The Tower at the Edge of the World

by William Heinesen

  But at all events, this bridge, this Life Bridge was there. Perhaps the plank was a spare one that had been in the way, and so it was put there: it wouldn’t do any harm to have a bridge across the stream, which in point of fact could grow into a real river in rainy weather.

  And how we loved that bridge and clung to it.

  And we hung over it as well, lying on our stomachs and looking down into the clear, brownish yellow water in which tiny trout lay still with fins quivering, and where the midges danced above the mossy stones when the weather cleared up.

  A certain tune has for ever been linked to the Life Bridge, a tiny piece in the minor key, a tune that for a brief moment modulates into the major and then back to the minor as when on a day of showers it stops raining for a moment and the sun shines and the midges dance.

  The Life Bridge. There is some dark, strange, solemn symbolism associated with this name. “Now I’m crossing the Life Bridge – look, I’m flying.” For it doesn’t take long, no, one two three and then you are over and standing among the stones on the other bank. One two three – such is the brief span of life.

  You didn’t think like that in those days when you were still standing in the midst of a green eternity. But that’s how you feel it now that you once and for all have crossed the Bridge of Life and – wonderingly – stand among the grey, lichen-covered boulders on the other bank, stand in this evening-shadowed land.

  (And now perhaps I have written too much now about this poor, unimpressive plank but it is difficult to use but few words when it is a matter of reports from Paradise!)

  Merrit

  Jutta is twelve years old, but she is very big for her age, so big that I almost feel her to be grown up although she is only three years older than I. She has fair hair and small bright eyes, and her mouth is always slightly open, showing her big front teeth. She is always friendly and nice, but she doesn’t say much, and when she does say something it’s always a bit boring.

  But then one day Merrit comes.

  Aye, one day Merrit comes, and then everything is suddenly quite different…

  Merrit is Jutta’s friend and they are the same age, but Merrit is smaller and slighter, though her eyes are bigger than Jutta’s. Merrit’s eyes are not pale like Jutta’s. Nor are they dark. They are green. Big, green, seeing eyes. For Merrit sees so much. And she knows a lot as well and can do so many things, and she also says such a lot.

  “Early this morning, when I was the only one up, do you know what I saw? A huge rainbow. I was all on my own with it. It was so close I could touch it. Do you want to see a little bit of it that I caught? I’ve got it here in my hand.”

  Then she takes out a little square glass stopper and lets the sun shine through it, and see, she’s got a bit of rainbow in her hand now.

  “I can catch the sun as well.”

  She takes a bit of a mirror and holds it up in the light, and there you are: now there’s a little sun dancing on her stomach and breast and neck and into her mouth so that it looks as though she is swallowing it.

  “And I can blow rain as well.”

  Then she blows into a hollow flower stem in which she has made a scratch with her finger. It makes a delicate whistling noise, but no rain comes.

  “No, but it’ll come soon. Look, the sky’s already getting dark now.”

  And it starts raining before long.

  Then Merrit sits there and lets it rain and doesn’t mind getting wet, for it’s her rain.

  But then the shower passes and the sun, which is still high in the sky despite its being evening, shines on the wet grass, and the moss on the warm stones on the banks of the stream starts to steam. And the dun horse called Jupiter is standing out in the water.

  Jupiter, our good friend, has worked faithfully throughout the day and is now standing out in the brook drinking for all he is worth, filling himself with water so that it rumbles and squelches in his belly. Then he slowly walks on to the bank and for a moment stands motionless on the greensward as though lost in deep thought.

  But suddenly he turns over on his back and rolls in the grass, showing his long teeth in a whinnying grin. His huge, human-coloured, veined stomach wobbles, his shaggy pasterns wave at the heavens. Jupiter’s good, gentle eyes have become mad and show the whites… what a sight, what a sight.

  And Merrit’s elbow in your side and her voice whispering in your ear:

  “Can you see his thingummy?”

  “His what?”

  “His thingummy. That funny thing he’s got between his back legs.”

  Yes, of course you can also see his thingummy just sticking out of the shaggy folds of skin.

  But before long, Jupiter has got up and shaken off his frenzy and is grazing calmly and quietly as though nothing has happened.

  But Merrit has more to tell you about the thingummy.

  “Do you know what it’s for?”

  “Ye-es… of course I do.”

  “Yes, but it’s not only for what you’re thinking, ’cos if he sees a filly his thingummy gets all big and then he jumps on her. I saw it once somewhere else. And do you know what? The filly had a little foal, and it was so lovely, so lovely. Didn’t you know it was like that? No, of course you didn’t, Amaldus, ’cos there’s such an awful lot you don’t know. ’Cos do you know what you are, Amaldus? You really are so terribly stupid.”

  ***

  Such was Merrit, and at first you didn’t really like her staring, green eyes, that not only could stare but also turn into long cracks full of laughter and mockery, and then there were her sharp elbows, with which she could give your ribs a friendly dig.

  Little Brother didn’t like Merrit either, and when she wanted to give him a kiss and a hug he cried out and fled across to Jutta. And even Jutta wasn’t always too happy with her friend, for her eyes often took on a tired look when Merrit turned up, as though she wanted to say, “Well, now she’s coming, so there’s not going to be much peace any longer.”

  Aunt Nanna isn’t keen on Merrit either, saying she’s a tomboy and that she’s terribly affected.

  But Grandmother is very fond of Merrit because she is so musical and has “a beautiful voice” and “sings like a little angel”.

  Occasionally, you sit in Grandmother’s sitting room and look through one of her picture books while Merrit’s clever fingers play her scales on the piano, with Grandmother sitting beside her holding a pointer and wearing glasses. And when the lesson is over it happens that Grandmother will come with tea and buns, and then she will sometimes read a story to us from the book called “Fairy Tale Treasures”.

  One of these stories is about two fairies, a good one and a bad one; and you can’t help thinking of Jutta as the good fairy and Merrit as the bad one.

  The good fairy is fair-haired like Jutta and has gentle little eyes and big front teeth for which her mouth is slightly too small. The bad one has green eyes that sometimes are long and narrow and reflect some sort of vague amusement, and sometimes they are staring and not at all nice.

  But one night you dream that the bad fairy has been caught and shut up in the dark coal cellar as a punishment for her evil deeds, and there she sits now, all on her own, staring out into the darkness with her big eyes and looking like both the Earth Girl Lonela and Merrit with the staring eyes.

  Then you feel sorry for the bad fairy.

  The Foal Girl

  There are some lonely houses high up in the hills, and a big, dark man lives in one of them. This is Strong Didrik. Some people also call him Filly Didrik. He lives alone, and no one visits him.

  Strong Didrik has been punished and was in the prison out in the Redoubt.

  “What was he in prison for?”

  Jutta doesn’t know, or perhaps she won’t give you a straight answer. But Merrit, who knows so much, also knows why Didrik had to be put behind bars out in the Redoubt.

  “It was because he was a filly’s boyfriend.”

  Jutta looks down and giggles and hides her face behind
Little Brother’s back. But Merrit’s staring eyes are quite serious.

  “It’s nothing to laugh at. And do you know why he had to be punished, Amaldus? Well, because if Didrik’s filly had a foal it would be a terrible monster. A troll! Well, what do you think trolls are then?”

  “Oh, stop it, Merrit.”

  Jutta looks as though she is ashamed of her friend.

  But Merrit doesn’t stop; she knows a lot more about Strong Didrik and his filly. For when it was discovered that he was the filly’s boyfriend and they came to take her from him, he got on the back of the filly and rode far off into the mountains, and there he let the filly loose so far away from people that no one could find her…

  And Merrit knows still more.

  “Come here, Amaldus, and I’ll tell you something. Do you know what happened then?”

  Jutta starts to hum.

  “You’re only trying to scare Amaldus, Merrit.”

  “No, ’cos Amaldus isn’t at all scared, are you, Amaldus? If you are, I’ll keep quiet about all the other things I know.”

  Jutta: “Yes, do, Merrit; that would be nice of you.”

  “Well, I won’t even so. Just you listen, Amaldus – just imagine. Didrik’s filly did have a foal up in the mountains, and she was a dreadful foal girl with a human body and a horse’s head. And do you know what? She’s still up there in the mountains, ’cos quite a lot of people have seen her and heard her whinnying. And there are some who’ve seen her up at Didrik’s house as well, ’cos she sometimes comes during the night to visit her father and to have some potatoes to eat, ’cos she loves potatoes.”

  ***

  That was what Merrit was like. And you could believe or not believe what she said.

  But at any rate, Strong Didrik goes around heaping potatoes outside his house, big and gloomy, and he looks capable of anything. And one evening a curious frail and languishing whinnying was heard up in the hills. So perhaps it’s a real horse, but it could also be Didrik’s horse daughter who had come down from the fells to visit him and taste his potatoes.

  The Cup Woman

  And there are a lot of other strange people living out there in the green summer pastures.

  One evening, the moon stands big and rust-coloured above the misty heather slopes behind the fence to the outfield.

  The misty moon produces no shadows on the earth; it is simply there like a big, bare face in all the greyness.

  “Look, Amaldus: here comes the Cup Woman.”

  The Cup Woman is on her way home bringing a load of peat from the heath. She is hurrying and hobbling along so that the peat bounces up and down in its basket, while the little blue cup she always carries with her is dangling from a woollen thread round her waist. That is why she is called the Cup Woman.

  Merrit sits holding on to your arm as the Cup Woman hobbles past with her basket of peat and her little blue cup.

  The Cup Woman is very old, perhaps more than a hundred. She lives out in the Cup House, a tiny, overgrown stone hut right out by the gate to the outfield, where the heath begins. Here she lives with the Cup Man, who is her brother not her husband. The Cup Man is younger than the Cup Woman, but nevertheless so old that he has bumps on his head that look almost like horns. But he can still cut peat. And the Cup Woman is still so fit that she can help him to spread and dry the peat and stack it.

  “And do you know why they stay so healthy even though they are so old? It’s because they drink the water from a red iron spring up on the heath. When you drink the red water every day you can live to be over a hundred years old, ’cos it’s a fountain of youth.”

  “But why doesn’t everybody drink from that spring?”

  Merrit has an answer to that question as well.

  “Well, ’cos you don’t only live to be old by drinking the red water – you also get so you can’t remember anything. The Cup Woman and the Cup Man have forgotten everything. They don’t remember where they come from or how old they are or what they’re called. They only call each other she and he.”

  Ekka in the Well House

  That was the Cup Woman. Then there is Ekka in the Well House.

  Ekka is Jutta’s aunt. She lives in an elegant, well kept house up in the hills and has her own field and keeps a cow and some poultry.

  Ekka is always dressed in black, for she is a widow and wears mourning. She is mourning her late husband Bendik.

  Ekka fetches water from a little pool in the stream that runs across her ground. It’s a well made pool with stones around it; Bendik made it. It is called the Well, and so the house is known as the Well House.

  Ekka brings her white bed clothes out into the field and spreads them out on the grass to get them properly bleached.

  There is nothing strange about any of this. But now comes the strange thing, and again it comes from Merrit and is one of all those things she knows.

  Well, during the night, when Ekka’s bed clothes are spread out in the green grass, Bendik’s lonely shadow comes and sees them lying there white and shining.

  “What then, Merrit?”

  “Well, Ekka knows perfectly well that Bendik is there, ’cos she can feel it in her bones. But what’s the use if he’s dead after all? Even so, Ekka wishes he would come in, even if he’s dead.”

  “Does he come?”

  “Yes. Just you listen. Dare you? Yes, ’cos it’s really frightening. Just come and sit over here, Amaldus, ’cos otherwise even I daren’t tell it.”

  It is a windy evening, all overcast; the wind soughs in the grass, and the water in Ekka’s well is almost black with tiny curling waves. Merrit looks all staring.

  “Well, you see, one day Ekka had taken her bed clothes indoors to iron them, but they had to be stretched first, and she couldn’t do that on her own, but then she had the idea of fixing one end of a sheet to a door latch. And then, just as she starts stretching, there’s Bendik suddenly standing in the doorway holding on the other end and helping her. Amaldus!”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Amaldus, I think he’s here now.”

  “Who? Bendik?”

  “Yes. ’Cos we’ve been talking about him so much.”

  And Merrit clings on to you, and you can feel her cold hair against your mouth. She’s trembling with fear and daren’t look up.

  “Can you see anything, Amaldus?”

  “See what?”

  “Him.”

  “No, ’cos there’s no one there.”

  “Yes, but he’s there even so.”

  She gets up with a little scream.

  “Come on.”

  And they rush off down through the fields.

  ***

  But you can’t get Ekka and her well house out of your mind again.

  The candles on Grandmother’s piano are lit during the gloaming. Then Merrit comes and plays scales. One scale is different from all the others; it goes right through you when you hear it.

  “Why is it like that, Merrit?”

  “Like what?”

  You try to explain to her, but it’s as though you don’t quite know how to put it.

  “No, but I know what you mean, ’cos it’s right enough that it is like that. It’s got its own name as well… what’s it called?”

  Grandmother knows. It’s the “melodic minor scale”.

  The melodic minor scale is full of the dusk, and it makes you think of Ekka’s well house and the well there reflecting the clouds in its dark waters. Then there are clouds and sorrow in the dark waters. And when Ekka’s bed clothes lie out there shining in the grass as they are bleaching, Bendik comes and stands watching how the sheets and pillowcases turn pale and sad in the grass ––

  Then, one evening, the church bells ring.

  “They are ringing for Ekka.”

  “Is Ekka dead?”

  No, Ekka’s not dead. They’re her wedding bells that are ringing. Ekka has found a new husband.

  And now there is no longer sorrow in Ekka’s well; there is joy instead. A
nd all the sheets and duvet covers and pillow cases in the bed where Ekka sleeps with her new husband are beautifully bleached and freshly ironed and full of joy and comfort.

  But outside, beneath the sad night clouds, Bendik’s pale shadow wanders about all alone.

  The Big Sluggish Beast

  That was Ekka in the Well House. But Merrit can tell about a lot more strange people and things and ghosts.

  And then there’s the worst of all: the Big Sluggish Beast.

  “Have you never heard about that Amaldus?”

  “No. What is it?”

  Merrit looks as though it’s something that isn’t easy to explain.

  “It’s something that creeps. Do you know what it means to creep?”

  “Yes, worms creep. And snails.”

  “Yes, but the Big Sluggish Beast isn’t a worm, and it’s not a snail either. But it creeps. It’s always somewhere or other. Then it goes away for a time, but it comes back when you least expect it. Creeping! – No, perhaps it’s best not to talk about it.”

  “Have you actually seen it, Merrit?”

  “You bet I have.”

  “Well then, what did it look like?”

  Merrit suddenly sits up and opens her stare eyes.

  “Just listen here. It’s slimy like a fish. And then it’s got funny pink eyes that stick out. And then it cries and sighs and moans. ’Cos it’s awfully sad. And then it comes and snuggles up to you. ’Cos it doesn’t mean you any harm. It’s simply so frightened and wants to be comforted. But it’s so horrible that everyone runs away from it. And so it’s all lonely and that’s a pity for it. All you can do is say a prayer and say, ‘Dear God, have pity on the Big Sluggish Beast and don’t let it be so upset. And don’t let it strangle me or suffocate me. Amen.’ ”

  Merrit has tears in her eyes, and you yourself are almost on the verge of tears because you are so touched about the poor horrible and lonely beast.

  But suddenly you feel her sharp elbow in your side: