The Black Cauldron

by William Heinesen

  “Do sit down here a moment,” said the nurse in a kind voice, pressing Liva down into a small sofa.

  “Is he … dead?” asked Liva, suddenly feeling icily cold and calm.

  The nurse nodded without making any reply. She took her time; it was a while before she said anything. She sat upright on the edge of a chair, her head bent and her hands folded.

  “Yes, it’s hard,” she said finally. “But perhaps you didn’t entertain much hope yourself? No, it was obvious to us that it was only a question of time. But then it happened far more quickly than we had imagined. We had thought he would keep going for a few months yet. He was so happy and cheerful after your visit, and yesterday evening his temperature was almost normal. But then early this morning he had a minor haemorrhage, and that finished him … he hadn’t the strength to get over it.”

  There was a knock at the door; a nurse entered cautiously.

  “Sister Elisabeth,” she said in a low voice. “I’m sorry to disturb you, but the doctor wants you.”

  The sister got up; she laid a hand on Liva’s shoulder. “Won’t you wait here for a while; I’ll be back. Would you like a glass of water? Just a moment …”

  Liva sat there calmly. She could still not gather her thoughts and realise fully what had happened. She glimpsed the chicken run from the window. The hens were moving about restlessly; one of them, without feathers on its neck and much of its breast, looked for all the world like an elderly lady who had dolled herself up, and for a moment Liva saw all the hens as having human faces, tiny, worn everyday faces; they were putting their heads together and talking to each other in women’s voices: “Oh, so he’s dead. Really? When? This morning? Did he die peacefully? Did he scream for help? For heaven’s sake, say something.” What an idea. But that was their affair.

  The orderly she had seen first now came with a glass of water. Liva left it untouched; she was not thirsty; she was scarcely affected, simply cold and out of sorts. She started examining the photographs hanging on the wall and above Sister Elisabeth’s bed … unknown, smiling faces. People always smiled in photographs, or at least they always looked relaxed and friendly. They didn’t allow themselves to be photographed when they were upset or in distress. It would soon be a pretty miserable collection if they did.

  The wall above Sister Elisabeth’s bed-head was in shadow; there was a crucifix fixed to it, a yellowing ivory Saviour on a black cross. For a moment Liva fancied the tiny figure wriggled in the gloom, as though trying to alter position, and suddenly she was overcome by a powerful sense of compassion with the martyred and helpless man on the cross. She had seen crucifixes and pictures of the crucifixion many times before without feeling more than solemnity and devotion, but this time the sight gave rise to a sudden overwhelming sense of compassion with the lonely young man, the Son of Man, Who in His torment and fear had felt Himself deserted by everyone, even by God.

  But now Sister Elisabeth came back; she was a little out of breath and had obviously been very busy. “Pastor Simmelhag sends his regards,” she said. “He would have liked a word with you, but unfortunately he hadn’t time; he had to go to an important meeting. But I told him, of course, how lonely you are here and that you are living at Hansen’s Hotel … we agreed that it wasn’t a proper place for you, and that you could easily have a bed up in the YWCA if you would like.”

  “No, thank you so much,” said Liva. “I’m quite all right where I am now. You see, I have a good friend there, so if you don’t think me impolite …”

  “As you like,” said Sister Elisabeth. “That’s up to you. Do you perhaps belong to the Brethren?”

  “No,” said Liva. “I’m not a member of the Plymouth Brethren.”

  The sister looked at her wristwatch and held out her hand. “Now, it’s almost four o’clock. Could you manage to come back about seven o’clock, over in the chapel? Or would you perhaps rather wait until tomorrow? You must do what suits you best. We would like to help you as far as we can.”

  “Thank you,” said Liva. “Then I’ll come back at seven o’clock.”

  Liva managed to steal unnoticed up to her attic. She did not want to tell the maid what had happened until later. She wanted to be quite alone at Johan’s coffin.

  As usual, the big wooden building was humming and throbbing with voices, the scraping of chairs, the clinking of glasses and plates. There was also some subdued singing and muffled dance steps could be heard from some distant room. Liva did not put on the light; she sat on the chair and gave in to staring at the gable window’s bluish square with its black cross. She felt full of contempt for the unattractive, noisy world with its sin and filth, its misfortune and death. Indeed, it was time for the hour of redemption to strike, so that the poor, misled people of the world would finally be able to see how pointless and reprehensible it was to kick against the pricks.

  Liva struck a match to see what time it was. Only half past four. She put on the light. The air was raw, and her breath rose like a blue shadow. She knelt down by her chair and folded her hands. But now there was the sound of creaking footsteps on the stairs. She quickly got up; Martha’s head appeared through the trapdoor.

  “When did you get back, Liva?” she asked. “Why didn’t you come and tell me that he was … was … dead? I happened to hear it from an orderly I know.”

  Martha took Liva’s hand and looked earnestly at her. “Is it very bad, Liva?” she asked. “Is it really dreadful? Are you afraid of dead bodies? I’m not at all afraid, and I don’t believe in ghosts, either.”

  “Martha,” said Liva suddenly. “You must come to Jesus. Do you hear? You must learn to love and fear Him.”

  Martha gave her a surprised and distrustful look. “Now, stop it,” she said, raising a deprecating hand. “You’re talking like one of the Brethren. I’d no idea you were like that.”

  But suddenly she stepped across and embraced Liva, took her hand and pressed it to her cheek. “No, I oughtn’t to be so unkind to you, Liva. Are you terribly angry with me? But I didn’t know you were all religious, did I? I thought you were just ordinary. Can you forgive me, Liva? Yes, you can, for you’re good. And what about me? Ugh, a dreadful harpy. I can’t understand how you can put up with me. Tell me off, Liva, and tell me that I’m going to go to … Hell. Because I am.”

  Martha suddenly burst into tears. She drew Liva across to the mattress, forced her to sit down and pressed her head against her arm, tugged at her and sobbed: “Then show me the way to Jesus, Liva. Ask Him to come to me. I’ll lie down here now; and you go over to the light and pray for me. Do you hear?”

  Martha threw herself down on the mattress and buried her face in her arms. Liva began to pray. The prayer was long and urgent, and it made her feel at once calm and very strong.

  Martha had sat up and was sitting staring at her.

  “Is Jesus your bridegroom?” she asked in wonderment. “You talked of wearing your bridal dress.”

  “Yes, my wedding dress,” said Liva.

  “But wouldn’t you really rather have your wedding with your fiancé when you meet again? Or … no, of course, you’d rather have Jesus Himself. But … perhaps I’m just talking nonsense, Liva, but I just mean: what about your fiancé?”

  “Yes, now you are talking dreadful nonsense,” said Liva. “For of course no one can be married to Jesus; surely you must understand that. It’s just the joy at meeting Him and living with Him to all eternity – it’s like the joy at being united with your bridegroom. Do you understand now, Martha?”

  Martha nodded. “Yes, but what about your fiancé? You’ll be meeting him again. Aren’t you going to be properly together again then? Or how are you going to arrange things, Liva? You can’t live together without being married, for what would people say?”

  “There’s no question of marriage or matrimony in eternity,” said Liva. “It’s only a question of the union of souls in everlasting joy and happiness.”

  “Do you mean all souls together?”

  “Y
es, all souls. All redeemed souls, Martha.”

  Martha was silent for a moment. Then, rather downheartedly, she asked: “Only redeemed souls, then, Liva? But what about the others? Will they all be damned? That’s a terrible thought really, for there might be a lot of nice people among them, don’t you think? And a lot of daft ones that can’t be made to understand it. Don’t you think?”

  Liva stared into the light. “It is dreadful,” she said quietly. “It is absolutely dreadful. But that’s how it is. Those who have not received the gift of grace through their faith are lost to all eternity. They will be thrown into utter darkness, where there are tears and the gnashing of teeth.”

  “The gnashing of teeth – what’s that?” asked Martha.

  “It’s when you grind your teeth – like this.”

  They both ground their teeth. Martha’s face twisted in disgust. “Do you mean they’ll be tortured like that always, Liva? For all time?”

  “Tortured by repentance, yes. Tormented by terrible repentance for not letting Jesus in when He knocked on the door.”

  “Ugh, don’t look so horrible and wicked,” cried Martha in horror. “Be nice, Liva, like you were before.”

  “I’m not wicked, my dear,” said Liva in surprise.

  “Yes, you are, you’re wicked, because you can look really horrible; I’ve noticed that.”

  Martha began to weep again; she got up; her thin face was ugly and twisted. She went across and touched Liva’s hand, cautiously and imploringly.

  “Don’t be wicked with me,” she said. “You must help me to love Jesus. Do you hear, Liva? I must be His bride, like you. I’d so much like to love Him; I’m not interested in anyone else; I’ve had enough of all that, Liva. I want to be pure and lovely like you.”

  Liva grasped her hand. The two girls looked at each other, both smiling a little, and Martha said in a brighter tone: “Yes, like that, Liva. Now you look good again, and that’s what you must always be like … not the other, it gets on my nerves.”

  It was bitterly cold later whan Liva returned to the hospital. The wind had veered to the north; the air was full of tiny grains of frost, and the Northern Lights were darting across the sky. The gable ends, chimneys and naked trees in the town were outlined black and motionless against the effervescent sky.

  There was a light in the little chapel, and Sister Elisabeth and a young nurse were just putting the lid on the coffin.

  “You must decide for yourself whether you want to see the body,” said Sister Elisabeth. “But I would almost advise you not to. It is not a beautiful corpse.”

  Liva wanted to see Johan’s body; the lid was taken off the coffin, and Sister Elisabeth drew the white cloth aside. Liva had to take hold of herself so as not to start at the sight of the dead man’s face. It was contorted and quite unrecognisable; there was nothing left here of the living Johan: the eyes, the nose, the mouth were all like those on someone she had never seen before in her life. The mouth was drawn askew to one side so that half of the front teeth were visible as though in some terrible smile; the nose was huge and sharp, and the eyes had almost disappeared in bluish hollows. Only the thick dark hair was unchanged.

  Liva stretched out her hand and touched the dead man’s forehead; it was cold like glass. And suddenly she burst into unrestrained weeping. She could hear her own hoarse gasping; it sounded like someone with asthma, and it was difficult for her to regain her breath.

  Sister Elisabeth stepped forward and took her arm. “Let’s say the Lord’s Prayer,” she said. Liva could not collect her thoughts to take part in the prayer, but she gradually managed to control her convulsive weeping.

  Liva walked slowly home; she took her time. There was nothing to hurry for. She stared up at the depths of the heavens, where the Northern Lights had gathered in an improbable wheel above her head, a vast streaming whirlpool emitting light of many colours. She stopped and for a long time stood wrapped in the astonishing sight, and suddenly she was lost in the thought that here she stood, lonely and cold on earth, but still alive and breathing.

  She went a little further away from the road, up into a tiny black patch of scrubland in the corner of a stony field. Here, shivering with cold and afraid, she knelt and prayed to God that her wait might be short.

  4

  A grey October, darkness and storm, and a continued Russian advance on the Eastern Front. Everything was sinister, sinister. What would be the end of it all? The defeat of Germany in the East was actually good enough news, but on the other hand it was not exactly a joyous sight to watch the Asian proletarian hordes pouring in across Europe. Incredible that Churchill could countenance the way in which things were developing and still not launch a second front.

  There were other reasons, too, why Mr. Nikodemus Skælling could not help feeling uneasy and sometimes almost ached for the good old days before the great wars.

  At home things were in a deplorable state, too; everything was developing in an unfortunate and sickening way. Sectarianism, both religious and political, was blossoming unrestrained; a new social class of upstarts and wartime speculators was stamping impatiently, eager to get at the helm. The boom had gone to the heads of such people and they had become ungovernable. Now these barbarians seriously wanted to make these islands a sovereign land in which they could do as they thought fit. There were ructions in the capital; the lawful Danish authorities were being criticised and attacked in the most impudent manner; conceited smatterers, failed students and sectarian missionaries thought themselves qualified to assume the roles of governors and judges.

  This national elephantiasis had spread here to Kingsport as well; the Forward Youth Association was deeply infected, and even Solomon Olsen himself had more or less joined the rebels. It was said that he had promised to finance a new newspaper which Bergthor Ørnberg was to edit. And much good may it do them. Incidentally, it was incredibly mean-spirited of Solomon Olsen, who had a Danish knighthood.

  Oh well, perhaps these boom-bubbles would burst sooner or later, and the good, healthy old conservatism which was rooted deep down in the Faroese people finally triumph.

  But a far greater danger threatened from a different direction, a real pestilence that gave ample reason to sound the alarm. That was communism. The cancerous communist cell structure, which was well known to have spread over the whole world since the Bolshevik Revolution probably had its secret metastases here at home, too. Mr. Skælling had discussed this with his good friends, Heimdal the bookseller and Lindenskov the postmaster. Many of the younger social democrats were probably more or less infected. So far the social democratic party was, however, probably fairly sound on the whole; it had conformed to parliamentary forms and adopted a calm, dignified manner in harmony with social democratic traditions in other countries. You knew more or less where you were with it; the social democrat newspaper had recently printed a quite reasonable leader unambiguously emphasising that socialism was built on evolution and not revolution.

  But this leader had presumably not been written without good reason. It signified a warning to the restless elements in their ranks not to become contaminated with the revolutionary disease. The heart-breaking problem was that the revolutionaries had gone underground and were working in secret. You had them close at hand without directly being able to prove it. You got their scent, that indefinable, rotten scent of game.

  Yes thank you; Mr. Skælling knew that scent. He had had it close at hand. Down in the print room, to be precise. For Jens Ferdinand Hermansen, the typographer, was without doubt a revolutionary. They had his own word for it that he was bitter and opposed to the social order. And you could not accept at its face value his categorical denial of being a member of any secret organisation. At all events he was indubitably a representative of the spirit of revolt and dissolution characteristic of this age. The episode in the church the other day told its own clear story. It was altogether too easy and unpsychological to brush it aside with the remark that it was no more than a single drunken
man’s happening to go berserk. It was far too symptomatic for that, by Jove.

  The little hunchback was most certainly not an easy person to have in your employment, even if – it had to be admitted – he was in many ways a valuable man to the newspaper, for he had a brilliant mind and was untiring in his reading; he showed an amazing knowledge of virtually everything under the sun, from local politics and the way to work out the cost of living, to the history of the world and astronomy. Moreover – apart from those deplorable periods on the bottle, which unfortunately seemed to be getting more and more out of hand – he was well organised, a skilled craftsman, an inventive and handy person, and something of a draughtsman and artist; he had painted some extremely commendable signs and advertisements for the bigger shops, and a caricature of Bergthor Ørnberg which Skælling had chanced to find down in the print room was really both talented and delightfully malicious. What a terrible shame it was that Jens Ferdinand Hermansen, with all these virtues, should be socially contaminated; indeed, who knows, perhaps he was that very borer beetle that could bring the entire edifice tumbling down over their heads when they least expected it.

  For the time being there was no immediate danger. The British occupying forces would scarcely tolerate revolutionary disturbances. But should one not view with unease the day when the war was over and the country was once more without firm government? For there was scarcely any help to be expected from Denmark proper, where communist resistance fighters and saboteurs held sway: they were probably arming themselves as fast as they could to take over the government as soon as the saga of the German occupation came to an end. It might be bad here, but it was far worse there.

  Yes, there was unrest and ferment wherever you looked; there were enemies at every turn, often where you would least expect them. For instance, where did a man like Doctor Tønnesen stand? His attitude towards his own class seems to be somewhat sarcastic. Among other things he was said on one occasion to have called the Club a harmless madhouse. What could that little word “harmless” imply? And this strange outsider was also supposed to have expressed himself rather deprecatingly about The Faroe News. In general, his political and social views were said to be extremely left wing.