As Trains Pass By Read online

  The train left. The young guard continued to lean out and nod.

  Katinka waved her blue shawl. Suddenly, all the people going on holiday waved and nodded back at her from the carriage windows, all laughing and enjoying themselves.

  Katinka shouted and waved her blue shawl, and they waved back from the train as long as they could be seen.

  Huus went home after tea. He was to come to the station at six o’clock the following morning.

  Katinka stood in the garden behind the hedge and sang out:

  “Cricket, oh cricket, now bring us good weather.”

  The scent of the trees in the grove descended on her. She stood there, smiling and staring up into the blue air.

  “Curious how blue suits the little lady,” thought the railway guard with the tight, revealing trousers. He was always on the lookout for anything interesting along this stretch of the track.

  “We must get up at five o’clock,” said Bai in the direction of the kitchen.

  “Yes, all right, Bai, I’m coming.” Katinka scraped a bit of black away from the pound cake. “We have to get everything ready, you know.”

  She wrapped the pound cake up and examined the basket one last time. She opened the door to the courtyard and stood there looking out. The only sound was that of the pigeons cooing up there.

  The last pale traces of red were disappearing in the west. The stream wound its way and disappeared among the steaming meadows.

  How she loved that spot.

  She closed the door and went inside.

  Bai had put his watch down near the lighted lamp by the bed. He wanted to check when she had finished fiddling about.

  But he had fallen asleep and lay there sweating and breathing heavily through his nose in the light from the lamp.

  Katinka quietly put it out. She undressed in the dark.

  Katinka was in the garden when the carriage arrived. Her blue dress could be recognised all the way from the turning.

  “Good morning, good morning, you are bringing a fine day with you.”

  She ran out onto the platform. “He’s here,” she shouted.

  “The hampers, Marie.”

  Bai stood in his shirt sleeves at the bedroom window. “Morning, Huus. Looks as though we’re going to get sunstroke, doesn’t it.”

  “Oh, there’s a bit of a breeze, you know” said Huus, alighting from the carriage.

  They managed to secure the baskets and had coffee out on the platform. Wee Bentzen was so sleepy that Bai made him run up and down the platform three times to wake him up.

  Katinka promised to bring some cake back for him, and they climbed into the carriage. Bai wanted to be in charge of the horses and sat on the front seat together with Marie, whose dress was so starched that it crackled at the slightest movement.

  Katinka looked like a young girl in her big white sunhat.

  “They will be sending food from the inn for you,” Katinka said to Wee Bentzen .

  “Well we’d better be off now, then,” said Bai. Wee Bentzen ran into the garden and waved eagerly.

  They drove some way along a narrow road through the meadows. It was still quite cool, with a good-natured summer breeze; the clover and the damp grass filled the air with perfume.

  “It is so lovely and fresh,” said Katinka.

  “Yes, a wonderful morning,” said Huus.

  “Lovely fresh air.” Bai gently tapped the horses.

  They drove along the avenue past Kiær’s land. The cattleman’s hut was out there on its wheels surrounded by the cattle. A dog barked from far away as it rounded up some cattle; the great cows raised their thick necks and lowed, lazy and replete.

  Katinka looked out across the green meadow with its scattered, shiny cattle, all illumined by the sun.

  “It’s so lovely,” she said.

  “Yes, isn’t it,” said Huus turning his head towards her. “It’s beautiful.”

  They started to talk. They saw the same things and took pleasure in the same things. The same things always caught their attention. And then either he or Katinka would nod.

  Bai talked to the horses like an old cavalryman.

  No more than an hour had passed before he started to talk of “having a bite”.

  “Early mornings make their demands on you, Tik,” he said. “You need something to keep you going, damn it.”

  Katinka really could not unpack now. And where were they going to find a place to sit in any case?

  But Bai did not give up, and they came to a standstill by a field where the rye had been stacked.

  They took one of the hampers from the carriage and sat down on a stack close to the roadside.

  Bai ate as though he had not seen food for a week.

  “Cheers, Huus,” he said. “Good company.”

  They chatted and passed the jars around and ate.

  “This does you good, you know, Tik,” said Bai.

  People passed by and glanced at them.

  “Enjoy your breakfast,” they said and walked on.

  “Cheers, Huus. Here’s to a good day.”

  “Thank you, Mrs Bai.”

  “That bucked us up,” said Bai. They were in the carriage again. “But it’s going to be a hot one today, isn’t it Marie?”

  “Yes,” said Marie, glistening with perspiration. “It’s pretty warm.”

  “We’ll soon be getting to the woods,” said Huus.

  They drove on. The edge of the woods was over there, bluish in the heat.

  “Don’t the fir trees smell wonderful?” said Katinka.

  They reached the edge of the woods, and densely packed fir trees threw shadows over much of the road ahead. They all breathed a sigh of relief, but they did not speak as they drove slowly through the forest. The fir trees stood in long, straight rows away from the road and disappeared into the gloom of the forest. And there were no birds, no singing, no noise.

  Only great clouds of insects could be seen rising from the fir trees up into the light.

  They emerged from the woods again.

  “Pretty solemn in there, isn’t it,” said Bai, breaking the silence.

  They reached the beech forest towards midday and went into the forester’s house.

  Bai said, “It’s good to get a bit of exercise. One has to stretch one’s legs, Huus.” And he immediately went and sat down beneath a tree to have a snooze.

  Huus helped with the unpacking. “You have such good fingers, Huus,” said Katinka. Marie went backwards and forwards, warming the pots in hot water in the kitchen.

  “My mother-in-law always said that,” said Huus.

  “Mother-in-law?”

  “Yes,” said Huus. “My fiancée’s mother.”

  Katinka said nothing. Knives and forks rattled out of the paper she was holding.

  “Yes,” said Huus, “I’ve never talked about it. I was engaged once.”

  “Oh? I didn’t know.”

  Katinka arranged the knives. Marie returned.

  “We could go down to the pond,” said Huus.

  “Yes, if Marie will call us.” They went down the path into the woods. The pond was a small marsh lake a little way into the wood. The trees stretched their great tops out over the dark water.

  They had not spoken on the way there. Now they sat beside each other on a bench by the lake.

  “No,” said Huus. “I’ve never talked about it.”

  Katinka looked out across the water in silence.

  “It was my mother,” he said, “who so much wanted it. For the sake of the future.”

  “Oh,” said Katinka.

  “And so it went on for a whole year until she broke it off.”

  Huus spoke jerkily, with long pauses, as though ashamed or angry.

  “That’s what engagements and marriages are like,” he said again.

  A bird started warbling over there in the forest. Katinka heard every note in the silence.

  “And I suppose I was a coward as well and went on with it,” said Huus ag
ain. “Stuck there really and truly like a coward. Day after day. I stayed with it,” he spoke quietly, “until she broke it off. Because she was fond of me.”

  Katinka placed her hand in a gentle caress down on his, which he was pressing hard on the bench.

  “Poor Huus,” was all she said.

  And she sat patting his hand, gently and soothingly: that poor man, how he had suffered.

  They sat like that, close to each other. The midday heat descended on the waters of the tiny lake. Clouds of midges and flies filled the air with their buzzing.

  They spoke no more. Marie’s shouting roused them.

  “They are calling us,” said Katinka.

  They rose and silently went along the path.

  They were all rather merry at table. Finally they had some old Aalborg port wine with the pound cake.

  Bai sat in his shirt sleeves, every other minute saying, “Aye, children, our green Danish forest is a damned nice place to be in.”

  He was overcome by an attack of tenderness and wanted Katinka to sit on his knee. She tore herself away. ‘What are you thinking of, Bai,” she said. She had turned pale and blushed at the same time.

  “I suppose she’s shy in front of strangers,” said Bai.

  All had gone quiet. Katinka started to pack the baskets and Huus rose.

  “Aye,” said Bai. “What about a bit of a walk to let the lunch go down?” He put on his coat. “It’s good for the digestion, you know.”

  “Yes,” said Katinka. “You could go for a walk while I pack up.”

  Huus and Bai strolled down the road, Bai walking with his hat in his hand, feeling warm from the heat and the old port.

  “There you are, Huus; that’s marriage for you, my lad,” he said. “That’s what it’s like and it’s never any different.”

  “It’s no damned good. Everything they write about and everything you sit and mop up in your weeklies about marriage and chastity and all that. And faithfulness and the ‘needs’ they pontificate about, just like old Linde and his Lord’s Prayer. They put it all fine and it sounds so good, and it gives people something to write about. But you see it doesn’t really get down to things, Huus.”

  He stopped and waved his straw hat in front of Huus.

  “Well, you saw now. I have needs but Katinka won’t… A lovely summer’s day when you’ve had a good meal out in the country and yet even so, she wouldn’t even give me a kiss. That’s what women are like. You can never reckon with them. They’re like that at times, you see, Huus.”

  “Between ourselves,” Bai shook his head. “It’s damned difficult for a man in the prime of life.”

  Huus hit out at some nettles with his walking stick. He swung it with such force that they went down as though they had been mown.

  “Aye, that’s what it’s like,” said Bai, walking along and looking dubious, “but they don’t say anything about that in the weeklies. But as one grown man to another, we know where the shoe pinches.”

  They heard Katinka call out behind them, and Huus replied with a shout that echoed right through the forest.

  Katinka had recovered her spirits. It would be a good idea for them to have a nap under the trees now, she said. She knew of a spot, a lovely spot beneath an oak tree. And she went ahead of them to find it.

  Huus followed. He made a sound like a cuckoo in the direction of the trees. Bai heard him laughing and yodelling.

  “Aye,” he said, “he can laugh all right. He’s free of all this.”

  It was not long before Bai was asleep beneath the great oak tree with his nose in the air and his hat lying on his stomach.

  “You must have a sleep now, Huus,” said Katinka.

  “Ye-es” said Huus. They were sitting each on their own side of the oak trunk.

  Katinka had taken her straw hat off and leant her head against the tree. She sat looking up into the oak. Right up there at the top, the sunbeams were like drops of shining gold in the greenery, and the birds were singing in the undergrowth.

  “It’s so lovely here,” she whispered, bending her head forward.

  “Yes, it’s lovely,” whispered Huus. He sat with his arms round his knees, staring up into the treetop.

  It was so quiet. They could both hear Bai’s breathing; they watched an insect buzzing its way up into the green treetop and the birds that were chirping both so close to them and yet so far away.

  “Are you asleep?” Katinka whispered.

  “Yes,” said Huus.

  They sat again for a while. Huus listened, rose quietly and moved forward. Yes, she was asleep. She looked like a child, with her head on one side and her mouth slightly open as though smiling in her sleep.

  Huus stood looking at her for a long time. Then he quietly returned to his place, and happily, with his eyes trained on the top of the oak tree, he listened to her sleeping.

  When Marie woke them with some robust shouts of “hello”, summoning them to coffee, Bai had slept off his irritation along with the old port wine.

  “A cognac does you good out in the open,” he said. “A nice little cognac in the open air.”

  Bai was again able to manage a piece of pound cake with the cognac. Bai was a man able to consume vast quantities.

  “Lovely cake,” he said.

  “It’s Huus’ cake,” said Katinka.

  “Oh well,” said Bai. “Provided the rest of us are allowed to eat it.”

  After coffee, they drove on. Bai was tired of holding the reins and he took Huus’ place on the back seat with Katinka. They were all a little lethargic. The hot summer sun was blazing down on them and the road was dusty. Katinka sat looking at the back of Huus’ head, his broad neck well browned by the sun.

  The hotel courtyard was tightly packed with carriages that had been left there. Women and girls who had just descended from the wagon seats were shaking their skirts and smoothing them down. All the windows in the basement were open; a plentiful supply of hot punch was being passed among the card players. A falsetto with piano was busy playing a popular song in the main wing behind rolled blinds.

  “That’s one of Agnes’s songs,” said Katinka.

  “It’s the Nightingales,” said Bai. “We’ll have to go in and hear them chirp this evening.”

  Katinka kept close to the main wing as they walked. But there was nothing to be seen.

  “No peeping,” said Bai. “Pay at the entrance.”

  Inside, behind the curtains, a screechy woman’s voice started imploring “O Charles, my dear”.

  “Oh Charles, my dear,

  Please write to me…”

  “Oh,” said Katinka, standing by the window and nodding. “That’s the one Agnes sings.”

  “That’s where you always wrote…”

  “Come on, Tik,” said Bai. “Just you go with Huus. I’ll barge a way through if there’s a crowd.”

  “But the first verse is the only one we know by heart,” said Katinka, listening as she took Huus’ arm.

  “That’s where you always wrote…”

  implored the screeching voice.

  “The other songs all say more or less the same,” said Huus.

  “Are you coming?” shouted Bai.

  Outside the entrance a gangling woman was singing about the mass murderer Thomas, beating his likeness with a cane. The audience stood there sheepishly, repeating the refrain lingeringly just like singing the amen in church.

  Long rows of wooden-faced girls walked arm in arm, waiting to be picked out by the boys standing in groups in front of the tents, smoking pipes and with hands buried deep in trouser pockets.

  One lad stepped forward.

  “Hello, Mary,” he said. And Mary reached him the tip of her fingers. “Hello, Søren,” she said. And the entire line of girls stopped and waited.

  Søren stood in front of Mary for a moment, looking first at his pipe and then at his boots. “Goodbye, Mary,” he said.

  “Goodbye, Søren.”

  And Søren rejoined his group, and th
e row of girls closed again, and they continued with their mouths primly closed.

  “Damn stupid way of carrying on,” said Bai, “blocking the street.”

  The married women gathered in groups, standing there looking each other up and down with melancholy mien as though waiting for a corpse. When they spoke, they whispered so it was difficult to hear them, as though they could not really open their mouths properly, and when they had said a couple of words, they stood there again in silence and looked quietly offended.

  It was impossible to make any progress. “I’ll use my elbows,” said Katinka. She was constantly being pushed in against Huus.

  “Just keep close to me,” said Huus.

  It was impossible to hear anything with the gangling female singing about the mass murderer and a couple of barrel organs that forlornly mingled General Bertrand’s song of departure with the Ajaxes’ duet. The grammar school pupils weaved their ways in and out, whistling through their fingers, and lethargic village kids blew up balloons and made them screech while gazing in the air with immovable expressions on their faces.

  The sun shone straight down on the street, baking both people and honey cakes.

  “Ugh, it’s hot,” said Katinka.

  “This is where we can get waffles,” shouted Bai.

  “Waffles, ladies, waffles, made by Tyrolese Ferdinand’s brown-eyed daughter.”

  “Waffles, Huus, waffles,” said Katinka, forcing her way through a wall of girls who were blocking the street.

  The girls squealed. Ooh, the boys from the grammar school had sewn their skirts together.

  “It’s all those grammar school lads,” shouted a couple of louts from the council school. They were pinning them with safety pins.

  The girls gathered in a group to undo themselves. “Ooh,” they howled. “Ooh.” The boys from the grammar school saw their chance and broke in like lightning to pinch their legs.

  “Ooh.” They howled at the top of their voices. Katinka shouted along with them out of sheer giddiness.

  “Waffles, ladies, made by Tyrolese Ferdinand’s brown-eyed daughter.”

  They went over to the oven: “Three waffles, sir, Dutch ones, fifteen øre.”