The Tower at the Edge of the World

by William Heinesen

  “Have you ever seen that before, Amaldus? No, ’cos no one but her has eyes like that. And look here.”

  Hannibal suddenly pulls at Vesta’s sweater, making it roll up like a Venetian blind, but she quickly pulls it down again and knocks him with her knee so that he takes his fingers off her again. But they both laugh; they actually curl up with laughter.

  “Well, he saw them all right, Vesta; didn’t you, Amaldus?”

  “See what?”

  “Oh, come off it.”

  Vesta sits with her eyes closed and her mouth open and is a little tired of laughing.

  “No, but off you go, Amaldus, ’cos you’ve been here long enough now; hasn’t he Hannibal?”

  “Yes, you’d better go now, Amaldus, ’cos Vesta’s come over all…”

  You don’t hear what it is Vesta has come all over, for she has taken hold of Hannibal’s head and is holding her hand pressed against his mouth.

  Then you leave and stand for a moment dazzled by the sun and its vast reflection on the water, shaken and confused by what you have seen. For you did see them all right, even if it only lasted for such a brief moment that it was almost nothing. You saw them clearly for a second – two live globes with something red at the middle.

  “Hello, Amaldus,” – there comes the sound of a cheerful voice behind you – it’s Harriet, the Numerator’s sandy-haired daughter. She smiles at you showing a row of big teeth in her freckled face.

  “Are you waiting for Hannibal?”

  “No.”

  She points her thumb behind you at the little window in the boathouse loft: “Have you been up there? Then you know whether Vesta’s there?”

  Harriet’s eyes are dark – greenish blue – like beryl. Confused, you stare at her breasts swelling up beneath the frizzy jersey. They are bigger than Vesta’s.

  “Eh, Amaldus? Why don’t you answer me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes, what do you mean?”

  “She’s up there.”

  Harriet shakes her head and gives you a gently surprised smile with her beryl eyes.

  “Heavens above, you do look strange, what’s the matter with you?”

  And she hurries on.

  The Path of Sin

  Then some time elapses, perhaps a couple of weeks, perhaps a month.

  It’s the dark winter days around the solstice, and an agonising twilight dominates your room as well as your mind, a harrowing ambivalence: on the one hand a crushing spiritual fear resulting from an increasing lack of confidence in God’s goodness and power, indeed at times even a straightforward doubt about His existence. On the other hand a ravenous attraction to the temptations of this world, the promising mira-bilia of grown-up life, the foaming, inflammatory mysteries of love life.

  One day, you are then again exposed to one of these external events which, although everyday and ordinary enough, you remember as unique and lastingly epoch-making…

  It’s Saturday afternoon, the day before Christmas Eve, and Hannibal is going to his secret place in the boathouse loft.

  “Come with me Amaldus, we’ve got something to show you.”

  “What?”

  “You’ll see.”

  “Yes, but then tell me what it is. Is it something to do with Vesta?”

  “No, it’s something else. Come on.”

  “No, I don’t think I want to.”

  “Oh, you’re just scared, that’s what it is.”

  You won’t have that, and so you join Hannibal, full of misgivings, but also with a feeling as though an uncontrollable sparkler was going off in your heart.

  It’s pitch dark up in the tiny loft, but the sound of giggling emerges from the gloom. It can’t be coming from Vesta alone, so there must be another girl there as well, perhaps several.

  You stand at the top step of the narrow stairs, hesitant and embarrassed. Then you feel a pair of hands grasp yours and pull at you – you can feel they are not Hannibal’s rough paws but sticky, soft girl’s hands tugging at you and trying to get you up through the trapdoor. For a moment you think of running away, but you can nevertheless not bring yourself to liberate yourself from these, eager, thin hands and so you chance it with a beating heart and tightened throat.

  Then Hannibal lights a little Christmas candle; faces appear out of the gloom; big shadowy wings unfold on the knot-filled beams below the sloping wall, and subdued but intimate laughter is directed at you from three triumphant mouths – Hannibal’s, Vesta’s and Harriet’s, for it is her hands that have pulled you up through the trapdoor. She is smiling at you with warm beryl eyes.

  Hannibal is sitting on the “sofa” with his arm round Vesta’s waist.

  “And now! We’ll put the candle out again, ’cos we don’t want all that light.”

  He blows the light out.

  “Comfort him a bit, Harriet, ’cos he’s awfully afraid of the dark.”

  “No, I’m sure he’s not. You aren’t, are you? Amaldus?”

  You can feel Harriet’s breath against your ear. Her arms around your neck. Her whispering mouth against your cheek. The enticing scent of her hair. The slight pressure of her breasts against your jersey. Her wheedling voice, for she is talking to you as though you were a kitten or a little lamb.

  “Amaldus. It’s only me, you know. Oh, what’s wrong, Amaldus? Are you going?”

  You have gently moved her arms from your neck and have drawn back, for you are really afraid, indeed you aren’t far from tears because of an undignified feeling of perturbation and nervousness.

  Giggling from the sofa. Vesta: “Is he going?”

  Hannibal: “Yes, ’cos I told you he was frightened. He’s never kissed a girl before.”

  No – frightened? You weren’t having any of that. And suddenly, you really aren’t frightened. You grasp Harriet’s hands, hold her slender figure tight and kiss her – on her neck, her eyelids, her mouth, all over her face until she is almost out of breath.

  “Amaldus! Oh no! Listen – you mustn’t. Not like that.”

  Hannibal’s voice from the darkness: “Well that got him going. Just you carry on, Amaldus.”

  Trembling, you gasp for breath; you have pushed your hand up under her jersey and are squeezing one of her breasts while still kissing her mouth, tempestuously, ceaselessly.

  “Oh no,” comes the sound of her voice, this time no longer subdued, but loud, almost scolding in tone: “Not like that. No more. You’re strangling me.”

  Then you suddenly let go and push her away. You are trembling all over; there are tears in your eyes, and you have to fight to subdue an idiotic sob.

  Harriet (out of breath and complaining): “Light the candle, Hannibal.”

  “What the hell are you two up to?”

  Hannibal jumps down from the sofa, but before he manages to light a match you are out through the trapdoor and hurrying down the ladder, for you don’t want them to see that you are more or less crying. It has been like the dream of the Hanging Girl – you’re just about dying from shame and fright and a sense of something ignominious and unclean.

  It’s pouring with rain; you hurry home through the empty alleyways near the harbour, overcome with sorrow and regret, but still possessed by memories of the captivating scent of her hair and skin and breath and the soft curves of her breasts in the palm of your hand. A sad melody runs through your head, a couple of lines from an old hymn you learned when a small child:

  O gentle God, to Thee we pray,

  O keep us from the path of sin today.

  “Amaldus. Have you gone to bed? You’re not poorly, are you?”

  It is your mother. She comes and sits down on the edge of the bed and places a flat hand on your forehead. You shrink beneath her caresses, and for the first time in your life you wish she would go to hell.

  “Does it hurt anywhere?”

  “No.”

  “Don’t you want your supper?”

  “No, thank you.”

  “Hm.”

  This clos
ed sound, hm – you sense what it means. It means that in some mysterious way she knows everything; she has guessed and worked it all out. She gets up with a sigh, but without asking any more questions.

  “Have a good night’s sleep, Amaldus. You’ll get over it.”

  You didn’t get over it; it got worse.

  You have to make an effort and play a part to ensure that no one sees anything unusual about you; but you daren’t look Mother in the eye. Perhaps Harriet has told everybody; perhaps the shameful affair is already known all over town.

  On Christmas Eve, a dark, foggy day, you go to find Hannibal down in the harbour; he has just rowed his skipper and first mate ashore from the moored motorboat and is on his way home with a canvas bag over his shoulder.

  “I’m glad I met you, Amaldus, ’cos I’ve got something very important to say to you.”

  “Oh, what about?”

  “About Harriet. Come over here, we’ll sit on this log.”

  Hannibal throws the bag down. He has adopted the air of a chieftain today and looks serious and authoritative and it makes you shudder.

  “Tell me first what you did to her, Amaldus.”

  “What do you mean, did?”

  “I mean, you got hold of her somewhere and tore her and made her bleed.”

  “I did? No.”

  “Well, you bit her or something.”

  “No, I didn’t bite her. Why are you asking? Was she bleeding?”

  “No, I don’t say she was bleeding. But you did something or other, for she was down on the floor crying after you went. Oh well, perhaps she was only crying because you buzzed off. What did you do? ’Cos she’s absolutely crazy about you, quite daft. Understand? Well, you mustn’t leave her in the lurch, but do the same as I’ve done with Vesta and get engaged to her. But then you’ll have to be careful and not make a fool of yourself, ’cos she says you’re the sort that can easily get a girl into trouble.”

  “What do you mean, trouble.”

  “Well, you fiddle about with them and then they’re going to have a kid – like Dolly Rose with our uncle. For with all due respect to him, he’s a clumsy twit when it comes to girls.”

  Hannibal gets up and swings the bag over his shoulder.

  “You understand, Amaldus, that I’m only saying all this to you to warn you, ’cos you’ve still got a lot to learn, such a lot. And you’re welcome to come up in my loft with Harriet, but then you must promise me to behave decently and not like a hungry wolf. Promise? Yes or no? Why don’t you say anything?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. ’Cos I’ll tell you something important: I’m responsible for both you and for her, and I won’t run away from that. And then just you think on that, Harriet’s a decent girl, and it’s brave of her to risk coming up into our loft, ’cos her father the Numerator’s a terribly strict man, and do you know: sometimes when he’s angry, he beats both her and her brother with a swab. Well, shall we say we’ll get together on the evening of the twenty-eighth at eight o’clock, eight sharp, up in our den? And I’ll make sure Harriet is there as well so you can apologise and explain yourself to her.”

  Young Pain

  On Christmas Eve you slipped out for a while and climbed up on The Window Man’s turf roof, where you had a good view of the lighted windows in the Numerator’s house in Step Street. You sat up there, hidden in the grass trying to catch a glimpse of Harriet through your father’s telescope, but all you could see was confused shadows against the yellowing roller blinds with their prints of Rosenborg Castle and the Round Tower. So you sat there in the raw south wind that was blowing in from the sea and shivered, overwhelmed by the thought that you would soon be meeting again and perhaps become engaged like Hannibal and Vesta.

  In the afternoon of the 27th, you had made up your mind not to keep the agreement with Hannibal. But when evening came, you couldn’t resist tiptoeing out to the Bight and standing hidden in a corner to look up at the little window in the boathouse gable.

  There was a gentle thaw that evening. The inspection ship the Neptune was out in the roads, reflecting its lights and lanterns in the dark waters. Now Harriet was surely up in the den waiting for you. Perhaps she was crying with longing, and that would really be a pity. You imagined how Vesta and Hannibal were laughing at her because she had been “stood up”.

  So the upshot of it all was that with a heart overflowing with the most delectable sense of pity and intoxicated with wild anticipation you slipped into the boatshed and, as though in delirium, you climbed up the narrow ladder leading to the loft…

  Hannibal was there alone.

  He was sitting on the edge of the sofa, leaning forward, with his legs wide apart and with a dead cigarette hanging from his lips. The candle, which was lit on the table, flickered in the draft from the open trapdoor so that his gigantic shadow moved on the sloping wall as though in exasperation.

  “Shut the trapdoor, you idiot.”

  “Haven’t they come yet?”

  No reply.

  “But it’s well past eight o’clock.”

  Silence. Only the sound of waves lapping the shore.

  “But I thought…”

  “Yes, but you’re a silly idiot.”

  Hannibal managed to light his cigarette; he drew his legs up and lay there puffing clouds of smoke in the air.

  Then he started talking, slowly and in a broken voice, as though he didn’t care whether he was understood or not.

  “Well, Amaldus. As for Harriet, she just a quite ordinary bit of cheap fluff, and besides that she’s a mere baby; she’s only a schoolgirl, so you simply don’t need to bother your head about her, and besides, you can be glad you didn’t get engaged to her, ’cos that would just have meant a load of trouble. But it’s different with Vesta, ’cos she’s a grown up girl and we (and here Hannibal’s voice broke a little) we’ve mixed our blood like you and I did that time. Well, I’m telling you everything as it is, and I am relying on you to be my true friend and not to go around gossiping.”

  Long silence. Waves lapping the shore. The distant sound of oars. Still further away the distant sound of music from the Temperance Association dance hall.

  Hannibal gets up on his elbow and through the clouds of smoke stares at the flickering flame of the Christmas candle.

  “Do you know where they’ve gone? It’s not difficult to guess. They’ve gone to the dance. Do you get it? And they’re not coming here this evening at all. They’re not going to come here any more.”

  “But how can you be so sure of that?”

  Hannibal makes a sweeping gesture with his hand. “Because Vesta’s said so herself. Can you keep a secret,

  Amaldus?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I can tell you it’s all off between her and me. She was here yesterday evening – no, she didn’t come up. She just stood down there and shouted up through the trap door and said that it was all over between us for good now. And do you know why? Because she’s gone crazy on one of the sailors from the Neptune. He’s the cook’s mate. I know him. He’s a silly idiot and a dreadful show-off. And he’s a shrimp as well. I could make mincemeat of him, and I might do that as well. Or blow the pair of them up.”

  Hannibal flicked the evil-smelling cigarette end away and stubbed it out under his shoe. Then he sat down again on the edge of the sofa and sat leaning forward, all morose with his face hidden in his hands. He was sniffing a little. But suddenly he got up as though he had made a sudden decision. He climbed up on the sofa and took hold of an oblong package that lay hidden in an old bag on the rafter beneath the sloping roof. It was the maroon.

  “Have you still got that, Hannibal?”

  “Of course.”

  “Is there real gunpowder in it?”

  “Yes, of course, what the hell do you think otherwise? Do you think I’ve been lying?”

  “Yes, but Hannibal…”

  Hannibal gave a bitter laugh, but there was no sign of a smile.

  “Never in my life di
d I think she’d have to suffer for it.”

  “What do you mean by suffer for it, Hannibal? Are you going to blow her up, or what?”

  “Blow her up? This evening? Now you’re talking like the silly idiot you are.”

  “Yes, but you said ‘suffer for it’. That’s what you said.”

  “Did I say that? Oh no, I could never make myself do that. I don’t wish her any harm. I only wish her well.”

  Hannibal sits with the maroon on his knees, stroking the dreadful bomb as though it were a kitten.

  “No, honestly, I don’t wish her any harm, not the least little bit. I only wish her well.”

  “Well, what then?”

  Hannibal climbs up again and carefully pushes the maroon back into place.

  “I don’t wish him any harm either. Him, the cook’s mate. I just wish them both well.”

  Silence and curious strangled sniffing.

  Then he gets up again and raises his threatening fists up in the air. He has once more assumed his old chieftain’s look.

  “You see, Amaldus, my only true friend. This man standing here has the power to crush and destroy and pulverise them both – not even only them, but the entire Temperance Association building, where they’re dancing and carrying on without the least suspicion. But he’s not going to, for he doesn’t wish harm on anyone. Never forget that I said those words, Amaldus. One day when I’m dead and gone, perhaps when I’m lying at the bottom of the sea, you’ll remember what I said this evening. Promise?”

  “Yes, Hannibal, I promise.”

  “That’s good, Amaldus. Let’s go now. Come on.”

  “Come where?”

  “Come on.”

  ***

  The sounds of cheerful dance music and the hum of many voices emerges from the illuminated open windows of the Temperance Association. In the shadow beneath the stairs there are two drunken men taking it in turns to drink from a bottle.

  “Here, Amaldus.”

  Hannibal has clambered up some railings from which it is possible to get hold of the eaves of a small outbuilding and swing up onto the roof. There, you can lie and look straight into the thronging dance hall. We lie on our stomachs, hidden in the dry winter’s grass, lying completely still and watching. The dancing couples can clearly be seen, one by one, as they pass the open windows. We know almost all of them, all except the foreign sailors. But there is no sign of Vesta and Harriet.