The old town

by Jacob A. Riis

Where were you this long while?

Saw you King Pharaoh’s lofty stone?

Stalk’d you in Nile River meadows?

The swallow and the starling were not far behind it. They were all our tenants and lived under our roof, or on it, but the stork was the only one who paid rent formally. Payment was made in kind. Every other year he threw an egg out of the nest, and the next year a fledgling stork. For the rest he held aloof, disdaining haughtily to hold communication of any kind with us. Even when a disabled stork became, by force of circumstances, a member of the household, residing in the hen-house through the winter, he never grew familiar, but accepted what was given to him with quiet reserve as from a subject people; which, of course, was his right, seeing that he was a public functionary of the first importance. We had no stork on our house, but both our neighbors did, and as if to make up for the apparent slight, he was a regular visitor in our family. They seemed to always know when he was coming, and when I was told of it, I never failed to leave a Tvebak for him in the window which the nurse had left open so that he should not wake up the whole house by rapping on the pane with his bill. And when it was gone in the morning, I knew that a little brother had come to join our company; and sure enough it was so.

The swallow sang for us, and we saw to it that his way out and in of the hallway where he built his nest was free, by leaving a pane out of the transom. If by any chance that was obstructed, we knew it by his flying up and down before the doorway, waiting anxiously for some one to open it, that he might slip in where a string of little round heads, always set in a straight row, were clamoring with wide-open bills for flies and gnats. When the starling sang his evening song in the big poplar, the Old Town was white with the bloom of the elder. He left it dyed a deep purple, for he was as fond of elderberries as we were of the soup our mothers made of them, and the stain of them abides. In between the blossoming and the berrying when his youngsters were grown, he took himself off with his wife for several weeks, leaving only the children behind. To France, it was said, he went, and to Mediterranean olive groves, where they hunted him as a nuisance. We loved him and gave him sanctuary. And he helped the farmer in turn by ridding his field of pests. Where a flock of starlings settled down for luncheon, no wriggling thing remained to tell the tale.

By the time the stork was settled on the Rector’s house and busy repairing his nest, our boyish eyes turned speculatively toward the swelling buds of the pear tree that hung temptingly over the narrow way to the Latin School, and we tried to estimate how many of them had pears in them, and what were the chances of their happening to hit us as they fell, later on. Our daily walk took the direction of the Castle Hill, and turned off at the big buckthorn hedge to the river where we swam in summer. The cowslips were in the meadows then, and forget-me-nots grew on the bank where the rushes nodded to the waters going out to the sea, as if they would like to go too, but, being unable, gave them a message of cheer and good luck on the way. And the spring birds called to each other in the meadows. Then the bright nights were at hand. They came, as night does in the hot countries, suddenly. You saw in the almanac—the 6th of May, I think it was—that they were due, and that night, or the next if it was clear, you noticed a something in the atmosphere that was different. You walked with a lighter step, and your glance strayed constantly to the west, where the light never quite went out, but kept moving round north, to hail the coming day in the east. And every morning it came earlier and left later, till St. John’s Day was passed, when the days again began to grow shorter. Then one night in early August, when we walked abroad on the causeway, we knew that the summer was soon over. The light had gone out of the sky, as suddenly as it came, and the world was changed.

There lives in my memory such an evening in after years. I had been home—for ever the Old Town remained home to one whose cradle was rocked there—and was going my farewell rounds among the old people and the old places before packing off with the stork and his family. My way took me past the Castle Hill in the early twilight. A man stood up there, a lonely figure sharply outlined against the light that was fading out of the western sky. He stood watching it as if he would hold it fast if he could, never stirring once while the warm pink changed to a steely gray, cold as the moonlight on Arctic ice. Behind him the town lay buried in its shadows. I almost fancied I saw him shiver as they crept up the hill to close him in their long night. I knew him, a schoolmate of mine, a man in good position who had remained unmarried and was now past middle age, always a lonesome sort of fellow. He stood there yet when the houses shut him out of my sight, and I did not see him again. Three days later, on the day we sailed from Copenhagen, I heard that he was dead. He had killed himself, no one knew why. He was comfortable as the world goes, and there was no explanation of his act, they said. To me none was needed. The picture of him, standing there alone, the twilight of summer and of life closing in upon him, rose up before me, and I thought I understood.

With the coming of the bright nights the Old Town grew young again. Its staid habits were laid aside; the watchmen cried the bedtime hour in vain. At all hours of the night, till the midnight bell sounded and sometimes later, young and old were abroad, on the causeway, in the Plantage, or driving to the shore and taking their supper there. The young rowed and sang on the river in the long glowing twilight and had a good time. School and university were closed, and the students came back to visit old friends and to make love. With midsummer came “Holme week,” of which more hereafter, when they all went out and sported in the hay together. An endless procession of young couples have driven home on the hay wagons, watching the midnight glow in the northern heavens from the top of the load, hand in hand, and thinking earth a new-found paradise for Two, while Cupid laughed at the ferry-landing to see them go. In Holme week he was always a regular boarder with the ferry-master. But the young never suspected it, or if they did, showed no fear; and their elders, who knew, having met him there in their time, held their peace. I am not sure that they did not even surreptitiously pay his board. For they were sly, the good people of the Old Town.

Early in August the young storks began to gather on the high roof of the Cloister-church, and every day we saw them manœuvring there in agitated rows, between practice flights into the fields that grew longer and longer toward the time for their departure. At the final review, we knew, any of them that could not fly well enough and far enough would be killed by the rest, for no laggards were wanted on their long trip to King Pharaoh’s land. We watched them soaring high, high up, and hoped fervently that our own stork, or the neighbor’s we knew so well, might pass muster and not be stabbed to death with those long bills which we had seen carrying home snakes and frogs and lizards to the nest so often, and always raised in loud thanksgiving as the feast was spread before the brood. Then they seemed the gentlest of birds; but all at once the red beaks became swords to our imagination, to pierce the helpless youngster who got a bad report at his “exam.” Every day we looked to see if they were all there and were glad when none was missing. Then one morning we looked out, and the Cloister roof was bare. The storks were gone. Every nest in the town was empty. We searched awhile, incredulous; then, with a little shiver, went to look up our skates and our mittens.