XI
Dirty is paying us a visit and my little boy is sitting at her feet.
She has buried her fingers in her hair and is reading, reading, reading..
She is learning the Ten Commandments by heart. She stammers and repeats herself, with eyes fixed in her head and a despairing mouth:
"Thou shalt.. Thou shalt not.. Thou shalt."
The boy watches her with tender compassion.
He has already learnt a couple of the commandments by listening to her and helps her, now and then, with a word. Then he comes to me and asks, anxiously:
"Father, must Dirty do all that the Ten Commandments say?"
"Yes."
He sits down by her again. His heart is overflowing with pity, his eyes are moist. She does not look at him, but plods on bravely:
"Thou shalt.. Thou shalt not."
"Father, when I grow big, must I also do all that the Ten Commandments say?"
"Ye-es."
He looks at me in utter despair. Then he goes back to Dirty and listens, but now he keeps his thoughts to himself.
Suddenly, something seems to flash across his mind.
He comes to me again, puts his arms on my knee and looks with his green eyes firmly into mine:
"Father, do you do all that the Ten Commandments say?"
"Ye-e-es."
He looks like a person whose last hope has escaped him. I would so much like to help him; but what, in Heaven's name, can I do?
Then he collects himself, shakes his head a little and says, with great tears in his eyes:
"Father, I don't believe that I can do all those things that the Ten Commandments say."
And I draw him to me and we cry together because life is so difficult, while Dirty plods away like a good girl.
XII
This we all know, that sin came into the world by the law.
Dirty's Ten Commandments have brought it to us.
When she comes, she now always has Luther's terrible Little Catechism1 and Balslev's equally objectionable work with her. Her parents evidently look upon it as most natural that she should also cultivate her soul at our house.
Her copies of these two classics were not published yesterday. They are probably heirlooms in Dirty's family. They are covered in thick brown paper, which again is protected by a heavy layer of dirt against any touch of clean fingers. They can be smelt at a distance.
But my little boy is no snob.
When Dirty has finished her studies – she always reads out aloud – he asks her permission to turn over the pages of the works in which she finds those strange words. He stares respectfully at the letters which he cannot read. And then he asks questions.
He asks Dirty, he asks the servant, he asks us. Before anyone suspects it, he is at home in the whole field of theology.
He knows that God is in Heaven, where all good people go to Him, while the wicked are put down below in Hell. That God created the world in six days and said that we must not do anything on Sundays. That God can do everything and knows everything and sees everything.
He often prays, creeps upstairs as high as he can go, so as to be nearer Heaven, and shouts as loud as he can. The other day I found him at the top of the folding-steps:
"Dear God! You must please give us fine weather tomorrow, for we are going to the wood."
He says Du to everybody except God and the grocer.
He never compromises.
The servant is laying the table; we have guests coming and we call her attention to a little hole in the cloth:
"I must lay it so that no one can see it," she says.
"God will see it."
"He is not coming this evening," says the blasphemous hussy.
"Yes, He is everywhere," answers my little boy, severely.
He looks after me in particular:
"You mustn't say 'gad,' Father. Dirty's teacher says that people who say 'gad' go to Hell."
"I shan't say it again," I reply, humbly.
One Sunday morning, he finds me writing and upbraids me seriously.
"My little boy," I say, distressfully, "I must work every day. If I do nothing on Sunday, I do nothing on Monday either. If I do nothing on Monday, I am idle on Tuesday too. And so on."
He ponders; and I continue, with the courage of despair:
"You must have noticed that Dirty wants a new catechism? The one she has is dirty and old."
He agrees to this.
"She will never have one, you see," I say, emphatically. "Her father rests so tremendously on Sunday that he is hardly able to do anything on the other days. He never earns enough to buy a new catechism."
I have won – this engagement. But the war is continued without cessation of hostilities.
The mother of my little boy and I are sitting in the twilight by his bedside and softly talking about this.
"What are we to do?" she asks.
"We can do nothing?" I reply. "Dirty is right: God is everywhere. We can't keep Him out. And if we could, for a time: what then? A day would come perhaps when our little boy was ill or sad and the priests would come to him with their God as a new and untried miraculous remedy and bewilder his mind and his senses. Our little boy too will have to go through Luther and Balslev and Assens and confirmation and all the rest of it. Then this will become a commonplace to him; and one day he will form his own views, as we have done."
But, when he comes and asks how big God is, whether He is bigger than the Round Tower, how far it is to Heaven, why the weather was not fine on the day when he prayed so hard for it: then we fly from the face of the Lord and hide like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.
And we leave Dirty to explain.
XIII
My little boy has got a rival, whose name is Henrik, a popinjay who not only is six years old, but has an unlimited supply of liquorice at his disposal. And, to fill the measure of my little boy's bitterness, Henrik is to go to the dancing-school; and I am, therefore, not surprised when my little boy asks to be taught to dance, so that he may not be left quite behind in the contest.
"I don't advise you to do that," I say. "The dancing which you learn at school is not pretty and does not play so great a part in love as you imagine. I don't know how to dance; and many charming ladies used to prefer me to the most accomplished ornaments of the ball-room. Besides, you know, you are knock-kneed."
And, to cheer him up, I sing a little song which we composed when we were small and had a dog and did not think about women:
See, my son, that little basset,
Running with his knock-kneed legs!
His own puppy, he can't catch it:
He'll fall down as sure as eggs!
Knock-kneed Billy!
Isn't he silly?
Silly Billy!
But poetry fails to comfort him. Dark is his face and desperate his glance. And, when I see that the case is serious, I resolve to resort to serious measures.
I take him with me to a ball, a real ball, where people who have learnt to dance go to enjoy themselves. It is difficult to keep him in a more or less waking condition, but I succeed.
We sit quietly in a corner and watch the merry throng. I say not a word, but look at his wide-open eyes.
"Father, why does that man jump like that, when he is so awfully hot?"
"Yes; can you understand it?"
"Why does that lady with her head on one side look so tired?.. Why does that fat woman hop about so funnily, Father?.. Father, what queer legs that man there has!"
It rains questions and observations. We make jokes and laugh till the tears come to our eyes. We whisper naughty things to each other and go into a side-room and mimic a pair of crooked legs till we can't hold ourselves for laughter. We sit and wait till a steam thrashing-machine on its round comes past us; and we are fit to die when we hear it puff and blow.
We enjoy ourselves beyond measure.
And we make a hit.
The steam thrashing-machine and the crooked legs and the fat woman and the hot gentleman and others crowd round us and admire the dear little boy. We accept their praises, for we have agreed not to say what we think to anybody, except to Mother, when we come home, and then, of course, to Dirty.
And we wink our eyes and enjoy our delightful fun until we fall asleep and are driven home and put to bed.
And then we have done with the dancing-school.
My little boy paints in strong colours, for his Dirty's benefit, what Henrik will look like when he dances. It is no use for that young man to deny all that my little boy says and to execute different elegant steps. I was prepared for this; and my little boy tells exultantly that this is only something with which they lure stupid people at the start and that it will certainly end with Henrik's getting very hot and hopping round on crooked legs with a fat woman and a face of despair.
In the meantime, of course, I do not forget that, if we pull down without building up we shall end by landing ourselves in an unwholesome scepticism.
We therefore invent various dances, which my little boy executes in the courtyard to Dirty's joy and to Henrik's most jealous envy. We point emphatically to the fact that the dances are our own, that they are composed only for the woman we love and performed only for her.
There is, for instance, a dance with a stick, which my little boy wields, while Henrik draws back. Another with a pair of new mittens for Dirty. And, lastly, the liquorice dance, which expresses an extraordinary contempt for that foodstuff.
That Dirty should suck a stick of liquorice, which she has received from Henrik, while enjoying her other admirer's satire, naturally staggers my little boy. But I explain to him that that is because she is a woman and that that is a thing which can't be helped.
What Bournonville2 would say, if he could look down upon us from his place in Heaven, I do not know.
But I don't believe that he can.
If he, up there, could see how people dance down here, he really would not stay there.