The History of Danish Dreams: A Novel (12 page)

This obstinacy turned to fear as they slipped into Rudkøbing’s huge harbor and its tentacles closed around them, pushing them toward a depravity beyond anything they could ever have imagined, with harborside drinking dens and brothels, and alehouses built like palaces with pillared colonnades and magnificent entrances and towers and spires and bay windows floating on clouds of gleaming copper. Later, when they came ashore, the savage cacophony closed over their heads, split them up, and drew them into a stream of humanity dressed with unbridled extravagance; into streets where Jewish peddlers hawked nails just like those with which the Savior was crucified. Not only that: on display they had a large crucified dummy, resembling the Son of Man, into which one could hammer one’s nails. In these streets animal tamers presented creatures from Noah’s ark: giraffes, hippopotamuses, elephants, and a unique monstrosity: a long-legged, misshapen duckbill platypus—all of these trained to make obscene gestures and to copulate with one another before the very eyes of the spectators. Now here I have to step in to say that I have had a hard time recognizing Rudkøbing, that respectable provincial town, in this, a description drawn from the annals of the Danish Evangelical Mission. Nevertheless, that is what the faithful later remembered having seen.

As they made their way through the town that evening to the service, which Thorvald Bak’s irresistible powers of persuasion had ensured would be held in the church, they huddled tightly around Anna in her silver-plated cage. This they pushed, on a little handcart, through a darkness constantly rocked by the sound of brawling from the wine cellars; the burbling of the organ music emanating from the theater, which sounded like the gasps of a couple making love; and the screams from the whorehouses as clients were smitten by rare tropical venereal diseases that spread through the body like galloping gangrene. They made their way through a reddish mist that by no means veiled their view. On the contrary, it made every outline stand out with heightened clarity. This mist gave off such a stench of corruption that the people of Lavnœs had to hold their breath, until their lips turned violet and their eyes were bulging out of their sockets; then they were forced to surrender and fill their lungs with a mist that went to their heads, bombarding them with memories of vices that their forefathers had given in to in a far-off century. And then they had to let themselves be drawn after the cage while they tried to catch a glimpse of Anna’s face.

At a street corner they pass a boy. He is standing leaning against a lamppost, staring vacantly into the mist, immersed in his own innermost visions. What he sees in his mind’s eye is the sea. He has come to town with a traveling theater. As wave boy in that unparalleled stage success
Sigurd’s Great Voyage around the World
he is responsible for creating convincing waves in the blue sheeting upon which the steamship
Mongolia
sails. He has stopped for a moment on his way to the theater, and his mind is now filled with wavy patterns. And while he is leaning against this lamppost and his body is swaying gently in tune to the interference of the waves, he looks into a world of unimaginable blueness, and out of the depths of soft, endless, permeable blocks of crystal floats a face. At first this face is but a white ruffle in a chasm of blue, but gradually it comes closer and closer, until it can clearly be seen. It is the face of Anna Bak.

On seeing the rapt boy, Anna’s first impulse is to pray for him, then to sing, but when she sees the sea in his eyes, she senses that neither prayers nor song would be enough. And so her spirit duplicates itself. While the procession of cowled brothers and sisters is swallowed up by the interplay of light and shade in the streets, together with Thorvald Bak—who has withdrawn into his shell and is committing to memory the hell that he is going to conjure up in his sermon—and the cage in which Anna sits surveying her surroundings, Anna Bak—or, now how else could I put this; at any rate, a different Anna from the one in the cage—glides barefoot across the cobbles and falls into step next to the wave boy on his way to the theater.

The religious missionary movement of which Thorvald Bak was to become co-founder—the Danish Evangelical Mission, that is—was henceforth to celebrate the anniversary of Thorvald Bak’s sermon in Rudkøbing church as one of its most significant founding dates. And in later years he himself always remembered his speech as being one of the most miraculously inspired he had ever given. Even in the shadow cast by subsequent disasters it would always shine in his memory as a mysterious sign from heaven. Likewise, Anna never forgot her night at the theater. From her place in the wings she, who was so fond of the sea, was moved to tears by the sight of those scandalous theatrical illusions and by the cavernous auditorium in which white shirtfronts and coquettish bosoms, powdered and bare, floated like small icebergs on a sea of black tailcoats and satin gowns. Lifting his eyes from the pulpit at that same moment, Thorvald Bak looked out upon a packed church. Rumors of the cowled fishermen and their fiery faith had spread, and people had flocked to see the child sacrifices, the speaking in tongues, the laying on of hands, and the transcendental frenzies of which they had heard; if, that is, they had not simply bumped into the fearful procession and then tagged along with it. Others had been lured by the sight of the actors’ parade and rumors of the incomparable stage production of
Sigurd’s Great Voyage around the World
in which the Princess Aouda appeared, to all intents and purposes, naked; a fact which Anna was, to her delight, having confirmed at that same moment—seeing the near-naked beauty being painted brown as a native and wound in her skimpy shroud. Paupers off the street had followed Thorvald Bak into the church believing that they had joined some gala procession, and the steadily swelling throng had been joined by seamen from the foreign ships anchored in the harbor. Before him Thorvald Bak now beheld more sin than he had encountered in his entire life, and he would, at that moment, have lost his composure if Anna’s face, at his side, had not begun to radiate a white light, even as, at the theater, she was watching the playacting seamen and remembering the bones she had collected on the beach at Lavnœs. The white light from the face of the Anna in the church intensified, and Thorvald Bak began to speak. While Anna took the wave boy’s hand and the dramatization of
Sigurd’s Great Voyage around the World
proclaimed the triumph of civilization and modern transportation methods over time, Thorvald Bak spoke of his audience’s journey into the wilderness of depravity. So penetrating and clear were his words that they were not apprehended as sounds but turned into images in the mind of each individual: pictures representing a cavalcade of the sins of his or her particular life, bathed in the white light emanating from Anna. And they all had to close their eyes. Meanwhile, at the theater, Anna was aware of the wave boy’s closeness and how he smelled of fresh-baked bread. She looked up at the blue sheeting as it was lowered over them like a starry sky, and at that moment Thorvald Bak was speaking of the liberation of death, in such a way that everyone heard the tolling bell and the oration from his or her own funeral. By the time he was telling them how it was possible, while still on this side of death, to face up to life and salvation and carry the faith to others, Anna had learned how to let the graceful undulations ripple across her body; undulations that created the amazing impression of the stormy sea on which the explosion of the steamship
Henriette
raised a pillar of flame and tossed pieces of wreckage all over the stage. The actors then swam through them while water was poured on them from up in the flies, making their skin, by the time they were rescued, as wet as the faces of Thorvald Bak’s congregation while they screamed at him that he must tell them the truth about life and he lifted his hands to still them and said, “The world awaits us.” While, under the blue sheeting, Anna edged closer to the wave boy, and there was not one person in the church who did not understand Thorvald Bak’s words; even the flock of Brazilian sailors who had brought their whores along dropped to their knees and beat their curly heads upon the church floor and, in their remorse, tried in vain to remember how many murders they had committed. These men were later to form the nucleus of the Seamen’s Mission, which spread from the town to some of the remotest corners of the earth and which was, in time, to make the Evangelical Mission one of the Danish dreams that would encircle the globe. When Anna, her face close to the boy’s and her fingers in his curly hair, gave in to the irresistible urge to see what lay behind things and unbuttoned his trousers, the intensity of the atmosphere in the church shattered the stained-glass windows and carved doors and forced the crowd out into the streets, where groups of people roamed for the rest of the night, singing songs of praise while searching for Thorvald Bak and the divine girl, of whom their only clear memory was a bitter taste in the mouth that gradually faded.

They never did find them, because they had already left. Weak from exhaustion, Thorvald Bak had staggered out of the church, protected by those members of the faithful who still had all their wits about them. They had Anna’s cage in tow and were so intent upon reaching the boat that they did not notice the two children, standing closely entwined at a street corner, who pulled apart suddenly just as they passed by. Then, looking as though there was something she had forgotten, Anna glided across to her cage and merged with the girl who rested on the silver plating, worn out by the service. Dawn had broken when their ship left the harbor.

*   *   *

After their return to Lavnœs, Anna resumed her habit of taking long walks, and it was not long before Thorvald Bak realized that she was pregnant and about to fulfill her destiny. He said nothing but let people discover it for themselves. As they did, they formed a guard of honor, which was changed four times a day, to escort Anna through the scorching days and ice-cold nights that persisted throughout the summer.

She gave birth one night, without warning and without help. Thorvald Bak was the first to see the child. He found some trivial excuse to send home the guard of honor, which had gathered around the bonfire outside the tower. Then he left the building. He pleaded with his God and summoned up all his spiritual strength. Only for one brief moment did he lose his self-control, when, on his way back, he met his housekeeper, her face now moldy with age.

“Our Savior is a girl,” he said.

He stayed away until the sun came up. By the time he returned to Anna’s room—where the night chill had already been replaced by intolerable heat—he had regained his strength and the enduring fortitude of his faith. He found the bed vacated and, later, discovered that the mission box was empty. Then, understanding that he would never again see Anna or the child and that all of this must be a punishment for some appalling mistake he had made—without having any idea of what this might have been—he bowed his head toward his housekeeper’s deafness and screamed, “The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”

ADONIS JENSEN

On the run
Living outside the law
1838–1918

RAMSES JENSEN’S
entire life turns into one long flight. And at one point, when he is well along in years, this brings him to Rudkøbing.

One moonless night he unscrews the hinges of a little arched door in the Teander Rabow family home; closes it carefully from the inside; glides across the black-and-white marble floor and up the wide staircase and along the long corridors without making a single sound. He has a peculiar gift for never leaving any traces of himself, a gift that is to make life difficult for the judges and lawyers and prosecutors from the courts of inquiry set up on the few occasions when he is arrested.

He collects all the items he intends to take on the floor of one large room, finding the things he seeks with instinctive assurance and without at any time being distracted by the house, as it sighs and moans in the night, or by the noises issuing from the bedrooms, where the Old Lady’s snoring sounds like laughter and where Christoffer Ludwig is memorizing his columns of figures in his sleep and where Katarina tosses and turns wakefully in her bed, with her hand on her father’s revolver.

In the tall chiffoniers his sensitive fingers find bed linens; in the kitchen cupboards, brushes; and elsewhere, down-at-heel shoes. These he chooses, in preference to the embroidered table runners, the bolts of lawn, or the silverware, just as he steers clear of the secret compartments where the jewelry lies in leather cases and where valuable toilet sets, complete with yellowed manicure sticks of silver and ivory, rest in wooden boxes lined with velvet. This seemingly unnecessary restraint arises from his deep and lifelong distrust of wealth.

Now and again he pauses in his work to consider the ponderous trappings of affluence that the Old Lady has amassed, perhaps fearing that her life would take to the air like a balloon and drift off toward the North Pole: the carved oak cupboards that had been on display at the World Exhibition, the shepherdesses on their epergnes of Meissen porcelain, the suits of armor that line the walls of the room, and the marble busts, in whose gaze Ramses Jensen sees the reflection of his own brooding gravity.

His character had possessed an introspective side ever since his incarceration—a very long time ago, when he was still a young man—in the new state prison at Horsens, where he had spent one whole year in total isolation. At that time the prison, which had been built according to the American Philadelphia principle, was not yet completed. Ramses had been moved there from one of the Copenhagen houses of correction because the prison warden was eager to put his principles into practice.

This star-shaped prison complex lay on a windswept stretch of countryside. Every single one of its—empty—cells was equipped with a toilet and running water. The plates of colorless potatoes and iron-hard crusts of bread seemed to edge their way into the cell of their own accord, without any human intervention, and the only person whom Ramses ever saw was the warden, who was a doctor of theology. Each Sunday he held a brief religious service in the prison assembly hall for Ramses, who stood bolt upright during the sermon, strapped into a wooden sentry box, his face covered by a special helmet that left only his eyes exposed. This saved the warden from being distracted by the face that confronted him and Ramses from being hurled back into a life of corruption by seeing his own reflection in the steel prison bars.