V

A couple of days later, Katinka went “home”.

One of her brothers had a grocer’s shop in the town where she was born, and she went to stay with him. The other brothers were scattered all over the place.

Her sister-in-law was a nice little woman who brought a child into the world each year and toddled around half embarrassed and anxious in her everlasting pregnancy. She had become very indolent and rather slow. She was not able to do much apart from giving birth and nursing.

In the house there was always one of the rooms in which they had not managed to hang the curtains. They all lay there, clean and starched, spread out over all the chairs, waiting. There was always washing to be done for all those little ones; short lines of drying linen and socks were fixed everywhere. Food was never ready in time for meals and there were never enough plates when the family was finally seated at table.

“Little Mi and mother will share this plate,” said the little woman.

There was a constant banging of doors and every half hour a screech like that of a stuck pig resounded through the house. It was one of the little ones falling down somewhere or other in one of the corners. They were always covered in bumps and bruises.

“Oh,” said Katinka’s brother. “There we go again.”

“Aye, what am I to do, Kristoffer?” said the little woman.

She was always saying, “Aye, what am I to do, Kristoffer?” and looking helpless.

Katinka gradually introduced some peace and quiet into the house. She needed to have something to do; she needed to know that she was useful, and she went around ever so quietly while everything was seen to.

Her little sister-in-law sat there relieved and smiling gratefully from her chair in one of the corners. She always sat in the corners, behind a bureau or beside the sofa, with a timid smile on her face.

Katinka preferred to stay indoors while she was there. The old furniture from her home was all there along with all the other old things. Her father’s masterpiece, the oak cupboard with the carved figures on the doors had stood in the drawing room at home, in the middle of the wall between the windows.

“It’s Moses and his prophets,” said her father. Katinka thought that “those men” were the most wonderful things in the world.

And the marble table that had been bought at an auction and on which the “best” things were symmetrically arranged in rows: the silver sugar bowl and the jug and the silver cup that had been given as a mark of special esteem by the guild.

As she went round tidying the house, Katinka kept finding memories from home – an old, inscribed cup, a yellowing picture, three or four plates.

The old plates with the blue Chinaman and the garden with the three trees and the little bridge over the brook. What a lot of tales they had told each other about those Chinese figures, at home on Sundays when they were using their best plates.

Katinka asked if she might keep the old plates.

“Keep them?” said the little woman. “Oh, heavens above, they are all chipped.” Everything in the house was chipped! “Everything gets spoilt here. But what am I to do?”

So Katinka preferred to stay indoors, or else she would go up to visit the grave in the churchyard. It was best up there. She often felt like a widow sitting by her husband’s grave. He had died so soon; they had had such a short time together, and now she was alone, quite alone.

As she sat there, she read the inscription on the gravestone, the names of her mother and father.

Did they love each other? Her father, who was forever grumbling, sitting there to be waited on. And her mother, who had been completely transformed after his death, as though she had suddenly blossomed out again.

How little she had really known her parents.

But how little they knew each other, all these people living and moving alongside each other.

Katinka leant her head against the trunk of the weeping willow. She was overcome by a sense of bitterness and sadness such as she had never known before.

She rarely went out into the streets or into town. There were so many new things everywhere, and everything was different from those days. Nothing but new faces and new names, people who were strangers to her.

She had been over to take a look at the old house. Some back rooms had been built onto the old workshop. And there were new windows and new doors, and their old dovecote had been turned into a gable room.

Katinka no longer went into the old courtyard.

She had met Thora Berg in the street.

“But surely…” yes, it was the same old voice, “that’s Katinka.”

“Yes.”

“Good heavens, girl, what are you doing here? And you’ve not changed at all.”

“Nor have you,” said Katinka. She had tears in her eyes.

“I? Good Lord, I live here now of course. Since the spring. We were moved here.”

“Yes, my dear, a lot of water has flowed under the bridge. I suppose you don’t have any children?”

“No.”

“I thought not. You just thank God for that, my dear. I have four. And five more boarders. No, you don’t get far on the second senior captain’s pay. But what about you? Where do you live, all of you? Still in the same place? Good Lord! When you are in the army you don’t live in the same place for long at a time.”

Thora continued to talk. Katinka walked beside her and looked at her. It was really the same face, but it had as it were grown more severe in appearance, and then it was yellowish and pointed at the chin.

“You’re looking at me, my girl,” said Thora. “No, let me tell you, living isn’t all a string of club dances.”

She said she would come and see her and then take her home with her to the nest.

“But it’s revision time, you know – and we’re up to our eyes in French verbs.”

They parted. Katinka stood there and watched her go. She was wearing a short, skimpy velvet jacket over a yellow dress. It was all chosen at random and looked as though it was a little too tight.

It was not until about a week later that they saw each other again at church.

“Do I ever get out? Yes, and I’ve been wanting to come and find you every day,” said Thora. “Come and see us on Wednesday. Wednesday about three o’clock. Wednesday’s the day there’s most peace and quiet,” she said.

Katinka was there that Wednesday.

Thora was in the kitchen when she arrived, and Katinka waited in the living room. This room was too big for the furniture in it, furniture that Thora had been given on marrying and which was now pale and faded; the pieces stood there and seemed to be stretching out in an effort to reach each other along the wall. By the window there was a modern flower stand containing a rubber plant alongside a cane chair on an embroidered rug. These were the choice items.

On the table there lay a few collections of poems in faded bindings along with a couple of panoramas of the Rhine, souvenirs from Thora’s honeymoon with her captain.

On high walls papered in yellow there hung some paintings of flowers in narrow gilt frames. They represented roses and pansies with big drops of dew that looked like glass beads scattered over their leaves. Katinka knew them, Thora had painted them when she was a girl.

“Yes, one uses all one’s old talents to decorate the place,” said Thora, coming in as Katinka stood there looking at the roses and the glass beads.

The captain opened the door, dressed in a denim jacket and collar and tie, “Is dinner ready?” he asked.

“We have a visitor, Dahl,” said Thora. And the door closed. “Dahl is drawing a map, you see,” she said.

The captain appeared again wearing his off-duty uniform jacket. “How nice, how nice,” he said, starting to walk up and down the floor. When the captain was not drawing maps or commanding his troops, he always had a payment date and a complicated piece of arithmetic in his head. These were left over from his days as a lieutenant and the honeymoon with the two panoramic views of the Rhine.

Thora sat there and talked and talked. Katinka was struck by how restless her eyes had become, moving first to the door and then to Dahl, talking incessantly the while.

“It’s quarter past,” said the captain.

“The boys aren’t here yet,” said Thora.

“So we can’t have our meal,” said the captain. “You must realise, Mrs Bai, that it is the boys who are the bosses in this house.”

Thora said nothing. The captain sat down on a chair over by the writing desk. The back fell off it.

“It’s about time we had that chair repaired,” he said.

“Yes, Dahl.”

“We’ve been going to have it done for the past six months, Mrs Bai,” said the captain. He inclined a little in her direction. “That is the customary state of affairs in this house.”

The boys came charging down the stairs from the attic like wild animals being chased.

“There they are,” said Thora. They went into the dining room. The captain had offered Katinka his arm; Thora quietly put the fallen chair back in place, supporting it on the wall.

“Where have you been?” said the captain.

“We’ve been bathing,” said the boys. They had been smoking for an hour by the roadside and then put their heads into a bowl of water.

“These are mine,” said Thora. And by mine she meant a nine-year-old boy and three small straight-haired girls.

The captain had bicarbonate of soda on his food and after each mouthful he wiped his Napoleonic beard, which was waxed and carefully tended to adorn his weary face.

The captain talked about wage conditions on the railways.

The boys were five upper-class puppies, pupils in the lower secondary school. They called ‘my four’ the paupers and regularly debagged the nine-year-old but were otherwise quite good-natured.

They ate like wolves and said they were never full except when they were “at home at the hall”.

The nine-year-old sat there with big, old-fashioned eyes, looking from the boys to Thora.

“The porcelain is chipped in honour of visitors,” said the captain. He handed Katinka the cucumber salad in a chipped dish.

“Oh, it happens so easily, captain,” said Katinka.

One of the boys continued to ask in a low voice for more potatoes; he had seen there were no more in the dish.

“There are cucumbers,” said Thora. “Would you like some more, Dahl?”

“You are not getting anything yourself,” said Katinka. “We have plenty, dear.”

“My dear Mrs Bai,” said the captain, “It is her pleasure. In this house we know nothing of that luxury called peace and quiet.”

Thora cut the meat for the smallest of the straight-haired girls.

“As you can hear, the captain is in such a good mood today,” she said with a laugh. “Isn’t that right, captain?”

The captain was always in that mood.

“What did Gustav get for geography?”

“Could do better,” came the reply in a low voice from a plate.

“Do you think your father will be satisfied with that, Gustav?”

“Father doesn’t care,” replied the low voice.

They rose from the table. All the doors in the house were slammed after the boys.

“Aye, Mrs Bai,” said the captain, “those are Thora’s invading forces.”

“She is afraid that we might have peace and quiet in the house one day.”

The captain returned to his maps. Thora rummaged through all kinds of coffee blends behind the coffee maker.

“Can’t I help you?” said Katinka.

“Thank you, dear.”

Thora had acquired red blotches in her cheeks and she put her hands up to her temples: “There’s always rather a lot about dinner time,” she said.

“But you get too worked up over it, Thora,” said Katinka, who was herself quite flushed.

“When you have all that nonsense from morning to evening, my dear,” said Thora.

She was not left in peace at her sewing table. The doors were opening and shutting all the time. The boys had sworn that they were not going to have that “chat over coffee” and every other minute they rushed up and down the stairs from the loft to ask about words.

Thora held her hand to her forehead and went from English to German.

The nine-year-old was “practising” in the dining room.

“Nikolai, must you always practise when I’ve got a headache. Do stop.”

Nikolai tiptoed quietly away from the piano. Thora always grumbled at her ‘own’ when she had been tormented by these boys who were always hungry.

Thora sat down on the sofa in the corner and curled up her legs as she had so often done as a girl.

They talked about people in the town.

“Yes, they are all new families; the old ones have gone.”

“Yes, the old ones have gone,” said Katinka. She looked at Thora, who had leant her head against the back of the sofa and closed her eyes. How sunken those eyes had become.

“Your brother is about the only one of the old ones left,” said Thora.

“Oh, there must be a few.”

Thora laughed: “Good Lord, your poor sister-in-law,” she said. “Is she really on the way again?”

“Yes, poor thing.”

They sat for a while. Then Thora opened her eyes and said, “Yes, my dear, we are all here for the propagation of the species.”

Thora closed her eyes, and the two friends sat in silence.

“Yes,” Thora said again, “life’s a strange thing.”

Katinka did not stay to tea. She said she had promised to go home. She needed to get out into the fresh air and to be alone. When she was down in the street, the idea came to her that she might go and visit her old teacher. It was so quiet near the old woman’s home, so unchanged. Katinka turned down the street in which she lived. Tears came to her eyes when she saw the three green lime trees outside the windows. And besides, she had not been far from tears all the time she had spent at Thora’s.

She mounted the few steps above the green basement entrance and knocked. A scent of roses and summer apples met her when the door opened.

The old teacher was fiddling about with rose petals spread out on newspaper on the bed, ready to be made into potpourri.

“And the people from Holmstrup had been there, all the young girls.”

“They want their berries from the tree,” she says. “It’s just about finished now.”

Katinka had to go out to look at the tree and “her” roses.

There had just been three roses for Mrs Bystrøm’s wreath, indeed there really had been only three roses.

They went inside again. The old teacher went on chatting as she moved to and fro, so that her words were lost between the doors. Katinka sat on the raised area by the window, just now and again saying yes or no. Through the open kitchen door there was a view across the green garden; the birds were chirping so loud as to be heard indoors.

How quiet it was here, as though there was no other world.

Katinka looked at the old pictures, faded in their skewed frames; she knew every one of them. The silver coffee pot on the table, the showpiece with its three exquisite cups and saucers and on the consol, before the greying mirror, the fine pieces of bric-a-brac with handkerchiefs spread over them, and the mats on the floor in front of all the doors, and the cats purring on their cushions.

She knew it all.

The old teacher went on chattering and going in and out. Katinka was no longer listening. It was beginning to grow dark in this room, shaded by the lime trees and with the old corners half in darkness.

It was the second time the old teacher mentioned Huus’ name from out in the kitchen. Katinka started. She thought she had said it herself, lost in thought.

“There’s a Mr Huus out your way,” the teacher said again.

“Yes, Huus the bailiff,” said Katinka. “Do you know him?”

The old teacher appeared in the doorway. Indeed she knew him. He was second cousin to her own cousin Karl from Kærsholm.

“The Kærsholms who were married to two generations of the Lundgaards.”

And she started talking about Huus and his mother, who was a Lundgaard, one of the Lundgaards from Falster, and about their farm and about his relatives and about cousin Karl from Kærsholm and the whole family as she walked back and forth.

She lit some candles in the kitchen and occupied herself with the roses on the bed in the bedroom. Katinka sat silently in her corner and heard only his name recurring time and time again.

It was the first time she had heard his name in all those weeks.

“But what sort of a person is he?” said the old teacher. She came in, lifted the sleeping cat off the armchair and sat down a little way from the window with her hands folded over the cat on her lap.

Katinka started to talk, a few unremarkable words, hesitantly, and as though she was thinking of something else. But then she was swept away: talking about him, mentioning his name, being able to mention his name.

And she told all about Christmas and the blue shawl and New Year’s Eve, when he arrived in the sleigh and the winter’s nights when they had walked some way with him under all those stars.

“Yes,” said the old teacher from her chair, “they are nice people, the Huus’.”

Katinka went on talking in a low voice through the dusk, from her corner.

How he had helped her in the garden when spring came; he had planted the roses for her; there was no limit to what he was able to do.

“Yes,” said the old teacher, “they are a nice family.”

And the summer days that came, and the fair. She told about it all.

The old teacher had started nodding in her chair. She was inclined to become sleepy when she had to listen, and before long she was asleep with her hands folded over her cat.

Katinka stopped talking and sat in silence. The gas lamps were lit outside, illuminating the sitting room: the pictures on the walls, the old clock and the old teacher sitting with her cat on her lap and her head down on her breast.

The old teacher awoke and raised her head.

“Yes,” she said, “he is a nice person.”

Katinka did not hear what she said. She rose simply in order to leave and to get away. And out in the fresh air, along the roads circling the town, as she walked it was as though her longing increased with every step.

A couple of days later, she received a letter from Bai. The most remarkable thing here, he wrote, concerns Huus. He went to Copenhagen last week on business, as he said. And what do you think? A few days later he wrote to Kiær asking to be released from his job. He had been given the opportunity of going to Holland and Belgium, he wrote, just fancy, on a scholarship, and he would send a replacement, and this replacement arrived yesterday. Kiær is furious and I’m sorry as well now as we had got so used to the dry old stick.

The letter lay open on the table in front of Katinka. And she had read it again and again: she had not known that she was still hoping. But she had thought that it was all nothing but a dream: a miracle must happen. But she had to see him again, and he would not leave.

But now he had left. He had left and gone away.

Her nephews were jabbering away around her as they ate their milk sops:

“Auntie, Auntie Tik.”

The smallest but one fell off his chair and let out a howl.

“Oh dear, did Emil fall and hurt himself?” said the little wife.

Katinka lifted Emil up and wiped his face and, without realising it, returned to her letter.

Left and gone away.

But now she wanted to go home, to be in her own surroundings and not among these strangers.

At least she would be at home.

It was her last afternoon there. The nursemaid had gone to the plantation with the children.

Katinka and her sister-in-law were alone in the sitting room. The sister-in-law was brooding over her baby clothes.

Then, just as they were sitting there, the little woman bent her head over her sewing box and sobbed.

“Oh Marie,” said Katinka, “my dear Marie, what is it?”

She rose and went across to her sister-in-law. “What is it, Marie?” she said.

The little woman continued to sob with her head bent over her workbox.

Katinka placed her hands on her head and spoke quietly to her. “But, dearest Marie – dear Marie.”

The little woman looked up: “Yes,” she said, “you are leaving now. And you have been so kind to me.”

She sobbed and again lowered her head over the workbox. “So kind to me – and here am I, simply always in this mess. Always.”

Katinka was touched. She knelt down on the floor in front of the little woman and took her hands. “But Marie,” she said, “things will change, you know.”

“Yes,” and the little woman went on weeping with her head against her, “when I’m old one day, or when I’m dead.”

Katinka took her sister-in-law’s hands from her face and made to speak.

But then she saw the other’s child-like face, wet with tears, and the poor little misshapen body, and quietly returned to her seat, while the little woman continued to weep.

That evening, Katinka went up to the churchyard. She wanted to pay a final visit to her parents’ grave.

She met Thora, who had brought a wreath up to her mother’s grave; it was to mark her birthday.

The two friends stood together by the burial place.

“Aye,” said Thora. “We shall lie down there one day.”

They parted by Katinka’s parents’ grave.

“We always meet again in this world,” said Thora.

Katinka went over to the grave and sat down on the bench beneath the willow. She looked at the dead stone with the lettering on it and she thought she had lost everything in this world including the place where she had been at home as a child.

What had become of it all? Everything was grey and anguished and miserable, everything.

She pictured Thora with those restless eyes of hers, and she heard the captain’s remark, “The porcelain is chipped in honour of visitors,” and she saw her little sister-in-law’s face as she wept.

And here at this spot with its dead stone and the two names on it. This was all she had with which to remember her youth and her home.

She sat there for a long time. And she considered the life she was to live now, and it was as though it all closed over her, everything, just one single, unimaginable sense of all-engulfing hopelessness.

She alighted from the carriage onto the platform, and she allowed Bai to kiss her, and Marie took her things, and she had one thought only: to get inside, to get indoors.

It seemed to her that Huus must be in there waiting for her.

And she went ahead and opened the door to the sitting room, which stood there clean and elegant; to the bedroom; to the kitchen, where everything was shining; spotless and empty.

“Good Lord, you do look bad,” were Marie’s first words as she struggled with the luggage.

And then, while Katinka, pale and weary, slumped down on a chair, she started relating news about the entire district. About what had happened and what had been said. They had had summer visitors over in the inn, people who had brought their own bedstead and everything, and the parsonage had been filled to the rafters with visitors.

And then there was Huus, who had gone away all of a sudden.

“Aye, I suspected it. ‘Cos he was down here on his last evening, and it felt to me just as though he was saying goodbye to it all. He sat in the sitting room all alone, and then out in the garden and here on the steps near the pigeons.”

“When did he leave?” asked Katinka.

“I suppose it must be about a fortnight ago.”

A fortnight.

Katinka rose quietly and went out into the garden. She walked round on the path, over to the roses, down beneath the elder. This was where he had come to say goodbye to her. She visited every spot, every single spot. She shed no tears. She felt it almost as though it was some silent ceremony.

There came a happy shout from the road. She heard Agnes’ voice in the midst of the crowd. She almost started: she did not want to see them all straight away.

Agnes rushed across to welcome her almost in the manner of some big dog and nearly knocked her over; and the entire company from the parsonage arrived to be given chocolate, and a table was laid in the garden beneath the elder and they all stayed there until the eight o’clock train came.

The train chugged off and they had gone again; the noise they made could be heard as they walked along the road. Peter the porter had put the milk churns in place, and Katinka sat on the platform alone.

“Aye,” said Bai from the window: “Huus sent his love.”

“Thank you.”

“Hmm, the days are drawing in. And there’s a damn cold wind. You should come inside.”

“Yes, I’m coming.”

Bai closed the window.

The sound of the party from the parsonage died away. All was quiet and desolate.

Katinka sat there looking out across the darkening, silent fields. This was where she was to live now.

Ida had been writing about it in all her letters for the past month. But Mrs Abel had not dared to hope. Ida was so sanguine.

Now, with the letter in her hand, she sat howling on the wet floor cloth beside the stove.

Louise had gone for a walk, looking for mushrooms near the doctor’s residence. When she came home, her mother was still rocking to and fro on the chair in the kitchen.

“What’s wrong?” said Louise. She thought her mother looked very strange as she sat there.

“Ida, my youngest child,” the widowed mother sobbed and started to howl again.

“Rubbish,” said Louise. Her mother handed her the letter with a gesture like that of the heroic mother in some tragedy.

Louise read it dispassionately. “That’s nice,” she said, “for her.”

“She’s had a whole summer, of course.”

Louise went inside and started banging on the piano. Then, as she sat there, she also started to wail with her head bent down over the keys.

“I suppose you’ll send her our congratulations,” she suddenly said amidst all her sobbing.

“What do you say?”

“I said I suppose you’ll send our congratulations,” said Louise, drying her eyes. She was starting to adapt to the new situation.

“Yes, dear,” said the widowed mother in a feeble voice.

“I can take the telegram down. I’ll go to the parsonage, and you can go to the Jensen’s and the Miller’s.” Louise was organising the campaign. She understood that she was at least the sister-in-law.

She became quite child-like and shouted “Long live the post office” as she hurried away from the station, swinging her parasol in the air.

He worked for the post office.

Her mother went happily from the Jensen’s to the Miller’s and wept at the thought that she was now going to lose her darling child.

“Joakim Barner – one of the distinguished Barner family,” said the widow. He has a place with the post office.

The mother was at the parsonage when her elder daughter arrived there.

“Yes, I felt the need to tell our spiritual adviser myself at such a solemn moment,” said Mrs Abel, again making use of her handkerchief.

The old minister slapped his stomach in delight. The strawberry liqueur was put on the table together with some biscuits. Mrs Linde sat on the sofa together with Mrs Abel so as to hear how it had “come about”. It had “come about” in a summerhouse down by the shore.

The old minister toasted the elder daughter Louise.

“Aye, aye, we know what happens when things start moving. One thing leads to another,” said the old parson.

“Yes, Mr Linde, but the thought of losing both of them. My younger daughter…” And the widowed lady had an attack of dreadfully tender feelings for her younger daughter.

That younger daughter was as gentle as a baby foal in view of the occasion.

“Well, there is a chance she might still turn out quite nice,” said Mrs Linde as she collected the cake plates after they had gone. “They’re all right at bottom, Linde.”

“Heaven knows what Agnes will say.”

Agnes was out in the forest with some young friends.

“Oh well, thank God for that,” she said on arriving home and hearing it.

“Heaven preserve us, they’re going to crush the poor man to death,” said Agnes standing at the platform gate watching the Abel family, who had gone to meet the son-in-law.

The little man was being swept around among the members of the Abel family as helpless as a bean in a coffee mill.

“Hmm,” said Agnes, “one look is enough to tell you there’s not very much to him.”

She put her arm round Katinka’s waist, and they went out into the garden.

“Well,” she said as she closed the gate, “they are ‘so happy’ now.”

They sat down beneath the elder tree. Suddenly Agnes said, “I’m leaving. Next week. I’ve told them at home.”

“I can’t stand this any longer.” Agnes tore to bits the leaves that had fallen on the table. “I’ve got to put an end to it some time.”

Katinka sat staring into space. “Do you think, Agnes, that it’s possible to escape sorrow by going away?” she said quietly.

“I’ll get some work. I’ll qualify as a teacher. There’s nothing else for it. Sitting behind a glass partition in a post office would be going a bit too far. And it’s too late to do anything interesting.”

Katinka nodded. “Yes,” she said, “that is true.”

“Hmm,” said Agnes. “We ‘women’ don’t really have many chances; for the first twenty-five years of our lives we dance around waiting to get married, and for the last twenty-five we sit around waiting to be buried.”

Agnes put her elbows on the table and supported her head on her hands.

“Wonderful,” she breathed.

Suddenly, she put her hands to her face and burst into tears.

“And how we will eat our hearts out then,” she said.

She wept for a long time with her face in her hands. Then she dropped her arms on the table. She looked at Katinka; the lovely lady sat leaning forward with her hands on her lap; slowly, the tears ran down her cheeks.

“How kind you are,” said Agnes, reaching across to her. “Lovely lady.”

The following week, Agnes left.

The Abel home was a pure dovecote. They all addressed each other in sentimental aah’s and little squeaks.

“He calls me pet,” said the old widow. “Yes, he has names for us all.”

When there were visitors, the engaged couple hung lifelessly over a couple of chairs until one of them said, “Puss puss,” then they disappeared through the door.

“That’s the way they talk to each other,” said the widow. “Their language is a little difficult for strangers to comprehend.”

When it was time for the visitors to go, there would be calls for “Pussy” and “Ducky” for a whole quarter of an hour “They must be in the garden,” said the widow. Pussy and Ducky were always in the garden, hiding anywhere where there was a bit of dense greenery.

When Pussy and Ducky emerged, they looked flushed and confused.

Louise and the little man spent their time in a series of minor skirmishes and wrestling bouts. The little man gave her brother-in-law’s kisses and tickled her behind the doors.

When they were in company, they were all sleepy and sat in the corners. At table, the widow used the term of endearment liebling for all three of “her children”. She did not herself know what it meant.

If they were home during the evening, no candles were lit.

“We enjoy sitting in the gloom,” said the widowed mother, “all of us.”

The little man would sit on the sofa between the younger daughter Ida and the elder daughter Louise. Miss Jensen and the widow would occasionally say something in the semidarkness. There were sounds of creaking from over on the sofa. Thus they would sit for hours on end.

When Miss Jensen arrived home she kissed Bel-Ami on its cold nose.

Pussy and Ducky would sometimes go down across the fields to meet the evening train. They would walk up and down the platform, looking into each other’s eyes; when they turned, the little man would look deep into Pussy’s eyes.

Katinka sat on the platform bench wrapped in Huus’ shawl; when the train had left she could hear the couple billing and cooing on their way home along the path across the meadow.

Katinka rose and went indoors. The days were drawing in, and they already needed to have some light when they had tea.

“The lamp, Marie,” she said.

Marie came in and stood with the lamp over by the piano. The light fell on Katinka’s diminutive, narrow face and the transparent white hands which remained there on the keys after she had played the last notes.

“Call Bai and tell him tea is ready,” said Katinka. She supported herself on the piano in order to rise from the stool. She was always so tired and felt as though she had lead in her legs.

They had their tea, and Bai read the papers while drinking his toddy.

Katinka took a book from the bag. They were always the most recent books: Agnes and Andersen had always fought for them.

The book lay open beneath the lamp. Katinka never got further than twenty pages into them: this was not real life after all, and neither was it really poetry such as could keep her thoughts at bay.

She took her album out, she had written “Marianna” in it and dated it. And when she put the book back once more she stood for a while in front of the drawer before closing it again. The little Japanese tray lay there, packed in her yellowing bridal veil.

She went out into the kitchen. She had her favourite seat at the chopping block in the corner. Marie was sewing in front of the tallow candle that stood on the table, talking ceaselessly. She was a faithful soul who never forgot old affections.

She kept on talking about Huus and how lonely it had become now.

Katinka sat silently in her corner. Occasionally she would shiver as though she was cold, and she held her arms tight across her breast.

Marie continued to talk with her big red face turned towards the lone candle.

“I suppose we’d better be getting to bed,” said Bai, opening the door.

“Yes, Bai.”

“Good night, Marie.”

Autumn arrived with its melancholy veil of mist across the meadows. The sky lay heavy above days that surreptitiously moved in semi-darkness from one night to the next.

“You must pull yourself together, you know,” said the young doctor. “You must get a grip on yourself.”

“Yes, doctor.”

“And you must walk. You must have some exercise. There’s no strength left in you at all.”

“Yes, doctor. I will go for a few walks.”

“Nothing new otherwise?” The doctor rose. “Have you heard from Miss Agnes?”

“Yes, I heard the other day.”

“They say Andersen is applying for a job elsewhere.”

“I did hear that,” said Katinka. “Everyone is leaving.”

“Oh no, my dear, some people are staying.”

“Yes, we are staying, doctor.”

“Your wife is not well,” said the doctor out in the office, lighting a cigar.

“No, it’s all a bit of a pickle,” said Bai.

“She seems not to have any strength. Ah well, good morning, stationmaster.”

“You must take a walk, Tik,” said Bai as he came in after the goods train had left. “You’re not doing anything to help yourself.”

Katinka took a walk. She dragged herself across the meadows, fighting her way against the wind and the rain.

She went down to the chapel-at-ease. Out of breath, she rested on the ancient meeting stone outside the church. The cemetery lay there, flat and flowerless behind the white wall. Only the privet hedges stood straight around the rigid crosses bearing their inscriptions.

She went home again across the meadows. The midday train came rumbling across the bridge and snaked its way out again. The smoke from it hung there for a time like a darker patch in the grey mist and then dispersed.

They were ploughing on the other side of the river. The turf was being peeled up in long lines behind the slow-moving plough.

Katinka came home.

The miller had been there, or the bailiff from Kiær’s.

“Nice chap, that man Svendsen,” said Bai to Katinka. “He’s got his head screwed on the right way.”

“But there’s no knowing what he’s like at his work,” he said to Kiær,

Kiær mumbled something or other.

“But he’s a good chap, one of the right sort, old man.”

Svendsen collected Greek cards and pictures in sealed envelopes. He brought them with him down to the station and he and Bai went through them over their toddies. “We’ll just check the archives,” said Svendsen.

“Aye, I don’t mind that.” Bai was always willing.

Svendsen had the “latest” sent from Hamburg, C.O.D.

“Filthy stuff,” said Bai happily. He always spoke in a quieter voice when they were “at the archives”, although the door was closed.

“Filthy stuff, Svendsen my lad,” he said, holding the cards up to the lamp.

They continued to look at the cards. Bai rubbed his knees.

“But this one’s tall,” he said. “And this one looks difficult.”

Svendsen rubbed his nose.

“That’s a nice bit of meat,” he said. “That’s meat for you.”

They had gone through all the pictures and sat quietly over their toddy glasses. It was as though Bai was drooping a little.

“Aye,” he said, “but what about life, Svendsen? What’s life got to offer, old man, when you have a sickly wife?”

Bai sighed and stretched out his legs.

“Aye, old man,” he said. “That’s how it is.”

Svendsen had kept a philosophical silence. Now he rose:

“No, we haven’t got a damned idea of what songs were sung at our cradle,” he said.

Bai rose and opened the door to the sitting room.

“What on earth?” he said. “Are you sitting in the dark?”

“Yes.” Katinka rose from her corner. “I was just sitting in the dark for a few minutes. Do you want anything, Bai?”

“I’m going to go a little way with Svendsen,” said Bai.

Katinka came in to say goodbye.

“Your wife’s still a bit pale around the gills,” said Svendsen, feeling his pockets to make sure he had his collection with him.

“Good heavens, ma-am, you’d better stay inside. It’s far too cold.”

“I’m only going as far as the gate,” she said.

They went onto the platform. “A lovely starry night,” said Bai.

“That suggests it’s going to be cold. Good night, Mrs Bai.”

The gate closed.

“Good night.”

Katinka stood there leaning against the gate. The voices died away.

Katinka raised her eyes. Yes, the sky was clear and all the stars were out.

As though she wanted to pour out her heart to the dead tree, Katinka bent down and threw her arms round the damp trunk.

The Lindes often came of an evening. The two old folk were missing Agnes.

And Andersen was leaving as well.

“He wanted to leave,” said the old parson. “And now we risk being saddled with one of those evangelicals.”

Mr Andersen had found a parish on the west coast.

Mrs Linde sat in the corner, weeping.

“Oh, heavens above, I could see it all coming,” she said. “I saw it perfectly well. But they can’t make their minds up, Mrs Bai. They can’t make their minds up, my dear.”

“That’s young people today, completely different from what it was like in our day, my dear Mrs Bai. They go around wondering whether they are in love until they break off with each other and go their own way and are unhappy for the rest of their lives.”

“I had my fortune told, my dear, before Linde proposed to me, and we have taken the good with the bad for thirty years.”

“But now we might be leaving Agnes behind as a lonely old maid one day when we two old ones close our eyes.”

The gentlemen came in. The old minister was to have his game of whist.

Katinka was happiest when the old minister was there. It was as though he brought such a sense of peace with him.

When he sat there with a small glass, wearing his skullcap, playing a shrewd game and with a happy look on his old face.

“There we are, my dear,” he said as he took the tricks.

The two old folks would argue a little.

“It’s as I say, Linde.”

“Well, just look, dear.” And he would spread his tricks out on the table.

“It’s you, Mrs Bai, it’s you.”

Katinka’s thoughts drifted away. She sat there watching the two old people.

“Queen of diamonds. There you see, dear.”

They played the last rubber with a dummy hand. Katinka went around preparing the table. They dined increasingly well at the Bais. Bai had so many favourite dishes and Katinka prepared them for him.

There were many days she spent in the kitchen from early in the morning, boiling and frying from recipes and cookery books. Difficult complicated dishes requiring both scraping and peeling.

Quite worn out, Katinka sat down on the chopping block and coughed.

“You’ll be getting consumption the way you put yourself out to make sure they’ve got plenty to stuff themselves with,” said Marie.

“Would you like a glass of gin?” says Katinka.

“If you’ve got some.”

When he nodded, it could be seen that Bai had acquired a double chin. In general, he was putting on weight. With a coquettish little swelling beneath his waistcoat and dimples on his knuckles.

“It’s ready now,” says Katinka.

“Thank you, dear,” says Bai.

Bai had recently taken on something of the quality of a sultan. Perhaps it was a result of his corpulence.

“Thank you, dear, we’ll just finish the game,” he repeats.

Katinka sits down on a chair near the table and waits. The old minister looks from Bai across the well-laid table to his quiet wife. Katinka is resting her head on her hand.

“It’s you, sir,” says old Linde to Bai.

Katinka rises. She has forgotten something for the table. The door closes behind her and the old minister looks again across the illuminated table at Bai, who is holding the cards over his coquettish bulge:

“Yes, inspector,” says the old parson to Bai, “you are a fortunate man.”

Afterwards, they sit over their milk punch and cakes. “It’s the good husbands who like sweet things,” says Mrs Linde. Bai helps himself to more vanilla biscuits out of the box.

And they chew away as they sit there around the lamp.

“Won’t you play something for us?” says Mrs Linde.

“Or sing something, one of Agnes’ songs?” says the old minister.

Katinka goes over to the piano. And in her weak voice she quietly sings the song about Marianna.

The old minister listens with his hands folded and Mrs Linde lowers her knitting.

“Deep down below the grass asleep

Lies poor, dear Marianna

Come now, oh girls, for we must weep

For poor, dear Marianna.”

“Thank you,” said the old minister.

“Thank you, Mrs Bai,” said Mrs Linde.

She could not really see the stitches until she had dried her eyes.

Katinka remained seated there with her back to the others. The tears slowly fell from her cheeks down onto the keys.

“Aye, young people nowadays have a lot of ideas,” said the old minister. He was staring vacantly in the air and thinking of Agnes.

They rose and prepared to leave, and Mrs Linde fetched her coat from the bedroom. The two candles by the looking glass were lit. It was so light and cosy in there with all the white bedclothes and the looking glass on the dressing table.

“Aye,” said Mrs Linde, “if only we could see Agnes in a home like this.” She was still sniffing while she tied her hatband.

“I’ll go a little way with the minister,” said Bai. “It’s important to have a little exercise.”

“Yes,” said the minister. “One needs a little exercise after all that jellied eel. You eat too well here at the station. Mother here has forbidden me to set foot here on a Saturday.”

“I won’t come any further,” said Katinka, standing at the door. “The doctor wants me to take care of my cough.”

“No, go inside. Autumn is the worst time.”

“Good night. Good night.”

Katinka went inside. She took out an old letter from Agnes, it was crumpled and had been read time after time, and she spread it out beneath the lamp:

“And then I had hoped that the first days would be the worst and that time would heal all wounds. But the first days are easy and nothing compared to now. For then it is a pain in which everything is near. But as everything is fading now, day by day, every new morning that wakens us is simply going to move us further and further away. And nothing new comes, Katinka, not even a shadow, but simply all the old things, memories that we rake up over and over again and ponder over… And then it is as though there were some great beast sucking the blood out of our hearts. Memories are a disaster for both body and soul.”

Katinka leaned back with her head against the cold wall. Her face was pale in the light from the lamp. She had no more tears.

Bai came home.

“It got rather late,” he said. “Time really does pass damned quickly… I came across Kiær somewhere or other on the way. It was Kiær who wanted to have a drink… I met him… on the way home.”

“Has it really got so late?” was all that Katinka said.

“Yes, it’s past one o’clock.” Bai started to undress. “That’s what comes of walking people home, damn it,” he said.

Bai had recently always walked people “home”. He went as far as the inn: “Well, I’d better be getting home to keep an eye on things,” he said as he took leave of his guests.

He kept his eye on things in the inn in the company of a girl who during the summer had had short puff sleeves over a pair of soft arms. One o’clock came and then two o’clock as he “kept an eye on things.”

“But you could have gone to bed, you know,” he said to Katinka. “All you do is sit up and get cold.”

“I didn’t know it was so late.”

The bed creaked under Bai as he stretched himself.

Katinka put the flowers in a row down on the floor. She coughed as she bent down.

“Blast this rheumatism,” said Bai. “It hurts like hell.”

“I could rub your arm for you,” said Katinka.

It had become a regular evening ritual that Katinka rubbed Bai’s arms with some miracle cure for rheumatism.

“Oh, never mind,” said Bai. He turned over a couple of times and fell asleep.

Katinka heard the night train. It rumbled across the bridge and clattered into the station – and now it was gone.

Katinka hid her face in the sheets so as not to waken Bai with her coughing.

Winter came, and Christmas arrived. Agnes was at home and the “post office official” came to the Abels on Christmas Eve.

Little Miss Jensen and Bel-Ami were at the station just as they were last year. Bel-Ami was now being carried quite officially.

“He’s gone blind,” said Little Miss Jensen. The animal was so lazy that it could simply not be bothered to open its eyes.

When the tree was lit, Bai brought a sealed telegram and placed it on Katinka’s table.

The telegram was from Huus.

Bai and Wee Bentzen sat dozing in the office. Katinka and Jensen sat in the sitting room, where the candles on the tree burned down.

Little Miss Jensen nodded as she dozed and bumped her head on the piano.

Katinka looked at the tree with the dead candles. Her hand gently stroked Huus’ telegram, which lay on her lap.