Barbara (35 page)

But when later that evening, dressed in their finest clothes, they all turned up at the judge's home, the joy was contained and the guests mostly spoke together quite quietly. It was as though something or other oppressed them.

“You aren't as you usually are,” said Barbara to Andreas.

Her eyes were shining in her powdered face. She was nervous. “I don't know,” she said, “this is only like the shadow of a ball.”

Outside the windows with their small panes, the night was calm and quite light. A rosy touch of day could still be seen atop Nolsoy, and all the turf roofs were illuminated by this reflected light on their north side. The East Bay lay deep down below like a black mirror. The ducks were asleep on the sand with their heads tucked under their wings.

“Oh,” said Johan Hendrik. “Whoever arranges a ball in daylight? I ought to have thought about that.”

He went out and returned with a lighted candelabrum and started lighting candles round about, on the bureau and on the bookshelves. They fluttered palely and had little effect, but the judge went outside and started closing the shutters.

“What the devil,” shouted Gabriel from the steps. He was one of the few who had been initiated into the secret plan. “Is this an evening for dark deeds?”

“I don't know,” replied Johan Hendrik. “Daylight doesn't seem to be suitable for this party. This Andreas is made of soft stuff. Hmm. But I can't sing my own praises… I haven't been able to bring myself to tell her either. But perhaps that is best. But we are going to have the devil of a day tomorrow.”

“Hi, hi, hi,” chortled Gabriel. “This is going to be one hell of a comedy.”

“Aye, give the devil an inch! There's nothing grows like lies.”

“Oh, because you're giving Barbara a taste of her own medicine. How has she herself behaved?”

“That is true,” said the judge, breathing out. “That is true. But still…”

He stroked his chin and looked thoughtfully out across the fjord. “No, no… if we say anything now I am afraid we shall not get Andreas off.”

They both went indoors, and the gaiety was by now quite palpable. Sieur Arentzen was tuning his cello and trying the tone with broad strokes of his bow. Everyone was talking noisily and the candles were shining in their eyes.

“Well, there we are, there we are,” said Johan Hendrik, rubbing his hands. “Now everything is as it should be.”

He grasped his flute and produced a long trill.

“Yes, now it is…!” shouted Barbara. And her voice betrayed enthusiasm like warm sunshine. She betrayed a childish delight, and the whole of her body was moving.

“Aye, Barbara, we are fooling you, fooling you…” thought Johan Hendrik.

But Barbara clapped her hands and said: “I suggest for fun that we pretend this is a school of dancing. And Andreas shall be the dancing master and tell us when we are not dancing according to the fashion. Isn't that a good idea?”

Andreas stood there, pale and wearing his most gallant suit. But when the flute and cello started to blend their voices, his heart was fired and all his carefree spirit came upon him. But he completely forgot to be the dancing master.

In fact there was nothing for a dancing master to do – at least not as far as Barbara was concerned. She danced with such erect elegance and yet such relaxed delight, such measured steps and yet so much grace that there was nothing to correct in her but a couple of tiny adjustments. It was in her very nature to do everything correctly. Yet there was in her face a kind of serious watchfulness; only when she looked at Andreas did her eyes glow warm, and once when she reached out her hand to him in the dance, she asked him tenderly and seriously: “Is it good?”

The judge sat watching her; his face was twisted by a flute and no one could see in his lined and ambiguous features whether he was laughing or crying. But Johan Hendrik was not laughing that evening.

“Alas Barbara. We are fooling you,” he thought, and his heart turned. Never had he seen beauty and naturalness so deceived. Here, she was dancing for Andreas. Oh dear, oh dear, that windbag, that fool. She was sending him amorous looks, and in a few hours he would be sailing away from her like a scoundrel.

Johan Hendrik blew and blew; the cello sounded deep alongside him; the tunes came time after time and the dancers filling his living room made the same steps and figures time after time, while the candles dripped and gradually became shorter. This was a large apparatus he had set going and dared not stop – a fairy tale with a dreadful ending. Once, during a pause, he fetched wine, all the bottles he possessed, and the merriment increased. Andreas, too, was enjoying himself and seemed only to be living in the present; it was a radiant, joyous occasion in this dark house in which all the shutters were closed. But, with sorrow in his heart, the judge only looked at his victim and saw how solemnly radiant she was in the midst of her ebullience, how strong she was in her joy, how devout in dance. She was nature personified, but at the same time she was blind, easy to deceive, and they were deceiving her, they were foully deceiving nature in the midst of its blind, trusting splendour.

And then this Andreas, his nephew, dancing and laughing and thinking of nothing! That lad probably resembled Barbara in his bad qualities, but not in the good. What nature was there in him? No, he was surely not worth the sacrifice she was making to him of her divinity, no, God forgive them all. Ugh!

And the ball came to an end. The judge's house was once more opened to the summer night. Its pale light fell soberly on bottles, glasses and smoking candles. It was like some fairytale soap bubble that had suddenly burst. Nolsoy lay there as clear as day and expressionless; everything was expressionless and silent, and everyone involuntarily lowered their voices as they went down the steps. The harbour was without a sign of life, and the gulls were asleep on the roof ridges.

“Then you will come back here when you have taken Barbara home,” said Johan Hendrik to Andreas. “I would like to have those nets taken up before going to bed.”

“Very well,” replied Andreas. He was at first a little confused, but quickly understood the idea.

“Why did you say yes?” asked Barbara, deeply disappointed, as they went along the street together.

“Yes, but, dearest,” said Andreas, “I could hardly refuse him. Besides, if we don't take the nets up now, it will be midday before we get the job done…”

The judge remained standing in his doorway. He would not be sure until Andreas was safely back. Alas, alas. But…
nul ne mérite d'être loué de sa bonté
…

Barbara went to bed, disappointed and rather angry with Andreas. She had also been filled with a quite indefinable sense of fear. He had recently not always been his usual self. But she was not inclined to worry. Besides, she was dizzy from the wine and the dancing, and she soon fell asleep.

She half woke to the sound of singing. For a long time she heard it through her dreams and felt deeply worried by it. But suddenly she understood what it was. It was the anchor song on board the
Fortuna
. They were weighing anchor. And almost at the same time she was overcome by a dreadful fear. Like a bird, she was out of her bed and over by the window.

There was a quite new sheen over Tórshavn now, and the sun was adding a touch of red to the north-eastern tip of Nolsoy. This glorious vista touched Barbara's sense of beauty, but her thoughts had no time for delight. Aboard the
Fortuna
she caught a glimpse of the men going round the capstan.

“Heave-ho, heave-ho.”

Then they fell silent. The sails were already set and the
Fortuna
slipped silently out of the bay. And then it was that she suddenly caught sight of Andreas on the deck. She caught only a glimpse of him, standing there as he was on his arrival. But it was Andreas; that was absolutely certain.

She made a brief sound, a wail of despair, and within a second she had grabbed a skirt and was out of the door. She rushed down to the Sand … there was no one to be seen. The
Fortuna
was slowly making its way out. She ran like mad on bare feet over naked rocks along the East Bay. After the
Fortuna
.

In one place she had to wade to her knees in the water to get past. In another place, outside the store manager's house, she scraped her leg and made it bleed by clambering up a high stone terrace. She got past the entrance to the Royal Store and ran on, out to the furthermost point of Tinganes. Then she could get no further. The
Fortuna
slid away. She again uttered the same plaintive wail, and then she ran back along the empty shore.

But as she reached the Hoist, she met Niels the Punt.

“Oh Jesus, Niels,” she shouted to him. “Has Andreas left? And I was supposed to be going with him.”

Niels stared at her in amazement. He was uncomfortable with this meeting. He had often seen Barbara, but never as she was now, wringing her hands and with coarse marks of tears down her cheeks.

“Yes,” he mumbled, “Andreas was on the
Fortuna
.”

“And I was…!” sobbed Barbara. She was completely beside herself. But suddenly she changed. A sign of eagerness and cunning persuasion started to shine hopefully through her tears. She grasped Niels' arm.

“But you can still catch it, can't you? If you hurry, you could row me out to it in a four man boat. You and Ole Atten and …?”

She looked up at the entrance to the Royal Store, where three men from the town were grouped together, looking on in amazement and embarrassment.

“You could easily do it, couldn't you?”

Barbara's voice was regaining something of its customary sound, breaking into a falsetto in her eagerness, and she stood dancing on the hard rock.

Niels was immediately aware that this was a doubtful undertaking. “Bless you,” he said hesitantly. “You can't just go off to Copenhagen without shoes or clothes, you know.”

Barbara looked down at herself and saw how shamefully undressed she was and blushed for a second. But she had not the time, and she immediately forgot it again. She called to the other men and urged and persuaded them with her wet and wildly radiant face.

“I'll go home and put some clothes on quickly. Meanwhile, you'll get the boat in the water, won't you?”

She did not wait for an answer. She dashed away from them and in through the entrance to the Royal Store. And thus, in the very first weak rays from the sun, she ran through the whole of Tórshavn, in a shift and skirt. No one saw her. Yes, Johan Hendrik did, just as he emerged from Reynegard. But he did not believe his own eyes; only later did he realise what kind of natural eruption he was witnessing.

A quarter of an hour after this, a boat rowed by four men skimmed out over the shiny surface of the East Bay. Barbara was in the stern, completing her dress. She did not so much as turn to her mother, who, wrapped in an array of rags and tatters and with horror in her old voice was standing over on the sand and calling her name. The town had been awakened. The early sunshine was flashing in various windows as they were opened out of curiosity; indeed several people were already out in their slippers. But Barbara sensed none of this. She was only looking at the
Fortuna
, which with its sails unfurled was moving out of the fjord like some golden statue.

“There's fog to the east,” remarked Niels the Punt as they passed the Redoubt point.

“Aye, that's what it's like at this time of the year,” gasped Ole Atten. They put all their strength into the rowing. The boat swept forward over the shining waters.

“It's like rowing for pilot whales,” shouted young Marcus excitedly from the prow: “If only the Lord would send us a whale!”

“Yes, but not now,” said Barbara quickly and nervously. She had a hand over each gunwale; she was almost standing up in her seat, and never for a second did her eyes leave the
Fortuna
. The boat was not moving anywhere near quickly enough for her. The sun shone on her left cheek; she looked like a goddess driving a chariot.

“We're catching up,” she shouted.

Niels the Punt was still watching the east. It was a summer morning of rare beauty. But the fog lay in great, lazy banks out in the sea and to the north of the islands. It glided so gently, mingling with the blue mountains, wrapping itself around their feet and leaving the peaks clear and sharp in the bright day. It was a good weather mist, a true sign of summer. But, thought Niels, it was not good for visibility. What concerned him particularly was the great bank of cloud behind Nolsoy. Shreds of it were already pouring in over the low isthmus on which the village of Nolsoy lay. But Barbara did not see this. She was only looking forward.

“We're catching up,” she shouted again with hope and jubilation in her multi-toned voice. “Don't you think we'll catch them?”

The men looked forward over their shoulders.

“Aye,” said Niels. “If it all goes as it's going now, we'll catch them.”

“Oh, Niels,” said Barbara. “You never make promises. I know you.”

“Promises? Bless you. I don't want to promise too much.” Niels was gentler and more accommodating this morning than he had ever been. But promise…

It was also curious that the
Fortuna
was not heaving to, although those on board must have seen the boat long ago. There must be something suspicious in this undertaking, thought Niels. Aye, that was what they had all been thinking. That was not why they were making such an effort; they were not expecting much by way of thanks for this rowing trip when they returned to the shore. But they had had so many tellings off before, both from the commandant and the bailiff, and now recently also from that man Gabriel. They were quite willing to accept another one on behalf of Barbara, for she had always been nice to them.

The
Fortuna
changed course and sailed more to the east. It was now at the end of the fjord, close to the southern tip of Nolsoy.