A Change of Time

by Ida Jessen

  “What was he wanting?” Peter asked when he came back.

  “I didn’t quite catch,” I said.

  We had coffee in the nook, and I told him that I had taken out subscriptions on the Folk High School Journal and Danish Horizon for the book collection.

  When I was at Hedebjerg this afternoon, Inge came out through the French doors with a pair of scissors in her hand and walked through the garden so proudly upright and with such purpose in her step that anyone, I am certain, would have thought she could see. She bent down and cut a handful of chives, before going back up the path and into the house.

  “Such marvelous daughters you have,” I said to Peter.

  “Good daughters, yes,” he replied, and I was at a loss as to whether he was correcting me or merely adding something else. Whatever it was, I think it was just right.

  We had such fun planting the trees, not that I can recall what we talked about. But the mood was lighthearted, the work unfussed, and we laughed. It felt almost as if we were young again. Yet thinking back now, I cannot recall us ever having fun when we were young. In those days, there was a solemn restraint between us that kept us apart, because something blind and serious was tunnelling forth. And of course it did become serious, and blind in the sense that it was unattainable.

  In all the years that have passed, I have pictured him the way he looked as he came walking over the meadow that evening to teach me how to grow a garden. It had just rained and he was wet across the shoulders, and I knew he would be fragrant with the smell of grass and livestock. He told me a cow had just calved, and asked me if I would like to see the calf. So we walked through the gloaming and came to the calf, that was sucking its mother’s milk. We were serious in those days. Tremulous.

  May 17

  On such an evening in May, when a pale blush falls into the room, the book collection can be rather a delightful place. People are quiet in here, save for a hushed murmur at the children’s shelf. Yesterday evening, which was Saturday, the chatterbox was Janus Vestergaard’s eldest son, who has already found an interest in girls, and they in him. He sat with two, slightly older than himself, and entertained them with a stack of books in his lap. The borrowers came and went all evening, and now and again I tidied up. I know most of them by sight, but at the reading table there was a man I was unable to recall having seen before. Peter Carlsen sat immersed in a copy of Danish Horizon for more than an hour at the same table. I have put summer curtains up and had the collection’s rules and regulations framed, and there are new pictures on the walls now: an ordnance survey map of Vejle’s western tracts from 1919 and a print showing the battle of Sankelmark, where Aksel Nielsen of Hindskov, who is long since dead, was wounded in the hip. When I first came here, people still told stories about 1864 on Saturday evenings when they got together at Hansen’s grocery. Everyone knew what Aksel Nielsen and apparently several others from the district had been through, and yet none of it was ever talked about. The stories they told were funny and down-to-earth, and concerned only with the trivial things. Jens Thiis and his brothers could not be chased to bed and would sit, wilting and pale with fatigue, waiting for the exciting parts that never came.

  As closing time approached, most of the borrowers had gone home and I went about making sure the books were in order on the shelves. I turned the lamp off on the desk and began to turn off the other lights too as a sign that we were closing. The children left, and Peter Carlsen came and said goodbye, but the man from before was still there at the reading table.

  “We’re closing now,” I said.

  “Lilly,” he said.

  I stopped in my tracks. He got to his feet. He was a big man. I had no idea who he might be. I stood and looked at him, and then his name popped out of my mouth.

  “Erland,” I blurted. “What are you doing here?”

  And we both began to laugh.

  * * *

  —

  “Have you eaten?” he asked.

  “Not really,” I said. “Have you?”

  “Not really.”

  “We can’t go to the inn here,” I said. “They’ll think we’re getting married, or worse.”

  “How about the hotel in Give?” he suggested.

  It turned out that he had taken a room there. He had come to Thyregod on the train, and so we agreed to take the car. Unsurprisingly, we were seen on our way to Rose Cottage to pick it up, so we might just as well have gone to the inn, but I gave not a thought to the matter; I was so excited that he had come.

  By the time we came to the high street in Give, I had returned so much to my senses as to become embarrassed at the thought of sitting in the sight of the dear Fru Lorentzen, but the fact was that we would be lucky if we could get anything at all to eat at that time of the evening. The kitchen was indeed closed, and though it was not without a sigh, she took pity on us and sent the waitresses in with vegetable broth and cold meat with bread and mustard to go with it, and then they came with beer too. Apart from ourselves, only a few other diners remained in the room. We sat by the French doors, behind the flower arrangement. We were both so happy and surprised to see each other. I asked him what on earth had brought him here, and he told me he had heard about me from Ervin and his wife, and that he had felt the urge to come and see me, now that he knew where I lived. We went our separate ways when we were still young, and because so much time has elapsed what lies in between can hardly be passed over. But in those days I looked at him differently and always thought he wore his clothes as if somehow he were rather helplessly naked. His waistcoat would be buttoned too high, and his jacket was far too tight, his movements in it awkward and unaccustomed, giving the impression that he was not yet properly a man, though he was big and muscular even then. And he sang so loudly and out of tune that I preferred to shuffle away from him, though no distance was ever sufficient for it not to ruin one’s concentration, and his laughter was so boisterous as to be nearly a roar. And all this I remembered with astonishment, for the recollection was no longer real, but a recollection of a recollection, or an image of an image of an image. And yet that is not true, because the recollection of these helplessly human qualities, which I had not appreciated at the time, prompted me then to lean forward towards him, and I cannot say anything but that I was glad.

  Indeed.

  Erland has in many ways led a disheartened life, though he now runs a free school up by the Limfjord. He told me about his compelling infatuation for his young student at Ubberup, which had taken him years to get over, despite his having known all along that it was wrong, in the sense of being destructive to all parties, to himself, to her, to his wife, and most of all to his children, he said, and then he looked down at his plate and fell silent.

  “Do you see them sometimes?” I asked.

  “No,” he said.

  In the continuing silence, something happened that was not at all like a house abruptly settling or something sinking inside my chest, but a warmth unfolded and spread. I know now that it was tenderness. I did nothing, but I could have taken his hand without shame, because I saw his nature and understood it, it was familiar to me, and at the same time I knew that the same held for my part, and that he, as he sat there, was quite as familiar with me and knew that I too was helplessly human, and I knew that he would never wish for it to be any different.

  Forgive them, for they know only what they do, as he considered Jesus ought to have said.

  We parted in the hall. He took my hand and I wriggled my fingers into the warm cup of his palm.

  I went out and started the car, and was home shortly after midnight. I lay in my bed for seven hours, but I did not sleep.

  May 22

  I told Hilda that I have met an old student friend who runs a free school in Himmerland, and she looked at me with wide eyes. All at once, they filled with tears. I think she found the news so singular that there was nothing else she could do
but cry. I said nothing of the circumstances of my meeting this old friend, but she understood immediately, and her question, albeit unuttered, was this: “An old woman like you? Are you a stranger after all?”

  * * *

  —

  What am I to say? Yes, I am a stranger, though oddly enough I am not unprepared. My heart runs on ahead of me. And I, I run after my heart. I cannot be without it.

  November 1, 1932

  Erland is in Viborg to give a talk and has taken the car. We had not anticipated that the weather would take such a turn. Snow on the first of November. It is not snowing much. The thermometer says zero degrees.

  We talked about Hallow-Eve in school today, and the children made lanterns. In Thyregod we cut faces in the turnips, the eerier the better, but the sugar beet they use here make a serene and blushing glow that is so very good for lanterns. They cut out suns and stars and moons, and strung their lanterns up among the trees at the pond.

  Just before, as I passed the French doors, I discovered they have been into our garden too. Lanterns in the trees, and one on the compost heap. Wherever I look, to the garden or to the road, there are lanterns. There is even one in the pear tree at the side of the house. Erland will be tickled when he comes home.

  The radio says the snow is from the south and that there is more to come.

  I have thought much about my lonely time, which has become so distant and yet may suddenly well inside me and feel exactly as before, if ever I happen to be alone for an afternoon and evening. The merest reminder of that time is more than sufficient. It is not a recollection of a recollection, or an image of an image. Never again do I wish to be alone, and what I mean is that I never again wish to be without Erland. No love is ever without grief. I must confess that when I was married to Vigand I often thought, when he was out in the car on such a night, that if he were to have an accident I would manage. And more so, that I would finally be myself alone. But in Erland’s case I worry. I have no desires to be myself alone.

  He must soon be here.

  * * *

  —

  I was thinking about how I arrived here. Like a twig suddenly dislodged from the bank of a stream, then carried along by a racing current. That helpless sense of motion. “I couldn’t stop myself from writing to you,” he said.

  “I’m glad you didn’t,” I said.

  “I imagined you thought me to be a scoundrel. What I told you is hardly flattering.”

  It was as far as we got before circumstances pulled us apart. I had traveled up here to attend a lecture at the free school and had arrived at the last minute. The room was packed. Marie Bregdahl was the speaker. I found a seat at the back next to a thin woman in a navy-blue dress who said: “I’ve been looking forward to this for more than a fortnight.”

  “Me too,” I said.

  I told her I had come from Thyregod, and she said, “Imagine!” She was thrilled that their events could attract people from so far afield.

  The audience extended into the hallway. I heard not a word of the lecture. Afterwards there were refreshments. I stuck to the woman in the navy-blue dress and went with her into the kitchen to butter bread. She was the first person I met here and we became friends that same evening. I am talking about Helene. When it was finished, we cleared the things away, and boiled kettles of water in the kitchen for the washing-up. There was chatter and laughter, and I was a part of it; my hands have always been able if ever there was a need.

  When eventually the school had emptied and everything was spick and span, the last cup had been returned to its place and even the dishwashers had gone, and after Marie Bregdahl had drunk a beer and been shown to her bed in the annex, the time was approaching midnight. Erland found me out in the hall.

  “I like it here,” I said.

  “And everyone wants you here,” he said.

  “How can you tell?”

  “They take joy in the joys of others,” he said. Written down, those words seem rather instructive, but Erland is not instructive. He took me into his rooms, put the lamp in the window, and his arms around me, and kissed me.

  Now the snow is falling over all of Jutland, on Carl Carlsen’s beehives, and Inge’s and Dagmar’s kitchen garden. On Hilda’s little house, and Peter Carlsen’s windbreaks and orchards. Tomorrow he will go out and inspect his trees, smooth an ungloved hand over an occasional trunk. On Vigand’s grave the snow falls too.

  That night, when I stood with Erland in the living room here for the very first time, I said: “You should know that it’s been such a long time since I was with a man that I’m practically innocent again.”

  “Then we must make you guilty,” he said.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Thanks to Kirsten Skriver Frandsen.

  Thanks to Gudrun Jessen, my mother.

  Thanks to the Give District Museum and Local History Archive.

  Particular thanks to Christian Tirsgaard.

  The quote on this page is from Sigurd Rambusch: Iagttagelser fra Midtjyllands hedeegne 1890-1904 (Observations from the Heathland Tracts of Mid-Jutland 1890-1904).

  A. Ankerstrøm’s memoirs Fra Herning og hedelandet (From Herning and the Heathland) and Vej og virke (Work and Vocation) have been an important source of inspiration.

  The portrayal of Terkelline Andersen stems largely from the Give District Musuem’s Year Book 2010.

  The account of Peter Carlsen’s tuberculosis is essentially a direct transcript from the personal documents of Thomas Sørensen, used here by kind permission of Villy M. Sørensen. The original Danish text may be accessed at:

  www.nørvang-herred.dk/brande/thomas/Thomas Tuberkulose.

  The verse on this page, from a hymn by Thomas Kingo, appears here in a translation by John Irons.

  The excerpt from Ibsen’s epic poem Terje Vigen on this page is in John Northam’s translation.

  Johannes V. Jensen’s poem was translated by Martin Aitken, as were the brief lines of a song by Carl Christian Bagger on this page.

  Although A Change of Time takes place in Thyregod and its surrounding area, it is a novel and as such bears only incidental relation to real events or people. During its writing, facts have been displaced, making many descriptions appear blurred to those with knowledge of the actual occurrences and states of affairs. It has not been my intention to write a section of the history of the town in which I grew up, though I freely acknowledge the singular allurement of using the name Thyregod.

  To Niels