The Great Hunger Part 33

"Do you talk politics?"

"No--we play cards. Why do you look at me like that?"

"You never cared for cards before."

"No; but what the devil am I to do? I can't read, because of these cursed eyes of mine--and the hammering in my head. . . . And I've counted all the farms up and down the valley now. There are fifty in all. And on the farm here there are just twenty-one houses, big and little. What the devil am I to take to next?"

Merle sighed. "It is hard," she said. "But couldn't you wait till the evening to play cards--till the children are in bed--then I could play with you. That would be better."

"Thank you very much. But what about the rest of the day? Do you know what it's like to go about from dawn to dark feeling that every minute is wasted, and wasted for nothing? No, you can't know it. What am I to do with myself all through one of these endless, deadly days? Drink myself drunk?"

"Couldn't you try cutting firewood for a little?"

"Firewood?" He whistled softly. "Well, that's an idea. Ye--yes. Let's try chopping firewood for a change."

Thud, thud, thud!

But as he straightened his back for a breathing-s.p.a.ce, the whirr, whirr of Raastad's mowing machine came to him from the hill-slope near by where it was working, and he clenched his teeth as if they ached. He was driving a mowing machine of his own invention, and it was raining continually, and the gra.s.s kept sticking, sticking--and how to put it right--put it right? It was as if blows were falling on festering wounds in his head, making him dance with pain. Thud, thud, thud!--anything to drown the whirr of that machine.

But a man may use an axe with his hands, and yet have idiotic fancies all the time bubbling and seething in his head. The power to hold in check the vagaries of imagination may be gone. From all sides they come creeping out in swarms, they swoop down on him like birds of prey--as if in revenge for having been driven away so often before--they cry: here we are! He stood once more as an apprentice in the mechanical works, riveting the plates of a gigantic boiler with a compressed-air tube--cling, clang! The wailing clang of the boiler went out over the whole town. And now that same boiler is set up inside his head--cling-clang--ugh! A cold sweat breaks out upon his body; he throws down the axe; he must go--must fly, escape somewhere--where, he cannot tell. Faces that he hates to think of peer out at him from every corner, yapping out: "Heh!--what did we say? To-day a beggar--to-morrow a madman in a cell."

But it may happen, too, that help comes in the night. Things come back to a man that it is good to remember. That time--and that other. . . . A woman there--and the one you met in such a place. There is a picture in the Louvre, by Veronese: a young Venetian woman steps out upon the marble stairway of a palace holding a golden-haired boy by the hand; she is dressed in black velvet, she glows with youth and happiness. A lovers' meeting in her garden? The first kiss! Moonlight and mandolins!

A shudder of pleasure pa.s.ses through his weary body. Bright recollections and impressions flock towards him like spirits of light--he can hear the rus.h.i.+ng sound of their wings--he calls to them for aid, and they encircle him round; they struggle with the spirits of darkness for his soul. He has known much brightness, much beauty in his life--surely the bright angels are the stronger and must conquer. Ah!

why had he not lived royally, amidst women and flowers and wine?

One morning as he was getting up, he said: "Merle, I must and will hit upon something that'll send me to bed thoroughly tired out."

"Yes dear," she answered. "Do try."

"I'll try wheeling stones to begin with," he said. "The devil's in it if a day at that doesn't make a man sleep."

So that day and for many days he wheeled stones from some newly broken land on the hillside down to a d.y.k.e that ran along the road.

Calm, golden autumn days; one farm above another rising up towards the crest of the range, all set in ripe yellow fields. One little cottage stands right on the crest against the sky itself, and it, too, has its tiny patch of yellow corn. And an eagle sails slowly across the deep valley from peak to peak.

People pa.s.sing by stared at Peer as he went about bare-headed, in his s.h.i.+rt-sleeves, wheeling stones. "Aye, gentlefolks have queer notions,"

they would say, shaking their heads.

"That's it--keep at it," a dry, hacking voice kept going in Peer's head.

"It is idiocy, but you are doomed to it. Shove hard with those skinny legs of yours; many a jade before you has had to do the same. You've got to get some sleep tonight. Only ten months left now; and then we shall have Lucifer turning up at the cross-roads once more. Poor Merle--she's beginning to grow grey. And the poor little children--dreaming of father beating them, maybe, they cry out so often in their sleep. Off now, trundle away. Now over with that load; and back for another.

"You, that once looked down on the soulless toil for bread, you have sunk now to something far more miserable. You are dragging at a load of sheer stupidity. You are a galley-slave, with calamity for your task-master. As you move the chains rattle. And that is your day."

He straightens himself up, wipes the sweat from his forehead, and begins heaving up stones into his barrow again.

How long must it last, this life in manacles? Do you remember Job?

Job? Aye, doubtless Jehovah was sitting at some jovial feast when he conceived that fantasy of a drunken brain, to let Satan loose upon a happy man. Job? His seven sons and daughters, and his cattle, and his calves were restored unto him, but we read nothing of any compensation made him for the jest itself. He was made to play court fool, with his boils and his tortures and his misery, and the G.o.ds had their bit of sport gratis. Job had his actual outlay in cattle and offspring refunded, and that was all. Ha-ha!

Prometheus! Is it you after all that are the friend of man among the G.o.ds? Have you indeed the power to free us all some day? When will you come, then, to raise the great revolt?

Come, come--up with the barrow again--you see it is full.

"Father, it's dinner-time. Come along home," cries little Louise, racing down the hill with her yellow plaits flying about her ears. But she stops cautiously a little distance off--there is no knowing what sort of temper father may be in.

"Thanks, little monkey. Got anything good for dinner to-day?"

"Aha! that's a secret," said the girl in a teasing voice; she was beaming now, with delight at finding him approachable. "Catch me, father! I can run quicker than you can!"

"I'm afraid I'm too tired just now, my little girl."

"Oh, poor papa! are you tired?" And she came up and took him by the hand. Then she slipped her arm into his--it was just as good fun to walk up the hill on her father's arm like a grown-up young lady.

Then came the frosts. And one morning the hilltops were turned into leaden grey clouds from which the snow came sweeping down. Merle stood at the window, her face grey in the clammy light. She looked down the valley to where the mountains closed it in; it seemed still narrower than before; one's breath came heavily, and one's mind seemed stifled under cold damp wrappings.

Ugh! Better go out into the kitchen and set to work again--work--work and forget.

Then one day there came a letter telling her that her mother was dead.

Chapter III

DEAR KLAUS BROCK,--

Legendary being! Cast down from Khedivial heights one day and up again on high with Kitchener the next. But, in Heaven's name, what has taken you to the Soudan? What made you go and risk your life at Omdurman? The same old desperation, I suppose, that you're always complaining about.

And why, of all things, plant yourself away in an outpost on the edge of the wilderness, to lie awake at nights nursing suicidal thoughts over Schopenhauer? You have lived without principles, you say. And wasted your youth. And are homeless now all round, with no morals, no country, no religion. But will you make all this better by making things much worse?

You've no reason to envy me my country life, by the way, and there's no sense in your going about longing for the little church of your childhood, with its Moses and hymns and G.o.d. Well, longing does no harm, perhaps, but don't ever try to find it. The fact is, old fellow, that such things are not to be found any more.

I take it that religion had the same power on you in your childhood as it had with me. We were wild young scamps, both of us, but we liked going to church, not for the sake of the sermons, but to bow our heads when the hymn arose and join in singing it. When the waves of the organ-music rolled through the church, it seemed--to me at least--as if something were set swelling in my own soul, bearing me away to lands and kingdoms where all at last was as it should be. And when we went out into the world we went with some echo of the hymn in our hearts, and we might curse Jehovah, but in a corner of our minds the hymn lived on as a craving, a hunger for some world-harmony. All through the busy day we might bear our part in the roaring song of the steel, but in the evenings, on our lonely couch, another power would come forth in our minds, the hunger for the infinite, the longing to be cradled and borne up on the waves of eternity, whose way is past all finding out.

Never believe, though, that you'll find the church of your childhood now in any of our country places. We have electric light now everywhere, telephones, separators, labour unions and political meetings, but the church stands empty. I have been there. The organ wails as if it had the toothache, the precentor sneezes out a hymn, the congregation does not lift the roof off with its voice, for the very good reason that there is no congregation there. And the priest, poor devil, stands up in his pulpit with his black moustache and pince-nez; he is an officer in the army reserve, and he reads out his highly rational remarks from a ma.n.u.script. But his face says all the time--"You two paupers down there that make up my congregation, you don't believe a word I am saying; but never mind, I don't believe it either." It's a tragic business when people have outgrown their own conception of the divine. And we--we are certainly better than Jehovah. The dogma of the atonement, based on original sin and the bloodthirstiness of G.o.d, is revolting to us; we shrug our shoulders, and turn away with a smile, or in disgust. We are not angels yet, but we are too good to wors.h.i.+p such a G.o.d as that.

There is some excuse for the priest, of course. He must preach of some G.o.d. And he has no other.

Altogether, it's hardly surprising that even ignorant peasants shake their heads and give the church a wide berth. What do they do on Sundays, then? My dear fellow, they have no Sunday. They sit nodding their heads over a long table, waiting for the day to pa.s.s. They remind one of plough horses, that have filled their bellies, and stand snoring softly, because there's no work today.

The great evolutionary scheme, with its wonders of steel and miracles of science, goes marching on victoriously, I grant you, changing the face of the world, hurrying its pulse to a more and more feverish beat. But what good will it do the peasant to be able to fly through the air on his wheelbarrow, while no temple, no holy day, is left him any more on earth? What errand can he have up among the clouds, while yet no heaven arches above his soul?

This is the burning question with all of us, with you in the desert as with us up here under the Pole. To me it seems that we need One who will make our religion new--not merely a new prophet, but a new G.o.d.

You ask about my health--well, I fancy it's too early yet to speak about it. But so much I will say: If you should ever be in pain and suffering, take it out on yourself--not on others.

Greetings from us all.

Yours,