Barbara (31 page)

Barbara suddenly became serious. She looked down and quickly replied: “Yes.”

That is to say she really whispered it; she hardly said it; she simply breathed it suddenly… it certainly was a yes, but it could almost sound like a no. Her eyes were filled with regret.

There was a slight pause, after which she asked, “Poul, may I drink a little of your beer?”

She took the tankard, drank from it, handed it to him and said, “You have a drink as well. You must be very thirsty.”

And Pastor Poul drank and was again as though refreshed. He felt it like a caress through his insensate weariness.

“I’m glad you are with me again,” said Barbara suddenly and humbly. She looked down.

Pastor Poul was no longer in despair. But it was simply all as though he were dreaming it. He ate calmly, ate his fill.

“I’m going to make sure you have some sleep now,” said Barbara.

Pastor Poul lay down on his bed.

“Shall I sit with you until you go to sleep?” asked Barbara persuasively. “Would that not be good?”

Pastor Poul felt his will awakening within him. New unhappiness, new unease.

“What is to become of me, Barbara?” he whispered.

“Well, my dearest love,” she exclaimed in her tenderest descant voice, weeping and laughing at the same time. Her throat tightened. She sat down on the edge of the bed and bent over him. “You mustn’t be so upset, you know.” Her voice now sounded as though she were telling a secret: “I must tell you something. There is no reason why you should be. No reason at all. My feelings for you are exactly as they were before. As always. That’s the truth… really.”

She kept glancing at him. Her look was still one of nervousness, of regret and sudden fear. She had put her hands in under his shoulders and was convulsively playing his back with all ten fingers. She was sombre and ridiculous, flushed with shameful expectation.

Pastor Poul was tired, and his thoughts moved only slowly. But he took hold of her and drew her close, and he suddenly felt she was quite submissive. His breast was filled with joy; a mighty wave rose slowly within him and filled him with delight. Good heavens. Everything was permitted to him; indeed she even came to his aid, drew off her clothes humbly and speedily and lay down beside him. Close to him he saw her eyes as green as the ocean depths every time she glanced up at him; her face was unrecognisable, unlovely, even ridiculous with delight.

Aye, aye, aye, everything he had suffered, endured and battled with, it had all only happened so that they should experience this moment of inconceivable union. Oh, she rewarded him for Mikines, for the cold ashes in Jansegard, for the great sorrow of Stegard, for the danger at sea by Konufjall, for the terrible wasteland of Kirkjubøreyn, for the lepers at Argir and for the minuet, pling, pling, pling. Ha ha ha! Barbara rewarded Pastor Poul; she gave herself to him, she was gracious to him, she rejoiced senselessly with him as the people of Tórshavn went home from the play… indeed throughout half the night.

Like a man drowning in heavy waves of joy, he fell asleep, and Barbara’s eyes were still sparkling with the green of the sea when he let her go.

Pastor Poul started to wake, but lay for a long time without being aware of anything. He suddenly came to himself with a violent shock to his heart, but then he immediately remembered Barbara. He was lying there beside her. Yes, that was right, everything was well; it was not the catastrophe he had imagined. And he sighed, released and freed; his heart was again beating at walking pace. Indeed, it was strutting along like a tired horse that has suddenly been let loose in a luscious meadow. He turned over and fell asleep again.

When he awoke, it was almost light. Barbara opened her eyes, stared at him at first in some confusion and then recognised him with great delight. She put her arm round him and kissed him.

“I’m glad you’ve come,” she said, looking shameful and rather stupid. She fiddled in some embarrassment with the button on his shirt.

Pastor Poul said that he was happy as well, that he did not remember ever having been so happy as on the previous evening.

“No, never,” was Barbara’s enthusiastic response. “Never ever have we both been so gloriously happy. Do you know what it reminds me of? Do you remember that time at Leynum?”

She quickly looked down and pressed herself close to him.

“But now, what about…?” said Pastor Poul, immediately breaking off. His mind was filled with laughter, enormous laughter; indeed the horse of his heart ran a joyous lap around its green meadow. “Oh, Andreas Heyde,” he thought. “Ha, ha, ha.” But he refused to betray his joy, and not a sound escaped him.

And yet, Barbara had understood him so well that she hastily and almost in fear exclaimed, “You mustn’t say that to anyone. Do you hear? It’s a secret between you and me. Oh, I can’t imagine how desperate he would be if he got to know it.”

She stared ahead, lost in thought and no longer took any notice of her husband.

Pastor Poul lay long in silence. His heart’s horse stood still and behaved as though he was afraid. This was the first time he had heard her mention Andreas Heyde, and the tone in which she was speaking was quite unknown to him.

“Barbara, do you regret it?” he asked.

“Oh no, dearest,” she said, smiling at him. But directly after this she again started to stare out in the air as though she had a vision.

“I’m so afraid he has got himself drunk,” she said suddenly. “He was probably drunk yesterday evening.”

She was trembling a little.

“
I
was drunk yesterday evening,” said Pastor Poul.

“Were you?” said Barbara absent-mindedly, still staring in the air.

Pastor Poul did not know whether he was angry or unhappy; he turned away from his wife. She was in love with Andreas Heyde. But this was nothing but what he had known all the time, indeed no more than she herself had said. Had he for a single moment thought things could be different? Had he really come here to take her back home to Jansegard? Had he really been so foolish? No, he remembered of course what he had thought. If only he could win her once more, one single time.

Well, his undertaking had been carried out. Carried out with enormous force and intensity. What more did he want? Yet once more?

“Why have you turned your back to me?” asked Barbara. There was just a hint in her voice that she felt she had been wronged. Pastor Poul felt a little happier and made no reply.

“I think you’re angry,” she whispered in his ear.

He turned towards her again and smiled.

“I’m not angry,” he said. “I was merely thinking. You are in love with someone else, and I am merely in your way. I won’t try to prevent you from doing anything, and it will be no use in any case. So I shall have to put you out of my mind and quite forget you. Don’t you agree?”

Barbara made no reply; she shook her head hopelessly, almost imperceptibly, just enough for Pastor Poul to see it. She was very serious, and her eyes were filled with great sadness.

“But Barbara,” Pastor Poul continued, “if you… if it isn’t me you are fond of.”

“But you know how much I love you,” said Barbara. “You must surely have understood that. Otherwise all that yesterday evening would have been unthinkable. There is no reason for… everything between us is as it always has been. Don’t you understand?”

She spoke urgently and forcefully; she held on to his wrists and let her hands glide up his sleeves. Then, in a lighter tone, she suddenly added: “You should simply never have left me. Then nothing would have happened.”

She smiled happily at the discovery she had made here, this little coloured stone. She believed in it herself: “We two ought simply to have lived here together in Tórshavn, shouldn’t we? I didn’t thrive in that village. You’ll stay here for a few days, won’t you, my dear?”

Rather more than an hour later, Pastor Poul was on his way to the judge’s home, satisfied but scarcely consoled. His wife had gone to Andreas Heyde. He was probably in need of a visit from her, poor man. Pastor Poul was happy at the thought. One must be noble to one’s enemy. Now he had fitted him with a good horn in his forehead. But why should he be a unicorn? One horn was no horn. No, there must be at least a couple. Pastor Poul caught himself thinking thus. Was he already such a – libertine? Aye, thoughts were flashing through his mind today; he was in a strange mood, unhappy and ardent and proud. He sat down in one of the judge’s chairs, threw his hat down and said, “Well, now I’ve experienced being my own wife’s lover. There’s another man who has managed to become his own coxcomb’s coxcomb. Which do you think is the worse?”

Johan Hendrik Heyde’s good-humoured, lined face lit up; he was at once all attention; he sat up, put his book down, rubbed the tip of his nose with a finger and said, “Well, that’s what I call an amusing way of looking at things.”

Then he twisted round and supported his chin in one hand.

“Well, It’s usually said that the husband is the only person who can be a real coxcomb, as he is the only person married to the woman in question. You can never be coxcomb to your own coxcomb, for…”

“No, you are applying far too legalistic a mind to it,” interrupted Pastor Poul. “It is only in the eyes of God and man that Barbara is my wife. In her heart of hearts she is another man’s woman. So in reality this other man is the coxcomb as he is the one who…? Don’t you yourself agree… that they are much in love?”

“Alas, far too much in love,” sighed Johan Hendrik. “Andreas makes no attempt to do anything useful at all, although he could achieve great things. Just imagine, sent by the Exchequer! It is all wrong.”

“Aye, I think so, too. It really is all very wrong,” laughed Pastor Poul boisterously with a sharp stab in his heart: “Very wrong indeed, ha, ha.”

The judge looked at him attentively.

“Aye,” he said, “you are now in the embrace I knew you would be in. You seem to be taking it well… hmm, how shall I put it? You seem to stand the sea well.”

“I’m in a furious mood,” said Pastor Poul. “A desperately furious mood, and yet an ecstatic mood. I had never imagined I could encompass so many powerful emotions at once.”

“Ha ha. I thought as much. Then perhaps God hasn’t deluged you with all those misfortunes in vain. But you are still only at the first stage.”

“I remember what you said to me the last time we saw each other. That people who encounter true grace are those whom fate grasps and plays like a musical instrument.”

“Yes, assuming that these people are instruments at all and not reeds or pieces of firewood or heads of stinging rays.”

“Good heavens, I am an instrument,” said Pastor Poul. “A wind instrument. And God is playing me mightily. Like a shawm, a pitiful shawm.”

“Well, you are perhaps not a trombone, and, by the way, take care not to become a trumpet.” Johan Hendrik smiled satirically: “But woodwind. Aye, let’s say a woodwind instrument. That might sound a bit uninteresting, but it is really the most beautiful of all instruments.”

He suddenly rose and started energetically walking up and down.

“The main thing,” he continued, stopping in front of Pastor Poul, “the main thing is that one has a character that can be inspired but not broken by misfortune. Desperation and fury are the best winds to sail in if only you know how. But don’t sail too close to the wind! It is possible to overturn. I take it you are about to undertake a series of foolish acts, eh? But do at least refrain from killing my nephew!”

“I assure you,” said Pastor Poul, “that my feelings towards him are almost those of a colleague.”

“They will scarcely continue like that.”

Pastor Poul straight away felt the truth of these words. At that moment, Barbara was together with Andreas. She had promised to come home this evening…

“Will you play something?” he asked the judge.

“I will play a little piece for you. Unfortunately, it is only a solo. Alas, I am almost always reduced to playing solo. And that never becomes as
agitato
as for instance in a trio.”

He gave the parson a wry smile and played a long tremolo. Pastor Poul had a sense of intoxication. He was unhappy but ardent; the music filled him with fervour.

Was he to be furious and enraged throughout the day?

Pastor Poul had detained the judge for a long time, and now he had determined to leave. Barbara had promised to come this evening, but evening was still far off. He was overcome by a terrible sense of loneliness that gnawed away at his heart as he drifted through narrow alleyways made depressing by the winter gloom. He met a man whose face he thought he had seen before, though he did not know where. The man recognised him and greeted him. He encountered several people whom he remembered as from a dream. They all recognised him and greeted him. He gave no more thought to it, but when he returned to Nýggjastova, his mother-in-law Magdalene told him: “The men from Kirkjubø have been here to enquire about you. They wanted to make sure you had got here safely. They have been out all night with lanterns and candles on Kirkjubøreyn looking for you.”

Her voice was peevish and resentful as always. Pastor Poul’s only reply was: “Oh.” At that very moment he realised he ought to pay a visit to his colleague, the Tórshavn minister. He was not keen on Pastor Wenzel, but he was drawn to his house. You never knew what might happen in that house. It was certainly not prudent to go there. But he felt desperate.

Pastor Wenzel received him with some reservation on behalf of heaven and various reproaches on the part of his family. He made no direct comment, but it seemed obvious that he was giving Pastor Poul responsibility for the indignation emanating from his wife and now relating to the Heyde family. His expression was one of deep injustice. Besides, he had both sick parishioners and folk in mourning to attend to – there was so much undeserved suffering, and he asked his colleague to forgive him and left. But his wife stayed at home and made preparations for a modest cup of coffee.

“Perhaps you are not all that keen on coffee?” she said when Pastor Wenzel had left. “Perhaps you would rather have a glass of French brandy or rum?”