UNCLE FERDINAND

By KRISTIAN ELSTER

Knut heard shuffling footsteps over in the corner and the sound of coal being poured into the stove. Morning had come. And now he had to get up. As he slept in the dining room, he had strict orders to get up as soon as Brita had lighted the fire. A sort of glow flickered over the floor—Brita had probably left the door of the stove open. If he could only stay in bed until the room got warm! He stuck his head out of the bedcovers and saw a frosty window pane and darkness outside. Downstairs a child was crying. Oh, Lord, if he only didn’t have to get up!

Through the crack in the door he saw that the light was burning in his parents’ room. So they were already up. He heard his mother’s low dissatisfied whine and his father’s plaintive explanatory replies. Knut lay in bed listening to his father’s voice, it seemed so pathetic, cold and whimpering. At last he caught the words: “You haven’t seen my suspenders, have you? Where in the world are my suspenders?”

Brita had finished poking the fire, and casting a sleepy glance over at Knut, she grumbled: “It’s about time you were getting up.” She stared for a moment at the frozen panes and went out.

Knut dressed over by the stove where there was a little warmth. Could anything be more rotten than to have to go to school so early? And the worst of it was that one’s own father was a teacher.

His mother came in in a petticoat and a pink flannel dressing sack, with her hair gathered at the top of her head in an untidy knot. She closed the door of the stove and didn’t even say good morning, but just stared at the frost-covered windows.

“The thermometer is fourteen below zero,” said Knut in a low voice.

“And think how coal is going up!” wailed the mother. “Tell the little ones they can dress in here if they want to.” The father came in too, a tall, ungainly, thin sort of man, with a large head of black hair streaked with grey and bluish, rather frightened baby eyes. He held the palms of his hands up against the stove.

“The thermometer is fourteen below,” said Knut.

“And think of the price of coal!” the mother said again, as she put Knut’s bedclothes away in the divan. “And Christmas not here yet!”

The two smaller children, Jens and little Mette, came in with their arms full of clothes. “Gee, it’s cold,” the boy shivered, standing on one leg.

“Get over by the stove and hurry up and dress,” the mother said sharply. Brita came to set the breakfast table. “But the room hasn’t been aired,” remonstrated the mother, “we’ll have to open the parlour door.” She opened the door to the next room and the air came in like a cold breath. They heard her trying to open the window in there. “No, I can’t make it,” she sighed despondently.

The father and Knut sat down at table. Teacher Nilsen put his watch on the table before his plate. “Fourteen degrees, and Christmas not yet here,” he mumbled. “But I’ve got to hurry,” he said, as the whistle blew at a neighbouring factory.

“Although we used to go to school even earlier,” he said with one of those associations of ideas which no one could follow, “it seems to me it wasn’t so dark and cold, in my youth. And Ferdinand, he was such an early bird, he’d whistle, he’d always whistle, when he dressed.”

“Uncle Man coming back with Christmas present for me,” cried little Mette, over by the stove.

“I shouldn’t be surprised, I shouldn’t be surprised.” The father shrugged his shoulders so that his tie went way up under his chin. “He used to give the funniest presents, he did. He was a queer one, Ferdinand. I’m sure he’s made a lot of money, over there, in the West.”

“Why in the world start the morning by talking of Ferdinand,” the mother said petulantly. “You don’t know anything about him. You don’t even know if he’s alive—you’ve said so yourself.”

Teacher Nilsen looked up rather peevishly: “You don’t know what you’re talking about. As if I didn’t know anything about Ferdinand! You say that because you never met him. Ferdinand—he was wonderful. Of course he’s alive. If anyone’s alive it’s Ferdinand. I’ll even go so far as to say that there’s no reason why he shouldn’t come here one day, and say: ‘I’m rich, I’m awfully rich—let’s share—take half. When we were boys we always shared and you helped me with my lessons—I was always poor in English composition—and now it’s my turn, take half of what I have.'"

He stared at the frozen panes.

Knut burst out, “And what would you do, Father?”

“What would I do?” Teacher Nilsen chewed thoughtfully on a large piece of bread. Great God! Such possibilities as the words conjured up before his imagination! It made his mind whirl. He nodded his head with determination. “I’d give up my job as teacher and finish my book on English philology—that is, if he had enough money,” he added prudently.

His wife went about muttering and complaining. She had heard about this brother-in-law for so many years and all she really knew about him was that he had been a lazy good-for-nothing at school and then gone off to sea. “If you, who stayed on land, haven’t amounted to anything, it isn’t probable that he amounted to anything on sea; and if he didn’t drown in the waves he was probably hanged on shore,” she said.

The more she scolded the more Teacher Nilsen seemed to shrivel up. He kept staring at the windows. The room wasn’t warm yet and the darkness outside did not seem to fade. And little Mette couldn’t get her stockings on, and cried because no one would help her.

But when his wife had stopped scolding, Teacher Nilsen shot his long body straight up, just as a snail comes out of its shell when one stops poking it, and his eyes winked and his mouth murmured softly and stubbornly, “Maybe. Maybe. It’s true Ferdinand was a blockhead at school. But he was too big for school. Conditions were too narrow for him, here. He couldn’t stand the cold, the dark. He belonged where flowers bloom twice a year, where tropical fruits grow and where the palm leaves wave . . .”

“Palms,” said little Jens; “they’ve a palm in the parlour downstairs.”

“Don’t talk to me about palms—in pots,” the father waved disparagingly with his hand. “I mean growing palm trees, where Ferdinand is. I seem to see him,” he said in a moved voice, “wandering around on his estates—on his hacienda,”—he sort of sang as he spoke the foreign word—“miles and miles of fruit-gardens, thousands of heads of cattle, sheep, wheat fields, banana plants—he has to ride on horseback from early dawn till late at night to cross his property. Because,” and he turned to his wife, “I know they’ve estates like that over there—I’ve read about them.”

“Has he any horses?” asked Jens.

“Horses? Horses?” the father smiled. “He doesn’t even know how many he has.” And, turning to his wife again, “Because Ferdinand is like that. He never counts. He doesn’t keep track of things like that. He only deals in large quantities. We’ve got to hurry, Knut—it’s late.”

But still he remained sitting a moment with his hands folded on the table and staring into the darkness outside. He couldn’t get over Ferdinand, and he hated teaching, and the school.

“I’m going, Father,” said Knut, with his coat on.

The air was raw outside, the cold pricked like little needles of ice. From the shop windows there came a pale light through the frost-covered windows and the snow creaked underfoot. Over the fjord the heaven seemed black.

Knut walked two or three steps behind his father. It’s an awful nuisance to come to school with a teacher! And his father couldn’t keep any discipline at all, in the lower grades. But Knut had to come up alongside him, just the same, to ask, “Do you really think Uncle Ferdinand rides on his own horse, every day?”

“Of course. He has lots of them.”

“Why doesn’t he ever write, do you think, Father?”

Teacher Nilsen froze up. “Who knows. Perhaps the letters went astray. And besides, out there—in the great world—where there’s sun and summer all the year round, one is apt to forget. I mean, one doesn’t think of writing. But Ferdinand won’t forget us. Never. Come, let’s hurry.”

II

At home, Jens and Mette sat playing that Uncle Ferdinand had come home. Mette was supposed to be the mother, who was home alone, and Jens was Uncle Ferdinand. “How do you do?” Uncle Ferdinand said. “Here are a few Christmas presents for all of you.”

“You’ve brought something for us? Let us see.”

“Here’s a lion, a tiger and a palm,” said Uncle Ferdinand.

“Put them out in the kitchen,” said Mette, imitating her mother’s peevish voice.

The mother went about annoyed. Always that Uncle Ferdinand! A real calamity. His name was on everybody’s lips, all the time in the house—in jest and play, and as a sort of panacea for all evils—for a toothache, for a stomach ache, when there was no money. It was a real curse.

“Why don’t you play something else!” she cried. But a moment later they were playing Uncle Ferdinand again.

“I’ve some English commoners for Father.”

“Put them in the kitchen,” said Mette. “Jens, what’s an English commoner?”

“I don’t know,” said Jens.

“Brita has gone to get the milk, and I’ve got to go out to get some dinner,” said the mother, “so you’ll be alone. Jens, take care of Mette. And if the doorbell rings, open and say I’ll be right back.”

The children kept on playing. Jens sat in the rocking chair and pretended he was Uncle Ferdinand riding over his fields. They put a plant on the floor—it was a palm tree. And Mette was sitting in a forest of palm trees. “And then Uncle Man comes and he says, he says, ‘Here’s ten cents,’ he says, ‘now you go and buy everything you want.’ ”

The bell rang. Jens opened the front door just enough to peek out. Mette pulled her brother’s sleeve, and called out, “Mother isn’t home but she’ll be right back.”

“And isn’t your father home either?” said the man outside.

“Father’s gone to school, and Knut, too, but you can come in, if you’ll be good, and wait till mother comes back.”

The man walked in slowly. He was a tall, broad-shouldered man, but frightfully emaciated. His beardless face with the blue-white eyes, was dark, and he had large, tanned hands. He wore a cap which he hung on the rack in the hall; he had a tightly buttoned coat and a muffler around his neck.

They went into the dining room. Mette went up to him and started staring at him. Then she pointed to the plant and said, “There’s Uncle Man’s palm.”

Jens laughed. “She means Uncle Ferdinand. She don’t know how to speak straight yet.”

The stranger grew sort of rigid, and blinked his eyes as the father often did. “Uncle Ferdinand’s palm, you said?”

“Yes, and that’s his horse,” said Jens, pointing to the rocking chair. “He’s got so much land he has to ride to get across it.”

“Is that so? And who told you?”

“Father.”

“And Christmas, Uncle Man coming with present for me.”

“And Father’ll get as much money as he wants.”

“And I’ll get ten cents to go and buy what I want,” said Mette.

The stranger had sat down and he looked at the children and then around the room. Jens’ trousers were patched. The chairs were cheap. There was the old divan-bed with the corner of a sheet showing. And the same old dining-room table.

Jens went up to him and looked the stranger straight in the eyes.

“Are you Uncle Ferdinand?”

A shock ran through the dark face and the eyes blinked helplessly. Then came an almost inaudible voice, “Yes . . . I’m Uncle Ferdinand.”

III

When Mrs. Nilsen came home she found a strange man sitting in the rocking chair with both children on his knee. “Here’s Uncle Ferdinand,” Jens called out.

Mrs. Nilsen stared at him. The man put the children down and rose. “Yes, it’s true,” he said.

“And Uncle Ferdinand has an awful lot of horses and a terrible lot of cows, and it’s just like Father said.”

Fru Nilsen went over to the table and put her parcels down. She felt her knees growing weak and it seemed to her that she was smiling a silly smile. “Is it really true?” was all she could say.

“Well, one always has a little something,” Uncle Ferdinand answered with an evasive look.

Fru Nilsen had to sit down.

“To think that you’ve come back! Why, I’m so surprised—I even forget to bid you welcome! Great heavens—what will Anders say! And I who thought———” she broke off immediately. “But let me give you a cup of coffee, first of all.”

“Thanks, thank you, very much,” Uncle Ferdinand murmured. “It’s gotten awfully cold here, these last years.”

Fru Nilsen opened the stove door. “We stay in the dining room most of the time. You see, it’s too expensive to keep a fire going in the parlour.”

“And isn’t it cold where you are?” Jens asked.

“No, it isn’t cold there,” Uncle Ferdinand answered almost harshly. “Often it’s too warm. How is Anders?”

“Pretty well. But you’ll see a change in him.” Fru Nilsen couldn’t help glancing sidewise at her brother-in-law. Was that the way a person looked when he came back as a rich man?

“You know a private school teacher has a pretty hard life.”

“Father teaches at the school where Knut goes,” said Jens.

“Yes, he’s a teacher—only a teacher,” said Fru Nilsen, “and you know what that means. You see how we live. And now we’ll have to let the parlour, I’m afraid. At the end of the month we haven’t a cent and owe butcher and baker—everybody.”

Uncle Ferdinand sat and gazed at his folded hands. He murmured in a low, soft voice, “Anders was always so clever. He always helped me with my lessons. He wanted to take up science, at that time. Did he give up the idea?”

Fru Nilsen sniffed scornfully. “Pooh! Science! Do you think he could afford to take up science? He has to give private lessons all afternoon. It isn’t as with someone who is out in the great world—well, you know something about that!”

“Very true, very true.” Uncle Ferdinand still sat with lowered eyes. “But somehow I imagined that Anders . . .”

“So did I,” Mrs. Nilsen sighed. She had taken her hat and coat off by this time. “I, too, thought everything would be different. You know,” she spoke quickly, “he’s the best and kindest man in the world. But he hasn’t any push, and he feels it, too, and that’s why he has always admired all you’ve done. He’s always talking about you. And it’s very strange, because he never had a sign of life or a word from you. Yet he’s always felt how things were going with you. Well, you see how he has spoken to the children about you—it is strange, isn’t it? Anders is such a fine man, he has such delicacy of feeling, and his heart has always been with you, his brother. He’s followed you from day to day, and everything that happened to you, thousands of miles away, he has felt and seen in his mind’s eye. But it is strange, isn’t it?”

Uncle Ferdinand seemed still more bowed. He gazed into his hands—deep furrows in the heavy, black hands. “Yes—it is strange,” and he suddenly looked up with a shy, dark glance. “I always thought Anders would amount to something—he got the schooling. But apparently the schooling didn’t help him any. Sister-in-law,” he continued slowly and with much difficulty, “on the boat I met a man who wanted to go home—he had worked hard, but he never had any luck. And now he wants to go back to land, he wants to try to get a job and to meet some decent people—for he comes of a good family—and all he has managed to scrape up is two thousand kroner—that’s all he has to fall back on. To tell the truth I hoped Anders could help him—I imagined Anders had made his mark and was a celebrated scientist or a great professor—in my thoughts I’ve always called him professor—and I hoped that Anders could . . . but I suppose he can’t help this man?” He looked anxiously and dubiously at his sister-in-law.

Fru Nilsen laughed a shrill, short laugh. “Why, Anders can’t even help himself. I have to make money on the side by taking in sewing. He’s certainly the right person to ask! Oh, it’s not the same as with you, brother-in-law,” she added with an expectant tremble in her voice.

“Anders has told a great many things about me, I See,” said Uncle Ferdinand and looked pensively at the children.

Fru Nilsen studied her brother-in-law’s thin, brown face, and large hands—and then she said, almost inaudibly, “And they aren’t true, perhaps?”

Uncle Ferdinand did not take his eyes away from the children and he met their great, admiring and expectant eyes. They gazed at him as on a living fairy tale. Then he gave a short laugh. “Perhaps they’re true. Such strange things happen out there, in the great world. But you never know how it’s going to end. Rich one day and poor the next . . . well, it doesn’t go quite as quickly as all that,” he added reassuringly. “When will Anders be home?”

“He usually gets back at about half-past two,” said Fru Nilsen, pouring out the coffee.

“Will you give me a present for Christmas?” asked little Mette.

“Indeed I will,” said Uncle Ferdinand, and bent down and caught her up and placed her on his knee again.

“Tell us some more about how things are, where you come from,” said Jens, hanging over him.

Uncle Ferdinand swung little Mette on his knees. He half closed his eyes and smiled a strange smile. “Anders is probably just like he used to be,” he said, glancing at his sister-in-law. “He never could see things as they really are. Nor I, for that matter. He used to make up the greatest and most wonderful adventures—fairy tales. And I went off. And I’d quite forgotten, by this time, how dark it is, here, at home. Well, I’ll tell you all about it. There’s a river so wide that you can’t see from one shore to another and huge steamships go up and down on it. And on each side are great forests, and in the forests there are monkeys, and parrots and all sorts of little birds with wings of silver and gold . . .”

“And you own these forests?”

“Of course! And there are wide prairies, you ride across them for days and meet thousands of cattle and again thousands and the next day more thousands . . .”

“And they are all yours?”

“Of course! And there are gardens full of all that’s good. Oranges and bananas, forests of bananas, fields of pineapples and apple orchards are big as the whole city, here . . .”

“And you have such gardens?”

“Of course!”

“Have you come back to stay, brother-in-law?” asked Fru Nilsen.

“For good? No.” Uncle Ferdinand put Mette down. “I don’t think I’ll ever do that. I’ve too much to take care of, over there. And it’s too dark and cold for me, here.” He looked at the clock. “I’ll be going, sister-in-law, but I’ll be right back. I’ve a few little things to attend to. I’ll be back by the time Anders comes home. But in the meantime,” he turned his back to his sister-in-law and took something out of an inside pocket, “will you take this and keep it—it’s for the children, for Christmas, you under stand—nothing to talk about.”

He lifted little Mette high up in the air. “Give Uncle found a good Squeeze.” She put her arms around his neck.

“Just like that,” he whispered hoarsely. “Two little arms . . . it’s such a long, long time ago . . .”

And then Uncle Ferdinand went out.

IV

It was half-past two. They all rushed to the door when they heard the father and Knut come up the stairs. “Uncle Ferdinand has come,” they all shouted, and Fru Nilsen added, “And do you know, it’s all true! He’ll be back any minute now.”

Teacher Nilsen stopped quite still and stared out blankly. “Ferdinand—back? . . . He’s not dead, then? Think of it!”

“Dead?” retorted Fru Nilsen contemptuously, “why I always knew he was alive.” They all talked at once. Jens and Mette to Knut, Fru Nilsen to her husband. Teacher Nilsen trembled with excitement—he could scarcely get his coat off.

“He certainly has made his mark,” she said, while forests and cattle and gardens and fields whirled around them.

“It’s unbelievable,” said Teacher Nilsen.

“But it’s true, just the same,” she said. “He’ll be back in a moment.”

She began to set the table. She had put on her best blouse, the one of pale blue batiste which she only wore at parties, and she hummed as she moved about. Brita had been sent out for some extra good chopped meat, for meat cakes. Teacher Nilsen paced up and down the floor, nervously.

“Just imagine if. . .”

“What?”

“Nothing. I was only thinking about my English philology.”

Mrs. Nilsen laughed contemptuously. ‘He asked if you weren’t professor!”

“Always the same Ferdinand! But why shouldn’t I become professor!”

“Yes, why not?”

“See if I don’t.” Teacher Nilsen snapped his fingers. “But why isn’t he here?”

They looked at the clock, surprised. It was almost four.

Mrs. Nilsen caught her breath. “Look,” she said, “he gave me an envelope—for the children, for Christmas.”

Teacher Nilsen peeped inside. “Two thousand kroner!” he gasped. “Two thousand! Ferdinand certainly is . . .”

“Yes, the man who sets out in the world . . .” she said, caught herself, and blushed.

But the hours passed and there was no sign of Uncle Ferdinand. Every time they heard footsteps in the hall they all rushed to the door. But there was no sign of him. At last they sat down for dinner. “We’ll keep the meat cakes for supper,” said Mrs. Nilsen, a bit hesitatingly, “he will surely be back by that time.” And they ate some soup that had been warmed over, and some cold fishcakes. They didn’t talk while they ate. It grew colder and darkness hung outside the windows impenetrably thick.

Toward evening a messenger came with a letter, written in a large, shaking handwriting, in pencil, on half a sheet of paper.

“I found a telegram which obliges me to take the first boat for the Baltic. I have to go there to see about some property in Russia. I’ll probably drop in on the way back. Ferdinand.”

Teacher Nilsen read the message twice. “Imagine, he has property in Russia, too. Ferdinand certainly is .. .” he said weakly.

Mrs. Nilsen did not answer. She went out in the kitchen. And while she put the meat cakes in a jar to keep them, till Christmas—they’d surely keep in this cold weather-she mumbled over and over again, “He’ll never come back.” She went in to take off her nice blouse. She heard her husband talking in the dining room speculating as to what sort of property Uncle Ferdinand had in Russia. . . .

At daybreak a tramp steamer sailed down the Christiania fjord. It was passing through the islands when a stoker stuck his head out of the engine room and gazed out, darkly.

Black sea. White frozen fields. Grey sky.

“Cold and biting and dark,” said Uncle Ferdinand, and disappeared in the engine room again.