Paen to the Abyss

By Martin Andersen Nexø

The excerpt is from the short story "Flyvende sommer" ("Gossamer")

It was, to all appearances, a perfectly ordinary day. The sun was shining with a peculiar, abandoned joy, which spread unchecked among the flock of sparrows belonging to the Barracks; otherwise, everything was just as it always was. At five o´clock in the morning, mother had gone off to work as usual, at six o´clock, Mrs. Hygum next door knocked on the wall and the two boys got up and started the day in a good mood. Peter straightened up the room, now that the night had passed, fetched the day´s supplies from the greengrocer, while Karl was over in Ryes St. climbing the worst stairs for the newspaper-woman.

Now their morning tasks were finished, and they sat in the tiny kitchen devouring their bread and drippings. Their briskness was over too, there was no more carefree chatter, nor did they kick out with their legs in an idle urge to have something to do, but they sat crouched dully over their bread and drippings as if they had suddenly discovered the pointlessness of going on. All the momentum had gone out of them. Nor was this anything unusual, the same thing happened every day at this time; it came upon them as a sudden slackening of everything.

It was not tiredness. They were already well hardened, and the exertions of the morning acted only as a cheerful prelude to the day. There were hundreds of just as glorious uses for each of the hours in the day, all of them centering on themselves and their poor little home. They and their mother had created a whole little world in the midst of the void, had constructed it from hard-earned scraps from the great solar system. Their world was not a part of the whole, but went its own way in space with its own small resources. It cost them never-ending exertion to keep it going and free from collisions. They already carried the lion´s share of the burden in their small, upstretched hands and they felt themselves fortunate.

But quite recently, a great hand had reached after them from without; they were no longer allowed to drift about freely, but they had to become part of the system. This was the first time that they had noticed that anyone had a thought for them and theirs, and, for the time being, this compassion was only expressed in the revolting torture of their having to sit still on a bench for several hours every morning and breathe in the dust of the deeds of others through the ages, while all their own activity was allowed to come to a standstill. And this interference could even claim to be considered charitable. When they got out in the afternoon, work had piled up for them considerably, and they plunged headlong into it and rinsed themselves of the dust.


From Martin Andersen Nexo: "Gossamer"
Anthology of Danish Literature, Arcturus Press 1972

Translated by David Stoner