Ung-Joel
Everyone knows how strange thoughts can be. It is as if they were sown about the earth by an unseen hand. And one can go about fancying one has found something rare and fine, and be glad and proud of it, until one day it appears that the same had grown up in hundreds of other minds as well.
So it was with Pastor Rhånge’s thought of the sacredness of life. He was by no means the only one who had found it....
It was in the month of June, the time of year when people in Bohuslän, or, rather, in the coast tract of Bohuslän and on the islands near, made ready for the coming of visitors.
There had been a great to-do everywhere in making preparations. Houses and boats were newly painted, rooms swept out, gardens tidied up, bathing-huts warmed, and refuse cleared away. And now the trains began to come in, laden with visitors from all parts of the country. Invalids and the overworked, loads of children and loads of aged folk, those seeking rest and those in search of amusement. It seemed as if all Sweden were on the road to the cool reef-belts and the boisterous sea.
But the visitors for whose sake all this was done were to come from the eastward, from up inland. From the west, from the sea, no visitors were looked for. No preparations had been made for any coming from there; No orders, no instructions, had come regarding visitors from the sea.
And so, when visitors did come from the sea, naturally enough, their reception could not be the same as in the case of those from inland. Also, they brought with them horror and confusion and gloom, but no pleasure at all.
One week of the month of June, 1916, had passed when Sven Elversson was constrained to make a journey to Applum, all for the sake of those same visitors. His brother, Ung-Joel, who had been at sea the last few years, sailing between Holland and the Swedish ports, had come home to Knapefiord, sick and strange in mind after having met with some of those strangers out at sea, while they were yet on their way. And he had told his young wife she must send for his brother to come and see him.
When Sven Elversson came to Ung-Joel he found him walking up and down the little room behind the kitchen, where the young couple had set all their best furniture, and which they never used as a rule. He was pale and weary, but not exactly ill. His eyes were bloodshot, and looked as if ready to close at any moment for lack of sleep, but he gave himself no rest, to sit or lie down.
“How is all with you, Ung-Joel?” asked Sven Elversson.
Ung-Joel made no answer to the question, nor did he seem in any way aware of his brother’s presence. He walked up and down as before, beating the air now and again with both arms.
“The seagulls—that is the worst, you know,” he said.
“If we could only do something to make him sleep,” whispered his wife. “But he is afraid to lie down; he is afraid to close his eyes. Just walks up and down, up and down....”
“The seagulls—that is the worst,” said Ung-Joel again, and waved his arms as before.
“Ung-Joel,” said Sven Elversson, trying to bring up some old memory to turn his brother’s mind from his trouble. “Do you remember when you and the fellows from the Naiad came over to Grimön that day with a snake for me to eat?”
And at that Ung-Joel stopped in his walk.
“Is that you, Sven?” he said. And the tears began to flow from his tired eyes. “It’s a good thing you came. So I can ask you to forgive me, before I go mad.”
“No need to talk like that,” said Sven Elversson.
But now Ung-Joel began to tell how one day, after the great fight in the North Sea, he had come sailing round the Skaw, and had seen the hosts of the dead floating on the surface of the sea.
They did not lie flat on the water, but were held upright by their lifebelts, with heads above water, so their features could be seen.
And Ung-Joel told how the vessel had sailed for hours among the dead—thousands and thousands of dead. The sea was covered with them.
He described many terrible sights he had seen, but what seemed most terrible of all to him was that all those dead men had their eyes torn out by the innumerable seagulls that hovered about their heads.
“And I’ll tell you what happened to the second mate,” said Joel. “He’d been standing looking at all this ghastliness a while, and then suddenly he shut his eyes and jumped overboard. We never saw him again. He knew he would never be able to live in peace after what he had seen. And I wish now I had done the same.”
“Do not think so, Joel,” said Sven Elversson.
“I’ve got those horrors fixed in my eyes now,” said Joel—“fixed there so I can see it all if I shut them only for a moment. I daren’t lie down; I must be on my feet day and night, to keep my eyes from closing.”
“You must think of other things,” said Sven Elversson. “You’ve a wife and children.”
“I’ll tell you what we did,” said Ung-Joel. “We got out a couple of guns we had on board, and started firing at the gulls. It was a sort of relief: something to vent our rage on. And I think it was that that saved us.
“But it was a silly thing to do, all the same. For it was no fault of the gulls. And they did no more than harm the dead—what’s that against what was done to the living? And it was that I wanted to say to you, Sven. When I think how men deal so with men, that thousands of young lives are strewn about the sea, I can only cry for shame.
“And, Sven, I know I used to look down on you before and reckon myself better than you. But I want to ask your forgiveness for that. I used to think how you and your comrades up there had done a wrong to the dead, and I myself—I’ve never done a single thing to help the living.”
“That you have, Joel,” said his brother.
“No,” said Joel, weeping, and threw himself on his knees beside an upholstered armchair, covered with pieces of embroidery, where his brother was sitting. “I’ve never helped a single soul, not even father or mother, or any one. And that’s why the world’s so cruel as it is.”
“It could be better, Joel,” said Sven, stroking his brother’s hair. “And you can help to make it so.”
“It’s too late now,” said Ung-Joel. “Now that I’ve got that sight in my eyes. I’m going mad now.”
Sven Elversson laid one hand gently over his brother’s eyes.
“Try now, Joel,” he said. “You cannot see anything cruel now, with my hand over your eyes.”
“That’s true,” said Ung-Joel. “There’s blessing in your hand, Sven, from all the good you’ve done for others.”
“Close your eyes now, Joel,” said Sven Elversson. “And just think of how we can work together and help each other from now on.”
And Ung-Joel closed his eyes, and in a moment he had fallen forward against his brother’s knees, asleep.
It was a strange day, indeed, for Sven Elversson, that day in Knapefiord. It seemed as if every living soul in the place had hit on the same thought as Ung-Joel.
When his brother had been put to bed, and was quietly and healthily asleep, Sven Elversson went for a walk through the fishing village. He had gone but a little way down the smooth rocky slope when he met a woman. It was the wife of that Hjelmfeldt who had been one of the crew of the Naiad.
As soon as she saw who it was, she came up and shook hands with him, and begged him to go in and speak to her husband. Hjelmfeldt had been one of a party that fished up a mine at the beginning of the war, with the result that he had now but one arm and two half-legs remaining.
“And I said to myself,” said his wife, “that if ever I came across you again, I’d ask your forgiveness for what we’d done to you. I’ve been thinking of them that sit making those mines and things. And if one of them heard about you, I dare say he’d think he was a fine fellow compared to you.”
“That may be,” said Sven Elversson.
“But I say no!” cried Hjelmfeldt’s wife, with loud-voiced eagerness. “If he thinks it’s wrong to harm the dead, then let him think how it’s a thousand times worse to make up such devil’s tools to cripple the living, and leave a man helpless and miserable all his life. You’ve never done that. You only tried all you could to help us.”
Sven Elversson went into the house to see her husband, and sat with him for a good while, listening to his troubles. Then he went on his way again.
The next he met of those he knew before was Julia Lamprecht. She, too, came up and spoke to him.
“You offered to marry me once,” she said. “And I said I would never marry such a one as you. I have thought of that many a time since this war began. And I’d like you now to know I’ve been sorry for it. For what right had I to judge you for how you’ve acted by the dead? But those whose doings have left all the quarries in Bohuslän empty, and the workers idle, and their wives and children starving—they’ve wronged the living, and that’s worse.”
Sven Elversson went on, and after a little while a young man whom he did not remember having seen before came up to him.
“You won’t know me, I dare say,” said he. “I was only a boy when you left Grimön. But I was one of those that called after you in the street that time. And I’d like to ask your pardon for that now, for I’ve come to see how it’s worse to wrong the living than to wrong the dead. I’ve been a pilot in the war, and been torpedoed three times, and each time some lives were lost. And I thought of you, and wondered why we that used to be so hard on you are so patient now. Seems as if it was only right for human beings to turn on one another like savages. And yet it can’t be right, somehow....”
On leaving the pilot, Sven Elversson climbed up to the top of a hill behind the village and stood for a long time looking out over the sea.
“If the trouble of my life,” he said, “could bring people to remember that life should be inviolable; that a living man should not be robbed of his life or hindered in its use, then, after all, some good would have grown up out of the bitter seed of my misery.”