Stories by Foreign Authors: Scandinavian — John Shaqi
Stories by Foreign Authors: Scandinavian
General
Stories by Foreign Authors: Scandinavian
Short stories, Scandinavian -- Translations into English
"What's that twinkling in the roof there enough to put your eyes out?"
he asked at last, when he had hung his stockings up on the rafters.
"Come now, guess what it is," said father, and he winked at mother and
us.
"I can't guess," said Pekka, and he came nearer to the lamp.
"Perhaps it's the church chandelier, eh?" said father jokingly.
"Perhaps," admitted Pekka; but he had become really curious, and passed
his thumb along the lamp.
"There's no need to finger it," says father; "look at it, but don't
touch it."
"All right, all right! I don't want to meddle with it!" said Pekka, a
little put out, and he drew back to the bench alongside the wall by the
door.
Mother must have thought that it was a sin to treat poor Pekka so, for
she began to explain to him that it was not a church chandelier at all,
but what people called a lamp, and that it was lit with oil, and that
was why people didn't want parea any more.
But Pekka was so little enlightened by the whole explanation that he
immediately began to split up the pare-wood log which he had dragged
into the room the day before. Then father said to him that he had
already told him there was no need to split parea any more.
"Oh! I quite forgot," said Pekka; "but there it may bide if it isn't
wanted any more," and with that Pekka drove his pare knife into a rift
in the wall.
"There let it rest at leisure," said father.
But Pekka said never a word more. A little while after that he began to
patch up his boots, stretched on tiptoe to reach down a pare from the
rafters, lit it, stuck it in a slit fagot, and sat him down on his
little stool by the stove. We children saw this before father, who
stood with his back to Pekka planing away at his axe-shaft under the
lamp. We said nothing, however, but laughed and whispered among
ourselves, "If only father sees that, what will he say, I wonder?" And
when father did catch sight of him, he planted himself arms akimbo in
front of Pekka, and asked him, quite spitefully, what sort of fine work
he had there, since he must needs have a separate light all to himself?
"I am only patching up my shoes," said Pekka to father.
"Oh, indeed! Patching your shoes, eh? Then if you can't see to do that
by the same light that does for me, you may take yourself off with your
pare into the bath-house or behind it if you like."
And Pekka went.
He stuck his boots under his arm, took his stool in one hand and his
pare in the other, and off he went. He crept softly through the door
into the hall, and out of the hall into the yard. The pare light flamed
outside in the blast, and played a little while, glaring red, over
outhouses, stalls, and stables. We children saw the light through the
window and thought it looked very pretty. But when Pekka bent down to
get behind the bath-house door, it was all dark again in the yard, and
instead of the pare we saw only the lamp mirroring itself in the dark
window-panes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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