The Sword and the Net полностью

Perhaps he was going to say more—but he did not, for a heavy hand fell on his shoulder and roughly jerked him around so that he was face to face with Axel, who was almost as tall as he, and his eyes were looking directly into the staring, unreadable eyes behind the thick, concave lenses. And then Axel’s right hand, its palm hard and calloused and heavy, struck him with a ringing, stunning clap across the left side of his face. Although it was struck with the open hand, the blow was so heavy, and so utterly, astonishingly unexpected, that Otto reeled. He might, indeed, have fallen had it not been for the edge of the work-bench which, crashing painfully against his back, held him upright.

He thrust himself away from it, his face lividly pale save for the angry red of the injured cheek. For an infinitesimal division of time, it was his intention to hurl himself at this man who had struck him; then, immediately, discipline locked iron fingers around his mind and he dropped his hands and stood, gazing at Axel in silence.

Axel did not move. He said, in Swedish:

“So! It is that way we treat silly children!” He paused for a long moment. “And that is what you are—a foolish child!” There was bitter contempt in the quiet, heavy voice. “I speak to you in German—and you answer in German!”

Axel’s left hand was raised now, slowly and with deliberation. Otto saw the blow coming; but he did not move as the horny palm, with a blow fully as weighty as the first, fell across the other cheek. His head rang, but he hardly blinked the vivid blue eyes. He stood rigid now, at attention.

“Now, Nils Jorgensen,” said the heavy, soft voice, “perhaps you will remember that you do not know the German language; not one single word of it! You may, perhaps, recognize it as German when it is spoken in your hearing—but even that is doubtful! . . . Get on with your work.”

Otto, with heavy heart and face burning with shame and bruises, turned back to his bench. . . .

Nils Jorgensen had a day off and was bound for Stockholm. He dressed in his best blue suit, which was of astonishing colour and cut, and his Aunt Kirsten tied his tie, and Axel gave him some extra money and Gertrud pouted unhappily at the thought of the girls he would see and perhaps talk with. And they all saw him safely aboard the strangely shaped single-deck bus which was the only road connection between Kornemunde and the city.

They found Nils a seat to himself, right behind the driver, and waved to him until the bus was out of sight around the bend in the road by the church, and he waved back.

The bus bumped and jiggled over the little bridge and came on to the smoother surface of the high road and gathered speed Nils settled comfortably in his seat—and Otto began to think. It was a full two weeks since the reprimand for his gross mistake; two weeks during which—he knew it, though no word of praise had been addressed to him—he had made good progress; two weeks during which he had begun, at safe times and only when alone, to become bored and impatient. Several times in the last two or three days he had been on the point of taking the plunge and at some suitable moment asking Axel how much longer he was to stay here in Kornemunde, but always, he thanked his stars, he had put it off. And now here he was, on the way to Stockholm—and something. He did not know what awaited him because Axel had said nothing except that it was time he had a day off and went into Stockholm and enjoyed himself. Nothing more than that—and nothing that he would not have said to a genuine Nils. But there had been something different in the eyes behind their thick glass—and, besides, for Otto Falken at this time there neither were nor should be holidays. Yes—something was going to happen in Stockholm; but what? And where, now he came to think of it? He felt in his breast-pocket to make sure the pencil was there; then drifted into musing with delighted admiration over the thoroughness of this great machine of which he was now a cog—and the amazing invisibility of its flawless machination.

He arrived in Stockholm just before noon. He wandered, managing to reconcile smoothly enough the bucolic awe proper to Nils with the genuine interest felt by Otto. Both Nils and Otto liked Stockholm and everything about it—its wide streets and its stone buildings and its parks and its people and its general air of making business a pleasure. But, while it was all matter for gaping to Nils, there was, for Otto, a certain unreality about the whole small, neat metropolis: it was as if this were a place apart from the stern and actual world; a place where everyone and everything pretended to be real and alive and occupied with the work of existence upon this planet, but a place which, in fact, was completely separate from the Earth and the problems of its people.