Stolen Spring

By Hans Scherfig

IN THE DARKNESS an alarm clock is ringing.
    You don´t understand what it is right away. You just feel a strong sense of revulsion. Your whole body aches.
    Then you suddenly realize that it´s the alarm clock. You´ve returned to earth. You had been far, far away. You had been dreaming about something but now you can´t remember what it was. And a bell is ringing shrilly out there in the cold darkness. A new day is beginning for the children of the world.
    You feel almost nauseated with sleep. It would be so heavenly to turn over under the warm quilt and fade away. Let yourself sink back into unconsciousness. Perhaps you could reconstruct the dream you were having.
    "For heaven´s sake hurry up and get out of bed!" a voice calls out. "It´s more than half past. You´ll be late!"
    Then you have to focus your thoughts on the here and now. Let´s see, you have mathematics the first hour, and you´d better go over it just one more time. You have to force yourself to remember exactly how it goes. Understanding it is hopeless. But you have to remember that when two secants intersect each other, the product of the first secant and its segment which lies outside the circle is equal to the product of the second secant and its segment which lies outside the circle, and the tangent is the mean proportional between the entire secant and its segment which lies outside the circle. This can be summarized as follows: when a circle intersects several straight lines which emanate from the same point, the product of the two segments, which are truncated on each line, calculated from the stationary point to one of the circle´s points of intersection, is the same for all lines, and this product is called the power of the point with respect to the circle. By drawing a line through the center, one can easily see that ...
    "Don´t study while you´re eating! You won´t get any nourishment from your food that way. You had enough time to do your homework yesterday, but you were too busy playing with something then. You said, oh yeah, you knew it all. Always the same old story."
    There is a clock on the cupboard in the dining room, and while you´re eating your oatmeal, its hands turn. You gulp down your cereal and burn your mouth and throat, but you don´t have time to eat it slowly.
You don´t walk to school. You run. Through the darkness and the rainy mist. Two hundred little men are running toward the same goal. From all corners of the city they steer their course toward the gray building on Frue Plads.
    You keep an eye on the clocks along the way. You know exactly what time it is supposed to be at each different point along the route, and every morning you meet the same people at specific places. People going to their offices. Children on their way to other schools. Every single day you see them and can compute the time by them.
    Through wet streets two hundred boys are tramping. They drag their learning with them in schoolbags and briefcases and rucksacks, so that they are all lopsided with learning. Plane geometry and world history and Latin grammar and French reading selections and an English primer and Cæsar´s Gallic Wars and Sundorph´s physics and Weiss´s chemistry and Krogh´s physiology and Kaper´s translation exercises and Luther´s catechism. They huff and puff under the burden of culture and education and pencil boxes and exercise books and arithmetic notebooks.
    Away, away through the streets they fly. Through the darkness and fog of November. In rain capes and oiled leather boots. One of them has a slice of bread in his hand that he didn´t have time to finish eating at home. One of them has a math book, which he reads as he runs.
    "Why don´t you watch where you´re going, boy!"
    Some of them live so far away that they have to ride the streetcar, and they have monthly passes tied on a string. And they sit in the packed morning streetcar studying the Gallic Wars and German. Some of them steer their bicycles through the traffic. In front of streetcars and automobiles on the slick asphalt. Their pencil boxes rattle in their rucksacks, and their lunches get squashed between their books. Away, away.
    One of the teachers is lying in wait for those who are late. The gate must be closed precisely on the hour, so the tardy pupils are forced to ring the noisy bell on the gate. The janitor sits down there in his little cubicle and opens the gate by means of a clever mechanism. The tardy pupils sneak in, red-faced and wet and out of breath. And the teacher who has been lying in wait for them rushes out and gives them a couple of slaps in the face. His eyes blaze behind his glasses. The grown man is indignant and furious at their crime.
    They assemble in the auditorium for devotions. Pressed tightly together, the boys stand on one side. On the other side stand the teachers, watching closely to see whether anyone is reading over his lessons during the singing.
    It smells of wet clothes and oiled leather and old sandwich paper. Steam is coming from the big round tiled stove. Moisture is running down the windows.
    And then the song reverberates across Frue Plads and up to the good Lord:

The blessed day with joy we behold
arising to us from the sea,
and ever brighter skies unfold
and kindle our piety.
As children of light we now do know,
that night has ceased to be.

The young high school teacher Lassen sings in a very loud, joyous voice and holds onto each note for a long time. You can hear him over all the others. The principal looks down at his hymnbook, moving his tiny little mouth as if he were singing along too. The other teachers merely stare vigilantly over at the boys.
    Out in the empty hallways, where the wet clothing hangs steaming, the teacher on duty is standing in a corner, on the lookout for victims. And when the doorbell jangles, and the janitor´s opening mechanism is set in motion with a rattling sound, he darts out and slaps the tardy offender in the face.


From Hans Scherfig: Stolen Spring
Fjord Press, 1991

Translated by Frank Hugus