A Change of Time
Page 11
“Have you eaten the apples?” Carl asked.
“I forgot,” I said with regret.
He nodded and said: “Maglemer Stripling’s a dull apple.”
“How are Dagmar and Inge?” I asked.
“They’re fine,” he said.
“How’s your father?”
“He’s fine,” he said.
Before he left he photographed the gramophone, and me sitting on the sofa.
One can wonder where his charm lies. Perhaps in the very fact of him coming to see me. The fact that he finds me interesting enough to come. I am sure that like me he is unaware of exactly what he is looking for, and that is the nice thing about it.
* * *
—
It feels like everything is the same. I get up in the mornings and drink my tea. I stare at the light in the garden, if there is light at all that day. I stare into the branches of the birch. I tidy up. People come and go, and box after box is carried from the house. There are no divisions, not even between what happened and what happens, and if that is untrue it is because I cannot remember for the moment. Everything has been erased. Only by some effort do I recall how lonely I was yesterday. Today I am not.
December 4
I keep thinking of Peter Carlsen’s mother, her stable-window eyes, and then it occurs to me that at the gable-end there was a holly taller than me, dark and shiny and substantial.
“How can it grow here?” I asked.
“I’ve watched it grow,” she replied. “I brought it home myself, in the pocket of my apron, when it was only so big.”
She told me that she and her sisters had been visiting an aunt over in Kølkær one time when they were children, a near thirty-kilometer hike, and that they had taken a twig back with them. She broke one off and gave it to me, and said that I should plant it by the school. In sixty years time it would be just as big.
I feel the urge to stop by and see if it is still there. After the free school closed, the building housed an elementary school and then a vocational school, but ten years have passed now since the place was sold and turned into a private dwelling. I never saw the holly grow.
* * *
—
I have begun to pack my own things now. The whole house here is gradually resembling a storage room, and I have no need to ask Rosenstand for any more packing cases. He is a daily visitor, bringing the empty boxes in person rather than sending his messenger, and with opinions as to which are most suited for a particular item. We have coffee in the kitchen. Sometimes he comes twice a day. I have the impression he can hardly wait to empty his boxes so that he can return them to me, and I cannot imagine anything other than that he must need them himself. He has an opinion on many matters. It feels strange to suddenly be inviting him in. I have known him for a good number of years and have always found it pleasant to be a customer of his; he has always presented himself as a person of insight and manners, perhaps because our conversations have been confined to coffee and raisins, but for the last few days he has reminded me of something else. A dog perhaps. I am afraid that very soon he will jump up at me. In which case I intend to brush him off and send him home. He has been widowed four years now, and it is plain that he would like to be married again. How can he imagine that I might be interested in that? It makes me embarrassed on his behalf. He courts me with packing cases, the nice man. And of course I need them, which makes the whole arrangement rather awkward.
“But surely you haven’t the time to sit here drinking coffee?” I say to him.
“Oh, business is well in hand,” he replies, and asks for another cup. Usually, I must begin to clear the table before he thinks it time to be getting on.
He finds it odd that I still do not know where I am going to live. Odd, and no doubt ridiculous, considering how purposeful my endeavors are to pack.
I am afraid to think about it. When I peered in at the windows of Rose Cottage the day before yesterday, the cobwebs were thick and of the kind that are laden with eggs, and the wooden floor in the living room was stained dark in the middle, as if some great pot had been spilt, or something else had seeped through the floorboards for a considerable time.
I think he believes me to be in need of a man, a path and a direction in which to proceed.
* * *
—
I stood with my books. Over the years I have put things away in them. Four-leafed clovers and anaemic blooms whose species I have been unable to determine. A note containing only a few words, with no indication of its sender. In all this time, I have known it was there, but I have not looked at it, nor in fact do I look at it now.
* * *
—
I found a portrait of Vigand too, taken at Appel’s the photographers in Give. His waistcoat is buttoned to the neck. He is sporting a full beard, half-spectacles, hat and cane. At first blush he looks like an old man, but his skin is young. It was taken just when he began as district physician, ten years before he made me a present of it. He is thirty-five years old. I was fifteen at the time. Perhaps he was engaged to someone and had his photograph taken for their benefit. His handwriting is on the back: From V. Bagger, District Physician, June 1, 1905. Three weeks later we were married. And now I cannot rid myself of the thought of that other young woman, the one he ought to have had instead. I imagine her to have been dark-haired, slim, wealthy and above all intelligent. In all the many years we were married, I have always so clearly imagined another woman as to be able to see her features. Thus, I feel certain that her nose was long and narrow, that her cheekbones were high and prominent, her eyes big and perceptive, and grey in color. But Vigand never spoke of another, and never commended any other woman but Fru Andersen. And we, we were married in a storm.
* * *
I have seen the young doctor’s fiancée. He thought she ought to view the place, and they came and said hello. I made them coffee and we sat in the bay window. I asked her if she would like to see the house, and she saw it all, even the wash-house, even the boiler tub. She looks young, and in fact I think of her as a child. But what was I like myself, I wonder, when I was her age? I was strong, definitely. And I knew everything, probably more than I know now.
With age comes a certain naivety. Perhaps we no longer can bear the things we know and must smooth them away, leveling ourselves in the process. The differences we even out are evened out by human hand. The very old say so very little, not because they are unable, but because they cannot be bothered.
I asked her if the matter was decided, and she said: “I hope so.” She seems a pleasant and considerate sort, much as her pleasant and considerate man, and it was no fault of hers that she could not conceal her contentment at the sight of my packing cases, but rather because I can be as hard as nails when the mood strikes me.
The living room is still cozy. The sofa is still there, and the armchairs and the bureau. The lamp in the window. Lit now, since the evening has come. For the first time in days, I have been outside on the step and felt the air. There is a coldness on its way. A stillness.
* * *
—
When it comes to Peter Carlsen, the following is to be remarked: Nothing had been said, and nothing had been done. He was my secret friend, so secret that even I was unknowing. There was a joy shut tight inside me. One could hardly have called it a hope. It was a joy, greater than joy itself.
Perhaps, if I had been taken on at Ryslinge, the same might have happened with Ervin.
* * *
His mother said that Peter was in Brande and had taken the dog with him, and that they would not be home until evening. She showed me the orchard. There were rows of young trees, apple and pear, plum and cherry. They were so slender and slight it moved my heart. She told me they had been there four years, and I thought of Fyn, where an apple tree planted four years ago would be taller than me. Every year they replanted, she said: “He p
lants all year round. Ever since he was a boy, all he’s ever thought about is planting. He learned it from Peder Pedersen from Herthasminde. And from Dalgas.” And it is true. Whenever one passes by Hedebjerg Farm, with its long avenue of chestnut, the orchards, the hedgerows, the thickets in the fields giving shelter to the game, the garden with its windbreak of tall trees, one understands that the farm, which originally grew up out of the heath, owes its present form entirely to a vision. No amount of hard work is ever sufficient in itself.
At one point the housekeeper appeared with the washing. She came and shook hands and was very nice. Her name was Henriette. She told me she had been on the farm some eighteen months and that she would soon be going home, albeit reluctantly. Then she laughed and put her arm under the old woman’s. “She’s my mother’s sister,” she said, “but she could just as well be my mother.” The old woman patted her hand. How old was she? About thirty, I think. Her face was heavy and good.
They would mention to Peter Carlsen that I had been to see him, but I think they forgot. It was the sowing season, a busy time.
Rose Cottage, February 5, 1928
This morning the light streamed in through the living room window. I have fallen into the habit of eating breakfast on the sofa, since from there one may look out directly into the garden. The stretching view. Halfway to the orchard there is a squint little spruce that I immediately decided I did not care for, and I told Carl I wanted it removed. But then he showed me how to smear the branches with fat and sprinkle them with seeds, and now every day is a field day for the sparrows. The little tree looks like it has come alive. It shivers and shudders, and wings poke out from it all over. Such a lot of chirping. Occasionally it verges on commotion. I have stolen a march on spring.
But snow lies on the ground in its fourth week, and the car is covered up with horse blankets. Since driving it up here I have not been out in it a single time. It was an unpleasant drive. The tires are not much wider than a bicycle’s, and I had no sense at all of being able to steer. Only by luck did it eventually get parked.
The last couple of months have been busy and good. Thorsen, the decorator, has wallpapered and painted and whitewashed, and laid new carpets throughout. The money has flown like great flocks of starlings from my hands. Such fun it has been. The outhouses have been repaired, and Hilda and I have washed and scrubbed from end to end. When all was done, we went through the house together, and she squeezed both my hands and declared: “Fru Bagge is a lady.”
Indeed. Everything here is arranged for my convenience, and mine alone. In the kitchen, there is a small table so that I may eat there without feeling a lack of company, for there is room for only one. In the bedroom, one bed without any tall end-boards to pen me in. I had Thorsen paint the room pale blue and put up a roller blind. There is an armchair for me to sit in, and the light falls on the dresser. I am already fond of every room. Each has something about it that attaches me to it: light or a curtain or an inviting nook in which to sit. The bookcase contains my books only. Vigand did not read fiction. I left his armchair behind in the study of the doctor’s residence.
* * *
—
It occurred to me that Rosenstand should have his boxes back. The daily visits continue, now in his car, since at Christmas time he purchased a Benz and has driven about in it ever since. He has seen the entire house and uttered knowledgeable and complimentary words about most of it, though he then considered that the tiled stoves lacked proper ventilation and made improvements accordingly. Now he comes every day to inspect and make sure they work. In return I am naturally compelled to offer him coffee. I know that he is making it all up, and yet I cannot bring myself to suggest that I have seen through him. It makes me embarrassed on his behalf that he should think me so stupid.
Today he drove into the ditch and turned the car on its side in front of the house. I ran out to help, but he would hear none of it and managed to bring it upright again on his own. He revved the engine to get the vehicle back on the road, but it would hardly budge. Several times he climbed out to peer under the bonnet; eventually he asked for a spade and dug the wheels free at the front and back, though to no avail. While he was at it, Peter Carlsen happened past. Though we are separated by nearly a kilometer, he is my nearest neighbor to the south. He and the grocer together pushed the vehicle out of the ditch while I tripped alongside and steered. Afterwards I asked them both in for coffee and we sat at my tiny blue table in the kitchen, there was hardly room for us. I told Peter Carlsen what a pleasure it is to have Carl come to visit. It was a pleasure for him too, he said. Rosenstand is really rather bustling and unsettled in nature.
* * *
—
What am I to do, with no one to look after and everything taken care of? Am I to be an outcast? Is that now to be my obligation, as it is my obligation to mourn? If so, it would perhaps be easier for me to understand. No matter. I do not constantly mourn.
Bicycling is out of the question as long as there is snow. I have started going for walks again.
* * *
—
The sound of a beck in February is a rich sound indeed. There is the water and the glittering ice. The water is almost black at this time of year, as black as the bed it runs upon.
* * *
—
I am looking forward to seeing what will appear when spring comes. I have already found two great Christmas roses on the south side of the house, and in the windbreak, where the snow is not quite as thick, there are snowdrops and eranthis. In the thousands.
* * *
—
Peter Carlsen thought the house had been done so nicely. He said so as he left. He leaned forward slightly, and because I thought he was going to shake hands I put out my hand. Instead, he placed a little figurine of a woman in my palm. He had made it himself at his kitchen table, from some leftover putty he had picked up and absently begun to shape. “For you, Fru Bagge,” he said. We did not look at each other. There was a warmth from him.
It was the same warmth as then. I could feel it despite our standing apart. How peculiar that it should happen here in the hall after so many years, with the grocer on his knees at the living-room stove, rattling the vents. Yet the feeling is not of mutual joy, but more of hope yet to be hoped, and that is enough to unsettle me. For was that warmth in fact my own? Did I wish to burn it up and reduce it to ashes? Closing the door after him, I glimpsed myself in the mirror, and there I stood with blushing cheeks.
I have put his little figurine on top of the grandfather clock in the hall. No visitor will see it there. But I will see it. The very moment after I had put it down, Rosenstand came out into the hall. “There we are,” he said. “It should give you no bother the rest of the day. I can’t promise it’ll stay that way, mind you.”
February 6
I am deflated. I sit in a chair in the living room and do nothing, immersed in the thought of Peter Carlsen being so acquainted with women as to be able to shape one with his hands. Vigand too was acquainted with women, though only as a physician. One senses in a man how much or how little he cares for the woman. It has been a sport for me all these years, and has kept me going, because I always thought it to be hidden away in Vigand, and that all I had to do was bring it out. I have only myself to thank, since he did nothing to encourage me. Occasionally, my will can be quite ruthless, and for long periods it has made me unhappy.
Not that I think he cared more for men. People interested him perhaps only by virtue of their stupidity. Often I have sat and watched him in company and seen how his showing an interest in people would encourage them to be talkative, oblivious to the fact that he did so only so that he might afterwards delight in their shortcomings. He observed people with the cold detachment of a scientist. One evening, when we were still living in Give, a car came up to the house, and Clemmens Mathiesen from Riis got out and knocked on the door. He had come with a message from
his neighbor, it was urgent, the man’s false teeth were stuck in his throat. It was a Thursday, and Vigand had been looking forward to the evening, he had invited three others to the house for a game of Ombre, and he replied that either the man would be dead by the time they got there, or else the dentures would have dislodged and come up of their own accord, and as such the matter was simply not worth his while. Nevertheless, Mathiesen managed to convince him, and when they reached the farm they found the neighbour sitting on a chair with the dentures in his hand. “See for yourself, Mathiesen,” said Vigand, “What did I tell you.” I have the story not from Vigand, but from gossip in the town, though I have no reason to doubt it on that account. He could be rude. Once, he had arranged with the carrier man from Give to be driven, and when the driver came and asked where they were going, Vigand replied: “To hell, for all I care.” I heard it myself from the step.