Ida Brandt

by Herman Bang

  “You must have something to eat, Schrøder,” said Ida, facing him directly as though speaking to someone who was deaf.

  “Hm.” He merely looked at her.

  “You must have something to eat, Schrøder,” she repeated.

  “Hm.”

  “I mean now.” She continued to speak clearly, as though the man had difficulty in hearing. “Because the doctors are coming now.”

  And, holding him in front of her, she guided him over to the table.

  The doctors could already be heard on the stairs, and the keys sounded in the door. It was the registrar and two junior doctors, followed by Nurse Helgesen carrying the case notes. She carried them like an officer in a court of law clutching some legal document.

  The patients rose from the table, and the three old bedridden patients watched the doctors through strangely half-glazed eyes.

  “Nothing to report?” asked the doctor.

  “No, doctor.”

  The doctor went into Ward A alone and shut the door.

  Quam, one of the junior doctors, sprang on to the table in the ante-room and brought his feet together.

  “Heaven preserve us – what a shift – eleven new admissions and one of them pumped.”

  “Was it opium?” Nurse Helgesen spoke to the junior doctors in a businesslike manner as though to colleagues.

  “Yes, he’s a locksmith’s apprentice. They say it’s a love affair, and now they’ve dragged him up and down the floor for almost five hours – two men. Heaven preserve us.” Quam yawned: “Just fancy, human beings can’t learn to take things calmly. What do you say, Nurse Brandt?”

  Quam jumped down, for the registrar was emerging.

  “You can let the patient have a little fresh air,” he said; he was already at the door to the women’s ward.

  Quam followed him at the end of the procession; he always wore white sports trousers on the days when he was on duty, and on reaching the doorway he shook his legs as though he wanted to shake the dust off his feet.

  Ida provided the three old men with food; she had a gentle way of her own when raising them up in bed.

  Nurse Petersen came out of her room, energetic and out of breath.

  “What time is it, nurse?” she said to Ida – the lower part of Nurse Petersen’s body performed ten elegant oscillations at every step she took.

  “My watch has stopped.”

  “It’s getting late,” said Ida. It was always getting late when Nurse Petersen emerged in the evenings.

  “Oh yes, thank you for waiting.” Nurse Petersen took out her keys – she was for ever making small movements with her fingers – “I’ll be quick with my tea.”

  Ida just nodded; she was so used to having to wait for the others for half an hour after her duty. She sat down under the light in the Hall and started to sew.

  How well she remembered him, of course, now she thought about it, at home in Ludvigsbakke – him and his mother, who always sat right up at the end of the table – she always sat up beside His Lordship at table.

  And she went for walks on the dot, and had the two stone benches in the approach to the steward’s house where she rested.

  “Hm,” she always said: “And here we have little Miss Brandt,” as though she discovered her anew each time.

  The three patients sat playing cards at the end of the bed with their woollen trousers concertinaed high up on their legs. But Schrøder wanted to go to bed.

  He was sitting in his bare shirt on the edge of the bed, his legs hanging down as though his bones were all loose.

  “Bedtime, Schrøder,” said Ida.

  “Yes,” he replied, though he continued to sit there with his head drooping down.

  Ida had to get up before Schrøder managed to lift his legs with some difficulty, as though this was something that required serious thought. “There,” she said, smoothing the blankets with both hands. “It’s a lot better when you lie down, isn’t it?”

  She continued to help with the blankets while hushing Bertelsen; he was always so aggressive when playing cards. Then she heard Nurse Petersen’s keys and started putting her sewing away; all she had to do now was open the door to Ward A.

  The gentleman in Ward A was sitting by the table and only looked up briefly to start writing on his big papers again. He wrote nothing but numbers and more numbers, slowly as though he were printing.

  “I will just open the shutters,” said Ida, as she opened the big window.

  But he made no reply and just went on writing. Here, in Ward A, Miss Benjamin was the patient who was heard most clearly, for she was right up against the wall.

  Nurse Petersen was standing outside at the peephole when Ida came out.

  “He’s one I wouldn’t mind getting rid of,” she said. She came from Flensburg and still spoke with an accent – and they both remained at the peephole. The gentleman in there rose slowly, and he seated himself quietly up on the windowsill.

  He sat there without moving, staring out into the night, at the stars.

  “Good heavens, he just always sits there working things out,” said Nurse Petersen.

  “Dr Quam says he wants to discover the laws,” said Ida.

  “Poor man,” said Nurse Petersen, who understood nothing at all, and she gave a maidenly toss of the head before leaving the peephole.

  Ida opened the door to the noisy ward and went in. Two porters were supporting a lifeless body between them; its arms were draped over their shoulders as they dragged him along.

  Josefine, sitting on the bench beneath the windows and trying to get two men to eat something, nodded in the direction of the porters.

  “What a job! They’ve been at it for five hours.”

  The porters turned just by the door leading to the “good” ward, as Ida came in, and one of them, looking at the hanging head, said:

  “He’s actually quite a respectable chap.”

  “Yes,” said Ida, looking at the face with lips open like those in a mask – and the porters turned round and continued to drag the body around.

  In the quiet ward, the doors to the individual rooms were open, and the patients were dozing on their beds. In the dining room, with her opera glasses before her and buttoning her gloves, sat Nurse Friis, who was off that evening and going to the theatre.

  “Ah,” she said. “There we have our assistant nurse.”

  “Give me a hand, will you?” she held out one hand towards Ida, who always had to “give a hand”. “I’m going to be far too late.”

  Ida buttoned the glove while Nurse Helgesen, who was sitting, arms crossed, in her favourite position behind the urn, said in her very clear voice:

  “What did that blouse cost?”

  “Thank you, nurse.”

  Nurse Friis looked at herself one last time in the little mirror in the corner; she was still wearing the coat she had received as a twenty-two-year old ten years ago, and her hair had to be waved in her own quite special way around her temples.

  “I got it from a cousin in Aalborg,” she said, referring to the blouse.

  Nurse Krohn and Nurse Berg, who were drinking their tea at the other end of the table, said: “Oh dear, now we shall have to start thinking about winter clothes.”

  And they started to talk about hats.

  “I make my own,” said Nurse Helgesen behind the urn.

  Then a large female figure appeared in the doorway.

  “There’s a fine smell in here,” she said, putting a white hand up to a broad nose while looking at Nurse Friis. This was Sister Koch, the senior nurse in the women’s ward.

  “Yes,” said Nurse Friis, who was ready at last and had taken hold of her opera glass. “I don’t like to smell of carbolic outside the hospital.”

  “Good night.”

  Sister Koch came in and sat down over in the corner with her hands on her knees like a man.

  “May I be here for a bit?” she said.

  And Nurse Helgesen, who had nodded to her, said from behind the urn,
“Nurse Friis is very fond of clothes.”

  Nurse Berg and Nurse Krohn continued to talk about hats, and Nurse Koch, scratching the grey hair tied up at the back of her neck in the much same way as one ties a piece of rope said:

  “Buy yourselves a couple of fur hats, ladies, they don’t wear out.”

  The two laughed and went on discussing hats: they had more or less to suit the way you did your hair; and they started to talk about hair while the two senior nurses asked about the new patients.

  “There were eleven today,” said Nurse Helgesen.

  “Yes and quite a lot of bother,” said Sister Koch.

  Nurse Berg could not imagine herself without a fringe.

  “Aye,” she said, “if one had Brandt’s hair. Good Heavens, Brandt, I can’t understand you don’t try to wave it a bit.”

  “It’s always been like this,” said Ida.

  But Nurse Berg wanted to try to wave it and started to ruffle Ida’s fringe with a pocket comb. “I can hardly recognise you,” she said, going on ruffling: “otherwise you just look as though your hair’s been plastered down with a wet comb.”

  Nurse Krohn, sitting watching, with both arms on the table, said: “Oh, did you see the new man in the office? My word, that’s some back parting he’s got.”

  They discussed Mr. von Eichbaum, and from over in her chair Nurse Helgesen said: “Mr. von Eichbaum seems to me to be a very nice person…”

  Sister Koch pushed her glasses more firmly on her nose as though to see better.

  “Well,” she said, “he gives me the impression of being something of a philanderer.”

  “I know him,” said Ida, sitting there quite quietly with her ruffled hair. “I knew him at home in Ludvigsbakke.” She always said “Ludvigsbakke” rather more gently than the other words she spoke.

  But, drumming her fingers on the table as though dancing a waltz with them, Nurse Krohn said:

  “The man wears straps on his trousers.”

  Sister Koch spoke about Ludvigsbakke, which was in the part of the country from which she came, and about His Old Lordship and Her Ladyship.

  “But surely she was already dead by that time.”

  “Yes,” replied Ida. “Her Ladyship was dead.”

  “She was a lovely woman,” said Sister Koch. “She still used to hoe her own flowerbeds when she was eighty, with farmhand’s socks pulled up over her shoes.”

  Sister Koch laughed at the thought of Her Late Ladyship and her woollen socks.

  “But that must be almost thirty years ago. Well…” – Sister Koch shook the front of her skirt. This was a habit she always had when she rose – “we all of us come to that.”

  “Are you going upstairs, Brandt?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I’ll go up with you,” said Sister Koch. “Good night.”

  They let themselves out on the stairs near the quiet ward and stopped at Sister Koch’s door.

  “Yes,” said Sister Koch in a quite different tone, and they stood by the door for a moment. “It was a splendid place.” She was thinking of Ludvigsbakke. “Good night, Brandt.”

  “Good night.”

  Ida went up and made her way across the loft to her own room. She lit the lamp, which was covered by a butterfly-shaped cloth (there were so many little things scattered about in the room that she and Nurse Roed made while on night duty to decorate their rooms), and she stood for a time in front of the chest of drawers looking at the picture of Ludvigsbakke with the tall white house and the lawn in front of it with the new flagpole, and all the children sitting on the steps all the way up.

  There was Mr von Eichbaum as well. Yes, it was he, she thought it was a long time since she had noticed him. But she could well remember that the picture was from the year when he had come home from some school in Switzerland and spent his time stretched out on the lawn.

  And His Lordship was standing by the flagpole.

  She went across to the writing desk and let the flap down and took out a couple more pictures. That was the one of the lake and she stood there holding it and smiling: hmm, it was from when it was dry and the water was low as well, and all the gentlemen and Agnes Linde waded out with bare legs, splashing around among all the fish. How they enjoyed themselves. But a pike had once bitten Agnes Linde on the calf so that they had to send for Dr. Didrichsen.

  There was Mrs von Eichbaum sitting under the white parasol.

  She closed the drawers again; they were full of so many of mother’s old things, and while she undressed she took Olivia’s letter out and put it over by the bed. She had a habit of taking letters to bed and keeping them under the pillow as though to have them with her.

  She sat up in bed and looked through all the sheets of paper. Olivia always started with quite small writing, which then became bigger and bigger and went all over the place:

  Aye, those were the days, and who can understand what became of them…Here I can see us in church, at our confirmation, when we all wore white dresses and were flushed with crying and with our hair all smoothed down. Old Mr Bacher, poor thing, he’s going downhill, and they all go to Mr Robert for their confirmation classes now; he had twenty-seven last time round.

  But goodness knows how often you had to test me on hymns.

  Mamma always said: ‘I always think that Ida is the smartest of the confirmation candidates…there is something special about that girl with the way she holds her head, looking down a little…rather different from the others.’

  And the dress you wore the next day was blue with tiny white dots.

  We attended our first ball that Christmas. I had slept with gloves on for three weeks:

  ‘You simply can’t go to a ball with those hands,’ said Mamma. ‘Ida helps in the house, and yet she has nicer hands than you.’

  We went there in Jensen’s carriage, you and I on the back seat, with two skirts up over our heads, sitting on the canvas ones while Mamma squeezed into the front seat and your Sofie sat proudly up on the box with your shoes, all wrapped in paper.

  Every mother gave her own orders and tidied us up. And there we stood, in the middle of the floor with red arms and all frightened and smiling, while Mrs Ferder rushed all over the place:

  `My word, Mrs Franck, yours are lovely,’ she went on; she had an open packet of pins fixed on her breast to straighten up Inka’s dress. There was a loud knock on the door: ‘Open up, open up’. It was Nina Stjernholm in her fur coat.

  ‘Good evening, good evening, children, children, I’m far too late,’ she shouted, shaking her head and making her curls fly all over the place, and then she shouted to Mamma:

  ‘Dear Mrs Franck, where are the fillies?’ And she scrutinized us and pushed fat Mrs Eriksen aside: ‘Charming, charming,’ she said as she bustled about.

  ‘Have you a partner for the first dance?’ she said turning to us.

  ‘Ida hasn’ t…’

  ‘Good, then stay with me, Miss Brandt; I’ve got a couple of new lieutenants from Fredericia…and I will take His Lordship.’

  The master of ceremonies knocked on the door and asked whether the ladies were ready, and the music started.

  We danced. I heard Captain Bergfeld say to Mamma:

  ‘That quiet young lady is so charming.’

  That ‘quiet young lady’ was you, my girl, and the captain was a connoisseur.

  Oh, yes, those wonderful early days: when summer arrived and the ‘sewing club’ moved out into the grove and we sat there in a circle, behind the pavilion, beneath the trees, while one of us read aloud.

  But then came the autumn when your mother was taken ill.

  You were over at our house, I remember, when Sofie came running across and shouted for you from out in the corridor. You had got up from the table and you left, without a word, without saying goodbye, running along the street after Sofie. You met Miss Fischer and took hold of her and spoke to her and then went on, faster and faster.

  I stood at our window and wanted to go after you, but I
don’t know…I was afraid, so frightened…that perhaps she was dead already, and I said to Mamma:

  ‘Are you not going to go with her?’

  And we put on our coats and went along and arrived in your living room, where all the furniture had been moved because they had had to lift your mother and carry her; and the doctor came and the room was full of people until the doctor said they should go, and Miss Fischer came running in with a bowl full of ice, and she was crying and kept on saying:

  ‘But she would never do as anyone advised her to do; she would never follow anyone’s advice.’

  I stayed with you that night, and we sat and kept watch in the living room and heard all the clocks ticking and announcing the slow hours with the bell whirring and striking.

  And we heard the night nurse whisper to Sofie and change the ice, and we sat there again, listening to the clocks.

  But you, poor thing, sat up for many nights after this.

  Goodbye for now, my dear. May the new year bring you much joy. You know that we in the Villa all wish you that.

  And then a kiss to mark the occasion, although you know how I hate all this kissing between friends. The children are shouting to me to give you their love.

  Yours,

  Olivia

  Ida turned round and was about to put the letter, which she had slowly folded, under her pillow when she heard three sharp knocks on the door.

  “Open up,” said a voice from outside.

  It was Nurse Kjær and Nurse Øverud from the women’s ward, who darted in and quickly closed the door again.

  “We’ve got something to drink,” said Nurse Kjær in little more than a whisper; she was carrying a brown bottle: “to celebrate her sister.”

  “Of course,” said Ida. “They were getting married today.”

  “Yes,” said Nurse Kjær. “She’s married now,” (they all three continued to speak quickly and in subdued voices as though the crème de cacao was something they had stolen): “Well, Sister Koch had gone to bed…”

  Still in a half whisper, she said: “Øverud, where are the glasses?”