As Trains Pass By Read online

  This book is dedicated to the memory of W. Glyn Jones who died shortly after completing this translation.

  He was a fine translator and a passionate advocate for Danish Literature.

  The Author

  Herman Bang (1857–1912) was from an aristocratic Danish family. His homosexuality led to a smear campaign against him and his exclusion from Danish literary circles. He worked as a theatre producer and as a journalist, having first tried unsuccessfully to be an actor.

  His first novel Families Without Hope was banned for obscenity. He specialised in novels about isolated female characters, including Ida Brandt and As Trains Pass By (Katinka).

  The Translator

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

  Contents

  Title

  Dedication

  The Author

  The Translator

  From Herman Bang’s Own Introduction:

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  VI

  VII

  Copyright

  From Herman Bang’s

  own introduction:

  It was a couple of years ago in the north of Jutland. I had been giving a reading the previous evening in a town up there and this evening I was to give one in another town. I was tired; the train was moving slowly, as our expresses do, and there was no end to the journey.

  Now we had stopped again. We came to a halt every five minutes.

  I rose in my seat to see how many miles we still had to go, when my eye wandered from the sign beneath the station roof and fell on one of the green-framed windows.

  This window was crammed with an abundance of rare flowers: palms and flowering cacti. And from among these flowers – its chin resting on two slender, white hands – a pale face was staring out at the train with the large, shiny eyes of a sick person. This young woman made no move. Quietly, with her head resting on her hands, she simply stared out at the line as long as I could see her.

  Throughout my journey after that I saw this woman’s face in the midst of her flowers. Her gaze scarcely suggested longing – longing had perhaps fluttered its wings until it died by beating them against those constricting walls – but merely quiet resignation, silent sorrow.

  And when the train had glided past, she would once more stare out in the same position and with the same look, across the heather-covered landscape, out across the wide and monotonous countryside.

  I

  The stationmaster put on his uniform coat to be ready for the train.

  “There’s no damn time for anything,” he said, stretching his arms. He had been dozing over the accounts.

  He lit a cigar stub and went out onto the platform. Now, as he walked up and down, erect in his uniform and with his hands in both his jacket pockets, there was still something of the lieutenant about him. And it could be seen in his legs, too, which were still bent in the way they had been in the cavalry.

  Five or six farm lads had arrived and were standing (legs akimbo) in a group opposite the station building; the station porter dragged the freight out, a single green-painted chest that looked as though it had been dropped by the side of the road.

  The parson’s daughter, tall as an officer in the guards, flung the platform gate open and entered.

  The stationmaster clicked his heels and saluted.

  “And what does madam intend to do today?” he said. When he was “on the platform”, the stationmaster conversed in the tone he used to employ in the club balls at Næstved in his old cavalry days.

  “Walk,” said the parson’s daughter. She made some curious flapping gestures as she spoke, as though she intended to hit whoever she was addressing.

  “By the way, Miss Abel is coming home.”

  “Already – from town?”

  “Ye-es.”

  “Nothing in the offing yet?” The stationmaster extended the fingers on his right hand in the air, and the parson’s daughter laughed.

  “Here come the family,” she said. “I made my excuses and ran away from them…”

  The stationmaster paid his respects to the Abel family, the widowed Mrs Abel and her elder daughter Louise. They were accompanied by Miss Jensen. Mrs Abel looked resigned.

  “Yes,” she said, “I have come to meet my younger daughter Ida.”

  Mrs Abel took it in turns to fetch her Louise and her younger daughter Ida. Louise in the spring and her younger daughter Ida in the autumn.

  They each spent six weeks with an aunt in Copenhagen. “My sister, the one who was married to a State Councillor,” said Mrs Abel. The State Councillor’s widow resided in a fourth floor apartment and made a living by decorating terracotta ornaments with paintings of storks standing on one leg. Mrs Abel always dispatched her daughters with many good wishes.

  She had now been dispatching them for ten years.

  “And such letters we have received from my younger daughter this time.”

  “Aye, those letters,” said Miss Jensen.

  “But it is better to have your chicks at home,” said Mrs Abel, looking tenderly at Louise. Mrs Abel had to dry her eyes at the thought.

  The six months they were at home, Mrs Abel’s chicks spent quarrelling and sewing fresh trimmings on old dresses. They never spoke to their mother.

  “How could one possibly live in an out-of-the-way place like this if one did not have a family life?” said the widow.

  Miss Jensen nodded.

  There came the sound of barking from the corner over by the inn, and a coach appeared.

  “That’s the Kiærs,” said the parson’s daughter. “What can they want?”

  She went across the platform to the gate.

  “Aye,” Kiær, the gentleman farmer, got out of his carriage. “You might well ask. Now Madsen’s gone and caught typhoid just at the worst possible time, so I’ve had to wire for a replacement and God knows what kind of rubbish I’m going to get. He’s due here now.”

  Mr Kiær came onto the platform.

  “He’s been to the Royal College of Agriculture, if that means anything, and he got top marks there as well. Oh, good morning, Bai.” The station master was allowed to shake hands. “You look a bit bleary-eyed. How’s the wife?”

  “Fine, thank you. So you’re here to fetch a new bailiff.”

  “Aye, dreadful story, and just at the worst possible time.”

  “Oh a new man in the district,” says the parson’s daughter waving her arms about as though she was already giving him a box on the ears. “With Wee Bentzen the porter that means six and a half.”

  The widow was suddenly all of a flutter. She had said it at home: her elder daughter Louise was not to go out wearing those prunella boots.

  Her feet were the source of her elder daughter Louise’s beauty: slender, aristocratic feet.

  And she had
told her.

  Miss Louise was in the waiting room adjusting her veil. The young Abels went in for low-cut dresses with ruffs, jet beads and veils.

  Bai went indoors to the kitchen to tell his wife about the bailiff. The parson’s daughter sat swinging her legs on the green-painted chest. She took out her watch and checked the time. “Good heavens, that man’s certainly making us wait,” she said.

  Miss Jensen said, “Yes, the train seems to be an appreciable number of minutes late.” Miss Jensen spoke indescribably correctly, especially when talking to the parson’s daughter.

  She did not approve of the parson’s daughter.

  “That is not the tone to be used by my pupils,” she said to the widow. Miss Jensen was not entirely sure in her use of foreign words.

  “But there we have our lovely lady.” The parson’s daughter bounced up from the chest and rushed across the platform towards Mrs Bai, who had appeared on the stone steps. When the parson’s daughter gave someone a hearty greeting, it looked as though she was about to commit a violent assault.

  Mrs Bai smiled quietly and allowed herself to be kissed.

  “Heaven help us,” said the parson’s daughter, “we’re unexpectedly going to have a new cock on the midden. Here he comes!”

  They heard the sound of the train in the distance and the loud clattering as it crossed the bridge over the river. Swaying and puffing, it made its slow approach across the meadow.

  The parson’s daughter remained on the steps, holding Mrs Bai around the waist.

  “That’s Ida Abel,” said the parson’s daughter. “I know her by her veil.” A Bordeaux-coloured veil emerged from a window.

  The train stopped, and doors were opened and closed. Mrs Abel shouted her “Hello” in such a loud voice that the occupants of all the nearby compartments came to the windows.

  The younger daughter Ida squeezed her mother’s arm angrily; she was still standing on the step:

  “There’s a gentleman on the train – coming here.”

  “Who is he?” Everything was going nineteen to the dozen.

  Ida was down on the platform. There was the gentleman, a very staid-looking, fair-haired gentleman with a beard who was taking a hat box and cases out of a smoking compartment.

  “And Auntie, Auntie Mi,” shouted the widow.

  “Shush,” said her younger daughter Ida in a quiet but irate voice. “Where’s Louise?”

  Louise turned and sprang like a child up the stone steps in front of Mrs Bai and the parson’s daughter, as though her “beauty” resided in her button boots.

  At the bottom of the steps, the bailiff made himself known to Mr Kiær.

  “Aye, the devil of a story. There’s Madsen in bed, at the very worst time. Ah well, we’ll hope for the best.” Mr Kiær slapped the new bailiff on the shoulder.

  “Heaven preserve us,” said the parson’s daughter. “A very ordinary domestic animal.”

  The green-painted box was in the train and the cans for the cooperative dairy had been hoisted onto the goods wagon. The train was just starting to move when a farmer shouted out of a window: he had no ticket.

  The guard, a smart young man as straight as a hussar briefly touched hands with Bai and jumped up onto the running board.

  The farmer continued to shout and argue with the guard, who was still hanging on to the running board.

  And for a moment all faces on the platform turned towards the train as it rumbled away.

  “Hmm, and that was that,” said the parson’s daughter. She went into the entrance hall with Mrs Bai.

  “My bailiff, Mr. Huus,” said Mr Kiær in the direction of Bai as he was about to walk past. The three stood there for a moment.

  Louise and young Ida finally found each other and started kissing madly in the doorway.

  “Oh, good heavens,” said the widow, “they haven’t seen each other for six weeks.”

  “You are fortunate, Mr Huus,” said Bai in his club-ball voice. “You can make the acquaintance of the ladies of this place without further ado. Ladies, may I introduce you?”

  The Misses Abel interrupted their kissing as though on command.

  “The Misses Abel,” said Mr Bai. “Mr Huus.”

  “Yes, I have just come to meet my younger daughter – from Copenhagen,” said the widow out of the blue.

  “Mrs Abel,” said Mr Bai.

  Mr Huus bowed.

  “Miss Linde” (This was the parson’s daughter.) “Mr Huus.”

  The parson’s daughter inclined her head.

  “And my wife,” said Bai.

  Mr Huus said a few words, and then they all went in to fetch their luggage.

  Farmer Kiær drove off with the bailiff. The others walked. When they reached the road, they discovered they had forgotten Miss Jensen.

  She still stood on the platform, dreaming away, leaning against a signal post.

  “Miss Jensen,” the parson’s daughter yelled from the road.

  Miss Jensen started. Miss Jensen always came over melancholy when she saw a railway. She could not abide to see “anything leaving”.

  “Seems to be a really nice person,” said Mrs Abel as they walked along the road.

  “Very ordinary bailiff,” said the parson’s daughter; she was walking arm in arm with Mrs Bai. “He had nice hands.”

  The two chicks tailed along at the end of the group, bickering.

  “I must say, Miss Jensen, you are in a hurry,” said the parson’s daughter. Miss Jensen was far ahead of them, jumping the puddles like a goat. She was making a considerable show of her maidenly legs on account of the autumnal humidity.

  They walked by the tiny woodland. At the turn of the road, Mrs Bai said goodbye.

  “Oh, you look so tiny and natty in that big shawl. What a lovely lady!” said the parson’s daughter, reaching out as though to embrace her.

  “Goodbye.”

  “Goo-oo-d bye”

  “She’ll never be out of breath with the amount she says,” said young Ida.

  The parson’s daughter whistled.

  “Oh, there’s the curate,” said Mrs Abel. “Good evening, curate. Good evening.”

  The curate raised his hat. “I had to say good evening to Ida as she returned home,” he said.

  “Well, Miss Abel. Are you in good health?”

  “Yes, thank you,” said Miss Abel.

  “And you have received a competitor, curate,” said Mrs Abel.

  “Oh? Where?”

  “Kiær was fetching his new bailiff. A very attractive person. Wasn’t he, Miss Linde?”

  “Oh yes.”

  “First rate, Miss Linde?”

  “Top hole,” said the parson’s daughter.

  The parson’s daughter and the curate always spoke in a kind of jargon when they were together with others, and they never uttered a word of sense. They laughed at their own foolishness until they were almost fit to burst.

  The parson’s daughter no longer went to church when the curate was preaching since one Sunday when she had almost made him laugh as he was standing in the pulpit reciting the Lord’s Prayer.

  “Miss Jensen rushed off as though she had rockets in a certain part of her anatomy,” said the curate.

  Miss Jensen was still ahead of them.

  “Oh, Andersen,” Miss Linde laughed heartily, “now you sound like Holberg.”

  They reached the parsonage, which was the first house in the village, and the parson’s daughter and the curate took leave of the others at the garden gate.

  “Goodbye, Miss Jensen,” shouted Miss Linde down the road. Miss Jensen answered her with a squeak.

  “What was he like?” said the curate when in the garden. His tone was quite different now.

  “Oh, good heavens,” said Miss Linde, “a very ordinary farmer.”

  Silently, they walked side by side down through the garden.

  “Hmm,” said Miss Ida. The Abel family caught up with Miss Jensen, who was standing waiting for them on some dry ground, “I
am sure he had come to say good morning to me.”

  They walked on a little. Then Miss Jensen said:

  “There are so many different kinds of people.”

  “Yes,” said Mrs Abel.

  “I am not happy when I am together with that family,” said Miss Jensen. “I prefer to avoid them.”

  Miss Jensen had “avoided them” for a week since the vicar had said all those things.

  “Mrs Abel,” said Miss Jensen, “who pays any heed to an unmarried lady? I said so to the vicar: ‘Vicar,’ I said, ‘you are interested in the Free School, so parents send their children to the Free School.’ And what was his answer to me, Mrs Abel? ‘I will not discuss the question of scholarships with Mr Linde any more. The parish council has removed half the scholarship money from my institute (Miss Jensen put the stress on the final syllable), but I will continue to do my duty even if they take the other half as well. I will not discuss the scholarship question with Mr Linde any further.’ ”

  The three ladies turned into the little road leading up to the “hall”, an old building with two wings.

  Mrs Abel lived in the wing on the right, and Miss Jensen’s institute was in that on the left.

  “How nice to have them both with me again,” said the widow. They took leave of each other in the courtyard.

  “Ugh,” said young Ida once they were inside the door, “you two looked such a mess at the station, I was ashamed of you.”

  “I wonder how you expect me to look,” said Louise as she took off her veil before the looking glass, “when you have all the clothes.”

  The widow put on some slippers. The soles of her boots were worn out.

  Miss Jensen finally extracted the key from her pocket and let herself in. In the sitting room, the pug gave a couple of irritated yelps at its mistress and remained in its basket.

  Miss Jensen took off her outdoor clothes and sat down in a corner and wept.

  She wept every time she was alone since Mr Linde had said those words.

  “You are interested in the school, vicar,” she had said, “and so the parents send their children to the Free School.”