Barbara Read online

  But Pastor Poul suddenly fell into a state of extreme agitation. It came all of a sudden. He jumped up and went across the floor; he was not himself aware that he was doing it.

  Barbara was soon almost naked; she was like a white sheen in the hearth room. She was not in the least embarrassed at the extremely natural way in Leynum; she was herself quite natural and free. But though seemingly oblivious, she all the time ensured that no one saw anything improper or secret or sufficient of her bare skin to become dazzled by it. On one occasion she was a little unfortunate. She covered her breast again like lightning. But Pastor Poul had seen it. She suddenly blushed deeply. Those who noticed this were a little surprised – according to all they had heard, they were not under the impression that Barbara was the type to blush.

  Pastor Poul had sat down again. His heart was beating so powerfully that it almost hurt, and he was trembling a little all over. Two of the servant women started to help him out of his wet clothes. He scarcely knew how he managed to change.

  By then, Barbara had long been dressed – in thick, heavy peasant garments. But her face was small and bright and cheerful.

  The law speaker thought he would rather go and lie down if no one minded. He had a box that it was best he took with him; there was some cough mixture in it that was good to take at night.

  They asked him whether he was ill. No, he was not. He was shown into the best room and a candle was fixed in a candlestick and lighted.

  The conversation, which had died down for a time because of the arrival of the strangers, had started to pick up again. They had all been amazed to hear of the French ships that had been in Tórshavn, but in reality it seemed to them to be a far greater event that they themselves had received such distinguished guests this evening. The law speaker was the most important man in the islands. His enormous trousers were at that moment hanging to dry up under the roof. They were swaying to and fro majestically. But a brand new parson was also worth seeing, although attention centred most of all on Barbara.

  She sensed it, and she was radiant. She knew how to talk to everyone and had a special ability to find the meek among them and encourage them with a couple of words. She delighted in their gratitude and admiration. It was not long before she had discovered that old Tormod had been interrupted in the midst of a story when the guests had arrived. She sat down on a stool in front of him and asked him to go on.

  Old Tormod sat by the fireplace. His clothes were covered in peat dust and ashes, and his white head, the head of an old man, trembled slightly all the time. He excused himself at first. It was only an old wives tale, he said, which no one could be bothered listening to, least of all a parson and a learned man, who doubtless knew far better. But he was easy to tempt, and bit by bit he started telling about the little people whom men and women could encounter out in the field when least expecting to.

  The farmer’s wife was busy. She shouted to Tormod and told him to stop all that nonsense. He must remember he was going into his second childhood. How could he think the visitors could be bothered to listen to such rubbish?

  But Tormod did not hear her. He sat with a distant look in his half-closed eyes and told how Pastor Rasmus Ganting came along the shore at Sørvág one summer’s day. There was a green mound there and it was open. There was a woman standing in the doorway, and she invited him inside. Another woman brought beer in a silver cup and gave it to him to drink. But before drinking, Pastor Rasmus blew all the froth from the beer straight into the face of the elfin woman.

  “That was a wise thing to do,” she said.

  “If I were not wiser than you, I would not have entered this mound,” replied the parson.

  The fire glowed hot beneath the saucepan. The shadows danced black along the walls. Up in the roof there was the huge shadow of the law speaker’s trousers. Tormod told story after story. The knitting needles clicked and the spinning wheels hummed. He told about the man in Gásadal who had an elfin woman as his friend. She came to him at night. His real wife knew nothing of this, but one night while she lay on the inner side of the bed close to her husband, she suddenly felt a cold hand. It was the elfin woman who was lying on the edge of the bed at the other side of her husband.

  They all sat listening in silence. A few had had various experiences that they could not quite explain. Their thoughts went out among the mighty fells to dark heaths and huge boulders, where the departed lived their silent lives… But the farmer’s wife brought them all back to reality, for now supper was ready.

  Pastor Poul was in a strange mood. He almost felt as though he himself had entered some mound. His heart was full of great disquiet and a strange feeling of comfort. As soon as he had eaten, he asked permission to go to bed. He wanted to try to gather his thoughts.

  He was shown into the best room and asked to share a bed with the law speaker. The candle was lit in the frame again. It was placed on a white scoured table standing between two windows. The walls, the ceiling, everything was of wood that had been scoured white. On one side wall there was a cupboard and an alcove. On the other side wall there were two alcoves in line with each other. The law speaker lay snoring in one of these.

  While undressing, Pastor Poul read the inscription on the stove:

  When I did grasp a stronger foot, he carried me away,

  So my advice to you my friend is mirror yourself in me.

  The relief represented an eagle flying away with a man in its claws. What the reader was to mirror himself in was the man’s backside. Ole Jacob explained that the old folks had said that this was Griffenfeld, who had suffered such a sorry fate.

  Pastor Poul crawled up into the alcove. The law speaker took up a great deal of room, but there was still a sufficient, warm space for the parson. He came up against something hard and smooth… and it turned out that they were two pint bottles. And they were empty. It seemed to take some time for a law speaker to get over a visit to Havn.

  The light from the hearth room came in through the chink in the door. There was still plenty of life and talk out there. Barbara’s laughter could be heard occasionally, happy and contented. Pastor Poul lay in the warm darkness and vainly tried to gather his thoughts for prayer. Good heavens, in what state was he arriving in his new benefice? His blood was fired with desire for Barbara.

  He began to go through the day’s events again. He felt the rhythm of the boat and saw the islet with the surf washing around. He leapt over all the streams in the Kollafjord Valley as the rain poured down. Barbara took him by the hand; she was so wet that her clothes clung to her and flopped around her. She was saying “jump”, “jump”, jump”, in a different tone of voice each time. She invited him inside and gave him beer, and he forgot to blow the foam off it.

  He awoke to hear something moving close to him. Someone or other was going to bed in the adjoining alcove. He saw an enormous confused shadow on the wall. It suddenly dawned on him that it was Barbara. He heard her lie down and pull the sliding door to, but there was still the sound of her rummaging around quite close by. His heart hammered in his breast.

  Others came in. He heard the farmer and his wife talking quietly. They were probably sleeping in the bed opposite. The house had fallen silent. People were fidgeting about and settling down. There was now only a single maid left busy in the kitchen, baking bread in the warm ashes in the hearth.

  Pastor Poul felt something scratching quite gently at his pillow. He thought it was a mouse and caught out at it. He got hold of a hand. He turned towards the bed head and looked straight into Barbara’s eyes. A couple of boards were missing in the panel between the two bunks, and her head was no more than two feet from his. The final remains of light from the chink in the door fell on her face. She was desperately serious and silent; he could see that she was just as excited and affected as he was himself.

  They silently caressed each other’s hands and arms, staring at each other as though afraid. The light from the door became weaker and weaker, and finally they lay there in complete d
arkness. And there was no obstacle between them. The law speaker simply snored.

  Coloured Stones

  By ebb tide, the whole of the Midvág sands were white and dry. It was at this time that Barbara had the habit of coming across to Pastor Poul in Jansegærde from her dower house at Kalvelien on the other side of the bay. For then she could take such a lovely shortcut, she said. It could often sound as though she only came for the sake of this short cut. The sand was so flat and so white! And when it was such a short way to come – well then why not? She was always radiant as she said this.

  Barbara had many radiant explanations for the ways and byways of her life; indeed she had a whole bag full of excuses that always shone like coloured stones and twinkled just like her own greenish yellow eyes. But although Pastor Poul well knew that it was exclusively for his sake that she came across the sands every day, it always hurt him a little when she spoke like this. For there was great turmoil in his heart.

  His life was not days and nights; his life was flood tide and ebb tide. Throughout the long summer days he sat at his table and read the Garden of Paradise, The Treasures of the Soul or The Rare Jewel of Faith. But his mind was empty and only resounded like a shell’s rush of waves as they scurried in and collapsed on the beach. His heart was on the white sand down there as it grew or shrank, and as the waters receded, the final remainder of his devotions also ebbed from his mind. Then he could only wait and wait.

  He had two brass candlesticks before him on the table. There was a big chip in the foot of one of them. He knew perfectly well that this had happened once when Barbara in fury had thrown the candlestick at his predecessor, Pastor Niels. But he never thought about that. He only longed for Barbara to come as she did yesterday and the day before, to play with the inkwell and The Spiritual Treasure, to lay her gentle hands down on his wretched learned belongings and illuminate everything with her sparkling yellowish green eyes. During one of these painful times he spent waiting for her, he had started to write a few verses about her.

  My fair one,

  My dear one

  My joy and delight,

  My angel so bright

  You have me now captured.

  I am simply enraptured

  My heart is in thrall

  To your gestures and all.

  But he could not even concentrate on these verses about Barbara. His eyes were all the time down on the sand, where he expected to see her.

  When she came, she could be seen as a tall, elegant figure among all the children running around and playing down there. She was always this upright figure as she walked. But he had once seen her bend down to tie a shoelace that had come undone. Like the other women in the village, she usually wore shoes of pale, soft skin with red ribbons tied around her ankles. Her walk was so light that she left no traces; the sand was firm and ribbed in the shape made by the waves as the tide had left it. Pastor Poul often thought how it must hurt her feet to walk on this bumpy terrain and how the gravel and the small stones must cut into her heels and the soles of her feet. He loved her feet, which every day took all these steps to come to him, and which sprang so nimbly across the river. When she reached the house, he always saw her face the moment she went past the window. Her expression was deadly serious; her eyes were afire, and she was hurrying.

  And yet he was every day afraid that she would not come, that the ebb would run out like an hourglass and flood tide again cover the entire stretch of sand. But did he have the least reason to fear this? It had so far never happened that she had not come. On the other hand it had happened that she had come unexpectedly, having walked the long way around the bay and had taken him unawares with her vehement expressions of love. And once, when she had not found him at home, she had left a brief letter on his table saying, “My dearest frend, I could not wait so long so came strait here, for I like best to be were you are, but you weren’t here. All my love, Barbara Christine Salling.”

  It was written in a terrible, restless hand. But Pastor Poul became quite dizzy and almost horrified when he read it, for he felt that this was a trembling declaration in flesh and blood and not just a glittering stone from Barbara’s fairytale bag.

  But it had also happened that he himself in the middle of the morning had gone up the hillside and said, “I so long to be with you.” And in an unequivocal voice she had replied, “That is good.”

  When he left her again, she was standing straight, high-bosomed and rosy cheeked like a goddess, and her eyes were like glowing embers.

  People in the village believed that Pastor Poul and Barbara were betrothed, and the rumour of this had long since reached Tórshavn. Everyone shook their heads and said that it was only to be expected. But in reality, betrothal and marriage had never been mentioned between the two. They had never had time for that, for they were always much more than betrothed and married if only they saw each other.

  But in lonely times it happened that the minister had misgivings that horrified him. When he turned to the heavy volume entitled Spiritual Treasure in search of Christian words and thoughts for his sermons, he most often only found things condemning his own way of life. It said that chastity was a necessity for a believer, that it could not be separated from the fellowship of Christ and that it was the fruit of faith. And the means to achieve it were 1) a sacred, genuine intent, 2) immediately to smother evil desires, 3) to avoid all occasion of sin, 4) to shun laziness and idleness, and 5) to mortify the flesh by fasting. Alas! As though he did not fast. His flesh would often scarcely allow him to eat, so sick and filled with longing was he for Barbara to appear. And when he had eaten it could happen that he brought his food up again.

  No, he was a miserable priest, and it was only a poor consolation to him that all it said about chastity was that few could boast of it. For he was a decent man and did not know how few they were.

  He often read until the sweat broke out on his forehead as he searched for some brief passage suggesting that God might have some slight ground for satisfaction in him and Barbara. For they loved each other so deeply and so genuinely. But he failed to reconcile Barbara and God. How could he even speak to God about Barbara? And how could he talk to Barbara about God?

  He could in no way defend his actions, and yet it was impossible for him to act differently. He had no power over himself.

  But of course he could enter into a marriage with Barbara. Then everything would be different. For woman was also a most useful creation with which to combat adultery, fornication and loose living. He read this in an ancient little book that he found among the things Pastor Niels had left. It was called A Mirror for Pious Women and in many ways was a charming book in all it had to say about the married woman. “It is irrefutable,” it said, “that it is impossible to find such good tender friends who mean so well and are so faithful to each other as God-fearing husbands and wives, who are one flesh, one body, one heart and have one will with which they share happiness and sadness, good and evil with each other, and especially the woman with her beauty, charm, love and kindness, her sweet and life-giving word is to her husband the supreme fortification in his troubles after the word of God.”

  When Pastor Poul read this, his heart was filled with sweetness, but at the same time with a terror that made his head whirl. He knew Barbara’s history, of course, and he knew her far better than his heart would admit.

  Woman is compared to a hind, which has an extremely sharp and quick sense of hearing, especially when it pricks up its ears. But when it sinks its ears, it is said to be almost deaf. Like a hind, woman, too, must open her ears when she hears the word of God or when her husband admonishes her and she must pay careful attention to what people say of her. On the other hand, she should be deaf to all Epicurean mockery of God and to the shameful words and deeds of a fool that encourage unchaste thoughts and foolish living…

  But oh, Barbara. Were there any words of Epicure that were not immediately caught by her ears and caused her senses to tremble? Was there any subtle remark that
did not immediately bring life to her eyes? Was there any game that she was not immediately willing to play?

  Pastor Poul was like the fowler hanging on his rope and daring to look neither up nor down.

  For if he raises his eyes to heaven, the line is lost to sight in the distance, and it seems he is hanging on a thread that has been cut. But if he looks down, he realises the horrors of the pit.

  He scarcely dared to think. He only dared to live. His happiness drew him mercilessly on through the summer days; his happiness was a trembling, fleeting hind whose ears were always raised and alert.

  Except in church. But Pastor Poul’s sermons were not good.

  Barbara, who noticed everything, also noticed that her beloved was not entirely happy, and she felt that as a profound affront. One day when they were talking about their love, she said, “Every time I give you all my hand, you only give me your little finger.”

  Pastor Poul was so amazed at this that he remained silent for a long time. That was not as he had understood it, no, far from it, the contrary in fact.

  “You don’t give me your whole hand,” he said. “You don’t because you can’t.”

  Now it was Barbara’s turn to be amazed. She flushed a little and hurried to counter, “I give you everything I have to give you.”

  She looked rather upset. Pastor Poul walked up and down the floor. Then he suddenly exclaimed, “Barbara. You know I have my calling.”

  “Yes, but can I not help you a bit?”

  She ran over to him, flung her arms round his neck and asked with such intensity: “Can I not help you a little?”

  Pastor Poul remembered the little note from Barbara and how terribly badly it was written. It was as helpless as a prayer; it was the most touching thing he knew about her – he treasured it like a piece of her own soul.

  Barbara looked at him in child-like enthusiasm. Her eyes were quite comical: “I can write all right when someone dictates to me.”