by Herman Bang
“Old Adam, you know,” said Bai.
They laughed and talked. Kiær was happy.
“I’m beginning to recognise you again now,” he said, “you old lamplighter. Now we can recognise you.”
Bai suddenly became serious:
“Yes, old boy,” he said. “It’s been a sad time.”
He sighed twice and sat back in the seat.
Then in a happy voice he said, “Tell you what – we’ll get hold of Nielsen.”
“Nielsen?” said Kiær.
“A young lieutenant, you know, a connoisseur. Of course, we don’t know all the new places, old boy. I met him in the parsonage. A right lad he is, a connoisseur.”
“Well, in for a penny.”
They started to yawn and fell silent. They dozed off each on his own seat and slept until they reached Fredericia.
There they drank one cognac after another to counter the “cold night air”.
Bai went out onto the platform. The coaches were being shunted and voices were drowned out by the ringing of bells and signalling.
Bai stood under a lamp in the midst of the crowd and allowed himself to be pushed and shoved.
“I say, old man,” he said to Kiær, rubbing his hands as he looked down the platform and the railway line, “What do you think of this?”
“This is the life,” said Kiær.
The ladies were elegantly going up and down the steps, flushed with sleep, in their travelling bonnets.
“And what ladies,” said Bai.
People were shouting and bells were ringing.
“Passengers for Strib.”
“Passengers for the ferry.”
The train carrying Bai to Copenhagen arrived at half past ten.
They found Lieutenant Nielsen on a fourth floor in Dannebrogsgade. His furniture consisted of a wardrobe with a half-open door revealing a lone uniform waistcoat and a cane chair plus a washbowl.
The lieutenant was stretched out on a straw mattress on the bedboards.
“Camping out,” he said. “I have my respectable lodgings ‘elsewhere’, stationmaster.”
Bai said they wanted to ‘look around town’.
“We’d like to see certain ‘places’ like – you know,” he said.
Lieutenant Nielsen knew.
“You want to see the market,” he said. “Leave it to me. We’ll see the market.”
He put on his trousers and started to shout for a Mrs Madsen. Mrs Madsen reached in a naked arm holding a bar of soap.
“You see, I’m like one of the family,” said the lieutenant, soaping his arms with Mrs Madsen’s soap.
They agreed on a place to meet where they could look at the legs dancing in the Casino. “And then we’ll go and have a look at the market,” said Bai.
The lieutenant got ten øre out of Mrs Madsen and they set off straight away to the “local”.
The local was a nice little beer garden in Pileallé, where “the lads” spent their time playing skittles or cards.
The “lads” were three second lieutenants and two flaxen-haired gentlemen from the national school of agriculture.
When Nielsen arrived, the gentlemen were already playing Hombre, sitting in shirt sleeves and with their hats on the backs of their heads.
“Well, twins,” said Nielsen. “Everything all right?”
“Doing our best,” said one of those with flaxen hair, shrugging his shoulders.
“Vaguely,” said one of the lieutenants.
“Very vaguely,” said the other,
The group took great pleasure in the expression “vaguely”. They said it once every quarter of an hour in a curious tone and accompanied by tiny flicks of the hand.
“Vaguely.”
“We need to water things down a bit,” said Nielsen.
The group watered things down with beer and “the weaker sex”.
“I’ve discovered a couple of big spenders,” said Nielsen.
“Spenders… what the hell do you mean, Nielsen?” The flaxen-haired couple pushed their hats to the back of their heads.
“A couple of rather older big spenders, twins…”
The twins banged their bottles of beer on the table in his honour.
That evening, they went to the Attic after Nielsen had taken a look at the “dancing legs” together with Kiær and Bai.
Nielsen found some rosy-cheeked girls who drank some punch with them and coquettishly rapped the fingers of “the two elderly gentlemen from the provinces”.
Bai employed some long forgotten words from his days as a lieutenant.
The two with the flaxen hair could not stand anything. They lolled about and said, “Ugh, you old rakes,” and draped themselves over Bai’s and Kiær’s shoulders.
They all went on drinking.
“Ugh, you old nonsense.”
“Keep your hands off me.” Bai had become sensitive as a result of all his drinking.
Bai did not know how it all happened. The lieutenants had suddenly disappeared with the rosy-cheeked girls.
“They’ve gone,” said Kiær.
“Are you sitting there all on your own, gentlemen?”
It was a rather older little lady who came over to their table.
A week had passed.
Kiær had business to attend to in the mornings. Bai slept most of the time.
Kiær came home and entered their room.
“What, are you asleep?” he said.
“Aye, I don’t feel in particularly good form,” said Bai from the sofa, rubbing his eyes. “What time is it?”
“Two o’clock.”
“Then we must be off,” Bai rose from the sofa. “This is as hard as a confounded ironing board,” he said. He was sore all over.
He got himself dressed.
They were going out to look at gravestones. Bai was going to buy Katinka’s gravestone in Copenhagen.
He had been to three or four stonemasons without being able to make up his mind.
Kiær was impatient at the thought of having to go all over the place with him to look at those gravestones.
“It’s nice of you, old friend. It’s very nice of you. But it makes not a damn bit of difference to her.”
Bai was rather affected as he went around among all these crosses and columns with their marble doves and angel heads.
He would have to make his mind up today; it was their last day.
He took a large, grey cross with a couple of marble hands clasped beneath a butterfly symbolising life.
“Lovely idea,” he said, rubbing his eyes with a finger, “Faith, Hope and Charity.”
Kiær did not always understand what Bai meant when he expressed his grief.
“Aye, nice idea,” he said.
They went to the Royal Theatre that evening.
After the performance, they were to go out to the entertainment district.
“Not on your life, damn it,” said Kiær, “I’m not going just to sit around and wait for that crowd.”
Kiær went home.
Bai drifted around alone. There was damn well not going to be anyone able to say that he could not keep going to the very end.
He entered the place. None of the others had come as yet, and he sat down up in the gallery to wait.
No, thank you. He didn’t want anything to drink – perhaps a soda water.
He sat there and through the tobacco smoke looked down into the main hall first at the eight girls sitting in a circle on the stage and then at the audience:
“Bloody kids, that’s all.”
“Disappointing lot,” he thought. He sat there, looking down, with his cheek in his hand.
“Kids,” he said again.
Then they started shouting and banging their walking sticks down there. It was for an English dancer energetically throwing her skirts up over her head. Bai had seen those same skirts flying there each evening.
And he looked almost angrily down on the enthusiasm of those banging their walking sticks.
He swallowed his soda water and continued to look down at the main hall. The eight girls sitting there like a row of sleepy hens on a perch, and the boys laughing their heads off in order to persuade themselves it was amusing.
He had been waiting for almost three quarters of an hour, and the bunch had failed to arrive.
In any case, he was quite happy to see them stay away with their “rosy-cheeked lasses”.
He could surely find some old girl for himself.
These two “old rakes from the provinces” with hair like pigs’ bristles.
Bai looked over at the other side: a couple of young gentlemen were fooling around with two girls. One of them was young and lively, with a couple of little dimples.
The young man bent forward and stole some kisses beneath her veil.
The others had still not arrived. And Bai felt something like irritation, like anger, while all the time watching this pair of doves billing and cooing.
No one was coming, damn it.
Oh well, when they’ve fleeced you.
And the premises began to empty. They were thinning out down on the floor and from the gallery one pair after another was going down the stairs.
The air was heavy with smoke, and the smell of beer lay thick and heavy over the tables with their deserted glasses.
There was no one up in the gallery but an elderly lady bobbing about and nodding seductively to Bai.
They had already turned the gas half down and Bai still sat there with his head in both his hands staring at the deserted, filthy main hall.
He swore roundly and rose.
The elderly lady was dodging around at the gate.
“Still here?” she said.
“Not bloody likely.”
Bai vented all his fury in the push he gave the elderly lady.
“What on earth,” the lady whined. “Is that the way to treat a lady, a woman who owns her own home?”
Kiær was in bed:
“Well,” he said, “Did you have fun?”
Bai took his boots off.
“They didn’t come,” he said in a low voice.
“Rotten lot,” said Kiær.
Bai undressed without speaking.
He lay there for a time with the light on. Then he put it out.
“Are you upset, old man?” said Kiær.
“Not really.”
“Oh. Well, good night.”
“But I’m getting old,” said Bai. “Aye,” he said again, slowly, “that’s what it is.”
Kiær turned over in bed, “Rubbish,” he said. “But you go about it like a bull at a barn door, old man. You need to be in training, to be cock of the midden, and you need to take things slowly. Then you’ll be all right. And able to enjoy yourself.”
Kiær fell silent. It was not long before he was snoring. But Bai could not sleep. It was though he had the smell of beer in his nostrils for half the night, and he lay there tossing and turning.
The following morning, as he was packing his bags, Katinka’s photograph fell out from between two handkerchiefs.
It was Mrs Abel who had packed it for him.
She had looked tenderly at it and packed it in tissue paper.
“That dear girl,” she had said.
Louise, the last one, had been irritated: “Good heavens, why don’t you give him a music box as well? So that he can play those ‘dear melodies’ of hers?”
Louise, the only one left at home, had a bad habit of snarling at her mother if she disapproved of something.
The widow had packed the portrait between the two handkerchiefs.
“He must have that bit of home with him.”
Bai picked the portrait up from the floor and sat looking at it with eyes swimming with tears.
The Abels were at the station to meet Bai. The indoor rooms looked as though they had been spring-cleaned for Easter, with white curtains and a smell of cleaning in the air.
Bai sat on the sofa for his meal.
“It’s nice to get back to your own home,” he said. “At home in the nest.”
He ate and drank as though he had not had a meal all the time he had been away.
Mrs Abel had tears in her eyes as she sat there looking fondly at “our homecomer”.
He told them about his trip.
“The theatres,” said the widow. “The season.”
He had bought a gravestone. “Hell of a price.”
“You don’t have to think about that,” said the widow, “the final act of love.”
“Aye, that was what it was, as I said to Kiær, the final act of love,” said Bai.
Louise never ran out of her small surprises. “You are not allowed to look,” she said, holding her hand to his eyes while the widow took the lid off the latest dish of ragout.
“Yes, she has made such a lot of things,” said the widow with a smile, “My elder daughter.”
“We all like our home comforts,” said Bai. He placed both his hands on the table and looked happy as he settled down for a quiet nap.
October arrived. There was quite a crowd on the platform waiting for the afternoon train. Little Jensen and all the Lindes and the family from the mill.
The widow was leaving to set up house for Ida, her younger daughter.
“Louise will be following on,” she said as she threw her arms round her elder daughter’s head. “She is happiest at home.”
“She won’t be coming until it’s time for the wedding,” she said.
The wedding was to be celebrated at the home of “my sister, the one who was married to a State Councillor”.
“That is where they met,” said the widow.
The train was announced. Bai came with a baggage claim slip and a ticket.
“He has been my providence,” said the widow, nodding to him.
The train approached across the meadows.
“Give our love to Ida, then,” said the old minister. “We will be thinking about her on the day.”
“We know,” said the widow. “We know where there are people who think kindly of us.” She was moved and kissed the assembled company.
“Yes,” she said, “this is a journey to say farewell.”
The train was there. “Well, my dear Mrs Abel,” said Bai. “It’s time now.”
“But what about my Louise?”
“We’ll look after her.” Bai had already pushed Mrs Abel into the carriage.
“Goodbye, Mrs Linde. Goodbye.”
Louise jumped up on the running board and kissed her. “One last one,” she said.
“Louise…” shouted the widow. The train had started to move.
Bai caught Louise, the only one the widow had left.
They waved their scarves and they waved their hands until the train was no longer in sight.
The Lindes walked along the road home with the family from the mill.
Louise wanted to have a look at something in the post bag and ran into the office in front of Bai. They laughed so loudly in there that it could be heard right out on the platform.
Little Miss Jensen had given up and was leaning against a post. The porter had moved the milk churns away from the platform and changed the points. And Miss Jensen stood there still, alone, leaning against her post.
The Lindes were at home.
The old minister was sitting with Agnes in the living room while “Mother” saw to the tea.
It was growing dark. The old parson could hardly see Agnes as she sat at the piano.
“Sing a song for me,” he said.
Agnes moved her hands a little, slowly up and down the keyboard. And then, quietly, in her dark contralto voice, she sang the song about Marianna:
“Beneath the grassy grave is sleeping
Our poor Marianna
Come gather, girls, and join in weeping.
Our poor Marianna.”
Silence fell in the dark sitting room
The old m
inister folded his hands and dozed off.
Dedalus would like to thank The Danish Arts Council’s Committee for Literature and Arts Council England, London for their assistance in publishing this book.
Copyright
Published in the UK by Dedalus Limited,
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Publishing History
First published in Denmark in 1886
First Dedalus edition in 2015
First ebook edition in 2015
As Trains Pass By (Katinka) translation copyright © W. Glyn Jones 2014
The right of W. Glyn Jones to be identified as the translator of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
Printed in Finland by Bookwell
Typeset by Marie Lane
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A C.I.P. listing for this book is available on request.