Barbara (16 page)

They reached the water. There it lay, black and shining, and the green and brown ridges surrounding it were reflected in it. Pastor Poul had often visited these places. When visiting his parishes of ease at Sørvág and Bø or going out on the lonely island of Mikines, this was the way he took. And he had walked out here in lonely, troubled hours. But he had never been out at Sørvág Lake together with Barbara and he felt it was a new, serious world into which he was introducing her. He had had a host of beautiful ideas regarding this area, and he longed to tell her of them.

There was a cluster of tiny huts by the lakeside. They were not houses for people to live in, but peat stores and boathouses. But it nevertheless still looked like a small village. And just at this time there were a crowd of busy people there. The people of Midvág cut their peat in the summer in the Sørvág fields on the other side of the lake, and this was just the time when the first peat was dry and ready to be transported across the water.

Pastor Poul and Barbara sat down in the heather. A single, heavily laden boat was approaching land.

“When I come here,” said the parson, “I always have to think about Lake Gennesareth. I don’t know why that should be. The first time I saw this lake it was like an old dream coming back to me. But then I realised that it was simply the idea of Lake Gennesareth.”

Barbara hardly replied to this and perhaps she did not entirely understand it. But her bright eyes showed how she admired Pastor Poul and how her heart clung to his every word.

“These houses over here,” he went on, “strike me as being just like Capernaum.”

“Capernaum,” shouted Barbara happily. It was now as though she better understood and suddenly felt she could take part in the conversation. “Capernaum! Was it not in Capernaum that… that…”

But then she turned to eagerly pulling heather up and looking down into the ground: “Wasn’t it there that thing happened, you know…?” And she was again embarrassed.

The minister thought for a moment and then replied that St Luke said nothing about where it happened, but it could well be that it was in Capernaum, for Jesus often went there.

Barbara said that it was
probably
Capernaum. Her face was radiant and she became very engaged for now
she
had a role in the story told by Pastor Poul. This was a splendid big stone that she presented to herself, and her eyes shone golden in the sun.

“In general,” said Pastor Poul, “Jesus went around in all the small villages by Lake Gennesareth, and sometimes he was over on the other side, out in the desert, preaching. I always think of that place as being over there where you can see people working.”

Barbara sat for a time, chewing a blade of grass. Then, all of a sudden, she said:

“You remind me of Jonas, my first husband.”

Pastor Poul did not know what to think of this and he made no reply.

“You
always
remind me of Jonas,” Barbara went on. “I thought that straight away – the very first time I saw you.”

“Oh, that time in the entrance to the Royal Store?”

“Yes, I had simply gone down to see what you looked like.”

“Were you very fond of Pastor Jonas?” asked the priest.

“I’ve never been as fond of anyone as I was of Jonas. We always talked to each other just like you and I have done today, about all kinds of things, and we were never tired of being together. That was at Vidareidi… it was wonderful. But then he died, and I missed him terribly. I always, always wished it could be like that again when I was married to Jonas. But it never was.”

She threw a sprig of heather down.

“What did you talk about then, you and Pastor Jonas? About God?”

“About God as well. About everything. I don’t remember all that well; I was so young in those days, but when Jonas talked about God it always made me happy. It was not like when…”

She suddenly stopped.

“Like what?” asked Pastor Poul excitedly.

“Like when Anders started on his everlasting reproaches and sermons and …”

“Pastor Anders? The dean from Næs?”

“Ugh yes; he’s a dean now. I suppose people have been kind enough to tell you that I was once betrothed to him? But I couldn’t stand him. Always full of… retribution and condemnation… and he was always seeking to improve me.”

“Were you so much in need of improvement?”

Barbara looked down: “I needed a husband like Jonas; that was all I longed for and the only thing that could keep me away from… from sin.”

This last word she only managed to utter after what seemed to be a great effort. It sounded entirely alien to her lips. But then she suddenly pulled herself together and added: “He gave me stones for bread.”

“So did you tire of the word of God?” the minister asked.

“Yes,” said Barbara. “I grew tired to death. But I didn’t forget Jonas, and I kept on thinking that perhaps another might come… one who was like Jonas and could make everything well again.”

“And then Pastor Niels came?”

“Pastor Niels!” It was as though Barbara had forgotten that she had ever been married to someone called Pastor Niels. But then she suddenly burst out: “Poor Niels! Aye, it was dreadful. And it was Dr Balzer who was responsible for it all. He made such a mess of that leg. I hate that fool.”

The minister fell into deep thought. Then, at last, he asked: “Yes, but was Pastor Niels not able to lead you back to the Word of God?”

Barbara seemed at first to pull a face, but then her features softened and she said quietly, “I was terribly fond of Pastor Niels. You must believe that even if I was often a beast to him. We were terribly good friends. But… but… you know: he had such a dreadfully dreary, squeaky voice.”

The minister turned away and looked down at the ground and felt quite dejected. There he saw a tiny spider busy between heather and blades of grass.

But Barbara got up, brushed something off her clothes and exclaimed:

“Come on; let’s go down to the water. Perhaps we could get across to the other side on that boat.”

Pastor Poul followed her. She took his hand again and intertwined her fingers in his; then she looked up at him and said, “Now we are at Lake Gennezareth and going into Capernaum, aren’t we?”

And when they entered Capernaum, she embraced him and said, “You mustn’t die, you know. I can’t do without you.”

She was very serious, and she was trembling.

When they reached the water, the boat was unloaded and ready to set out again. Pastor Poul and Barbara were allowed on it. They sat down on the narrow thwart in the stern, close to each other. The boat was full of peat litter and the oars creaked and squeaked against the bone-dry thole pins.

All around them lay the vast shiny surface of the lake, and the reflection of the afternoon sun glittered on it and dazzled them. But over on the shore there was the dark shadow of the mountain, and in the waves as the boat cut through them there were also cool, black patches. Barbara held her hand down in the water and let it run through her fingers.

The peat lands were a dark area with black peat bogs. They looked like wounds in the earth. But the air was clear and echoed with the voices of grown ups and children working round about. There were the cries of curlews and golden plover standing on piles of heather, and here and there, where people were preparing food, smoke was rising into the air. It was a smoke that tore at their eyes and burned them, but it was sweet and strong like some kind of brandy. There was thyme in it.

Barbara said that walking in the peat like this was one of the things she liked best. She dragged Pastor Poul round from one family to the other and wanted to know how far they had got and when they thought the last peat would be dry enough to take across. They were given something to eat by one of the families. These were poor people, but Barbara praised the food and persuaded the minister to do so as well.

There was an old woman helping to carry the peat down to the water. Like all the others, she bore it in the Faroese manner in a
leyp
. This was a big wooden creel carried on the back and held in place by a woollen band around the forehead. The old woman was on the point of collapsing beneath the burden. Her neck was strong and tough enough and her face showed great determination. But her legs could scarcely carry her.

“Let me try to carry that leyp,” said Barbara.

“Oh no, no no,” said the old woman. “Of course not.”

But Barbara was clever and managed to get the leyp from her, and before anyone knew what she was doing, she had the coarse woollen band around her forehead and had bent her slender back beneath the heavy burden. She managed to get down to the water without staggering, unloaded the peat and ambled back with the leyp hanging over one shoulder. Now Pastor Poul also decided to carry something. They loaded the leyp for him and put the band around his forehead. But no sooner had he taken up the entire burden than his knees started to shake. His neck was not strong enough, and he suddenly fell over backwards and sat down.

“I knew it,” shouted Barbara in delight.

But people were polite and explained that no strangers could carry a leyp because their necks were not trained to do it.

Then Barbara set about it again. There was no stopping her; she laughed and everyone admired her. But each time she put down the empty leyp she stood as upright and high-bosomed as ever. Her eyes shone, and she was like a lighted candle among them. She was as though filled with strength and benefaction, for God had accepted her heart today.

Only when the work was done did she brush the peat litter from her neck. She said that she had also got peat litter down her back and she laughed and shook herself. Then she went on with Pastor Poul and was still glowing and full of warmth.

They went south and reached the end of the lake. But there was no River Jordan here. The quiet, shining water cascaded mightily into the ocean. All was blue and foaming deep beneath them. Thus ended this Lake Gennesareth – not in a narrow valley, but in a never-ending rush of water.

They leapt from stone to stone and reached the other side of the brief stretch of river between the lake and the waterfall. It was evening now, and all the heath’s birds were silent. When they reached Midvág it was approaching midnight. But it was high tide, and so Barbara found an excuse to stay with Pastor Poul a little longer. They walked in the dewed grass, and the northern sides of everything – the houses, the boulders, the wooden crosses in the churchyard – were illumined by the great beacon in the sky above the mountain tops. It was so deathly quiet that they only dared whisper. They sat down and talked and talked and were agreed about everything, and meanwhile the light in the heavens moved further and further to the east.

When Pastor Poul lay down to sleep, he was still immersed in the grandeur of nature. His senses were slow to release the dark earth, the scintillating heavens and the bright voices that had sounded across the heath. But the sudden waterfall down to the sea was the end of everything. Yet God’s mercy and God’s goodness were so great and so remarkable that it could well be imagined that the angels
spelt
the words a little wrongly in their heavenly hymnbooks. Indeed, it was hard to imagine anything else.

Barbara, too, went to bed renewed by this great day. She did not quite have an exact recollection of everything, but her heart continued to cling to the words: “Her sins, which are many, are forgiven; for she loved much.”

And she did love much.

The turf on all the roofs in Tórshavn stood out green and luxuriant in the mist. It was a dry, gentle mist which did not even manage to dampen the stones in the alleyways, but it was so dense that it shut out everything and everybody as though in a cupboard filled with white darkness. The sound of boys playing noisily on Tinganes and the screeching of gulls above their heads was damped down and strangled in the impenetrable atmosphere. But other sounds coming from far away could be heard quite clearly. The rhythmical sound of oars out on the fjord had been heard repeatedly during the day, and each time this happened, the boys had stopped their game and listened and watched until a fully manned boat glided out of the mist and came alongside near the Hoist or one of the other landing stages in the East Bay.

It was St Olaf’s Eve. The streets in the town were filled with quiet crowds of villagers. They had come to Havn to meet their friends and see the opening of the Assembly. They strolled up and down in their heavy buckled shoes, meeting on street corners, standing in groups and exchanging news. A dawning merriment to be seen in the eyes of many, but their talk was subdued and they made no great noise. They radiated a sense of solemnity and dignity.

The women of the town had a bit of fun opening the windows a little and watching the village men as they secretly congregated around a bottle in some corner or alleyway. But they were less keen on meeting the St Olaf visitors face to face. The villagers had a curiously simple way of
asking
. They could sit there so innocently and look as though they were not able to count to three. But just watch them! They could count both to three and to nine, and no one needed to be in any doubt as to what gossip they were interested in today. The town’s great scandal was already known throughout the country, and all they wanted in every single village was to get to know it in greater detail.

Aye, it was a hell of a scandal, unlike any other. It affected not only individuals, it affected the entire town. Gabriel had been the first to set the story going. Already several months ago he had been telling the farmers who visited the store all about the
French brats
that would soon be appearing in Tórshavn. Just wait until August, he had said, and then they would see how busy the midwife would be all of a sudden. He had had a good laugh and the villagers had all gone home bursting with this news.

It was also said that Barbara was soon to marry the new parson from Vágar. Aye, she was an unusual woman. She never seemed to have had enough of parsons, the farmers said. But Gabriel was not quite so sure that her appetite was so great this time. There could well be other reasons than desire. Let’s see, he had said. He knew what he knew. And before long everyone thought they knew that Pastor Poul was about to lumber himself with a French baby.