The Black Cauldron

by William Heinesen

  He lowered his arms. He took a step towards Solomon Olsen and stared him straight in the eye. Then he quickly left the shop.

  Solomon Olsen slowly walked to his office, shaking his head.

  “He’s mad,” he said to Bergthor. “He’s stark raving mad.”

  “You can see the madness shining in his eyes,” confirmed Bergthor humbly.

  Solomon Olsen sat down with a sigh. There were two unopened telegrams on his desk. He opened one and read it through excitedly.

  “Just look at that,” he said.

  “Is it from the Joan of Arc?” enquired Bergthor.

  “Yes. They’ve got £8000 for their catch. That’s quite a tidy sum, isn’t it? And there I was, getting worried.”

  He was humming to himself as he opened the second telegram. He suddenly went silent. He got up without a sound and went out into the corridor. Bergthor heard the click of the bolt being pushed on the toilet door. The telegram lay open on the desk. It was from Solomon Olsen’s agent in Reykjavík. Bergthor read it and started trembling.

  “Good God. ’Trawler Magnus Heinason mined off Iceland. Disaster observed by two other ships, but violent gale made rescue impossible. Probably no survivors.”’

  Bergthor passed on the tragic message to Gjowstein. There was no reason to keep it secret, it would soon be out in any case. Soon the entire building was humming with sombre and subdued talk.

  “It’s so awful, you can’t credit it,” said Gjowstein. He had a heavy cold and his mouth was full of liquorice tablets. “Awful. Twenty drowned. And all from the fjord here. And then the ship … the best we had. Or at least the next best.”

  Bergthor gave him an intense look, raised his head high and said: “They fell at their posts, Gjowstein. They died for their country. Never, never shall they be forgotten.”

  He turned round, quickly put a sheet of paper into the typewriter and began to write. It was a poem. The words came of their own accord; they gushed forth from his sorrowing breast and brought a trickle of tears from the corners of his eyes.

  5

  “And of course, the entire front page edged in black. And a cross above the obituary. And italics for the list of names of those lost. Or perhaps bold, or at least semi-bold. It has a more sombre, more solemn effect. And the two more … more optimistic headlines will have to go out – God help us. Yes, I mean ’Keep smiling’ and ’Beneath the Storm Cloud’. This is very definitely a mourning issue, a black issue. What are you smiling at, Hermansen?”

  Mr. Skælling, the editor, gave his typographer a surprised and offended look.

  “Well, it’s this advertisement from Opperman. We can’t possibly include it in this issue, can we? Top quality life jackets!”

  “No, definitely not. It would border on the ridiculous, even the blasphemous.”

  “And then, there’s this one: ’Drown your sorrows and worries in coffee and cakes at the Bells of Victory.’ “

  “Yes, that’s just like Opperman,” the editor said, shaking his head. “He’s a bad lad, a really bad lad, by God.”

  “Well, he’s not the only one,” the typographer went on. “For instance, there’s this one from Masa Hansen for mourning clothes for women and children, widow’s veils, mourning decorations, huge selection.”

  “Does it really say mourning decorations?” asked Mr. Skælling in consternation. “Incredibly bad taste. Yes, it’s vulgar, definitely vulgar.”

  “Yes, there’s no denying that,” the typographer agreed, studying Mr. Skælling through half-closed eyes. “And what do you think of this one: ’Make the orphans happy with books and toys from S. F. Heimdal.”’

  “But surely, it can’t be possible.” Mr. Skælling put his hand involuntarily to his head; he was momentarily confused. Heimdal … that sober, civilised man. Could he have a screw loose … or was it perhaps his wife … or no, of course … it was Hermansen making a fool of him. Were there no limits to this monster’s disrespect?

  He heard the typographer going on in the same sharp, cutting voice as he took a new sheet of paper: “Seamen. Nordic brothers. Help a brother nation drowning in overproduction of fish. Iceland needs you. Still huge profits to be made for poor sailors who will risk their lives in the greatest rush for profit the world has ever known …”

  “Stop it, for God’s sake,” shouted Mr. Skílling in a plaintive voice, raising his elbows. “Are you out of your mind, man? Is that supposed to be funny? Do you really think this is the right moment … ?”

  The little typographer had a hectic flush in his cheeks; he gave the editor an acrimonious look and said: “Yes, I think the time has come for me to say goodbye to this disgusting, lickspittle newspaper of yours. I’m fed up with your damned sentimental, snobbish rubbish. Understand?”

  Mr. Skælling had become very pale.

  “You … you’re leaving, Hermansen?” he asked quietly and almost imploringly. “Yes, but … what have I done to you, Hermansen? Why are you so dreadfully angry with me? I must say that it makes me profoundly upset. You know, I’ve always been well satisfied with you … we have worked together very well indeed … we’ve never exchanged as much as an angry word … and your wages … your wages …”

  Shaking his head, the editor groped his way to a stool. He went on in a subdued voice: “Of course, Hermansen, I know your … your rather extreme views. Society, yes. It’s admittedly something quite … paradoxical, yes, you’re entirely right in that. But perhaps in the final analysis not quite as bad as you make out, no, thank God. And – well, in the name of heaven … what is it you really want? Do you demand that all economic life should cease? But where shall we drift off to then? I must admit, it’s beyond me. But perhaps I’m one of the … hm … old school.”

  The typographer had taken his cap. He shrugged his shoulders briefly and went without saying goodbye.

  The editor got up, shaking his head. What did the desperate man intend now? The alarm clock! Mr. Skælling went quickly across to the type case and pulled out the drawer. Yes, of course, the alarm clock had gone.

  Gone and gone. Perhaps it had not gone. Perhaps not gone at all, but simply set in motion.

  He listened. Yes. There was the sound of a steady ticking from somewhere or other. There was no mistaking it. Tick-tock-tick-tock, it sounded, with a kind of wooden resonance. Was the devilish contraption hidden somewhere behind the panelling or under the floor? And suddenly the sound would stop, and …

  Mr. Skælling rushed out, bareheaded and without his stick or galoches. He did not stop until he had the printing office at a safe distance. There was an ear-splitting roar. But admittedly, it came from the opposite direction. And then a fresh roar, and then another.

  Oh, of course. It was the usual artillery practice. Yes, now he could see the smoke from the gunpowder rising from the battery over on the point.

  Mr. Skælling had to smile a little, in spite of everything. What times we live in, what times. By God, it was not surprising if your nerves let you down occasionally.

  He breathed a deep sigh of relief.

  The fresh air brought in by the gale did him good. The printing office was still in its usual place. No damage had been done. The ticking sound was still there, but it was coming, he noticed, from outside. More precisely, it was coming from the little inlet called the Seaweed Pool, where Markus the mad boatbuilder had his yard.

  Mr. Skælling took his hat and walking stick. He would go for a short stroll along the shore before dinner. That would take him past the Seaweed Pool, so he would be able to discover the source of the noise that had so thrown him off his balance. And then he would be able to think through the situation. It would presumably be possible to find another typographer. At a pinch he could use Hugo, the painter and decorator, who usually helped Hermansen when he was particularly busy. He was not too bad, really.

  Mr. Skælling stopped in front of Markus’s boathouse. The hollow knocking had ceased. He peeped in through the door, which was standing ajar. But the sight that met him he
re was once more on the point of taking his breath away – a cross … a huge wooden cross filling practically the whole of the long workshop. Good God. What on earth was this?

  The cross was beautifully finished, planed smooth and varnished, and up on the crossbeam there was a plaque on which some lettering had been carved. I. N. R. I.!

  What in the name of heaven was going on here?

  He went inside. Markus came wading towards him through a billowing pile of fresh shavings. And there were shavings in his thick beard.

  “What on earth is this cross?” asked Mr. Skælling breathlessly.

  “It’s the cross of Jesus Christ,” replied the boatbuilder calmly and informatively, almost like a teacher helping a backward pupil.

  “Where is it to be … put?” asked Mr. Skælling. He felt strangely crestfallen and weak at the knees.

  “At Golgotha,” came the reply. Markus turned around dolefully and began searching on a shelf.

  Mr. Skælling had started trembling again. He was feeling more and more confused. A line from a hymn kept on going round in his head:

  Light is the cross as others’ guerdon

  But heavy when one’s own sad burden.

  Sensation is always sensation, whether it is sad or joyful; there is always something pleasurable, voluptuous about the actual shock for the first few moments. The mighty experience lights a fuse … the spirit is projected aloft with the force of a rocket, and only when it loses speed will it be seen whether the fiery fruits it dispenses are the fruits of joy or sorrow. People love this brief extravaganza of sensations and seek it, blinded by their fixation, as moths seek the light. Warmongers well know this law and exploit it in their devilish speculations. But wait, obnoxious creatures that you are … retribution is already upon you; the demons of retribution have brewed the magic potion of malediction for you who speculate in human life and feed your fruit trees on human suffering and misery…

  Jens Ferdinand forces his clenched fists down into his jacket pocket and flaps his arms like a bird. For a moment he is suffused with hatred and fury. But then he feels the flush slowly subside and condense in mockery, powerless mockery, clownish behaviour … the fate of the village reformer. Aye, even a Lenin would have been no more than a wretched clown if he had been cursed with having to spend his life in a village …

  You ought to have been a priest, he thinks with a cold little laugh. Or at least a lay preacher. Like Simon the baker.

  He catches himself feeling some sympathy for Simon. What a great pity that this untiring fanatic didn’t tread the path of reason, but that of religious mania. But there is a devilish drive and power even about his mania as he stands totally isolated and aims his shafts at wartime profiteers and bigwigs.

  There he is now, standing on the little square in front of Solomon Olsen’s shop, talking to a throng of widows and orphans, fiancées and relatives, people who have, as it were, still not quite realised that this time it is they who are affected, but are still expecting a miracle and stubbornly cling to the telegram’s “probably”. There might, after all, just be a chance that a few of them were rescued … if no one else, then at least my Peter or Hans.

  “For we must wrestle against principalities and powers,” cries the baker. “Against the rulers of the darkness of this world. Against spiritual wickedness in high places.”

  Simon is quite hoarse by now and ought to stop before people begin to feel sorry for him. And yet, as he stands there, lonely and windswept and drenched, but full of the indestructible ardour of inspiration, he really does resemble a genuine prophet … John the Baptist, crying in the wilderness. Yes, even the Messiah, when, He raised His whip in fury against the moneychangers.

  “It’s dreadful, dreadful,” says old Verlandsen, the headmaster, shaking his bent, bespectacled ram’s head. “Almost all those lost were my old pupils. One of them wasn’t even sixteen yet; he’d just left school, and he was the best pupil I’ve had for many years, perhaps the most gifted boy I’ve ever known … after you, Jens Ferdinand. He wanted to go on and study and become something great. And now he’d got the chance of earning some money to finance his studies. He’d already managed to collect enough to start on.”

  The old teacher suddenly nudged Jens Ferdinand: “That’s his mother coming along over there. She was once a pupil of mine, too …”

  A wispy little woman with seasick eyes and apple-green cheeks approached the teacher. He held out his hands to her, and they were for a moment united as though they were father and daughter. Jens Ferdinand turned away. He was seething deep down in his breast.

  Now Bergthor Ørnberg appears in the door holding a telegram. He opens his mouth and calls out a name, and suddenly a little whine can be heard from the crowd, and a young girl, well dressed but drenched and tousled, starts shouting jubilantly: “He’s saved, he’s saved.” And like a gust of wind it spreads from mouth to mouth: The skipper’s safe. Poul Strøm’s been rescued. He’d drifted far out to sea on a plank … and was found by an American ship …

  And the girl, the skipper’s fiancée, runs off, flapping her arms like a bird that has extricated itself from a snare and suddenly feels the life-giving thrust under its wings.

  Jens Ferdinand feels overwhelmed by emotion at this sight, and a lump grows in his throat. Life, good Lord … life! In the midst of all this misery and suffering, a bubble of happiness, a delicate, poor soap bubble … how long will it last? But what heavy, joyful, intoxicated colours swirl around on its clear, reflecting surface. He has to think of Liva’s absolutely ridiculous, foolish delight when it emerged that Johan had survived his pneumonia. She sobbed and laughed at the same time, bit her finger tips and waddled her bottom so that people who saw her were almost embarrassed on her behalf … and finally she had kissed him, Jens Ferdinand, kissed him on the cheek. This was the only time he had ever been kissed … but the kiss had, of course, not really been his. It was a kiss of joy, not aimed at anyone is particular. It was for life. Life … life had kissed him for the first and last time.

  “There you are getting all sentimental, you humbug,” he said to himself and tried to pull himself together. But it was no use. Tears ran unashamedly down his cheeks, and he had to hurry away. Liva – he heard the cry deep down within him, forcing its way into his very being and drowning everything else: “Liva. I love you. This is no banal infatuation, it’s … it’s a poor, lonely man’s hopeless love of life.”

  “Nonsense, rubbish … shut up once and for all and stop that self-centred claptrap.” He clenched his hands in his jacket pockets and flapped his wings hard. But it was no use; it was as though something had sprung a leak inside him; it was leaking like hell, he was bleeding unceremoniously, and it was doing good, not harm. It was bliss to be able to formulate those words: “I love someone. I love you.”

  “Humbug” – he tried once more to put a stop to all this crazy sentimental nonsense bubbling up and carrying on inside him like carbon dioxide in a bottle of soda water.

  That reminded him: soda water. He had some whisky and soda at home. And now he was no longer tied to slaving over printer’s ink, that was always something.

  He hurried home.

  There. Here he was alone, at least. He took out a glass and some bottles and held the clear soda water bottle up to the light for a moment. How still … wasn’t it. Now for the shock. He took off the patent stopper and the calm water exploded in the well-known hysterical turbulence and formed an effervescent pool on the floor. The outbreak of war and the general will to sacrifice. And in the background all around lascivious hands were being rubbed together, and weapons manufacturers and food merchants were clearing their throats expectantly …

  With eyes half closed, he sipped at the salt drink and settled down in a canvas deckchair. The bubbles of carbon dioxide rose eagerly, propelled aloft like some bewitched snowstorm. He emptied the glass in a single gulp and murmured: “And that was the end of that one.”

  “And good morning to you, too, sir,” he greeted
the new effervescing drink. “Good morning, Mr. Cluny, how do you do?” He transformed his voice and spoke in a calm, drawling English tone, curling his tongue upwards to form the little twist found in all Anglo-Saxons mouths. And all foxes. With this indomitable twist on their tongues this proud people of missionaries and dealers had gone out into the whole world to convert the heathen to God, whisky and capitalism. There they come, these pioneers of civilisation, everlastingly travelling and trading … traversing boundless oceans, endless deserts, poisonous jungles, icy mountain passes … unflinching and young and cruel, enveloped in tobacco and gunpowder smoke and early mornings … !

  Jens Ferdinand surrendered voluptuously to the sense of being on a dizzying journey. Aye, the measureless loneliness of the Canadian prairie, where you could go and pee in any direction you liked, if it amused you. The solitary desert afternoons, carefree like the life after death. Beneath the mighty vault of heaven, beneath the high, silent sun, across an endless plain, slowly and with eternity before it, creeps a tiny golden beetle. Where are you off to? Nowhere, really, only creeping, today and tonight and tomorrow. No one can object to that, that’s clear. Your health, little beetle…

  Oh, blast it, now someone’s coming … the mirror of silence is shattered; the door opens, and there are hurrying footsteps. It’s Sigrun. Dissolved in tears like an opened bottle of soda water. And with a voice as mercilessly insistent as an alarm clock: “Johan is dead. A telegram. I got it at the exchange. Look: Johan died last night. Liva.”

  And then – in a low voice, but terribly reproachful – “Don’t you care?”

  And – turning away from him, with her face hidden in her hands, and sobbing: “He doesn’t care, he just sits there as though nothing has happened.”

  And then, wild-eyed and minatory: “You’ll have to go, Jens Ferdinand. Do you hear? It’s up to you. Liva can’t be left alone a stranger in that place. And Magdalena can’t leave the children and the old man … ’cause Thomea’s ill. And I … I won’t do it. For I daren’t.”