The Lost Musicians E-Book

William Heinesen

• Herausgeber: Dedalus
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

This is a new translation by W. Glyn Jones of William Heinesen's masterpiece and one of the most important Scandinavian novels of the 20th century. Music is at the heart of this book. The devotion to it of a group of amateur musicians forming the Boman Quartet prevents a series of dramatic events from turning into heart-rending tragedy. Music enables each of the musicians to rise above his own bleak situation. But there is humour, too, especially in the satirical, larger-than-life portrayal of the local sectarians, led by the bank manager Ankersen, as they seek in vain to break the spirit of the musicians. And humour of a more earthy kind in Janniksen, the huge blacksmith who is completely at the mercy of his petty-minded sectarian wife.

Leseprobe

Contents

The Author

The Translator

First Movement

Second Movement

Third Movement

Fourth Movement

Copyright

The Author

William Heinesen (1900–1991) was born in Torshavn in the Faroe Islands, the son of a Danish mother and Faroese father, and was equally at home in both languages. Although he spent most of his life in the Faroe Islands he chose to write in Danish as he felt it offered him greater inventive freedom. Although internationally known as a poet and a novelist he made his living as an artist. His paintings range from large-scale murals in public buildings, through oil to pen sketches, caricatures and collages.

It is Dedalus’ intention to make all of William Heinesen’s novels available in new translations by W. Glyn Jones. Published so far are The Black Cauldron, The Lost Musicians, Windswept Dawn, The Good Hope and Mother Pleiades. In 2018 Dedalus will publish William Heinesen’s novels The Tower at the Edge of the World and Noatun.

William Heinesen is generally considered to be one of the greatest, if not the greatest, Scandinavian novelist of the twentieth century.

The Translator

W. Glyn Jones (1928–2014) had a distinguished career as an academic, writer and translator.

He taught at various universities in England and Scandinavia before becoming Professor of Scandinavian Studies at Newcastle and then at the University of East Anglia. He also spent two years as Professor of Scandinavian Literature in the Faeroese Academy. On his retirement from teaching he was created a Knight of the Royal Danish Order of the Dannebrog. He has written widely on Danish, Faeroese and Finland-Swedish literature including studies of Johannes Jorgensen, Tove Jansson and William Heinesen. He is the the author of Denmark: A Modern History and co-author with his wife, Kirsten Gade, of Colloquial Danish and the Blue Guide to Denmark.

W. Glyn Jones’ many translations from Danish include Seneca by Villy Sorensen and for Dedalus The Black Cauldron, The Lost Musicians, Windswept Dawn, The Good Hope and Mother Pleiades by William Heinesen, Ida Brandt and As Trains Pass By (Katinka) by Herman Bang and My Fairy-Tale Life by Hans Christian Andersen.

Before he died he translated William Heinesen’s novels The Tower at the Edge of the World and Noatun which Dedalus will publish in 2018.

Illustration by Zacharias Heinesen

Illustration by Zacharias Heinesen

The Faroese poet and author William Heinesen (1900–1991) must be counted one of the major writers in Scandinavia in the 20th century. The writer of novels, short stories, poems and a small number of works of non-fiction, he was considered for the Nobel Prize but asked to be left out of consideration since he wrote in Danish and believed that any Faroese receiving the prize should write in Faroese. He was in addition a painter of note and a gifted pianist who also composed a modest amount of music.

Born in 1900, Heinesen grew up in a Faroe Island community in transition. Until 1856, the islands had been a Danish colony and trade monopoly closed off from the outside world. However, once the Danish monopoly was abandoned, what had basically been a medieval society underwent a period of both economic and cultural change. One result of this process of opening up to the world was the advent of various sectarian movements who made – and still make – a huge impact on Faroese life. The most important of them, the Plymouth Brethren, locally known as “Baptists”, still has an influence rivalling that of the established Lutheran Church. One of the achievements of the sectarians was the introduction of total prohibition at the beginning of the 20th century. The Lost Musicians is centred on the fates of a small group of life-asserting amateur musicians facing the threat and apparently final triumph of these life-denying sectarians.

Poor as they are, the musicians represent a joy in life, yet one by one they are overcome by the anti-life forces of the sectarians led by the formidable savings bank manager Ankersen and his scurrilous putative son Matte Gok. Yet, typical of Heinesen, hope survives nevertheless when Orpheus, the child of one of these doomed musicians, is finally taken off to Copenhagen to embark on a musical career there.

However, this is no dry piece of social realism, but a fast-moving, rollicking account that verges on the fantastic. Ankersen himself is a fanatic, blind to the reality around him but nevertheless not portrayed in an entirely negative light. Matte Gok, one of the most thoroughgoing scoundrels in 20th-century Scandinavian literature, has on the other hand no redeeming features. On the other side of the divide there is the enormous, hen-pecked blacksmith Janniksen, a huge man who would enjoy life if it were not for his determined sectarian wife. It is he who organises a grand traditional wedding festivity for his daughter, which turns into a battle between the two forces each struggling to take possession of the bridal couple. To offset this we have the tenderness and kindness of the ordinary people of the little town in which the action takes place.

Only by stretching the term to its utmost could this be called a historical novel, though there is a vague link between it and actual events in the Faroe Islands at the beginning of the twentieth century. There was indeed at that time an amateur quartet such as that portrayed in the novel, and there was indeed a savings bank manager by the name of Danielsen who led the sectarians and obviously had at least something in common with the Ankersen of the novel. One of Heinesen’s many caricature paintings is of this Danielsen, and to it the painter has added the telling words “that hellhound Danielsen”. The struggle for total prohibition took place at the time at which the novel is set of course, though it was scarcely as amusing and grotesque as it is portrayed here. And the visit by the Hamburg Philharmonic Orchestra did in fact have its parallel, though the visiting orchestra’s programme was not such as would emphasise the struggle between life and death reflected in Heinesen’s interpretation of Schubert’s Eighth Symphony.

Constructed as a classical symphony, the novel has music at its heart and is at the same time a wonderful mixture of caricature, satire and poetry. On a higher plane it represents the cosmic struggle between life-asserting and life-denying forces. It is set in an unnamed town in an unnamed tiny country in the North Atlantic – for those who know it quite clearly and recognisably the capital of the Faroe Islands, Tórshavn. For those who do not know it, it is of no matter, as the novel’s theme is one of universality. Seldom can such great themes have been treated in such an approachable fashion.

One of the great Danish novels of the 20th century.

FIRST MOVEMENT

in which the musicians and their family and friends are presented

1

On the Aeolian harp builder Kornelius and his sons

Far out in a radiant ocean glinting like quicksilver there lies a solitary little lead-coloured land. The tiny rocky shore is to the vast ocean just about the same as a grain of sand to the floor of a dance hall. But seen beneath a magnifying glass, this grain of sand is nevertheless a whole world with mountains and valleys, sounds and fjords and houses with small people. Indeed in one place there is even a complete little old town with quays and storehouses, streets and lanes and steep alleyways, gardens and squares and churchyards. There is also a little church situated high up, from whose tower there is a view over the roofs of the town and further out across the almighty ocean.

One windy afternoon many years ago, a man and three boys sat up in this tower listening to the capriciously varying sounds of an Aeolian harp. It was the sexton Kornelius Isaksen and his three sons, Moritz, Sirius and Young Kornelius, and the Aeolian harp they were listening to was the first of a considerable number deriving from the sexton’s hand, for this remarkable man gradually developed into a builder of Aeolian harps such as is seldom encountered. So for a time there were no fewer that seventeen Aeolian harps hanging up there in the tower, and the concert of sound they produced went right through you.

But let us return to the day when the magical music from an Aeolian harp came to the ears of the three boys for the first time and stirred a curiously insatiable longing in their young souls. Before this, they had not heard any music apart from what came from the asthmatic old organ that Lamm the organist sat and murdered on Sundays.

“Daddy, who is it playing the Aeolian harp?” asked Young Kornelius, who was about six years old at the time.

“It’s the wind, of course,” replied his elder brother.

“No, it’s the cherubs, isn’t it, Dad?” asked Sirius seeking to catch his father’s gaze with his wildly open eyes.

The sexton nodded in absent-minded confirmation, and the three boys’ listening became still more breathless and rapt. They sat staring from the belfry lights out into a windswept space where huge solitary clouds scudded past with an observant mien, as though they, too, were listening to the distant music. The three brothers never forgot this wonderful afternoon in later days, and as a grown man Sirius gave it a lasting memorial in his poem “And cherubim passed by”.

As already said, the sexton’s Aeolian harp-making later got out of hand. Kornelius Isakson was in general a man given to excess; he was for ever subject to some crazy idea, and he often set himself impossible tasks. When he failed to achieve them, he was deeply upset and abandoned himself to melancholy, and while in such a state he not infrequently turned to the bottle.

He was nevertheless a kind and considerate father to his sons. And so it was at his instance that their musical gifts were placed in the meticulous care of Kaspar Boman.

Kornelius became a widower at an early age and he himself only lived to be thirty-four. So the three sons were left to themselves at an early age and had to manage as best they could. But the Aeolian harp builder’s restless spirit lived on in their souls, among other things resulting in an inordinate love of music.

2

About a wedding, a wake and an angry man, and about the name Orpheus

At the age of only twenty-two, Moritz, the sexton’s eldest son, married the eighteen-year-old highly musical bottle-washer Eliana, whom he had met in Boman’s choral society, and who had already long been much courted. It was about this Eliana that Sirius later wrote his justly so much loved poem “Sunshine in a Cellar”, in which he pictures a fair-haired girl standing washing out bottles in a greenish twilit room, wet and a little dishevelled, but young and happy like an Aphrodite who had just come ashore. Eliana really was like that, as though made of lighter stuff than other mortals; indeed, she had that goddess-like gaze that is a remarkable quality in certain female creatures who are specially favoured: a gaze that as it were looks right through everything in a blithesome and practical way without for a moment seeming pensive, and in addition there was something light and airy about her entire person, an innate sense of agile movement, which had certainly not been lost on Lindenskov the dancing teacher, for in his classes he usually pointed Eliana out as a model of natural grace and plasticity.

It goes without saying that Eliana was a beautiful bride. Moritz, too, looked smart: a tanned and handsome young sailor, upright and full of confidence and with the medal for life-saving shining on his jacket lapel. In general, the young couple were surrounded by the atmosphere of freedom from care and of innocent happiness that can make certain solid citizens so strangely bitter and distrustful. And soon there was plenty to gossip about; even the wedding provided the occasion for worries and much shaking of the head, and neither can it be denied that the end to the wedding was as ugly as its start had been beautiful.

It began with a male voice choir, in which the bridegroom himself took part as first tenor, singing “In the Wondrous Hour of Dawn”, written for the occasion by Sirius and set to music by Young Kornelius, who here made his first appearance as a composer. Then a string quartet in which the bridegroom himself played first violin performed Haydn’s well-known Andante cantabile for solo violin and pizzicato. That, too, was a great success and resulted in much praise for the soloist. After this, the assembled company ate and drank and then danced, and in many respects in a very animated fashion, though not more animatedly than is customary in this society. But unfortunately the celebration cost one man his life, as an old shoemaker by the name of Esau – a fine old man of seventy-seven years, whose only fault was that he was incorrigibly devoted to the bottle – was found drowned towards morning in the little cove known as the Kelp Trench, only a few steps away from the house where the festivities were taking place.

The wedding was to have lasted at least two days, but now it naturally came to a standstill. The guests wended their way home. It was a sad affair and extremely unfortunate.

The old shoemaker was buried a few days later, and the male voice choir sang beautifully and movingly at the graveside. That evening, Moritz gathered his friends together for a wake. Here, the remains of the interrupted wedding feast were eaten and drunk, but all naturally took place in a suitably subdued and decorous atmosphere.

Nevertheless, the manager of the savings bank, Mr Ankersen, found reason to interfere. He turned up in the midst of the wake, red and frothing at the mouth as was his custom, and spoke of blasphemy, retribution and damnation. The little gathering listened obediently to this impassioned castigator. Ankersen looked dreadful; he had no control whatsoever of his bearded rubicund face and its wrathful spectacles; his voice broke several times in sectarian fury, and as it danced on the wall, his double shadow was the very image of the Devil himself. Two candles were burning on the table; and they fluttered in the blast from his mouth, and he blew one of them right out.

Finally, he grasped an almost full bottle of Dutch gin that was standing on the table, went outside and emptied it in the gutter. Not even this prompted a word from Moritz and his friends in the dimly lit room.

But when the bank manager finally left, Moritz took out a new earthenware bottle of gin and opened it. Averting his eyes, he sighed: “Of course it was a terrible thing that Esau, poor blighter, should go and drown, of course it was. But I surely can’t be given all the blame? I hadn’t even invited Esau; he came as an uninvited guest, but of course I didn’t throw him out. But on the other hand I couldn’t be his nursemaid. But what’s done is done, and after all he was a lonely old man. Let’s drink to him!”

Despite the fact that Moritz only plied the simple trade of a ferryman, he was, as already said, a man who had a rare and all-absorbing love of music. He had an excellent singing voice and never played difficult to get when he was asked to sing at weddings or funerals, and in addition he played at dances when the opportunity arose. He played the violin, the viola, the French horn, flute and clarinet. Not in the sense that he mastered any of these instruments in the manner of a real musician. But he was magnificent when taking part in music making, especially when playing the violin.

Aye, Moritz was more musical than most people, and when about a year after the wedding he had become the father of a little boy, he also wanted to give this child a truly musical name. On this question he asked the advice of various people who were more versed in the history of music than he was. Kaspar Boman, the gardener and music teacher, who at that time was tied to his bed, drew up a whole list of musical names. Moritz preserved this list; it still exists and in all its touching meticulousness, this is how it looks:

Franz (Schubert)

Christoff Willibald (Gluck)

Wolfgang Amadeus

Amadeus or Amadé

Wolfgang

Franz

Felix (Mendelssohn)

Ole Bull

Paganini (not good)

Papageno (not good either)

Johan Sebastian Bach

Corelli

Giovanni Battista Viotti? No

Franz (Schubert)

Orfeus (crossed out)

August Sødermann

Ludvig (dreary name)

J.P.E. Hartmann

Carl Maria v. Weber

Franz Schubert

Why from all these names Moritz selected Orpheus, which into the bargain had been crossed out, has remained a mystery, but in any case Orpheus became the boy’s name.

Many years later, along with the list here reproduced, which Moritz kept at the bottom of his seaman’s chest, Orpheus found a faded letter from old Boman. It ran thus:

Dear Moritz,

I am really sorry I cannot come to the christening party, but I am still not well enough, but I had otherwise put a little speech together for my godson. Now it had better wait for his confirmation if God allows me to live so long, which He probably will not, but please do not refuse this little present, and please do not make too much of the bottle, Moritz; promise me that, and remember Ibsen’s beautiful words:

With music ravishing and chaste in tone,

Orpheus gave soul to beast and fire to stone.

Make music so the stone strikes sparks.

Make music so our carnal shape departs.

3

Of a trip one night to the Orken Isles

Poor Sirius. He finally became a recognised poet, but not until many years after he had suffered an untimely death, as so often happens. While alive he was seen as an idler and as impossibly stupid.

Of course, Sirius did also have many peculiar ideas and crazy habits, among which was that of wandering around at night, especially in the light summer nights. And then he could be completely unmerciful in disturbing his slumbering fellow creatures.

Thus, one mild night in August he had taken it into his head that it would be a splendid idea to go out to the Orken Isles and watch the sun rise, and for this purpose he first woke Young Kornelius and then the young couple from the house by the Kelp Trench. Of course they all wanted to go with him, for such were these people from the young and innocent dawn of time. Even little slumbering Orfeus, who then was only three years old, was taken along, carefully wrapped between blankets in a wash basket. The Orken Isles referred to here were naturally not the well-known Scottish group by roughly the same name, but merely a small cluster of rocks by the entrance to the cove. It was Sirius who had invented the bizarre name.

While Eliana made coffee and buttered bread and biscuits, Sirius and Young Kornelius sat in the living room working eagerly together to produce a hymn to the morning. Such was their nature, these sons of the Aeolian harp builder; there was always something to celebrate. Sirius sat there, tall and thin and with his hat pushed to the back of his head, writing in his crumpled poetry book with a well-chewed stump of a pencil, and Kornelius hummed as he peered over his shoulder through his pince-nez. There was something infinitely helpless about this pince-nez of Kornelius’s. This was possibly because it was too small and too loose, or because he had no idea how to wear it with the correct, dignified nonchalance. Moreover, the pince-nez, which was in fashion at that time, hardly goes well with an honest and straightforward face with an underhung jaw and protruding ears. There was no saying that Young Kornelius was handsome; he had a tendency to squint, in addition to which he had a stammer.

When the poet and the composer had finished their work, they discovered that the Crab King was present in the room. He was sitting in a rocking chair and staring morosely, as was his wont. It is this dwarf Sirius has immortalised in his moving poem “The Man from the Moon”.

Moritz came back, bringing Ole Brandy the first mate with him. Ole Brandy was fairly inebriated; Moritz had found him sitting half asleep in a beached boat. Ole had half a bottle of brandy with him and was keen to hurry home and fetch some more.

Finally, the little group embarked in the boat. The night was inexpressibly quiet. Ole Brandy’s bottle went round from mouth to mouth. The Crab King was the only one to drink nothing; as usual, it was impossible to get a word out of this strange shadow of a human being. Kornelius tapped his shoulder to cheer him up, and the dwarf gave him a devoted look. Kornelius was the only living soul for whom the Crab King is known to have felt any affection.

The ocean breathed in and out in long, resplendent billows populated by silent eiderducks. A full moon on its way down had the happy idea of revealing itself in the west between motionless clouds. It imparted to the darkened landscape a reddish glow that might seem to have been produced by some kind of spiritual trumpet blast.

When the little party had seated itself on the Orken Isles and while Eliana laid out food and coffee on the spotlessly clean rock, Moritz took out his violin and with verve and difficult double stopping played the extraordinary, blissful andante from Pergolesi’s Concertino in f minor.

The bottle continued to circulate, but the men remained silent. Only the Crab King glumly cleared his throat, as was his habit, and stared out across the sea with a great careworn face which seemed once and for all to have drunk its fill of sombre superior knowledge. In the meantime, the moon had gone down, and the dawn sky in the east had started to derive colour from the sun, which was still below the horizon like some sunken Soria Moria castle. When the coffee was drunk and the bread and biscuits eaten, the first blush started to trickle forth from among the long linear cloud formations and to strike fire in a mantle of merry fleecy clouds.

Then Sirius stepped forward and in an emotional voice declaimed his morning hymn, a kind of song of praise to the sun and to life. The Crab King took off his bonnet and folded his hands. Moritz sat with the bottle on his left knee, and with his right arm he held his young wife close to him. Ole Brandy had stretched out on the rocks and lay emitting clouds of smoke in the air from his crusty chalk pipe. The morning sun shining on his broken red nose made it doubly red and played in his golden earrings. But all at once, Sirius stopped declaiming and pointed out across the water: Look!

They all rose to look. Out there on the furrowed water, which had now adopted a dazzling bronze glow, a pod of dolphins could be seen. They were flapping their tails and performing somersaults on the surface of the water as though in excessive joy as they hastened away in the current and disappeared in the distance.

Little Orfeus had awakened in his basket just in time to see this sight. He stretched his arms up and cried out, beyond himself with delight mixed with fear, and the image of the massively happy fish in the sunrise imprinted itself on his memory for all time.

Sirius read his poem to the end. Ole Brandy lit his pipe, which had gone out, and grabbed for the bottle, and now Kornelius had his melody ready. He handed the paper with the scribbled notes to Moritz, who took his violin and played the melody through a couple of times. He nodded approvingly and launched into singing the new song. Kornelius and Sirius sang in harmony and Ole Brandy hooted in the empty bottle, and thus was born the beautiful hymn to the morning of which the literary historian Magnus Skæling says in his beautiful essay on Sirius Isaksen that with its powerful, naïve portrayal of nature it is reminiscent of Thomas Kingo himself.

When the song came to an end, merriment and the dawn broke forth in earnest. Ole Brandy smashed the bottle against the rock and embarked on a strangely merciless sea shanty. Ole’s eyes had become clouded. Moritz, too, was somewhat tipsy. He went over and shook Ole’s hand and listened patiently to a raucous and incoherent story of life at sea in his young years, of unforgettable voyages to distant parts on the bark the “Albatross” and of the Red Indian girl Ubokosiara, who bit the ear of the respectable Norwegian sailor known as Uncle and tore it to pieces.

Sirius had discovered a sea anemone by the water’s edge and clambered cautiously down to take a closer look. The fleshy flower reached out with vaguely amorous movements up towards the darkish sunshine, as though in some melancholy yearning.

A breeze now started to blow from the south. Eliana packed the blankets more tightly round the child; feeling rather cold, she started gathering cups and jugs together. But suddenly there was a cry and a splash. Sirius had disappeared! Eliana uttered a scream that produced a loud and ominous double echo from land, and the Crab King’s face twisted in a new and hopeless expression of grief. But Moritz had immediately thrown off his jersey and leapt into the water, and before long he appeared with Sirius, who was flapping about blindly with his arms and legs and uttering gurgling noises. Ole Brandy managed to haul him ashore; he remained on his stomach, groaning and with the water pouring off his worn clothes. Eliana bent down and with a sigh of relief kissed him on the cheek. She set about wringing the water from his long hair and soothed him as though he were a little child. Ole Brandy took off his dirty, alcohol-perfumed jersey and dressed Sirius in it. Moritz prepared the boat for departure, and the little party quickly embarked.

Sirius was trembling, and his teeth were chattering. Little Orfeus was howling and inconsolable, but it helped when his mother took him on her lap and reminded him of the lovely big fish that had been playing and leaping so amusingly for him out there in the sea. He met his mother’s reassuring gaze and fell silent, lost in the memory.

4

Aspects of life in the basement of the Bastille and in Skindholm in general

During his childhood and early youth, Moritz had sailed the great seas, but now he lived by ferrying travellers and sailors out to ships. This was in the days before the harbour and the quay installations came, so that a ferryman was much in demand. Occasionally, Moritz also ran a kind of freight and passenger service out to Seal Island and other small landing places near the capital. These routes were mostly in sheltered waters, but Moritz’s vocation was by no means without its dangers. Ferrying, especially during the winter months, often demanded a considerable amount of bravery and resourcefulness, and when misfortune was abroad it could turn into a game of life and death.

Moritz enjoyed a well-earned reputation as a sailor. He was both experienced and bold, and the rescue he had carried out at the age of twenty when single-handedly he had brought seven men and a woman safely ashore from the wrecked Finnish schooner the “Karelia”, added undying lustre to his name.

But one pitch-black night close to Christmas 1904, Moritz was unfortunate enough to wreck his boat. He was on his way back from one of the large ocean-going steamers, which had dropped anchor far out on account of the strong on-shore wind. Together with a far too hospitable agent on board out there, he had drunk a couple of glasses of some unusually strong green liquid that the agent had jestingly called “Certain Death”.

As though by a miracle, however, Moritz escaped death, but the boat, which had drifted ashore at Punt Point, was smashed to smithereens, and it was not insured.

Moritz wandered around for a time feeling ashamed but secretly happy, for of course his life had been saved, and that means quite a lot to a young man with the future before him. After some discussions with his young wife, he decided to sell the small, but well-kept house near the Kelp Trench and to buy a new and bigger boat with the money. The family, which incidentally had seen the arrival of two lovely, frizzy-haired twin girls, Franziska and Amadea, then had to rent accommodation in the Bastille, the big, dilapidated building on the east side of Skindholm.

In its day this house had been the home of the wealthy consul Sebastian Hansen, “Old Bastian”, as he was called. The basement flat there was vacant just at this time due to the death of the former tenant, Sundholm the photographer. Sundholm had been a morose and lonely man of indeterminate origin. But although he was now dead and gone, it was as though impossible to be quite rid of him. In spite of having been thoroughly cleaned, the flat still smelled of Sundholm’s tobacco and photographic fluids, and in the first nights after the new tenants had moved in, little Orfeus kept on dreaming of the late photographer. He dreamt that Sundholm was sitting on the edge of his bed, morose and brooding, in his shiny, worn jacket from the greasy lapels of which the pincenez hung glittering in its chain. Occasionally, the boy would wake up in the middle of the night with the strangely mournful smell of the dead man’s medicines in his nostrils. One night he dreamt that Sundholm’s spirit opened a trapdoor in the floor and took him round a hidden apartment below, an endless series of rooms that were all bathed in a vague, sinister light from a hanging lamp, and in one of these terrible rooms sat the figurehead Tarira, staring at him with pale eyes. This figurehead otherwise belonged below the bowsprit of the old bark, the “Albatross”. It represented a pale angel imperturbably staring ahead. But it frequently came to him in dreams, and it was the most ominous thing he knew. Not because it wasn’t beautiful and kindly enough in itself, for that it certainly was – indeed it even reminded him a little of his own mother. But it was a baleful ghost nevertheless, and then you had to make the best of a bad job and call it by its name and pretend you were fond of it.

Otherwise, the Bastille was not a dismal place by any means. It was a big, overbuilt house with space for several families. In addition to the people from the Kelp Trench, the cellar was inhabited by a sprightly man called Fribert and his toothless old dog, Pan. Fribert delivered coal for Sebastian Hansen & Son; he always had black rings around his eyes, which produced a penetrating quality to his gaze, and he had the good-humoured habit each evening of singing himself to sleep with old ballads, especially “Ole Morske lay dead in the loft”.

There were two flats on the middle floor in the Bastille. In one of them lived the Adventist family, the Samsonsens – husband, wife and daughter and little son. They ran a kind of laundry and mangle shop and kept Saturdays holy by playing the harmonium and singing defiant songs. In the other flat, which faced east and was very small, lived the carpenter known as Josef the Lament because he was a willing and much used singer at funerals. Josef was also an active member of the male voice choir, where he made a good contribution among the tenors. His hair and skin were curiously colourless, and his eyes were reddish, rather like two round portholes behind which a weak light can be seen glowing. His wife Sarina had been a maid out in The Dolphin, and it was generally known that she had married Josef the Lament because she had been seduced by a commercial traveller who had since disappeared abroad without trace. Meanwhile, Josef was ecstatic about his wife and daughter and slaved away to make them both content.

At the very top, in what were known as the “towers”, two small flats had also been set up. Young Kornelius, a man who made much of his independence, lived in one of them. The other tower flat was the home of Mr Mortensen, a man who had known better days, and for whom all felt sympathy, but who nevertheless was known as a sourpuss and something of a bighead. He was a widower and had a daughter who was not quite all there.

Orpheus loved to stand at his Uncle Kornelius’s tower window and look out. It was almost like flying, for not only was the Bastille a tall building, but it also stood on a promontory. From here there was a view out across the sea and of Skindholm with its winding alleyways, cramped gardens and confusion of roofs, some of which were covered with turf and populated by poultry.

Skindholm, which incidentally was no holm but a long rocky tongue of land, was the oldest district in the town. Here lived old Boman, Ole Brandy and the Crab King and many other odd characters, for instance Pontus the Rose, whose windows were painted with a profusion of roses and lilies and on whose door hung a showcase adorned with cheerful pictures of girls and ladies. Or Ura the Brink, the fortune teller, of whom all the town was secretly afraid and who couldn’t be persuaded to leave her tiny ramshackle house on Cliff Rise, even though it seemed almost to be hovering freely in the air and indeed one day did disappear into the depths. Or the three maiden ladies by the name of Schibbye, who ran the smallest fashion shop in the world and looked like three skeletons. Here, too, was the old tavern, Olsen’s Hotel, or “The Dainty Duck”, where King Frederik the Seventh had stayed as a young prince, and further out on the point was the bigger hotel “The Dolphin”, which didn’t have a good reputation either.

Out on the very southernmost tip of Skindholm stood the High Warehouse and the other ancient houses and shops from the days of the monopoly. They were now owned by Sebastian Hansen & Son and served as stores for timber, salt and coal.

In Old Bastian’s day the Bastille had been a distinguished edifice, but gradually as the town grew, Skindholm became a curiously out-dated and neglected place that respectable people moved out of. This tightly packed area was unhealthy and a fire hazard, and all the cellars were full of damp and rats. Skindholm had been left behind, and the new districts with their airy houses and gardens now constituted the real town.

The big room that had served Sundholm as a photographic studio and had a pent roof with skylights overlooking the yard, was turned into a living room by Moritz and Eliana, but the sparse furniture from the Kelp Trench scarcely filled the large room. It was resoundingly empty here, cheerless and raw, and outside there was the wintry pale inlet where the black ships lay at anchor, dismantled and agape, surrendering themselves to their hopeless rocking backwards and forwards.

But there was one good thing about the former studio: it was splendidly suited to music. Moritz was not long in discovering that, and during the winter many pieces were practised, some for the string quartet, some for strings and wind instruments, occasionally also for Boman’s choir.

The string quartet, which could also be expanded to a quintet and on a single occasion had counted no fewer than eight men (the Minuet from Schubert’s Octet), was, like the choir, Kaspar Boman’s work. At that time it consisted of Moritz, who played first violin, Sirius: second violin, Mr Mortensen: viola and Young Kornelius: cello. More often than not, the old music teacher was also there to conduct. Apart from the family, the audience usually consisted of the music-makers’ friends and acquaintances, who came and went as it suited them: Ole Brandy, the one-legged sailmaker Olivarius, Pontus the Rose, Lindenskov the dancing-master, occasionally Janniksen the blacksmith and Mac Bett the decorator, and on special occasions Count Oldendorp and Judge Pommerencke, both of whom were great music lovers.

Orfeus liked these evenings. He would sit in a corner and enjoy himself. The stove was red hot; there was a reddish glow from the big tin lamps under the ceiling; the musicians were red-faced, and the music itself acquired a roseate tone, as it were. On occasions such as these, Sundholm the photographer was as though blown completely away. Old Boman bustled about, pointing and eagerly gesticulating or else sitting in rapt attention, stroking his grey goatee beard with his small veined hands. There was sometimes a curiously happy smile on his face, and on such occasions, despite beard and wrinkles, he looked like a boy, a rather shy boy at a birthday party. There was in general something childlike about these men as they played, especially when they were well on the way in a piece and it began to move forward of its own accord. They sat there with relaxed features and eyes dreaming as they humbly listened. The stern and suspicious Mr Mortensen looked like kindness itself. Kornelius was pale and sweating with emotion, sitting there with his projecting lower lip and his wispy hair hanging down over his glasses. Sirius sat with his head on one side, fondly stroking his violin. He was actually only a moderately good violinist and often the object of irritated remarks on the part of the other musicians.

But Moritz, the leader, sat bolt upright, and the notes emerged from his instrument like happy glimpses of sunshine.

Outside could be heard the seething of the dark waters, and when you looked out you could just see the outlines of the ships rocking in the darkness. But they, too, lay in a hint of red and with expressions of longing and listening, as though yearning to be freed from the prison imposed on them by their anchor chains and to set sail for the unmatched freedom of the windswept ocean.

5

On the kind-hearted and contented composer Young Kornelius and his secret plans

Now if these music-makers whose story is to be told below had seen to their work down here on earth instead of striving to reach the heavens in that curious way of theirs, then things might perhaps have gone far better for them in this, the pettiest of all known worlds. But that was simply not to be. Each in his own way, they were possessed, just as real musicians are by their very nature.

This applied not least to Young Kornelius. He was said to be a person not to be taken too seriously, for he was always happy and in good spirits and rarely produced what in the eyes of the world was an entirely sensible remark.

The latter quality was to some extent connected with the fact that he stammered. This unfortunate stammer came over him when he became excited, and it could take over to such an extent that he had to stand completely silent and make himself understood by means of hand movements and mimicry.

In everyday life, Kornelius was a compositor on the newspaper The Messenger. It provided a small regular monthly income that was just enough to keep the wolf from the door but which offered no future prospects whatever, in addition to which it was dreary and unhealthy work. That Kornelius was nevertheless a young man with few real worries, was due partly to the music to which he dedicated himself heart and soul. But it was also thanks to his innate ability to detach himself from that oh so important but immaterial web of petty everyday activities and to lose himself in curious visions, peering into things that were veiled from him and expecting the unexpected.

“You’re a simple compositor and fiddler today, but who says you’re not going to be the very person to find the treasure? It must be buried somewhere or other out here on Skindholm if we’re to believe a persistent old legend, and he who seeks shall find. Why couldn’t this treasure be lying hidden in the old churchyard just as well as anywhere else?”

In days long gone, a certain man by the name of Sansirana or Sansarasena lived out here on Skindholm; he was a free-booter and lived the depraved and dangerous life of a great nobleman, and one day retribution came to him, too: pirates arrived, took his robber’s castle, forced their way into his houses, murdered him and his people and sailed away again with what they could lay their hands on. “But they didn’t get hold of much, for Sansarasena was a man with foresight, and he had put his money and valuables out of sight before the pirates managed to come ashore. Since then, there has been no sign of this treasure, but it is still there, wherever it may be. And one thing is certain – no one apart from you gives a thought to this treasure and no one is doing anything to find it, and if you are lucky enough to come across it, at least you won’t need to wear yourself out as a compositor on the smallest and, in many people’s opinion, most ridiculous newspaper in the world. And just think how you would be able to spread goodness and blessings around if you suddenly went and became a rich man.” Kornelius didn’t only think of his own good, he thought of his brothers as well and of lovely, hospitable Eliana and her children, and then of old Boman and the unhappy, penniless Mr Mortensen, and finally of course, Ole Brandy and other friends, not forgetting the Crab King.

In brief: it can take a man all his life to find this treasure, but if fortune favours him he can just as easily find it tomorrow as any other day, and in any case he has a chance that other mortals don’t have.

And Kornelius had made a start. From Sebastian Hansen & Son he had rented the long disused churchyard on the west side of Skindholm on the pretence that he wanted to establish a kitchen garden there. He had cleared the dense undergrowth of angelica and dock that had flourished there for centuries and collected all the mouldy old bones from the skeletons into a common grave, for which Josef the Lament had made a beautiful wooden cross with the words “Rest in Peace”. And at the same time he had secretly searched for the treasure.

It was not there. But then that was one thing he knew.

The attempt had not been completely fruitless, however. On the one hand, during his gardening he had had the idea for a string quartet in three movements and had sketched two of them in his head, an allegro ma non troppo and an andante con moto. And on the other hand the kitchen garden provided the eager treasure seeker with an extra bit of income. He put the money aside. He was saving up for diving equipment, for his next plan was to search for the treasure on the bottom of the little Commander’s Deep just off the old churchyard.

He had come to the conclusion that this was probably the very place where the treasure lay. But probability had now almost grown into certainty, thanks to Ura the Brink. For this woman was psychic. If people had lost something valuable they would secretly make their way up the Cliff Rise to see Ura, and if it suited her and the spirit was otherwise upon her, they were told where to look, and in an amazing number of cases her predictions turned out to be correct.

Meanwhile, Ura was not one of those who obliged anyone and everyone. Lots of people had gone to her in vain, and others had been given a vague hint, as though it were up to themselves to decide how to interpret it. Those bringing gifts for her were well received and she promised to do something for them. But she was otherwise an unpredictable creature, feared and hated by many, partly on account of her witchcraft and partly also because of the scandalous, sinful life she had lived in her youth.

On the day before Christmas Eve one year, Kornelius decided to visit this strange woman and present her with a well-fed, plucked duck and two red cabbages. Ura seemed to be quite overwhelmed at the sight of these things, but when she heard what it was Kornelius wanted her to do, she shook her head energetically, sniffed and looked up at the ceiling.

“No, no, a thing like that is far beyond my power,” she said. “Remember, I’m an old woman. If I’d been in my prime, it would have been another matter. But since Dr. Manicus took my spleen, it’s as if I’m finished. No, you’d better just take your wonderful gift back, Kornelius; I don’t think I can do anything for you, much as I’d like to.”

Ura started to laugh, as she often did. She produced these bursts of laughter at the most remarkable junctures, so they often had a confusing and somewhat disconcerting effect on whomever she was talking to.

“No, the duck’s yours in any case,” said Kornelius.

Ura laughed again and gave in: “Yes, well at least come inside and have a cup of coffee, Kornelius.”

Ura was quite touched, as was quite plainly to be seen in that big reddish, shiny face of hers with its high cheekbones. There wasn’t the slightest sign of grey in her black hair.

“Aye, I’d do anything for you, Kornelius,” she said sorrowfully. “You’re a wonderful person; goodness radiates from you, and I only wish I’d been able to help you to find this treasure, for you truly deserve it. But, you know, it’s a terribly difficult thing you’re asking of me.”

“Erhh, I suppose we’re alone here?” Kornelius asked cautiously. “I mean … I think … it would be best to keep that … that about … a strict secret.”

“Of course,” Ura confirmed. “And as for Kornelia over there, you’ve no need to be afraid, ’Cause she never meets anyone but me, and she’s as reliable as gold.”

Kornelius looked around in the faded little kitchen; his pince-nez had steamed up, and it was some time before he discovered Kornelia, Ura’s young great-niece, who was sitting over by the fire nursing a big black cat. He remembered immediately that the poor girl was blind, of course. Perhaps he ought to go across and say hello to her.

He went over and took her hand. Kornelia got up shyly and put the cat down. A very young girl, not bad looking, not bad looking at all. What a pity that she was so hopelessly blind. But – there was nothing strange about her eyes; they were big and open, in fact it even seemed to him that she actually met his eye, something that gave him quite a strange feeling.

“Yes, it’s one of the young men who play such lovely music,” Ura explained. And she added as though confiding in him: “Yes, because Kornelia is so terribly fond of music. You know, she nearly always stands outside listening when you are playing out there in the Bastille. The poor lamb doesn’t have much pleasure.”

Kornelia blushed and sank back on her bench. Kornelius felt dreadfully sorry for her. It gave him quite a jolt to think she was so fond of music, this blind creature with a name almost the same as his own. Stammering and fumbling for the words, he said, “Well … why don’t you come inside to us instead? Tell her she’ll be heartily welcome … and then she’d hear so much better and she could sit down in the warm instead of standing shivering outside.”

“No, you’ll never ever get her to do that,” smiled Ura, “’cause Kornelia’s terribly shy.”

She set about filtering the coffee, and Kornelius sat down at the table. While they were drinking the coffee, Ura was silent and preoccupied, though her smile never completely left her face. But suddenly she stared excitedly at him and said with an eager little smile: “One thing I can tell you, Kornelius, is that your treasure does exist, and it … it’s … it’s lying somewhere damp where lots of something or other grow.”

“Yes, seaweed,” Kornelius confirmed in delight.

A shadow crossed Ura’s face. She got up and said quickly, “It’s here, Kornelius, aye, I could almost point to it, but errhh, I can’t after all.”

“No, that’s almost enough in any case,” said Kornelius animatedly, “For I can see now that it’s in the water, isn’t it; at the bottom of the Commandant Deep. I’ve had a feeling of that all the time, and I even dreamt it one night.”

Kornelius felt a burning desire to press the old woman’s hand, but suddenly Ura got up and her eyes assumed such a sharp and evil look that he felt a cold shiver run down his spine.

The old woman stood looking out of the window. “We’re about to have an unwelcome visit,” she said.

Kornelius had also got up to look out of the window. Three elderly figures were clambering up the steep Cliff Rise. They were Ankersen the savings bank manager and Mrs Nillegaard the midwife and her husband. They all three looked very serious.