Barbara Read online

  But he had not heeded a tiny thought that insidiously entered his heart at that moment. The thought that it was not everything in the city that was holding him back with the same force and that there was also something that turned him away a little. This was Lucie Gemynther, the highly regarded daughter of an affluent merchant.

  He had for a time found her particularly pleasing, and he had thought that this might perhaps go far. But then, Lucie herself had become far too engrossed with the same thought – indeed she had shown herself to be so deeply in love that Poul Aggersøe had started to turn away from her. For she bothered him with her constancy and with her feelings, which quickly developed for him into a melody he knew only too well. He reproached himself for it, but it was all too clear to him that he did not love her. For she was like an ivy seeking to twist its way up him as though round a tree trunk and to cover him completely with her devotion. But he did not want that. He only wanted to be himself, Poul Aggersøe, and felt the affection of others to be a burden and a limitation.

  Lucie wept the day he left, and he was happy and relieved when the ship had passed the toll booth and he could no longer see her. The voyage went well and they only encountered stormy weather at the end when they were approaching their destination. Pastor Poul still had the splendour of the Copenhagen spires and towers in his eyes on the day they sighted land. But that ghastly morning when he glimpsed Tórshavn for the first time – oh, it was no longer ago than yesterday although it seemed like an age to him – it was then as though both courage and joy were drawn from his heart.

  Here, he found himself in the rain among decayed and badly tarred wooden houses. He could not bear the idea of remaining in the parsonage for ever. His host and colleague, Wenzel Heyde, was a master of theology and a learned man, but when Pastor Poul started discussing theological matters and revealing that he, too, was at home in learned subjects, it had been as though Pastor Wenzel had been put off. He was not unfriendly, but he did not say much and there were always shadows to be seen in his water-blue eyes, as though he was constantly being offended and wronged by concerns visible and invisible.

  Pastor Poul wanted to meet his superior, Dean Anders Morsing, but he was over at Nes in Esteroy. Pastor Poul talked of going over to see him, but everyone assured him that that would be a waste of time, as the dean would probably be in Tórshavn within a few days.

  What on earth was Pastor Poul to do, then? He had already paid his respects to the judge and the law speaker; the bailiff was a self-important former customs clerk, the judge an old fogey, an oddity and an atheist with whom he disagreed in every way, the law speaker, on a visit to Tórshavn, was a gentle but thirsty, bull-like man who quietly went his own way; the storekeeper a young pup, old Armgard and old Ellen Katrine with her crutch – oh, heaven preserve us! And what else? Oh God, oh God – in Tórshavn. Or Havn, as everyone called it.

  And yet, every time Pastor Poul put on his soaking black hat and went out in the everlasting rain, this was done with a quiet hope that he might in time be granted something bright and smiling, a joy in the darkness. For he knew that here, too, somewhere or other in this labyrinth of narrow passageways, yards and middens, there must be a corner where beauty and something to delight the eye resided. There was no denying that he would like to see her again – the widow living in his own benefice. Not that he had any special intentions. God preserve him. He could already see what a dangerous constellation fate had brought about between him and her. But at the same time as it worried him, it was also a tiny source of joy to him in the midst of all this wretchedness. His thoughts played around Barbara. Perhaps she was not all that glorious. But, when the sun has set, the stars shine.

  It was Anna Sophie, Pastor Wenzel’s wife, who unexpectedly came to his help. When he was preparing to go out later in the day, she asked him whether he had paid a visit to Mrs. Salling, his predecessor’s widow. For she thought after all…

  This was one of the many things that Pastor Wenzel came up against in the course of a day. His cheeks grew red and his eyes shone helplessly and as though aggrieved.

  “Pastor Poul,” he said, “must decide for himself what he thinks suitable. As for Barbara… Mrs Salling, nothing has been hidden.”

  “For Magdalene’s sake,” said Anna Sophie quite unconcerned. She added, “Well, Magdalene – Mrs Stenderup – is her mother. I think you should go for her sake at least. She would feel hurt if you ignored them. Good Lord, she can’t help…”

  Pastor Wenzel capitulated and looked even more offended: “Oh, I suppose not. Mrs Stenderup is in truth… is in truth someone for whom one can only feel pity.”

  Pastor Poul let Madame Anna Sophie explain which way he should go. It was quite straightforward: through Gongin to Nýggjastova, as it was called, just opposite the bailiff’s office and then you were there.

  She smiled just slightly as she said this. There was something intimate and as it were artful in her entire behaviour. It was as though she knew his thoughts better than he did himself. But Pastor Wenzel continued to look hurt. Perhaps he was more aware of his wife’s frivolous quality than she herself was. Perhaps he simply knew her far too well.

  In Nýggjastova, Pastor Poul was received by Madame Magdalene Stenderup, but he did not receive the impression that his visit had been anticipated with any special sense of anticipation on her part. She received him rather with a kind of half bitter resignation to fate. He could not later recall what words were spoken, but they were uttered with a weary customariness as though she wanted to say that seeing a new priest in her home was rather like encountering a verse of a hymn that had been sung far too many times.

  But he immediately forgot this in the unconcealed delight shining in Barbara’s face when he entered the sitting room. Indeed, she made not the least effort to hide it. There was a child-like triumph in the warm, glittering falsetto of her voice, as though at last, at long last, she had won a protracted and exciting game that others might have doubted that she could win – for instance Gabriel, Mr Gabriel Hansen, who was also in the room. But perhaps most of all Pastor Poul himself.

  And he felt it. Was it not actually as though she said to him, “Oh, you simply couldn’t keep away any longer now.” But he did not feel in the least put out by this. For at the same time it was as though she was saying, “It was good you came. Can’t you understand that?” She was so natural and so seemly that he immediately felt comfortable and at ease and as it were infected by her good nature. Everything was so amusing and straightforward.

  But Gabriel, whose watchful eyes had been observing this meeting, was not amused and was the last to find Barbara natural and seemly in the way in which she was throwing herself at this stranger. Not that it was the least bit surprising. Yesterday morning, he had already taken the measure of the new Vágar minister and seen that he was quite a distinctive man, rather dark and thickset, very unlike the late Pastor Niels. So it was quite easy to foresee how Barbara would behave… and in any case what the men looked like seemed to be a matter of indifference to her, provided they were… good lord, it was difficult to see what she had seen in several of them. It was enough for her that they were males!

  They seated themselves around a white-scoured table, all except Magdalene, who with a disapproving look made an excuse to leave the room. Barbara was sewing. But her lively eyes were not so much directed at her sewing: their quickly shifting, greenish sheen was everywhere and for the time being mostly on Gabriel. Perhaps she did not know what he was thinking, but she knew what he was feeling. She was so perceptive. When she sat between two men in this way, she could hear the beating of both their hearts. She could play each of them like an instrument – in different keys. And now Gabriel must be consoled and redressed a little. She talked to him, asked him about something and listened very carefully to his answer. During all this she only thrice directed her eyes at Pastor Poul and on each occasion she quickly lowered them again.

  Pastor Poul, who throughout the day had felt as though he we
re already lodged in ultimate darkness, suddenly felt himself bathed in a powerful light. This was not only on account of the white table top, Barbara’s sewing and her very white and warm hands. It was especially these eyes, which shone so powerfully that she had to lower them each time they had lighted on him. It was as though they had been far too intimate and were then ashamed of themselves.

  Pastor Poul at first took pleasure in these looks until he noted that they were directed far more at Gabriel than at himself. He also saw how she several times smiled with pleasure: the corners of her mouth were long and red and when she smiled they brought dimples to her cheeks. Pastor Poul did not quite understand what they were talking about – there must be veiled insinuations in what Gabriel was saying, taunts that Barbara was quite happy to hear. But he himself gradually began to feel in the way.

  But his time soon came when Barbara seriously and very attentively began to ask him about his journey, about his studies, his first sermon and all sorts of other things regarding his pastoral duties. It emerged that she knew the names of several of the professors. Aye, there was no limit to her impudence, thought Gabriel. For what could Barbara possibly know about such things? Nevertheless, she went on talking as though the only thoughts she had ever had in her head were those of a parson’s wife, and finally she asked Pastor Poul whether he had ever met her late husband, Pastor Niels.

  “Bloody shameless, that’s what she is,” thought Gabriel. It irritated him that there was no one else present to witness her hypocrisy.

  But for Pastor Poul, it was as though for the first time in this country he had met anyone who bothered to show any interest in him, and he expressed himself freely and honestly and in his heart of hearts he felt flattered. For although he was well aware that this sort of subject could scarcely in itself be a subject of interest to a woman like Barbara, he could nevertheless see from her face and eyes how engrossed she was and how she reacted to his slightest change of expression, and at that moment he had the thought that seemed right to him, that in a conversation with a woman the subject was only an excuse, while the real matter was the delight of standing face to face, to be able to let their eyes meet, their voices mingle and their souls touch. And Barbara’s soul, which spoke through her greenish golden eyes, touched him and was occasionally ashamed and withdrew, but immediately returned and played for him and sunned itself in his powerful, eager gaze. The corners of her mouth happily turned up again now; she listened as though to a rare musical performance, and what he told her now was only apparently about parsons and parishes, but was in reality a long solo aria arising from the depths of his male soul. And the aria was heard.

  It was at this point that Barbara’s eyes suddenly began to wander in the direction of Gabriel. She lowered them, glanced at him once more with lightning speed and gave a little giggle. The words seemed to stick in Pastor Poul’s throat: what had happened? Had Gabriel done something or said something. Was he intervening in the recital? Barbara looked determinedly at her sewing and worked quickly.

  “It’s a bolster,” she said quietly.

  But it was obvious that she was filled with hidden laughter. Gabriel gave her a caustic look.

  “It is a bolster,” she repeated insistently. Her voice rose into a falsetto and ended in that wheezing sound that was mid-way between a sigh and a laugh.

  Pastor Poul had started to feel very uncomfortable indeed. He did not understand a word of it at all. At first, he thought it was he himself who was being laughed at, but then he realised this was not the case. Nevertheless, he did not at all like this mischievous new game between Barbara and Gabriel, which had quite definitely interrupted his own account and made it superfluous.

  Suddenly, Gabriel tugged at the sewing. Barbara defended herself a little and rapped his fingers, but she was unable to prevent him from pulling all the white material up on to the table top. Then she suddenly gave in and said in a voice that she tried to make sound angry: “Oh, you fool, Gabriel. Yes, of course it’s a shift. One would think you’d never seen a chemise before.”

  Gabriel’s fat face was highly expressive of both amusement and insolence.

  “Yes, of course,” he replied, “but never such a fine one. Who’s going…?”

  But Barbara had suddenly flushed scarlet right down to her neck. She had chanced to glance at Pastor Poul, just for a second, and never had she been so quick to look away again. Gabriel sensed that something had happened and suddenly understood where they had got to. Damn! He had bungled things again. Pastor Poul and Barbara were both speechless; he was the only one to be saying anything and yet he understood that at that moment he was less than nothing. It was more than he could stand. He said that he would have to go now.

  “Are you going?” asked Barbara.

  “Yes, I’m afraid so,” Gabriel said; he needed to go to the store. He was very busy at the moment.

  Pastor Poul had also made signs of making a move. He murmured something to the effect that it was perhaps also time for him to go home. But then Barbara suddenly found the power of speech again and in a loud voice started to talk her way out of her confusion: No, no! Surely he needn’t go. Her mother was just making some coffee for him. She hadn’t been able to have a talk to him yet, as she surely, most surely wanted. There was simply so much for her to do in the house. Whatever he did, he mustn’t go yet.

  Gabriel was outside in the vestibule; he poked his head inside and pointing in the direction of the sewing, said: “Goodbye. It’s nice to see you doing a chemise fit for a bride.”

  Barbara laughed. A little laugh that at the same time was a sigh that caught in her throat: “Oh, you do talk nonsense, Gabriel.”

  She went with him to the door and stood out in the rain for a moment and was full of joy. Then she went inside to rejoin Pastor Poul, the new Pastor Poul. And as it was now beginning to turn dusk, she lit some candles.

  After this visit, Pastor Poul’s melancholy was transformed into a quiet gaiety. When he came from his visit to Barbara he wandered through the dark town like a man liberated and wanted only to be alone for a time with his joy. There was just a break in the rain. He turned off along a windswept passageway leading down to the water. There he stopped in the shelter of a boathouse to gather his thoughts and try to explain to himself the source of his new-found happiness. But it was not long before he sensed that others had made their way down to the shore with their thoughts. A lone figure appeared out of the darkness. They greeted each other. It was Gabriel.

  He was not at all unhappy that it should be Gabriel. Although he had been a considerable nuisance to him during his conversation with Madame Barbara, he had nevertheless been one of the participants in the pleasantest scene he had experienced since arriving in this country. And although he might appear to be something of a rascal, he was nevertheless probably something of a cheerful Scapin to whom it might well be worth chatting.

  Gabriel also turned out to be friendly, familiar and blessed with the gift of the gab. They discussed all manner of things concerning Tórshavn and the country, and Gabriel retailed some quite amusing things about many people, making Pastor Poul laugh. But the fact that they avoided discussing a certain person made it increasingly clear to them both that it was she who was at the centre of their thoughts, and when they finally reached this subject, Gabriel’s voice became quite soft and emotional.

  “A charming woman, you say. Yes, but then you should have seen her when she was eighteen and quite innocent. Barbara was really sweet in those days.”

  “I can imagine that,” said Pastor Poul.

  “Aye,” said Gabriel. “It’s a pity that she was so blemished. It’s galling. My God it is.”

  “I’ve heard a good deal about her already,” said Pastor Poul. “So there must be something in it, although I find it difficult to make it fit in with her character, which seems to me to be decent and respectable enough and not such as one would expect of a woman like that.”

  “Oh, she’s full of… If you knew her proper
ly, you’d think she was terrible… She’s up to her tricks as soon as she sees a stranger.”

  “Tricks?” asked Pastor Poul dubiously. He thought of Barbara’s glances, which had been so radiant that she had constantly had to look down. “On the contrary,” he went on, “she seems to me to be so completely natural.”

  Gabriel snorted a little. “Those eyes! Oh yes, how fine! Let me tell you something, and by God this is true: I am often ashamed of being related to her. Because at times she lives as though she was nothing but… nothing but… well, a whore.”

  “Well, I can’t judge that, of course,” murmured the priest. “I hear that’s what people say. But I thought it was mainly the older people who said that kind of thing about her.”

  “But it’s bloody well the young’uns who know first hand what she’s like.”

  “Well, as for me,” said the clergyman, “I haven’t had a sense of anything on her part but what is decent and beautiful.”

  “Oh, good heavens. She can’t tempt me,” said Gabriel seriously. “I know her too well for that… Everyone knows her tricks and what she gets up to. It’s really only something to laugh at… If I wasn’t related to her.”

  “But,” he concluded, “one thing I will say to you: she’s as lecherous as they come.”

  “Ha, ha,” thought Pastor Poul after they had parted. “Gabriel here is probably not quite as indifferent as he makes out.” Pastor Poul himself had to admit that he was certainly not unaffected by this conversation. And his new sense of delight at Tórshavn and all this dreary country had not diminished. He was very surprised, for Gabriel had not said anything but what was likely to spoil his sense of pleasure after his visit to Nýggjastova. Yet it seemed to him that this pleasure had now only increased.