Short Fiction

young girl came up to me through the dusk and took me aside behind a shed.

“You must answer me a question,” said she. “Did the druggist really write his verses himself?” Her voice trembled, and she tried to look away as she spoke.

“Yes,” I said. “He wrote them last night. I heard him going back and forth in his room all night.”

But when I had said that, I felt a sting in my conscience, for I saw that she was a pretty and lovable child and that it was a great sin to deceive her so.

Who knows, I said to myself, who knows? Perhaps this is the sin of which the Scripture says that it cannot be forgiven.

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The twilight deepened, it became night, and a star burned between the trees in the wood, where we were walking in pairs.

But I was alone.

I do not remember any more where I went that evening. I separated from the others and went deeper into the wood.

But deep within the wood among the firs I saw a birch with a shining white stem. By the stem stood two young people kissing, and I saw that one of them was the young girl who smelled of pine woods and heather. But the other was the apothecary, and he was a quite ordinary apothecary with a white vest. He held her pressed against the white stem of the birch and kissed her.

But when he had kissed her three times, I went away and wept bitterly.

Communion

It happened when I was hardly more than a boy.

It was on a blustering autumn evening on board a coast steamer. We had not yet come in from the country, and I had to go in and out of town to school. I had been lazy as usual and was to be examined in several subjects in order to be promoted into a higher class.

I went back and forward on the deck in the darkness, with collar turned up and hands in my coat pockets, thinking of my reverses at school. I was almost sure to flunk. As I leaned forward over the railing and saw how the foam hissed whitely and the starboard lantern threw sparkling green reflections on the black water, I felt tempted to jump overboard. Then at least the mathematics teacher would be sorry for the way he had tormented me⁠—then, when it was too late⁠—

But in the end it grew cold outside, and when I thought I had been freezing long enough, I went into the smoking cabin.

In my imagination I can still see the warm, comfortable interior which met my view when I opened the door. The lighted ceiling-lamp swung slowly back and forth like a pendulum. On the table steamed four whiskey toddies, four cigars puffed, and four gentlemen were telling smutty stories. I recognized them all as neighbors of our summer sojourn: a company director, an old clergyman, a leading actor, and a button dealer. I bowed politely and threw myself down in a corner. I had, to be sure, a slight feeling that my presence might perhaps be superfluous; but on the other hand it would have been asking too much of me to go out into the wind and freeze when there was so much room in the cabin. Furthermore I knew within myself that I might very well contribute to the entertainment if necessary.

The four men looked askance at me with a certain coolness, and there was a pause.

I was sixteen and had recently been confirmed. People have told me that at that time I had a guileless and innocent appearance.

The pause, however, was not long. A few swallows from the glasses, a few puffs at the cigars, and the exchange of opinions was once more in full swing. A peculiar circumstance struck me, though: all the stories that were told I had already heard innumerable times, and for my part I found them comparatively flat. Smutty stories may, as is well known, be divided into two chief groups, one of which concentrates itself mostly about digestive processes and circumstances related to them, whereas, on the contrary, the other, which stands incomparably higher in degree, has preferably to do with woman. I and my schoolmates had long since left the former group behind us; I was therefore the more surprised to hear these mature gentlemen give it their liveliest interest, while the other, much more appealing group was passed over in silence. I did not understand it. Could this possibly be out of any undue consideration for me? I need not say to what extent the suspicion of such a thing provoked me. The lively tone of the cabin had affected me and made me venturesome, so that I resolved to put an end to this childishness.

“Look here, uncle,” I burst out quite impulsively during a silence after a story which was so harmless that even the clergyman guffawed at it, “don’t you remember the story the captain told day before yesterday?”

“Uncle” was the company director, who was a friend of my father.

I continued undismayed: “That was the choicest I’ve heard in all my days. Couldn’t you please tell it?”

Four pairs of astonished eyes were directed upon me, and a painful silence set in. I already regretted my rash courage.

The company director broke the ice with a skittish little chuckle, which was but a faint echo of the thunder he had allowed to roll out a couple of days before when the captain had told the story.

“Tee-hee!⁠—yes, that wasn’t so bad⁠—”

He then began to tell it. It was very highly seasoned and had to do with woman.

The leading actor at first hid his feelings behind his customary mask of dignified seriousness, whereas on the other hand the button dealer, an old buck who had grown gray in sin, regarded me with a sort of furtive interest, in which was an element of increased respect for my personality.

But when the anecdote began to take a somewhat precarious