Short Fiction

By Selma Lagerlöf.

Translated by Pauline Bancroft Flach, Jessie Brochner, and Velma Swanston Howard.

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Foreword

This edition of Selma Lagerlöf’s Short Fiction was produced from various translations. “The Spirit of Fasting and Petter Nord,” “The Legend of the Bird’s Nest,” “The King’s Grave,” “The Outlaws,” “The Legend Of Reor,” “Valdemar Atterdag,” “Mamsell Fredrika,” “The Romance of a Fisherman’s Wife,” “His Mother’s Portrait,” “A Fallen King,” “A Christmas Guest,” “Uncle Reuben,” “Downie,” and “Among the Climbing Roses” were translated by Pauline Bancroft Flach and originally published in 1899. “The Story of a Country House,” “Queens at Kungahälla,” “Old Agnete,” “The Fisherman’s Ring,” “Santa Caterina of Siena,” “The Empress’s Money-Chest,” “The Peace of God,” “A Story from Halstanäs,” “The Inscription on the Grave,” and “The Brothers” were translated by Jessie Brochner and originally published in 1901. “The Holy Night,” “The Emperor’s Vision,” “The Wise Men’s Well,” “Bethlehem’s Children,” “The Flight Into Egypt,” “In Nazareth,” “In the Temple,” “Saint Veronica’s Kerchief,” “Robin Redbreast,” “Our Lord and Saint Peter,” and “The Sacred Flame” were translated by Velma Swanston Howard and originally published in 1908. “The Girl from the Marsh Croft,” “The Silver Mine,” “The Airship,” “The Wedding March,” “The Musician,” “The Legend of the Christmas Rose,” “A Story from Jerusalem,” “Why the Pope Lived to Be So Old” and “The Story of a Story” were also translated by Velma Swanston Howard and originally published in 1910.

Robin Whittleton

Malmö, Sweden, February 2021

Short Fiction

The Spirit of Fasting and Petter Nord

I

I can see before me the little town, friendly as a home. It is so small that I know its every hole and corner, am friends with all the children and know the name of every one of its dogs. Who ever walked up the street knew to which window he must raise his eyes to see a lovely face behind the panes, and who ever strolled through the town park knew well whither he should turn his steps to meet the one he wished to meet.

One was as proud of the beautiful roses in the garden of a neighbor, as if they had grown in one’s own. If anything mean or vulgar was done, it was as great a shame as if it had happened in one’s own family; but at the smallest adventure, at a fire or a fight in the marketplace, one swelled with pride and said: “Only see what a community! Do such things ever happen anywhere else? What a wonderful town!”

In my beloved town nothing ever changes. If I ever come there again, I shall find the same houses and shops that I knew of old; the same holes in the pavements will cause my downfall; the same stiff hedges of lindens, the same clipped lilac bushes will captivate my fascinated gaze. Again shall I see the old Mayor who rules the whole town walking down the street with elephantine tread. What a feeling of security there is in knowing that you are walking there! And deaf old Halfvorson will still be digging in his garden, while his eyes, clear as water, stare and wander as if they would say: “We have investigated everything, everything; now, earth, we will bore down to your very centre.”

But one who will not still be there is little, round Petter Nord: the little fellow from Värmland, you know, who was in Halfvorson’s shop; he who amused the customers with his small mechanical inventions and his white mice. There is a long story about him. There are stories to be told about everything and everybody in the town. Nowhere else do such wonderful things happen.

He was a peasant boy, little Petter Nord. He was short and round; he was brown-eyed and smiling. His hair was paler than birch leaves in the autumn; his cheeks were red and downy. And he was from Värmland. No one, seeing him, could imagine that he was from any other place. His native land had equipped him with its excellent qualities. He was quick at his work, nimble with his fingers, ready with his tongue, clear in his thoughts. And, moreover, full of fun, good-natured and brave, kind and quarrelsome, inquisitive and a chatterbox. A madcap, he never could show more respect to a burgomaster than to a beggar! But he had a heart; he fell in love every other day, and confided in the whole town.

This child of rich gifts attended to the work in the shop in rather an extraordinary manner. The customers were waited on while he fed the white mice. Money was changed and counted while he put wheels on his little automatic wagons. And while he told the customers of his very last love-affair, he kept his eye on the quart measure, into which the brown molasses was slowly curling. It delighted his admiring listeners to see him suddenly leap over the counter and rush out into the street to have a brush with a passing street-boy; also to see him calmly return to tie the string on a package or to finish measuring a piece of cloth.

Was it not quite natural that he should be the favorite of the whole town? We all felt obliged to trade with Halfvorson, after Petter Nord came there. Even the old Mayor himself was proud when Petter Nord took him apart into a dark corner and showed him the cages of the white mice. It was nervous work to show the mice, for Halfvorson had forbidden him to have them in the shop.

But then in the brightening February there came a few days of warm, misty weather. Petter Nord became suddenly serious and silent. He let the white mice nibble the steel bars of their cages without feeding them. He attended to his duties in the most irreproachable way. He fought with no more street boys. Could Petter Nord not bear the change in the weather?

Oh no, the matter was that he had found a fifty-crown note on one of the shelves. He believed that it had got caught in a piece of cloth, and without anyone’s seeing him he had pushed it under a roll of striped cotton which was out of fashion and was never taken down from the shelf.

The boy was cherishing great anger in his heart against Halfvorson. The latter had destroyed a whole family of mice for him, and now he meant to be revenged. Before his eyes he still saw the white mother with her helpless offspring. She had not made the slightest attempt to escape; she had remained in her place with steadfast heroism, staring with red, burning eyes on the heartless murderer. Did he not deserve a short time of anxiety? Petter Nord wished to see him come out pale as death from his office and begin to look for the fifty crowns. He wished to see the same despair in his watery eyes as he had seen in the ruby red ones of the white mouse. The shopkeeper should search, he should turn the whole shop upside down before Petter Nord would let him find the banknote.

But the fifty crowns lay in its hiding-place all day without anyone’s asking about it. It was a new note, many-colored and bright, and had big numbers in all the corners. When Petter Nord was alone in the shop, he put a stepladder against the shelves and climbed up to the roll of cotton. Then he took out the fifty crowns, unfolded it and admired its beauties.

In the midst of the most eager trade he would grow anxious lest something should have happened to the fifty crowns. Then he pretended to look for something on the shelf, and groped about under the roll of cotton till he felt the smooth banknote rustle under his fingers.

The note had suddenly acquired a supernatural power over him. Might there not be something living in it? The figures surrounded by wide rings were like magnetic eyes. The boy kissed them all and whispered: “I should like to have many, very many like you.”

He began to have all sorts of thoughts about the note, and why Halfvorson did not inquire for it. Perhaps it was not Halfvorson’s? Perhaps it had lain in the shop for a long time? Perhaps it no longer had any owner?

Thoughts are contagious.—At supper Halfvorson had begun to speak of money and moneyed-men. He told Petter Nord about all the poor boys who had amassed riches. He began with Whittington and ended with Astor and Jay Gould. Halfvorson knew all their histories; he knew how they had striven and denied themselves; what they had discovered and ventured. He grew eloquent when he began on such tales. He lived through the sufferings of those young people; he followed them in their successes; he rejoiced in their victories. Petter Nord listened quite fascinated.

Halfvorson was stone deaf, but that was no obstacle to conversation, for he read by the lips everything that was said. On the other hand, he could not hear his own voice. It rolled out as strangely monotonous as the roar of a distant waterfall. But his peculiar way of speaking made everything he said sink in, so that one could not escape from it for many days. Poor Petter Nord!

“What is most needed to become rich,” said Halfvorson, “is the foundation. But it cannot be earned. Take note that they all have found it in the street or discovered it between the lining and cloth of a coat which they had bought at a pawnbroker’s sale; or that it had been won at cards, or had been given to them in alms by a beautiful and charitable lady. After they had once found that blessed coin, everything had gone well with them. The stream of gold welled from it as from a fountain. The first thing that is necessary, Petter Nord, is the foundation.”

Halfvorson’s voice sounded ever fainter and fainter. Young Petter Nord sat in a kind of trance and saw endless vistas of gold before him. On the dining table rose great piles of ducats; the floor heaved white with silver, and the indistinct patterns on the dirty wallpaper changed into banknotes, big as handkerchiefs. But directly before his eyes fluttered the fifty-crown note, surrounded by wide rings, luring him like the most beautiful eyes. “Who can know,” smiled the eyes, “perhaps the fifty crowns up on the shelf is just such a foundation?”

“Mark my words,” said Halfvorson, “that, after the foundation, two things are necessary for those who wish to reach the heights. Work, untiring work, Petter Nord, is one; and the other is renunciation. Renunciation of play and love, of talk and laughter, of morning sleep and evening strolls. In truth, in truth, two things are necessary for him who would win fortune. One is called work, and the other renunciation.”