Martin and Maria listened with wide-open mouths. Grandmother had told a story, after all. Of such stories she knew plenty.
Father had lighted a cigar and pushed his chair nearer the fire. He now motioned to Martin and Maria: “Come, children, now we’ll play.”
The blaze had almost burned out. Father broke apart two or three empty match boxes and built out of the fragments a house away deep in the porcelain stove. He put in a lot of matches as pillars and beams and lastly twisted up a bit of stiff paper; that was a tower. At the top of the twist he cut a hole for a chimney. All this was now a stately castle like the old Stockholm castles in Dahlberg’s Swedish Monuments. When it was done, father set fire to all the corners.
It hissed and sputtered and burned.
“Look—just look how it’s burning!—now the farthest corner is catching—now the eastern gate’s on fire, now it’s falling!—and the tower’s burning, the tower’s tumbling—”
“Now it’s over.”
“Again, papa,” begged Martin. “Oh, again! Just once more!”
“No, not just once more,” said father; “it’s no fun the second time.”
Martin begged and implored. But father went over to the piano and stroked his wife’s hair.
Martin remained sitting in front of the fire. His cheeks burned but he couldn’t tear himself away. It flamed and glowed so finely away in there. It glimmered and glowed and burned.
Finally grandmother came, shut the damper, and put down the slats. Then Martin went to the window.
The sun was gone long ago. It had cleared a while, but murky cloud masses were driving along in broken lines over the thin, glassy blue of the sky. Long Row lay in deep twilight. The lindens and cherry trees of the garden were stripped of leaves, and here and there a light was already gleaming in a window from out the dark net of boughs. Down on the street the lamplighter went about his task; he was old and bent, and had a leather cap which came far down over his forehead. Now he came to the lamp just in front of the window on the opposite side of the street; when he had lighted it, the whole room brightened. The white lace curtains outlined their broken pattern on the ceiling and walls, while the calla lilies and fuchsias painted fantastic shadows.
It grew darker and darker.
One could see so far up above—far off over the low buildings of the old suburb with its wooden houses and gardens. One could see Humlegård Park with the roof of the rotunda between the old naked lindens. And farthest off in the west rose a gray outline, the Observatory on its hill.
The deep and empty blue of the October heavens became still more deep and still more empty. Toward the west it was suffused with a red that looked dirty with mist and soot.
Martin traced outlines with his finger on the pane, which had begun to be damp.
“Will it soon be Christmas, grandma?”
“Oh, not for a good bit, child.”
Martin stood a long while with his nose pressed against the pane staring at the sky, a melancholy twilight sky with clouds of pale red and gray.
V
But when the lamp was lighted and they sat around the table, each with his own work or book or paper, Martin went off and sat in a corner. For he had suddenly become sad without knowing why. There he sat in the dark, staring in at the circle of yellow light in which the others sat and talked, while he felt himself outside, abandoned and forgotten.
It did not help that Maria hunted out an old volume of Near and Far to show him Garibaldi and the war in Poland and Emperor Napoleon III with his pointed mustaches; he had seen them all many times. Nor did it help that she gave him a piece of paper and taught him to fold it into the shape of a saltcellar, a crow, or a catamaran; for, though he did not know it, Martin only longed for someone to say or do something that would make him cry. It was therefore he sat moody and silent, listening to the rain that whipped against the window, for it had begun to rain again, and the wind shook the glass.
What was that? Did he suddenly hear father say to mother: “Perhaps you’re right that we ought to try to sell the piano and buy a pianino on instalment. It goes out of tune in a couple of weeks, and a pianino would be prettier.”
Martin gave a start at the words “sell the piano.” He had no clear idea of what a pianino was, but he didn’t believe it could be a real piano; he pictured it rather as something that was worked with a handle. He didn’t believe any other instrument could sound as beautiful as their piano. He loved every dent and every crack in the red mahogany frame, for he himself had made most of them, and he remembered almost every key from its special color. Sell the piano! To his ears it sounded like something impossible. It was almost as if he had heard his parents calmly sitting and talking about selling grandmother and buying an aunt instead.
Martin began to cry before he knew it.
“Mamma,” said Maria, “Martin’s crying.”
“What are you crying for, Martin?” his mother asked.
Martin only sobbed.
“He’s tired and sleepy,” declared grandmother. “He’d better go to bed.”
While Martin, still sobbing, made the rounds to
