Father no longer sails, but he has decided to work ashore and is now going to help Uncle Hans run the Rømer Concern, for it is “a colossus on feet of clay”.
“What’s ‘a colossus on feet of clay’?”
Mother tries to explain that to you, but it isn’t something that can be done in a jiffy; it takes time, for it’s a “complicated story”. But at any rate you gradually get some idea of it…
In your great-grandfather’s day, the Rømer Concern was the biggest firm in the entire country. It owned thirty-two fishing sloops and two schooners carrying freight. And your grandfather, Amaldus Rømer, the one you are called after, could still more or less “keep it all together”. But then he died, and his brother Prosper, “was never any good at anything but sorting potatoes”. As for your Uncle Hans (your mother’s only brother) – “poor Hans”, well there’s no real go in him, no backbone although he will soon be twenty-five; he simply fools about and wastes his time together with his friends, Selimsen, Keil and Platen. They go off into the mountains on their horses, or they spend their time sailing around from one island to another in Uncle Hans’ splendid new yacht, the Nitouche.
But now Father’s coming, and he’ll get the whole thing organised, for he’s a captain and is used to being obeyed.
***
And so Father comes to get everything put right.
Father is big and strict, with stern eyes and a huge, weatherbeaten nose. And Uncle Hans and his friends are now no longer allowed to sit with their glasses of beer in the office, singing, “I’ve been born, so I’m going to live.”
But then they still have the Factory.
The Factory is the biggest building in town, but it stands there empty as it “didn’t pay”, and the owner, who was a wealthy Scotsman, sold his Factory to the Rømer Concern and went back to Scotland. That was in Grandfather’s day. Since then, the Factory has “lain fallow”, but now Father is going to see about getting it going again.
For the time being, however, it is left empty.
However, one of its “halls” is often full of people – this is when Uncle Hans and his friends have their evening entertainments or dances out there, or when they put on a play.
Selimsen is an artist who wears a broad-brimmed hat and has an impressive moustache that turns up at the ends. Keil is a photographer who wears a frock coat and yellow skin gloves. He’s also known as the “Lieutenant”, though Aunt Nanna says he’s never been a lieutenant, only a cadet – the other title is only to show off, for he is a braggart. Mother calls him “a ladies’ man”, but Father has a more scornful term; he calls him a “gasbag”.
Then there is Platen. Platen speaks Danish, but a curious sort of Danish, for he’s a Swede. He is a fat, happy man with curly hair and a beard and a floppy tie, and he’s musical and plays the cello, “and he plays it very well indeed”, says Mother. He’s really called von Platen and that’s an aristocratic name. “And perhaps it’s right enough that he’s a baron,” says Father. “But at all events, he’s a feckless idiot. They’re all feckless idiots.”
“What’s a feckless idiot?”
Father doesn’t answer this, but sits there at the table sullen and brooding and refusing to answer anything you ask him. Aunt Nanna puts the tips of two fingers up to her lips; that means that you have to sit and be quiet when Father’s eating and not disturb him in his thinking, for he has such a dreadful lot of things to see to.
***
There is a cellar window in the Factory that can’t be closed, and through this window you can get into the huge, complex building with all its halls. In these halls, which all have walls made of rough old boulders from the mountains, there are high ceilings, but it is as dark in there as in a cellar, even in daytime, for the long rows of windows are right up at the top near the roof. It feels oppressive in here like in the Mountain King’s castle. There are big basins and water pipes and strange machines in some of the halls, and others are full of empty crates and barrels, piles of crumpled lengths of tin and other rubbish, and then there’s the boiler room where the tall steam engine stands and grows rusty. But some of the huge rooms are quite empty, so empty that even your stealthy footsteps produce an echo.
Then there’s the Office. This is where you will find the big, dark green safe, which is so heavy that it has been impossible to move it, and in the corner there, standing in splendid isolation, is the huge Scottish fireplace, which is built of stone in various colours and is topped with a marbled slab. And along the walls there are fixed benches with leather covers. But there are patches of white mould on the fine dark carpet, and below the high windows overlooking the sea there is a half-dried pool of water.
Hannibal settles down comfortably with his legs up on one of the benches along the wall and lights a cigarette.
“Isn’t it good here? This is where it all goes on.”
“What goes on?”
“All that with our uncle and Selimsen and them.”
“Who do you mean?”
“And the girls.”
“What girls?”
Hannibal sits blowing smoke rings and looking up at the ceiling.
“No, I’m not going to say anything, ’cos I’m not going to gossip; I never do. Besides, our uncle’s a nice man. And you’re far too little to be told all those things. But I know all about it.”
But then after all, Hannibal starts talking about this and that, though he uses such a strange, enigmatic language that it’s really impossible to get much out of it. But it’s all about Uncle Hans and his friends and various girls and women.
The Schooner – you know, that big, good-looking woman, surely you know who I mean? Have you noticed how fat she’s got?”
Here, Hannibal draws a big curve over his stomach.
“It’s Selimsen that’s blown her up. Girls can be blown up just like balloons. And then they burst one day. And then there’s Dolly Rose; at least you know her. She’s our uncle’s. He’s got her. He gives her both clothes and money. Oh, but now I’ve said too much already. ’Cos when all’s said and done uncle’s a nice person. But Dolly Rose’s only sixteen. And I wonder what her mother, Fina the Hut, thinks about all that? Perhaps she’s pleased? Perhaps she’s put a spell on our uncle; that’s what some people say at least. All I know is that if I’d been him I wouldn’t have been so daft. I’d have kept my hands off Dolly Rose.”
Hannibal has assumed his chieftain’s mien and looks grown up and stern.
“And as for Keil, the photographer, he’s a gutless twit, even if he’s a hundred times a lieutenant. But he’s got lots of them, I can tell you. He gets anyone he wants, ’cos they’re all mad about him – and Aunt Nanna’s one of them. As for Platen – no, he only comes here during the day, ’cos he’s a much finer man than the others, even finer than our uncle, and almost even finer than your Father. For Platen’s a baron. And then he’s extremely well off. Yes, good Lord, he owns an entire mine in Sweden. But then he went on the bottle and so they sent him up here, ’cos they’ve said he can’t look after his own affairs. But he never comes out into the Factory except to sit and play his cello. Listen.”
Hannibal gets up.
“He’s there now. Come on.”
The distant, deep sound is coming from inside one of the empty halls. Through the crack in a half-open door you can see Platen sitting on a folding chair, bent over his cello and you can see his fingers on the fingerboard and the bow going to and fro. Then he turns a little to allow you a glimpse also of his beard and eyebrows as they catch the light from the windows up there and then his smiling features. He is sitting there with a delighted smile on his face as though he was together with someone with whom he was having an amusing, cosy chat. But he is quite alone.
“Why’s he sitting there playing all on his own?”
“Because it sounds a lot better here than up in Mrs Midjord’s little house where he lives. Can you see his bottle? He’s always got to have it with him, otherwise he gets DTs.”
“What’s DTs?”
“It’s something you die from.”
Platen plays and plays, and the music comes in great waves from the reddish brown cello, as though full of subdued light and profound delight. You can feel the deep sounds right down inside you.
Platen is sitting here in the dark, clammy rock, smiling and enjoying himself all on his own.
He’s a feckless idiot. They are all feckless. Good-for-nothings. Good-for-nothings.
***
You don’t quite like Uncle Hans being called feckless, for you like him. Uncle Hans is always kind and good-tempered and he’s always busy doing something amusing and exciting.
He takes you out sailing in his fine yacht the “Nitouche”. Then he’s a sailor with a shiny peaked cap or wearing a sou-wester. And when he’s out riding in the mountains he wears riding breeches and leather gaiters. But when they are giving a concert out in the Factory and Uncle Hans stands conducting the “Ydun” girls’ choir with his white baton, he is in “tails”. Then they clap and Uncle Hans bows and smiles and points to the girls with his hand to show that the honour is theirs. And when they put on a comedy, there is no one like Uncle Hans to make people double up with laughter or weep with emotion.
But Father is angry with Uncle Hans and addresses some harsh words to him and he doesn’t care whether others hear them as well:
“You’ll never grow up! You think everything’s a game. But the jar’ll float on the water so long that it will come home without a handle.”
Then Uncle Hans says nothing and makes no effort to defend himself, and he doesn’t even look angry or hurt.
Later, when Father has gone, you hear Uncle Hans say to Mother, “I’ve really always liked the idea of this jar floating on the water instead of standing on the shelf filled with pickled gherkins.”
***
But the biggest of all the feckless idiots is after all Uncle Prosper, who just stands by his duck pond and feeds his ducks.
There is a little brook that hurries through the garden at Andreasminde. It comes from somewhere up in the mountains and the great green grasslands. Once in the garden, it hides beneath the dense foliage of the redcurrant bushes, but it turns up again further down, and this is where Uncle Prosper has his duck pond.
Uncle Prosper’s duck pond is divided off from the garden by means of a tall fence “so that we don’t have to look at all that mess”.
Uncle Prosper is Mother’s uncle. He is quite small, indeed really not much more than a dwarf, but he has a big white handlebar moustache. He looks pretty strange in general, for he also wears smoke-coloured glasses and almost always goes around in sea boots.
Uncle Prosper has deep furrows across his brow like someone who has a lot to think about, but what he is thinking about is the duck pond and the ducks.
“It’s a pity for Uncle Prosper. You must always be kind to him and not laugh at him.”
Uncle Prosper has a “workshop” in the cellar of Andreasminde; here there is a table full of coloured pieces of paper and jars of paste, and on the wall there hangs a photograph of an old man with mutton chop whiskers; this is Uncle Prosper’s father, “Old Rømer”, who is your great grandfather. Old Rømer has fierce eyes, but still he looks as though he can’t quite refrain from being secretly slightly amused at his impossible son Prosper.
Uncle Prosper loves to feed his ducks. He stands by the pond with his bag of bread and calls them each by name, for he has a name for each of them: Rabbirap and Rabbisnap, Big Malene, Old Malene and Little Malene, Andrik and Mandrik and Topperik and whatever. They come swimming along with their heads on one side looking at Uncle Prosper with one eye and curtseying politely.
Inside the wash cellar there is a big basin with running water, and swimming around here are Uncle Prosper’s yellow ducklings that are not yet big enough to go out into the pond, where the big tomcat “Shitty Frederik” (that’s the name Uncle Prosper gives to this fierce, predatory cat that can both swim and dive) goes around looking for an opportunity. Uncle Prosper is particularly fond of the ducklings; they are the apples of his eye, and he often stands and plays his little flower-decorated ocarina flute for them.
The eggs that Uncle Prosper’s ducks lay are taken up into the kitchen and boiled or fried for him personally, for no one else likes duck eggs. But some of the eggs are “blown” and covered with coloured and golden strips of paper and tiny cutout figures and hung up on the wall to be used as birthday presents and gifts.
When the weather is good in the evening, Uncle Prosper sits in a basket chair near the pond and smokes his long pipe. He will not be wearing his sea boots then, but will be in a dressing gown and skull cap and embroidered slippers as he sits and makes himself comfortable. Occasionally, he will leaf through an old picture book about Struwwelpeter and sit and chuckle through his beard and pipe smoke as he settles down in a seventh heaven.
***
Grandmother – is she feckless, too? Perhaps and perhaps not.
“Grandmother’s so naive.”
“What’s naive?”
Mother hesitates for a moment over her ironing.
“Naive? It’s when you think too well of everybody. And when you’re too kind. And when you let others take advantage of you.”
Mother and Aunt Nanna go on talking about how poor Grandmother has “let others take advantage of her throughout her life”.
You sit there, half listening, while you are playing about with your schooner the Christina, whose name plate has come loose and needs to be fixed again with some glue you’ve borrowed from Uncle Prosper. A few strange words fix themselves in your mind, and you can’t help wondering about them afterwards.
Your grandfather, whose name is the same as yours, Amaldus, – this grandfather was “a bit of a rake”. And “dissolute”. And a “toper”. And poor Hans takes after him, unfortunately. And (here you prick up your ears) he was a “ladykiller” as well.
“Yes, he was, Nanna. He couldn’t leave a skirt alone. And of course, Mother had no idea. She simply adored him. So did everyone else. Aye, ’cos he had a way with people. Everyone adored Father. Just as they do Hans now.”
***
So Grandmother is naive (a lovely new word even if there is something rather sad about it) and she “lets everyone take advantage of her”.
Grandmother is small, frail and very short-sighted, but when she sits at her piano and runs her small hands over the keys, it is simply wonderful to hear how she can make the big piano sound and how, through her glasses, she can work out all those countless black dots and curious forks and hairpins on the pages of the old music books. (In those days you didn’t yet know that your Grandmother had had a strict musical upbringing in her native city of Copenhagen and that it was the original intention that she should have a “musical training”.
Sometimes, usually on Saturday evenings, Uncle Hans and his friends come and make music together with Grandmother. And sometimes the Ferryman and his two sons come with their horn and violins and Platen with his cello. This is when they are to rehearse for an evening concert in the Factory. On such occasions, all kinds of people meet in the veranda room in Andreasminde. Pastor Evaldsen’s male voice choir comes as well, and so does Uncle Hans’ “Ydun” girls’ choir to have their voices trained.
Then Grandmother is “really very much in demand”, but she often becomes so tired that during the pauses she has to sit and collapse in her rocking chair and smell some invigorating scents from her “potpourri jar”.
Then she sits and rocks a little and relaxes, but a moment later she is up again and with eyes radiant behind her glasses is once more a feckless idiot among the other feckless idiots.
Grandmother’s toy theatre stands behind the round flap on the desk in the dining room at Andreasminde. It is her father’s work. He was a horn player in the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen, and his delightfully painted and gilded toy theatre is “like the Royal Theatre right down to the least little detail”. And the small coloured cardboard figures that are arranged on the stage are all well-known actors and actresses that Grandmother saw as a child and young girl and about whom she has so much to tell – “Mrs Heiberg”, “Phister”, “Anna Levinson”, “Herold” and lots of others.
The toy theatre is a gem that no one is allowed to play with, but people are very welcome to look at it and listen to Grandmother telling what it is the tiny figures are doing. Sometimes it’s an opera, and then Grandmother plays the piano and in a cracked but warm voice sings the “arias” and “recitatives”.
Grandmother would most of all herself have liked to be a singer – but fate determined otherwise.
But (as Mother told me later, when Grandmother was long dead), one of the small figures on the stage of the toy theatre was Grandmother herself. And sometimes during the evening when she was playing with her figures she pretended to be an opera singer and would sing Cherubino’s aria from The Marriage of Figaro.
But sometimes Grandmother sits all hunched up in her rocking chair and is so quiet and so far away in her thoughts that she looks almost like a cardboard figure. Then she mustn’t be disturbed, but be allowed to sit and dream.
“What does Grandmother sit and dream about?”
“About Copenhagen and the royal palace and the King’s Garden. And Kongens Nytorv and the Royal Theatre…”