Martin Birck’s Youth

Martin Birck was a little child, who lay in his bed and dreamed.

It was twilight of a summer evening, a green and tranquil twilight, and Martin went holding his mother’s hand through a big and marvelous garden where the shadows lay dark in the recesses of the walks. On both sides grew strange blue and red flowers, swaying back and forth in the wind on their slender stalks. He went along holding his mother’s hand, looking at the flowers in wonder and thinking of nothing. “You must pick only the blue ones; the red ones are poisonous,” said his mother. Then he let go her hand and stopped to pick a flower for her; it was a big blue flower he wanted to pick, as it nodded heavily, poised on its stem. Such a marvelous flower! He looked at it and smelled it. And again he looked at it with big astonished eyes; it wasn’t blue, after all, but red. It was quite red! And such an ugly, poisonous red! He threw the naughty flower on the ground and trampled on it as on a dangerous animal. But then, when he turned around, his mother was gone. “Mamma,” he cried, “where are you? Where are you? Why are you hiding from me?” Martin ran a little way down the walk, but he saw no one and he was near to weeping. The walk was silent and empty, and it was getting darker and darker. At last he heard a voice quite near: “Here I am, Martin. Don’t you see me?” But Martin saw nothing. “Here I am all the time. Why don’t you come?”

On a gray October morning Martin received permission from his mother to go down and play with Ida Dupont.

Mr. Dupont had two small rooms, one flight up. At this time of day he was away at rehearsal, so Martin and Ida were alone.

It was a dark and somber day. The inner room lay in semi-twilight, with a high Venetian blind in front of the window. When one pushed aside a corner of the blind, one could see between two gray house gables a part of the great black church cupola. Bing bong! went the bells.

Ida showed Martin a peepshow box with tinted pictures. There were white castles and gardens with colored lanterns in long gleaming rows, yellow and red and blue. There were strange cities with churches and bridges, and steamboats and big ships on a wide river. And there were halls illuminated with radiant candelabra, but what looked like lights were just little holes made with pins. It all looked so big and alive when one saw it in the box. It almost moved; there was surely something magical about it.

“I got that from mamma,” declared Ida.

“But where is your mamma?”

“She’s away.”

Martin looked surprised.

“How⁠—away?”

“She has gone off with a strange gentleman. But sometimes she writes me letters that papa reads to me, and sometimes I get pretty things from her that she sends.”

Martin became very inquisitive. He wanted to learn more but didn’t know just how he ought to ask.

However, Ida now caught Martin by both shoulders and looked very impressive.

At these words Martin had a dark premonition that a new stage of his life was beginning. He had been as happy as a plant in the earth, as is every little child with kind parents and a good home. Now the doors were opened upon an entirely new world, a world where one could not get on by the same simple means that his father and mother had shown him: i.e., by being polite and friendly towards all he met and never taking advantage of others. Here the thing was to decide quickly and firmly in what case one should use one’s fists, in what one should take to one’s heels, and under what circumstances one could benefit by cunning and deceit. It was not long, either, before Martin got the way of things. He suddenly remembered various curses and ugly words that he had heard from the bridge-tender’s assistant in the country, and he missed no opportunity of fitting them in here and there in conversation with his associates wherever he thought they would go. In this way he became sooner acquainted with the other boys, and they in return enlightened him in much that a newcomer might find useful: e.g., which of the teachers flogged and which only gave bad marks; that the worst of all was Director Sundell, who had mirrors in his spectacles so that he saw what was done behind his back and always wore galoshes so that he couldn’t be heard in the corridors; that “Sausages” was decent, though he marked hard, but that “The Flea” was a damned sneak.

When Martin Birck had got the white cap, his first errand was to go into a cigar booth to buy a cane of cinnamon wood and a package of cigarettes. The young girl who stood in the shop had black eyes and a thick bang. Her exterior corresponded but imperfectly with the ideal of his dreams, which belonged to a more blonde and Gretchen-like sphere; but when she congratulated him pleasantly on his white cap and at the same time regarded him with a look full of kindliness, despite the fact that he had never before been in her shop, he suddenly felt all warm about the heart, caught her dirty hand, which lay outstretched across the counter display of Cameo and Duke of Durham, and tenderly kissed it. However, he repented almost at once. He had no doubt behaved badly. He did not, to be sure, imagine that the young girl was completely innocent⁠—she had no doubt a lover, possibly several; but that was no reason why anyone at all had the right to come in from the street and kiss her hand just like that. He was embarrassed and didn’t know what to say or do, till he finally plucked up courage to select a cane, light a cigarette, and go out.

Queen Street was still wet after the last shower, little ladies with jogging bustles lifted their skirts to jump over puddles, which mirrored the blue above; stylish gentlemen with thin angular legs and canes like Martin’s swung their top-hats in pompous salutation, revealing in the act heads so close-clipped that the scalp shone through.

Martin suddenly heard a strange voice behind his chair.

“Very true,” said the voice, “very true. She doesn’t come when she’s invoked. An equally mournful and accurate observation!”

Martin turned in surprise. The stranger was a man carelessly dressed, with a student cap, a pale narrow face and black mustaches which hung down over his mouth so that it wasn’t easy to see whether he smiled or was serious. His face looked oldish for the white cap, and it was not entirely clean.

One of Martin’s companions stood beside him and made the introduction, “Doctor Markel.”

Doctor Markel had come there with an older brother of Billfelt’s. They had come from Uppsala that day, eaten dinner at Hasselbacken, and then invited themselves to share the student supper. The elder Billfelt was giving a talk inside at the moment. Martin heard something about “Uppsala” and “alma mater.”

Doctor Markel sat down beside Henrik and Martin without further ceremony.

“Two young poets, eh?” he asked. “I venture to assume so, since the gentlemen sit here by themselves apart from the vulgar throng and talk about the stars. May I ask what your attitude toward life is? Do you believe in God?”

Henrik Rissler looked at the stranger in surprise, and Martin shook his head.

Doctor Markel looked entirely serious, except that there was a slight mist over his eyes, which were large and mournful.

Some of the others had come up and were now listening to the conversation. Planius and Tullman presented the same docile countenances with which they had listened in class to the exposition of the instructor.