The Black Cauldron

by William Heinesen

  “Opperman’s a mystery.” Her husband shook his head. “He’s both ridiculous and sublime. A strangely moving combination of good and evil, Maja.”

  The couple found themselves in the company of Doctor Tønnesen and his son Lars, a medical student. They naturally discussed Opperman, and Mr. Skælling said: “Yes, but is it possible to understand him, Tønnesen? I’d give a lot to borrow the key to the innermost corner of his heart.”

  “I’ll give it you,” said the doctor, in fine spirits and taking a deep breath. “Eh … Opperman suffers from moral insanity. He’s morally incoherent, disintegrated. So he won’t go to pieces. He’s like an earthworm that can be cut into several bits and yet go on living in the best of health … through all the changing scenes of life, ha, ha. Aye, it all looks very strange indeed to the rest of us, but in reality it’s perfectly straightforward. Therefore he’s both a softy and a dangerous man. Do you see?”

  Mr. Skælling blushed slightly. That man Tønnesen was really sometimes a little supercilious, just a little bit too keen to teach others. A clever surgeon, admittedly, an excellent butcher. But otherwise he was a hard-boiled materialistic cynic. And pretty boorish, too.

  “And of course it’s this conscience-free amoeba-like character that makes such a successful business man of him,” the doctor continued his philosophising. “And that’s fundamentally something we can say about the whole bloody lot of them, Mr. Skælling. These so-called hale and hearty businessmen who carry society on their backs, as is usually said of them, and as they think themselves … there’s nearly always something defective or warped inside them. Their thoughts are arid, centred on one single problem: Is there any money in it? Their emotional life has congealed in some religious cliche or other … once and for all they take out a spiritual life insurance, and then that’s that, and they’ve got their hands free to go about all kinds of unsavoury business with no holds barred.”

  Mr. Skælling sought to break in with a comment, but the doctor had still not finished with his analysis and he mercilessly cut him short … “Fundamentally it’s the same warped spiritual life – this atrophy of the organ that produces common humanity – that’s responsible for all these wretched wars being fought all over the world these days – they’re all about money … Oh, I’m sorry, were you wanting to say something?”

  Mr. Skælling smiled bitterly. “As far as I know, Opperman isn’t particularly religious,” he pointed out.

  “Oh, isn’t he,” said the doctor happily. “So his mandolin playing didn’t soften you up?”

  “Oh, that …!” Mr. Skælling blushed scarlet.

  “No, it boils down to this,” continued Tønnesen. “When all’s said and done, there is more integrity in our two poor loonies, Liva Berghammer and her baker. They have honestly and truly taken their Christianity to its logical conclusion, and they’ve ended up in total absurdity.”

  “You don’t seem to have much liking for that same Christianity, Dr. Tønnesen,” Mrs. Skælling interrupted in a patently restrained voice.

  “Sshh,” her husband nudged her gently: “The caliph’s words are those of wisdom. Well, goodbye, Doctor, this is the parting of our ways …”

  “Goodbye, goodbye, old chap,” said the doctor. He obviously had no sense of having upset anyone, thick-skinned as he was.

  “The man’s totally devoid of any understanding of the mystical element in life,” Mr. Skælling said in a peppery tone. “Of the paradoxical nature of all things. And so he becomes superficial and banal in his judgement of the tenebrous powers of the spirit. That’s what it is, Maja.”

  “Yes, of course a man like Opperman grabs the Oxford Movement mandolin when it suits him, Lars,” continued the doctor. “And it’s wrong to say he doesn’t mean anything by it. On the contrary the mandolin-playing fragment of the earthworm is religious all right. And when he sits there and collapses over his wife’s grave, it’s not really affectation, for you can bet your bottom dollar that that bit of the worm is pretty devastated, at any rate by self pity. For he probably hasn’t the slightest idea that it was really he who killed her.”

  “Was it … myelitis?” The son put the professional question. His voice trembled a little.

  “No, it was hysteria,” said the doctor, hitting out with his walking stick at a withered dock-weed by the roadside, making the raindrops splash up in all directions. “Hysteria and a weak heart. And how could it have been otherwise. Take an ordinary nice and decent girl and lock her up in a cage with a spider … a lobster … a centipede … a tapeworm … for eight years! She’ll die of it even if she’s as strong as an ostrich.”

  Opperman was still kneeling by the graveside. There was no longer a dry stitch on his body. Amanda, his old maid, finally took pity on him and went over and touched him. Opperman started and turned a distorted and grimy face towards her. His eyes were numbed with tears, and he was drawing his breath in gasps.

  “Yes, this is the punishment,” said Amanda. “But it’s only the beginning.”

  “I didn’t know it was so hard,” sniffed Opperman. “Amanda, do you think … do you believe that …”

  “Believe what?” She looked at him in disgust.

  “That the forgiveness of sins…”

  “No,” she said. “I don’t believe that.”

  “Then I shall always be unhappy, Amanda?”

  “No, not always,” said the old woman, raising her rasping voice. “But at the end, Opperman.”

  He trembled miserably, and without looking at her said: “Amanda think … Amanda think …?”

  “That Hell awaits you? Yes.” She shouted, so loud that it made her hoarse, and she began to cough. “And now I’m going. And we shall never meet again.”

  Opperman threw himself to the ground and writhed silently in the mud from the open grave. Amanda turned away and spat.

  The old gravedigger and his son had witnessed this scene from a place where they were waiting out of sight. “We can’t leave him lying there like that,” said the old man. They went over to the grave and got the desperate man on his feet again and took him home.

  About five o’clock that afternoon Inspector Joab Hansen came and knocked on Opperman’s door. He had heard of the events in the cemetery and was somewhat surprised to find Opperman sitting comfortably in a dressing gown and slippers, reading the Illustrated London News. It was very warm in his sitting room, and a steaming, fragrant toddy with slices of lemon was standing on the smoker’s table by Opperman’s easy chair.

  “Please take seat,” said Opperman. “Have a toddy perhaps … ? Cigar … ?”

  Opperman’s eyelids and cheeks were pale pink.

  No, thanks, the inspector wouldn’t have anything. He sat down and glanced sideways at Opperman through his slanting Japanese eyes, sighed deeply and slowly and in an official voice he came out with his errand. To get straight down to brass tacks, it was something concerning Liva Berghammer. They had discovered out at the hospital that while she was wandering about she had been the object of a sexual assault, indeed, to put it bluntly, rape. And the doctor had now furnished the inspector with these facts and said that it was up to the authorities to get to the bottom of the matter.

  “And the doctor’s a dangerous chap,” added Inspector Hansen. “A very zealous man in all matters of that kind.”

  “Yes, but where had she been, then?” said Opperman, putting down his magazine.

  “Well, that’s exactly what I wanted to ask you about. For she was here, among other places.”

  “Oh, I am not very clear about it,” said Opperman, moving in his chair as though trying to remember. “It was that night my wife die. Oh, I was very upset, Inspector. But I well remember Liva was here and Schibbye as well. We sat in my office. We had a little drink, it was so cold. Then telephone rang … oh misfortune, misfortune. My wife…”

  “Did Liva Berghammer drink alcohol, too?” interrupted the inspector.

  Opperman raised his index finger, like a reprimanding school teacher:
“I say to Schibbye: not pour. But he give her strong whisky. But I say: in any case only liqueur. In any case.”

  “Were you yourself drunk?”

  “I? Oh no. Well, perhaps a little. But Schibbye … oh!” Opperman closed his eyes and shook his head.

  “Was Schibbye alone with Liva at any time?” continued the inspector. He had taken out a cheap little notebook.

  “Yes. While I telephone. I turn back completely.”

  “In other words, you were present all the time while Schibbye was here?”

  “All time, yes,” admitted Opperman, sounding almost melancholy, but all the time thinking hard.

  “And then Schibbye left after you got the telephone message?”

  Opperman clasped his hands and pondered very deeply. “Yes. Yes, indeed.”

  “And Liva left together with him?”

  “Together with him, yes.” This time there seemed to be nothing for Opperman to hesitate about. “Together with him.”

  The inspector made a note. “Then he’s not telling the truth,” he said pointedly. “I mean Schibbye. He says that she stayed behind with you.”

  “But I go up to my wife, you know?” said Opperman as though in great surprise. “Up to deathbed…?”

  “But you very quickly came back, didn’t you, back to Liva?”

  There was a sudden ugly flash in the inspector’s eye, but he quickly extinguished it again and his tone became confidential: “Is it really worth sitting here playing poker any longer, Opperman?”

  “No, you are right,” replied Opperman, seeking to catch his eye. “I not good at white lies. Oh, I was drunk, Joab Hansen. I was upset with sorrow and fear. I nearly not know what I did that evening. You understand?”

  “No, I suppose not,” said the inspector. “But what you’ve done, Opperman, is a very serious crime indeed. You can get eight years’ hard labour for that. Understand?”

  “For a grown woman?” whispered Opperman rising in his seat in amazement.

  “She was not in control of herself,” explained the inspector. “And you knew that perfectly well.”

  “Then I too not in control of myself,” maintained Opperman sternly. “And Schibbye also not in control. For he had got us all drunk, all three of us.”

  The inspector blew his nose. He said persuasively: “You knew perfectly well that she was out of her mind, Opperman. Now don’t let’s have any more nonsense.”

  “No, how could I know it?” Opperman raised his eyebrows triumphantly like the top boy in the class catching his teacher out in some childish inconsistency. “She come here where we sitting drunk … She not tell that she out of her mind, does she? She not bring documentation. Do be reasonable, my dear fellow.”

  “That makes no difference,” growled the inspector petulantly and looked down. “Whether the girl was mad or drunk, you exploited her condition.”

  “No, I did not for I not know her condition. Be fair. She come to me, she stay here with me … what must I think? And Liva and I know each other so well from old times, oh, we have had so much together before … Have you not heard that, Inspector? No? No gossip, eh? You who know everything.”

  The inspector dropped his pencil on the floor. He bent down to pick it up, while he was thinking: “So the beast’s trying to turn it all into a trivial matter … something that happened while they were all drunk … that’s to say there were mitigating circumstances, very mitigating.”

  He sat for a moment considering. Then, slowly, he turned his gaze on Opperman and said, casually: “It doesn’t matter, for if this comes to court you’re finished in any case. You will be forced to admit that you were carrying on with a mentally deranged, drunk girl at the very moment your own wife was on the point of death.”

  The inspector got up and said in a shocked voice: “Opperman, Opperman. Quite honestly, this is the worst case I’ve ever met in my life. It’s so appalling that as a private individual I dread bringing it to court. But as an official …”

  Opperman lit a cigarette, shook his head, and said: “I understand. But, Joab Hansen … for me it is not such big scandal. It is mostly just like some kind of moral laxity. And moral laxity is great in our time. People also know I had Liva before. I know they say it. Yes, some say it therefore she became mad. And what can the punishment be? Perhaps I be acquitted, yes? Perhaps I just pay fine or alimony.”

  The inspector sat down and made a long note with many crossings out. “You admit that it is true, then. Well, that’s the most important thing. You maintain that you did not realise she was mentally disturbed, but you admit that she was drunk.”

  “The aforementioned woman has been my mistress for some time,” Opperman dictated.

  The inspector growled. Opperman was right: the whole affair looked less serious when put down on paper. Fundamentally it was not much more than a rather riotous merry evening.

  In his impotence the inspector made some clicking sounds and passed wind. Here he’d come believing …

  “Write also,” added Opperman, “that she was in strange condition when she came, hair untidy, dress undone … write that I cannot guarantee that she not drunk when she came … and perhaps already raped. Write that, Inspector.”

  “I’ll write as I please,” said the inspector savagely and passed wind again. “I’m not actually acting in your defence.”

  “Perhaps you not write anything at all?” enquired Opperman suddenly, hastily and with a thin, expectant voice.

  The inspector looked up suspiciously: “What do you mean?”

  “One knows so much,” smiled Opperman, looking away. “One knows so much, inspector. Shall we speak, shall we be silent? You know Frigga Tørnkrona, Frøja’s little sister, don’t you?”

  The inspector got up with a threatening look, but turned away. “Yes, but that story’s a wicked lie,” he laughed dully. “I’d happily take my oath on that.” He suddenly turned towards Opperman with a murderous look in his eyes. “Oh, you bloody rotter. You loathsome rotter.”

  Opperman placed a comforting hand on his shoulder. “Be sensible, now, Inspector, and listen to me. I don’t think that story is a lie. If matter comes out, you also be disgraced. Then we both be disgraced, both rotters. Who will that do any good? And there are other things, Inspector, strange things. I know much … What about letting things drop, Joab Hansen. No, I just suggest.”

  The inspector was breathing heavily. He scratched his chest and appeared not entirely unwilling to negotiate. “But the girl has been raped,” he said. “They’re going to demand an explanation.”

  “The baker?” said Opperman quickly. “No one talk about him?”

  He went over and took hold of the inspector’s lapel. “Perhaps we two make agreement? Perhaps? You do me favour and I do you favour … as we have done before? Perhaps I say I give you Christmas present as good customer, I give you 5000 kroner … 10,000 kroner or 20,000 kroner or something. In cash, of course, not cheque.”

  He could not suppress a little laugh.

  The inspector sullenly pursed his rather skew lips. He said slowly: “I don’t know, Opperman, my duty as an official … you know what that is. But on the other hand, as you are well aware, I can’t stand … And what would the girl get out of it? On the whole it’ll be by far the best thing if we avoid a court case. It would be a pity for her reputation, a pity for her family. In short. In short, Opperman … I must think it over before I do anything.”

  He lowered his voice: “And between us, Opperman, the doctor … the doctor is after you. He’d love to get you … But shall we say we’ll have another talk tomorrow? Good, then I’ll give you a ring.”

  The two men shook hands, smiling, but without looking at each other.

  The following day, towards evening, Mr. Skælling received a visit from Opperman.

  “Forgive me for bothering you, Editor,” he said with a slight, deferential bow. “And many thanks for the splendid wreath and all beautiful sympathy.”

  He gave Mr. Skælling an envelope: �
�It is advertisement, if I could have all back page. I have had delivery of many fine goods. But it was otherwise something else I come for. Thank you, I sit comfortably here, by the door, thank you.”

  “Oh,” he said plaintively. “It is so much suffering … so many many people out of their minds, so many struck by tragedy, and unhappy people, Mr. Skælling. In whole world. And here, too, though we are not in war. And now my dear Liva Berghammer become mad. Oh, it make me so sad, she was good worker for me, respectable and decent girl. But what I want to say: There is nearly no room in hospital for all mentally ill desperate people, Editor, and so they must be sent home again before they are cured. Therefore I have the thought: what about making convalescent home? There are convalescent homes everywhere in the world. Think how good it would be if we had convalescent home here?”

  “Yes, there’s certainly no doubt about that,” agreed Mr. Skælling emotionally.

  Opperman himself was emotional. His upper lip was trembling, and there was a pleading look in his eyes. He sat turning his hat in his hands as though embarrassed, and while doing so he had about him something of the look of a junior clerk obtaining an interview with his boss and intending to ask for a small pay rise. This man of wealth, this consul, was far too modest. Mr. Skælling actually felt sorry for him and tried to help him along. “Well, and now you’re perhaps thinking of starting an appeal, Mr. Opperman … ?”

  “Yes, no, I wanted first to say that now my house, my villa, is standing empty after my poor Alice’s death, and I not need it any more, and it is so big and roomy that it could almost be used for a start if you think so, Editor. And then we could make appeal, yes, and then I would put my name on list of contributors to give 50,000 kroner, that is what I have thought.”

  Mr. Skælling brought his hands together with a loud smack. He was thunderstruck.

  “And then the convalescent home could be called The Alice Opperman Memorial Home in memory of my wife. Or simply Alice House.”

  “The Alice Opperman Memorial Home,” said Mr Skælling. His voice was breaking with emotion. “No, now you must … Excuse me a moment, Consul Opperman, I must tell my wife about this straight away. I can’t wait. Maja – just you listen. What do you say to this?”