Short Story: The Hamper For Mother Calla

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXIX, Issue 20065, 23 March 1935, Page 9

Short Story: The Hamper For Mother Calla

NEW YEAR’S EVE arrived with a thaw and loosening icicles. My sister Marianne, big sister Marianne, all of two years older than I, let up the blind. It was still quite dark outside. We went out to find our mother and pester her to pack the hamper for Mother Calla—the usual New Year’s hamper. Mother Calla was an old, poverty-stricken rag-weaver who lived alone in a little ramshackle hut at the edge of the Tosterup fields. It was my mother’s custom to send her every New Year a hamper of food and other good things, and this year it was to be Marianne's and my privilege to bring it to her. We looked forward to this expedition with pleasant expectations.

The great hamper was brought out, and mother began to collect provisions in the pantry. Marianne officiously helped to pack them and pushed me out of the way. Into the bottom of the hamper they put a loaf of black bread, a few crispy white loaves and one of rye. Next came a layer of the makings of substantial sandwiches; pig’s head jelly, smoked ham, rolled brisket of mutton with onions and thyme inside, sausage redolent of the juniper smoke in which it had been cured, fat-glistening liver sausage and a bit of black pudding as thick as a man's thigh, in which were embedded great cubes of apple and fat. Then came a large chunk of special Christmas cheese.

In the next layer were bags of doughnuts, almond cakes and ginger biscuits, together with the most important item of all, coffee and lump sugar. Marianne insisted on more sugar, for she knew Mother Calla took her coffee “by the lump.” And Marianne was allowed to have her way; the sugar bag was filled to bursting with yet another handful of lumps. Down the side Mother pushed a packet of tall wax candles from the linen-closet in the dining room—old Mother Calla should not lack light on New Year’s Eve —and spread a freshly mangled kitchen towel over the whole. When the hamper reached this stage Marianne and I put on our coats, pulled our woollen caps over our ears and drew on our knitted mittens. Warm woollen neckcloths completed our toilet and we were ready to go. Mother let us out by the back door, reminded us to wish Mother Calla a Happy New Year and gave us many words of admonition on the way.

After walking for about half an hour, in the course of which we rested and changed arms many times, we came to the avenue of naked poplars leading from the highway up to the poorhouse. We put down the hamper by the side of the road and stood looking at its grey, awe-inspiring walls. I could see by Marianne’s face that she was revolving a plan in her mind, and finally she gave it expression. “Shall we go in and look at the Jesox? He’s not dangerous and he’s got a chain on. They keep him in the stable so he shan’t be cold.” The suggestion was so dizzily grand and bold that I was quite speechless. The Jesox was to us children a fabulous creature, a monster who terrified and fascinated us at once. I had j often seen him in nightmares, for they ; used to frighten children by invoking his name.

The Jesox was a lunatic who had for many, many years—no one knew how many—been kept in one of the pens in the poorhouse stable, “the one farthest in to the right,” said Marianne, who knew everything. It was said that in his youth, he had been a clergyman, and had gone mad with reading too much. As I have said, I was speechless at the grandeur of Marianne’s proposal. She climbed down into the ditch and broke off a willow switch. “They say he acts so funny if you hit him over the fingers,” she said explanatorily. So we took the hamper between us again and marched up the avenue. Once in the garden we stopped and looked fearfully about us, but not a soul was abroad. In one window in the long wall, one of the few that was not stuffed with sacking or paper, we caught a glimpse of pale, haggard faces. The stable doors were wide open. We walked on, and had almost reached the door when a harsh voice stopped us. “What are you doing there, young ’uns?” The overseer—Poor Man’s Whip he was called—had come out on the steps. He looked big and stern. “We only wanted to see the Jesox,” Marianne stammered. “Oh, is that all,” he said in a friendly tone. “All right, if you think that’s any fun. He never hurts anybody. Anyhow, he’s safely chained.” In the first two stalls to the right inside the stable-door, there were horses chewing their oats. Their stalls had been thoroughly Christmascleaned, with fresh hay on the floor, and on the well-swept stone passage behind them, white rims of dust to prove that the horses were freshly curried. Beyond the stalls were the pens, and coming from the one farthest to the right, we could hear a low muttering as we approached.

When our eyes had grown accustomed to the gloom, we could see the Jesox's head and arms above the side of the pen. His head was a single thick, dirty tangle of hair and beard, in which his eyes showed indistinctly white.

Apparently he was looking up at the roof of the stable. Prom his mouth, which was like a black hole in his beard, with a whitish tongue vibrating inside as if in spasms, issued a steady, droning mumble. About his head swayed the torn draperies of grey spiders’ webs depending from the roof. His bare, scurvy arms were hanging down over the sides of the pen, and his thin hands were clasped. The fingers, with their clawlike nails, writhed ceaselessly, as if in torments over the sinfullness of the world. How long we stood there in silent fear and trembling, gazing up at the Jesox, I no longer know. Marianne collected herself first. “Now, I’m going to hit him,” she said, raising her willow switch. She struck him lightly over the fingers. His mumble shrilled into a whine, and a shudder passed through him; the iron chains in his pen rattled. It was not funny at all, but indescribably terrible. The tears came into j Marianne’s eyes. “Poor fellow!” she exclaimed. “Eli, let’s give him a lump of sugar.”

By FRITIOF NILSSON (TRANSLATED FROM THE SWEDISH BY PAULA WIKING)

I turned round to take some sugar for the Jesox.

The hamper was gone! Only the towel was lying on the stone floor. I looked about in amazement. It was exactly as if the hamper had been spirited away. Then I heard a creaking sound above me. Looking up, I saw the hamper swaying high above my head in the firm grasp of what seemed a giant’s hairy arm. I cried out in fright and started back. My cry drew Marianne’s attention away from the Jesox, and she, too, saw what had happened. The man who was holding the basket was another lunatic in the

pen next to the Jesox’s. He was swallowing and gobbling away with his whole big red face, devouring the six tallow candles, wrappings and all. The blue paper hung in strips from his mouth. Marianne burst into tears of rage. Bravely lifting her slender switch, she shrieked at him. “Let go the hamper, zany! Let go the hamper!” The lunatic obeyed her and dropped it, grinning stupidly all the while and licking his greasy fingers. But Mother Calla’s New Year hamper was empty. The lunatic had not left even as much as could be spread on a thumb-nail. Only lunatics can eat such unlimited quantities of food.

Overcome by our misfortune, Marianne and I sat down on the stone paving and gazed at the empty hamper. The muttering of the Jesox sounded ominous and menacing. How could we have known that they kept another lunatic in the pen next to his! “What did you put the hamper there for?” said Marianne at last. “Me!” I protested tearfully. “I couldn’t even lift it alone.” But Marianne soon showed what a practical little woman she was. “We can't go to Mother Calla with an empty hamper. That won’t do at all,” she declared. “And we haven’t time to go back home first. Besides, we daren’t say we’ve been to look at the Jesox.”

Her eyes wandered searchingly about the stable and settled on the great chest of cattle fodder. She sprang up. “Help me, Eli!”

With combined strength, we managed to raise the lid of the chest. It was well filled with oats, and we began to bail them into the hamper. When it w f as nearly full, Marianne took two great beetroots from a box near the chest, and planted them in the oats. Then she spread the towel over the whole, and packed it well down the sides,. Mother Calla’s New Year hamper was well filled again.

So we left the poorhouse, poorer than we had come, with the monotonous sermon of the Jesox ringing in our ears. We still had a good distance to walk along the hard highway, but when we entered the cattle-path across the fields, it was more difficult going, for there the snow lay soft and untrampled. The hamper grew heavier and heavier —it grew heavy as lead. Mother Calla saw us through her window, and was waiting on her doorstep when we came up. “Don’t you say a word, Eli,” Marianne w r hispered to me. “I’m the biggest.” Mother Calla looked like a stunted pine in the wind as she stood there. Age and rheumatism had bent her, and her head hung low with much sorrow. Small as we were, she seemed to be squinting up at us obliquely, like a troll peering at the sun. She welcomed us with the words: “Blessings on your good mother, children! This is really far too much!” The old woman dried a tear from her eye with her left hand, and stretched out her right for the hamper. I closed my eyes against the impending catastrophe, but it failed to crash. Instead, I heard Marianne’s voice saying: “You’re not to look in the hamper till we’ve gone Mother Calla. It’s supposed to be kind of a surprise.” Clever Marianne!! Mother Calla lifted the hamper to test its weight, and sang untold hosannas. We wanted to leave at once, but that was not to be thought of. It would bring bad luck to Mother Calla’s New Year if she let us go without showing us Christmas hospitality, so we followed her round into the low-roofed room. While we sipped her bitter chicory and munched her dry saffron buns, Mother Calla called down blessings and thanksgivings on the hamper of oats and beetroots. The bun grew very big in my mouth. I felt as if it were the widow’s mite I was chewing and for the first time in my life I found practical employment for the thing called conscience. I remember nothing of our return

except that neither Marianne nor I ever once looked back. When we returned home Marianne gave a very full report of our visit. We were to deliver Mother Calla’s best greetings and a thousand thanks, especially for the black pudding and the tallow candles. And she hoped we were all well and in the best of health. And she “Where’s the hamper?” Mother asked. I cringed like a mouse before the cat. This was the end. But Marianne was equal to the situation. “Mother Calla said could she keep it for a while. We can go and get it some other day.” “What on earth does she want the hamper for?” mother wondered. “She’s getting a bit silly with old age.” It was time to decorate the tree. Mother took out boxes of candlesticks, flags, cotton wool, tinsel and gilt paper. But neither Marianne nor I felt any enthusiasm. The gilt and glitter could not delight our eyes and the odour of the sealing wax from parcels and presents could not flatter our nostrils. We cowered unhappily in opposite corners of the room and dared not look at each other. Mother was uneasy and felt our pulses. Had we caught cold? Were we feverish? No, our pulses were normal. When darkness had fallen I went up to the attic, which was ghostly and terrible. Under ordinary circumstances I should never have dared go there alone, but from the attic a ladder led up to the loft, and from the window of the loft you could see across the fields. I felt driven to go up. Something moved in the darkness and I nearly died of fright. But it was only Marianne. She had gone there before me, impelled by the same feeling.

We crept close to each other by the window and looked across the fields, but no light was visible out there. It was dark in Mother Calla’s hut. On New Year’s Eve, she sat in darkness because the poor-house lunatic had eaten her candles. And it was all our fault. The burden was too heavy for us and we began to cry. Then, without a word, we made up our minds. Holding each other by the hand we crawled down through the attic. Our weeping grew into a howl. We found mother, who had all she could do to calm us sufficiently for us to make ourselves understood. At last she pieced together our sob-broken confession—about the Jesox, the lunatic and our tricking Mother Calla. Mother and Father held a brief council of war and then a fresh hamper was packed, even bigger than the first. Marianne and I willingly gave up for the hamper the good things we should have had that evening ourselves. It was a relief to do so. Father harnessed the horse to the sleigh and drove across the fields with the hamper himself. Once more Marianne and I sat side by side by the window in the dark loft. After a long time a light came up on the other side of the field. The candles had reached Mother Calla and, with them, the New Year was kindled in our spirits too. We stormed down. Marianne .began to filch nuts out of the paper baskets in the tree. I fetched one of the grey slugs out of the box under my bed and dropped it down her back. It was indeed a joyful New Year.