Egholm and his God

He was not suffered to stand there very long, for his iron rods barred the whole footway. But for the rest of his journey back, he talked out loud to himself of the wonderful vision.

It was a Christmas tree. Then Christmas must be coming. It was put in the window as a sign that Christmas would soon be here.

Already there was a taste of sweets in his mouth, just as he remembered once before…

Then suddenly his mother’s letters, that he knew by heart, began talking too.

“All well at home!”

At home – yes, at home … with Mother, they were all well.

An indomitable craving, and a resolution, ripened within him.

His craving was that he, too, would share in that “all well” at home. As to the resolution, he clenched his teeth upon it for the present, and his eyes stared fixedly. In the evening, when he had seen Olsen go out, he stood with shaking hands up in their room, and collected his belongings. Yes, this was what he was going to do. He was going home. And never come back any more. So he must be careful not to forget a single thing.

There were his pictures all cut out, his letters and – under the mattress – that indispensable tie-pin given him by the Eriksens at his confirmation; he would find some use for it, no doubt, when he was older.

And that was all. But still he wandered about the room, looking into every corner.

In the washstand drawer was Olsen’s registration book – fancy Olsen’s leaving it there! Suppose a thief…

In a moment of confusion, Sivert’s hand dipped into the drawer, closed all five fingers on the book, and thrust it under his blouse, close against his trembling heart.

Then, overcome by dizziness, he stole on all fours down the stairs.

The shop windows were ablaze, and the streets full of people. It was all like some great festival, thought Sivert, as he trotted along in the gutter.

Suddenly it struck him that he might encounter Olsen.

Wasn’t that Olsen coming round the corner there? Sivert did not stay to make closer investigation, but raced off down the first turning. And there – Heaven preserve him! – was Olsen himself, coming out of a tavern not ten paces away. It was Olsen this time. Leaning up against the railing just as Olsen always did. Sivert turned round and fled, as if the lightnings of retribution were at his heels, dodging in a zigzag through a maze of intercrossing streets.

He came into quarters of the town where he had never been before, and met four more Olsens on his way. Once with a girl on his arm, once in the very gateway where he was hiding in fear of – yes, of that same Olsen.

At last he found the road he sought – the road to Knarreby. The distance between the houses increased, and the gale rose to a hurricane. It was full in his face now, and beating against his cheeks with a torrent of sand and stones, but he bent forward and drew his cap down over his eyes, sighting at the next lamp-post through the split between the peak and the cloth top, and keeping his hands behind his back.

Yes, he would manage it now!

Then suddenly there were no more lamp-posts to go by. The last one shed its gleam a few yards round, a solitary figure of a lamp, the extreme outpost, rattling its glass with a noise as of chattering teeth in the cold, and its flame hopping from the wick at every gust. Sivert set his back against it – he dared not give himself up entirely to the gaping jaws of the black dark ahead.

He knew the place well, by the way; he had stood here many a Sunday afternoon, staring out towards Knarreby. The tears welled up chokingly within him now.

A little later, there came a man with a pole. He growled out something or other, but Sivert drew away shyly out of the ring of light.

Well, well, the man put out the lamp, and turned in towards the town again, leaving darkness behind him as he went.

Sivert stole on behind him, sobbing. The putting out of the lamps entered into his consciousness as a picture of his own desolation.

Late that night he squeezed himself up in the doorway of the old home in Nedergade, where he had not been since his mother left.

The gloomy place had something of homeliness about it; almost instinctively he stole in through the door to the washing cellar. There were tubs lying about, full of washing left to soak.

He stumbled in amongst them, and took a drink of water from the tap, not so much from thirst, but more from a fancy to use his familiar knowledge of the place. Then he recollected that it made a buzzing sound in the tenements upstairs when that tap was turned on, and he hurried away to the passage between the coal cellars. Egholms’ cellar used to be the fifth. Could he manage now to tear open the padlock with a smart twist? Wonderful – it was as easy as ever! That showed that God was with him after all. Full of thankfulness, Sivert slipped into the narrow space, and tried to concentrate his mind on the Lord’s Prayer, but fell asleep despite his efforts, and did not wake until the pale light of morning came filtering in to him through the cobwebbed windows. His back was like a boil from the knobs and points of the firewood he had been lying on.

Out in the washing cellars someone was rattling tubs and buckets, and the water was running.

Sivert pressed himself closer up in a corner. He stood there a long time, till his sense was dulled. There was a bottle in the window, that looked as if it had been used for oil. A cork was stuck half-way down the neck. And from among the broken lumps of peat and turf on the floor a lump of old iron pipe was sticking out.

Sivert looked at the two things – first one, then the other, a hundred times. Bottle – iron pipe – iron pipe – bottle. He thrust out his wooden shoe and kicked at the pipe to make a change. There was a brass tap on it. It emerged from the litter on the floor like a revelation.

“Father’s big tap,” he burst out in wondering recognition. They must have forgotten it. No, not forgotten; it had been left here for him to take with him.

Half an hour later he was clattering along at a sharp trot out of the town, with the tap under his coat.

The poplars stood in two endless rows with their leafless branches pointing stiffly heavenwards. Only one thing to do now – get along as fast as he could. His heart might hop and thump as it pleased, like a dry nut in its shell; he had no use for that now – only for his legs.

Villages showed up ahead of him and faded away behind, all nothing to do with him. It did not enter his head to ask for food anywhere, or even to rest. Only go on, on, along the road, past ditches where the snow lay streaked with wind-borne dust, and tufts of withered grass above; past flattened heaps of road-metal that lay like so many nameless graves. Trotting or dragging his feet, he went on past buzzing telegraph poles, passing or following heavy-laden milk-carts or solitary peasants with kerchiefs bound over their ears as a protection from the biting cold.

He spoke to no one until evening was drawing on; then, an old woman told him there was but another mile to Knarreby.

This came to him as something of a shock; he felt there ought to be, say, four or six miles more yet.

He slackened his pace, and at the same time his mind began working again.

All the way till now, through those twenty-four icy miles, he had had a feeling that he was running straight into his mother’s welcoming arms. Now the picture changed incomprehensibly. Her open arms were turned to clenched fists, and her gentle eyes gave place to his father’s glaring fiery orbs. After all, perhaps it was not so simple a matter to run away from one’s place and go home!

Thrashings, even kicks, he knew, but how should he ever be able to bear his father’s thundering voice when he was angry? Sivert remembered how he had once himself offered his father a brass ladle to beat him with, just to get it over. His father had taken it – yes – and there were dints in it still. Oh, his father’s voice was the most terrible thing in the world. It was not thick like Olsen’s, or whinnying like the smith’s, but a sort of voice that made one feel stiff all over.

By the time he reached Knarreby Mill it was pitch dark. The high invisible sails flung rattling round past a little red window far above. A little later, and the town itself blinked out to meet him, but it was some time before he managed, with the help of a lad of his own age, to find the way in through Andreasen’s yard, and stood, with beating heart, looking in at the light behind the familiar green curtains. Someone was standing outside the window, looking in from one side where the curtain was folded. Someone in a blue blouse, only a little bigger than Sivert himself. He did not look so very dangerous… When Sivert crept nearer, the other started, as if to run away, but judging Sivert to be equally harmless, he thought better of it, and soon the two had come to a whispered understanding.

The figure in the blue blouse was called Marinus. Yes, and Sivert could stand there by the other window, if he liked, and look in, if he kept quite still.

Inside, was Mother – yes, his mother – sitting over her work, making up hair. Her practised fingers took up the piece, plaited it into the three strands, thrust it into place, and then, wetting her fingers, she reached for another. She nodded now and then as she worked. And the lamp was reflected upside down in her spectacles.

Sivert began sniffing and swallowing something in his throat. Then he tore himself away from that picture, and perceived his father sitting in a big arm-chair, his fingers twined into his beard, reading the Bible. Now he turned a page; now he lifted his eyes from the book and fixed something or other in space, nailing it, as it were, to the ceiling with his glance.

On the settee in the room behind, the light from the lamp shone on Emanuel’s fair round head, and by the door sat Hedvig, undressed, combing her hair. She had drawn one leg up under her, and leaned back dreamily. A feeling of envy stole over Sivert at sight of those legs, so thick and overfed they seemed, both here and there. And both legs, too – oh, it was not fair.

Truly, all well at home.

His father was speaking. Hedvig answered, but with lips tight and straight as a line, though her nose moved.

“Won’t?” cried her father. “You disobedient little devil! To bed with you this instant!”

He slapped down the Bible on the table and shook his hand in the air.

“That’s Father’s voice; I know it. I know it’s the right one,” muttered Sivert. His legs carried him staggering out through the gateway again, and Marinus turned and watched him as he went.

After much aimless wandering, Sivert found his way at last into the waiting-room of the railway station. It was naturally his last resource, being the only place that showed a light still burning.

His wooden shoes echoed in the empty room, but no one came to turn him out. He slept close to a lovely warm stove, and heard trains rushing past, doors opening and slamming through his sleep; not till next morning did anyone disturb him, and then it was an old peasant who slipped the boy’s feet down to make room for himself on the bench. There were a number of other people about.

One or two men in heavy travelling cloaks walked up and down, rubbing their hands for warmth. A waitress with beautiful frills at her throat had appeared; she took down the shutters from the buffet and set out dishes of refreshments. A little later came the popping of corks.

Vehicles rolled up outside; and drivers with silver-tasseled hats came in and hung over the bar. They talked with noisy humour of the waitress, who, they declared, looked as if she had not slept well that night. The lady in question, however, merely raised her eyebrows to show that she had not even heard what they said. Now and again she scratched her hair with the least little touch of one fourth finger. Sivert understood this as evidence that so elegant a being had little need to scratch at all.

Altogether, it was a morning rich in experience for Sivert. When the trains and the passengers had gone, the head-scratching waitress sat down to further cups of coffee. Sivert shifted a little closer, and saw how deliciously ready to hand were the dishes of smørrebrød,4 whereat his mouth watered quite literally, down his blouse.

“Are you going by train?”

“No,” said Sivert, dismayed at being noticed. Doubtless he would be turned out at once.

“What are you doing, then?” said the waitress after a pause. She was taking her hair down, and undoing the plaits.

What was he doing? Heaven only knew!

“Taking home the big tap. For Father,” he stammered.

The lady laughed – it sounded like a scream. A moment after she was serious again, but anyhow, she had laughed. She was sitting now, bending forward, combing her back hair upward and forward in little jerks, and observing the effect in a little round mirror with an advertisement on the back. She laughed, though it evidently hurt badly when the comb stuck.

A lovely creature, was that waitress.

“And who’s your father?”

“Egholm. I saw him eat one of those once. Just like that.” Sivert nodded sideways towards the dish.

“One of what?”

“One of those!” said Sivert, springing up to the counter and pointing to a piece with slices of sausage. “This one’s bigger, though, I’m sure.”

Sivert could not say more; he stammered and hiccuped in a delirium of hunger.

The waitress was combing back again now, till the comb fairly crackled; she spread out her chest mightily, and shook her mane of hair.

“You can have that piece, if you like,” she said, with her mouth full of hairpins. And added mysteriously: “Serve her right, too.”

Three further pieces were granted Sivert on the same grounds, of serving somebody right. He laughed and cried and stuffed his mouth all at the same time.

“You’re a funny sort of deaf-and-dumb lad, you are. What’s your name?”

“Well, I’m mostly Olsen, really,” said Sivert, fumbling at the place where the precious book was hidden. “But I’m not all deaf and dumb. Not quite…”

“Well, I said you were half a lunatic.”

“… Or I couldn’t sing, you know.”

“Let’s hear you sing.” The barmaiden surveyed her work of art in its entirety, until it seemed as if her eyes would turn back to front in their sockets.

“Well, I can, you know…” said Sivert hesitatingly.

The barmaid pointed to another piece – cheese it was this time – with her little finger. Sivert pounced on it at once.

Then he wiped his mouth, wrinkled up his forehead thoughtfully, and rattled off at a furious rate:

“The pretty bird upon the tree its merry notes doth sing…”

and all the rest of that verse. It sounded like an Eskimo letting off a single word of a hundred syllables or so.

“That wasn’t singing, not yet; I was just trying if I knew all the words,” explained Sivert apologetically, and proceeded to repeat the words “with music.”

A porter and one or two others came up, and grouped themselves in an attentive half-circle about the singing mannikin.

Sivert sang all the smørrebrød off one dish, and then went out with the porter to a little room where they cleaned the lamps, and here he talked of many remarkable things, helping to clean lamps the while. At last he brought out his brass tap, and polished that up till it shone. Then suddenly he stole off unobserved.

Down the street and across Andreasen’s yard, walking awkwardly and shuffling like an epileptic, his mouth running over all the time with prayers and verses of hymns.

In the little entry he stood still and laid one ear to the crack of the door, listening breathlessly.

Yes, there was Emanuel prattling away, and his mother answering with a few low words.

Was it to be his luck to find them alone? He listened again, with his head on one side, and heard now another sound – a long-drawn, sucking sound, almost like a snore, and then the rattle of a cup, repeated at regular intervals. Ah … now he knew who was there besides!

Sivert knelt down where he stood, with his face against the door and his hands folded piously. He had knelt that way once before, when he had happened to upset a lamp. So, too, Knud, the Martyr-King, had knelt waiting for death. It was the proper thing on such occasions, and no doubt looked well. But was his hair all right?

He drew forth the brass tap, and tried to make out his own reflection swimming unsteadily in the polished metal.

Perhaps he had spoken aloud. For suddenly his father appeared in the open door. The first astonishment in his face changed to inflamed fury, and he swung back his boot ready for a blow.

Sivert, terrified, held up the brass tap like a crucifix above his head, as if to guard.

His thoughts were scattered in flight like sparrows at a shot, but some instinct came to his aid, and he cried out in his cracked voice, echoing through the house:

“Oh, Lord my God, I’ve brought your brass tap.”

Sivert’s ideas as to his father on earth and his Father in heaven had always been somewhat vague; now, they seemed fused into one.

The effect of his words was beyond comprehension. The threatened kick did not fall; his father snatched up the tap instead, and said:

“Wherever did you find it? I’ve been wanting it all the time.”

“In the cellar,” said Sivert. “But it wasn’t me that didn’t bring it along.”

And with an idiot laugh he collapsed in his mother’s arms.

Egholm stood by the window overlooking the yard. He blew through the tap, and turned it lovingly in his fingers. A great ship came throbbing towards him and took him on board. And he mounted up, high, high, up to the bridge.

“Full speed ahead! Stand by! Full speed astern!”

And the ship went astern till Captain Egholm felt the tears welling into his eyes with delight. A little after, he went to the kitchen door.

“Sivert!”

A timorous “Yes” came from within.

“Did you really think I was God Himself?”

Sivert nodded.

His father turned on his heel and said calmly:

“Then you were wrong, boy, because I’m not.”

XVII

Egholm went up to the station in a great state of excitement every time a train was due from Odense. There had come a wondrous letter in a blue envelope from the Brethren there – a document to the effect that the community had voted him a gift of money. It would be delivered in person within a few days, by Evangelist Karlsen.

The letter lay on the floor, as if deposited by mysterious means from above. And certainly no one had heard the postman come.

Egholm gave thanks to God. That was a thing which should be done to the full, and preferably a little before the fulfilment of his prayer.

For the first few days he talked a great deal about the practice he had gradually acquired in the art of prayer. But as Karlsen still failed to appear, he grew silent, and began going up to meet the trains. And then at last, on the eighth day, just as he came home tired and discouraged from the station, there sat the Evangelist himself in the parlour.

He, too, looked as if some angel had brought him on wings through the air, though, as a matter of fact, this was not the case. He explained himself that he had come by train from Jutland.

Egholm forgot to take off his coat; he sat down opposite his ancient enemy, lacking words with which to begin. And, truth to tell, he was humiliated and abashed after all at having to accept a gift, in view of what had passed. What made things worse was that the Evangelist was grown so surpassingly elegant in his dress. No more butcher-boots – nothing like it. Striped trousers he wore, and a smart-looking collar and cuffs. True, the last were of indiarubber, but still… His moustache was simply beyond description, and the blue-black wether-eyes glittered like globes of lightning. Under his chair was a handbag, undeniably new, but, of course, … no, of course, it couldn’t be the money in that.

Karlsen looked round the room, and thrust his shoulders back, as if preparing to speak, but still he did not seem to find the suitable “word.”

What was he to say? As for the gift, that could wait a little. A sermon would hardly do either, though he was known to be a first-rate hand at that. Suppose he were to launch out with a suitable text? Yes, that would be the thing!

Karlsen went about, so to speak, with his pockets full of texts, which he used, now to smite the head of an unruly disciple, now to scatter like golden largesse among the poor. He had, too, long extracts from Revelations, which could be flung like lassos to entangle the ungodly, cooling draughts from the Sermon on the Mount, and blood and fire from the Mosaic portions of the Old Testament. But it always took a certain degree of opposition before he could be brought to use them.

Egholm asked in a very general way how the Brotherhood was getting on.

“First-rate,” said Karlsen, with an absent yawn – “first-rate,” and relapsed into silence.

Egholm could not keep away from the scene of the crime. He stammered out:

“Karlsen, you mustn’t regard my attack – my somewhat over-zealous attack, perhaps – that evening, you know, as – as evidence of enmity towards the Brethren. Not in the least. There was much in the Brotherhood that I greatly appreciated. A certain simplicity… No; if hard words were said, they were due to a momentary indignation over the refusal to give me a plain, straightforward answer to my definite question, regarding that text in the Epistle to the Hebrews, which – at any rate to my humble mind – expressly annuls all giving of tithes.”

Karlsen gloated awhile over Egholm’s downcast eyes and the tip of his tongue creeping over dry lips. He wrinkled up his forehead deeply, and said, with that crafty, ingratiating smile that was so thoroughly his own:

“An answer, my dear friends – why, of course. Nothing easier. You shall have it to-day. I’ve a big fat book here in my bag; you can read it there to your heart’s content…”

“A book?..”

“Yes. Half a minute, I’ll show you. Six kroner’s the price of it, but there’s edifying reading for more than twice the money. Guaranteed. A big fat book, bound cloth boards. Let me show you.”

“No, no. I’ll take your word for it. No doubt it’s excellent. But … er … well…”

It would be sheer madness to offend Karlsen now, and send him away with the three or four hundred kroner, but still, there was no sense in spending the six kroner if it could be helped. Egholm knew the book well enough himself – a rambling translation from the English.

“But … er … well, you know, there was nothing said about that on the night. If only they’d given me an answer in some way or other, I’m sure I’d never have resigned from the Brotherhood at all.”

“You never did resign from the Brotherhood!”

“Well, no, not resigned exactly … that is to say…”

Egholm sat crushed and despairing in the arm-chair, letting Karlsen do with him as he pleased.

“No, my dear good man, what possessed you to say so? If you weren’t a disciple still, of course we shouldn’t have troubled to help you. Nothing to do with us, you understand. As it is, why, we hung up a box for you at the meeting.”

Egholm sighed inaudibly, and inwardly reduced his claim to half. So they had hung up a collecting box for him. Well, well. He knew those boxes. There were a number of them – hung along the wall like a row of young birds with hungrily gaping mouths. He remembered how the Evangelist used to draw attention to them discreetly before closing the proceedings for each evening – quite unnecessarily, by the way, seeing that Karlsen senior, the Angel of the flock, stood with hand outstretched in farewell, just where the boxes began.

“And now, my dear friends, we have heard the Word, for our souls’ good, and that we can take with us in our hearts. And, in return, let us not forget to put something in the boxes. No one calls upon you to give much. When each gives what he can, it is enough. The first is for the hall, that we may have a place to meet in; the second is for light and firing – neither of these can be got for nothing, my dear friends – and the third is for myself – I need hardly remind you, my dear friends, that I cannot live on air. The fourth is for members of the Brotherhood in distress, and the fifth towards the purchase of a library. Put a little in each, and your conscience will be at ease!”