Short stories, Swedish -- Translations into English; Sweden -- Social life and customs -- Fiction
He could not be quite right, either, or he would not have dragged that
heavy pack about on a Sunday. If he had been quite in his senses, he
would have known that it was of no use, as he could not sell anything in
any case. None of the other men from Dalarne who walked about from
village to village bent their backs under this burden on a Sunday, but
they went to the house of God free and erect as other men.
But this poor fellow probably did not know it was a holy day until he
stood in the sunshine outside the church and heard the singing. He was
sensible enough at once to understand that he could not do any business,
and then his brain began to work as to how he should spend the day.
He stood for a long time and stared in front of him. When everything
went its usual course, he had no difficulty in managing. He was not so
bad but that he could go from farm to farm all through the week and
attend to his business, but he never could get accustomed to the
Sunday--that always came upon him as a great, unexpected trouble.
His eyes became quite fixed, and the muscles of his forehead swelled.
The first thought that took shape in his brain was that he should go
into the church and listen to the singing, but he would not accept this
suggestion. He was very fond of singing, but he dared not go into the
church. He was not afraid of human beings, but in some churches there
were such quaint, uncanny pictures, which represented creatures of which
he would rather not think.
At last his brain worked round to the thought that, as this was a
church, there would probably also be a churchyard, and when he could
take refuge in a churchyard all was well. One could not offer him
anything better. If on his wanderings he saw a churchyard, he always
went in and sat there awhile, even if it were in the middle of a
workaday week.
Now that he wanted to go to the churchyard a new difficulty suddenly
arose. The burial-place at Raglanda does not lie quite near the church,
which is built on a hill, but on the other side of the road; and he
could not get to the entrance of the churchyard without passing along
the road where the horses of the church-goers were standing tied up.
All the horses stood with their heads deep in bundles of hay and
nosebags, chewing. There was no question of their being able to do the
man any harm, but he had his own ideas as to the danger of going past
such a long row of animals.
Two or three times he made an attempt, but his courage failed him, so
that he was obliged to turn back. He was not afraid that the horses
would bite or kick. It was quite enough for him that they were so near
that they could see him. It was quite enough that they could shake their
bridles and scrape the earth with their hoofs.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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