Alfhild laughed and slapped Magdalena’s bottom, but then she grabbed her chimes and stretched out on the floor with them.
Ivar and Frederik were not allowed to go before they had had a cup of coffee. Ivar poured a snaps for his father. The old man sipped it slowly; he held the glass gingerly and took great care not to spill a single drop, and with every sip he breathed a wish for thousandfold good fortune and then called down Christ’s blessing and grace on them.
Ivar watched him impatiently. His father had always been like this, tender, delicate, almost womanish, full of pious apologies, excessively grateful for little things. Ivar could not help thinking of his mother, whom he clearly remembered, although he had only been five years old when she died: she was the opposite of her husband, big-boned and tough, mannish in temperament, kind and patient with her children, but taciturn and bitter when confronting strangers. Aye, his parents had been very different in nature and background; his father had come from poor stock, his mother from an affluent farming family. Yet despite this their married life had been happy, and they had left behind them the achievement of a lifetime: they had cleared the virgin land under the outcrop known as the Angelica Wall, where there was now a potato patch, meadows and a small herd of cattle. A peaceful locality, well hidden from the world, aye, merciful heavens, a happy place, a paradise to look back on when you were out there on the sea.
Ivar took hold of his glass and emptied it. He felt a light touch on his shoulder and turned round. It was Liva. She bent down and whispered: “Come with me a moment, Ivar, there’s something I so much want to say to you.”
He got up and followed his sister outside. Liva looked away from him and said in a low voice: “You must forgive me, Ivar … I’ve been wanting to talk to you all the time, but I’ve not dared, for I don’t know how you’ll take it … but I’m so worried about you, Ivar, and I pray so often that all shall be well for you and that you might turn to Jesus before it’s too late. But don’t wait until it’s too late, Ivar. For the hour is nigh now, and we must be ready always and have our lamps lit. No, listen to me, Ivar; I must talk to you. You must turn to Him who alone can light our way out of the everlasting darkness to come. Do you hear? I don’t want us to be parted for all eternity when the hour comes. I can’t bear that thought…”
She took hold of his hand, and a firm, alien ring crept into her voice: “Ivar, surrender to your Saviour, believe in Him Who has suffered death for us so that we may not perish.”
Ivar gave Simon the baker a vexed thought: that crazy fool, now he had completely turned Liva’s head, kind, well-meaning Liva. He pressed his sister’s hand in return and said calmly: “You don’t need to be anxious on my behalf, Liva. Come on, we’ll go inside again.”
“You mustn’t be angry,” said Liva. “I had to say it, I didn’t want to neglect what God demanded of me. I’ll always pray for you and Frederik, and for all of you…”
Ivar gave her a comradely nudge with his elbow. “We’ll work it out, old girl,” he laughed. Liva, too, had to laugh. She took his arm, and they went inside again.
Frederik had refilled the glasses, but now they had to go and they drank to their departure. Liva and Magdalena went down the path with the two men, all four walking arm in arm. The moon was up, hovering in the murky, misty air like a pale old jellyfish. Magdalena was a little giddy from the wine and kissed her brother and Frederik as she took her leave. Once more she took their hands, executed a few dance steps and sang:
Then fare you well, beloved friends.
To God we now commend you.
His gentle solace never ends
And He will ever tend you.
The others joined in the refrain from the old seamen’s ballad:
Fare ye well, now I must leave,
But I’ll be back one day.
Ivar and Frederik walked on in silence. Frederik was supporting himself on Ivar’s arm; contrary to his custom, he had had a drop too much and was not entirely steady on his feet. As they approached the cemetery Ivar increased his speed. He was hoping that for once Frederik would forget to visit it. Frederik had the habit of taking leave of his parents’ grave every time he went to sea, and thanks to an old misunderstanding, it had become the custom that Ivar should accompany him. And so it was this time, too. It was impossible to prevent it, for the road skirted the cemetery. Frederik was determined to stop at the gate; he stood there with a curious stoop, as though weary.
They filed up the long avenue of stunted trees which emerged one after another in the veiled moonlight, and they were swathed in the cemetery’s melancholy aroma of withered flowers. Ivar could not for the life of him stand this smell, and it was almost with glee that he surrendered to the thought that he could look forward to ending his days at sea and so be spared lying here among sorrowing doves and glass-covered curlicues.
There was only grass and a small moss-grown memorial stone to adorn Frederik’s parents’ grave. Frederik bent forward and mumbled some short piece of which Ivar as usual only caught the words: “eternal rest”. Then it was over, and they hurried out again. The trees lining the path reappeared in the mist, one by one, like sentries standing there to confirm that Frederik had carried out his idiotic duty. Only when he had shut the gate did Frederik straighten up and become himself again.
On the foredeck of the Manuela a group of men could be seen. It looked like the crews from several ships, and some of the men appeared to be kneeling. Ivar and Frederik could clearly hear Opperman’s voice: “Oh no, it is hopeless, he is quite dead.”
“What the hell’s going on?” murmured Ivar.
“The monkey,” Frederik burst out. He dashed on ahead.
Yes, it was the monkey. It lay rolled up on the deck, as stiff as a dried swab, stone dead.
Then something totally unusual happened: Frederik started storming and raging like a slave driver and using words which no one ever expected to hear coming from his mouth. He swung the stiff animal’s corpse in the air as though threatening to batter the onlookers with it, and he openly accused the cook of having poisoned it.
“You could never stand him, Elieser, that’s what it is, for you’re a creature of the Devil, for all your Christian claptrap. You’ve given him rat poison or some other bloody concoction, that’s what you’ve done, you bugger … you begrudged me him, even though he brought luck to the whole ship.”
No one spoke out against him. They were all taken aback to see the peaceful leading seaman go berserk. They simply let him go on venting his fury; no one was glad the monkey was dead; it had been popular with them all. The cook bent his head and sighed. He knew perfectly well that he had not given the poor beast anything bad to eat, and Frederik would come to accept that later, once they could talk it over in peace and quiet.
When no one sought to contradict him, Frederik’s torrent of words died away, and now Opperman’s voice rang out loud and clear, speaking as it were on behalf of all those present: “You buy new monkey, Frederik. I pleased to pay.”
There was a sound of sniggering and suppressed laughter at these words, and this reawakened Frederik’s fury. Fuming, he turned towards Opperman: “It’s not everything in this world that can be bought for money, Mr. Opperman.”
Opperman smiled and was about to say something, but Frederik got in first; the words were hurled from his lips like stones from a catapult: “Shut up, you scruffy cur, you foreign swine, you swindler, you womaniser. Do you understand what I say, you little rat? Get ashore with you, you’ve no right on this ship with honest men.”
A howl of laughter, offensive but inevitable, arose at this. Like an avalanche, it started quite gently, with a few splutters here and there, but it quickly rose to a roar, and indeed some of the younger ones present laughed and howled uncontrollably. Ivar glanced at Opperman, and to his amazement saw that he, too, was laughing. He was not the least bit upset; Frederik, on the other hand, was decidedly offended, indeed deeply hurt. He uttered a sound almost like a sob and forced his way through th
e crowd with the dead monkey under his arm. Those nearest to him stopped laughing, and gradually the tumult subsided.
“Oh, dreadfully angry,” said Opperman. “Shame for Frederik, poor Frederik, lose his darling monkey.”
For the first time in his life Ivar felt a certain admiration for Opperman. Anyone else would inevitably have made a fool of himself in such circumstances; they would have boiled over and acted intemperately in one way or another. But it appeared that Opperman was not like that. No, there he stood, little and ridiculously dressed up to the nines among a crowd of seamen in their working clothes, and expressing sincere pity for the man who had just been heaping abuse on him.
Soon afterwards the Manuela cast off and put out to sea in the silent, fluffy, damp darkness.
12
The misty autumn night, haunted by sleepy moonlight, lies like a protoplasm over the village, an indefinable something, filled with torment.
Jens Ferdinand has awakened from his deep intoxicated sleep, he notices in dull despair that retribution is upon him. Like the boy in the fairy tale, he has presumed to open the door to the innermost, forbidden room in the castle, the place where oblivion’s sacred jewel lies hidden, but now the sinful yearning for a forbidden bliss has left him, and the hour of retribution has arrived. There is something merciless and uncompromising within him, something that is demanding vengeance and exacting payment.
The situation is a familiar one, but it can most certainly not be suffered with rationality and resignation; it is appallingly new every time … the potential for suffering is inexhaustible; the demons of retribution are in fine fettle, and their inventiveness knows no bounds. Indeed, in their very knavishness they are somehow admirable. They effect disintegration; they disrupt all sense of time and space; they divide consciousness against itself: you are no longer a single person, you are two or more, you have eight eyes like a spider.
If you doze off for a moment the demons have it all their own way. Yet even that is preferable to the sharp needle of wakefulness nagging in the back of your head.
He is lying in his own bed; he knows that by the familiar sound of the springs. But at the same time he is lying on the floor of a vast crypt, and round about in the darkness he can sense the multifarious sound of great crowds moving about impatiently … at sea, on land and in the air, as Churchill says.
If only he could gather together his arms and legs, which are being trampled underfoot by all these millions of alien beings …! If only he could get his eyes under control and and stop them squinting, unite them into a single whole!
He hears a shout in the darkness: “This is what we expect of you.” And suddenly he understands that in his capacity of a thinking and comprehending being he is the object of devotion. He gathers himself for an almighty effort and shouts, while the juices of life rise in him: “My suffering is but a tiny fragment of the totality of suffering in the world, of the phenomenal suffering and misery of this age. Like someone suffering from meningitis, humanity itself lies on its couch of pain, crippled to the depths of its soul and a prey to the demons.”
“Heil! Heil!” resounds the applause like a horde of wild horses galloping across an arena of iron.
But then he hears irritated voices: “Out with that misery, that hunchback, that spider!” And so they go on. And he has to suffer it.
But her hand in your hair … ? Whose hand? And suddenly he knows: Liva’s distant but warm smile and that young voice of hers, sad, unsuspecting and infinitely kind: … “I’m not angry with you … May Jesus Christ keep thee, my poor dear.”
So Liva is smiling at you? I’ll stake everything, everything on that smile – see here, my crippled heart, take it, fry it, eat it in the name of God, and may it do you good, amen… !
And then the most iniquitous of all iniquities: Powerful alien arms grasp her from behind and throw her to the ground. There is the sound of laughter, coarse and lusting; he leaps up and to his horror sees Death himself having his will with her. And with a shriek he awakens and feels the long, painful needle of consciousness pricking him.
II
1
One windy moonlight night at the end of September Solomon Olsen’s trawler, the Magnus Heinason steered in through the bay. Its flag was at half mast, and when it came within hailing distance of the quayside there was a call to those ashore with the request that they should send for the ambulance. It arrived just as the ship docked; two stretchers were passed in over the gunwhale; a wounded man was put on one and carried out to the waiting ambulance, which quickly moved off. The other stretcher was slowly lifted ashore, while the harbour folk and the seamen bared their heads.
The body was that of the young skipper of the Manuela, Ivar Berghammer. The crew climbed ashore and grouped silently around the stretcher. They spoke in low voices, as though so as not to waken the dead man. The Magnus Heinason had found the Manuela’s lifeboat with six survivors eighteen nautical miles south west of the island. They had all been suffering badly from exposure after drifting for two days. One of them, a seventeen-year-old from Sandefjord had been wounded in the shoulder. The skipper had been killed on board the Manuela, his chest torn apart by machine gun fire. An enemy aircraft had attacked the ship one morning at dawn, not bombing it, but strafing and setting it ablaze.
Frederik, the leading seaman, had his arm in a sling, but it was nothing serious, just a minor flesh wound in the lower part of the arm. Poul Strøm, the trawler’s captain, had cleaned it and bandaged it.
The ambulance returned; the stretcher with Ivar’s body was lifted into it, and the ambulance disappeared into the night. Soon afterwards the trawler put out again; they were in a hurry, on their way from Iceland to Scotland with a valuable cargo of frozen fish, and they had not originally intended putting ashore on the way.
Of the five survivors from the Manuela, only one, Sylverius, was married; the others were young lads, and three of them lived in other villages. Sylverius suggested that they should all go home with him and have a warm meal. Someone had fetched his wife, and she was standing there, white as a sheet, holding his arm; the others looked away from the young couple and let them have their reunion in peace. Before long the three men went off with them. Frederik, however, upset and restless, preferred to be left alone and stayed behind on the windswept quayside. The windows in Solomon Olsen’s warehouse on the other side of the bay were glittering in the moonlight, and the shadows of huge clouds were driving across the mountain sides. It was just after two o’clock.
Frederik was at a loss as to what he should do. Opperman and Ivar’s family had to be told of the tragedy, that was certain. But ought he to waken people up in the middle of the night with such bad news? He was the obvious person to undertake the task, and he had promised to do so. It was another of those many trials one had to face. Nevertheless, he felt most inclined to drag it out as long as he decently could, perhaps until five o’clock. Then, at least, it would be morning. To turn up in the middle of the night and shock people up with the news of a tragedy struck him as little short of an act of murder.
Frederik prepared to spend a few hours alone. He decided to go for a walk and exercise his stiff limbs. He could go up to the cemetery. That seemed to be the most suitable place just now. Then he would go down to the hospital and enquire about Henrik, the wounded man from Sande-fjord, and try to discover what arrangements were being made for Ivar’s funeral. For the time being, the stretcher had been placed in the hospital mortuary.
The town was grey and inert in the bleak night, but it was not silent; there were the muffled sounds of work from Solomon Olsen’s slipway, while voices and even a little music could be heard here and there. When Frederik passed Opperman’s warehouse he could see through a chink in the black-out curtains that there was a light on in the office. He went closer and listened; yes, he could hear voices. They were speaking English. Frederik decided to cut short the agony and knock on the door with his awful message. He took a deep breath and shook his head. It was disgr
aceful that he had behaved so outrageously and heaped abuse on Opperman the last time they had met; he felt ashamed when he thought how calmly Opperman had taken it. And he felt it as a kind of punishment, a just punishment, that he was now condemned to be the one to tell Opperman that his ship had been lost. That was what you got for your arrogance – forced to eat the cabbage that you yourself had spat in, as the old play had it.
Frederik felt insignificant and superfluous. He had had this feeling ever since the catastrophe. He felt it was all a gross misunderstanding on the part of fate. It was quite wrong, absolutely ridiculous, that it was Ivar who should be dead and that he, Frederik, had survived. He had not yet shed a single tear over Ivar, but the dryness he felt within was burning the soul out of him.
Now the door to Opperman’s reception room opened, and a couple of army officers emerged on to the steps. Behind them came Pjølle Schibbye, puffing away powerfully at his cigar. Opperman remained standing in the doorway, rubbing his hands and smiling so broadly that his teeth could be seen flashing in the moonlight. Frederik waited until the others had disappeared, and then he went and knocked at the door. Best to get it over and done with.
Opperman was flushed and a little tipsy and smelled of whisky. “Pliss come in,” he said. “You want borrow bottle? Oh, I see it is Frederik…? But where Frederik come from now in middle of night? The Manuela… ?”
Frederik leaned against the doorpost. He was holding his bonnet in his hand. In a flat voice and looking down he told Opperman what had happened. Opperman put all five fingers of his hand to his mouth, “Dreadful,” he said. “Dreadful.”
He pulled Frederik inside and forced him down in a chair. He remained standing himself, wringing his hands and standing askew; his mouth was twisted as though he were about to vomit, open so that the well-tended teeth could be seen.
“Oh Lord and God,” he said. “Shot in the chest? Dead on the spot? Oh, bad, bad.”
The Black Cauldron Page 10
