The world is a rattrap

'The Rattrap' is a story by the Swedish writer Selma Lagerlöf. It begins with a poor peddler who goes from place to place selling small rattraps of wire. He makes them himself from material he begs in shops or on big farms. But the business is not very profitable, so he also begs, and sometimes steals a little, to keep body and soul together. His clothes are in rags, his cheeks are sunken, and hunger gleams in his eyes.

One day, as he plods along the road, he thinks of his rattraps, and an idea strikes him: the whole world is nothing but a big rattrap. It offers riches and joys, shelter and food, heat and clothing, exactly as a rattrap offers cheese and pork. As soon as anyone is tempted to touch the bait, it closes on them, and then everything comes to an end.

The world had never been kind to him, so it gives him pleasure to think ill of it in this way. He amuses himself by thinking of people he knows who have let themselves be caught in the dangerous snare, and of others who are still circling around the bait.

One dark evening he knocks at a little grey cottage by the roadside and asks for shelter. The owner, an old crofter with no wife or child, is glad of company in his loneliness. He gives the peddler hot porridge for supper, a big slice from his tobacco roll, and plays cards (mjölis) with him until bedtime.

The old man tells him that in his better days he worked on the land at Ramsjö Ironworks. Now he has his cow, which supports him: he sells her milk to the creamery, and last month he was paid thirty kronor. To prove it, he takes the money from a leather pouch and shows it, then hangs the pouch back on a nail in the window frame.

Next morning both men leave the cottage early. Half an hour later, the peddler returns, smashes a pane of the window, takes out the thirty kronor, hangs the pouch back in its place, and goes away.