Ditte: Girl Alive!

by Martin Andersen Nexø

But Sören refused to be bled. "Folks die quickly enough without," said he, incredulous as he had always been. Maren was silent and went back to her work with a sigh. Sören never did believe in anything, he was just as unbelieving as he had been in his young days—if only God would not be too hard on him.

At first Sören longed to have the child with him always, and every other minute Maren had to bring her to the bedside. The little one did not like to sit quietly on a chair beside Grandad's bed, and as soon as she saw a chance of escape, off she would run. This was hardest of all to Sören, he felt alone and forsaken, all was blackness and despair.

Before long, however, he lost all interest in the child, as he did in everything else. His mind began to wander from the present back to bygone days; Maren knew well what it meant. He went further and still further back to his youth and childhood. Strange it was how much he could remember things which otherwise had been forgotten. And it was not rambling nonsense that he talked, but all true enough; people older than he who came from the hamlet to visit him confirmed it, and wondered at hearing him speak of events that must have happened when he was but two or three years old. Sören forgot the latter years of his life, indeed he might never have lived them so completely had they faded from his mind.

This saddened Maren. They had lived a long life, and gone through so much together, and how much more pleasant it would have been, if they could have talked of the past together once more before they parted. But Sören would not listen, when it came to their mutual memories. No, the garden on the old farm—where Sören lived when five years old—that he could remember! Where this tree stood, and that—and what kind of fruit it bore.

And when he had gone as far back as he could remember, his mind would wander forward again, and in his delirium he would rave of his days as a shepherd boy or sailor boy and heaven knows what.

In his uneasy dreams he mixed up all his experiences, the travels of his youth, his work and difficulties. At one minute he would be on the sea furling sail in the storm, the next he would struggle with the ground. Maren who stood over him listened with terror to all that he toiled with; he seemed to be taking his life in one long stride. Many were the tribulations he had been through, and of which she now heard for the first time. When his mind cleared once more, he would be worn out with beads of perspiration standing on his forehead.

His old partners came to see him, and then they went through it again—Sören had to talk of old times. He could only say a few words, weak as he was; but then the others would continue. Maren begged them not to speak too much, as it made him restless, and he would struggle with it in his dreams.

It was worst when he imagined himself on the old farm; pitiful to see how he fought against the sea's greedy advance, clutching the bedclothes with his wasted fingers. It was a wearisome leave-taking with existence, as wearisome as existence itself had been to him.

One day when Maren had been to the village shop, Ditte ran out screaming, as she came back. "Grandad's dead!" she burst out sobbing. Sören lay bruised and senseless across the doorstep to the kitchen. He had been up on the big chest, meddling with the hands of the clock. Maren dragged him to bed and bathed his wounds, and when it was done he lay quietly following her movements with his eyes. Now and then he would ask in a low voice what the time was, and from this Maren knew that he was nearing his end.

On the morning of the day he died he was altogether changed again. It was as if he had come home to take a last farewell of everybody and everything; he was weak but quite in his senses. There was so much he wanted to touch upon once again. His talk jumped from one thing to another and he seemed quite happy. For the first time for many months he could sit on the edge of the bed drinking his morning coffee, chatting to Maren whenever she came near. He was exactly like a big child, and Maren could not but put his old head to hers and caress it. "You've worn well, Sören," said she, stroking his hair—"your hair's as soft as when we were young."