Ditte: Girl Alive!

by Martin Andersen Nexø

But Ditte needed some one who could secure her future. Granny was no good, she was too old and helpless, and she was a woman. There ought to be a man! And now she had found him. She lay down to sleep behind Granny with a new feeling now; she had a real father, just like other children, one who was married to her mother, and in addition possessed a horse and cart. The bald young owner of the Sand farm, who was so thin and mean that he froze everybody near him, she never took to, he was too cold for that. But the rag and bone man had taken her on his knee and shouted in her ear with his big blustering voice. They might shout "brat" after her as much as they liked, for all she cared. She had a father taller than any of theirs, he had to bend his head when he stood under the beams in Granny's sitting room.

The outlook was so much better now, one fell asleep feeling richer and woke again—not disappointed as when one had dreamt—but with a feeling of security. Such a father was much better to depend upon, than an old blind Granny, who was nothing but a bundle of rags. Every night when Granny undressed, Ditte was equally astonished at seeing her take off skirt after skirt, getting thinner and thinner until, as if by witchcraft, nothing was left of the fat grandmother but a skeleton, a withered little crone, who wheezed like the leaky bellows by the fireplace.

They looked forward to the day when the new father would come and fetch them to the wedding. Then of course it would be in a grand carriage—the other one was only a cart. It would happen when they were most wearied with life, not knowing where to turn for food or coffee. Suddenly they would hear the cheerful crack of a whip outside, and there he would stand, saluting with his whip, the rascal; and as they got into the carriage, he would sit at attention with his whip—like the coachman on the estate.

Maren, poor soul, had never seen a carriage at her door; she was almost more excited than the child, and described it all to her. "And little I thought any carriage would ever come for me, but the one that took me to the churchyard," she would say each time. "But your mother, she always had a weakness for what is grand."

There had come excitement into their poor lives. Ditte was no longer bored, and did not have to invent mischief to keep her little mind occupied. She had also developed a certain feeling of responsibility towards her grandmother, now that she was dependent on her—they got on much better together. "You're very good to your old Granny, child," Maren would often say, and then they would cry over each other without knowing why.

The little wide-awake girl now had to be eyes for Granny as well, and old Maren had to learn to see things through Ditte. And as soon as she got used to it and put implicit faith in the child, all went well. Whenever Ditte was tempted to make fun, Maren had only to say: "You're not playing tricks, are you, child?" and she would immediately stop. She was intelligent and quick, and Maren could wish for no better eyes than hers, failing the use of her own. There she would sit fumbling and turning her sightless eyes towards every sound without discovering what it could be. But thanks to Ditte she was able by degrees to take up part of her old life again.

Perhaps after all she missed the skies more than anything else. The weather had always played a great part in Maren's life; not so much the weather that was, as that to come. This was the fishergirl in her; she took after her mother—and her mother again—from the time she began to take notice she would peer at the skies early and late. Everything was governed by them, even their food from day to day, and when they were dark—it cleared the table once and for all by taking the bread-winner. The sky was the first thing her eyes sought for in the morning, and the last to dwell upon at night. "There'll be a storm in the night," she would say, as she came in, or: "It'll be a good day for fishing tomorrow!" Ditte never understood how she knew this.

Maren seldom went out now, so it did not matter to her what the weather was, but she was still as much interested in it. "What's the sky like?" she would often ask. Ditte would run out and peer anxiously at the skies, very much taken up with her commission.

"'Tis red," she announced on her return, "and there's a man riding over it on a wet, wet horse. Is it going to rain then?"

"Is the sun going down into a sack?" asked Granny. Ditte ran out again to see.