I valet och kvalet

"What had impressed him most was the difference between war as imagined and witnessed. As imagined it had seemed the most immense of sports; as witnessed it was merely murder."

 "THE little house, tell this story. It was lived within my walls; not a line is invented and it was I, by my interfering, who brought about the happy ending. Who wants a story that does not end happily, especially a Christmas story? To have been responsible for the happy ending is pretty nearly as clever as to have made the story up out of one’s own head or, as we houses say, out of one’s own walls.

Perhaps you never heard before of a house telling a story. If that be so, it is because you don’t listen or because you go to bed too early. Unlike people, we houses sleep all day long; but after midnight we wake up and talk. When the clock strikes twelve, our stairs begin to crack and our windows to rattle and our floors to creak. If you ever hear these sounds, don’t be frightened; they simply mean that the kind old walls that shelter you have begun to remember and to think. And we have so many things to remember and to think about, especially we old houses who have been standing for almost two hundred years. We have seen so much; we have been the friends of so many generations. More little children have been born beneath our roofs than we have stairs on which to count. We reckon things on our stairs, just as people reckon things on their fingers. When our stairs crack after midnight, it’s usually because we’re counting’ the births and love-makings and marriages we have watched. We very often get them wrong because there are so many of them. Then the doors and windows and floors will chip in to correct us. “Ha,” a window will rattle, “you’ve forgotten the little girl who used to gaze through my panes in 1760 or thereabouts.” One of the doors will swing slowly on its hinges and, if anyone disputes with it, will bang, shouting angrily, “Wrong again—all wrong.” Then the walls and the windows and the doors and the floors all start whispering, trying to add up correctly the joys and sorrows they have witnessed in the years beyond recall.

Det finns gånger jag vill ha något att läsa — men jag vet inte vad, och förkastar de ena efter de andra av alla förslag jag ger mig själv.  Jag söker i minnet efter lämplig författare, eller försöker att åtminstone sätta fingret på vilken sorts bok jag vill ha. Det känns som om min hjärna har rest bort, jag klarar inte av något djupsinnigt eller komplicerat — så många böcker ramlar bort i första omgången. Något spännande? Nej, till och med en mysdeckare är mer än jag kan svälja nu — inte ens en Miss Marple. Förresten kan jag nästan alla Miss Marple-böckerna utantill. Något romantiskt då, tänker jag — nej tack, inget slisk.

Ja, jag är svår att göra till lags.

Gutenberg blir min räddning — som vanligt. Han pekar på en författare som jag aldrig hört talas om: Coningsby Dawson. Jag slår upp honom, och blir varken imponerad eller intresserad. Men Gutenberg ger sig inte i första taget och kommer med ett nytt förslag — samma författare men en annan titel: The Little House. Jag som gillar hus, ger efter — och är glad att jag gjorde det. En charmig bok på min nivå. Ett enkelt men gott språk, och ett lite ovanligt grepp att låta ett hus berätta vad som händer på  “Dolls’ House Square.” 

Stella Langdale (1880–1976) har illustrerat boken — hennes mörka, ofta dramatiska, kolteckningar balanserar bokens aningen sentimentala innehåll.