Nonetheless, the large following showed Jóakim had been a popular man. Most Suðoroyingars knew him, at least those who had done business at the Trade Monopoly. And Jóakim was also hilarious, both when he imitated other people and, most of all, when he made fools of the authority. Still, that was not the kind of thing you said at a funeral. Nonetheless, a man from Hvalba, making his way home through the Káragjógv ravine, remarked that Jóakim was probably the only man on earth to ascend to Heaven with a ruptured anus.
When Tóvó and the maid returned from the wake, Pole was sitting alone in the living room smoking a pipe. Realizing immediately that Pole was in a bad mood, the maid hurried up to her attic room. Tóvó wanted to do the same, but Pole called him in.
He said he did not want anything in particular, just to ask how the young widower was doing. Tóvó did not grasp his meaning right away, and Pole did not wait for an answer. Instead, he continued that his good friend Dahlerup had entrusted this house to him five years ago. Next to the church, the Doctor’s House or the Hospital were sacred, but whereas the clergy tended to the soul, it was the doctor’s responsibility to look after the soul’s vessel. One could say, therefore, that the Doctor’s House was a holy place. In any case, it was a house governed by the Hippocratic Oath, and therefore moral purity ought to be held in the highest regard.
“Do you understand me?” he asked.
Tóvó shook his head.
“I’m asking if this house has been polluted by sodomistic debauchery.”
“I don’t know,” Tóvó answered softly.
“If something objectionable did happen, I was considering asking Pastor Harald to come and drive the evil spirit away.”
“You shouldn’t talk to me that way,” Tóvó said even more softly.
“What did the widower say? I couldn’t quite hear.”
“No one should talk to me like you are.”
“Is that an order?”
“Yes, it is. I’m not a dog, and I’m not some rat or fly whose wings you can tear off.”
“I didn’t say that.”
Tóvó stomped the floor with his foot. “Do you know who I am?”
He approached Pole’s chair. He circled behind it, watching the doctor’s head as it appeared above the backrest.
“We’ve lived under the same roof for five years, and still you don’t seem to know who I am. You could’ve been my father, but I could’ve been your forefather. You could’ve been the one to govern the Faroes, but I am the sea who fills the middens with growth. And why? Because I’m a Brahmadella.
“One day the Master Barber and Saint Birgitta will walk toward the rainbow, and they won’t ask where Napoleon Nolsøe lives. They won’t ask what herbs he has lying in his mortar, they won’t count the number of opium vials standing on his shelf. They’ll ask after me, the little chisel wight, and they’ll want to know why so many tears are being cried in the mild March sun.”
Pole put down his pipe, turned around in his chair, and told Tóvó to calm down.
And Tóvó was calm; he was so calm that it frightened Pole. He had the strange feeling Tóvó could see right through him and read his terrified thoughts. Pole also did not recall ever having heard such peculiar words before, and did not know whether they belonged to the realm of pathology or poetry. There was also a third possibility, but he dared not consider it. To mention the underwordly—the mythical, subterranean creatures of Old Norse folklore—was not something his heart could not have tolerated right then.
Pole grinned foolishly, and the laughter that rose in his throat sounded like a dry cough.
Tóvó came around to the front of the chair and looked at Pole.
“I was six years old the first time I spoke with you. Eight years later you took me with you south to Tvøroyri and I have been here for five years. Now it’s time for me to go.”
Pole nodded.
“I’ve had a good life here in Tvøroyri, and I have you to thank for that. I’m going to go to bed now. Good night.”
“Good night, Tóvó.”
PART THREE
Death and Flight Dreams
HENRIETTA AWOKE TO the smell of blood and the first thing she thought of was her monthly cycle. She felt herself and sniffed her fingertips, but there was only the scent of her sex. For a while she lay in the dark, yawning and thinking back. When had she bled last?
Good God! It only just now hit her. It had been at least three years. She had not bled in the three years they had been married, and besides, the smell was never this cloying.
She lit the candle on the nightstand and lifted it toward Pole. That was when she saw that he was bleeding from his mouth and nose, and that the whites of his eyes were showing.
“Pole,” she whispered, but he seemed unconscious.
She sprang into the attic corridor, shouted “my dear” to the serving girl, begged her for God’s sake to fetch the Landkirurg.
When Hoff entered the bedroom not half an hour later, Pole was dead. Hoff said that his colleague and dear friend had died of an aneurism, and it was a comfort to Henrietta that she knew what an aneurism was. One of the large veins in his abdominal cavity had burst and the blood’s characteristically dark color, already visible along his throat and the bridge of his nose, had spread like a dark growth around his eyes and forehead.
Hoff lingered in the corridor. His yellowish hair stuck straight up. His eyes were light blue and his unusually white teeth glinted in the half-dark hallway. He said that he wanted to relate a little event that happened in Tórshavn’s Club on Twelfth Night.
Napoleon had tapped on his glass and, clearly moved, had told the story of a farmer in Nes on Suðuroy who had made himself a feather suit. His plan was to fly straight across Vágsfjørður, and so on a brisk, windy day he cast himself off the cliff’s edge above the farm. The suit was equipped with a tail to steer, but after he was quite a ways over the inlet, he realized that he had too little control, and he was afraid the wind would blow him seaward. His sons sat in a boat below him, ready to help if anything should go wrong, and as he hung in the air he called to them in a terrified voice. There was nothing they could do, however, but watch him play bird twenty-five fathoms above the sea. Finally, the farmer was able to steer himself back to land, and man and suit took a head-over-heels tumble into the surf on the rocky beach.
A few years later, a young man from the Billhús in Sumba repeated the experiment. Instead of using feathers he covered the wings in red canvas, and instead of a tail he made it so the wings could move independently. He thought this would help him to steer better.
Like a giant red bird the man stood atop Krossjarðarhamar, and when he cast himself aloft, the whole town turned out to watch the courageous Billhús fool.
Proudly he floated over the house in Høggeil and over Ergisstova and down toward the cemetery. Occasionally, they could hear him shout—not cries for help, but the joyful cries of a flying chieftain.
His wingspan was a good ten feet long, and like a playful broom the shadow whisked away the heaps of anxiety time had deposited in the Sumbingur’s consciousness. He had often told his fellow townsmen that people were made of both earthly and heavenly stuff and that one day he would prove it.
And now he sailed above the town, followed by gleeful and disbelieving eyes.
Suddenly, Hoff broke off his story and begged her forgiveness, saying that he did not want to exhaust Henrietta at such a time. The story was just so touching, its tone quite H. C. Anderson-esque.
Henrietta knew the story well, knew it inside and out, since it was one of her own. But she did not want to say that now. Still, it made her happy that Pole had been moved by it, and that his club friends had allowed him to tell it.
She had written several stories the summer her cousin, Fióla Kjelnes, lived with them in the Quillinsgarður house, and as she handed Hoff his hat, she remembered that the wind had swept the Billhús man away. Oh Jesus, she thought. The Billhús man had sailed around the globe. He had floated ov
er forests where trees yielded oranges and other exotic fruit, and he had floated over cities that shone during the night. She told Fióla about bridges held up by iron cables as thick as your arm, and about churches built on high piles. She told the girl about red people who danced the rain down from heaven, and about yellow people who ate their food with sticks like the ones Faroese women used to knit sweaters.
She wove fragments from her scattered reading into her stories, and three or four were born right there at the bedside.
Personally, Henrietta liked the story about the seal woman from Agrar best. In her day there was a little circus on Suðuroy, and on Twelfth Night the circus clown hid himself behind some large rocks on the beach and watched the seal woman’s delightful dance. It was not, however, the seal woman herself that interested him, but rather her sealskin, which she removed before she danced. Carefully, the clown removed his motley garb, including the red cardboard nose people always laughed at, and which ensured he was never truly happy. He did not want to be a clown anymore, so he slipped into the sealskin and swam away from the beach. The two children waited for their mother in the den, but great was their sorrow when they realized it was not their mother wearing the skin.
Fióla did not want to hear the rest of the story. She called the woman an impudent seal and would much rather hear the story of the Billhús man one more time. That story was tragic in just the right way, and he was so very high up in the air when he died.
For years he flew lifelessly around the world. Birds ate his flesh and laid eggs in his skull, hatching as cheerfully in the empty eye sockets as they would in Dahlerup’s starling nest boxes. Storks and pelicans greeted the skeleton with their fine clattering when their paths crossed. When he flew past open town windows, people folded their hands and thanked God for angels. Museums in large cities offered huge rewards to anyone who could capture the skeleton, and clever artists attempted to sketch the unknown airman for the front page of major newspapers. Grass and moss grew between his fingers, and since up high it is always summertime, small beetles and berries thrived in the moss.
One morning the people of Sumba saw something floating at the beach’s edge, and when they waded out with ropes and a dredge, they recognized the remains of the Billhús man.
The Sumbingurs were glad that their townsman had returned home at long last. Everyone who could walk followed him to the cemetery, and Fióla said that when she grew up, she would go to Sumba and plant flowers on the brave Billhús man’s grave.
The Løbners and Michael Müller
LATER THAT AFTERNOON Adelheid the midwife helped Henrietta prepare Pole’s body. They dressed him in the same clothes in which he had married two-and-a-half years ago. Ludda-Kristjan came to take his old friend’s measurements, and the widow smiled when he said that a coffin was the second house he had built for Pole.
Ludda-Kristjan had often said that it was a real shame Frú Løbner had never allowed her daughter to live a normal life as a married woman. Adelheid did not disagree with him, but if she were to speak her mind, she understood Frú Løbner. She would not care herself to have a type like Pole for a son-in-law. It was that hole, Tvøroyri, that had taken his spirit, she said.
Ludda-Kristjan did not believe that Pole had lost his spirit, any more than people usually did over the years.
Indeed, Adelheid said, he was a complete pessimist when he returned from Suðuroy.
Ludda-Kristjan did not know what a pessimist was, and Adelheid, who liked to irritate the man, said that a pessimist was the opposite of an optimist.
Ludda-Kristjan lost his temper and told her to stop the pretentious nonsense and speak Faroese.
Pole was just so bullheaded, Adelheid said, that was what she meant. He always knew better than everyone else. And sure, he was entertaining, but there was usually a thread of devilry woven into his merriment.
Ludda-Kristjan and Adelheid were both familiar with the quarrel that had persisted between Emilius Løbner and Nólsoyar-Páll at the turn of the century, and all the years that had passed since the poet’s death had not served to mellow Frú Løbner. In that respect she was a true Tórshavnar. She had no problem hating a family and everyone in it for five or six generations back, and if it had been possible to extend that hate into the future, she would have done that, too.
In The Ballad of the Birds, and especially in The Ballad of Gorpland, Nólsoyar Páll shamelessly belittled Commandant Løbner for cowardice, and the fact that Jákup Nolsøe had a hand in Løbner’s belittlement was something she had heard from so reliable a source as the old skipper Michael Müller. The older brother composed the verses and the younger wrote them down, and wherever possible the younger mixed in even more wickedness. When it came to Nolsøe poets, Frú Løbner wanted nothing to do with them. Just seeing the trade director’s surly and disagreeable face on Tórshavn’s streets was enough to spoil her day.
And the director’s son did not even know Latin, so Michael Müller had told her as well. And aside from being impotent, he had no other education besides completing the simple Civil Medical Exam. And if he appealed to rank, well, Frú Løbner could tell Napoleon Nolsøe that she had nothing of which to be ashamed. Not too many years ago she was the country’s Frúa, the first lady, and mother to both of the Amtmand’s children. Every Sunday for years she and Emilius had walked up the church aisle, and when Ludvig was big enough to sit still in the gallery, they started taking their son with them to church.
Michael Müller had been one of the Løbners’ few friends, and he was also Henrietta’s godfather.
Michael was a clergyman’s son from Hvalba and had left the country as a young man. After the English bombardment of Copenhagen in 1807, he was among those who received a letter of marque from the king, and he captained several privateers as long as the Napoleonic war lasted.
Following the Treaty of Kiel, the English occupation of the Danish West Indies ended, and for a few years Michael sailed the isles. He was chief helmsman aboard the Jakobs Stige, and for a time he also captained the ship. Accordingly, he worked closely with Danish officials in Christianssted and Charlotte Amalie and saw that the attitude of these officials regarding slavery was not dissimilar to that of officials in Tórshavn. And he told the Løbners as much: “In your eyes, the riffraff of Tórshavn are like white negroes who don’t have much use.”
Michael later wrote a work characterized by Niels Winther as: “A flower amid the young Faroese national fauna.” The work was extensively titled: The Faroese Foundation for the Support of Spiritual Education, Useful Invention, and Helpful Organization on the Faroes for the Promotion of Young People Who Strive to Prepare Themselves through Education for Theological or Juridical Positions on the Faroes as Well as for Support in Other Scientific Disciplines and Prizes for Useful Inventions and Beneficial Arrangements, All of the Country’s Inhabitants and Youth.
Michael saw that Frú Løbner was not thriving in her marriage, and at a party one evening he said a few words that straightened her spine immediately. What Tórshavn’s church needed, he said, was a Mater Dolorosa. Frú Løbner did not exactly know what that meant, but as Michael explained she sat still and listened.
He said he had nothing against the pastors taking helm and making necessary church-related decisions. However, the church’s true authority did not rest with a bunch of distinguished gentlemen in chasubles and miters. The church ought to be more expansive than that and reflect life’s source, and the name of that source was the Mother. He meant the Virgin Mary who had carried Jesus Christ beneath her breast, and had followed him down the terrifying road to Golgotha, and who was also there when her son was taken down from the cross. The road to Golgotha was named Via Dolorosa, and that could mean the way of suffering or the way of pain, and therefore Christ’s mother had earned the beautiful and tragic name Mater Dolorosa.
Frú Løbner suddenly asked if Michael was Catholic; the question completely surprised him. As he surveyed the other guests in the living room, he said that one did not d
iscuss such matters aloud in the Faroes, but since she had asked with a pure heart, he would answer her in the same spirit. Yes, he was a Catholic to his innermost soul! European history’s greatest tragedy had been the Reformation. “In my eyes,” Michael said, “Martin Luther was the Church’s black angel.” He had driven out the Virgin Mary, and in her place he set up a false nun by the name of Katharina von Bora, whom he had also married. The fact that Bora rhymes with whore, and brings to mind the great harlot of Revelation, well, that could not be a complete coincidence!
Frú Løbner sat straight as a candle. In that moment she could have kissed Michael. The words reached a barren place in her heart, and out of that desolation now flowed a small stream. That was how it felt. The sound of the stream was mild and peaceful, and it swallowed the feelings of inferiority under which she had suffered for years, ever since she and Emilius had moved in together. After they married, their relationship had changed. She never understood why, but everything was just different.
“What would you do in the King’s city?” Emilius asked when she begged leave to accompany him to Copenhagen. She was obviously not capable of strolling in crinoline down Kongens Nytorv, much less conversing with anyone. She must not imagine that cultured Copenhageners were interested in hearing about her past as Júst á Húsum’s milkmaid. Her place was in Tórshavn and there she must remain until her hourglass was run.
It is hard to protect yourself against such injurious words. She could not do much against her husband anyway, and when he left the country she was greatly relieved to escape his determined and callous denigration.
The Brahmadells Page 14