The Red Room, August Strindberg [the mitten read aloud txt] 📗

“I’ll spare you the tedious recital of a year’s humiliations, the countless taunts, the endless bitterness. Everything which appeared small and ridiculous to me was treated with grave solemnity, and everything which I considered great and praiseworthy was scoffed at. The people were called ‘the mob,’ and their only use was to be shot at by the army if occasion should arise. The new form of government was openly reviled and the peasants were called traitors.1

“I had to listen to this sort of thing for seven months; they began to suspect me because I didn’t join in their laughter, and challenged me. Next time the ‘opposition dogs’ were attacked, I exploded and made a speech, the result of which was that they knew where I stood, and that I was henceforth impossible. And now I shall do what so many other shipwrecks have done: I shall throw myself into the arms of literature.”

Struve, who seemed dissatisfied with the truncated ending, put the pencil back, sipped his toddy and looked absentminded. Nevertheless, he thought he ought to say something.

“My dear fellow,” he remarked at last, “you haven’t yet learned the art of living; you will find out how difficult it is to earn bread and butter, and how it gradually becomes the main interest. One works to eat and eats to be able to work. Believe me, who have wife and child, that I know what I’m talking about. You must cut your coat according to your cloth, you see⁠—according to your cloth. And you’ve no idea what the position of a writer is. He stands outside society.”

“His punishment for aspiring to stand above it. Moreover, I detest society, for it is not founded on a voluntary basis. It’s a web of lies⁠—I renounce it with pleasure.”

“It’s beginning to grow chilly,” said Struve.

“Yes; shall we go?”

“Perhaps we’d better.”

The flame of conversation had flickered out.

Meanwhile the sun had set; the half moon had risen and hung over the fields to the north of the town. Star after star struggled with the daylight which still lingered in the sky; the gas-lamps were being lighted in the town; the noise and uproar was beginning to die away.

Falk and Struve walked together in the direction of the north, talking of commerce, navigation, the crafts, everything in fact which did not interest them; finally, to each other’s relief, they parted.

Falk strolled down River Street towards the dockyard, his brain pregnant with new thoughts. He felt like a bird which had flown against a windowpane and now lay bruised on the ground at the very moment when it had spread its wings to fly towards freedom. He sat down on a seat, listening to the splashing of the waves; a light breeze had sprung up and rustled through the flowering maple trees, and the faint light of the half moon shone on the black water; twenty, thirty boats lay moored on the quay; they tore at their chains for a moment, raised their heads, one after the other, and dived down again, underneath the water; wind and wave seemed to drive them onward; they made little runs towards the bridge like a pack of hounds, but the chain held them in leash and left them kicking and stamping, as if they were eager to break loose.

He remained in his seat till midnight; the wind fell asleep, the waves went to rest, the fettered boats ceased tugging at their chains; the maples stopped rustling, and the dew was beginning to fall.

Then he rose and strolled home, dreaming, to his lonely attic in the northeastern part of the town.

That is what young Falk did; but old Struve, who on the same day had become a member of the staff of the Grey Bonnet, because the Red Cap had sacked him, went home and wrote an article for the notorious People’s Flag, on the Board of Payment of Employees’ Salaries, four columns at five crowns a column.

The flax merchant, Charles Nicholas Falk⁠—son of the late flax merchant, one of the fifty elders of the burgesses, captain of the infantry of militia, vestryman and member of the Board of Administration of the Stockholm Fire Insurance, Charles John Falk, and brother of the former assessor and present writer, Arvid Falk⁠—had a business or, as his enemies preferred to call it, a shop in Long Street East, nearly opposite Pig Street, so that the young man who sat behind the counter, surreptitiously reading a novel, could see a piece of a steamer, the paddle-box perhaps, or the jib-boom, and the crown of a tree on Skeppsholm, with a patch of sky above it, whenever he raised his eyes from his book.

The shop assistant, who answered to the not unusual name of Andersson, and he had learnt to answer to it, had just⁠—it was early in the morning⁠—opened the shop, hung up outside the door a flax tress, a fish and an eel basket, a bundle of fishing-rods, and a crawl of unstripped quills; this done, he had swept the shop, strewn the floor with sawdust, and sat down behind the counter. He had converted an empty candle-box into a kind of mousetrap, which he set with a hooked stick; immediately on the appearance of his principal, or any of the latter’s friends, the novel on which Andersson was intent dropped into the box. He did not seem afraid of customers; for one thing it was early in the morning and for another he was not used to very many customers.

The business had been established in the days of the late King Frederick⁠—Charles Nicholas Falk had inherited this statement from his father, to whom it had descended from his grandfather; it had flourished and earned a good deal of money until a few years ago; but the disastrous chamber-system killed trade, ruined all prospects, impeded all enterprise, and threatened all citizens with bankruptcy. So, at least, Falk said;