Character guide

Unknown

major

He drifts through Stockholm with a gnawing sense that his days are empty and meaningless, and his memory works like a junk-room he sifts for clues. When he recognizes a minor actor on stage, the man's bitter intonations unlock a buried recollection: a small boy forced to kneel and bark 'I am your slave' for a ring of laughing classmates. His compulsion to identify the humiliated child drives the story's quiet, uneasy pull.

Bloom

major

Freshly out of prison, Bloom savors a morning of sunlight and open air before he must hunt for work and a cheap lodging. His past is a tangle of waning Baptist faith, a betrothal to the moneyed Tekla, and a ruinous affair with the inconstant Edith that ended in a theft charge and his first sentence. He walks toward Lilyholm with the woods on his mind, a man whose small pleasures have always cost him more than they were worth.

Frederick Richard Fant

major

Also known as Frederick, Richard Fant, Richard, Fant

Fant measures his life in cigars and quiet humiliations, convinced his wife Ellen has grown cold since his friend John Richardt acquired a fur coat and a company. He splurges on a coat of his own, hoping to rekindle her affection, and is rewarded with an embrace in the unlit hall — until he answers her whispered question and reveals he is home. A physician who knows his own days are numbered, he spends his last Christmas watching the tree being lit and thanking Richardt for kindnesses he can no longer repay.

Paul Herbst

supporting

Also known as Herbst

Herbst strolls homeward with a companion, discoursing on the freemasonry of those who have passed the line into resignation — visible in their walk, their carriage, the lines around the mouth. He finds a certain consolation in watching acquaintances slip one by one toward the same end, though he admits it leaves much to be desired. He turns up his coat collar, bids a hurried good night, and predicts a headache: he cannot stand moonlight.

Dr. Henck

supporting

Also known as Henck

Henck comes home laden with parcels and a tender shoulder, his one consolation the fur coat he hopes will thaw his wife's recent coldness. She steals up to him in the dark hall and kisses him warmly, murmuring that Gustav isn't home yet — and he answers, trembling, that he is. Later, over whisky and a Christmas fire, he tells Judge Richardt that this will be their last Christmas together: he is a doctor, and he knows with full certainty that his days are numbered.

Mr. Fant

minor

Also known as this Mr. Fant

A variant or separate reference to the Fant character, possibly the same person.

Wetzmann

supporting

Also known as sweeper Wetzmann, Mrs. Wetzmann

Old Wetzmann has done well in life, drinks toddy at the tavern every evening, and endures a joyless house presided over by the former maidservant he married. His second wife, once ruled by Envy and Lust, now governs through Wrath and Pride, and she keeps a mistrustful eye on the charwoman's daughter Magda, who reads aloud to Wetzmann's convalescent son Frederick. The courtyard linden, the cobblestones, and the mismatched household set the stage for a grim story the narrator heard told and shuddered at as a child.

Magda

supporting

Magda is the girl caught embracing the young invalid when his stepmother bursts in, and she is flung from the house with curses and threats. Her slender wrist in that iron grasp becomes the image the feverish young man cannot shake, and his whispered wish to make her his bride sets the household's quiet war in motion. She matters because everything the invalid still wants from the world is bound up in her name.

Edith

supporting

Edith moves through Dr. Henck's household as the barometer of his dwindling pride: cold when he is poor, tender when he comes home draped in fur. Her embrace in the dark hall, and the whispered name that slips out with it, exposes the quiet bargain at the center of their marriage. She matters because Henck's Christmas reckoning with Richardt is really a reckoning with what she has come to want.

Margot

supporting

Also known as Margot To Oscar Levertin

Margot lived with Herbst in the house with the left gable window, sewing by her mahogany board while sunlight patterned the wallpaper, and fell asleep on his shoulder at a New Year's service. Conscientious to the point of fearing God's anger for being too happy, she was dead of brain fever within three days. She matters because Herbst's memory of her is the measure against which he now weighs all passing happiness.

Tom Gabel

minor

Also known as Tom

A character appearing in one or more stories, possibly a working-class figure.

His Master

minor

A master figure referenced in relation to a servant or dog.

Tekla

minor

A female character with a handful of proper mentions.

Signy

supporting

Also known as Signy Signy

Signy exists only in the narrator's murmured conversations, a private companion he created the way a German creates a camel, out of the depths of his own consciousness. When his parents pry and tease, he renames her Ida to hide the telltale sound, then quarrels with her and lets her go, learning to think in silence instead. She matters because she is the first sign of the imaginative compulsion that will later make him a writer.

Martin

minor

A named character with limited but distinct appearances.

Ida

minor

A female character appearing briefly in the collection.

Ellen

minor

A female character with pronoun-heavy mentions.

Papa

minor

A father figure mentioned in a story.

Miss Erika

minor

A minor female character with a single proper mention.

Judge Richardt

minor

Also known as Richardt

A judge character with a defined role in a story.

John Richardt

minor

Also known as John

A younger relative or variant of Judge Richardt.

Hercules

minor

A mythological or allegorical figure referenced in a story.

Sweeper Wetzmann

minor

The chimney sweeper himself, distinct from his wife.

Lord

minor

A religious or noble figure referenced with archaic pronouns.