Recollections of My Childhood and Youth | Page 9

much annoyed to find out, as I soon did, that I
had been misled by the explanation and that it was a question of
soldiers only.
Not a month had passed before I began to follow eagerly, when the
grown- up people read aloud from the farthing newspaper sheets about
the battles at Bov, Nybböl, etc. The Danes always won. At bottom, war
was a cheerful thing.
Then one day an unexpected and overwhelming thing happened.
Mother was sitting with her work on the little raised platform in the
drawing-room, in front of the sewing-table with its many little
compartments, in which, under the loose mahogany lid, there lay so
many beautiful and wonderful things--rings and lovely earrings, with
pearls in them--when the door to the kitchen opened and the maid came
in. "Has Madame heard? The Christian VIII. has been blown up at
Eckernförde and the Gefion is taken."
"Can it be possible?" said Mother. And she leaned over the
sewing-table and burst into tears, positively sobbed. It impressed me as
nothing had ever done before. I had never seen Mother cry. Grown-up
people did not cry. I did not even know that they could. And now

Mother was crying till the tears streamed down her face. I did not know
what either the Christian VIII. or the Gefion were, and it was only now
that the maid explained to me that they were ships. But I understood
that a great misfortune had happened, and soon, too, how people were
blown up with gunpowder, and what a good thing it was that one of our
acquaintances, an active young man who was liked by everyone and
always got on well, had escaped with a whole skin, and had reached
Copenhagen in civilian's dress.
X.
About this time it dawned upon me in a measure what birth and death
were. Birth was something that came quite unexpectedly, and
afterwards there was one child more in the house. One day, when I was
sitting on the sofa between Grandmamma and Grandpapa at their
dining-table in Klareboderne, having dinner with a fairly large
company, the door at the back of the room just opposite to me opened.
My father stood in the doorway, and, without a good-morning, said:
"You have got a little brother"--and there really was a little one in a
cradle when I went home.
Death I had hitherto been chiefly acquainted with from a large,
handsome painting on Grandfather's wall, the death of the King not
having affected me. The picture represented a garden in which Aunt
Rosette sat on a white-painted bench, while in front of her stood Uncle
Edward with curly hair and a blouse on, holding out a flower to her.
But Uncle Edward was dead, had died when he was a little boy, and as
he had been such a very good boy, everyone was very sorry that they
were not going to see him again. And now they were always talking
about death. So and so many dead, so and so many wounded! And all
the trouble was caused by the Enemy.
XI.
There were other inimical forces, too, besides the police and the Enemy,
more uncanny and less palpable forces. When I dragged behind the
nursemaid who held my younger brother by the hand, sometimes I
heard a shout behind me, and if I turned round would see a grinning
boy, making faces and shaking his fist at me. For a long time I took no
particular notice, but as time went on I heard the shout oftener and
asked the maid what it meant. "Oh, nothing!" she replied. But on my
repeatedly asking she simply said: "It is a bad word."

But one day, when I had heard the shout again, I made up my mind that
I would know, and when I came home asked my mother: "What does it
mean?" "Jew!" said Mother. "Jews are people." "Nasty people?" "Yes,"
said Mother, smiling, "sometimes very ugly people, but not always."
"Could I see a Jew?" "Yes, very easily," said Mother, lifting me up
quickly in front of the large oval mirror above the sofa.
I uttered a shriek, so that Mother hurriedly put me down again, and my
horror was such that she regretted not having prepared me. Later on she
occasionally spoke about it.
XII.
Other inimical forces in the world cropped up by degrees. When you
had been put to bed early the maids often sat down at the nursery table,
and talked in an undertone until far on into the evening. And then they
would tell stories that were enough to make your hair stand on end.
They talked of ghosts that went about dressed in white, quite
noiselessly, or rattling their chains through the rooms of houses,
appeared to