by Ida Jessen
“Look what I’ve bought with your money,” I said when I showed them the lamp the next day. “I shall put it in the window in the evenings so that people can see it from the road when they come past.” They thought it was fine. Oscar Vestergaard said: “But y’wid nae a’ had eneugh?” I told him I had chipped in. Later, I overheard him say to some men standing by the skittle alley: “She shewed us a lamp she’d bot wee t’munny, but she sayed t’wus nae eneugh.”
* * *
—
The inn was my nearest neighbor. At that time it adjoined Vester Farm, which has since been moved up the hill here. A great, filthy muck heap lay outside by the road along with all manner of rubbish and refuse that blew across the field in any decent wind. When spring came, the noises from the skittle alley drifted over to the school, the sudden shouts and cries. Alcohol was swilled, and scraps were commonplace. Jens Kristian Andersen sometimes came to my door before going over there and would confide to me that he did not feel at ease in the place. And yet he went. When there was money in his pocket, the others would talk to him, but otherwise they treated him abominably. I have seen him so drunk that his face was completely benumbed, his eyes empty and dead, glazed with fever. I have seen him in that state many a time. And not only him.
It caused a certain stir when I came to the town. There was the bicycle, for one thing, and then the fact that I was a woman and on my own, and moreover a trained teacher. I think it may safely be said that to the young men, or perhaps the men in general, I was an attractive blend of something attainable and yet absolutely unattainable. One of my more singular admirers was the miller, who also earned a living tarring roofs. One day, when he was at work on the dairy roof, the sight of me walking along the road prompted him to do a handstand on the roof ridge and wave his legs about. He was an old man then. At least ten years older than I am now. Later, he fell from the church tower without hurting himself. Nevertheless, he ended up an invalid after a fall. His wife opened a hair salon and they lived on the income she made. People were resourceful in Thyregod. Resourceful and strong-willed.
* * *
—
It was a very small town. I am not sure it even merited the word. In the town itself, besides the mill and the church, the inn and the dairy, and the grocer Hansen’s yard, Vester Farm and the free school, there was almost nothing but Line’s little emporium, which sold nearly anything one can imagine and would later boast a public telephone, and a couple of miserable houses belonging to poor folk. But there were street lamps. Every evening, the tobacconist would hang oil lamps up on their posts with a long pole.
Surrounding the town was the heath.
I have seen the sandy earth shift after the spring sowing. The sky was as black as Doomsday. The sand crept in everywhere, and deposited itself in drifts on the floors of my rooms. To be out in such a storm is inconceivable, people die from it. Machinery becomes blanketed, livestock succumb. And people’s despair at the perished seed, that too I have seen.
I have seen the heath. It is nearly all gone now. I have seen the fires when it was burned off to be cultivated. The smoke drifted chokingly across the land, a low mantle above the ground. When the flames caught it was like a sea suddenly rising up, its thunderous waves were yellow and wild, and ahead of them leapt the hares, the partridges scuttled, and black grouse flapped into the air, adders and grass snakes slithered, here and there a fox emerged. And then they were engulfed. The fires went on for hours. In the night, men watched over them. And when morning came, the charred corpses were revealed.
Now Vigand makes himself known: “A true witness of truth,” he remarks in that oddly spurious voice he has occasionally employed of late.
I think I shall go for a drive in the dark. I shall proceed slowly along the road, and see who might be out.
November 27
We were married for twenty-two years, and although it has been a time in which many things have happened — a world war, motor cars, electricity, women’s suffrage — indeed an entire world would seem to have wound down and been replaced by a new one, I would still venture that those years have been one long and unbroken day.
For me it has been a quiet time.
November 28
The butcher Schnedler has done up his window for Christmas. Two pigs with pixie hats on and cob pipes inserted between their discolored teeth have been seated on a bench. Their bare hocks and trotters poke towards the beholder as if they were stretching their muscles. It looks so very human, and draws as much attention as ever. The children gather to watch the butcher and his wife manhandle the pigs onto the bench, where they are tied to the backrest with a rope around the midriff. Scarves are wrapped around their necks and arranged to cover their sliced bellies, concealing their horrible plight, and finally Fru Schnedler inserts the pipes into their mouths and puts their hats on. They look like they are having a fine time on their bench, in the midst of a good gossip.
* * *
—
Today I was on my way in the car to ask Dagmar and Inge if they would care for a spin, but on the way up the hill to Hedebjerg Farm it began to rain and I ended up driving past. Often I feel silly in that car. Such a noisy spectacle. What do I even need it for, other than to make a show of myself?
During the singing at Ryslinge Folk High School, among all the young people who are so wrapped up in each other as to think of nothing but living, one finds little reason to ask questions of oneself. One may sing anything at all, even the glummest of songs, without feeling anything other than joy. Song and blood are so very much alike, they flow through us. Now too, as I pick up the Folk High School Song Book and sing for myself in a voice so feeble it would seem to be afraid of the room here, it will flow if only I raise myself.
The bright sun starts to set, soon evening will be here,
Each laborer is tired and hopes that rest is near:
To death I am yet one day closer than before,
Time for me
Unhurriedly
Is opening death’s door.
Yes. Death is often a matter for one rather than two, as I had wished it. Was Vigand so by himself, I wonder? Or did he die in self-defense against me?
* * *
—
Can a radical perdition be entertained? The idea of a human life without value?
November 30
In my employment as a free-school teacher, the children were by no means my only occupation. A new time had begun, and I was young and vigorous, with a head full of ideas and rooms in which they could be realized. After school the girls would come back for sewing lessons. There were so many that I had to take them in groups by turn, since I used my own private living room where we were able to sit more comfortably. They received instructions to wash their hands thoroughly. As they sewed, I would read aloud to them, albeit with many interruptions, for my own needlework required attention too whenever it went wrong, as it so often did. The evenings were taken by various activities. I taught physical exercise in the temperance hotel’s function room, and in the winter season there were parents’ meetings once a week. These were not meetings at which the children were discussed, but assemblies for the debate of important topics — much in the way of a folk high school, though of course on a smaller scale. Sometimes there would be readings, and I would have boxes of books sent over from the library in Vejle for people to borrow. Occasionally, we would arrange a dance so that people would not have to go to the inn. We organized a lecture society too, and invited speakers from outside. Often they would be teachers and clergymen from the neighboring parishes. The subjects were many and varied: the folk-high-school movement, the co-operative movement, the plantation movement, kitchen gardens, fruit growing, the need for a health commission. I wrote to Vigand and asked if he might come and speak to us one evening, and he came and talked about hygiene in the kitchen, the perils of preparing food with dirty hands in dirty pot
s and pans, and the kind of individuals born from the mealy white sauce most of them consumed every day of the year. He spoke too of the importance of letting fresh air into the home. I have no recollection of his personality that evening. He was the remote physician. I am sure that I welcomed him as best I could.
On such evenings, when something was going on at the school, I had much to do making coffee and buttering bread. In most cases, some wives came over and helped.
I received no compensation for these extra-curricular activities, and Peder Møllergaard, aware of how hard stretched I was, particularly in periods when the parents had insufficient surplus to supply me with peat or eggs, arranged for me to be given a small job as district singer for Thyregod and Vester churches. It was not a regular position, but I would be called upon in cases of urgent baptism as well as for funerals. I also sang at weddings.
* * *
Today, the grocer Rosenstand was here with his van to collect the packing cases I have filled. He took the beds from the bedroom, and the dresser and the bedside tables while he was at it, and asked me to let him know if there was anything else. He told me he would have no trouble finding people who would make good use of whatever I no longer needed. I cleaned the windows, brushed down the cobwebs, and mopped the floor after he was gone. Now I need never go in there again.
December 1
Line’s room has now been emptied and cleaned as well, and with Hilda’s help the scullery and the cellar are both in the process. Although we have only lived here for eight years, things have accummulated. All the jam that was made and forgotten about has been donated to the Christmas bazaar at the Mission Hotel. We carried seven boxes full up the stair. Eggs in waterglass, years old, were thrown out; Hilda thought it a shame, but when I asked her if she wanted them she nonetheless declined. It was quite a job extracting them from their jars, the waterglass was like stone. We took them outside and pelted the birch, the garden’s only tree as such. Smack, smack, smack. They smelled dreadful and rotten, but we became so absorbed that we carried on until not a single egg was left. Hilda, who is tiny and worn to the bone, had to stand up close to the tree, since her arms cannot throw very far. Every joint in her body aches, but it is plain to see that there once was something she loved. Work, perhaps. Afterwards, we had coffee and her lapper cakes.
She asked me where I was going to live, and when I told her I had no idea, she cautiously suggested that I had better find out. She is not the only one to think so. Peder Møllergaard came yesterday, and with him the young doctor people have been talking about of late. They were here to see the consultation, but wished to pay their regards first. I found him pleasant and appealing. He is exactly as I imagined. Young. Engaged to be married. He almost gasped with delight when he stepped into the study and saw Vigand’s deep armchair and the bookshelves. When I came back in with the coffee tray, I found him standing there perusing the volumes. They did not stay long. I took them around the outside to the consultation after coffee.
It is afternoon and the air is clear, the final light is dwindling. It is just past four o’clock.
* * *
And now evening again. Each day draws with it the next. Such a difference there is between day and evening. In the evenings, secret friends come scampering. Old joys, old sorrows, and all that lies between. They come with the light. I strike a match and put it to the wick of the lamp. Peace fills the room, and fills me too.
December 2
This afternoon, while out walking, I came by Rose Cottage, and as the light was failing and there was nobody around I entered the garden. It is a large garden, slightly more than an acre, I would say. One part is given over to fruit, another to flowers, a third to vegetables. There is an abandoned hen-house, which I inspected. The door was a job to open. Inside smelled of rotten straw, and the roost was thick with dried excrement, quite as malodorous. I peered in at all the windows of the house, or those I could reach, which made me feel so oddly ill at ease that I walked back the long way, stopping at the rectory where Fru Grell was standing in the kitchen, her cheeks glistening as she was making black pudding. It was a comforting sight; it reminded me that everything is still there. I am not sure what I mean by that exactly. And yet: Vigand is dead, and there is more that I cannot hope to even approach, but the practical things remain, which is good. The practical life, black pudding and the light of industry in a kitchen, is so very good indeed. She told me about a new reading group she would like to begin after Christmas and asked if I would care to join. I told her I would. She came out to the step with me when I left. The wind rushed in the trees at the bottom of the garden, and we stood for a moment and listened. She does the same each evening, she told me. She is fond of the sound.
I am too.
Now, with the time at twenty past eight, I feel companionless. My peace is gone, and my secret friends with it. Only solitude remains. It cannot bear to be with others. Never, never will you find attachment to your life, it whispers. You are bound to be a stranger who knows not what to do. Get out, I tell it emphatically. Get out!
* * *
I shall leave the books for the new doctor. Perhaps he will find some of them useful, and he should have no trouble disposing of the rest.
December 3
I used to walk past Rose Cottage almost daily. It was my favorite walk, there being a garden there with trees in it. An old man lived there at the time, Peder Pedersen, who used to have the farm at Herthasminde, and after planting there he bought Rose Cottage instead, as the place to pass his old age, and planted the garden there too. Now and again when I came past he would invite me inside the gate. Once, he gave me a full-blown sprig of jasmin, which I took home with me and which filled the schoolroom with such a sweet and luxuriant smell of summer it almost brought tears to my eyes. I have always been fond of flowers, though quite how fond I had no idea until I came here, where there were none. And yet, that is not entirely true. Our Lady’s bedstraw, for instance, on a sun-warmed slope, with wild thyme in bloom. No fragrance is as balmy. And the globeflowers too. But I was sorry about the bare schoolyard, whose grass was scuffed away under the children’s feet and whittled down by the stiff and foul-tempered wind that came at us from the west, for there was nothing there to stop it. I wished for an educational garden and a place where the children could learn the joys of planting and watch things grow, and most of all I wished for shelter from the wind. When spring came again, my second in Thyregod, I spoke to Peder Møllergaard about it. He told me I should have a word with Peter Carlsen. “Have you seen what he’s done?” he asked. “At Hedebjerg Farm?”
I said no, I hadn’t.
“Then putting myself in your place I’d go and have a look,” he said. “I think you’ll find it interesting. And you’ll enjoy the walk, I know.”
Some time afterwards he returned to the matter. He asked if I had been there yet. I said no, that I had been too tied up with things to do.
“Then putting myself in your place I’d go tomorrow,” he said. “I happen to know there’s nothing to keep you.”
It was rather surprising. Twice he had said “putting myself in your place.” I remember it puzzled me, as it would anyone else who knew Peder Møllergaard, whose stout-heartedness was legend, for although he would take care of things for people, unravel their knots so as to allow them to get on with their lives, he was not a person who tended to put himself in the place of others. He was a leader. It felt like he was giving me a shove. But I wanted to go anyway.
I took the bicycle that day, though generally it was often more of a hindrance than a help. I kept having to get off and walk, long stretches of track where I almost had to drag it along. But I was fond of that bicycle. One sat so proudly on it. I have it still, and it is quite as good as before, despite having been used almost daily.
Peter Carlsen’s mother was out in the yard in front of the house, picking weeds in a bucket. I remember her straightening up a li
ttle and resting her elbows on her thighs when I came. “Nae, wod a neece s’prise,” she said. Such a smile on her face. I cannot say that it was anything else but a smile, but it was a smile that said so much about the person. And her eyes, like stable windows. Often I have seen old people bent almost double and yet engaged in conversation, elbows on knees, hands paused in whatever they happened to be doing when they were interrupted. They look as if they have all the time in the world, when the fact of the matter is that their bodies ache and they are unable to draw themselves up. It is a sight so peculiarly full of grace.
* * *
—
How can I say that Carl resembles his grandmother? They are so very different. She had the happiest face, the happiest eyes. Perhaps it is merely a charming appeal they share, with no other similarity?
He was here today, shortly before twelve. I had just set the table for myself and was about to tuck into a slice of liver and two potatoes when there was a knock on the door. I was glad of the company. He wanted nothing to eat, only to show me his photographs. We cleared the things aside and sat down at the kitchen table, the kitchen being the only room that was properly warm, and he took them from an envelope one by one and pointed out the various motives with a finger whose nail was bitten to the quick. His hands have always been clean, as opposed to most other boys I have known. When he was little he used to want to wash them all the time. Now it seems as if he is down to the red flesh. He explained to me how he develops and makes copies of his photographs. He closes the shutter at the window and uses a torch with red paper in front of the bulb. The photographs themselves are sepia-colored and very small. He calls them daylight prints and tells me they are quite perishable. I had to put my glasses on and pick them up to be able to see them properly. He photographs everything with the same enthusiasm. Borgergade, Grundtvigs Plads, his sisters shelling peas on a doorstep, the reaper-binder, his father forking hay, the chimney at the dairy, his sisters no longer shelling peas on a doorstep. “Carl,” I said, “this is a treasure trove.” There were two I recognized. Johannes V. Jensen’s wife standing in front of the French doors at the hotel in Give. She is insignificant in the photograph, whereas a flower arrangement and a table-edge leap out. But still I stared at it for some time. The other is of Hilda and me in the car that day by the station. How very different I look compared to how I imagined. So much in charge. Perhaps it is the hat I was wearing. But Hilda looked the same as ever.