“Amaldus. You really are so terribly stupid!”
The Churchyard
The wind hurries, the clouds hurry, the brook hurries, the soughing summer hurries, and it will soon be past, and then autumn will come.
In the great grassland, the grass is no longer green, but there it stands in flower with reddish violet wisps at the top. The haymaking has started; Jutta’s father and uncle are out with their scythes, while Jutta’s mother and some other women and girls spread the hay and then, when evening comes, rake it together into small stacks. And there it stands, looking like some big dwarf city.
Jutta and Merrit help with the haymaking as well.
But then, one day, Merrit is on her own in a corner among the stones by the brook, making a wreath of dandelions and stinking mayweed and other late summer flowers. It is to be put on her sister’s grave, for it is this sister’s fifteenth birthday today.
“What was your sister called, Merrit?”
“She was called Merrit – the same as me. She died before I was born, and so I was given her name. Mother says I’m like her as well. And perhaps I am her.”
“Oh no, how could you be her, Merrit?”
“Well, perhaps her soul went over into my soul. And then, do you know what? That means I’m dead and buried even if I’m standing here as well.”
“That means you’re two people then. Is that possible?”
“Yes, it’s possible. There are lots of people who are two people. Just think of all the women going around with babies in their stomachs.”
Merrit’s voice sounds so cheerful and she looks radiantly happy, although she is not smiling, for you mustn’t smile in the churchyard.
“See, we’ll put the wreath here. Now please, Amaldus, wait a moment while I say the Our Father.”
Merrit kneels by the grave and sits there with her hands together and her head bowed. A few bedraggled cornflowers can still be seen in the grass. It’s a dark, blustery day and it looks like rain. The wind blows over graves and crosses as though with brooms and dusters at the height of the spring cleaning.
Then Merrit has finished her prayer. She gets up and makes the sign of the cross over the grave.
“Rest in peace, Merrit dear.”
It makes you shudder in some strange way to hear her say her own name over the grave, for suppose it was she, the live Merrit, who lay there dead in the ground. Horror and sympathy go through your mind in hot and cold waves; you want to take her hand and say her name, or simply to touch her a little and feel that she’s still alive.
Then we slowly go out of the churchyard, looking at graves and gravestones on the way. Lovely white crushed shells have been strewn on the narrow paths between the Window Man’s seven little grass-edged graves; the wind is whispering in them, and each of the graves has its own little wooden cross.
“And can you see the angel on watchmaker Girlseye’s grave, Amaldus? She can’t fly, because you can’t fly when you’ve got stone wings. That’s why she looks so miserable. Don’t you think she looks terribly miserable?”
“Yes. But why was he called that?”
“Watchmaker Girlseye? Well, that wasn’t his real name, of course. But that’s what everybody called him. Perhaps because he had beautiful eyes. Or perhaps because he was one for the girls… Oh, God forgive me for what I’m saying; you mustn’t say that kind of thing here in God’s garden.”
There is an enormous hawthorn bush standing on an almost obliterated grave. It’s so bent and twisted that it seems to be writhing in despair. Merrit hurries past it as though she is afraid it might catch her in its claws.
At the gate, she makes the sign of the cross again.
“Rest in peace.”
And then we are outside the churchyard.
“Do you know who’s buried under that funny-shaped bush, Amaldus?”
“Yes. A suicide (everybody knows that).”
“Yes, and do you know what he was called?”
“No?”
“Snorky. A dreadful name, isn’t it? And do you know what else? Come on, we’ll go into Grandmother’s garden and I’ll tell you more about Snorky.”
We go in and sit down on a bench in the open summer-house in the corner of the garden. It’s cold and draughty here. But from inside Grandmother’s house there comes the sound of warm, scurrying notes on the piano.
Then Merrit tells about Snorky, the suicide. It’s a nasty story about evil people, so it’s a good thing that Grandmother is playing such a cheerful tune.
For suicides don’t go to heaven, and so they have to stay on earth and be ghosts until Judgement Day. And Snorky has to live under his bush in the churchyard. So during the summer you can see his eyes deep down in the darkness behind the branches of the hawthorn bush. But in winter he has to hide in the ground with all the black beetles and worms and centipedes.
“Dare you listen to some more? No, it isn’t all that dreadful after all, ’cos it all happened ages ago. But just listen: ’cos when Snorky was dead and buried, he came back and was seen in the dark by his wife Emma. For Emma was a nasty piece of work and she had always refused to give Snorky decent food or wash his clothes, and she used to biff him on the head with a broom handle when he was drunk.”
“Did she kill him?”
“No, ’cos he did that himself. But do you know how he showed himself to her? Like a big black spider. And when Emma saw this big spider run across the kitchen table, well, bang! She stabbed it with the bread knife. And then there was a scream in the broom cupboard.”
“Why was there a scream in there?”
“’Cos that was the cupboard he hung himself in. And then there were splashes of blood on the cupboard floor.”
“Then what, Merrit?”
“Then Emma came with a cloth and wiped the blood up. And then she flung the cloth in the fire. And then she said something.”
“What did she say?”
“No, I daren’t say it now. Perhaps another time. Amaldus.”
“Yes?”
“Amaldus, you’ll have to take me home, ’cos I daren’t go past the churchyard on my own. Come on. And you’ll have to hold my hand.”
“Yes, but that looks so peculiar.”
“Yes, but then we must run. But make sure you run alongside me.”
So we run and don’t stop before we are outside the door of Svensson’s house. There we stop and puff and catch our breath.
“Now I can tell you what Emma said when she threw the cloth with blood into the fire. Dare you listen? Come on, and I’ll whisper it in your ear.”
Then you felt her mouth against your ear and heard her voice as she whispered:
Vanish like smoke in the earth below
Melt like wax before fire and glow
Vanish into fire and flame
And never again let me hear your name.
The Kiss
Merrit knows much, much more.
But then there came a time when she didn’t say so much herself, but sat rather and listened when you talked about some of all the things that you yourself knew.
And then there are a lot of things you both know.
Merrit knows the Ferryman, who sits blowing a horn outside his house in the evening when the weather is good. And she knows everything about the Wise Virgins. And she also knows Fina the Hut, but she doesn’t know anything at all about the big black bird that comes and visits her during the night. And neither does Merrit know anything about the Old Poet’s barrel of bones.
“Ugh, is that right? Have you yourself seen that there are dead bones in it?”
“Yes, and there’s a dead girl’s skull, and Hannibal wanted me to kiss it.”
“Ugh, Amaldus. Surely you didn’t?”
Then you tell her how the Old Poet came and took the head and put it in his barrel, and about Hannibal’s robbers’ den in the warehouse cellar out near the Bight, where there’s the maroon that could blow up the entire building if you put a match to the touch paper. And Merrit shudders
and has big staring eyes and sits gripping your arm.
Then you are secretly glad and proud that you have made her shudder.
And one evening you also tell her about the Earth Girl Lonela, the girl who sometimes comes to you in dreams and floats off with you.
Merrit listens with open mouth and big staring eyes.
“And what then, Amaldus? Where do you fly off to?”
“No, we just float.”
“And does she kiss you then? Or do you kiss her?”
“No, why?”
“Well, after all, when you’re out floating together.”
“Well, she’s dead, you know.”
“Oh, of course, Amaldus. But suppose she was alive?”
“Well, what then?”
“Well, wouldn’t you want to kiss her then?”
“I don’t know…”
“No, ’cos you’ve no idea how to, have you? Come here and I’ll show you.”
And then you feel her cold arm round your neck and her warm breath on your face and her lips, which are neither warm nor cold, but feel alive and a bit sticky and just a little bit nasty, like when you touch an earthworm.
“Well, hug me a bit, Amaldus. You’ve got to hug as well. Yes, like that.”
Merrit makes her voice deep and hollow:
“Now we’re floating… Whoo–oo. Now you’re out floating together with your Earth Girl.”
Then her hand comes and ruffles your hair.
“Was it all that bad? Have you never kissed a girl before? No, I don’t think you have, for do you know what you are? You’re a funny little puppikins.”
Then you think a little about this curious expression, which probably doesn’t mean anything good, but perhaps nothing bad either, for her voice is warm, and she is nudging you in a nice way.
And yet, that bit about puppy worries you a bit, for the fact is that she is two or three years older than you.
***
But puppy or no puppy, the first kiss has come into your life now, and something has started that will never cease, something that brings great disorder and change in its wake so that nothing is as before.
And still today, a generation later, you can clearly remember both time and place for this event, an event that was both so tiny and so great.
That was just near the stream under the Life Bridge, and it was a Saturday evening. For when you got home to Andreasminde, Little Brother was in his bath being washed and scrubbed by Jutta, and in the living room Grandmother was rehearsing a song with Pastor Evaldsen’s male voice choir (“Rejoice ye now, all Christian men”).
And when you had gone to bed that evening you could see the evening star low on the horizon in the west, motionless and un-twinkling like a little moon… while you lay there and wished that the Earth Girl Lonela would come and fetch you out on a long, long floating trip, but she should be in the shape of Merrit.
The Willow Grove
High up in the hills, in an out-of-the-way place near the old, grey outfield fence, where the green summer land ends, there stood some weather-beaten dwarf willows in the midst of a motley array of wild grass and big, juicy sorrel. You could lie here out of sight and all on your own and as it were outside everything.
You used to lie in the grass here and long for Merrit when she was away.
It was not often she was away, usually only a few hours a day, but once for several days on end, for her mother had been taken ill and so she had to “look after the house”.
The memory of the infinite length of these days and the sense of longing is still in your mind like a deep sense of loss, and your inner ear can still hear the wind whispering in the grass and leaves of the Willow Grove – a sound that like the melodic minor scale bears a quiet complaint within it, but also something else, something joyful beyond comprehension: the first enormous, uncontainable, restless joy of falling in love for the first time – the feeling that no word can express, but for which music has always been able to find a happy expression in its wordless outpourings.
The Calf
Now the hay is in and the autumn gales are howling through the open hatches and doors in Jutta’s father’s barn.
Then comes the strange, empty time when the hayfields lie there desolate in the form of fields of stubble, the time when the last migratory birds have left and stars and Northern Lights again begin to be seen in the dark evening sky.
So that summer is past…
And one day the Life Bridge has gone, too, for Jutta’s father has finally discovered what the excellent plank can be used for: a lamp post! The lamp is to be put up down by the gate in the fence out to the road so that the path up to the house, which has been far too dark otherwise, can be lit up in the evening.
So the “Life Bridge” is transformed into the “Life Light” as we naturally called this paraffin lamp as it cast a reddish glow over the pale wooden gate and the lichen-covered boulders forming the wall.
***
Then one day, Grima the cow has had a calf, and Merrit is quite crazy about the little baby cow that Grima lies licking and looking after while grunting tenderly through her nose.
Merrit almost has tears in her eyes.
“Oh, just see how she’s lying there singing for her little boy.”
“Why a boy, Merrit?”
“Well, it’s a bull calf; you can see that because he’s got a thingummijig. And then he’s got a white star on his forehead, and that a sign of good luck. And what do you think he should be called? Daisy Star? No, that’s a girl’s name. What about Bobstar? Or Bigstar? Oh, just see how he’s sucking his mother. Oh, he’s so thirsty.”
Jutta: “Yes, but he’s only going to do that today and tomorrow.”
“What then?”
“Then he’s going to be slaughtered.”
“Slaughtered.”
“Yes, ’cos otherwise he’s going to drink all Grima’s milk.”
Merrit looks somewhat crestfallen and isn’t at all pleased any longer. Her stare eyes simply radiate disgust.
“Is he going to be eaten as well?”
Jutta nods.
“But then, what about Grima? What does she say to having her baby taken away from her and killed? Isn’t she going to be simply furious?”
“No, ’cos she’ll soon forget.”
Merrit turns away.
“If I were Grima, I’d gore your Father to death if he came to kill my baby. I’d get him on my horns and throw him right away, and that’d serve him right. Ugh, you are horrid, the lot of you.”
And suddenly, Merrit goes off and slams the stable door.
Jutta shakes her head like a grown up.
“What a thing to go on about! And what a thing to say. Gore Father to death!”
Jutta is on the point of tears, and there is a little froth around her big front teeth.
“But do you know what Merrit is, Amaldus? She’s a really dangerous little witch. That’s what Father says, too, and it’s true. Do you know what she did once? She set her hair on fire! What do you make of that?”
“Well why did she do it?”
“Because her mother had smacked her. And she’d really deserved all the smacks she got. But that’s what she’s like. And I’ll guarantee she creates a lot of problems for her mother and father. And now she’s going around sulking and upset ’cos the calf’s going to be slaughtered. What a lot of rubbish.”
“Where do you think she’s gone?”
“I don’t know and I don’t care. Just let her stay away. But she’s probably sitting around watching somewhere or other and thinking of something nasty to do, like setting fire to the house. No, you never know…”
***
But Merrit isn’t to be seen anywhere.
It’s a raw, windy day; big crows are hopping around on the fields of stubble and filling the air with their hoarse cries. Up by the stream, in the place where the bridge used to be, there are pale marks left by the ends of the plank where they have been placed on the grass. And up in the
Willow Grove the wind-blown willows are turning yellow, and there are black snails eating holes in the few sorrels that are left.
And suddenly you are overcome by a vast sense of grief, an endless feeling of sorrow that the Life Bridge has gone – and that Grima’s calf is to be killed – and that Merrit has wanted to set fire to herself. And that it will soon be winter and dark nights and perhaps the End of the World and Judgement Day as well, the day that comes when you least expect it, “like a thief in the night”…
And as you are on your own, you can just as well abandon yourself to your misery and allow free rein to your tears.
You threw yourself down in the wet grass, quite over-whelmed, with your face buried in the sleeves of your jersey and lay and surrendered to wordless distress.
But in the midst of your despair it was as though you saw a light, something like the glow from a lamp deep down in the darkness, or a lighthouse far out to sea, or a rising moon, and you whispered down in your wet jersey sleeve:
“Merrit, Merrit.”
***
Then a long time passes without Merrit.
You certainly catch sight of her now and then, but it is as though she no longer sees you. Or perhaps she sees you, but doesn’t really notice you, even when you meet and talk to each other.
She has other things on her mind. You still have hardly anything but her.
And the more distant she grows from you, the more you have to think about her and long for her to come back and be as she was before as on that occasion by the stream under the Life Bridge in the great, green, soughing summer.
The Concert
Grandmother and Merrit are planning something together, something very exciting. They play and sing every afternoon out in Andreasminde, practising and practising, so much so that Aunt Kaja has a headache and has to go around with cotton wool in her ears.
“It’s a pity for that girl that Mother bosses her about like this. Now the poor little thing’s being turned into an infant prodigy and concert singer, ’cos she’s ‘a future Jenny Lind’ now.”
The Tower at the Edge of the World Page 9