"I hate her with all my soul, but I am afraid to meet her."
"Which proves that you are still in love with her."
"Let's change the subject!"
"You really must control yourself, Falk! Take an example from me! But now I'll go and sun myself; one should enjoy life as much as possible in this dreary world. Gustav, you can go and play buttons for an hour, if you like."
Falk was left alone. The sun threw his rays over the steep roof opposite and warmed the room; he opened the window and put out his head for a breath of fresh air, but he only breathed the pungent odours of the gutter. His glance swept the street on the right and far away in the distance he saw a part of a steamer, a few waves of the Lake of Mälar glittering in the sunlight, and a hollow in the rocks on the other side, which were just beginning to show a little green here and there. He thought of the people whom that steamer would take into the country, who would bathe in those waves and feast their eyes on the young green. But at this moment the whitesmith below him began to hammer a sheet of iron, so that house and window panes trembled; two or three labourers went by with a rattling, evil-smelling cart, and an odour of brandy, beer, sawdust, and pine-branches poured out of the inn opposite. He shut the window and sat down at his table.
Before him lay a heap of about a hundred provincial papers, from which it was his task to make cuttings. He took off his cuffs and began to look through them. They smelt of oil and soot and blackened his hands—that was their principal feature. Nothing he considered worthy of reprinting was of any use, for he had to consider the programme of his paper. A report to the effect that the workmen of a certain factory had given the foreman a silver snuff-box had to be cut out; but the notice of a manufacturer having given five hundred crowns to his working-men's funds had to be ignored. A paragraph reporting that the Duke of Halland had handselled a pile-driver, and Director Holzheim celebrated the event in verses, had to be cut out and reproduced in full "because the people liked to read this kind of thing"; if he could add a little biting sarcasm, all the better, for then "they were sure to hear about it."
Roughly speaking, the rule was to cut out everything said in favour of journalists and working men and everything depreciating clergymen, officers, wholesale merchants (not retail), the professions, and famous writers. Moreover, at least once a week, it was his business to attack the management of the Royal Theatre, and severely criticize the frivolous musical comedies produced in the Little Theatre, in the name of morality and public decency—he had noticed that the working men did not patronize these theatres. Once a month the town councillors had to be accused of extravagance. As often as opportunity arose the form of government, not Government itself, had to be assailed. The editor severely censored all attacks on certain members of Parliament and ministers. Which? That was a mystery unknown to even the editor; it depended on a combination of circumstances which only the secret proprietor of the paper could deal with.
Falk worked with his scissors until one of his hands was black. He had frequent recourse to the gum-bottle, but the gum smelt sour and the heat in the room was stifling. The poor aloe, capable of enduring thirst like a camel, and patiently receiving countless stabs from an irritated steel-nib, increased the terrible resemblance to a desert. It had been stabbed until it was covered with black wounds; its leaves shot, like a bundle of donkeys' ears out of the parched mould. Falk probably had a vague consciousness of something of this sort, as he sat, plunged in thought, for before he could realize what he was doing, he had docked off all the ear lobes. When he perceived what he had done, he painted the wounds with gum and watched it drying in the sun.
He vaguely wondered for a few moments how he was to get dinner, for he had strayed on to that path which leads to destruction, so-called poor circumstances. Finally he lit a pipe and watched the soothing smoke rising and bathing, for a few seconds in the sunshine. It made him feel more tolerant of poor Sweden, as she expressed herself in these daily, weekly, and monthly reports, called the Press.
He put the scissors aside and threw the papers into a corner; he shared the contents of the earthen water-bottle with the aloe; the miserable object looked like a creature whose wings had been clipped; a spirit standing in a bog on its head, digging for something; for pearls, for instance, or at any rate, for empty shells.