Significant changes were taking place all over the country, many of them not for the better. Pole regretted that Doffa, the political trailblazer, had left the country. Pole and Doffa were both among the parliamentarians elected to the newly reconstituted Faroese parliament, the Føroya Løgting, on June 18th, 1852. Pole sat for one term, but Doffa was reelected. The man was so shrewd and well-respected that he could have retained his seat in parliament until the world’s end. And aside from serving in the Føroya Løgting, he also represented the Faroes in the Danish Folketinget.
Jóakim moaned in pain, but he had just been given morphine. Pole took his pulse and remembered the time he had asked Jóakim his opinion about the new Løgting. It was not without reason he had sought out his cousin in particular. Jóakim was so astoundingly bright and could, as if instinctively, evaluate extremely complicated matters.
Jóakim had responded that in order to vote a man was required to own three guilders of land. Each guilder was equal to twenty skinn, a skinn being the estimated value of a pilot whale measured eye to anus. Twenty skinn is equal to about 314.5 cm on this measure. Yet there was neither house nor any deed that bore the name Jóakim Nolsøe. All he had to his name was the boat that hauled water out to the sloops, nothing else. As such, he lacked voting rights. In his opinion, politics was something that officials and rich farmers used to pass the time. Over half of the men in the Løgting were Sunmen, and that sort did not begrudge their unlanded countrymen the shit beneath their fingernails. Yet Jóakim took comfort in the fact that Jesus had also been unlanded. If Jesus were registered in Froðba’s parish, just think, the Almighty’s son could not vote. So brilliantly had the Føroya Løgting been nailed together!
Napoleon was offended. No one was comparable to Christ, he said, and using worldly analogies when talking about God’s son was pointless. Not only were such thoughts blasphemous, but they also simplified the matter’s heart. However, to himself he was forced to admit that what Jóakim said made sense, indeed, a kind of terrifying sense.
And the Sunmen? He certainly understood why Dahlerup complained that in Parliament those damned meat-greedy asses tried to express pure rubbish and twaddle in their helpless Danish. Deep down they feared change. They wanted the Faroes to be governed like they always had been; they tended to ignore Doffa, especially when he talked about letting small folk cultivate fallow ground.
Without courageous men such as Doffa, the rocks of the Faroes would be cold and empty—that you had to admit, Pole had told his cousin.
“Maybe that’s true,” Jóakim replied. “But I have to say that I’m also a little sick of all this Doffatry. You can’t have a conversation anymore without Doffa popping up. And I know him, as you’re well aware. We used to play together before Hunderup brought him into the sheriff’s office. August Manicus, Vesse Hammershaimb, Løbner’s Luddi, Doffa, and me—we all stuck together in childhood. August died last year. He was a man I liked. I helped him on Suðuroy with the measles epidemic. I know you remember that,” Jóakim taunted. “August said he was a socialist. I didn’t know the meaning of the word and asked if that was a new kind of tar or tobacco. August said that Jesus was a Socialist, and when he rebelled and cleansed the temple he did it in the people’s name. Doffa?” Jóakim shook his head. “The fact is, I knew every place name between Skansin Fortress and Boðanes by heart before he even knew the days of the week. But Hunderup thought Doffa was so clever. On Sundays he walked about in his sailor’s suit, a fat kid in a sailor’s collar. No, dear cousin. Doffa is not the man the Faroes has been waiting for.”
Napoleon sputtered with fury. “I have no idea who you think you’re waiting on here in the south. You all love August Manicus because he showered you with medicine he didn’t even own. The Danish Finance Chamber footed the bill. And then you all badmouthed the man behind his back. On Suðuroy all you do is badmouth honest people and then laugh like fools. And this is the island I’m supposed to care about. Lord help me!”
Pole sat in the kitchen for the rest of the night. He ate bread, picked dried meat from a sheep shoulder, and sipped gin. Several times he said fuck, and that desperate curse made him think of that poor, one-handed fisherman who was now on his way home to Scotland. Fortunately, the Glen Rose’s skipper had taken the amputated hand with him. Otherwise, Tóvó would have probably tossed it onto the midden. Pole smiled at the thought, remembering how the boy had been so eager to toss anything capable of rotting onto his precious midden.
Pole sat on the peat box by the window, while on the table, wrapped in its dark-red silk cloth, was Nólsaryar Páll’s old telescope.
Sometimes when he went into the mountains, Pole took the telescope with him. It was compact in size and was good for bird watching. Usually, it sat in the bookcase in the living room, and you could see yourself in the brass because Tóvó liked to polish the metal with tobacco ash and spit. He had considered giving Tóvó the telescope when they parted ways, but now he was not so sure.
At regular intervals he went to check on his cousin. The morphine was working. Jóakim whimpered with froth in the corners of his mouth, and once Pole kissed him gently on the lips and whispered: good boy.
The words brought tears to his eyes. However, when he suddenly remembered what Jóakim might have been doing with those lips in the Trade Monopoly’s boathouse, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and whispered: you stupid dog, you damned Sodomite.
Tóvó had to leave the house. His decision was made. Pole was not Tóvó’s father, after all, and God have mercy on his soul, thought Pole as he stood up. No. Tóvó deserved no mercy, he decided, sitting down again. The boy had to go! He could well be an onanist. The diagnosis, of course, was not so easy to make. Still, he had the same low, degenerate forehead as Slavs, Lapps, and some Asian groups.
The boy was tough, though. Around two years ago Doffa asked in a letter how the young Brahmadella was doing, and Pole could well recall the satisfaction he had when he wrote back: Whether it is old ancestral strength making its sudden appearance in the boy’s mental constitution, or whether the climate here in the south is especially favorable, is difficult to say. However, our dear Brahmadella has acquired youth’s hearty appetite for life, and he works like that warrior who in the early days planted the Babylonian gardens.
He stood by the words. Tóvó truly had changed. He was no longer the distrustful milksop who peeked around corners thinking he saw the Devil in every other man’s eye. Nonetheless, the Brahmadella would vacate the Doctor’s House in Tvøroyri. The decision had been made, and the Devil take Pole if he gave that boy the telescope!
It was after six o’clock when Pole knocked on Tóvó’s door. Tóvó had gone to bed early and did not know it was the Glen Rose that had anchored. His brother Lýðar no longer sailed with the ship, as he had married someone from Nólsoy and become a landsman.
Pole told him to hurry and fetch the envoy.
The Gentle Singer
NAPOLEON TOLD HIS uncle about Jóakim’s condition in unusually harsh terms.
He said Jóakim was the victim of a crime and was going to die. He also said Jóakim was a sodomite and that this was the reason he was in this mess.
From what Napoleon had pieced together, the Glen Rose’s crew had given Jóakim a strong drink after he had rowed water to them. One or two had come ashore with him, and they had continued the party in the Trade Monopoly’s boathouse, where the terrible crime had apparently taken place.
Jóakim was going to suffer a painful death, Napoleon said and filled two glasses. The envoy, however, was not inclined to drink.
When the doctor had drained his glass, he offered in more neutral tones to write a report and give it to the sheriff. What his uncle had to realize, though, was that if the matter were brought before the authorities, it would quickly become general knowledge who Jóakim Nolsøe really was. The question to consider now was whether such a report would serve Jóakim’s legacy, not to mention the family’s reputation.
Napoleon
had finally said his piece and he asked if they should go and see Jóakim in the consultation room.
The envoy stood and told Napoleon no. His voice trembled, but it was pure disgust, not sorrow, that shook his vocal chords. He said never before had such a load of shit been dumped on him and his house, and the words, moreover, came from a learned man, who was also his own brother’s son. He said he was going to go home and transform the parlor into a sick room. Then he would return for his son. That way he could die at home among his family in peace.
“But I have a sick room at the west end of the house,” said Pole. “Jóakim is in good hands when those hands also belong to a doctor.”
“That might be true,” the envoy answered. “But I also had no idea you were so self-righteous. Don’t you think I know my son and his vices? I can’t do anything about that, or couldn’t, anyway, since according to what you said, it’s only a matter of days until he meets his Judgment. But one thing you should know, Napoleon Nolsøe: I would rather be father to Jóakim the Sodomite a thousand times over than be in a family with a beast like you.”
Tóvó helped the envoy bear his son home. They placed him on a ladder, wrapped a blanket around him, and carefully walked up the hill.
It took Jóakim six days to wrestle free of life. During that time, he naturally ate no solid food and a starling’s throat could easily contain what he drank. His bowels became infected, and his stomach was hot to the touch and hard as a board. It was only on the last day that he was mostly unconscious. Most of the time he was lucid but taciturn.
Pole visited him once, sometimes twice a day.
The envoy’s wife welcomed him quietly, said my dear and occasionally blessed, and opened the door to the parlor so he could be alone with her dying son. Pole brought morphine, and when he asked Jóakim how he was doing, he received only a shrug or a gesture in response. Pole tried to start a conversation, but it was difficult to find the words.
Sometimes Jóakim asked about Tóvó and that displeased Pole. He partly felt a sting of jealousy, but he was also growing increasingly certain that something aberrant had existed between his cousin and Tóvó.
And Pole was hurt that he had not been asked to watch over his cousin.
Tóvó, for his part, sat with Jóakim for two nights, and on the last night he learned what had happened in the Trade Monopoly boathouse. Or he at least learned what Jóakim remembered.
It was Ronnie Harrison, the skipper’s nephew, who had come ashore with him, and it was not the first time they had been together in the boathouse.
Tóvó knew who Ronnie was, and he also knew that the man was a sodomite. Jóakim had told him that. Jóakim also told him that Ronnie was one of those famous gadabouts from Inverness. For four or five years Ronnie’s uncle had taken him aboard the Glen Rose to make a decent man of him, and for longs stretches of time it could go reasonably well. They were not so dissimilar, Ronnie and George, or rather, they were like the rest of the Harrison clan, hard-knuckled priest-haters. Everywhere they went they heard the doors of evil creak and clatter; it was like an eternal blast of sin swept around their souls and deeds. George did seem milder, or in any case, he was more easily moved to tears. That was just on the surface, though. When he had a mind, he could be downright obstinate. The reason the Glen Rose had anchored at Tvøroyri was that there had been trouble aboard the ship lately. It had come to blows over the trawl, and the reason was that the skipper had refused to sail to land with the young man who had wounded his hand.
Jóakim talked slowly and sometimes it seemed he lost consciousness. He continued his story, though, and there was such great tenderness in his voice that it gripped Tóvó’s heart. Yet he spoke so strangely, calling the Trade Monopoly’s boathouse his temple and his offering ground, and saying that if he were not so bad off, he would dress it with Lebanese cypress or cedar wood. He said that the boathouse was located next to a fjord flowing high above the earth, and it was supported by basalt columns like those out in Bø.
“But what happened?” Tóvó asked.
Ronnie went berserk, Jóakim said. He was lying on his stomach when the Scott grabbed his head and started hammering it into the stone floor. Then he lost consciousness and had no idea how he had reached the Doctor’s House.
Tóvó took the washcloth from the bowl and wiped Jóakim’s brow. Jóakim said that a poor man was predestined to be a sodomite. If you owned nothing, you could offer no life to a woman or children. And now he was a joke and could only wait for the pastor to come and administer the Sacrament.
He told Tóvó about the time an American corvette had anchored at Hvalba for coal. They loaded for several days and the skipper said they needed a sailor. He had often regretted not accepting the offering and going out into the wide world. Flee, he told Tóvó. This was not a country for poor folk.
There were long pauses between the words sometimes, but Tóvó was patient.
He was sitting just as his great-grandfather had sat by Martimann’s bedside eleven years ago. Tóvó had always been unable dwell on that terrible May night in 1846, but now he felt a call to follow Jóakim to death’s door.
He held Jóakim’s burning hand and asked if he was asleep, but Jóakim shook his head.
Tóvó asked if he wanted to listen to a couple of verses that his great-grandfather had taught him.
“What, now you’re telling me you’re a singer?” Jóakim whispered with a roguish grin.
The Christmas sun
in the bell’s bronze
rings in a sea-washed heart.
The Sweet One in the manger,
the manger in the stable,
the stable of stone
the stone of earth.
Life and death and blackest sorrow
tell me you Sweet One in the manger
why the shuttle sings in the loom
why the sorrowful sing in the night.
March, the mild month, has two hands
searches the raven’s nest
the kind man from Tórshavn came
the kind man from Tórshavn went
poor Tóvó sits behind.
Tread hard
grip fast
magic days seven.
Searches memory with two hands.
Tread hard.
grip fast
the sun beautifully reddens.
The Hour of Farewell
JÓAKIM’S FUNERAL WAS the first to be held in Froðba church since it was moved to Tvøroyri. Tóvó, two salesmen, and Jóhann Mortensen from Øravík carried the coffin down the path between the Tvørá and Doctor Pole’s garden fence. Several boats lay at the bridge, and the Dannebrog flew at half-mast from the black-tarred funeral boat. Though the black-tarred boat was meant for ten men, that day six men rowed it, and between the stern seat and the last rower bank sat the coffin. They grasped the oars carefully, and the men in the other boats did the same. The small flotilla rowed slowly past Sixpence and Akurgerði toward the churchyard on Bø.
Pole was part of the procession that walked to Froðba, a journey not more than half an hour by foot. There was an occasional creak of the oars, but the rowers splashed water onto the wood beneath the oarlocks. Noise was not fitting at such a solemn moment. Pole appreciated the mythological notion of the deceased being rowed into a Froðbian realm of the dead.
Froðba was one of the most beautiful towns. In the sun the yellow fields waved right up to the infield fence, and golden plovers could be heard whistling from Torvheyggjur’s green slopes. In Reports from a Visit to the Faroes, Svabo wrote: Here one sees the best stone walls in all of the Faroes, not just because they are built from basalt, which Froðba has in abundance, but also because they have a correct height of eight to nine quarters.
The landscape, however, was also a masterwork of nature. The sun shone most of the day here and the mountains stretching from Froðbiarnípa to Remberg provided good protection from the north wind. The town was located on two levels, so to speak, and from up on Hamar you had a view
west toward the black coal mountains, while on the east side lay the great blue Atlantic.
But the most beautiful place in Froðba was Úti á Bø, and it was no coincidence that the old Froðbians had built their church at this precise location. A narrow waterfall plunged from the steep cliffs and ran white and babbling toward the beach. Rows of magnificent basalt columns stood on both sides of the churchyard, and as Pole walked by them, he genuinely felt that he was passing a forgotten shrine. That was exactly the sensation. The columns were reminiscent of a portal before a forgotten temple someone had raised to honor, well, he was not sure exactly what. Perhaps the dead or those dark, sublime feelings about which the Preacher sang.
Pole did not let it show, but it wounded his pride that he had been passed over as bearer. He could have chosen his words with greater care the morning he sent Tóvó to fetch his uncle, that he could have. But to punish a grown man in this way was simply ludicrous. Plus his family only had one educated man. He was the Nolsøe clan’s intellectual jewel, and yet he was rejected in favor of two shop attendants, a young eccentric from Tórshavn, and a clodhopper from Øravík.
It was a strange funeral. Various rumors regarding the cause of Jóakim’s death had leaked out, but no one knew whether his death was due to a tragic accident or to an outright murder, and they could not inquire. People did not know Ronnie Harrison nearly as well as they knew his uncle. George had shocked people one Sunday when the Glen Rose had come into the harbor with some other sloops for water. Several of the fishermen took the opportunity to visit the Froðba church, but George Harrison was not among them. Instead, he gave a speech on the bridge over the Tvørá, where he spoke the dreadful words that were repeated twenty-five years later by another priest-hater, namely, that the church doors were the gate to Hell. The subsequent priest-hater, William Gibson Sloan, founded the the Brethren Congregation on the Faroes.
The Brahmadells Page 13