The Son of a Servant. August Strindberg
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gas-lamps.
For many nights he lies in bed, without getting up by day. He is tired and sleepy. A harsh-voiced man comes to the bed, and says that he must not lay his hands outside the coverlet. They give him evil-tasting stuff with a spoon; he eats nothing. There is whispering in the room, and his mother weeps. Then he sits again at the window in the bedroom. Bells are tolling the whole day long. Green biers are carried over the churchyard. Sometimes a dark mass of people stand round a black chest. Gravediggers with their spades keep coming and going. He has to wear a copper plate suspended by a blue silk ribbon on his breast, and chew all day at a root. That is the cholera epidemic of 1854.
One day he goes a long way with one of the servants—so far that he becomes homesick and cries for his mother. The servant takes him into a house; they sit in a dark kitchen near a green water-butt. He thinks he will never see his home again. But they still go on, past ships and barges, past a gloomy brick house with long high walls behind which prisoners sit. He sees a new church, a new alley lined with trees, a dusty high-road along whose edges dandelions grow. Now the servant carries him. At last they come to a great stone building hard by which is a yellow wooden house with a cross, surrounded by a large garden. They see limping, mournful-looking people dressed in white. They reach a great hall where are nothing but beds painted brown, with old women in them. The walls are whitewashed, the old women are white, and the beds are white. There is a very bad smell. They pass by a row of beds, and in the middle of the room stop at a bed on the right side. In it lies a woman younger than the rest with black curly hair confined by a night-cap. She lies half on her back; her face is emaciated, and she wears a white cloth over her head and ears. Her thin hands are wrapped up in white bandages and her arms shake ceaselessly so that her knuckles knock against each other. When she sees the child, her arms and knees tremble violently, and she bursts into tears. She kisses his head, but the boy does not feel comfortable. He is shy, and not far from crying himself. "Don't you know Christina again?" she says; but he does not. Then she dries her eyes and describes her sufferings to the servant, who is taking eatables out of a basket.
The old women in white now begin to talk in an undertone, and Christina begs the servant not to show what she has in the basket, for they are so envious. Accordingly the servant pushes surreptitiously a yellow rix-dollar into the psalm-book on the table. The child finds the whole thing tedious. His heart says nothing to him; it does not tell him that he has drunk this woman's milk, which really belonged to another; it does not tell him that he had slept his best sleep on that shrunken bosom, that those shaking arms had cradled, carried, and dandled him; his heart says nothing, for the heart is only a muscle, which pumps blood indifferent as to the source it springs from. But after receiving her last fervent kisses, after bowing to the old women and the nurse, and breathing freely in the courtyard after inhaling the close air of the sick-ward, he becomes somehow conscious of a debt, which can only be paid by perpetual gratitude, a few eatables, and a rix-dollar slipped into a psalm-book, and he feels ashamed at being glad to get away from the brown-painted beds of the sufferers.
It was his wet-nurse, who subsequently lay for fifteen years in the same bed, suffering from fits of cramp and wasting disease, till she died. Then he received his portrait in a schoolboy's cap, sent back by the directors of the Sabbatsberg infirmary, where it had hung for many years. During that time the growing youth had only once a year given her an hour of indescribable joy, and himself one of some uneasiness of conscience, by going to see her. Although he had received from her inflammation in his blood, and cramp in his nerves, still he felt he owed her a debt, a representative debt. It was not a personal one, for she had only given him what she had been obliged to sell. The fact that she had been compelled to sell it was the sin of society, and as a member of society he felt himself in a certain degree guilty.
Sometimes the child went to the churchyard, where everything seemed strange. The vaults with the stone monuments bearing inscriptions and carved figures, the grass on which one might not step, the trees with leaves which one might not touch. One day his uncle plucked a leaf, but the police were instantly on the spot. The great building in the middle was unintelligible to him. People went in and out of it, and one heard singing and music, ringing and chiming. It was mysterious. At the east end was a window with a gilded eye. That was God's eye. He did not understand that, but at any rate it was a large eye which must see far.
Under the window was a grated cellar-opening. His uncle pointed out to him the polished coffins below. "Here," he said, "lives Clara the Nun." Who was she? He did not know, but supposed it must be a ghost.
One day he stands in an enormous room and does not know where he is; but it is beautiful, everything in white and gold. Music, as if from a hundred pianos, sounds over his head, but he cannot see the instrument or the person who plays it. There stand long rows of benches, and quite in front is a picture, probably of some Bible story. Two white-winged figures are kneeling, and near them are two large candlesticks. Those are probably the angels with the two lights who go about our house. The people on the benches are bowed down as though they were sleeping. "Take your caps off," says his uncle, and holds his hat before his face. The boys look round, and see close beside them a strange-looking seat on which are two men in grey mantles and hoods. They have iron chains on their hands and feet, and policemen stand by them.
"Those are thieves," whispers their uncle.
All this oppresses the boy with a sense of weirdness, strangeness, and severity. His brothers also feel it, for they ask their uncle to go, and he complies.
Strange! Such are the impressions made by that form of worship which was intended to symbolise the simple truths of Christianity. But it was not like the mild teaching of Christ. The sight of the thieves was the worst—in iron chains, and such coats!
One day, when the sun shines warmly, there is a great stir in the house. Articles of furniture are moved from their place, drawers are emptied, clothes are thrown about everywhere. A morning or two after, a waggon comes to take away the things, and so the journey begins. Some of the family start in a boat from "the red shop," others go in a cab. Near the harbour there is a smell of oil, tar, and coal smoke; the freshly painted steamboats shine in gay colours and their flags flutter in the breeze; drays rattle past the long row of lime-trees; the yellow riding-school stands dusty and dirty near a woodshed. They are going on the water, but first they go to see their father in his office. John is astonished to find him looking cheerful and brisk, joking with the sunburnt steamer captains and laughing in a friendly, pleasant way. Indeed, he seems quite youthful, and has a bow and arrows with which the captains amuse themselves by shooting at the window of the riding-school. The office is small, but they can go behind the green partition and drink a glass of porter behind a curtain. The clerks are attentive and polite when his father speaks to them. John had never before seen his father at work, but only known him in the character of a tired, hungry provider for his family, who preferred to live with nine persons in three rooms, than alone in two. He had only seen his father at leisure, eating and reading the paper when he came home in the evening, but never in his official capacity. He admired him, but he felt that he feared him now less, and thought that some day he might come to love him.
He fears the water, but before he knows where he is he finds himself sitting in an oval room ornamented in white and gold, and containing red satin sofas. Such a splendid room he has never seen before. But everything rattles and shakes. He looks out of a little window, and sees green banks, bluish-green waves, sloops carrying hay, and steamers passing by. It is like a panorama or something seen at a theatre. On the banks move small red and white houses, outside which stand green trees with a sprinkling of snow upon them; larger green meadows rush past with red cows standing in them, looking like Christmas toys. The sun gets high, and now they reach trees with yellow foliage and brown caterpillars, bridges with sailing-boats flying flags, cottages with fowls pecking and dogs barking. The sun shines on rows of windows which lie on the ground, and old men and women go about with water-cans and rakes. Then appear green trees again bending over the water, and yellow and white bath-houses; overhead a cannon-shot is fired; the rattling and shaking cease; the banks stand still; above him he sees a stone wall, men's coats and trousers and a multitude of boots. He is carried up some steps which have a gilded rail, and sees a very large castle. Somebody says, "Here the King lives."
It was the castle of Drottningholm—the most beautiful memory