Downstream quotes

To tell the story of a child as you would tell the story of a grownup would be to commit forgery, for once you are wide awake it costs you a great effort to describe a dream exactly as it occurred.

The tide of events flows remote from the child. Only occasionally do its eddies touch upon the consciousness of the child, and then the latter is unaware of their significance.

The shadow of that Fate still casts itself over our riper years. It haunts us, ghostlike, even when we have begun consciously to order our lives. Only a few chosen spirits are able to cast off the spell of these fairies and trolls.

This is a tale of people whose childhood was passed in the shadow of the wolf⁠—and who never could escape from their childhood.

First let me tell you about that evening, many years ago, when Peter and Hedvig heard a strange cry coming from the window of their parents’ bedroom. The whole of that day it had been evident that something was in the air.

The most remarkable thing about Kristin was that she alone survived from the days of the old owner. She was grey, bent, tough, the incarnation of the everlasting ill-humoured peasant soul.

Even if she only talked of a pair of grey stockings it still sounded like a fairy tale.

And since, moreover, the fatalism of age is closely related to the helplessness of childhood, we can well understand that she had two attentive listeners in Peter and Hedvig.

They lay huddled up in terrible darkness like two poor little orphans. Fear kept them long awake and pursued them ever in their dreams, when at last they had fallen asleep.

The night of the earth is but a passing shadow, but the night of fear in the heart is evil and long.

And for many it seems as if there will be no morning.

But Stellan knew better. Both Peter and Herman were stronger than Stellan, but all the same it was usually he who was leader.

If a lot of dogs play about on a lawn you will in nine cases out of ten find that there is a small one taking the lead in the game.

“No, let us get out on the roof and play robbers,” he shouted.

He turned and twisted on his chair and looked about him, and secretly cast stealthy side-glances from beneath his unkempt shock of hair as if fearing that somebody stood behind him listening to his thoughts.

Not even when he was alone could he look anything straight in the face.

Now he jumped up and took a turn round the old billiard table covered by an old torn dust sheet. All round him in the dilapidated room the torn wallpaper was curling and the dry paint was peeling off the skirting boards and window frames.

From the beginning, he was a God from the Servants’ Hall and he was an inheritance from Hedvig’s first horror, the Bogey Man!

We never escape from our first impressions and experiences. They bind us with the fibres of deep-seated roots which we never draw up into the full light of consciousness.

There Kristin, severe and foreboding, stood over the little sugar thief whom she had caught: “Hedvig, if you do not leave the sugar box alone, the Bogey Man will come and take you.”

From the beginning he tried to imitate the aristocratic indifference of the “china doll” to all the good things to eat. Except, of course, when he thought nobody was looking, and then he gobbled up all he could.

Worldly wisdom and fine manners are all very well, but we are only human after all.

…

Peter did not go to his guardian, because it was he who had placed Brundin in authority. Perhaps he was even in league with the dangerous fellow. Imagine suspecting old Hermansson!

Ignorance is either very credulous or very suspicious.

In this case it was suspicious. And besides Peter the Watchdog was one of those who prefer hunting alone.

“It’s a pity for those children who have to have a guardian,” she used to say. Well, Peter did not exactly believe that old Hermansson had cheated them. But he had all the same a vague feeling that the matter ought not to be forgotten.

The distrust we learn during the years when we have a right to be trustful easily becomes a dangerous weapon.

It was now a little later in the spring. A new bailiff of proved honesty had been appointed and Peter was sent to an elementary Agricultural School in the Upland plain.

He did not like being there. The other pupils seemed to him dull, the soil unfavourable. The Brundin case was still fermenting within him. He longed to be home.

There are many kinds of homesickness, and one of them is of a kind not suitable for poetry.

Let us now look at our friend Peter during the spring ploughing. The pupils were standing in a bunch out on the clay and each one had to plough a plot with the new American steel plough.

Is it then to be wondered at that Peter Selamb did not plough deep enough in the alien and unsympathetic Upland clay?

These were the days of his betrothal to wealth.

Stellan had not been very often at Ekbacken lately. And if he came it was to scold Laura, who was always there.

Sisters are a doubtful blessing when they begin to take your friends away from you.

No, nowadays, Stellan went mostly to Manne at Kolsnäs. He had nobody else to turn to, because Percy was away in Jämtland for the summer on account of his chest. And Stonehill had been sold.

It was quite calm now. The atmosphere twinkled coldly between the black fleets of cloud. Over the oak trees out on the spit of land the lights of Stockholm lit the sky.

There is always something both of exhortation and menace in the pale radiance in the sky over an invisible city.

Now the crescent moon peeped out over the serried edge of the forest behind Stonehill and threw a few shafts of light over the dark water—the dark water holding the three dead.

It was as if the dead out there helped him to come to a decision. With complete detachment from all this talk he suddenly came to reflect coolly, clearly and swiftly on his own future.

Life is short and uncertain, he thought. Life is a gamble.

It is silly to take it too seriously. I shall be an officer. I shall have a smart uniform. I shall spend my time amidst arms, horses and smart people. I want to be on top.

Laura stared, ate, and dreamed. How perfectly lovely, she thought. And she was right.

Not even a poster could be more beautiful.

What was Laura dreaming about now in the glow of this eternal snow? Not about silence, the infinite withdrawal from the world, oh no! Laura was dreaming about a long honeymoon, a long, long honeymoon.

Day after day he had been sitting there on the edge of the bed tempting him with a piece of cheese in his hands, till the old man learnt the formula that opened the gates of joy to him.

It is generally the boldest and stupidest tricks that succeed.

Peter never forgot the caraway cheese. He used it, as a matter of fact, throughout his life.

The cab proprietor made a rapid calculation and then agreed to the bet in the cloud of smoke. And Peter won the bet and the cab proprietor got the hay at his own price.

So you see that even the Eiffel Tower has its uses.

In this way much business was done in the good old times.

The whole thing was a matter between himself and Brundin. Peter was taking his revenge on Brundin, that was all. He beat the nightmare of his childhood on his own ground.

So strange are our victories sometimes.

Peter felt a delightful relief after each successful coup, a relief that was almost related to a good conscience.

It is true that Peter drank a good deal. Spirit and business melted together with him so that he could not distinguish one from the other. That was why he always drank with a good conscience and grew fat with a good conscience.

Because in Sweden in those days it was still easier for fat people to do business than for thin.

If Peter could think of nothing else he used to put a bottle in his pocket and march down to Tord, who now lived in “The Rookery,” with all his crows and snakes and foxes.

And she could not be persuaded to suckle the newborn child. Thus far Nature had forced her, but now at last she could say “No.” Oh what a joy to be able to say “no” at last!

When a mother is not delivered of her egoism it grows sevenfold worse.

There is something mysterious in the quick recovery of women after childbirth. In a week and a half Mrs.

But Laura accepted it with secret satisfaction. She had already begun to plan how she might escape with the greatest possible profit from this besieged fortress, whilst retaining all the honours of war.

An unhappy marriage is the finest arsenal of egoism.

In the constant clash of two wills, selfishness sharpens its edge, and in the suffering of an opponent tempers its steel.

He was filled with a deep despair and remorse and begged her forgiveness with tears streaming from his eyes.

It was the old, banal, and horrible struggle, in which the result is a foregone conclusion, the struggle between the one who loves and the one who is loved.

Laura was merely irritated by Herman’s tears. Did she suspect that they sprang from sources which in her had already dried up? Was that why her tone was so hard and dry? When one cannot be Love one wishes to be Fate. Oh!

Laura was merely irritated by Herman’s tears. Did she suspect that they sprang from sources which in her had already dried up? Was that why her tone was so hard and dry?

When one cannot be Love one wishes to be Fate.

Oh! there was a secret luxury in standing there stiff and unyielding:

Wonderfully sweet contentment suffused her whole being. She trampled on her old fear, loneliness, and humiliation, and felt as if she had truly her old fear under her foot. But she could not trample it to death.

One does not trample a shadow to death. It can only be killed by light.

…

With a sort of impartial pleasure he had seen his knowledge boldly applied by his clever pupil. In his theoretical eagerness he had been rather proud, though he was himself the soul of honour, of his being able to show Peter certain loopholes and snags.

Old Lundbom symbolised, as it were, the fate of the law in this world: to be made use of by rogues.

Peter stood there with outstretched hand, and Lundbom really could not help seizing it, though Herman had forbidden all communication with Selambshof.

But Herman swept bottle and glass on to the floor and then sat motionless as a statue and stared into the night and thought of his son.

There are men who are fat for slaughter and there are those who are fattened by the slaughter of others.

Peter the Boss certainly belonged to the latter category. But heavy and sluggish blood may still leave you a victim of softer feelings. And Peter had, as we have seen, his weaknesses.

Peter the Boss really felt quite touched.

It is strange how poetic poverty can be⁠—in others.

Fancy how simply one can live. Yes, they were really quite comfortable here in Majängen and Solberget. Peter actually began to feel a benefactor of all these people. “Goodness! I wonder if I did not let those sites go too cheaply,” he thought.

He was going to be a writer, as we know, and those who can do nothing else can always explore the special vices of the imagination. He discovered that loneliness in a crowd has many joys for a fastidious individualist.

The masses are necessary, so that we may look down on them.

In the crush of humanity we dream so easily of the lofty heights from which all below look like creeping things. It is always so with the dreams of sterile genius. It would begin at the top, forgetful of all that lies below.

He was, as a matter of fact, right. Peter had at the last moment got Järnö five thousand crowns cheaper than his sisters and brothers were told. So he earned a little on the business all the same.

Thus Tord moved out to Järnö with a lot of cages. He had a whole menagerie. And Dagmar looked rather like a tamer of wild animals.

The old dilapidated dwelling house lay in a little garden among the small patches of cultivated ground below the rocks in the southern part of the island. Tord could not live there. It was too tame—too close to his tenant’s little red cottage.

During the siege of the Legations during the Boxers’ rising in China it is told that a lady stole yolks of eggs, whilst people died of starvation all round her, in order to preserve the colour of her hair. That is serious. …

Laura always had a long tête-à-tête with her face before she paraded it in public.

She became very impatient as somebody hesitatingly fingered the door handle and little Georg at last stepped in.

If he had done that he would have been lost. It never occurred to him to refuse himself anything; on the contrary. He, Stellan Selamb, must of course live up to his position. The best was, of course, always for him and his like.

It is an enormous source of strength to have such an inborn conviction. Because you usually get what you consider should as a matter of course be yours.

It was this elegant microcosm of upper class prejudices that kept Stellan afloat.

He detested Levy and treated him with an icy cold rudeness, which only seemed to amuse him. They emphasized their respective vocations as officer and lawyer and indulged, of course in most general terms, in exquisite sarcasms at each other’s expense.

To keep to the general is often the best way to offer personal insults.

In the beginning the atmosphere was a little chilly and depressed at Laura’s first dinner of the season.

“You are difficult tonight,” he said. “Now I must have a whiskey and soda.”

The art of losing gracefully never forsook him.

Stellan leant back in his chair and puffed hard at his torn cigarette. He felt his winnings like a cool shiver in his limbs.

The hammer blows rained down with a frequency sufficient to fell an ox. But Peter merely blinked his eyes. He did not understand how anybody could be afraid of the press.

He had no real respect for any other kind of letterpress than that which is to be found on banknotes and in the paragraphs of the penal code.

“Do these damned journalists want to teach me how to build suburbs?” he muttered with an almost compassionate shrug of the shoulders. And he did not budge an inch on this matter: “The ground is mine.

And suddenly she felt a secret bitterness that the man by her side was not stronger, more robust, more dangerous, that he had allowed her to say “no” so often.

Darkness requires more heat than light.

The sun, the sight of blood, the inborn cruelty of the south had all at once burnt through her shyness, her fear and her brooding. Hunger for life buried its claws deep in this strange virgin soul that had lain so anxious and so self-absorbed.

It was not that she had begun to understand any of these new paradoxes. No, but she imbibed courage from their impudent recklessness. She deafened her conscience with their excesses. “Everything is permitted,” that was what Percy’s pictures whispered into the ear of a Selamb.

Life and death soar strangely near each other in love.

You give and take with the same recklessness. Sacrifice and selfishness disport themselves side by side. And just at the moment when the human egoism is nearest to its dissolution it is sometimes most blindly cruel.

“You have become damned difficult to find,” panted Peter. But Stellan was already prepared with a smile.

It is strange that smiles can thrive so many degrees below freezing point.

“You can meet me as much as you like when you have got decent clothes—and a decent face. …”

What does a man like Captain Stellan Selamb feel when he mutters to himself that he might “go to hell”? Nothing really. He has never properly conceived death. His egoism is so hard and polished that the thought of death slips off everywhere.

If you want an opinion of a man, try to find out his views of death.

Death comes in life and not after life. And it is what happens in life that makes us really alive. What else are we but our conception of, our defiance of, our struggle against, and our victory over, death?

Stellan was not, for the moment, thinking of Manne, whom he had seduced into gambling, from whom he had won, and whom he now knew to be destitute. No, he only heard the voice that had called him afraid:

So cold and selfish can conscience be.

“No, I was not at all frightened,” he protested. “The fact is that I at last perceived my own stupidity. What the devil is the use of relying on chance. Chance is the fool of necessity, nothing else.

But it was not the fear that is the beginning of wisdom. He had gracefully skated on the outside edge on the smooth ice of prejudices and fictions. But now he had fallen through into deep reality. “Ugh—this seems to be bottomless!

Yes, the world is as deep as my fears.

”

A moment before Stellan had never meant to say anything of the kind; he only had a clear feeling that he must be absolutely unsentimental. But he did not regret it.

A brutal sincerity may sometimes be the most refined of lies.

The barge had at last passed through and sailed on. Stellan continued in a different and more passionate tone:

“

Well, one can still live, even with a little self-contempt,

” he thought, when of her own accord she put her arm through his on the steps. He was right. Nothing really improves your chances better in the game of life.

Peter also seemed to be very far from claiming the honour of relationship. He shrank up in his seat. He enjoyed doing so before the magnificent Tord. He was not well, he was dusty, worried, tired. Business worried him.

There was no difficulty in making oneself small if only one’s pocketbook grew fat in the process.

They did not talk of Tord’s affairs.

His work, his cursed masterpiece simply oppressed him like a quintessence, a rude microcosm of his vague conceit. There came cramp, but nothing else. And it was not easy to go about with that cramp in the wild teeming life of spring. …

May is once and for all not a month for the Selambs.

It was already growing summerlike. Tord came to meet it with staring, feverish eyes and a thin emaciated face. He began to keep to the sea more and more. It seemed as if the soil burnt his face.

Just the line that most challenges the ridicule of the world is often aglow with the most intense passion. Just the very wretchedness of the form often reflects a seriousness from which there has been no deliverance.

Yes, the bad poets are the unborn children of emotion.

Their sufferings are cruel. People seem to them empty, blind, perverse, malevolent. How can anyone laugh at red, flowing blood? How can anyone help trembling in the presence of a volcano in eruption?

She was a stupid, dirty, greedy animal who couldn’t help pulling a man down and degrading him. Yes, a short time ago humanity had been a lot of scoundrels who would not recognize his greatness, now he was pulled down and degraded.

Suffering knows no logic.

He wanted to see her suffer and groan and hate as he himself suffered and groaned and hated. But alas! already long ago during the loneliness of the cold winter’s evenings he had dulled the effect of hard words.

In this way Tord Selamb soon fell into black naturalism. He overlooked the fact that if, as he supposed, everything was nature, this must also apply to our human reaction against nature’s cruelty. And that therefore nature contained within herself the correction of this evil.

Horror itself is in the last resort a promise.

There is a profound contradiction. But these are not Selambian truths.

“Ugh,” Laura mumbled as she walked about in the sunshine outside the Grand Hotel, “ugh, how moral Stellan has grown.”

From which you can see that everything is relative in this world.

Peter stalked home from his tailor. It was Stellan who had forced him to order a new suit of evening clothes for the family dinner.

And if he added it all together it came to more than twenty millions. Or perhaps more correctly thirty. Thirty millions. Peter rolled the figure in his mouth, chewed it with the fowl, swallowed it with the wine. Thirty millions, thirty millions. …

He was not at all like King Midas. The gold agreed with him splendidly.

But just opposite sat Stellan, thin, straight, scrupulously elegant, with the set face of the retired gambler. He sat looking at the row of untouched glasses in front of his wife. All those fine vintages!

At last Stellan got up and made his well-balanced speech to the newly married couple with a certain military briskness in his delivery.

After all even lies have nothing but truth to live on.

And even the coldest egoism must in the end draw breath beside whatever honour and goodness is left in the world. Otherwise it would die of suffocation. …

She began to feel out of sorts, listless, bitter. She had looked forward to some pleasant weeks at the seaside and now she had to sit here and be baked at the Grand Hotel in the midst of the summer heat and the dead season.

That Count Alexis should immediately fall ill was not a part of the marriage contract.

Laura consoled herself as far as possible with Georg. During her long stay abroad he had been boarded out in the family of a bank cashier.

“My husband is worse and I must go to him,” she said, quietly and solemnly.

Appearances must, of course, be saved.

They said goodbye with many regrets and expressions of sympathy. The young Russian musician had a refined and a very sensitive face. He meant to kiss his hostess’s hand but stopped halfway and turned a little pale.

So the game of “Chinese shades” was followed by a plundering of the dead. All that she could lay hands on was now used as a weapon against the insistent Levy.

Truly, human beings play strange games with each other.

Levy suddenly looked very tired. There was something pathetic about his raised shoulders. He had one of his fits of inevitable truth-telling. But his quick, harsh voice was unsteady:

This was a lie, a clumsy lie. Hedvig knew it and still she remained silent and allowed her mind to be poisoned. Yes, she sat there with a face that shrank in pale, shivering misery and allowed them to thrust the sting into her love.

Their cold malicious joy even gave her a sort of miserable relief.

It soothed her wound. At last she managed to rise and go out. At the door she suddenly turned round:

The gust of wind ruffled the pools on deck and tore at her wet ragged skirt. The vibration of the motor set the water in the whole of the little harbour nervously trembling.

It was as if the water, the boat and the woman were shivering from the same cold squall.

“I can jump into the water again,” she cried.

He was alone now.

It was ghastly how everything suddenly grew in the loneliness, how everything grew big and heavy and terrible, the trees, the clouds, the wind, the sea.

Quickly, as if pursued by an enemy, he dived into his house. The fire had gone out. The pine branch still beat against the window: knock! knock! knock!

The punt lay beneath the alder trees. Tord got it afloat and rowed out through the scattered, rustling reeds. On board the yacht the deck was covered with withered leaves. The water had risen up into the cockpit.

Water is never so unpleasant as when, brown with rust from the ballast, it rises up in an old boat.

Tord pumped. With difficulty he opened the swollen doors of the cabin. Down below it smelt of rotting oak, rotten ropes, mildew and damp. He pushed away a lot of rubbish and lay down on a cushion. Flap, flap!

… He fell away before an easterly gust; he was already out in the more steady wind of Järnö bay. … But then the yacht suddenly went about with whipping sails and headed out towards the open sea visible through “The Iron Door.”

Tord did not know why he had tacked. It was as if the old boat had known better than he.

As soon as Tord had rounded the point, the gale cast itself upon him as if a window had blown in. The yacht luffed, slowed down with flapping sails and vibrated till you could feel it through the whole hull.