Recollections of My Childhood and Youth | Page 7

an arrow. I could not possibly have walked. And I ran home again at full galop. From that day forth I always ran when I had to go out alone. Yes, and I could not understand how grown-up people and other boys could walk. I tried a few steps to see, but impatience got the better of me and off I flew. It was fine fun to run till you positively felt the hurry you were in, because you hit your back with your heels at every step.
My father, though, could run very much faster. It was impossible to compete with him on the grass. But it was astonishing how slow old people were. Some of them could not run up a hill and called it trying to climb stairs.
IX.
On the whole, the world was friendly. It chiefly depended on whether one were good or not. If not, Karoline was especially prone to complain and Father and Mother were transformed into angry powers. Father was, of course, a much more serious power than Mother, a more distant, more hard-handed power. Neither of them, in an ordinary way, inspired any terror. They were in the main protecting powers.
The terrifying power at this first stage was supplied by the bogey-man. He came rushing suddenly out of a corner with a towel in front of his face and said: "Bo!" and you jumped. If the towel were taken away there soon emerged a laughing face from behind it. That at once made the bogey-man less terrible. And perhaps that was the reason Maren's threat: "Now, if you are not good, the bogey-man will come and take you," quickly lost its effect. And yet it was out of this same bogey-man, so cold-bloodedly shaken off, that at a later stage a personality with whom there was no jesting developed, one who was not to be thrust aside in the same way, a personality for whom you felt both fear and trembling-- the Devil himself.
But it was only later that he revealed himself to my ken. It was not he who succeeded first to the bogey-man. It was--the police. The police was the strange and dreadful power from which there was no refuge for a little boy. The police came and took him away from his parents, away from the nursery and the drawing-room, and put him in prison.
In the street the police wore a blue coat and had a large cane in his hand. Woe to the one who made the acquaintance of that cane!
My maternal grandfather was having his warehouse done up, a large warehouse, three stories high. Through doors at the top, just under the gable in the middle, there issued a crane, and from it hung down a tremendously thick rope at the end of which was a strong iron hook. By means of it the large barrels of sky-blue indigo, which were brought on waggons, were hoisted. Inside the warehouse the ropes passed through every storey, through holes in the floors. If you pulled from the inside at the one or the other of the ropes, the rope outside with the iron crook went up or down.
In the warehouse you found Jens; he was a big, strong, taciturn, majestic man with a red nose and a little pipe in his mouth, and his fingers were always blue from the indigo. If you had made sure of Jens' good-will, you could play in the warehouse for hours at a time, roll the empty barrels about, and--which was the greatest treat of all--pull the ropes. This last was a delight that kept all one's faculties at extreme tension. The marvellous thing about it was that you yourself stood inside the house and pulled, and yet at the same time you could watch through the open doors in the wall how the rope outside went up or down. How it came about was an enigma. But you had the refreshing consciousness of having accomplished something--saw the results of your efforts before your eyes.
Nor could I resist the temptation of pulling the ropes when Jens was out and the warehouse empty. My little brother had whooping cough, so I could not live at home, but had to be at my grandfather's. One day Jens surprised me and pretty angry he was. "A nice little boy you are! If you pull the rope at a wrong time you will cut the expensive rope through, and it cost 90 Rigsdaler! What do you think your grandfather will say?" [Footnote: A Rigsdaler was worth about two shillings and threepence, English money. It is a coin that has been out of use about 40 years.]
It was, of course, very alarming to think that I might destroy such a valuable thing. Not that I had any definite ideas of