Barbara

by Jorgen-Frantz Jacobsen

  Barbara and Pastor Poul.

  The very moment he saw Gabriel approaching, Poul adopted that dark, tense expression suggesting that he would now have to hold on tight again. But Barbara was surprised; she laughed and said, “Gabriel! Are you here?”

  Gabriel gave the two an embarrassed smile and took up a position in front of them. Pastor Poul felt as though a cloud had passed before the sun. He stared bitterly at Gabriel’s powerful legs and said not a word. He had a sense of disgust at the sight of him, just as he would have had at the sight of a bluebottle on a fresh berry.

  It was Barbara who spoke first. “Would you like some angelica, Gabriel?” she asked quite unconcernedly.

  The clergyman gave her an angry look. But Gabriel, too, was incapable of showing any kind of polish. Perhaps he was put off by something in the exaggeratedly natural tone of her voice; perhaps he was provoked by a glint in her friendly eyes. Hell! He knew perfectly well he was standing there looking foolish.

  “Angelica,” he snarled angrily. “I don’t eat churchyard plants.

  Barbara looked as though someone had hit her. She was completely unaccustomed to people speaking to her in that harsh tone.

  “But, Gabriel,” she said, “this isn’t…”

  “They are corpse plants,” said Gabriel. “Don’t you know there’s been a plague cemetery here?”

  “Rubbish,” shouted Barbara. “The plague cemetery wasn’t here; it was right down there in the corner.”

  “Even so, it’s still horrible,” said Gabriel.

  His anger was actually directed at the clergyman though he refused to see him or to acknowledge his presence here in the garden.

  So it was Barbara he was scolding, and he felt a kind of sweet satisfaction as he observed the effect of his words. He laughed quietly without smiling and went on, “Surely you know, Barbara, that angelica’s a filthy plant. You can get leprosy from it. Ha, ha, ha. Aye, otherwise where the hell should all that leprosy come from that is all over the place here in Tórshavn? It’s horrible – horrible!”

  Barbara was really upset. Never had anyone told her that what she was doing was horrible. She spun the big bunch of angelica round quickly and suddenly threw it away.

  “You do talk rubbish, Gabriel,” she said with a brief laugh that was anything but happy.

  Gabriel was so pleased with his victory that he sat down beside Barbara.

  “Oh well,” he said in order to say something, and he groaned a little. He ignored Pastor Poul. Nor did Pastor Poul look at him; he was so angry that everything went black before his eyes.

  Gabriel gave a gentle laugh again and was sufficiently appeased to add, “No, of course it’s never been proved that it’s the angelica that causes leprosy. But, everyone knows that Hans, Niels the Point’s son, who was put in the leprosy hospital in Argir last year had gorged himself on angelica just before he was taken ill.”

  Barbara made no reply to this, but suddenly she said, “Are you pleased you’re going to get married, Gabriel?”

  She wanted to talk about something other than angelica.

  “Pleased?” said Gabriel. “What the hell have I got to be pleased about?”

  “Well, pleased about Suzanne for instance.”

  “Hmm. Am I supposed to be pleased about the baby, do you think? Hardly.”

  He sat with his elbows resting on his knees and staring down into the grass. Suddenly, he looked at Barbara and laughed: “No, it must be admitted that there was someone who managed things a lot better that evening.”

  Barbara gasped.

  “You’ve got it absolutely wrong,” she exclaimed vehemently. Laughter and indignation struggled for supremacy in her voice, and she gradually showed signs of blushing. But she did not manage to become angry.

  Gabriel sat there laughing silently and watching her. He had the same gently offensive look as he had had that morning. He gave the minister the occasional searching glance. It was the first time he had turned his eyes on him. Pastor Poul had the same withdrawn expression that said he was keeping a grip on himself.

  But Barbara hurried to talk of something else.

  “Are you really so unhappy to be getting married to Suzanne?” she asked Gabriel.

  “Aye, God knows I am,” he gave an honest sigh. “There’s no denying I had other ideas.”

  A delighted smile lit up Barbara’s face. Again a little laugh escaped her.

  “Yes, but Gabriel,” she said, blinking several times, “perhaps… perhaps you don’t need to?”

  Gabriel’s face took on a quite remarkable expression. An enormously arrogant idea flickered across his mind for a moment. His lower lip became quite limp.

  “Don’t need to?” he said uncertainly.

  Barbara continued to look at him, still blinking quite slowly. “Well, I mean that it might not be necessary,” she said a little hesitantly.

  “Of course it’s necessary, damn it,” said Gabriel hesitantly. But all at once his face became pale and tense: “Tell me, what do you really mean by that?” he shouted.

  “I simply mean that you can probably get out of it if you want,” countered Barbara.

  Gabriel bounced up.

  “Who the devil says I don’t want to? I mean… who the hell says that I… that I can get out of it?”

  “No one is saying that yet, but the judge might perhaps be willing to marry Suzanne if she will have him. Both the law speaker and I have discussed it with him, and … and …”

  Barbara shrugged her shoulder and looked mischievously up at Gabriel. “And when you are so upset about it, well…”

  “Thank you very much, Barbara,” said Gabriel solemnly, “I am most grateful,” he went on in a voice that was almost a roar, “for telling me this in time. I will bloody well never forgive you for a dirty little trick like this.”

  He was already out of the garden. His feet knocked away bits of turf, which rolled down the slope. Barbara stood scornfully watching the huge play of muscles in his backside. Perhaps she was at the same time a little angry that he had left her in such an undignified manner. She noticed that his trousers were made of some thick, very solid material.

  But suddenly a yellow butterfly flew up from the bushes and started fluttering around the garden.

  “Oh, look!” she shouted.

  Pastor Poul slowly rose. The sun was baking down on them. He still had in his mouth the acrid sweet taste of luxuriant flowers and black earth.

  Tides

  Pastor Poul awoke. The sun was shining in through the window and casting its light on Barbara’s clothes, which were lying in a pile on a chair.

  He was married now. Barbara was asleep beside him.

  Some of Barbara’s clothes were white linen, and some were coloured materials – it was her apparel from yesterday lying there, quickly taken off and thrown down, untidily, but not without beauty. Pastor Poul lay a little, looking at these garments. Perhaps she would have arranged them a little differently if she had thought about it. But did Barbara think of anything? As the clothes lay there they represented one of the deeds of her heart, captured and preserved in its powerful, thoughtless nature and grace.

  Pastor Poul was filled with tender admiration and gratitude. These clothes lay there like a statement made in confidence, a kind of moving declaration to him. He turned over towards her. But her face when asleep was different from when awake. He had not noticed this before. When she was asleep her features seemed almost to express a kind of grief; there was something helpless and tormented about them. This, too, she showed him. But was it the intention that he should see it? Was this confiding something in him that she would not have admitted to when awake? His heart beat for her.

  Who was Barbara? Was she the woman who yesterday evening had undressed by the chair over there, or was she the woman sleeping here with suffering expressed in her face? Suppose everything he knew of Barbara was only a guise, a parti-coloured container like her clothes?

  Her eyes opened, and she was immediately ano
ther. She smiled at him as though she had suddenly found him again after he had been away from her for a long time. She was warm with sleep and put her arms around his neck. Then she looked at the sun and said it was time to get up.

  Barbara got out of bed. As natural as a flower in bloom, she went around in her bare shift; only her feet shrank some insignificant amount on contact with the cold floor. Pastor Poul lay wondering. Here, outside Nýggjastova he had gone trembling at the mere thought of Barbara less than a year ago. And there she was now, standing before him as his legally married wife, naked and radiant with warmth from the bed they shared.

  He was suddenly overcome by a sense of disappointment. Was this really all? A bed, an embrace and a curiously sweet atmosphere to which, however, he had long ago grown accustomed – was there no other content to this phantasmagoria by which he had been possessed for some nine months.

  Barbara slipped her shift off and stood quite naked on the floor. Pastor Poul felt a huge surge of desire, but then the sense of emptiness crept over him again. So that was how Barbara looked. She was beautiful: he realised that. But he felt nothing as a result.

  He met her flaming eyes in the mirror and heard her excited voice: “No, my dear. I must hurry today. We have to leave.”

  “That’s a pity,” he heard himself say. He was quite amazed. Never before had he needed to tell such a lie to her. He remembered how incredibly wild he had once become one winter’s night on having caught a glimpse of her naked body in a hearth room. Now she was standing in the morning sunshine sprinkling her blushing body with eau de cologne. And he was so cool-headed that he simply felt the lack of his torment and pain.

  Barbara blew him several kisses and laughed. But suddenly she started: “What’s wrong, my love? Are you upset? But I simply haven’t time.”

  She ran across and just touched him with her lips in a kiss. Her body was fragrant and cool. But Pastor Poul felt it as though a huge soap bubble had burst. He was filled with painful sympathy for Barbara and reproached himself bitterly.

  But Barbara did not know his thoughts and started to dress. She buttoned her slip above her hips, took a quick look at herself in the mirror, sat down and drew her stockings on. Already by now, Pastor Poul started to feel different. But Barbara was simply now conscious of him. She quickly tied her garters around her knees. Then she took a comb and started to do her hair.

  He sought to catch her eyes in the mirror. But she looked only at her own image and smiled to herself as she arranged her hair. He tried to talk to her, but she only replied in monosyllables and enveloped herself in a cloud of fragrant powder.

  “May I kiss you?” he asked.

  He saw her smiling mouth, red and white in the mirror. She carefully fixed a tiny black patch on her cheek.

  “May I kiss you?”

  She rubbed the patch away and put a new one closer to the corner of her mouth. Then she suddenly turned towards him, her bosom fragrant and swelling, her eyes burning in her powdered face. She gave him a quick, preoccupied kiss and immediately turned back to the mirror.

  “You really are doing yourself up,” he said. “I had no idea that you painted your faces so much in the Faroes.”

  She made no reply. He could think of nothing better to do than put on his trousers. Then he sat down on the edge of the bed and thought about love. It was like sunshine and fleeting shadows.

  Barbara had put on her blue dress. She tied a silk scarf around her neck and was radiant and fragrant. Then she opened the window. A gentle breeze cleared away the clouds of powder. Tórshavn’s cockerels were crowing and its ducks were swimming out on the smooth waters of the East Bay.

  “There goes Gabriel,” she said.

  Gabriel was walking through Gongin dressed in a wig and a three-cornered hat. He had become a fine man. Even his shadow was as sharp and distingué in the morning light as any of the silhouettes on Bailiff Harme’s hessian-covered walls. People greeted him respectfully and he replied by raising the silver knob on his ebony walking stick up to his hat. It was one of the bailiff’s walking sticks.

  Gabriel was married and on the first morning of his marriage had been presented with a son. The child had come into the world rather early; he was sickly and had had to be baptised immediately. He had been called after the bailiff and his name was Augustus Gabriel Harme.

  “Goodbye,” said Barbara, blowing a kiss, “I have an awful lot to do today.”

  Pastor Poul ran after her, but she dodged him and was off like a frightened bird. He was left behind in his stocking feet like some half-dressed wretch. The usual vague unease again began to trouble him. He wished back the moment a short time ago when he had not been the least interested in her. He looked out of the window and saw her go in through the door to the bailiff’s house from which Gabriel had emerged a short time before. Well, so he knew after all where she was for the time being. Fancy his having had the absurd idea that he was not keen on Barbara. He lit his pipe and slowly dressed.

  He felt the need to talk to someone or other. But who on earth could he talk to about Barbara? His colleague the Tórshavn parson? Master Wenzel would give him some airy-fairy answer to any down-to-earth question. The law speaker? He envisaged Samuel Mikkelsen’s kind face. He would smile sympathetically and benevolently at the subtleties of love. The judge? He would consult a book on philosophy and throw light on the question with examples and parallels. But when it came to the point, was that not to be preferred? He had heard the word of God so many times, and what he needed now was a secular sermon. The judge was a man he had always found it good to talk to. He liked this bony reasoner. He had simply never had time, never had a breathing space.

  There was something strange in his having started to reflect today. He had not reflected for the past nine months. Was it not after all as though the fever in his heart had become less? He was glad of that and yet he did not like it.

  When, half an hour later, he entered the judge’s sitting room, he immediately sensed an atmosphere he knew. It was something from Copenhagen; he came to think of Regensen and of the halls of residence in the university district, and suddenly he remembered the soaring, golden spire of the Cathedral Church of Our Lady. He felt as though he had been thrown back into an earlier, forgotten time when many things had not yet happened.

  The judge received him. He was not fully dressed and he was holding a book in his hand.

  “Forgive me,” he said. “It isn’t that I am a lazybones. But I often become so engrossed in my books that I forget to get up.

  “Aye,” thought Pastor Poul: “Regensen!” He spoke first a little about the weather, and the judge talked about the harvest, which he believed would be good after the favourable summer.

  “You are a man who takes a sensible view of everything, Mr Heyde,” said Pastor Poul without further ado.

  “I do my best to do so,” said the judge in his quiet, deep voice.

  “Well,” said Pastor Poul, looking as though idly out of the window, “then you presumably think I am a very foolish man?”

  “Why?”

  “I am thinking of my marriage.”

  The judge sat down, threw his right leg over the left, leant forward and buried his chin in his hand. Then he changed legs and leant back, and finally, digging his silver snuff box out of his pocket: “He who lives without committing foolish acts is not as wise as he himself thinks.”

  Pastor Poul looked at him in amazement. The judge rose, waved his hand dismissively and laughed: “No, you mustn’t think I invented that saying myself. I am not as wise as that. No, they are by La Rochefoucauld.”

  “Laroche… oh, one of these new-fangled philosophers?”

  “Well, new-fangled… no, but he will never become démodé. I often read one of his sayings, rather like when I take a pinch of snuff. It is so healthy.”

  He offered his little silver snuffbox to Pastor Poul: “It is so good occasionally to hear the truth about yourself and about people in general.” The judge gave a loud sneeze.
“It’s a subject which I never tire of considering.”

  “That was the impression I had of you,” said Pastor Poul. “All the more surprising I find it that you recommend to me what you yourself call foolishness.”

  The judge sat down and laughed. He again crossed his legs and rubbed one of his socks.

  “Well, putting it bluntly, I mean: just you jump overboard. Someone has to live life, and he who avoids foolishness also avoids life, believe you me. Do you know, I will happily admit to you that I not only admire you, but I envy you. Now, don’t misunderstand me. First of all, I am very well aware what a daring game you are playing, and you will probably find that life is not simply a bed of roses. But to express my thought quite precisely: I envy you the experiences you are going to have.”

  “Even if I lose the game?”

  “Precisely if you lose the game. If you win, there must be something wrong with you.”

  “I don’t really understand you.”

  “You will understand me afterwards – provided you survive.”

  The judge suddenly rose and went across and gave Pastor Poul a slap on his shoulder: “I hope you can appreciate a joke – of course you will survive. You must not let yourself be influenced by any superstition. So, have courage. But you surely already know beforehand that you are embarking on an adventure.”

  “You say you envy me the game I have come to play. So it is an obvious question why you yourself are not risking an adventure of any kind.”