Egholm and his God

Page after page, the stamp and signatures of the police – the State Authorities, no less. One stamp for every imaginable town.

Sivert was dumb with emotion. Even Olsen’s voice shook. And in the middle of showing it, he would sometimes snatch up the book with an oath and hide it jealously against his naked breast, only to draw it forth lovingly a moment later. It was as if he could not bear the glorious vision for more than a little glimpse at a time.

It was a treasure of almost inconceivable value, was that book. Better to lose one’s own head than that, for, once lost, the unfortunate owner would be put in prison on the spot. On the other hand, whoever held such a book, duly stamped and signed and in order, might wander the whole world over, and none should dare to touch a hair of his head.

In the front of the book was something more wonderful even than the police stamps. Sivert had been three times granted a sight of it. Nothing less than a painting in words of the owner of the book. The boy grew giddy at the thought that in five years’ time he, too, might attain a like distinction.

“Height – 58 inches.

Hair – black.

Eyes – brown (eyebrows meeting in centre).

Nose – ordinary.”

Sivert turned his eyes from the book to the living Olsen before him; it was a marvel that anyone could have hit off the description thus to a hair.

But then came the best of all:

“Any distinctive marks: Has six toes on each foot.”

Olsen threw back his head, and set his lips sternly. Yes, he had six toes; it was perfectly true. And why shouldn’t he? What, didn’t believe it? Well, then, look here!

Off came Olsen’s socks, and Sivert, in humble amazement, counted the whole dozen. True, the outermost toe was no giant, but rather a tiny blind thing that clung to the next. There was no nail to it, yet it was undoubtedly a toe. A whole limb additional!

Sivert counted his own inferior equipment again and again by night, and in course of time developed a fine gift of counting them wrong.

“Why don’t they write down about your inside?” he ventured to ask.

“They can’t. That’s private,” answered Olsen.

X

Henrik Vang loved a soft, easy seat, and from his very first visit he had chosen to sit down in the middle of Egholm’s iron bed. Sometimes, when it was cold, he would pull the bedclothes up over his legs, right to his throat. Egholm did not mind. He preferred to walk up and down the floor, listening to his own voice. It was rarely but he had some new strange plan or invention in his head.

To-day, however, he was nervous, and void of ideas. Anna was coming by the midday train. Consequently, he found nothing now to talk of but old, worn-out themes. Of the Brethren, who had cheated him out of all that money. Of his great Day of Reckoning with those same Brethren, and how they had risen up and cast him forth, together with one Meilby, a photographer.

“He was something like you, Vang, by the way, was Meilby. Same light hair, and eyes – and especially in the look of them. Now, anyone not seeing that great big body of yours would say you weren’t grown up yet. But Meilby, he was younger, and not so heavy built, perhaps.”

“Was he married?”

“No, but he…”

“Then he wasn’t like me.”

“Ha ha – but he was, though, on my word. The voice, too. Same rumbling sort of way, as if that wasn’t properly set either.”

“Anyhow, he wasn’t married, so he wasn’t like me. She’s been talking to Father again. Asking him to turn me out. I don’t know if she wants me to die of hunger. For she never gives me anything herself.”

“Well, you know, Vang,” laughed Egholm, “you’re not exactly a model husband, either. Women like being made a fuss of now and then. Now me, for instance. Here’s my wife coming to-day, and what do I do? Go up to the station myself to meet her. See?”

Egholm looked at his watch, and felt uncomfortable. Again he had forgotten the time. The train must be in by now, and Anna would be left standing there, utterly strange to the place…

He left Vang in the nest he had made, and hurried out.

Annoyance at the little misfortune was but a herald for the host of black thoughts that had been gathering in Egholm’s mind ever since the day when, in a weak – a very weak – moment, he had written to Anna to come.

Now, was it nice, was it decent of her, to take advantage of a momentary lapse like that?

Anyhow, it was too late now. The thing was done. Good-bye to freedom – he had himself turned back to seek his fetters. Anna would be there, right enough, standing on the platform ready to clap the handcuffs on him once more.

And now, just as things were beginning to move! With a wife and two hungry children to drag about after him, it would be stagnation once more, however he might put his shoulder to the work.

The gravel path leading to the station had been newly planted with trees, poor, scraggy things, more like the brooms on the buoys outside the harbour. And now they had to feel about with their roots through the hard earth. It would be ages before they grew to be tall and strong, with broad leafy crowns. And they were young – but he was no longer young, and his strength had been wasted in many a barren soil.

Egholm clasped his hands under his cloak, and prayed:

“Lord, spare Thy servant. Take away this cup from me. Let it be so that, when I come to the station, I may wake up out of a painful dream. No wife and children at all. Lord, hear Thy servant; hear him for that he suffered for the sake of Thy word, at the hands of the Brethren in Odense!”

He writhed his bony fingers, and looked up to the blue March sky. How grateful he would be; how he would fall down and bend his forehead to the earth, if his prayer should be heard!

But, alas, they would surely be there – Anna, Sivert, and Hedvig. Yes; they would be there, never fear.

It suddenly occurred to him that he could not remember the children’s faces. All he could call to mind of Hedvig was her keen grey eyes, and Sivert was associated chiefly with the grating sound of a little saw. But that sound was so vividly present in his mind that he lashed out with his stick, by way of relief. It was a reflex movement, a case of cause and effect.

Egholm had expected to find his family on the steps of the station, but there was no one there. The whole place looked dead and deserted. The omnibus horse stood drowsing in its tether, while the driver, Red Jeppe, jested with the waitress at the bar. No one on the platform but a group of girls. And it was already half-past twelve by the clock.

Strange – very strange.

He drifted up to a porter, and asked:

“The train from Odense – has it come in yet?”

“She’s broken down at Aaby. A nasty mess.”

“Broken down!”

“Yes. Engine off the line, and…”

Oh! Egholm felt a nasty blow at his heart. So God – or was it Satan? – had heard his prayer for once. With an ashy face he asked again:

“Nobody hurt, I hope?” And the answer seemed to flash on him as a vision: Anna stretched out on a canvas bier, her thick hair matted with blood.

“Hurt? Oh, Lord, no,” said the porter. “Only the engine turned off down the wrong track, and stuck in the gravel.” He yawned hungrily. “You’re not the only one hanging about here waiting for their blessed trains…”

Egholm felt a strange weakness in the legs, and sat down. The signal bell rang – train due in ten minutes. It seemed to him as if the station had suddenly brightened up. Quite cheerful all at once. Those girls there, for instance, with lovely new boots on. And laughing all the time. The one on the outside leaned right over to listen when the others whispered. Well, well, a good thing everyone wasn’t miserable.

And there – there was a man coming out of the waiting-room – a tall, fat man with rather thin legs – a commercial traveller. He didn’t look pleased at all, but dragged at his two bags like a convict in irons. Then, at sight of the girls, he stopped and drew himself up, anxious to be seen.

He draws a mirror and a tiny brush from his pocket, and wields them like a virtuoso. Then a cigar-case, and next a smart little contrivance for cutting off the end; another little case, with matches in. Evidently he is trying to impress those girls with an idea that he is a sort of original chest of drawers, with all manner of cases and shiny, interesting things inside. And he succeeds. The girls stop talking, and look at him, to see what will happen next. But after a little they fall to laughing again.

When the train rolled in, Fru Egholm, standing at the window of a compartment beyond the end of the platform, saw her husband come running down the length of the carriages, eagerly, with delighted eyes.

Hurriedly she took leave of a couple of women fellow-travellers. They had lived together for the past three or four hours, and suddenly that was over…

Egholm clambered up on the footboard, and found a pleasant surprise. Sivert was not there!

True, there was little Emanuel, whom he had forgotten altogether for the moment. But then Emanuel was the child of victory. Or at least it was reasonable here, as ever, of two evils to choose the lesser.

Anna was a little puffy and dark under the eyes, but her cheeks were flushed with excitement. She and Hedvig handed out an endless array of packages, a lamp, some pictures, and the family treasure – the cut-glass bowl. One of the parcels was soft and round, and Anna proffered it with a warning:

“Be careful; don’t lay it down anywhere. There might come a dog…”

Egholm fingered it over, and made out the contours of a fowl. His heart softened. And then, as Anna stood feeling helplessly behind her with her lace boots, he took her in his arms, helped her out, and twisted her round. Her face was flushed with confusion. The features he cared for hid those he hated. For a second he read the anxious questioning in her eyes, then a wave of deep sympathy overwhelmed him, and he pressed her to him again and again.

“I’m so glad you’ve come, Anna, my dear, I’m so glad.”

Omnibus-Jeppe was to take the heavier luggage that was in the van.

“H’m,” said Jeppe, scratching the back of his head, “there’s enough to stock a shop.”

Egholm scratched his head likewise, and stared helplessly at the bundles of bedding and Anna’s flower-pots – a whole score of them.

“What on earth d’you want to drag all that about for?” he asked irritably.

“Oh, look! They’ve broken the calla there,” wailed Fru Egholm, kneeling down beside it. “Broken right down at the root. And it was just coming out…”

“Oh, never mind that!”

“Give me a twenty-five øre, and I’ll look after the lot,” said Jeppe, melting at once before feminine grief.

The family had as much as they could carry. Egholm walked with pictures under either arm; his wife took the fowl, the cut-glass bowl, and the flower-pot with the calla. Leave it – because it was broken? No, she could never be so cruel.

Emanuel’s perambulator lay upside down, revealing the advertisement placard for somebody’s beer that had been tacked over the hole in the bottom. Hedvig tipped it right side up. It would hold a good deal, being of a peculiarly low, broad shape. Emanuel was ultimately placed among the various goods there disposed, as one surrounded by trophies in a triumphal car. He sat looking round with big blue eyes under his little white cap. It was a girl’s cap, really – a sort of sunbonnet that had lain in a drawer since Hedvig’s time, but —Herregud! what did it matter? At his age…

Egholm walked in front, the pictures waving up and down like a pair of wings as he described the view with great enthusiasm to his wife.

The slow-moving flood of the Belt glittered in newborn sunlight. The fields lay green and open under God’s sky. The landscape looked one freshly and boldly in the eyes – Anna marked how the very air tasted utterly different from that about Eriksens’ sour little patch of yard and garden. Her husband voiced her thought exactly when he said:

“I don’t believe there’s a prettier spot in all the world.”

“But the town?” she asked in surprise. “Where is it?”

“Right up there in the bay. See the red church-tower there, and the Custom House – that yellow place standing out against the great black woods? The town’s as sheltered as a bird in its nest. And look, that’s Jutland over there – see how close it looks, and the two lines of coast all soft against each other. Looks almost as if they were dancing.”

“And look at the white sails on the blue water!”

“Yes. I know that one with the topsail. That’s Etatsraad Brodersen’s. You know, ‘Brodersen’s Pure Grape.’ He’s the great man of the town.”

“It’s a lovely place.”

“Ah, but wait till it’s summer, and the beeches are out,” said Egholm, with bright eyes. “We’ll go out one day together. I’ll show you it all.”

Tears welled up into Anna’s eyes. What a marvellous place was this Knarreby, that could so change her husband altogether! Actually running down the platform to meet them as if it had been visitors of rank. And no grumbling or scolding because the train was late.

Egholm was himself moved. He blinked his eyes and looked away.

Out on the Belt, Brodersen’s cutter was cruising about. It was on the water early this year. There – it was tacking now. Stood for a moment straight as a white church, and then off on the new tack. Heavens, how it heeled over! Why don’t they let go the sheet? Ah, there she was up again! But Egholm had somehow slipped out of his former joyous mood, and said a trifle absently and wearily:

“Yes, it’s a pretty place; that’s true.”

Fru Egholm did not notice his altered tone. She found the moment opportune to put in a word for one that had been left behind in Odense, one that had stood on the platform in the early morning, waving and waving, till he suddenly collapsed, as if the ground had been snatched from under his feet. Was he not to have a share in the promised land?

“Sivert sent his love. He couldn’t come, of course, poor child.”

“No, thank goodness!”

The mother started – it was the old voice again. Her rejoicing had hurried her forward along a path that ended in a morass – she must drag her steps back now, uncertain of her way.

Listlessly she followed Egholm’s account of some excursion of his own.

“We came round the point to an island that was like a floating forest – Heireøen, it’s called. We put in there, alongside a pavilion place, and had steak and onions.”

“Wasn’t it dreadfully expensive – at a place like that?” Anna’s voice was dull and joyless as her own meals and the children’s had been every day, Sundays and weekdays alike, as far back as she could remember.

“I don’t know. It was Henrik Vang that paid. That is to say – he knew the man who kept the place, and so…”

“Henrik Vang? Oh, that’ll be the one you wrote about. His father’s got a little eating-house or something.”

“Little eating-house! Good Lord! – the finest hotel in the place. First-class restaurant!”

Anna had no grounds for disapproval, but, none the less, she murmured:

“H’m. A fellow like that…”

The family had reached the outskirts of the town. As they walked on, curtains were moved aside, and a nose-tip here and there showed through. In the little shops, the shopkeepers dropped their paper bags and crowded with their customers to see.

Hedvig enjoyed being thus a centre of attraction. She arranged the newspaper-holder, the plaster figure, and the lamp in a specially attractive fashion, drew herself up, tossed her head, and only wished they might have to walk all through the town. As it happened, she was disappointed.

Egholm, whose fingers were getting sore with holding the pictures, tripped on faster.

“There – that’s where I live,” he said, out of breath. “Pick up your legs a bit, can’t you?”

“Where?”

“The grey house there, with the gateway.”

All else was forgotten now in the anxiety to see the place that was to be their home. It was a long, low house. A gateway, two narrow shop-windows, a door, and four pairs of windows beside. Over the entrance was a placard inscribed with black letters on a white ground: “H. Andreasen. Coffins and Funeral Furnishings.”

A very respectable house it was, plastered with cement. And now they could see the show-case on one side of the entrance, with the photos in. No dream, then, no misunderstanding. It was here they were to live.

“Lord, isn’t it fine!” cried Hedvig.

Anna sighed resignedly, even perhaps in relief.

Saw and plane stopped suddenly. The men wiped the cobwebs from the panes and looked out, their bare arms gleaming against their blue overalls.

Anna hurried in through the entrance, but stopped inside, and looked back at her husband inquiringly.

There was someone in there! She could feel it, and it made her ill at ease. She was ready to drop as it was, from weariness, and longed to hide herself between four walls, to get her breath in peace, and set about to make things comfortable for her husband, the children, and herself.

“What are you waiting for? Go along in – the door’s open.”

“But there’s someone … I thought I…”

“Oh, that’ll be Vang, I suppose,” said Egholm, opening the door himself. “Hullo, Vang, here we are again. Nobody been, I suppose? No, no. Well, here’s my little party.”

Vang was seated in the middle of the bed, with his hat on, and a cold cigar at one corner of his mouth. The bed had sunk under the weight of his heavy frame; the dirty sheets and spotted blankets were twirled up as by a waterspout.

“My husband wrote about you,” Fru Egholm stammered with an effort. She stood holding her flower-pot and her parcels as if dreading to soil the paint of table and seats.

“Him and me,” said Vang in a solemn bass, letting his chin fall forward on his chest – “him and me we’ve been as one. But I’m going now, all right.”

“Why, what for?” said Egholm, touched. “There’s no need…” He took Vang’s arm.

“Ah, but I must. Henrik Vang can’t stay where there’s women about.”

“What’s turned you so serious all at once?”

Vang smoothed the bedclothes, evidently embarrassed.

“It’s not just making a fuss, to be asked again. I know I’d rather stay. Where should I go to, anyway?”

“You’ve a charming wife at home,” said Egholm mischievously. “But stay here if you like. I’ll be only too pleased.”

“Home? I’d rather walk in water up to my neck the rest of the day. But if you really mean it – if you’ll let me stay where I am – still as a mouse, and never disturb a soul, why, I’d just love it.”

“Do, then, Vang, do.”

Vang turned with a smile towards Fru Egholm, who was removing her hat in silence at the farthest corner of the room.

“I’ll stay, then, just as I am, in what I’ve got on. My clothes aren’t much, anyway. And I’m mostly drunk as well. But when you get to know me, Frue, you’ll see that right down inside I’m the man I am. Son of Sofus Vang. First-class hotel, excellent cuisine, and choicest wines – with terrace overlooking the water!”

Hedvig burst out laughing. She and her mother began carrying in the things Omnibus-Jeppe had piled up outside.

Egholm saw how he and Vang were gradually being immured behind the various belongings. It even seemed to him that now and then something was thrust with unnecessary harshness against his legs, and a threatening look crept into his eyes. In the midst of a flow of speech addressed to Vang, he broke off suddenly, and said in a voice of command:

“Take that stuff into the other room!”

“I will, dear. Let me,” said Fru Egholm. “But it looked like rain, you know.”

“Not that door,” said Egholm angrily.

“But these are the kitchen things.” Fru Egholm had already seen that the other door opened into an attic or box-room or something of the sort. “Isn’t that the kitchen there?”

“Kitchen! That’s my dark-room.” Egholm spoke as might a God to whom creations are the merest trifle. The place might have been a kitchen. Well and good – Egholm spoke the words: “Let there be a dark-room.”

“You’ll have to manage in there – at any rate, for the present.” He nodded towards the nondescript apartment opposite. “Make that a kitchen.”

“But, my dear…” Fru Egholm pulled herself together with a poor attempt at a smile. Then she shook her head; it was hopeless to try to explain to the uninitiate what a little world in itself a kitchen is. “The stove…” she managed to protest. “There’s not even a heating-stove in there.”

She waited still, with the chest of utensils in her hands, before the forbidden door. She must get in there.

Egholm reflected that it was perfectly true about there being no stove. It was for that reason he had had his bed in here for the winter. He could find no way out of the difficulty, and grew furious – for even he was not so far almighty as to create a kitchen where no kitchen was.

“All right, get along with you, then?” he said, pushing her in, and Hedvig, with Emanuel in her arms, behind her. “There you are! But mind! No fooling about with any of my things!”

The door opened with a queer sucking noise – it had been caulked with strips of cardboard and cloth.

Hedvig and her mother stood aghast, while Egholm thrust past them and began moving his bottles with the easy familiarity of habit.

All the windows were darkened but one, that glared red as a furnace door. They could see nothing save their own hands, which looked strange and uncanny in the red light.

“Egholm, you surely don’t mean to say we’re to do the cooking here? When you can’t see your hand before your face!”

Egholm stepped across and shut the door behind them; then, turning to his wife, he brought his face close down to hers, and whispered in a voice that seethed like a leak in an overheated boiler:

“Look here! You’re not going to come along and ruin the business for me now, so don’t you think it. If I can see to do my developing, you can see to cook. You understand?”

And he went on with a further flow of words, furious, though subdued.

Fru Egholm writhed.

“But, Egholm … there’s no room! I can’t even see the stove… Oh…”

She still clung to a faint hope that he might be brought to see things with her eyes, and realise how unreasonable it was to ask her.

“Very well. I’ll give you a lamp. My dark-room lamp should be about here somewhere.”

His fingers moved among rattling bottles on the stove.

“Here it is – no. Now, where the devil…”

A bottle upset; he grasped at it hurriedly and knocked over another; the liquid gurgled out into a pool on the floor.

“A basin – quick, give me a basin! My silver nitrate … quick, a basin!”

They reached about for one in haste and confusion.

“Open the door so we can see!” cried Hedvig. But at the same moment her father came towards them. His face looked as if smeared with blood in the light from the red-covered pane; his teeth showed between parted lips.

“You – you’re the serpent in the garden!” he hissed.

“Oh, don’t!” she cried, her voice rising to a scream.

Emanuel was beginning to cry. Hedvig tried to wriggle through with him to the door, but stepped on the basin her father had just set on the floor.

This was too much for Egholm. He felt he must either discharge the current within, or be fused by it, like an overcharged wire.

He staggered one step back, then forward again. His arms rose up as if with an inner force of their own; then with his full strength he struck his clenched fist in his wife’s face.

Once again, and once again he struck, the flesh of her checks squelching under the blows. Then he stumbled out, and closed the door carefully behind him.

Vang was seated on the bed exactly as before. What could he say to him? It was the first time any stranger had witnessed a scene of this sort. What was the use of starting upon heart-rending explanations, which Vang would never understand? And how much of the trouble had been audible through the close-padded door?

Vang gets to his feet; he must go now – yes, he must. There is something cowed about him; he speaks in a low voice, and does not look up. And Egholm, suddenly aware of Anna’s sobbing and Hedvig’s uncontrolled blubbering plainly heard through the door, realises that Vang must have been able to follow the drama through all its painful details.

And now he is going off, convinced that Egholm is a cruel, cruel brute.