The Soul of a Child by Edwin Bjorkman

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THE SOUL OF A CHILD

BY

EDWIN BJOeRKMAN

1922

CONTENTS

PART I.
PART II.
PART III.
PART IV.

PART I

I

The oldest part of Stockholm is a little rocky island. Once it was the
whole city. Popularly it is still spoken of as "The City." At one end of
it stands the huge square-cut pile of the Royal Palace, looking with
solemn indifference toward the more modern quarters across the ever
hurried waters of the North River. Nearer the centre, and at the very
top of the island, lies an open place called Great Square, which used to
play a most important part in Swedish history, but which now serves no
better purpose than to house the open-air toy market that operates the
last week before Christmas.

Long narrow streets loop concentrically about Great Square. They are
lined with massive structures of stone and brick, four and five stories
high, that used to be the homes of court and government officials, of
army and navy officers, of burghers made prosperous by an extensive
domestic and foreign trade, while on the ground floors were located the
choicest shops of the country's capital. The shops are still there, but
they have grown dingy and cheap, and they administer only to the casual
needs of the humble middle-class people crowded into the old-fashioned,
gloomy apartments above.

From the square to the water-fronts radiate a number of still more
narrow and squalid lanes, harbouring a population which is held inferior
to that of the streets in social rank without yet being willing to have
itself classed with the manual toilers of the suburbs. Halfway down the
slope of such a lane, and almost within the shadow of the palace, stood
the house where Keith first arrived at some sort of consciousness of
himself and the surrounding world.

On the fourth floor his parents occupied a three-room flat. The parlour
and the living-room had two windows each, looking into the lane. The
kitchen in the rear opened a single window on the narrowest, barest,
darkest courtyard you ever saw, its one redeeming feature being a
glimpse of sky above the red-tiled roof of the building opposite.

In such surroundings Keith spent the better part of his first sixteen
years.

He was an only son, much loved, and one of his first conscious
realizations was a sharp sense of restraint, as if he had been tied to a
string by which he was pulled back as soon as anything promised to
become interesting.

At first he thought the world made up entirely of those three rooms,
where he, his parents, Granny--his maternal grandmother--and a more or
less transient servant girl had lived for ever. Visitors drifted in, of
course, but he seemed to think that they had come from nowhere and would
return to the same place. What instilled the first idea of a wider
outside world in his mind was leaning out through one of the windows,
with his mother's arm clutched tightly about his waist.

There was something symbolic in that clutch, for his mother was always
full of fear that dire things befall him. She was afraid of many other
things besides, and the need of being constantly worried was probably
his second clear realization.

But the clasp of his mother's arm was soft and tender for all that. Her
inclination to humour him in sundry respects not implying too much
freedom of movement contrasted favourably with the sterner restraint
exercised by his father. And so it was only natural that, to begin with,
he should cling no less closely to her than she to him.

Leaning out of the front windows was one of the favorite pursuits of his
earliest childhood, and during the summer it could be indulged to a
reasonable extent.

Across the lane, not more than twenty-five feet distant, was another
building, the upper parts of which he could see even when the windows
were closed. It was much darker of aspect than their own house, and he
knew that no people lived in it. He called it the distillery, just as he
heard his parents do, without knowing what the word meant. Staring as he
might into its dark windows, he could as a rule see nothing but the
grimy panes, because in the back of it there was no courtyard at
all--nothing but a solid wall without a single opening in it.

Now and then however, he would spy the flickering light of an open-wick
lamp move about on the floor level with their own. In the fitful,
smoke-enshrouded glow of that lamp he would catch fleeting glimpses of
clumsy figures and spooklike faces bending over huge round objects,
while at the same time, if the windows were open, he would hear much
mysterious tapping and knocking. It was all very puzzling and not quite
pleasant, so that on midwinter afternoons, when he was still awake after
dark, he would not care to look very long at the house opposite, and
the drawing of the shades came as an actual relief.

Letting his glance drop straight down from one of their windows, he saw,
at a dizzying depth, the cobbles of the lane, lined on either side by a
gutter made out of huge smooth stones. There was often water in the
gutter even on dry days, when the intense blueness of the sky-strip
overhead showed that the sun must be shining brightly. Sometimes the
water was thick and beautifully coloured, and then he yearned to get
down and put his hands into it. But to do so, he gathered from his
mother, would not only be dangerous and contrary to her will and wish,
but quite out of the question for some other reason that he could not
grasp. His mother's standing expression for it was:

"No _nice_ little boy would ever do that."

Keith's third realization in the way of self-consciousness was an uneasy
doubt of his own inherent nicety, for he soon discovered that whatever
was thus particularly forbidden seemed to himself particularly
desirable.

At times he saw children playing down there--perhaps in the very gutter
for which he was longing. To him they appeared entirely like himself,
but to his mother's eye they were evidently objectionable in the same
way as the gutter. There were not many of them, however, and it was a
long time before two or three of them began to return with sufficient
regularity to assume a distinct identity in his mind.

Older people came and went, but never many of them, and hardly ever more
than one or two at a time. Nor did he care very much. More attractive
was the sight of long, horse-drawn carts with narrow bodies resting on
two small wheels set about the centre. Generally they stopped in front
of the distillery to load or unload heavy casks or barrels of varying
size. The loading was more exciting by far, especially when the barrels
were large, for then the men had to use all their strength to roll them
up the gangway of two loose beams laid from the pavement to the cart,
and to time their efforts they shouted or chanted noisily--much to
Keith's joy and the disgust of his mother. On such occasions the air of
the lane was apt to take on a special pungency, and as he sniffed it, he
would have a sensation of mixed pleasure and revulsion. At other times
when the carts stopped in front of the warehouse below the distillery,
odours of an exclusively enjoyable character would tickle his
nostrils--odours that later he might encounter in their own kitchen and
identify with matters pleasing to the palate as well as to the nose.

There were in all only eight houses on both sides of the lane. Four of
these were the rear parts of the corner houses facing respectively on
the Quay, at the foot of the lane and on East Long Street, at its head.
Beyond the latter there was nothing but another wall full of windows,
just like the walls flanking the lane itself. The traffic on the street
was more lively and varied, but there was not much about it to catch and
hold his interest.

Almost invariably Keith turned his head in the other direction the
moment he had poked it out of the window and been pulled back by his
mother to a position of greater safety. There, at the foot of the lane,
only a stone's throw distant, opened the stony expanse of the quay
across which surged a veritable multitude of men and animals and
vehicles at all hours of the day. At the end of the Quay, silhouetted
against blue or grey or green water, appeared commonly the blunt nose or
the flag-draped stern of a big steamer, but hardly ever the middle part
of a hull with bridge or masts. And Keith could never recall whether the
complete shape of a full-sized vessel was finally revealed to him by
reality or by that reflection of it which, at an uncannily premature
age, he began to find in books.

The main feature of the view, however--a sort of narrow Japanese panel
where childish eyes perceived everything as on a flat surface--was that
it continued upwards: first, a lot of water, ripped and curled by busily
scurrying steam launches and tugs, streaked by plodding rowboats, and,
at rare times, adorned by a white-sailed yacht; then, still higher up, a
shore with many trees that drew the soul magnetically by their summer
verdure; and, finally, a brightly red, toylike fort, crowned by a small
embattled tower flying the blue and yellow Swedish flag at the top. Here
was another world, indeed, larger and brighter by far, and more richly
varied, than that of his home and the lane below and the dingy courtyard
in the back.

So he began to ask questions, and one of the first things he learned, to
his great astonishment, was that he had not always lived in the same
place--that he had been born, whatever that meant, in another and
unmistakably more desirable part of the city.

"But why did we come here," he asked, trying instinctively to keep his
voice from sounding regretful or petulant.

"Because the bank owns this house," his mother replied. "And because
papa acts as landlord for it, and we don't have to pay any rent here."

Out of this confusing answer he retained a single idea: the bank. It was
in the home air, so to speak. Evidently his father was closely connected
with it, and this was good for the whole family. For a little while the
boy imagined that his father was the bank. Later he began to think of it
as some sort of superlatively powerful being that, alone in the whole
world, ranked above his father even. Still later--much later--he began
to suspect a relationship between the bank and his father resembling
that between his father and himself. And he read out of his father's
words and miens a sense of dissatisfaction not unlike the one he felt
when he was forced to do what he did not want, or prevented from doing
what he wanted.

This was his fourth fundamental realization: of powers beyond those
directly represented within the home; powers of compelling importance
that might, or might not, be kindly; powers before which all and
everything within his own narrow world had to bow down in helpless
submission. In the end this one undoubtedly became the most significant
of all his early realizations. It tended gradually to lessen his awe of
parental authority so that, at a very early age, he developed the
courage to shape his own life and opinions regardless of his immediate
surroundings. At the same time, strange as it may seem, it inspired him
with a general respect for established authority from which he could
never quite free himself.

II

"Why don't I remember when we came here," Keith asked his mother one day
after she had let out the startling fact of his being born elsewhere.

"Because it happened before you began to remember things," she said a
little warily.

As frequently was the case, her reply puzzled him more than the fact it
was meant to explain, and so he asked no more questions that time.

On the whole, he lived completely in the present, and rather on the edge
nearest the future, so that a teacher later said of him that he was in
constant danger of "falling off forward." Highstrung and restless,
sitting still did not come naturally until he had learned to read books
all by himself, and he could hardly be called introspective. While prone
to futile regrets, largely under the influence of his mother's morbid
attitude, he gave little attention as a rule to what was past and gone.

Here was an exception, however--something concerning the past that
stirred his curiosity powerfully--and it became his first subject
for brooding.

He could remember all sorts of things, of course. And it seemed that he
had always remembered them. Yet his mother was able to tell him things
of which he knew nothing at all, although they had happened to himself.
There might be any number of such things. What were they? Could he
recall any of them by thinking hard enough?

When this problem laid hold of his mind he would retire to the corner
between the big bureau and the right-hand window in the living-room,
which, by formal conferment, was reserved for him as his own
"play-room." The space in that nook was large enough to hold a small
chair, a table to match, and a few toy boxes. There he would sit staring
blindly at his toys until his mother anxiously inquired what was the
matter with him.

The great question taking precedence of all the rest was: what was the
very first thing he could remember?

With puckered brows and peering pupils he would send his gaze back into
the misty past, and out of it emerged invariably the same image.

He saw himself seated on a small wooden horse fastened to a little
platform with wheels under it. The horse was black with white spots, and
possessed a nobly curved neck, a head with ears on top of it, and a pair
of fiercely red nostrils.

The next thing recurring to his mind was a sense of swift, exhilarating
movement. His father stood at one end of the living-room, his mother at
the other, and the horse with himself on it was being pushed rapidly
back and forth between them.

He could even hear his own joyous shouts as his father sent the horse
careering across the floor by an extra strong push. The general
impression left behind by the whole scene was one of happiness so acute
that nothing else in his life compared with it.

Was it a real memory? If so, when did it happen? And what had become of
the horse?

Finally the pressure from within became too strong and he blurted out
the whole story to his mother in order to make sure of what it meant.

"You never had a horse large enough to sit on," she declared
emphatically.

"You have been dreaming, child," Granny put in.

"What would the neighbours below have said," his mother continued. "And
the rag carpets on the floor would have caught the wheels, anyhow."

Removing the rag carpets except for purposes of cleaning was one of the
unforgivable sins, by the bye.

"And it isn't like your father either," Granny added after a while, not
without a suggestion of bitterness in her voice.

"Carl is always tired when he comes home," Keith's mother rejoined in a
tone that put an end to further discussion.

Granny's point made an impression on Keith's mind nevertheless. As far
as he could actually remember, his father had on no occasion showed such
a jolly spirit or done anything that could be used as basis for a belief
in that one questionable recollection.

At all times of the day Keith was enjoined to keep quiet--because his
mother was not well, or because of the neighbours, or just because "nice
children should not make a noise"--but it was only after his father's
return home that these injunctions must be taken quite seriously. The
father's appearance brought an instantaneous change in the atmosphere of
the place, the boy strove instinctly to be as little noticeable as
possible. If his mercurial temperament lured him into temporary
forgetfulness, a single stern word from the father sent him back into
silence and the refuge of his own corner--or into bed.

But the more he considered and conceded the unlikeliness of the scene
projected by some part of his mind with such persistency, the more
passionately he craved it to be a real memory of something that had
really happened to himself.

Perhaps it was merely a dream, as Granny had suggested. Perhaps it was
something he had wished....

Anyhow, he did wish that his father would let him come a little closer
to himself at times--not in the same way his mother did, but as he did
in the dream--or whatever it was....

Once more he fell into a deep study of when he had begun to remember so
hard that he could still remember it. Out of this he was awakened by his
mother's voice:

"What _is_ the matter, Keith?"

"I don't know what to play," he replied out of policy, as it might bring
him something either in the way of a diversion or a treat. There were
still some of mother's delectable ginger snaps left over from the
Christmas baking.

"Your soldiers are right in front of you," his mother said in a voice
holding out no hope.

So Keith returned to the tin soldiers that were his most cherished
toys--perhaps because they drew fewer protests from above than anything
else, as being least conductive to outbursts of youthful vivacity.
Judging by the earnest attention with which he manoeuvred them on his
own little table or, in moments of special dispensation, on the
collapsible dining table placed against the wall between the two
windows in the living-room, he ought to have ended as a general.

III

All through his life Keith retained a queer inclination to arrange
furniture very precisely at right angles to the wall as close to it as
possible. It was a direct outcome of his first and most deeply rooted
impressions, received in that parental living-room, where every inch of
space had been carefully calculated, and where the smallest nook was
filled by a chair, or a footstool, or some other minor object. In later
years he often wondered how a single room of modest proportions could
hold so much of furniture and of life.

It was bedroom and study, dining-room and nursery, workroom and parlour.
There the morning toilet was made, and there his first lessons were
learned. There the father did his reading, of which he was very fond,
and there the mother sewed, darned, embroidered, wrote letters, gave
household orders, told fairy tales, and received visitors. There the
simple daily meals were served for all but Granny, who clung obstinately
to the kitchen, and there friends were feasted and cards played at
nameday and birthday parties. And there three people slept every night.

Of course, excursions could be made, particularly to the kitchen where
Granny was always restlessly waiting for "one more kiss," and once in a
great while to the "best room" which mostly was occupied by some
stranger whose small weekly rent paid the servant's wages. But to the
living-room one always returned in the end, and during his first years
this narrow confinement did not strike Keith as a hardship.

The room seemed quite large to him at that time, with distances and
vistas and diversions sufficient for his childish fancy. It was a
pleasant room, with brightly striped rag carpets on the floor and two
pretty large windows framed by snow-white lace curtains. Crammed as it
was with objects needed for its many different uses, it was always kept
in a state of the most scrupulous order and instant disaster followed
any attempt as a disarrangement.

It was a whole world by itself, full of interesting things for a small
boy to puzzle over. It was also a world in evolution. Every so often a
piece of furniture would disappear and a better one take its place, to
be studied and admired and tried out again and again. Back of every
improvement lay a unifying ambition. Its key-word was mahogany. The
superior social respectability of this wood could not be disputed, and
it had a sort of natural dignity that harmonized with the father's solid
taste--though the mother might have preferred something lighter and
brighter. And a microcosm of mahogany might, after all, be worth living
for when loftier illusions had gone on the scrap heap.

Practically everything in the room had a history as well as a special
place. There was the main chest of drawers, for instance, known as
"mamma's bureau" and placed near one of the windows, where a good light
fell on the swinging mirror forming a separate piece on top of it. A
journeyman carpenter had made that chest to prove himself a master of
his trade under the old gild rules. Then he put it up at lottery to
raise money with which to open a shop of his own. Keith's father bought
a lot while still engaged, and won the prize which became the chief
wedding present of his bride--to be cherished above all other objects to
her dying day.

It was really a fine piece of work, of mahogany, with daintily carved
and twisted columns along the front corners, and so highly polished that
Keith could see his own face in the rich brown glimmer of its surfaces.
It had four drawers. The three lower ones were divided between the
parents and held all sorts of things, from shirts and socks to mother's
mahogany yard stick, which had a turned handle and a tapering blade that
made it pass excellent muster as a sword. The top drawer could only be
pulled out halfway, but then the front of it came down and it changed
into a writing desk, with an intriguing array of small drawers and
pigeonholes at the back of it, and a suspicion of alluring and
unattainable treasures in every separate receptacle. To ransack all of
these was Keith's most audacious dream, but when the dream came true at
last, it was fraught with no ecstasy of realization, for he was a
middle-aged man, and in the room behind him his mother lay dead....

The mirror was flanked by two small square mahogany boxes, one holding
medicines and the other tobacco. Little mats, some crocheted and some
wonderfully composed of differently coloured glass beads, were used to
protect the boxes as well as the top of the bureau from being
scratched, and on them stood several small groups and figures of
porcelain. One of these was Keith's special favourite and his first
introduction to that world where beauty takes precedence of goodness and
truth. It showed a lady and a gentleman in dresses of a colour and cut
wholly unlike anything seen by Keith on the real persons coming within
his ken. They were seated on a richly ornamented sofa before a tea
table, and there was something about the manner in which they looked at
each other that spoke more loudly than their bright costumes of things
lying beyond ordinary existence.

There was also a nice little girl with a doll viewing herself
complacently in a real mirror, and a lady in bloomers, apparently of
Oriental pattern, who rowed a boat hardly larger than herself, that was
raised almost on end by terrific waves. All three groups had this in
common, that when you removed the ornamental upper part, a previously
unsuspected inkstand was revealed. There was a period when Keith
seriously believed that all specimens of the keramic art were inkstands
in disguise.

Art not represented on the bureau alone, however. The walls contained a
number of steel engravings in gilt frames, quaint old coloured prints,
family photographs, and pink-coloured reliefs of various Swedish kings
made out of wax and mounted under convex glass panes on highly polished
black boards. But all of those objects were flat and distant and
colourless in comparison with the things on the bureau that could be
touched as well as seen. As for the group with the lady and the
gentlemen, it had only one rival in the boy's mind, and that was the
big clock in a wooden case that hung on the wall between the windows
over the dining table. The hide-and-seek of the restless pendulum with
its shining brass disc was a constant source of fascination in itself,
and so were the strange operations performed by the father in front of
the clock every Sunday morning, when diversions were particularly
welcome on account of the extra restrictions on play. But its main charm
rested in the strangely pleasing sounds it produced every so often,
preceded by a funny rattle that warned small folk and big of what was
going to happen. It was Keith's first acquaintance with music.

The parents' bed occupied the centre of the right-hand wall, between
mamma's bureau and another chest of drawers known as "Granny's bureau."
It was all wood and made in two parts that slid into each other,
reducing the daytime width of the bed by one-half. It stood parallel to
the wall, instead of at right angles, and the extension took place
sideways. At night it looked like an ordinary double bed. In the day it
almost disappeared beneath a rectangular pile of bed-clothing, covered
by a snow-white spread that was pulled and smoothed and tucked until it
hung straight as a wall.

Granny's bureau, old-fashioned and clumsy, but made of some native wood
that glimmered like gold, was largely devoted to linen ware for bed and
table. At the top it had two small drawers instead of a long, and one of
these constituted the first storage place set aside for Keith's special
use. His impression was that it had always been his, and once he asked
his mother if it really had been his before he was born.

"Of course it was," she said with a sly smile, "but we took the liberty
to use it for other purposes until you arrived"

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