Once, when he had reached a smoother region, he suddenly heard a strong, constant whistling sound. Slowly, this great, sorrowful sound penetrated his consciousness; he stopped, and the fear that he had so far not felt, gradually emerged in his heart. He ran for some way, but he could still hear this sound of seething sorrow to his left. When it became a little lighter, the moonlight turning the clouds white, he saw he was standing beside a mountain lake. Its waves were hurrying towards the desolate, stony shore and breaking against it. This was something living he had found here in the desert: a troubled lake, and its sole passion was isolation.
He hastened on; it grew lighter and lighter; a half moon was rushing through the clouds, and in sharp, hesitant patches of light, Pastor Poul could see where he was: in the midst of a congealed ocean of boulders with great waves, mighty breakers of rocks and foam of receding gravel. And the stones were laughing at him and the cliffs had such terrifying shapes that he was gripped by panic, and he ran as though for his life.
He ran for a long time. But finally it was downhill on softer ground, and when he stumbled he no longer hurt himself, but immediately felt the moisture seeping in through his clothing. He waded through sumps and at last found himself outside a lonely house in which candles were burning. When, breathlessly, he knocked on the door, he suddenly heard the minuet in his head again and it dawned on him that it had been going round and round in his mind all the time he had been running and groaning and complaining and – who knows – perhaps howling.
As soon as he was inside, he asked if he was on his way to Tórshavn, but the words stuck fast in his throat. For around him in this hearth room he saw nothing but appallingly ravaged or crazed faces, all gaping and staring foolishly at him.
“God help you,” finally said one man with a face as white as chalk. His voice was unreal in its melodiousness. “God help you,” he repeated. “This is the lepers’ hospital. The Argir hospital.”
“The lepers’ hospital,” exclaimed Pastor Poul and sank to his knees.
“Yes, sir, the lepers’ hospital,” came the words from a man squatting like an animal and eating from a trough of food. There was a foul smell in the room that caught his breath. It was like a nightmare.
The pale man with the melodious voice said he would go a little way with the minister. The river was not easy to get over this evening, so he would show him the best place to cross it.
“There’s a play on in Tórshavn this evening,” he said. He seemed to know everything and spoke at great length in his gentle voice. They met someone in the dark. “He’s one of the inmates,” he explained. “They are allowed to wander around out here, but they are not allowed to go indoors near other people.” And he explained that it was no fun for him to be counted among the inmates. But no one would have him at home although he was only slightly ill.
He went on talking, full of knowledge and melancholy until they came to the rushing Sandá river, the rushing waters of which were swirling there in the moonlight.
There, Pastor Poul thanked him for accompanying him and managed to cross the river in safety.
His heart started to beat violently, for he was now quite close to Tórshavn. He could already see the odd light, and yes, now he was to see Barbara again. He could think no further than to that event. She was presumably at the play… so he would not even be able to talk to her. Breathlessly, he went on his way. And the minuet!
He went past the first houses and remembered the afternoon only five months ago when he had run past here with Barbara. Everywhere was closed and deserted. Nýggjastova was dark, too; no one was at home. Pastor Poul tramped on through Gongin with his dead horn lantern.
But in the Assembly Hall there were festive lights and a crowd of people. The first thing he set eyes on as he entered was the judge, who with an earnest face was stroking his violin and playing some gentle music. He was sitting towards the back, and somewhere else at the back there were several others standing and laughing, including Gabriel, big and heavy, wearing a bright red dress coat. And Pastor Paul gradually realised that all this was something he somehow recognised, but he was on the point of dropping with fatigue and from that murderous beating of his heart. Of course, this was Holberg’s Jeppe of the Hill, and Gabriel must be Baron Nilus. For in a huge bed in the middle of the floor lay Andreas Heyde, carrying on something dreadful and saying in a drunken voice, “Surely I am dreaming? Yet I think not. I will try to pinch my arm; then, if it doesn’t hurt I am dreaming, and if it hurts, then I am not dreaming…”
At that moment, Pastor Poul caught sight of Barbara in the midst of the crowd. She went out of the hall, and he thought she was running away from him and went after her. But she stood waiting for him in the entrance hall.
“But my dear,” she exclaimed. “Are you mad? Are you completely mad?”
Her voice was on the point of tears, so tender was she. She felt his torn, wet clothing and stroked his cheek. “Are you completely mad?”
“Barbara, I’ve come… to you,” stammered Pastor Paul in a broken voice.
“Have you come to me?” She spoke as though to a child, and delight began to bubble up in her voice. “But how on earth have you got here in this weather? Dearest Poul. Walked from Kirkjubø? Are you mad?”
She took a firm hold on his arm: “Come on. Come home, my dear.”
And she twisted her hand down into his and clutched it and patted it tenderly with her other hand and led him through Gongin, supporting him and being close to him with all her body, time and time again, glancing briefly and shyly at him, radiant with joy. But Pastor Poul still bore the extinguished lantern in his left hand.
She got him into Nýggjastova, lit candles, helped him out of his clothing and gave him something to eat, doing all this silently and willingly, eager to serve him, such as he had never seen her before. It was a source of great comfort to him. But while he ate slowly and as though sleep-walking, he had nevertheless to ask her: “Do you love – him?”
Barbara suddenly became serious. She looked down and quickly replied: “Yes.”
That is to say she really whispered it; she hardly said it; she simply breathed it suddenly… it certainly was a yes, but it could almost sound like a no. Her eyes were filled with regret.
There was a slight pause, after which she asked, “Poul, may I drink a little of your beer?”
She took the tankard, drank from it, handed it to him and said, “You have a drink as well. You must be very thirsty.”
And Pastor Poul drank and was again as though refreshed. He felt it like a caress through his insensate weariness.
“I’m glad you are with me again,” said Barbara suddenly and humbly. She looked down.
Pastor Poul was no longer in despair. But it was simply all as though he were dreaming it. He ate calmly, ate his fill.
“I’m going to make sure you have some sleep now,” said Barbara.
Pastor Poul lay down on his bed.
“Shall I sit with you until you go to sleep?” asked Barbara persuasively. “Would that not be good?”
Pastor Poul felt his will awakening within him. New unhappiness, new unease.
“What is to become of me, Barbara?” he whispered.
“Well, my dearest love,” she exclaimed in her tenderest descant voice, weeping and laughing at the same time. Her throat tightened. She sat down on the edge of the bed and bent over him. “You mustn’t be so upset, you know.” Her voice now sounded as though she were telling a secret: “I must tell you something. There is no reason why you should be. No reason at all. My feelings for you are exactly as they were before. As always. That’s the truth… really.”
She kept glancing at him. Her look was still one of nervousness, of regret and sudden fear. She had put her hands in under his shoulders and was convulsively playing his back with all ten fingers. She was sombre and ridiculous, flushed with shameful expectation.
Pastor Poul was tired, and his thoughts moved only slowly. But he took hold of her and drew her c
lose, and he suddenly felt she was quite submissive. His breast was filled with joy; a mighty wave rose slowly within him and filled him with delight. Good heavens. Everything was permitted to him; indeed she even came to his aid, drew off her clothes humbly and speedily and lay down beside him. Close to him he saw her eyes as green as the ocean depths every time she glanced up at him; her face was unrecognisable, unlovely, even ridiculous with delight.
Aye, aye, aye, everything he had suffered, endured and battled with, it had all only happened so that they should experience this moment of inconceivable union. Oh, she rewarded him for Mikines, for the cold ashes in Jansegard, for the great sorrow of Stegard, for the danger at sea by Konufjall, for the terrible wasteland of Kirkjubøreyn, for the lepers at Argir and for the minuet, pling, pling, pling. Ha ha ha! Barbara rewarded Pastor Poul; she gave herself to him, she was gracious to him, she rejoiced senselessly with him as the people of Tórshavn went home from the play… indeed throughout half the night.
Like a man drowning in heavy waves of joy, he fell asleep, and Barbara’s eyes were still sparkling with the green of the sea when he let her go.
China
Pastor Poul started to wake, but lay for a long time without being aware of anything. He suddenly came to himself with a violent shock to his heart, but then he immediately remembered Barbara. He was lying there beside her. Yes, that was right, everything was well; it was not the catastrophe he had imagined. And he sighed, released and freed; his heart was again beating at walking pace. Indeed, it was strutting along like a tired horse that has suddenly been let loose in a luscious meadow. He turned over and fell asleep again.
When he awoke, it was almost light. Barbara opened her eyes, stared at him at first in some confusion and then recognised him with great delight. She put her arm round him and kissed him.
“I’m glad you’ve come,” she said, looking shameful and rather stupid. She fiddled in some embarrassment with the button on his shirt.
Pastor Poul said that he was happy as well, that he did not remember ever having been so happy as on the previous evening.
“No, never,” was Barbara’s enthusiastic response. “Never ever have we both been so gloriously happy. Do you know what it reminds me of? Do you remember that time at Leynum?”
She quickly looked down and pressed herself close to him.
“But now, what about…?” said Pastor Poul, immediately breaking off. His mind was filled with laughter, enormous laughter; indeed the horse of his heart ran a joyous lap around its green meadow. “Oh, Andreas Heyde,” he thought. “Ha, ha, ha.” But he refused to betray his joy, and not a sound escaped him.
And yet, Barbara had understood him so well that she hastily and almost in fear exclaimed, “You mustn’t say that to anyone. Do you hear? It’s a secret between you and me. Oh, I can’t imagine how desperate he would be if he got to know it.”
She stared ahead, lost in thought and no longer took any notice of her husband.
Pastor Poul lay long in silence. His heart’s horse stood still and behaved as though he was afraid. This was the first time he had heard her mention Andreas Heyde, and the tone in which she was speaking was quite unknown to him.
“Barbara, do you regret it?” he asked.
“Oh no, dearest,” she said, smiling at him. But directly after this she again started to stare out in the air as though she had a vision.
“I’m so afraid he has got himself drunk,” she said suddenly. “He was probably drunk yesterday evening.”
She was trembling a little.
“I was drunk yesterday evening,” said Pastor Poul.
“Were you?” said Barbara absent-mindedly, still staring in the air.
Pastor Poul did not know whether he was angry or unhappy; he turned away from his wife. She was in love with Andreas Heyde. But this was nothing but what he had known all the time, indeed no more than she herself had said. Had he for a single moment thought things could be different? Had he really come here to take her back home to Jansegard? Had he really been so foolish? No, he remembered of course what he had thought. If only he could win her once more, one single time.
Well, his undertaking had been carried out. Carried out with enormous force and intensity. What more did he want? Yet once more?
“Why have you turned your back to me?” asked Barbara. There was just a hint in her voice that she felt she had been wronged. Pastor Poul felt a little happier and made no reply.
“I think you’re angry,” she whispered in his ear.
He turned towards her again and smiled.
“I’m not angry,” he said. “I was merely thinking. You are in love with someone else, and I am merely in your way. I won’t try to prevent you from doing anything, and it will be no use in any case. So I shall have to put you out of my mind and quite forget you. Don’t you agree?”
Barbara made no reply; she shook her head hopelessly, almost imperceptibly, just enough for Pastor Poul to see it. She was very serious, and her eyes were filled with great sadness.
“But Barbara,” Pastor Poul continued, “if you… if it isn’t me you are fond of.”
“But you know how much I love you,” said Barbara. “You must surely have understood that. Otherwise all that yesterday evening would have been unthinkable. There is no reason for… everything between us is as it always has been. Don’t you understand?”
She spoke urgently and forcefully; she held on to his wrists and let her hands glide up his sleeves. Then, in a lighter tone, she suddenly added: “You should simply never have left me. Then nothing would have happened.”
She smiled happily at the discovery she had made here, this little coloured stone. She believed in it herself: “We two ought simply to have lived here together in Tórshavn, shouldn’t we? I didn’t thrive in that village. You’ll stay here for a few days, won’t you, my dear?”
Rather more than an hour later, Pastor Poul was on his way to the judge’s home, satisfied but scarcely consoled. His wife had gone to Andreas Heyde. He was probably in need of a visit from her, poor man. Pastor Poul was happy at the thought. One must be noble to one’s enemy. Now he had fitted him with a good horn in his forehead. But why should he be a unicorn? One horn was no horn. No, there must be at least a couple. Pastor Poul caught himself thinking thus. Was he already such a – libertine? Aye, thoughts were flashing through his mind today; he was in a strange mood, unhappy and ardent and proud. He sat down in one of the judge’s chairs, threw his hat down and said, “Well, now I’ve experienced being my own wife’s lover. There’s another man who has managed to become his own coxcomb’s coxcomb. Which do you think is the worse?”
Johan Hendrik Heyde’s good-humoured, lined face lit up; he was at once all attention; he sat up, put his book down, rubbed the tip of his nose with a finger and said, “Well, that’s what I call an amusing way of looking at things.”
Then he twisted round and supported his chin in one hand.
“Well, It’s usually said that the husband is the only person who can be a real coxcomb, as he is the only person married to the woman in question. You can never be coxcomb to your own coxcomb, for…”
“No, you are applying far too legalistic a mind to it,” interrupted Pastor Poul. “It is only in the eyes of God and man that Barbara is my wife. In her heart of hearts she is another man’s woman. So in reality this other man is the coxcomb as he is the one who…? Don’t you yourself agree… that they are much in love?”
“Alas, far too much in love,” sighed Johan Hendrik. “Andreas makes no attempt to do anything useful at all, although he could achieve great things. Just imagine, sent by the Exchequer! It is all wrong.”
“Aye, I think so, too. It really is all very wrong,” laughed Pastor Poul boisterously with a sharp stab in his heart: “Very wrong indeed, ha, ha.”
The judge looked at him attentively.
“Aye,” he said, “you are now in the embrace I knew you would be in. You seem to be taking it well… hmm, how shall I put it? You seem
to stand the sea well.”
“I’m in a furious mood,” said Pastor Poul. “A desperately furious mood, and yet an ecstatic mood. I had never imagined I could encompass so many powerful emotions at once.”
“Ha ha. I thought as much. Then perhaps God hasn’t deluged you with all those misfortunes in vain. But you are still only at the first stage.”
“I remember what you said to me the last time we saw each other. That people who encounter true grace are those whom fate grasps and plays like a musical instrument.”
“Yes, assuming that these people are instruments at all and not reeds or pieces of firewood or heads of stinging rays.”
“Good heavens, I am an instrument,” said Pastor Poul. “A wind instrument. And God is playing me mightily. Like a shawm, a pitiful shawm.”
“Well, you are perhaps not a trombone, and, by the way, take care not to become a trumpet.” Johan Hendrik smiled satirically: “But woodwind. Aye, let’s say a woodwind instrument. That might sound a bit uninteresting, but it is really the most beautiful of all instruments.”
He suddenly rose and started energetically walking up and down.
“The main thing,” he continued, stopping in front of Pastor Poul, “the main thing is that one has a character that can be inspired but not broken by misfortune. Desperation and fury are the best winds to sail in if only you know how. But don’t sail too close to the wind! It is possible to overturn. I take it you are about to undertake a series of foolish acts, eh? But do at least refrain from killing my nephew!”
“I assure you,” said Pastor Poul, “that my feelings towards him are almost those of a colleague.”
“They will scarcely continue like that.”
Pastor Poul straight away felt the truth of these words. At that moment, Barbara was together with Andreas. She had promised to come home this evening…
“Will you play something?” he asked the judge.
“I will play a little piece for you. Unfortunately, it is only a solo. Alas, I am almost always reduced to playing solo. And that never becomes as agitato as for instance in a trio.”
Barbara Page 24