Ida Brandt

by Herman Bang

  But Mrs Brandt went on, showing everything: cellar, milk cellar, potato cellar, lofts, the whole house, refusing to let go of Mrs Reck – the entire perfect house that she had built up and which she, the widow, was now to leave.

  She talked about the beds, their own beds, the servants’ beds, the beds for visitors. Mrs Reck said:

  “Yes, it means buying a lot.”

  “Here are the cupboards,” said Mrs Brandt when they came down into the corridor.

  She opened her cupboards, showing the linen, the pillows, the pillowcases, the curtains, making a show of her peasant affluence, speaking a little louder, her mouth twitching a little in a sudden attack of widow-like playful malice.

  Mrs Reck was thinking to herself:

  “No, she shall never cross my threshold,” and said:

  “Well, Mrs Brandt, if only I were half as able.”

  “Well, one has to look after one’s house,” said Mrs Brandt, shutting her cupboards and putting on some wooden-soled shoes: they were to go and see the garden. When they arrived there, they encountered Ida along with Schrøder, who wanted to see the new mistress.

  “I’m the housekeeper,” she said, shaking hands with Mrs Reck with a red hand. Mrs Reck felt something akin to relief and, bending down over Ida, who was with her mother, she said in a kind voice:

  “So this must be your granddaughter, Mrs. Brandt.”

  “My daughter,” replied Mrs Brandt, and they all flushed suddenly, while Mrs. Reck made matters worse by quickly saying to Ida:

  “What a lovely garden you’ve had here.”

  “Yes,” said Ida, withdrawing the hand that Mrs Reck was holding.

  No one said any more before they were back in the corridor, where they found the pharmacist’s wife, who had arrived in the pony chaise and was dressed in a sealskin coat. To the accompaniment of a torrent of words, she began wildly to embrace Mrs Reck without vouchsafing the others a glance:

  “Oh, my dear Henriette (they had been at school together), dearest Henriette, I am so delighted, my dear, to have someone here I know (they had hardly seen each other for twelve to fifteen years),I really do need that.

  “Yes, dear Mrs Brandt, I’ll just take my coat off. Dearest Henriette, we have dozens of things to talk about.”

  She led the way into the sitting room, holding Mrs Reck by the waist, while continuing to talk about the house and about how delighted she was and about what would have to be bought.

  “You know, my dear, it can be made so lovely here…Well, Mrs Brandt, you know how often I have said that I could not exist even for an hour in these rooms, with all the furniture stuck up against the walls as it is now.”

  “We have always made modest demands, Mrs Mogensen,” said Mrs Brandt, offering her a seat. Ida and Schrøder stayed in a corner.

  Mrs Mogensen went on: “There are really only three rooms here. I suppose your piano is a Hornung, Henriette? Yours is German, of course, Mrs Brandt…But then no one has played it very much.”

  She stood in the doorway between the two main rooms, talking without cease, pointing and advising, deciding where to put furniture, getting rid of the old things, giving Mrs Brandt such benevolent looks, as benevolent as though she were striking her:

  “That is where you can put that, and that can go there. Dear Henriette…it can be quite delightful in here – ”

  Mrs Brandt offered them coffee in the silver pot that had been presented to Brandt to mark 25 years of service.

  Mrs Reck, too, became quite enthusiastic and spoke about her furniture and curtains and the doors, while Mrs Mogensen moved the silver coffee pot to make a plan of the Recks’ rooms on Mrs Brandt’s tablecloth.

  She asked for a tape measure. “Because you must have the measurements,” she said, and Ida brought the tape measure while Mrs Reck measured up, standing on a chair, walking to and fro across the floors, cheerfully asking Mrs Brandt’s advice.

  “Don’t you think so, dear Mrs Brandt, don’t you think so, dear Mrs Brandt,” she said repeatedly as she hung invisible curtains, arranged alien furniture and took the entire house to pieces bit by bit. Mrs Brandt continued to make brief replies and Schrøder stood panting over her cup: she felt the cakes turning into great lumps in her mouth.

  “Yes, you know, I think it can be made quite nice here,” Mrs Reck concluded, jumping down from a chair.

  Shortly afterwards, Mrs Mogensen took Mrs Reck home with her to the pharmacy in her pony chaise.

  While still standing in the doorway – Mrs Reck was in the chaise – she said goodbye.

  “Yes, dear Mrs Brandt,” she said, gently placing her hands on hers, “it must be rather difficult…”

  She stood there for a moment looking straight into Mrs Brandt’s face and said once more as she touched her arm:

  “Really difficult.”

  And then the carriage was gone.

  Schrøder hurried to get away: she was not keen on being there alone.

  “Well,” she said: “That was that. Now the pharmacist has finally got the measurements of the bailiff’s house.”

  Schrøder went.

  Mrs Brandt washed the china herself, collecting it piece by piece in large stacks. But then, all at once, she sat down on the chair near the sideboard. Mrs Brandt wept.

  Ida just stood in front of her; she had never seen her mother really weep like this.

  Then she gently touched her knee. And Mrs Brandt picked the child up while still weeping.

  But that afternoon she went down past the pharmacy, veiled and in mourning, carrying a wreath. She was on her way to the churchyard…there were the sounds of music in the pharmacy.

  ∞∞∞

  It was starting to grow dark, but Schrøder continued to walk about in the garden, bending down over the remaining snow and searching; there were always snowdrops around here – the first ones.

  But they were so frail and difficult to find.

  She had found ten or twelve, delicate and cold. She would give them to Mrs Brandt before she left.

  She went inside into the stripped, bare rooms. Ida was toddling around, wrapped in a shawl and had nowhere to lay her head. It was dark and there was straw on the floors.

  “Is it you, dear?” said Schrøder, attempting to adopt a happy tone.

  “Yes,” said Ida.

  “Good Lord, but it’s cold,” said Schrøder, feeling her hands.

  “Mother’s in there,” said Ida.

  “In there” was the bedroom. Now they had packed and tidied up for a week, room by room, as though they were losing a bit of the house with each passing day. There was a candle in a jar on the bare window ledge in the bedroom. Otherwise there was only the bed and the servants’ old wardrobe. Christen Nielsen’s wife was sitting on the edge of the bed, and Mrs Brandt was going around clad in a black shawl.

  Christen Nielsen came and spoke slowly in a low voice with his hands on his stomach: “Well, there you are, the butter and the hams and that’s that.”

  Mrs Brandt went around packing the last things as he spoke: now she had surely seen to everything and made all the necessary arrangements…For when all was said and done, it was cheapest for her to buy from the estate when she had to buy things. They owed her that at least.

  “Aye, aye,” said Christen Nielsen’s wife.

  “I suppose that’s it,” and she got up from the bed.

  “Yes, I suppose so,” said Schrøder, putting the snowdrops on the edge of the bed. Ida took them; her mother had put gloves on her, and she held them tight while the other three stood there quietly, looking at the candle in the jar.

  They heard the carriage turn up at the door, and Sofie came in, wrapped up so that only her nose was to be seen. She took the candle, and they all went in through the rooms. Mrs Brandt had dropped her veil over her face. But Ida went along holding the twelve snowdrops in her gloves.

  Lars was out in the yard with the horses. They were the old ones. But the carriage was His Lordship’s phaeton, for Brandt’s barouch
e had been “sold privately”.

  Mrs Brandt gave orders, behind her black veil.

  “I won’t be a moment,” said Schrøder, running over towards the main building.

  There was a host of sacks and jars that had to stand upright, and Mrs Brandt continued to give orders from behind her black veil. The steward came out, and they all helped, though no one spoke except Mrs Brandt, and Ida was helped up into the carriage, followed by her mother.

  Schrøder came running back. She had a parcel, she said, something for Ida…Schrøder’s voice broke a little. It was the house that Miss Rosenfeld had drawn during the summer.

  “And Ida was to have it…to remember it all by,” she said, weeping as she handed it up into the carriage.

  Then Sofie was up there, and Lars said slowly:

  “Have you anything else, madam?”

  There was nothing else. Ida sat there, looking strangely small alongside her mother, and Schrøder continued to weep.

  And then they left.

  The other three stayed on the steps and watched them go; and now the carriage disappeared.

  Without saying anything, Schrøder took the candle that was flickering in the corridor window and held it up in the doorway, lighting up the bare rooms. Then Lars lit a lamp, and Schrøder extinguished the candle between two fingers.

  “It’s very painful after all,” said Lars.

  They went out and locked the door to the corridor. Then they left.

  “It’s not easy when the breadwinner dies,” said Christen Nielsen’s wife.

  And then they went off each in their own direction.

  ∞∞∞

  But then the years she spent as a child in the town came back to her, and her confirmation and the first year as a young adult, that bright year, and then the sickness and the long days…

  ∞∞∞

  Half awake, Ida could hear Sofie fiddling by the chimney and her mother’s difficult breathing beside her – it was as though the sounds of that breathing were to fill the entire house – and almost in her sleep and quite mechanically she put her bare feet out on the knitted rug.

  She must get up now. Hans Christensen was there with the milk.

  She did not light a lamp, but tiptoed gently around in the dark to dress. She just looked at her mother sitting up in the bed like a broad shadow shutting out the dawn light behind the curtains.

  Down in the kitchen, Hans Christensen had already arrived – he was so wrapped in scarves that only his eyes and the tips of his ears could be seen – and she gave him the milk money that lay counted out on the shelf.

  “Yes, it’s cold this morning,” he said (his breath emerged from his scarves like a long cloud):

  “The pond’s frozen solid now out by our house…”

  He took a couple of steps in his clogs to make it sound as though he was going, while Ida managed to pass him the coffee cup and Sofie moved some things over by the chimney in case madam should wake up and hear that they were giving Hans Christensen coffee.

  “Goodbye,” said Hans Christensen when he had finished, and he lifted the latch ever so gently.

  Ida had taken the frozen butter over to the fire to soften it: there was less of it now. Just as she thought, for she had heard stocking feet in the loft yesterday evening.

  She went into the sitting room and started to take the covers from the chairs and to do the dusting while quietly moving the little low-legged lamp from one piece of furniture to the other. This was really her best time – it was almost as though she were stealing it – these mornings while her mother was asleep and she could potter about, quite quietly, engrossed in her own thoughts.

  Oh, there was plenty to think about…there was always the question of money and the problem always had to be hidden…Now Hans Ole’s widow was dead, too. So they probably would no longer be provided with meat; there soon would not be any of the old folks left in Ludvigsbakke. And how could you expect the young folk to remember them…

  Now Christian from the mill was out of work again – so they would use almost twice as much now – but it was reasonable enough that Sofie should stick with him when she was so fond of him, poor thing.

  Ida stopped in front of the mirror and stretched out to polish it; she had a distinctly virginal way of bending her head.

  Then there was to be the christening at Olivia’s as well, as soon as the weather was a little milder…She would have to give them a spoon and fork if she was going to be the child’s godmother.

  She stopped in front of the mirror and smiled.

  “Oh, the little chap had such a lot of hair, and his eyes were just like Jørgensen’s.”

  Ida continued to smile; she always thought of so many happy things when thinking of the brickworks and Olivia.

  She started to water the flowers and moved them from the floor up on to the window ledge. Her mother’s myrtle was very heavy, and its stem was almost like that of a tree. It looked so healthy as it stood there. And Ida plucked every dead leaf off it. She did not know why, but she thought that myrtle was like a reminder of her father.

  “Ida, Ida.”

  Mrs Brandt was awake, and Ida put the plant down.

  “Yes, mother.”

  “I’m lying here awake,” said Mrs Brandt.

  Out in the kitchen, Sofie poured some warm water into two dishes.

  “I suppose you do intend to get me up,” said Mrs Brandt.

  “Yes, mother.”

  Ida started to turn her attention to her mother, tending her and talking to her, tying and untying and telling her the news as she dressed her: they could expect the Lunds today – for they were coming from the wedding – and the pond was frozen solid now according to Hans Christensen.

  Ida continued to recite the news; Mrs Brandt simply looked down at her nervous hands:

  “You’ve got your father’s fingers,” she said: “they are all thumbs.”

  When her hair was set – Mrs Brandt still had a full head of hair – all the food in the house was brought up so that she could inspect it, in bed. Sofie went there, slow and sullen and brought it in, dish after dish, while Mrs Brandt sat up in bed, with her thoroughly padded hair, carefully inspecting the leavings.

  She said nothing, but merely sat silently calculating – Ida looked like a customs officer during an inspection of the cashbox – while Sofie stood by the bed, straight as a pole. Mrs Brandt watched every dish that Sofie took out again as though she wanted to follow its way through the door when it was closed.

  “And then we must do the joint, mother, for the Lunds…”

  “If they come,” said Mrs Brandt.

  Ida had again started to attend to her: “But you know they always come when they are in town,” she said.

  “Yes,” said Mrs Brandt. “It’s cheaper than eating at the inn.”

  She had got out of bed and wanted to go into the sitting room. Ida and Sofie had to support her, one under each arm, (Mrs Brandt was never so heavy as when she had to be moved), and she managed to reach the chair by the window. There all her gold trinkets lay waiting for her on the table. Ida hung the watch chain around her neck.

  “The watch,” said Mrs Brandt.

  “Here, mother.”

  She wanted to have Ida’s watch in front of her on a frame, beside her purse. They finally had her settled down. The door to the kitchen was left slightly ajar so that she could “listen”.

  Her mother could not stand a warm room, so Ida was wearing a shawl as she bent over the three new sets of sheets, for the linen was taken care of as it used to be in the “old bailiff’s wing”.

  “Your threads are always too long,” said Mrs Brandt.

  Ida pulled at the thread.

  “Mrs Muus is waving,” said her mother.

  Ida looked out and flushed as she nodded. Mrs Muus always took a quick and deliberate path close to Mrs Brandt’s window and only waved to Ida.

  Mrs Muus was the judge’s wife, and Mrs Brandt continued to follow her in the mirror and watch
her fur coat bouncing against her energetic little backside.

  Ida also looked out and smiled. Mrs Muus never reached the corner. She stopped in front of every other house as she went by, swinging her hips and stamping and showing all her friends’ windows that she was wearing fur boots.

  “Have the Muus’s got a housekeeper?” said Mrs Brandt, continuing to watch her.

  “I don’t know, mother.”

  “I thought she would be going to the Jørgensens,” said Mrs Brandt. “She’s a Copenhagener.”

  And as though in defence of the judge’s wife, Ida said:

  “But of course, they haven’t any children, mother.”

  Mrs Brandt merely shut her eyes, said nothing and nodded. Sørensen, the local treasurer had appeared at the window of the house opposite and was nodding. Mr Sørensen was going downhill, very much downhill; he could hardly manage to open the newspaper when he wanted to read it.

  Mrs Brandt continued to look across at Mr Sørensen. She had the same look in her eyes as when she examined Ida’s hands.

  Then she turned her head.

  “Do they use coke in the brickworks?” she said.

  “Coke and coal.”

  “Hm,” said Mrs Brandt. “No, wood is not sufficient in those furnaces, I suppose.”

  Ida made no reply, and Mrs Brandt said:

  “But it’s a good thing there is plenty of it.”

  Sofie was making the beds in the bedroom. She straightened all the duvets as though she wanted to beat them. She was always so energetic with everything when Christian from the mill was out of work.

  “It’s eleven o’ clock,” said Mrs Brandt.

  Ida knew that; it was time for coffee.

  There was the sound of a loud voice from the kitchen. It was Miss Thøgersen, the “housekeeper” to their neighbour, the coppersmith, who was a member of a German “company of confirmed bachelors”. She had brought the newspapers.

  “Good heavens,” she said. “It is bitterly cold today.”

  Her face was red and blue with cold, and her sleeves were rolled up to her elbows.

  “Yes, yes,” she said. “I stand in the midst of den Wäsche, and no help do I have.”