by Ida Jessen
He lost his appetite. He continued making his rounds until long into the evenings, but normally he would eat when he came home. That stopped. I sliced cold meat for him and baked little puddings, chopped kale and made grated carrot with whipped cream and sugar to sneak some vitamins inside him. “Your cooking’s so bloody bland these days,” he said.
“My cooking’s the same as it’s always been,” I told him. He gave me a look. It said: Can you not bear to be criticized?
No, often I could not.
His last days before he was admitted to the hospital were spent in his consulting room, unless he was out on his rounds. His patients were few on the final day. He was required only to make a trip to Dørken, and in the evening he was called out to a birth in Vesterlund. Apart from that he was there all day. I made him coffee. Supper on a tray. But the door was locked and he would not let me in. I put the tray outside the door, and when I collected it again the food had a crust on it. Only the coffee did he take in, expelling the cup back to the sideboard in the corridor again when he was finished. There were wide, angry marks on the cup where his lips had touched, and he had spilled from the pot onto the napkin. He banged about behind the door. Drawers were pulled out and slammed shut, instruments clattered in their bowls. He groaned and remonstrated with himself. His words were single syllables: “No!” and “Clean hands!” I rattled the handle:
“Vigand!” I shouted. “Let me in!”
“I haven’t the time!”
“I’ll go for help, if you don’t let me in.”
He did not let me in. I did not fetch help. He knew that the only threats to issue from my mouth were the empty kind. Who could have put Dr. Bagge in his place?
Few indeed. P. Møllergaard. P. Carlsen. In all discretion they could have done so. No one would ever have known.
But Vigand had not lost his mind. In his instance, the mind was the last thing to go after everything else came to a halt. His limbs could wither, but his senses still clung to his wretched body. Even his sleep in those final days at the hospital was canny. I always had the feeling he woke up as soon as I had gone.
I stayed in the house all day without once going out. I don’t know how I passed the time. There was an embroidery, I imagine. Domestic matters to be sorted out with Line. Silverware to be polished. That was the day I suggested she take some days off and go home to visit her mother. She left as it was getting dark. I stood on the step and waved to her with a sense of relief, watching her figure grow smaller as she made her way to the station.
I went back inside and closed the door. Sat down in the living room without switching on the light. Then the telephone rang. We have two, one in the consulting room and one in the living room, besides a system of bells throughout the house, including outside, so that any call may be heard even from the garden. I picked up the receiver and heard Vigand’s voice, he had already answered, so I put it down again. Shortly afterwards, he was standing in the doorway with his bag in his hand and told me he had been called out to a birth in Vester, and everything was at once returned to normal. He asked for a sandwich and I went out into the kitchen and made him one and opened a bottle of beer. He ate at the oilcloth-covered table in the kitchen, I sat down on the bench and we chatted as if nothing had happened. He said he might be some time and that there was no need to wait up. He patted my hand as he got to his feet, and a few moments later the exhaust spluttered angrily against the coach-house walls as he turned the engine over and reversed out.
A fresh sheet had been drawn over the examination table in the consulting room, the steel table with its array of bowls, stethoscope and other instruments had likewise been covered up. I lifted a corner and saw nothing unusual. Everything else was the same too. The sink with the soap next to it. The shelves with their reference books in alphabetical order. The waste bin, empty. Nothing out of the ordinary.
Two hours later, the time was hardly after seven, the car returned. I heard it approach on the road and waited for it to splutter again in the coach house. But it did not transpire. He went in through the consultation, put his bag down and presumably wrote something in the journal. Shortly afterwards he came into the living room.
“A fine, healthy girl,” he said. “Already at the teat when I left.”
“And the mother?” I asked.
“Happy and content.”
“It must have been very quick.”
“She’s a fine specimen. Made for childbirth.”
“You must be tired,” I said.
“Not at all,” he said.
“Sit down, I’ll bring you a cup of tea.”
“There’s something I need to do first.”
I took it that he still wanted tea and went into the kitchen to light the range, which I had allowed to go out after Line had left. When I looked out of the kitchen window the car had gone. I went to the consulting room and found that he had locked the door. Half an hour later he was back. He went upstairs. I heard his footsteps in the bedroom for a while, and when he came back down into the living room he was wearing his long, grey overcoat that he only ever wore on cold journeys in the car. I had arranged the tea table and lit candles. It was a cozy living room. The candles on the piano were lit too. I had polished the brass holders that same afternoon, and they shone and sparkled. I got up when he came in, but he gestured for me to remain seated.
“How nice you’ve made everything,” he said. He crossed the floor, bent down and kissed the top of my head.
“I must give tea a miss tonight,” he said.
“What’s the matter, Vigand?”
He put his hand on mine. Both were freezing cold.
“Don’t get into a state,” he said.
“No,” I said.
“Good.”
He straightened up.
“Everything’s taken care of. You’ve no need to worry.”
“Where are you going?”
“A short stay at the hospital.”
I said nothing.
“There are certain things that should not be dealt with at home,” he said, and uttered a chortle that was so dry and brief it sounded more like he was clearing his throat. It meant: We shall speak no more of it.
He went out into the hallway and picked up the suitcase he had left there, then put his hat on. I followed him out to the car, which he had left on the road, and held the door for him as he got in.
“I’ll come and see you tomorrow,” I said.
“See you there, then.”
* * *
—
He is dead. He does not exist. He can no longer bend down and place a kiss on my head. No more will he come striding unapproachably through the living room. No more will I sit opposite a raised newspaper at the breakfast table. Never again hear the sound of running water as I pause on the landing. He took cold showers. His meager body must have shivered. Vigorously he would dry himself, dropping the towel on the floor when he was done, then stepping over it with his head lifted to the day, already immersed in things to be done, oblivious to himself. Today I have buried my face in his shirts several times. They smell of him: his fragrance was always of soap and eau de cologne. It was he who taught me to use lavender water in the ironing. How unusual for a man to take an interest in that.
I have rummaged everywhere, apart from the consulting room, which remains locked, and the house is now such a terrible clutter. I have no idea what time it is. It could be night or it could be early morning. I have been searching for something personal. I have been through his armoire in the bedroom, though I know full well what it contains, having always looked after his clothes myself. The drawers of the bureau here in the living room are all pulled open, but nothing in them is his. The junk they accommodate is mine alone: reels of musty-smelling embroidery thread; forgotten letters and postcards from my sister, and from my student days at Ryslinge, a couple from my father an
d mother when they were still in charge of the poorhouse in Faaborg; playing cards and old teaching materials; and Forty Tales from the History of the Fatherland.
I have been through the study. And what did I find? Such tidiness, everything neatly in its place. A pen-wiper, blotting paper, sharpened pencils and fountain pens all ordered in the drawer according to size; writing paper, a rubber thimble to place on the finger when leafing through a book, and on the shelves meters of volumes I have never once seen him read. So forcefully did I slam the drawer shut that everything inside was sent rattling.
I went through his books too, having formerly been in the habit myself of hiding secrets in books I felt sure no one else would ever open. I opened every one, lifting each by the spine and shaking it briskly, letting it drop to the floor, then stepping over it with my gaze already fixed on the next.
But if it is the case that I have burned his only written words to me, then so be it. Let them be burned. I have fallen back on myself. It might be night, it might be morning. No light on the stair. No light on the horizon. No lamp lit in the window. No moon held out in the palm of a hand.
October 18
Vigand was a free-thinker and did not attend funerals, not even of patients to whom he had been close. They say he did not even attend his parents’ funeral. They died when he was young, of diphtheria in Sønderborg. But how could a district physician in such a far-flung place take time off when there was no one to fill in?
So it was I who attended the funerals. Someone from the house ought to, I considered. I have been to many over the years, and of people we knew well. All have been different. Some unbearably grievous, others cheerful and merry, with excellent refreshments.
I once asked him to go with me so he could see what went on for himself. He said there were things to which a person need not subject himself voluntarily.
I asked him how he thought a funeral should take place.
“Obviously, the corpse must be disposed of immediately,” he said. “This objectionable custom people have of laying the deceased out in bed or on the dinner table, kissing and fondling them for days on end, makes the flesh creep. Think of the bacteria, the risk of contagion. No, throw them on the fire or get them in the ground as quickly as possible, I say. Though why there should have to be all that caterwauling in church is beyond me.”
I laughed, and he did too. I often did when he talked as if he were clipping people’s ears. His opinions were so rigid, and they continued to surprise me, even though they were familiar. But I only laughed when it was someone other than me on the receiving end.
“If I die first, I want a proper funeral,” I said.
“Proper?”
“With caterwauling in church.”
“All likelihood says you won’t. So the rest of us won’t have to suffer it.”
It turned out he was right. But still I found it odd that he should have taken such care of matters and yet left no instruction as to his funeral, until yesterday when I visited Pastor Grell. He ushered me into the living room, not the study. Fru Grell brought us coffee and biscuits, and remained with us. They spoke to me both. Pastor Grell is a cheerful, ruddy man, and she is a cheerful, ruddy wife. They have no children yet. He paints pictures from the district and writes countryside observations for the Vejle Gazette, and is altogether highly interested in local custom and folklore. She has a countermarch loom that occupies one of the rectory’s many rooms, takes a keen interest in the garden, and invests much effort in parish work. They are always together wherever they go, and have been able even to remain on a good footing with the Lutheran Mission, despite their both being products of the Folk High School movement, for which reason there was much opposition in mission circles when they applied for the vacancy. But that was four years ago now, which is an age. I doubt anyone gives it a thought anymore.
I wanted to speak to him about the funeral arrangements, but before I got round to it, he said:
“I received a letter from your husband a few weeks ago. I think it best you read it yourself.”
He got to his feet and left the room for a moment, and while he was away his wife served me coffee.
Vigand wrote this:
Dear Pastor Grell,
I write to you regarding a matter of which I trust you will make no mention until the appropriate time. I shall presently be deceased, and in that connection I do not doubt that you will receive a visit from my wife wishing to speak of a funeral. I do not wish for any such occasion and have therefore arranged with Dr. Eriksen that my body be removed for immediate cremation. In the event that she is distraught, by all means arrange a memorial service to dry her eyes. However, no prayers and no fairy music.
Kindest regards,
Vigand Bagge.
It was dated August 28.
I handed the letter back, and Fru Grell placed a hand on my shoulder.
“Should I not have shown it to you?” the pastor asked.
“Yes,” I said to the contrary, partly because he seemed already to have put the word in my mouth, and partly because he was doing his best. It wasn’t his fault. But I had never before known Vigand to be quite so cruel.
And then there was the date.
It strikes me now that it was perhaps not me he was seeking to offend, but Pastor Grell, as if he wished to shock him by being so despicably frivolous, now that he had such a strong card to play as his impending death. But Vigand was never so naive. He must have known he would be killing two birds with one stone.
“You needn’t make any decision today,” said Fru Grell. “A memorial service can be held at any time.”
“But there should be one,” I said.
“Agreed,” said the pastor.
“We can dispense with any fairy music,” I said.
“Of course. We can make do with a eulogy and a hymn. And I can read from Ecclesiastes, chapter three.”
“That’s what I was thinking too,” I said. “And I’d like it to be soon.”
“So very understandable,” said his wife.
Today, over the telephone, we have agreed on the twenty-fifth. In a week’s time. His urn will have arrived by then. To be interred in the churchyard.
They followed me out into the driveway when I left.
October 19
Vigand was with all his heart of the conviction that one should not be a nuisance, and he could be rudely offensive in order to avoid it. Such an idea is of course in every respect honorable, and yet one may ask whether the right to be a nuisance ought not to be a human right? What if we were to eradicate every nuisance? Who would then be left?
Moreover, I have wished more than anything else that he would make a nuisance of himself to me.
Not that he never did. He was a nuisance. Just not in a way I could understand. A man who needed my help, his nuisance I would have understood. But perhaps then it would not have been a nuisance at all. I have never thought of it like that before.
Nevertheless, I am none the wiser.
* * *
—
Ever since I was at the rectory three days ago I have felt like I left a black mark on that cheerful young man. Perhaps he felt the same about me. At any rate, he and his wife were loath to let me go in the driveway that day. He stood there all astutter, glancing at his wife as if they had agreed on the matter beforehand, but had now fallen into doubt.
“One becomes absorbed in the district,” he said. “In the countryside, as well as in the people who live here. Occasionally, one hears something that makes an impression, and then…” His words trailed away. “I have much pleasure in speaking with Peter Carlsen now and again. I coaxed him into writing down something he told me. I should like to show it to you. I think it might be of interest, and perhaps you will also be gladdened by it.”
His wife placed a hand on his arm and he paused.
“I cannot think
that Peter Carlsen would have anything against me showing it to you…Would you care to see it? It’s only a few pages.”
I told him I would like to very much, and he scurried away over the cobbles, returning a moment later with some folded sheets of paper held out in front of him. “Is it all right like this? Or should I find an envelope?”
“An envelope would be suitable, Hans,” said his wife.
“You’ll find he refers to himself simply as the man,” Grell said. “I’m not sure why. Perhaps he found it easier that way.”
His wife went inside to get an envelope.
I read the Peter Carlsen’s account that same afternoon at home in the unheated living room and returned it when I stopped by the rectory today. I had nothing to say when I handed it back, and Grell was embarrassed. He had wished only to make me happy, and yet there I stood unable to muster a single word of compliment.
“Yes,” he said. “There we have a most telling testimony to how excellent a physician your husband was, Fru Bagge. How splendid a man.”
“Indeed,” I said. “How true.”
“But of course you knew as much already. It was interfering of me.”
“Not at all,” I said. “It was kind of you.”
And that was true as well.
He asked me inside, and apologized immediately for his wife not being at home. I declined politely. But I did not go home.