To Siberia Read Free Page A

viewpoint at the top, you could see the sea like an enormous painting when the big boats turned in towards the two lighthouses on the breakwater. From the height of Pikkerbakken the sea looked as if it hung rather than lay.
    I remember how we stood on the quay watching the swells go down the gangway from the Copenhagen boat. They had traveled first class and now they were going to Frydenstrand health resort for the bathing or further on to Skagen by train to rent vacation houses or stay at hotels for the summer weeks. The men wore straw boaters and the ladies’ dresses were bright in the sunshine. The upper-class people of Copenhagen had just discovered Skagen and a special railway line ran from the harbor to take them to the station although it was only a few blocks away. I watched porters in uniform carrying their suitcases over to the train, and I thought it might be an aim in life, to have someone to carry your suitcases for you.
    When the boats came in we could hear them hooting from a long way away, and then my father would take off his carpenter’s apron and hang it on a nail behind the workshop door and walk through the streets to the harbor to see them arrive. He always walked at the same pace and never hurried, he knew exactly how long it took. He would stop a few meters from the edge of the quay, and there he stayed in the long coat he always wore when it was windy, with his hands clasped behind his back and his brown beret on his head, but it was not possible to see what he was thinking, for his face was so calm and he only went there when the boats came in and never when they left, unless there was someone on board he knew, and that was seldom the case.
    When I was not at school we both stood there. I too had my hands behind my back and the wind pulled at his coat and the wind pulled at my hair and whirled it around so it whipped both him and me. It was a mass of brown hair with ringlets that bounced against my back when I ran. Many people in town said it looked nice, even dashing, but I felt it just got in the way, and when I suggested cutting it short my mother said, “No, for it’s your best feature and without it you’d look like an Eskimo because of your round face.” According to her the Eskimos were a race who lived at the North Pole and worshipped gods of blubber and bone and unfortunately Denmark ruled over them. But everyone has their cross to bear, and I had not the strength in those days to defy her, so I used to pull my hair back tightly with a rubber band at the neck so I could take part in all Jesper’s projects. The latest one was Great Discoveries. He would get together with some friends and they would roam the roads and the forests of the neighborhood and in the evenings they would meet in a cellar on the other side of the Plantation park where one of them lived and make plans for The Great Journey. I was the only girl allowed to be with them now and then.
    But I enjoyed the feeling of the wind in my hair, and I knew my father liked to see it blow straight out when we stood on the quay and watched the boats come in. And after all it was my only pride.
    The train waited behind us, puffing and hissing through its valves, and even though it was only an hour’s journey to Skagen, I had never been there.
    “Can’t we go to Skagen one day?” I asked. Being with Jesper and his friends had made me realize the world was far bigger than the town I lived in and the fields around it, and I wanted to go traveling and see it.
    “There’s nothing but sand at Skagen,” my father said, “you don’t want to go there, my lass.” And because it was Sunday and he seldom said my lass, he took a cigar from his waistcoat pocket with a pleased expression, lit it, and blew out smoke into the wind. The smoke flew back in our faces and scorched them, but I pretended not to notice and so did he. With smarting eyes we watched the passenger boat Melchior approach the opening in the breakwater full steam ahead,