by Ida Jessen
“There’d be no excuse to miss the man who wrote Himmerland Tales and The Glacier.” He smiled. “What are you smiling at, Fru Bagge?”
“It’s nice to hear someone talk in such a way, that’s all.”
“Like what?”
“That there’d be no excuse. It’s so simply put.”
“Too simple for one such as yourself, perhaps?” he said softly.
“That’s not what I meant. But someone else might have said—”
We had reached the hall and were halted by the general hubbub. People stood putting on their coats and fell more or less silent as we appeared. For once, no one spoke to me, apart from the pastor and his wife, who speak to everyone. Later, it occurred to me that they perhaps found it hard to see me at the hotel with my husband being so poorly in the hospital. There is an uprightness among people in these parts that is near uncompromising and which embarrasses many, both those who nourish it and those who find themselves on its receiving end. I think they would like to relieve themselves of it in certain situations. They did not look unkindly upon me. On her way out, S. P. Carlsen’s wife leaned forward and gave me a little pat on the arm as she adjusted her headscarf.
I went into the restaurant to ask for a cup of tea and stood at the counter. Two young girls were busy laying tablecloths, setting the tables for the day after. Their round faces blushed with fatigue. Johannes V. Jensen and his wife were having soup over by one of the windows.
“It’s a rich soup, I will say,” I heard his wife comment. “Boiled from a good, fatty hen. The meatballs are nicely done too.”
“It’s half cold.” He abandoned his spoon in the bowl with a clatter.
“Yes, I was just about to say. Shall I ask them to heat it up again?”
No reply.
“You know how much good it does you to get something inside your stomach.”
“I’m not having any more.”
“It’s only starters. There’s roast pork.”
“No, I said.”
They fell silent. The great author turned to a newspaper. His wife had put her spoon down too by then, and sat in front of her barely touched soup staring out of the window with a glazed expression. All of a sudden she straightened up and called one of the serving girls over and asked for coffee and two pieces of plum cake with whipped cream, and at that same moment Carl Carlsen appeared.
Often I have seen him slinking around at the fringes, not because of shyness, but out of a wish not to be disturbed in a pursuit of which others are ignorant. It is easily mistaken for self-consciousness. People feel sorry for him and call out to him on the street if he comes cycling by. They think he can be warmed up and gladdened by company. In larger gatherings, he dashes about so as not to become stuck in one place and is here, there, and everywhere, for he has been well brought up and knows that he must conduct himself among others. I have never found it odder than the urge of others to blather on and on.
He approached Johannes V. Jensen directly with his camera against his stomach, announced his name and put out his hand. There was an authority about him, as if he had come to settle an account or book another reading.
“May I be permitted to take a photograph?” he asked.
Johannes V. Jensen put the newspaper down on the table.
“What newspaper are you from?” he asked.
When it transpired that Carl was not from any newspaper, Johannes V. Jensen lost interest and waved his hand in a gesture of annoyance, but Carl remained unaffected and asked if he might photograph the author’s spouse instead. I think Fru Jensen was rather surprised by the suggestion. She smiled hastily and glanced at her husband.
“Do as you wish,” he said. “As long as it’s away from the table.”
She was photographed by the French doors, with ruddy cheeks and her chin raised. But then all of a sudden a shyness came over her. My tea arrived, and I retired upstairs. A short time later, I heard the couple pass in the corridor.
Instead of retiring so swiftly I should have approached Johannes V. Jensen and said something complimentary. It would not have been difficult for me. I have read both The Fall of the King and The Glacier. It would have given him something else to scorn besides his wife. Scorn cannot be broken and cannot be softened, but merely diverted from those it hurts most, if only temporarily.
Stiff his gait on dreary field
As twigs his blackened toes
Beak to frozen kelp for yield
Of shellish scraps exposed.
At naked forest’s crown
The band of corpses frown
Trees cold that sway and creak
His asylum, bleak.
And abruptly this verse appears too, almost quite by itself. Yet I think of Fru Jensen, who laid out offerings in vain. Can one ask a person to show that they love you? Reason, that most faithful onlooker to the tribulations of others, says no.
But what say unreason?
Mark, the crow is canny.
Perhaps I shall sleep tonight. I think of Fru Lorentzen’s benevolent eyes. I think of Peter Carlsen, who spoke of his beloved Carl. I very much like that he said earns money, not gets.
But mark, the crow is canny
Ask the crow what he knows —
In flight he turns, and crafty,
Caws his nouse, scarcely slows:
Aye, speak of golden years!
Ha, kra, kra, time but sneers! —
And laughing, arrows higher
To cloud, the nigher.
October 16
“We telephoned all evening from six until ten. The lady from the exchange was up looking for you. Dr. Eriksen even drove to Thyregod to find out where you were. Where were you?”
“At the hotel,” I replied. “I took a room at the hotel.”
“You mean you were here all along?” she said. “If only we’d known.”
“I didn’t know myself until the last minute,” I said. I had no idea why she was talking to me in such a way.
She led me in to Dr. Eriksen, who stood up and put out his hand. He said Vigand died at half past nine last evening.
Simply died.
October 17
It is evening, I have no idea what the time is. All day people have come to the door with flowers and food. They don’t want to come in. Some knock and offer a few words. Others simply put what they have brought on the step and leave it for me to find when I go out, but I have hardly been out at all, apart from cycling up to the rectory to speak with Pastor Grell. I haven’t the inclination to look people in the eye, nor not to. I find myself in a state of shame. The word itself shames me as I write.
I was out on the step just before. The hour is so late now that all lights have been extinguished, including those of the sky. No stars are out, no moon over Thyregod. Not the slightest twinkle from Vester Farm’s water-logged field. At the foot of the hill lies the sleeping town. I am filled by a mad desire — not to cease to exist, but to be alone. To have no one come. No one look in on me. No kindness, no outstretched hands. What are they supposed to help me with? To realize how grateful I should be for their visits, now that I have no one else in the entire world?
Only the deepest ingratitude do I have to give them in return.
They sense and understand it. And thoughtful as they are, they leave their attentions on the step.
It is a still and overcast sky. There is coldness in it.
For supper this evening I had fried egg and a seasoned sausage with a slice of bread. I had looked forward to it, for it is the kind of food I have often longed for when cooking has seemed to me to be the most horrendous waste of time. I set the table, poured water into the glass and placed the napkin on my knee. But after only a mouthful or two, patience deserted me and I left the table. I spent most of the day pottering about the house, rummaging through drawers and cupboards
, only to forget what was in them the moment I turned away. I returned to the same drawers and cupboards several times over. Now the place is a mess, the living rooms, the bedroom, the study, all a terrible mess, but it is not enough.
Nurse Svendsen accompanied me over to the chapel yesterday. “I sat with him last evening,” she told me. “I thought someone should keep vigil.” She was pale and fatigued. When I asked, she told me she had not been to bed, but had been up all night. I squeezed her hand feebly. She opened the door for me and ushered me in, but did not follow. Candles had been lit around the coffin, and I stared at him. I can no longer recall what he looked like. I recall the candles, and Nurse Svendsen’s wearied and reverential expression, and thinking about it now I feel the urge to say: There you are, take his corpse. It’s all yours!
I went back to collect his things. Everything had been put in the suitcase. His shaving tackle, his pajamas, his dressing-gown. His fountain pen, toothbush, and underwear. His socks, and the slippers Johannes made for him just after we were married. I stood with them in my hands. Fine, hand-sewn slippers in tan, near-black leather. All packed meticulously by Nurse Svendsen.
“Where’s the letter?” I asked. She was in the disposal room.
“What letter?”
“You said he wrote something the other day.”
“Oh, you gave me a shock, appearing like that. All his papers are in the side pocket in the suitcase.”
“What side pocket? I couldn’t find anything.”
She went with me back into the empty room, where the bed had been washed down, folded together, and put aside against the wall. She bent down over the suitcase and indicated the side pocket with two fingers. “Here,” she said.
The envelope said Fru Bagge, the words written in his heavy, slanting hand.
My own letter wasn’t there.
I went back to the disposal room. “I can’t understand it,” I said. “Something seems to be missing.” She drew herself upright.
“Everything’s there, I’m certain of it.”
“I wrote a letter to my husband. It’s not there.”
“I haven’t seen anything,” she said, perturbed. “I don’t know quite where else it could be.”
“What about the bedside cabinet?”
“That was cleaned out some time ago. It would have been found. You’re welcome to look, of course.”
I looked, in the bedside cabinet and the cupboard too. While I was looking, Dr. Eriksen came in. “Your husband had an agreement with the cremation society,” he said. I had no idea, but pretended I did. Afterwards, all I wanted was to go home. It felt like everything was expended. I left as if in a state of disgrace. Anyway, I was in time for the train.
I arrived home to the freezing cold house, where I stumbled on the stairs with the peat box. The bricks spilled onto the cellar floor where they lie still. My dress: draped over a chair in the living room to dry. I made tea and wrapped myself up in blankets, then sat down in front of the tiled stove; it took half an hour for the room to warm up even barely. I lit the range in the kitchen, and the stove in the spare room. Standing in front of the open stove in the living room with a blanket over my shoulders, I read his letter. I reproduce it here while I can still recall the wording:
Everything is agreed with P. Møllergaard and the parish council. You’ve got three months to find a new home, and there should be enough for somewhere decent. Nothing fancy. You’ll have to do without Line. Rose Cottage is vacant. You’ll be fine.
VB.
P.S. I’ve sold the car to Dr. Eriksen.
I bent down and put a brick of peat on the fire. And then the letter. It would not catch to begin with; there was time to change my mind if I wanted, but the thought did not even occur to me.
Yet the fact remains, and I must never forget it, that he has provided for me and made sure that my dignity will not be compromised, unless of course I contrive to do so myself, and that he has made arrangements for me not to be evicted immediately, though naturally the parish council is already on the lookout for a new physician, who shall have to be put up in some dingy room and come and go from his consultations and treat the widow kindly, lift his hat and refrain from enquiring too inquisitively as to her habitational predicament, this new young doctor so eager to make a start, to marry and move into his own home.
A new home may be mine too.
He wrote that Rose Cottage is now vacant. It lies in the western end of the town, on a plot parcelled out from the farm called Herthasminde. Its nearest neighbour is Hedebjerg Farm, and not a lovelier place could be found in all the district. The house itself is of red brick. It is not big. There is a small yard with washing lines and outhouses. A pond where ducks might be kept, and a large garden with wind rushing in its trees. Only in that end of the town are there trees for shelter. We who live up here on the hill are as unfamiliar with shelter as those in the windblown high street below. I have often passed the cottage on my walks, and once, when Vigand asked where I had been, I told him about it, and there must have been something in my voice that he recalled. Vigand remembered such things. One morning, many years ago, I sat studying an advertisement for a dressing gown, while Vigand sat opposite reading the main section. I folded the newspaper around the picture when I stood up. At Christmas a couple of months later, his present to me was the same dressing gown. White with red stripes. To be honest, I had forgotten all about it by then. It was a luxury I had whispered in all privacy one morning, without for a moment imagining there to be even the remotest likelihood. And then there it was before my eyes, the wildest surprise on Christmas Eve, and I sprang up and threw my arms around him. “I believe that was the one you liked,” he said. I have it to this day. He often wanted to buy me a new one, and actually did on a couple of occasions. But my favorite is the striped one, the one from the newspaper advertisement, the one from that morning.
He has given me blouses, handbags, jewelry, hats. An umbrella with a varnished handle. Scarves, dresses, and boots. And all of the finest quality, far better than the cheap rubbish I have always bought for myself whenever I have been in need of something. When I met him I possessed neither style nor taste and could be happy for even the most inferior item. I never looked at the quality of the fabric, never noticed if a dress did not fit snugly across the shoulders or if the armhole was spoiled by a fold. Although he taught me to tell the difference between what was good and what was poor, my former habits remained, and on several occasions I came home from the sisters Clemmensen, beaming over a new dress, only for him to send me back with it. Once, the elder sister said to me: “I feel sorry for you, Fru Bagge.” Of course, it was herself she felt sorry for, because there she was thinking she had managed to sell me four summer frocks, only for me to come back with them an hour after we had stood in the fitting room in complete agreement, blushing and intimate, having admired the items for their fall and twirl and color, and then our entire conversation had been annulled. As soon as the words left her mouth she must have know they would have consequence. And indeed they did, for after that day I stopped buying their clothes altogether.
Their shop is still on the high street, but has since become a proper boutique with awnings outside and two big windows facing out. They have become stout, the both of them. Spinsters still. They have a weaver’s shop too, where they weave in the evenings and teach the young girls of the district. They weave tablecloths, mats, cushions, blankets. A display cabinet hangs on the wall outside with a changing selection of their wares.
One of the first things I did when I got home today was to unpack his suitcase. I put his pajamas and underwear in the laundry bin and resisted the urge I felt to bury my face in them. There are times when one must avoid becoming sentimental and muddling matters. I must do the washing as soon as possible. I put his shaving tackle in the bathroom cupboard: the razor, the soap in its porcelain bowl, the shaving brush. Only then did it occur to me th
at there was no change of clothes in the suitcase. He was lying in the coffin in his new grey suit, the one Heinesen the tailor had made for him in the spring, in his new trousers, waistcoat, and jacket. That lovely line of black buttons. Had he driven off to the hospital in his best suit the day he admitted himself? There has been no messenger here to ask for any grave clothes, I know it myself, even if I do remember poorly.
Did he drive off dressed for his funeral?
All of a sudden I remember nothing and recall him neither saying goodbye nor leaving.
I have written to Line and informed her I can no longer afford to keep her on. I put it as nicely as I could.
* * *
Vigand was in every respect of the opinion that life and death were a yoke one had to bear without a sulk. Griping was something he tolerated as little in himself as in others. His motto: “That’s life!”
He was known for scolding his patients mercilessly. It was an annoyance to him that they should come with their complaints and ailments, and he had no wish to encourage them to demean themselves further. Could they not bear a predicament with dignity? No one has ever received a visit from Dr. Bagge without being raked over the coals for it, people would say, before our getting married prevented them from saying such things to my face. But I know it not to be true. I always have.
And if he was harsh on others, he was no less so on himself. He never told me he was ill, and I have no idea how long he kept it from me, but I have seen him gulping down pills on several occasions in his consulting room. Then came the vomiting. When in September I eventually aired concern, since by that time he had become visibly thin, it had happened gradually during the course of the summer, and I could not help but pass comment, he played it down. It was nothing, he said, his face grey and limp: “Feeling a bit tired, that’s all.”
“I’ve heard you being sick,” I said. “And not just once either.”
“Perhaps you listen in on me shitting as well?” he barked, suddenly enraged. “Do you want me to keep a record every time I defecate?” I have often wished I could laugh, and I am certain it was what both of us wanted more than anything in our marriage, and that it would have made our life together so very much easier. Perhaps laughter might even have coaxed forth some measure of intimacy, and with it other things of which I have no conception in my present state. But I have never been capable of a quick retort. It is a weakness of mine, perhaps my greatest, and one that I cannot hope to overcome, that I so easily take offense. Not that I ever say as much. No, my offense reveals itself by slowly seeping from my voice, which is otherwise so mild.