To Siberia Read Online Free PDF Page A

things and tied the scarf tightly round my neck, and together we walked up the main street to Nytorv and forgot that we ought to be home for supper. I held Jesper’s hand though I knew he thought he was too big for that, but it was dark out and nighttime and not many people could see. Only one man turned into an alleyway and we could hear he was drunk and being violently sick down one of the house walls.
    At the end of the square was the Court House with the lockup on the left. We looked in on our way past but there was no one there, and then we crossed over Gammeltorv to the Aftenstjernen on the opposite side. The old inn lay at a crossroads where one way wound down to Frydenstrand health resort, which was closed for the season, and another led straight past the Home for Retired Artisans. Forty years later my father would end his days there.
    We saw Lucifer standing by the inn door, he was restless, tossing his head and snorting, and there were shadows playing and golden light in the windows and golden light on the cobblestones from the streetlamps above, and when we came to a point midway between two of them we threw shadows in both directions. Jesper had clogs on so you could hear us coming from a long way off. But we were not the only ones. Suddenly there was shouting and hoofbeats and wheels on the cobbles. We turned around and saw a big landau rolling up Danmarksgate, it sounded loud between the houses where the road was narrow and doors flew open, people came out and some boys began to run after the black carriage with its silver embellishments. They hallooed and yelled:
    “Throw us some coins, Baron!”
    It was Baron Biegler, squire of Bangsbo, in his heavy sheepskin furs, he slapped the door and yelled:
    “Faster, coachman! I’m parched as flaming hell!” The coachman whipped up the two horses, they strained against their harness and each would have run to the side if they had not been yoked together. The carriage swung across the square and as it went by the baron leaned out and threw a handful of coins through the night, they sparkled in the light from the streetlamps and jingled on the cobblestones before us, rolled to right and left and came to rest in the cracks between the cobbles, but we did not bend to pick them up. We were strictly forbidden to touch that money. It was blood money, my father said. I had no idea whose blood it came from, but they were shinier coins than any I had seen, and Jesper put his hands to his sides and shouted after the carriage:
    “Keep your blood money, Baron! You’ll soon be dead, anyway!”
    I threw myself at him and pulled at his coat:
    “What are you saying! You mustn’t say such things,” I hissed at him as loud as I dared, and one of the boys came up close to us, dropped to his knees, and started to pick up coins.
    “Get away with you, everyone knows he’s got a disease that’s killing him.”
    “But he is the baron, isn’t he?”
    “A circus baron, a pantomime baron, an upstart, and a damn brute!” Jesper yelled with words that were not his own, that he had learned heaven knows where, and the baron’s face loomed out of the carriage window like a white mask with three empty black holes before the horses turned in beside the Aftenstjernen and stopped.
    “What’s he going there for?” said Jesper, “surely he’s got plenty to drink at home with all those fine bottles of his.”
    “Perhaps he’s lonely,” I said.
    “He’s a blockhead,” said Jesper. “Come on.”
    He walked across the square as soon as the baron had gone into the inn, the boys had vanished with all the money, and we were alone again. I followed him quietly, feeling uneasy.
    “Maybe we should go home now,” I said, “we should have been in for supper long ago.”
    “Grandfather is in there, I want to see him. He is my grandfather, and yours too,” he said without turning around and then he was at the windows peering in. His face turned yellow and his back was all black and the