IV

Autumn advanced over the earth, and in the city where Martin lived the houses were gray and black with rain and smoke, and the days grew shorter.

But when the afternoon came and the dusk fell, Martin Birck’s father often sat by the fire and looked at the embers. He was no longer young. He had a smooth-shaven face with sharply marked features, like an actor’s or a priest’s; and he had a way of laughing to himself without saying anything, which inspired respect and a certain feeling of insecurity. But when he laughed in this way his laugh was not taken for weakness or imbecility by his fellows, for there was nothing satiric in his temperament; he was merely laughing at an anecdote he had read in the morning paper, or at a couple of dogs that had barked at the lions around Charles XIII’s statue when he had passed through the square at noon on his way home from the office. For Martin Birck’s father was a government clerk. Although his salary was not large and he had no private means, he knew how to arrange things so that he and his family could lead a comparatively carefree existence, for his taste was given only to innocent and simple pleasures, and no feeling of vanity drove him to seek association with people who were above him in rank or fortune. He was the son of a mechanic, and when he chanced to think about his lot in life, he did not compare it with that of his superiors or his wealthy comrades but recalled instead the poor home from which he had come. He decided then that he was lucky and only wished that the luck he had should never be dimmed. He was fond of his wife and children and loved nothing in the world as much as his home. When he was free from his official duties he liked to work with his hands. He mended broken furniture; he could in an emergency even repair the old kitchen clock, which had flowers painted on its face and great brass weights on chains. He also manufactured funny and ingenious playthings for his children and neat little ornaments for his wife on her birthday. Among these was a little temple of white cardboard. It was adorned with narrow gold borders, and behind a semicircle of slender columns was a mirror, which seemed to double the number of the pillars. A spiral staircase led to the top of the temple, which was surrounded by a balustrade of marbled paper, the staircase being also of cardboard covered with marble; but in the bottom stair was a little drawer which could be pulled out. In this drawer Martin’s mother found every year on her birthday a folded banknote or a little piece of jewelry.

He also loved music and song. He liked to sing “Gluntar” with an old student comrade, Uncle Abraham, who sometimes came to visit him, and he could improvise on the piano and play by ear various pieces from his favorite operas.

But he seldom read anything except his paper.

Martin Birck’s mother, when twilight fell, often sat at the piano and sang to her own accompaniment. She had the sweetest of voices. The songs she sang were such as no one sings any more. At these times Martin and Maria would stand behind her stool and listen entranced; sometimes they tried to join in. There was a song about a soldier treasuring a canteen from which he had given a dying prince a drink on the field of battle. “ ’Twas from that His Highness drank,” was the refrain. And there was another song about a shepherdess who was tending her flock in a defile among the Alps. Suddenly she heard the roar of an avalanche and hurried to her charges: “Run fast, run fast, my lambs!” As Martin’s mother sang, her hands glided over the yellowed keys of the instrument. The strings had a brittle, glassy sound, and the pedals sighed and groaned. A string was broken in the bass, and it would buzz now and again.

There was a sense of loneliness when she had stopped singing.

Martin was drifting here and there. The room seemed to grow larger and more empty when twilight came. Finally he turned to grandmother, who was sitting by the window reading the Stockholm Journal.

“Tell us a story, please, grandmother,” Martin begged.

But grandmother didn’t know any new stories, and the old ones Martin had heard many times before. Grandmother continued to read the paper with her glasses far down on her nose.

“Lord deliver us,” she suddenly exclaimed, looking up from the paper, “did you see there’s a Miss Oldhusen has died?”

“No, is she dead?” remarked Martin’s father.

“Do you suppose she was a sister of the Secretary?”

“Goodness, no; she was his aunt,” said grandmother. “Her name was Pella, Pella Oldhusen. I remember her very well, I met her at Vaxholm. A plaguy smart and amusing woman she was, but she was a kleptomaniac. Her acquaintances used to say, ‘Be careful, my dear, and don’t leave anything around loose this evening; Pella Oldhusen’s coming!’ There was a girl she took up. When the girl was to be got ready for her first communion, Miss Oldhusen stole her old housekeeper’s linen underskirts that hung in the same wardrobe with her own clothes and had them made up for the girl. It’s God’s own truth; I heard it from a lady that knew all about her and the whole family. ‘Look here, Miss Oldhusen,’ the housekeeper said to her, for she had been with her many years and knew her peculiarities; ‘look here, Miss Oldhusen, there’s been thieves in the wardrobe! And the mischief’s in it, they’ve stolen all my underskirts, but not yours, though they were hanging side by side.’ ‘Could anyone imagine such rascals?’ said Pella. ‘That’s frightfully annoying, but what can I do about it?’ Just the same she gave the housekeeper money for new linen a while afterward, for she was well off and not stingy neither; but the girl went to the blessed Lord’s Supper in the stolen underskirts.”

Martin and Maria listened with wide-open mouths. Grandmother had told a story, after all. Of such stories she knew plenty.

Father had lighted a cigar and pushed his chair nearer the fire. He now motioned to Martin and Maria: “Come, children, now we’ll play.”

The blaze had almost burned out. Father broke apart two or three empty match boxes and built out of the fragments a house away deep in the porcelain stove. He put in a lot of matches as pillars and beams and lastly twisted up a bit of stiff paper; that was a tower. At the top of the twist he cut a hole for a chimney. All this was now a stately castle like the old Stockholm castles in Dahlberg’s Swedish Monuments. When it was done, father set fire to all the corners.

It hissed and sputtered and burned.

“Look⁠—just look how it’s burning!⁠—now the farthest corner is catching⁠—now the eastern gate’s on fire, now it’s falling!⁠—and the tower’s burning, the tower’s tumbling⁠—”

“Now it’s over.”

“Again, papa,” begged Martin. “Oh, again! Just once more!”

“No, not just once more,” said father; “it’s no fun the second time.”

Martin begged and implored. But father went over to the piano and stroked his wife’s hair.

Martin remained sitting in front of the fire. His cheeks burned but he couldn’t tear himself away. It flamed and glowed so finely away in there. It glimmered and glowed and burned.

Finally grandmother came, shut the damper, and put down the slats. Then Martin went to the window.

The sun was gone long ago. It had cleared a while, but murky cloud masses were driving along in broken lines over the thin, glassy blue of the sky. Long Row lay in deep twilight. The lindens and cherry trees of the garden were stripped of leaves, and here and there a light was already gleaming in a window from out the dark net of boughs. Down on the street the lamplighter went about his task; he was old and bent, and had a leather cap which came far down over his forehead. Now he came to the lamp just in front of the window on the opposite side of the street; when he had lighted it, the whole room brightened. The white lace curtains outlined their broken pattern on the ceiling and walls, while the calla lilies and fuchsias painted fantastic shadows.

It grew darker and darker.

One could see so far up above⁠—far off over the low buildings of the old suburb with its wooden houses and gardens. One could see Humlegård Park with the roof of the rotunda between the old naked lindens. And farthest off in the west rose a gray outline, the Observatory on its hill.

The deep and empty blue of the October heavens became still more deep and still more empty. Toward the west it was suffused with a red that looked dirty with mist and soot.

Martin traced outlines with his finger on the pane, which had begun to be damp.

“Will it soon be Christmas, grandma?”

“Oh, not for a good bit, child.”

Martin stood a long while with his nose pressed against the pane staring at the sky, a melancholy twilight sky with clouds of pale red and gray.