Barbara (25 page)

“Well,” said Johan Hendrik, “he has his faults. But what the devil has that got to do with his studies? The lad knows his economics.”

“Yes, you can see that by his showy clothes,” came the bitter reply.

The judge suddenly turned towards him: “Never mind, I’m damned glad we haven’t got him home as a pedant or a bookworm.” He bleated angrily: “Or as a sanctimonious hypocrite. Now he’s come for the good of the country. We have to help the farms to prosper. I don’t think you understand that. But let me tell you something you will understand: That will produce more tithes for you as well. Goodbye.”

Pastor Poul and Barbara had been left alone in the living room. She avoided looking at her husband, and she jumped when he suddenly was standing before her.

“Oh, my dear,” she exclaimed. “What is wrong with you, Poul?”

She got up and stroked him, and her voice was one of great tenderness: “What is wrong, my love?”

Pastor Poul made no reply and did not move. His face showed no emotion, but his eyes turned black with anger. He was not far from striking her. But suddenly he crumpled and simply said, “Barbara.”

She hurried to embrace him and she looked at him. There was some terrible fear in her eyes.

“Will you leave with me today?” he asked dully.

“Yes” she replied, still frightened. But suddenly her face brightened: “Yes, let’s go.” She kissed him several times: “Of course. We will simply leave.”

“But what about the law speaker?” said Pastor Poul suddenly. “It is hardly likely he will want to leave today.”

“Never mind,” said Barbara. “We’ll go without him. We’ll get someone to row us there on our own.”

Andreas was radiant when he entered the room a few minutes later.

“Did you get a comfortable bedroom?” asked Barbara.

“Couldn’t be better. In a parsonage one ought always to stay on the ground floor… strange when it is my Uncle Wenzel who is the minister.”

“Yes, then you can come home in the middle of the night when you feel like it,” said Barbara.

“Exactly,” shouted Andreas. “You understand me, Madam.”

“Yes,” Barbara went on. Her eyes were full of life: “And then you can…”

She broke off.

“Exactly,” said Andreas. “That as well.”

They both laughed. Barbara was a little flushed. But she suddenly reached out her hand to him and said, “Well, goodbye, monsieur, and enjoy yourself. We are leaving now.”

Andreas Heyde’s face was suddenly like a candle that has burnt out.

“Are you leaving?” he stammered. “I thought…”

A tiny delighted smile spread around the corners of Barbara’s mouth: “Yes,” she said in a tone that was both teasing and apologetic. “We really do have to leave now.”

“You can’t leave today,” said Anna Sophie, who had entered the room. “All the men are unloading. You won’t find a team to row you.”

“No, you won’t get anyone,” repeated Andreas eagerly.

Barbara looked a little dubious. “What are we going to do, then?” she asked. “It looks as though we shall have to stay.” She gave her husband a look that was at once one of laughing and weeping: “That’s a pity, Poul.”

Pastor Poul was desperate. He felt it was a matter of life and death.

“We’ll walk to Velbestad,” he said, “and get a boat there. And that will be a lot quicker as well.”

“Yes, that’s a good idea,” said Barbara. “It’s both quicker and a lot more fun. How foolish of me not to have thought of that straight away.”

“But what about all your luggage?” objected Anna Sophie. “You can’t take it with you that way.”

“No, that’s quite impossible,” said Andreas in an effort to persuade them.

“No, so we are no further,” said Barbara.

“The law speaker can bring the luggage when he comes,” said Pastor Poul.

“Yes, of course,” said Barbara. “The law speaker can bring the luggage. Then we had better be off.”

She gave Andreas a look that was both smiling and apologetic at the same time.

“Well, then, goodbye monsieur.”

Within quite a short time all the arrangements had been made. The luggage prepared and Barbara dressed for the journey. As they passed the westernmost houses in the town, she suddenly took her husband’s arm and gave him a warm smile. “Oh, it’s so exciting. It’s almost as though you are carrying me away.”

She pressed herself close to him before letting go of his arm. Before them lay the broad landscape in the light of the midday sun. They walked across stretches of green and over brown heaths and were more and more alone amidst nature. The rivers rushed and the golden plover sang in the heather. It was a beautiful afternoon, warm and fresh. When they had reached the ridge above Velbestad, they had a view west over the open sea. The islands of Hestoy and Koltur stood out, surrounded by foam and with the afternoon shadows on their east-facing slopes. The mountains of Vágar rose bluish in the north west. Pastor Poul and Barbara looked at each other and laughed as though they had escaped some great danger.

The first months Pastor Poul spent as a married man in the Jansegard Parsonage were the happiest in his marriage. During this time, the days became shorter and shorter and the weather increasingly rough and stormy. In the few hours around noon when it was light, they could see men carrying baskets on their backs as they went across towards the lake to fetch fuel from the little group of peat stacks that looked like Capernaum. But it was a desolate and wet Capernaum, and when the men returned with their burdens in the dusk and in the cold light produced by the showers, they looked grey like cats against the dark earth.

The winter was a burden to many minds. But for Pastor Poul, the darkness was only like a warm nest into which he burrowed deeper and deeper. His days were good and sweet. Wherever he was, wherever he went, whether in the servants’ hall, in the pulpit or in the huts tending the sick, he knew in his own mind that he was a man who had just left a good harbour and was about to return to it immediately. Barbara was always waiting for him, always looking forward to his coming home. She made clothes for him and tried them on him, and she was in a bad mood only when he had to go away for any length of time. Then, she could hardly bring herself to pack his chest and give him food for the journey. But occasionally, he had to go to the distant parishes such as Sørvang and Bøur and to spend a few nights there, and a couple of times a year he even had to go as far away as the island of Mikines.

He could perhaps simply have felt that he was too happy, as had happened a couple of times before, but he knew now how fragile happiness was, and the uncertainty following from this made him spry and alert.

He now realised something that he had been unaware of as a younger man – that love is like a flame that cannot burn clear and bright without fear, like a draft of air, keeping it burning. But this fear, which had once been erratic and unpredictable, had now become a gentle, steady draught. He knew there was only one danger threatening him. He always remembered Andreas Heyde, but he never mentioned him. Nor did Barbara mention him.

And yet it happened that they spoke about him. In their happiest moments, Pastor Poul could feel it like a stitch in his heart, and then he would ask: “Do you think you can always be with me as you are now?”

What Barbara answered to this varied. When she was at her giddiest, she made no reply at all. But otherwise it could happen that she looked uncertain and in a deeply emotional voice said: “I hope so.”

When this upset her husband, she tried to console him. She said that he should stop asking such foolish questions, that it was nasty of him especially now that they were so very happy together. And when she could not think of anything else to say, she would finish with these words: “Good heavens, Poul, one doesn’t have to think of such things. There are just the two of us at the moment, aren’t there, Poul. Can’t you be content with that?”

Pastor Poul saw the wisdom in this. They were both helpless, defenceless human beings.

He knew Barbara, good God he did! Her intentions were no less good than his, and her heart was many times better than his. But she was not in control of her heart; it always went its own way. They both trembled before this heart, which was so untameable and so blind, and the only thing they could turn to in their human weakness was the Grace of God.

In this way, Pastor Poul learned to accept every new day as a gift from God. In the dark mornings, he read morning prayers for the servants in the light of a tallow candle, but afterwards he usually went down to the sands to say his own prayers. And while the day burst forth from the south east like a blood red rose, he wandered back and forth on the dark shore and remembered the words of the morning hymn:

Each morn He fills my cup

With mercies beyond count

There were frequent golden mornings in December and this was the source of great joy to Pastor Poul. But for most people, the days were only like more or less confined pools of light in the harsh confines of the dark months. Everyone was now looking forward to the joys of Christmas and the sense of liberation they would bring, and they were preparing for it by slaughtering sheep and baking. A couple of boats had been in Tórshavn to fetch Christmas drinks, and one of them brought a letter for Barbara from her friend Suzanne.

It was quite a cheerful letter, a happy letter. “If you had been here,” wrote Suzanne, “you would hardly have recognised Havn again. Things are quite different here now. We have had a ball, and we are soon to perform a comedy in the Assembly House. It is called Herman von Bremenfeld, and all we young people are going to take part in it. As you might imagine, it is Andreas Heyde who is the driving force in all this.”

Barbara was at first very enlivened by this letter, but then she lapsed into thought. Pastor Poul did not get much out of talking to her that day, and she answered him as though from a different world. That evening, he asked her if she was sorry she had not been to the play in Tórshavn. But she embraced him and said that she would far rather celebrate Christmas with him in Jansegard. He dared not tell her that it would only be a very brief Christmas that they could celebrate together. On Christmas Day itself, immediately after service, he had to go to Sorvág to celebrate Evensong, and if the weather was good, he would have to go to Mikines on the second day of Christmas. He hoped very much that the weather would not be good.

Among those travelling by boat to Tórshavn was the law speaker. He was the last to return. Only on Christmas Eve, after dark, did he return to Sandavág. By then, the holiday, was with them, and there were not many who noticed that he had a guest with him. No one had been expected in the law speaker’s home, but as soon as the sons in the house saw the stranger, they guessed it must be Andreas coming to celebrate Christmas. We thought as much, they said as they shook his hand. Andreas could surely not come back to the Faroes without also visiting Stegard! And Andreas laughed and was immediately just as he had been as a boy when he had regularly visited his relative Samuel Mikkelsen and been guilty of countless mischievous tricks together with Samuel Mikkelsen’s four boisterous sons. He remembered everything and everybody and went through the room greeting each individual farm servant.

Old Armgard was spending that Christmas at Stegard. Andreas was a little nervous when he was about to enter the formal room to greet her. He grimaced to his half-cousins as he took hold of the door handle.

“She is in a good mood this evening,” they said. “She’ll be nice with you, you can be sure of that.”

Armgard was indeed in a good mood. Her face melted in tenderness and pride when she recognised her nephew. She held his hand for a long time between her bony hands.

“Oh, Andreas, is it you? So you are home again, God bless you. I can’t tell you how pleased I am. But now, Andreas, sit down and tell your aunt what you have been doing. Let me hear all about it.”

Andreas sat down and told his story, breezily as usual, but in a polite tone. He had occasionally to repeat himself, but that did not happen often. Armgard was not deaf: she just wanted to be sure she had heard everything.

“I am glad,” she said, “that you think about this poor country. Let’s see how your potatoes, or whatever you call them, will grow. You are like your great grandfather, Poul Caspar, the law speaker. He was the first one to introduce real gardens here, as you know. He brought all those berry-bearing shrubs outside here. But dear Andreas, you won’t take it the wrong way if your aunt gives you some good advice? You must also think a bit about yourself. Don’t miss the chance of getting a good job in time.”

Andreas was quite touched to see his aunt’s face. It was so old and so affectionate. When she smiled, he could see the stumps of her teeth in her mouth.

“So,” his cousins asked him, “she didn’t read the riot act to you today?”

Andreas felt a little embarrassed. The law speaker’s wife, Birita, hushed her sons: “Be quiet with you. You make a dreadful row. Samuel, you ought to have a word with them.”

Samuel Mikkelsen smiled: “Andreas doesn’t take them seriously,” he said. “He knows them of old.”

“I’m afraid he knows them only too well,” said Birita.

The law speaker had four sons, but the oldest of them, Peder, was now married and was working for his father by running the old family farm on Eysteroy. The other three, Mikkel, Jacob and Samson, were all unmarried and lived at home with their parents, spending a lot of their time fishing and helping in the running of the farm and were otherwise among the keenest participants in all the weddings on Vágar. There was also a daughter, Armgard Maria, a beautiful, dark-haired girl. But she rarely said anything. It was always the brothers who talked and played games in the common room.

“Tell me what we are to do with them, Andreas,” said the law speaker’s wife. “Their father and I would have liked them to have had an academic or administrative training, but they can’t be bothered. And, God help them, they can’t all become farmers. Not unless they could marry into a farm. But what do you think? Do you think there is any honest farmer’s daughter who could be bothered with these shameless lazybones?”