The Tower at the Edge of the World

by William Heinesen

  The concert is to be given out in the Factory. The money it earns is to go to the Cup Woman and the Cup Man, the two of them being old but unable to die and not having anything to live on either.

  It is not only Merrit who is to sing; Uncle Hans and the Ydun girls’ choir are going to as well, and Pastor Evaldsen’s male voice chorus. And there is going to be an “orchestra” and “tableaux” and other exciting things. And Grandmother is going to contribute to it all with her piano, so she has plenty to see to at this time.

  But even so, Grandmother is in her element.

  “If all goes well, this will be the best evening’s entertainment we’ve had up here yet.”

  One of the halls in the Factory is decorated with flags and streamers. A platform has been built at the end of the hall, and Grandmother’s old piano is fetched and lifted up on to it. That makes it go out of tune and it has to be retuned, but the Ferryman can do that because he’s got “such a wonderful ear”.

  Merrit is standing at the entrance to the Andreasminde garden, holding her music case.

  “Aren’t you dreadfully excited, Merrit?”

  She looks at you with cold eyes as though she doesn’t really understand you.

  “Excited? Oh, you’re thinking of the concert. No-o. I’m used to all this by now. I suppose you’ll be coming to hear us, Amaldus?”

  No, Merrit is so strangely aloof and so grown up that you feel endlessly little and foolish.

  Then suddenly she smiles and there comes a warm look in her eyes.

  “Come here, Amaldus, I want to whisper something to you.”

  Then you feel her mouth and her breath against your ear.

  “I’m terribly afraid. And I’m upset as well. ’Cos do you know what: your Aunt Kaja says that I’ve got a voice like a tin whistle!”

  “What’s a tin whistle?”

  “It’s one of those like your Uncle Prosper plays for his ducks, you know, the little round one with flowers on.”

  Then you want to say something to console her, but it is not so easy.

  “Well, Merrit, you don’t need to take any notice of that.”

  “No, ’cos Kaja’s simply envious. And do you know what Lieutenant Keil says? He says I sing like a lark.”

  “Well, so you do, Merrit.”

  Then Merrit gives a little wave like a grown up and is again a stranger, a bird of passage.

  ***

  In one of Grandmother’s hidey-holes in the upper loft in Andreasminde, I (Amaldus the Reliver and Relater) recently (while searching for something quite different) found a large, faded poster containing the entire programme from that concert in which Merrit made her public debut. The charming poster was done (in elegant black lettering) by Selimsen the artist, while a whole herbarium of flowers had been pasted on to decorate it.

  The programme is reproduced below, along with Grandmother’s pencilled notes on who each performer was here in parenthesis:

  1. Prologue.

  (Bergh, the headmaster.)

  2. Arise all things that God hath made, traditional melody. Denmark, Denmark, sacred sound, Weyse. Swedish folk song melody.

  (Male voice chorus.)

  3. The Princess sat in her Maiden’s Bower, H. Kierulf. Before your foot I bow down deep. Tenor soloists with humming voices.

  (Hans.)

  4. Intermezzo from Cavalleria Rusticana, Mascagni. Horn and piano.

  (The Ferryman.)

  5. Comedy Overture No. 1: Keler Béla. Salon orchestra.

  (Violin and viola: The Ferryman’s two sons. Flute: Olsen, the bookbinder. Cello: Platen. Horn: The Ferryman. Drums and castanets: Bærentsen the victualler.)

  6. Folo Fola Blakken, Edvard Grieg. Aladdin’s Lullaby; Heise. Soprano solos.

  (Merrit.)

  7. Tableau I: Saul and David.

  (Mr. Bergh and Lieutenant Keil)

  8. Tableau II: Stanley meets Livingstone in Africa.

  (Selimsen and Degn, the bookkeeper.)

  9. Tableau III: The Girls from Southern Jutland.

  (The Judge’s two daughters, Minna and Jenny.)

  10. Androcles and the Lion, Drachmann. Recitation.

  (Pastor Evaldsen.)

  11. Cherubino’s aria from The Marriage of Figaro, Mozart. Soprano solo.

  (Merrit, undoubtedly the high spot of the evening.)

  12. Eighteen juggling and disappearance tricks.

  (Keil.)

  13. Hush, friends, Bacchus is sleeping, Bellman. Canon: My stomach is giving me terrible pain, Weyse.

  (Ydun Girls Choir.)

  14. May peace now dwell o’er town and land, Weyse

  (Mixed choir.)

  And, while we are at it: Grandmother’s comments written on the back of the programme:

  Oh, Heavens above, we’ve done it now. And it all went quite well, and some of it was really quite good even though (as always) there was something wrong with almost everything, a couple of times quite disconcerting, but never entirely scandalous.

  Hans was a little too emotional in his singing (unfortunately, he had quite obviously already had a drop to drink!) and the humming voices were too loud. As always, the Ferryman played his horn splendidly. The comedy overture, heaven help us, was only so-so and far too loud and a little uneven, and then, naturally (!) it happened that Platen, who is such a heavy person, had a chair that was far too rickety for him and he broke it when he sat on it and fell slowly over backwards, holding his cello, to the accompaniment of a dreadful sound of splintering wood. But, thank God, Keil and the Ferryman caught hold of him so that neither he nor his instrument came to any harm. But it caused quite a disturbance, and there was a certain amount of justified laughter in the hall, and then we had to do it all over again from the beginning.

  The tableaux were elegantly arranged by Selimsen, but here, too, things went wrong, for King Saul, played by the headmaster, whose noble shape otherwise suited the figure so well, had a fit of sneezing; that naturally gave rise to laughter, and Bergh ought to have taken that in good part instead of sitting there glaring at the audience and looking hurt. But Stanley and Livingstone were both good, indeed almost perfect, and the jungle setting and the “natives” (people from the warehouse and the Rømer Concern) were very convincing! And the Judge’s daughters were charming as “The Girls from Southern Jutland”, and Pastor Evaldsen’s reading was really moving.

  But the best was undoubtedly my little Merrit. A lot of handkerchiefs were taken out as she sang Aladdin’s Lullaby, and just imagine: in Cherubino’s aria she managed all the modulations without blinking; it only went wrong once (the low D towards the end was dead).

  There was a great deal of applause and enthusiasm. After the concert, Pastor Evaldsen came and shook hands with us (and also with Merrit’s parents) and said that Merrit was a girl of whose ear for music we could expect great things. I was so pleased for them. And then there was the most beautiful gift for Merrit; it came from Platen – a gold ring with an emerald set in it, just think, a genuine emerald!

  Afterwards, there was a reception at which punch was available for all, but I had to go to bed early, for I was dead tired.

  ***

  As I sit now making copies of these comments by Grandmother, I can clearly recall the scent of incense that filled the big, rather chilly factory hall in which this unforgettable entertainment took place.

  This incense was an idea that came from Selimsen, the artist; it was intended to drown the persistent smell of discarded fish and train oil that filled this magic castle, a relic from its former time as a factory for the production of fish balls. To achieve this, some incense burners had been established, that is to say barrels and casks decorated with coloured paper and filled with heather and dried moss, bitter orange peel, bay leaves and other things that could be burned to produce a singular smell that many people found unpleasant and disturbing, but which we children thought great fun. And when at the same time I recall the music, I have it all before me as vividly as can be wished: the stage d
ecorated with flags, those taking part all dressed in their Sunday best, the gentlemen with starched collars, messrs Berg and Degn even in dress coat and morning coat respectively, Grandmother in an old-fashioned but not unbecoming get-up with a sort of modest bustle.

  But dominating it all there was Merrit, in a white summer dress (also in a rather old-fashioned cut, probably found in Grandmother’s wardrobe), with blue ribbons in her hair and a somewhat shy smile in her big stare eyes… and the thrill that went down my back when the voice I knew so well was heard in song and so became something quite different, something that was not addressed only to me or to Jutta or Little Brother, but, all those people who were listening attentively and open-mouthed, a whole audience of strangers, indeed the entire town.

  It was a transformation like the one that took place with Hannibal’s kite when it got away from the earth and hung up there high in the clouds playing its remarkable celestial game in the blue of the sky…

  ***

  I was allowed to see Merrit’s diamond ring the very next day when I came across her in the garden at Andreasminde. The green stone looked like an eye, it didn’t glitter, but there was a deep, sleepy glow to it, as if it were coming from far away or deep down.

  “And do you know what Platen said? He said it was an old ring to bring you good luck and grant you a wish, but that you can only make one wish in your life so you have to wait before making it.”

  “Well, in that case you’ll have to wait.”

  “Yes, and I’m going to as well. Have you ever seen a precious stone before, Amaldus?”

  “No.”

  “Well then, you’ve seen one now. Oh, but I’ve got to hurry.”

  And she did her grown-up wave and disappeared through the garden gate.

  When, Last Night, I, Amaldus the Aged, put out my Writing Lamp at about Two O’Clock

  there was just a clear, starry pause in the everlasting rain and sleet of this January, and the sight of Sirius, low over the sea, wonderfully sparkling and huge, put me into a state of ecstasy as it had so often done before.

  This, the diamond-like nocturnal sun of the ocean, which sends us its vital greeting from distant times and Space: all the colours of the spectrum reside in its ecstatic glints, from the coldest icy green to the most intense red, the red of a drop of blood, and if the weather is calm, as it was last night, it reflects its radiance in the ocean’s waves.

  ***

  Star and eye do not share the same time, but they have their secret meeting place beyond time, and never did mortal eye have a more splendid gift than the light from Sirius, this star of all stars.

  The Lunar Eclipse

  Then came the winter that will always be fixed in my memory as “the winter with the lunar eclipse”.

  Short, dark days. Well, they weren’t really all dark, indeed the odd one was even so bright that the venetian blinds had to be lowered in the classroom where Miss Gudelund was taking her lessons in “general knowledge” so that she shouldn’t have the sun right in her eyes when sitting at her desk.

  In Miss Gudelund’s general knowledge lessons we had so far only learned about life in the distant country called Denmark from which she came – about the villages with their churches and village ponds, about the forests with their beech trees and birdsong, about Kronborg Castle and other splendid old castles, and about Copenhagen with its towers and spires, all shown on big paper rolls that could be unfolded on the wall. But one day there was a globe on Miss Gudelund’s desk, a most magnificent toy, a wonderful thing to see. There was a gasp of delight and surprise throughout the classroom when the teacher gave the globe a push so that it turned round on its stand like a top. She allowed it to whirl around until it stopped of its own accord. Then she spoke words that were mysterious and which I have never since forgotten:

  “Well, children, what you can see here is the Earth, the planet on which we live.”

  We had naturally already heard something about the world being round, though without really attaching much significance to it, but now we could see it before our eyes: the Earth is round and it floats in an enormous circle round the Sun, which is also round, but much, much bigger, as much bigger than the Earth as an orange is bigger than a pea.

  Yes, these were mighty words, historical words; but we small denizens of the Earth thought at first that it was only a joke, for the teacher was a cheerful and rather mischievous lady who liked to shake us out of our inattentiveness by means of droll and surprising remarks. But then we could usually see a twinkle in her eye, and there was no twinkle today.

  She gave the globe another push and made it turn, but more slowly this time. Then she went on in a gentle, calm voice:

  “You see this is how it turns as it travels round the Sun, and we are with it on that journey, including you, Amaldus! Yes, including you, because I can see from the look on your face that you think I’m having you on. But if you don’t believe the Earth is round you can go outside at eleven o’clock this evening and see that it is. Because this evening there is going to be a lunar eclipse.”

  Then our teacher goes on to explain what a lunar eclipse, an eclipse of the Moon, really is and she draws lines and rings on the blackboard, but in the midst of it all she becomes strangely tired and wipes it all out again.

  “No, I can’t expect you to understand any of this at your age, and in any case that doesn’t matter. But you really should go out and see the eclipse if the sky’s clear, as I think it will be and then you’ll see something that happens only very rarely.”

  ***

  “Is the Earth round?”

  Mother gives me an apprehensive and rather worried look.

  “What are you asking that for, dear? Yes, of course the world is round. But I don’t really know anything about that. Except that it was God who made it round when He created it. You’d better ask your Father.”

  Father nods and puts down his pen on the edge of the inkwell. Then he pushes his chair back a little from the big writing desk and sits there for a moment, stretches and yawns. This means that he is in a good mood and is “relaxing”.

  “You want to know whether the Earth’s round? Yes, it certainly is. And then it revolves around itself and that’s why we have night and day. And then it goes in a ring around the Sun, and that’s why we have the seasons.”

  Then he gives you a gentle smile and tugs your hair as though it was all just empty talk and some kind of a waggish idea.

  “You look as though you simply don’t believe that the Earth is round, Amaldus. But if the weather’s good at about eleven o’clock this evening, you ‘ll be able to see how round it is for yourself, because we’ll be able to see its shadow on the Moon! Look, let me show you how it works. Find something or other that’s round, a ball or a ball of string.”

  “An orange?”

  “Yes, an orange would be all right. And then this ashtray.”

  He puts the round, yellow ashtray on its edge and moves the lighted table lamp a little.

  “See, the lamp’s the Sun and the ashtray’s the Moon, and then this orange can be the Earth. And now the Sun shines on the Moon and makes it light up. But here comes the Earth rolling along and casting its shadow on the Moon, like this, and you can see how round the shadow is. But perhaps we’ll be able to see it all much better this evening.”

  Then Father puts the Sun back in its place and takes the Moon down from the sky, knocks his pipe out on its yellow surface and flicks the orange: “Just you peel the Earth and eat it, Amaldus, and then we’ll be shot of that for a bit.”

  ***

  Then evening comes with a clear sky and a Moon that is red as it rises, just as it needs to be.

  From the veranda steps at Andreasminde there is a good view of the open sky over the sea. There is still no shadow to be seen on the clear Moon that is reflected in waters that are alive with lines formed by the currents. It is Uncle Prosper’s birthday, and in the dining room Aunt Nanna and her sisters have set the table with gilt-edged cups an
d a large yellow sponge cake. It was made with lots of duck-egg yolks, and the layer of meringue made from the whites is adorned with a host of apricot halves like little shiny moons. Uncle Prosper has arranged this himself. He is sitting in a rocking chair, puffing away cheerfully at his long pipe; he is enjoying himself and looking forward to the cake.

  This lunar eclipse is taking its time.

  Then Grandmother sits down at the piano, where the candles are flickering in the draught from the open veranda door, and plays a cheerful piece of music. (A rondo by Schubert – and when you recall it in your mind you still have a clear sense of this entire situation from more than half a century ago: the warm sitting room with the table set for chocolate, the tremendous cold shudder from the desolate moonlit heavens – and a huge and painful longing in your soul because the lighted candles on the piano make you think of Merrit!)

  But now things are starting to happen up there in the sky.

  Father stands out on the veranda steps with his big telescope to his eye.

  “Now you can see some fun. The Earth’s shadow’s starting to eat the Moon now.”

  Aunt Nanna (cold and with teeth chattering): “Oh no.”

  Mother (wrapped in a light-coloured shawl): “Oh dear, yes. I don’t like it either.”

  You feel her arm on your shoulder. The homely smell of her woollen shawl is mixed with the cold breath of air from the sea. The Moon looks as though it would like to get away from the Earth’s shadow, but it’s too slow on the move, for the huge shadow has already settled on it.

  Mother grasps your arm and shudders and doesn’t like this shadow of the Earth; she can’t bear the thought.

  So we stand and watch it happen out there in the depths. It’s a dreadful event, something like a murder. And yet it’s nothing, simply a game in the air, like when Hannibal’s kite plays its games in the sky. But far, far greater, so great that it leaves a heart-stopping sense of emptiness in your head and right down into your stomach and then on down into your feet as you stand there on a round Earth that is floating freely in the heavens…