The Tower at the Edge of the World

by William Heinesen

  “It’s a good thing that you won’t, Amaldus. You mustn’t tempt God. And I only said it to test you. But you’ll have to kiss the skull. Come on.”

  At the foot of the slope beneath the Old Poet’s House there lies a pile of rubbish scattered on the little foreshore, pieces of seaweed and splintered bits of wood, dried jellyfish and bits of glass, rusty saucepans and other discarded kitchen utensils. There are also some bones that the surf has washed down from the old cemetery up on the slope. And, well hidden in a pile of brushwood and gravel, there is a skull, which Hannibal takes out and brushes and polishes.

  “Here, kiss its forehead.”

  “No, I won’t.”

  “Now, now. But you see, Amaldus, if you won’t, then you can expect the dead man to come back and visit you tonight.”

  “Well, I’m still not going to.”

  Hannibal stands there polishing the greenish skull with the sleeve of his jersey. It looks so grisly that you get cold shivers down your spine. He bends his head down and gives you a piercing and imperious look.

  “You must, Amaldus.”

  “No. You can kiss it yourself if you want to.”

  But then comes the sound of a gentle but plaintive voice from the top of the slope. It’s the old poet, who is leaning on a spade and has a big, woollen scarf wrapped around his neck and beard. He has stood there and seen it all.

  “What are you doing, boys? Come and give me that thing you’re holding, Hannibal.”

  Hannibal hesitates; he stands hugging the skull and looking sombre and defiant.

  “Come on, lads, both of you.” The voice is heard again from the top of the slope, this time very insistent.

  Hannibal’s eyes grow dark. “Now you’re going to keep quiet about everything, Amaldus. Promise?”

  The poet takes the skull and examines it as he holds it out in front of him.

  “What are you going to do with it, boys?”

  No answer.

  “It’s probably the head of a young girl. Just look how delicately it’s shaped. And the little teeth are almost all there. What a pity the council still leaves all these poor human remains lying around like any other bits of rubbish.”

  He looks at us with big, open eyes and with his black eyebrows drawn high up in his forehead.

  “Are you really playing with the poor cranium? It’s not a toy, lads, it’s the skull of someone who was perhaps your age and perhaps played out here like you.”

  (Perhaps it’s Lonela’s head, you thought).

  The poet looks at us a little longer. Then he sighs and gently takes the skull as though wanting to protect it and, coughing slightly, goes up towards his house. We see him open the cellar door and disappear into the darkness of the vestibule, where he has his strange bin of bones standing.

  Hannibal shrugs his shoulders.

  “Well, that’s up to him. Oh well, but all that about kissing the skull was only to test you.”

  ***

  The wind has started blowing, and it’s kite weather. Perhaps there’s a bit too much wind. But even so we decide to fetch the kite.

  On the way we go past the Hut garden and here stands Dolly Rose at the gate, smiling and looking up in the air as though she was smiling to someone far away. She is neatly dressed as always, with a chequered bonnet and a decorative apron.

  Hannibal: “Hello, Rosie”

  “Hello.”

  Rose’s voice is curiously faint, as though not quite real, and her big brown doll’s eyes don’t move, but still stare into the distance. Hannibal goes close to her and whispers, “What have you had for dinner today, Dolly? Have you eaten your black cat?”

  Rose makes no reply, but smiles and shows a row of wet teeth between her thick lips.

  But now the voice of Fina the Hut is heard from somewhere or other: “I heard you, Hannibal.”

  And now she appears behind some shrubbery, holding a rake from the teeth of which she is pulling some roots. She is smiling politely but with her eyes averted.

  “Are you going looking for dead crows for supper, my boy?”

  Hannibal makes no reply, but stands and swallows.

  “Come on, Amaldus.”

  ***

  That afternoon saw the tragedy of the fine, gilt kite breaking lose and being lost.

  It wasn’t that there was too much wind, for the drag was no stronger than usual, and the kite hung there quietly and beautiful in the air, flapping its tail quite sedately. But suddenly it jerked madly and started coming down, slowly and headfirst, while Hannibal was left holding an empty reel.

  We stood there horrified, watching the kite and seeing it twirl around itself and collapse and disappear far away over the dark waters.

  “Well, I’ll be damned. Have you ever seen anything like it? That’s never happened to me before.”

  Hannibal is choking with disappointment and gloomy surprise: “The string was firmly fixed on to the reel. Or have you been fiddling with it?”

  “No, I’ve not touched it.”

  Hannibal flung the empty reel away. Then he threw himself down in the withered grass and lay there for a moment on his stomach, writhing in sorrow and anger, and when he got up again, he stood for a long time wiping his eyes on his jersey sleeve.

  “Oh, that bitch. There you see. That was getting her own back for the black cat. I ought to keep my mouth shut. And then you had to suffer for it, though you hadn’t done anything, ’cos it was your kite of course. But she’s such a disgusting person. She should… someone ought to throw a hymn book at her.”

  These words about the hymn book were something that Hannibal explained more fully as they made their sad way home.

  It was Markus, the cooper in the Rømer Concern, who had once thrown a hymn book at Fina and hit her on the back of her head and knocked her out so she had to stay in bed for several days.

  “Well, why did he do that?”

  “’Cos she’d put a spell on his daughter.”

  “What do you mean, put a spell on her?”

  “Well, she puts spells on women. She can do that as well.”

  Hannibal nods sombrely and refuses to say any more on that subject.

  “But you shall have your ship back now, Amaldus.”

  “You don’t need to.”

  “Well, then you shall have a new kite. A much bigger and better one. Just you wait.”

  ***

  When you had gone to bed that evening, you were excited to see whether the dead girl would come to you in your dreams, but you weren’t particularly afraid, for it was probably only the Earth Girl Lonela and you weren’t afraid of her.

  She didn’t come. But Fina the Hut came instead with her strange, big, dirty devil bird. She gave you a kind smile and had tears on her cheeks, and the bird hopped around clucking on one leg and with half unfolded wings that smelled like mouldy old clothing. And then you had to go into the Hut, and that wasn’t nice because in addition to Fina and Dolly Rose there were both goats and crabs and some strange creature that was half horse and half man.

  But then Hannibal came with his maroon, and everything disappeared in dust and smoke.

  The Snilk

  The Snilk lies rotting up in the grass.

  The Snilk is a small, flat-bottomed dinghy. It’s so rotten that grass and pimpernel are growing up through its floor.

  And it has been there since Ole Rilke drowned. That was ten years ago.

  Ole Rilke drowned on his way out to a ship called the Spurn. It was a dark evening, and he was alone in the dinghy. The Snilk couldn’t stand any kind of rough sea, and so it capsized.

  Ole Rilke was only twenty-two when he drowned. He was studying to be a skipper. He was engaged to Anna Diana, Hannibal’s mother.

  No one knows for certain what Ole Rilke wanted on board the Spurn that evening. There are those who say they were having a binge on board.

  Anna Diana (the woman who’s your aunt – if that’s true, for you can’t always believe what Hannibal says) – Anna Diana late
r married Howler Hans, the crazy man who was Hannibal’s father, and if Ole Rilke hadn’t capsized with the Snilk, Hannibal would have been his son and not Howler Hans’. And then Hannibal would have been a quite different person from what he is now.

  But what if Howler Hans hadn’t married Anna Diana, but had a quite different wife?

  Then Anna Diana would have married quite a different man, and where would Hannibal be then?

  And if there hadn’t been a do just that evening on the Spurn? And if Ole Rilke had rowed out there in a proper boat and not in the Snilk? And if the Spurn hadn’t been in the roads just on that evening? And if the Snilk had never existed? And if your grandfather had never known Hannibal’s grandmother?

  If and if and if and if…!

  But the Snilk exists.

  The Snilk is still there, lying there gaping in the grass and doesn’t know what it’s done wrong.

  There it lies, rotting, and it will soon be completely eaten up by damp and rot, and it will turn to earth and nothing.

  Gale

  It is autumn again, autumn – gales and surf and autumn, darkening skies and fleeing birds and flying leaves. Autumn, autumn.

  The wind is coming in from the sea and it’s cold and wet in the empty halls of the Castle.

  When you lie on the floor in the Castle Hall and look out through the little peephole, you can see the waves foaming beneath the dark clouds. The wind blows in through your mouth and nose and tastes salty. The entire Castle shakes and trembles.

  The Castle is called the Sea Fort. It’s Hannibal’s robber baron’s castle. It is built of packing cases and stands on the sand down by the river mouth.

  An old fisherman comes past; he cups his hands and shouts, “You can’t stay here, lads, or you’ll end in the waves.”

  “We know that, but we can’t abandon our old Sea Fort now.”

  A huge wave comes and breaks and fills the castle’s casements with water. If there are any prisoners down there they’ll just have to drown.

  A new wave, and now the castle starts to totter.

  Again a huge wave, greenish and foaming, and now we can feel the castle beginning to float. So we have to jump ashore and stand watching the enemy destroy our splendid Sea Fort.

  Then we grow angry. Angry and wanton like the hostile waves that are destroying our castle.

  Then we have the dry, dark hour before the rain starts. This is Horn Time. This is when Rydberg stands among the darkening trees in his dilapidated old garden behind the warehouses, when he stands there with his enormous green horn, stands beneath clacking trees, stands in a confusion of dry, brown leaves, stands in the brownish yellow sepulchral light of Horn Time with that fearful horn of his.

  That’s when you can hear the horn shriek and whinny through the roar of the surf, whinnying and snorting while we dance around high up here. While we dance and jump around in wild, senseless ecstasy in Ole Morske’s sail loft, where hanging sails wave in the draft from the rattling peepholes.

  “Who’s Rydberg?”

  Rydberg? Nobody knows. He died a long time ago. He used to live here in the warehouse and sleep in the bedroom up in the gable. Rydberg’s a ghost, a man in the grave, a horn blower and storm blower; he blows rain and he blows night and darkness while we dance around and turn somersaults on the piles of canvas up here on the great empty floor in the greenish yellow stormy light at Horn Time. For Ole Morske isn’t here, but he could come at any moment, and so we must hurry…!

  And now it turns into a gale of the worst kind, and that is only a good thing.

  Men shout to each other as they hurry to bring their fishing boats ashore and drag them up into the boat houses. Women with scarves flapping in the wind are going around looking for lost ducks and hens.

  When it is lighting up time, the entire town is enveloped in an unbroken swirling mass of salt and foam from the sea; and then the lamps smoke in the wind and are blown out, and that is good!

  Angry voices can be heard in the darkness, coming from up on an old turf roof that the gale is trying to lift off and fly away with, and which some men are zealously trying to tie down and secure with ropes tied to big boulders.

  The roof will probably blow off even so, and that’ll do them good.

  From out in the darkness there comes a sound as of hollow, plaintive cries for help. The entire town can hear this dreadful noise, which goes right through you. Some think it’s the siren from a ship in difficulties. But we know that it is only the storm playing around in the old iron buoys out near the Bight.

  Some people think it’s the last trumpet sounding, and that’ll do them good.

  And then in the darkness we delight in the plaintive song from the sea and lie there full of dreadful, evil wishes. If only it would blow the church tower down! If only the sea would wash over the entire town so that all the houses went sailing!

  The Feckless Idiots

  Father no longer sails, but he has decided to work ashore and is now going to help Uncle Hans run the Rømer Concern, for it is “a colossus on feet of clay”.

  “What’s ‘a colossus on feet of clay’?”

  Mother tries to explain that to you, but it isn’t something that can be done in a jiffy; it takes time, for it’s a “complicated story”. But at any rate you gradually get some idea of it…

  In your great-grandfather’s day, the Rømer Concern was the biggest firm in the entire country. It owned thirty-two fishing sloops and two schooners carrying freight. And your grandfather, Amaldus Rømer, the one you are called after, could still more or less “keep it all together”. But then he died, and his brother Prosper, “was never any good at anything but sorting potatoes”. As for your Uncle Hans (your mother’s only brother) – “poor Hans”, well there’s no real go in him, no backbone although he will soon be twenty-five; he simply fools about and wastes his time together with his friends, Selimsen, Keil and Platen. They go off into the mountains on their horses, or they spend their time sailing around from one island to another in Uncle Hans’ splendid new yacht, the Nitouche.

  But now Father’s coming, and he’ll get the whole thing organised, for he’s a captain and is used to being obeyed.

  ***

  And so Father comes to get everything put right.

  Father is big and strict, with stern eyes and a huge, weatherbeaten nose. And Uncle Hans and his friends are now no longer allowed to sit with their glasses of beer in the office, singing, “I’ve been born, so I’m going to live.”

  But then they still have the Factory.

  The Factory is the biggest building in town, but it stands there empty as it “didn’t pay”, and the owner, who was a wealthy Scotsman, sold his Factory to the Rømer Concern and went back to Scotland. That was in Grandfather’s day. Since then, the Factory has “lain fallow”, but now Father is going to see about getting it going again.

  For the time being, however, it is left empty.

  However, one of its “halls” is often full of people – this is when Uncle Hans and his friends have their evening entertainments or dances out there, or when they put on a play.

  Selimsen is an artist who wears a broad-brimmed hat and has an impressive moustache that turns up at the ends. Keil is a photographer who wears a frock coat and yellow skin gloves. He’s also known as the “Lieutenant”, though Aunt Nanna says he’s never been a lieutenant, only a cadet – the other title is only to show off, for he is a braggart. Mother calls him “a ladies’ man”, but Father has a more scornful term; he calls him a “gasbag”.

  Then there is Platen. Platen speaks Danish, but a curious sort of Danish, for he’s a Swede. He is a fat, happy man with curly hair and a beard and a floppy tie, and he’s musical and plays the cello, “and he plays it very well indeed”, says Mother. He’s really called von Platen and that’s an aristocratic name. “And perhaps it’s right enough that he’s a baron,” says Father. “But at all events, he’s a feckless idiot. They’re all feckless idiots.”

  “What’s a feckles
s idiot?”

  Father doesn’t answer this, but sits there at the table sullen and brooding and refusing to answer anything you ask him. Aunt Nanna puts the tips of two fingers up to her lips; that means that you have to sit and be quiet when Father’s eating and not disturb him in his thinking, for he has such a dreadful lot of things to see to.

  ***

  There is a cellar window in the Factory that can’t be closed, and through this window you can get into the huge, complex building with all its halls. In these halls, which all have walls made of rough old boulders from the mountains, there are high ceilings, but it is as dark in there as in a cellar, even in daytime, for the long rows of windows are right up at the top near the roof. It feels oppressive in here like in the Mountain King’s castle. There are big basins and water pipes and strange machines in some of the halls, and others are full of empty crates and barrels, piles of crumpled lengths of tin and other rubbish, and then there’s the boiler room where the tall steam engine stands and grows rusty. But some of the huge rooms are quite empty, so empty that even your stealthy footsteps produce an echo.

  Then there’s the Office. This is where you will find the big, dark green safe, which is so heavy that it has been impossible to move it, and in the corner there, standing in splendid isolation, is the huge Scottish fireplace, which is built of stone in various colours and is topped with a marbled slab. And along the walls there are fixed benches with leather covers. But there are patches of white mould on the fine dark carpet, and below the high windows overlooking the sea there is a half-dried pool of water.

  Hannibal settles down comfortably with his legs up on one of the benches along the wall and lights a cigarette.

  “Isn’t it good here? This is where it all goes on.”

  “What goes on?”

  “All that with our uncle and Selimsen and them.”

  “Who do you mean?”

  “And the girls.”

  “What girls?”

  Hannibal sits blowing smoke rings and looking up at the ceiling.

  “No, I’m not going to say anything, ’cos I’m not going to gossip; I never do. Besides, our uncle’s a nice man. And you’re far too little to be told all those things. But I know all about it.”