Short Fiction

In a side street stands an old middle-class house with a smooth gray façade. Through a large round-arched door without any decorations⁠—there is, to be sure, a date, and perhaps too a couple of garlands with fruit⁠—one comes upon a narrow courtyard paved with cobblestones, and a dark, stone-paved fountain like so many of its kind, where the sun never strikes the path. An old linden with pollarded branches, blackened bark, and leafage thinned with age stands in one corner; it is as old as the house, older indeed, and is always a favorite resort for the children and cats of the courtyard.

This was of old the yard of Wetzmann, the master chimney-sweep.

Sweeper Wetzmann must have been a very good-natured old fellow. He had had success in life and had got together quite a large property. He was kind to the poor, harsh to his prentices⁠—for such was the custom; so perhaps it needed to be, too⁠—and drank toddy in the tavern every evening, for he had a poor life at home.

His wife was likewise harsh to the prentices, but she was not kind to the poor or to anyone else either. She had worked as maidservant in sweeper Wetzmann’s house before she became his second wife. At that time Envy and Lust were the two of the seven deadly sins which were nearest her nature; now it was rather Wrath and Pride.

She was large and strongly built and in her earlier days must have been handsome.

The son Frederick was slim and pale. He was born of the first marriage, and it was said that he resembled his mother. He had a good head and a cheerful disposition, and was studying to be a minister.

On a brilliant August morning at eight o’clock precisely the gates of the establishment of Långholm were opened for three boarders of the establishment, who had come there for various causes and sojourned for various periods. These periods were exactly suited to the grade and kind of their differences with the law-abiding community as proved by their conduct. They did not know each other, and having no feeling of brotherhood through their common misfortune, they said to one another neither good morning nor goodbye.

The man who came out first was a thickset fellow with a beast-like forehead and heavy wrists. One dark evening he had fallen upon an old workman whom he did not like, knocked out some of his teeth, and kicked him in the chest so that he coughed blood for several days. He had been given a month for assault and battery, which did him little harm, and he betook himself hastily to the nearest tavern.

Next came a man who had swindled an impersonal entity known as a bank of a fairly large sum of money. The three months he had spent indoors had not overly bleached his fresh brandy complexion. He had a well-fitting summer suit of dark blue with narrow white edgings; on his feet he wore new yellow shoes, and in his hand he held an elegant little satchel of the same color as the shoes, so that he most nearly resembled a traveling salesman who comes whistling softly out of a hotel.

It was a cold winter that year. People shrank up in the chill and grew smaller, all except those who had furs. Judge Richardt had a big fur coat. It almost belonged, moreover, to his official position, for he was managing director of a brand-new company. His old friend Dr. Henck, on the contrary, had no fur coat: he had instead a pretty wife and three children. Dr. Henck was thin and pale. Some people grow fat with marriage, others grow thin. Dr. Henck had grown thin, and remained so on this particular Christmas Eve.

I’ve had a bad year this year, said Dr. Henck to himself, as he was on his way to his old friend John Richardt to borrow money. It was three o’clock of Christmas Eve, just the hour of the midday twilight.⁠—I’ve had a very bad year. My health is fragile, not to say broken. My patients, on the contrary, have picked up, almost the whole lot of them, I see them so seldom nowadays. Presumably I’m going to die soon. My wife thinks so, too; I’ve seen it in her looks. In such a case it would be desirable that the event should happen before the end of January, when the cursed life insurance premium has to be paid.

By the time he had reached this point in the process of his thoughts he found himself on the corner of Government and Harbor Street.

There was once a young girl and a very young man. They sat on a stone on a promontory that ran out into the lake, and the waves splashed at their feet. They sat silent, each wrapped in thought, and watched the sun go down.

He thought that he should very much like to kiss her. When he looked at her mouth, it occurred to him that this was just what it was meant for. He had, to be sure, seen girls prettier than she was, and he was really in love with someone else; but this other he could surely never kiss, because she was an ideal, a star, and what availed “the desire of the moth for the star”?

She thought that she should very much like to have him kiss her, so that she might have occasion to be downright angry with him and show how deeply she despised him. She would get up, pull her skirts tightly round her, give him a glance brimmed with icy contempt, and go off, erect and calm, without any unnecessary haste. But in order that he might not divine what she thought, she asked in a low, soft voice, “Do you think there is another life after this?”

He thought it would be easier to kiss her if he said yes. But he could not remember for certain what he might have said on other occasions about the same subject, and he was afraid of contradicting himself.

For some time back the good God had become so angered over the wickedness of men that he resolved to punish them by making them still wickeder. He should, in his great goodness, have liked above all things to have drowned them all together in a new Deluge: he had not forgotten how agreeable was the sight when all living creatures perished in the flood. But unfortunately in a sentimental moment he had promised Noah never to do so again.

“Harken, my friend!” he therefore said to the Devil one day. “You are assuredly no saint, but occasionally you have good ideas, and one can talk things over with you. The children of men are wicked and do not want to improve. My patience, which is infinite, has now come to an end, and I have resolved to punish them by making them wickeder still. The fact is I hope they will then collectively destroy each other and themselves. It occurs to me that our interests⁠—otherwise so far apart⁠—should here for once find a point of contact. What advice can you give me?”

The Devil bit the end of his tail reflectively.

“Lord,” he answered finally, “Thy wisdom is as great as Thy goodness. Statistics show that the greatest number of crimes are committed in the autumn, when the days are dismal, the sky is gray, and the earth is enveloped in rain and mist.”