The Prophets of Eternal Fjord
Page 41
Did you take my letters to the Trader and his wife?
I threw them away. You can write letters when you’re well.
But I will not be well. I don’t want to be well!
It’s not for us to decide.
She brings him food, food from the natives with whom she lives, boiled meat, soup, fish. Unfortunately his appetite is ravenous and he cannot abstain from eating. The keg of aquavit is emptying, though as yet it remains half full. Sometimes he lifts it up and dances a few steps with it in the inclining cabin, singing a shanty he learned on his voyage with Der Frühling, or one of Brorson’s hymns. The air turns chilly; snow intrudes through the timber, ice forms in the cracks of the bulkhead. The widow comes with back issues of the Christiania-Kureren and Kjøbenhavns Posttidende and together they stuff them into the gaps. She teaches him to keep a train-oil lamp burning by trimming the wick. If he allows it to go out, she pulls his beard and scolds him. When he needs to empty his bowels he climbs down into the hold and squats at the bow. He discharges his filth upon the planks and it seeps away through the cracks. He refrains from ever going ashore. He has made a rule for himself that he will never set foot on land again. He wishes to sail into the sunset as captain of the wrecked Taasinge Slot. Until now he has abided by it. He spends most of his time lying in the slanting cot, reading small scraps torn from the Posttidende. Denmark has no other natural wealth than . . . possible perfection! Hippocrates . . . the oldest Danish legislators . . . the country’s happiness in sight . . . population of Danish peasantry . . . our number lottery . . . by the new year of 1777 . . . number lottery in Denmark . . . such considerable loss for whoever should gamble . . . state of theology in this country . . .
He puts on his cassock, which is furry white with mildew, pulls his festering wig down over his forehead and searches for his ruff. But the ruff is gone. He delivers a sermon without it, a sermon of fire and brimstone in the manner of the old pastor at Nakskov before his trembling congregation. His own congregation is humbler and consists of the lice which predominantly inhabit the area of his cuffs, his armpits and the inside and out of his wig, but which nonetheless are many!
The widow comes. What are you doing? She helps him back into the cot.
He passes out, sleeps dreamlessly and arises twelve hours later with a bandage around his head.
You fell, she says.
His body quivers. He eats hard tack soaked in warm aquavit and begins to feel better. He considers his situation. This is not as easy as he thought. Has the ship arrived? he asks.
The ship sailed a long time ago, says the widow. It’s winter.
How are things in the colony?
There’s a new carpenter and a new cook, she says. And the Trader has written off for a new priest.
Good, he says. Excellent. I have written to Dr Fabricius myself regarding a successor to my position.
He contracts dysentery. The weather is so cold his excrement freezes to his buttocks and thighs, thawing and beginning to exude its stench only when he returns to the cabin. He lies in his cot and hasn’t the strength to go into the hold to evacuate his bowels. When eventually he gets to his feet it is too late and he falls back, exhausted, onto the bed.
This is the bottom, he thinks to himself. And about time!
But the bottom is never the bottom. There is always another bottom below it. He descends through nine circles of debasement to debasement that is deeper still. He finds it to be a most satisfying and instructive experience. The widow is with him and observes him from a distance. Then she is there no more. Perhaps he simply imagines her to be there. He lifts up his head and she gives him a little to drink. Aquavit, he groans, give me my aquavit!
There is no more aquavit, she says. You’ve drunk the whole keg. Now the trouble begins.
Cold, he breathes through chattering teeth. I’m so cold.
I’m washing you, says the widow. You will soon be warm again.
He feels himself turned first one way then another, the wet cloth at his lower regions, the widow’s mutterings of annoyance. I am dead, he thinks. She is preparing me for my grave and wrapping me in my shroud. But Purgatory is cold, not at all hot as we learned.
His skin retracts from his bones, which rest hard against the planks of the cot. He can find no respite. He tosses and turns, or else his spirit does, struggling to free itself, while his empty frame remains stiff upon the bunk. He perches attentively on a joist in the ceiling, from where he observes himself lying huddled in his bed, looking up at himself perched on a joist in the ceiling, observing himself lying huddled in his bed. He emits a scarcely human, inorganic stench like waste from a tannery, a pungent chemistry of foulness. He notes how his clothes stick to his skin, the ammonia of his urine burning his thighs. He sees the seeping bedsores, registers the bile that trickles from the corners of his mouth. He senses the way he squirms to be released from his carcass, through such orifices as are amenable. Am I a part of the world or is the world a part of me? When I die, will I then become liquid and be stirred into the great soup of the Unknown? He thanks the Lord for his final days of peace and reconciliation. Then, resolutely, he closes his eyes.
Are you ready now? the widow asks, holding an enormous gold crucifix out in front of him.
Ready for what, my dear? he asks or thinks he asks, squinting his eyes at the crucifix as it swings like a pendulum before him, its glare blinding him.
Ready to leave.
Leave for where? He holds a hand up in front of his face.
For Habakuk and Maria Magdalene, says the widow. The time has come.
What sort of a person are you? he says or thinks he says. Can you not let a dead man lie in peace?
The Tenth Commandment
In the Bosom of the Prophets: Excerpts from the Diary of Morten Falck
(Winter to Summer, 1793)
The Tenth Commandment, as it is most plainly to be taught by a father to his family:
‘Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his man-servant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour’s.’
What does this imply?
Answer: That we should fear and love God, so that we may not seduce our neighbour’s wife, alienate his domestics or force away from him his cattle; but cause them to remain and do their duty.
Diary, the First Part
. . .
Let there be light
. . .
And darkness
. . .
Who am I?
. . .
I am
Therefore I am God
Therefore God exists!
God’s existence is hereby proven
And thereby my own
Give me the widow!
. . .
Mother!
Father!
Sister Kirstine!
?
King Christian VII (and the Crown Prince)!
Jesus Christ!
Our Lord!
I am a question mark in the midst of eternity
Who am I?
. . .
A
B
D
M
P
F
Morten
Pedersen
Falck
. . .
I pinch myself
It hurts!
. . .
I am the pen that doth scratch
I am the ink that runneth
The paper that doth absorb
The words
From my hand my spirit
I am the hand that holds the cock pen
I am the spirit that leadeth the hand that holds the pen
I am Morten Pedersen Falck
. . .
The passage of light across
the floor
The passage of the eye within the socket
The passage of time through a room
One day is seven ells in length
And four ells high
. . .
I am Morten Pedersen Falck
I am Morten Pedersen Falck
I am Morten Pedersen Falck
I am Morten Pedersen Falck
I am Morten Pedersen Falck
I am Morten Pedersen Falck
. . .
The light falls so pleasantly upon the floor
It wanders from wall to wall
My wounds
My legs
My fingers
My member frame
No pain
But lust
No hunger
But thirst
No repentance
But contrition
My front teeth are quite fallen out but for five that dangle like
scoundrels of the night from a gallows
R. I. P.
Verily I say unto thee
Rise up and go!
I shall not want
Who am I?
The woman comes with my slops
She calls me Palasi
Verily I say unto thee, woman, I am priest no more!
I ask for ale
She gives me water
Bright as aquavit
I ask for a kiss
She attends to the warming pan
She takes my night pot
I ask for a smile
She does not smile
Who is she?
She has a comely backside
I must sleep now
. . .
My ejaculations are bloody
Nevertheless, they afford me much enjoyment
. . .
This night my excrement spoke to me in Latin from the malodorous
depths of the night pot
The eternal tongue
Hoc est Corpus Christi!
It shouted out
This is the body of Christ
Eat me!
This is the blood of Christ
Drink me!
Small wafers it resembled
I laid one upon my tongue
In order to taste it
And receive the salvation
I drank the bitter altar wine
It tasted of urine
Ugh, how vile!
. . .
Music
French horn and lute
Kettledrums!
Blessed tones
The royal musicians play
Master Eckenberg waxes his moustache
And snaps his braces
Performs his somersault
And breaks his neck
. . .
My name is Morten Falck
My arsehole it doth talk
It poureth forth with sweet refrain
Resounding farts without restrain
The Lord’s praise it doth sing
With arsehole descant ring
O squelching minor key!
O squeaking major chord!
I have not learned to write down music
Though poet may still be within reach
Such a wretch am I!
Who am I?
. . .
Rain beating hard against the pane
Is winter over?
Will summer soon be here?
The woman who comes here under pretext of tending to my physical
needs is a thief(ess)
She takes my night pot
And when she brings it back it is empty
Not a drop has she left!
I believe she makes sorcery with it, and enchantments
I scold her on such account
And impress upon her the sacrilege of which she thereby is guilty
My excrement, I tell her, is blessed
It is the body and blood of Christ!
But she pays me no heed
She washes me with the cold water
Without shame she grasps my nakedness
As though it were the shaft of a broom
And washes around it with her cloth
Who art thou, woman?
Who am I?
I was the priest
More I shall not say
. . .
My obituary:
Morten Pedersen Falck
Son of schoolmaster Peder Mortensen, Lier Parish, Diocese of Akershus, Norway, born 1731.
And Gundel, née Olavsdatter, Lier Parish, Diocese of Akershus, born 1741, died 1791, R. I. P.
Morten Pedersen Falck was born 20 May 1756, a vile Thursday, at the schoolmaster’s holding by the banks of the Holsford, where grows a birchwood copse and the life is good.
Christened and led to confirmation in Lier Church by the Rev. Mr Clemens.
Latin school at Drammen, graduation with honours.
Theological studies at the University of Copenhagen, 1782–5.
Graduated to the title of Candidatus Theologicus (Third Class), 1785.
Called to the Mission of Greenland, Sukkertoppen Colony, 1787, in his 32nd year.
Magister Falck left his home in the Colony last January and has since not been seen by any member of its crew. He is therefore presumed dead from cold or by drowning.
Loved and missed by his sister Kirstine Gram née Pedersen, Nakskov, and by his still living father, the schoolmaster.
Requiescat in Pace.
In Heaven we shall be united!
. . .
The journey here remains as yet all but clear to my memory. My bleating, shrieking, snivelling person was transported over land and water and placed here in the horizontal, being quite without strength and detached from all senses. I recall dreadful visions, white maggots wishing to wriggle into my orifices, small and vile creatures crawling about my body, mice, rats, spiders. It seems to me this continued for some weeks or else an entire year, jolting upon sleds, pitching in the bottom of vessels in choppy waters. Or perhaps merely days. I do not recall it, but see only indirectly images of it, a camera obscura projecting disconnected flashes of memory upon the blurred glass of recollection.
Remember to ask this if ever a person appears with whom one might converse: How long did my journey last? The Lord was in the wilderness for forty days. How long my own cold wandering? But who to ask? There is no one here, only the small woman who silently brings me three meals each day and empties my night pot, whereafter she departs without answering my queries. Perhaps she is deaf, perhaps she is one of the silent keepers of the underworld.
Where is the widow?
Where am I?
I demand to see the widow!
The widow belongs to me!
The widow is to come!
Do I wish to see the widow?
What she has seen, no man ought to allow any woman to see.
She knows me.
I know her not.
And yet I love her.
I think.
Until this hour I have called her only ‘the widow’.
What is the widow’s name? Remember to ask!
This place is dim, but warm and comfortable. My bed is a soft mattress of straw, my cover reindeer skins sewn together. They are quite alive with vermin, albeit most likely the same creatures as brought here upon my own person and now multiplied in these new preserves. A tallow candle burns upon a small table. Next to it has been placed a Bible, a volume of Pietistic hymns, writing instruments and some sheets of paper of which a dozen already bear the scribble of my handwriting and a number of obscene sketches, though I have no recollection of having eith
er written or drawn. I dip my quill, I put its nib to the hard parchment, I see the ink flow and my hand come trembling to life again. I live!
Lord, have mercy and let me die!
. . .
Alas, my wretched, battered body!
Today I rose from the warmth of my bed and took some small and uncertain steps upon the hard wooden floor. The room in which I have been placed is quite small, smaller than Bertel’s front room in the colony as I remember it, and no larger than my bleak habitation on board the Taasinge Slot, though more comfortable by far. When my legs become strong enough I shall pace out its measurements, but I believe it to be four paces lengthways and some two and a half in width. To the right of the door is a window, quite impenetrable to the eye, though the light shines through it well. The sun is cast down upon the floor, a field of brightness that wanders from wall to wall, from dawn until dusk, and thus approximately I may judge the time of day, though not the time of year. I hear the lapping of water and pebbles clacking at the changing of the tide. Further away the rush of a river. Now and then voices, albeit distant. I have not yet the courage to put my head outside.
Thus proceed my days: I am awoken after good sleep by the small woman, who brings me a bowl of barley gruel. It is the widow. Now I see it. Only now do I see her.
Remember to ask: From where is this barley acquired that does not taste of mildew and rot? Do they do business with the Trade? If so, it is unlawful business.
When this kindly person has gone, which is to say the widow, at least I think her to be the widow, I sit up in my cot and slurp the gruel. Thereafter I read a little in the two books with which I have been entrusted, though both tire me so immensely that soon I prefer to follow the sun’s advancement across the floor. When it has reached the right side of the door, the woman, the widow, returns, now with my mid- day meal, usually boiled meat with hard tack which I chew only with difficulty. I ask her where I am, how long I have been here and whether anyone will come and speak to me, but she offers no reply. When the sun has reached the other wall she brings me supper, usually porridge. I observe the bright square of sunlight wander up the wall to the ceiling joists, there to be extinguished, at which time I light my dip and commit my thoughts to this journal.
All is well.
15 April!
A living human, a person with whom to speak! The widow!
She is here. She enters. She sits down on a chair she has drawn up to the cot. She speaks to me. She tells me of the journey here, which was fraught with difficulties and lasted some score of days on account of ice and bad weather. Moreover, I made matters no easier, she tells me, being quite out of my senses, screaming and behaving like a savage. No, worse than a savage! A man who would lift me up received a punch on the nose by my hand, making his blood squirt, another I kicked in the chest, causing him to lose his breath, and only a dousing with a bucket of cold water could bring him back to his senses. I raged like Samson. And like Samson I had to be bound so as not to injure myself or others. Presently I fell into a state of great feebleness lasting some weeks, in which time I ingested only a little soup and water under protest. Everyone, with the exception of the widow herself, she says with a smile, is astonished that I am still alive, and all consider me to be living testament that the Lord protects His own.