Ditte: Girl Alive!

by Martin Andersen Nexø

Hansine shook her head. And he had threatened to return and claim her, if she broke her word. He had said, he would tap on the trap-door in the ceiling.

"Did you promise of your own free will?" Lars Peter said ponderously.

No, Hansine thought he had pressed her.

"Then you're not bound by it," said he. "My family, maybe, are not much to go by, scum of the earth as we are. But my father and my grandfather always used to say, there's no need to fear the dead; they were easier to get away from than the living." She sat bending over the babe, which had cried itself to sleep on her knees, and Lars Peter stood with his arms round her shoulder, softly rocking her backwards and forwards, as he tried to talk her to reason. "You must think of the little one here—and the other little one to come! The only thing which can't be forgiven, is unkindness to those given to us."

Hansine took his hand and pressed it against her tearful eyes. Then rising herself she put the child to bed; she was calm now.

The rag and bone man had no superstition of any kind, or fear either, it was the only bright touch in the darkness of his race that they possessed; this property caused them to be outcasts—and decided their trade. Those who are not haunted, haunt others.

The only curse he knew, was the curse of being an outcast and feared; and this, thank the Lord, had been removed where he was concerned. He did not believe in persecution from a dead man. But he understood the serious effect it had upon Hansine, and was much troubled on her account. Before going to bed, he took down the trap-door and hid it under the roof.

Thus they had children one after the other, and with it trouble and depression. Instead of becoming better it grew worse with each one; and as much as Lars Peter loved his children, he hoped each one would be the last. The children themselves bore no mark of having been carried under a heart full of fear. They were like small shining suns, who encircled him all day long from the moment they could move. They added enjoyment to his work, and as each new one made its appearance, he received it as a gift of God. His huge fists entirely covered the newly born babe, when handed to him by the midwife—looking in its swaddling clothes like the leg of a boot—as he lifted it to the ceiling. His voice in its joy was like the deep chime of a bell, and the babe's head rolled from side to side, while blinking its eyes at the light. Never had any one been so grateful for children, wife and everything else as Lars Peter. He was filled with admiration for them all, it was a glorious world.

He did not exactly make headway on his little farm. It was poor land, and Lars Peter was said to be unlucky. Either he lost an animal or the crop was spoiled by hail. Other people kept an account of these accidents, Lars Peter himself had no feeling of being treated badly. On the contrary he was thankful for his farm, and toiled patiently on it. Nothing affected him.

When Hansine was to have her fifth child, she was worse than ever. She had made him put up the trap-door again, on the pretense that she could not stay in the kitchen for the draught, and she would be nowhere else but there—she was waiting for the tap. She complained no longer nor on the whole was she anxious either. It was as if she had learned to endure what could not be evaded; she was absent-minded, and Lars Peter had the sad feeling that she no longer belonged to him. In the night he would suddenly realize that she was missing from his side—and would find her in the kitchen stiff with cold. He carried her back to bed, soothing her like a little child, and she would fall asleep on his breast.