away on the stone-paved courtyard. As it rolled over the planks of the wooden, bridge, there was a rumbling like the echo from a grave-vault.

"The last load?" called the driver to the gate-keeper.

"The last," came the answer from the vaulted gateway.

The word "last" made a deep impression on Sten, who felt himself to be the last of his race, but he could not indulge in further reflections, for a man whom he did not know stepped towards him holding the nag.

"The castle is to be shut up," he said.