LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

a good sort.”

      I smile sadly. A few minutes later Terje starts to snore. It’s a familiar sound. I don’t like to admit it, but I’m fond of the sound. Terje’s snoring makes me feel calm. I don’t know why.

      I PUT THE box of herbs away and take out my diary. Writing is my solace. When I write, I have control over the world. Then all that exists are the letters of the words and myself. Then I can speak the truth about human beings. I can study those peculiar creatures as if I were a mathematicus. And that’s a necessity, because they would never dream of doing it themselves.

      I learned to read and write at an early age.

      My father brought in a castigator when I was eight years old. He was an elderly man with bloodshot eyes. Like all castigators, he was more interested in chastising than in teaching. I had my lessons at the parsonage, in a dank little room where I was supposed to stay so as not to frighten the parishioners. Slowly I began to catch on. I was taught the Bible and Luther’s catechism. It was tedious reading, but the words fascinated me; they were like building blocks. Words could become sentences, sentences became pages, and pages became gospels. When I write in my diary it’s my spirit that hovers above the waters. Then I’m the one who gives names to the world. Then I’m the one who becomes Our Lord.

      I cast another glance at Terje and take off my homespun jacket. It’s much too hot in the cellar. There are bugs everywhere, laying eggs in our hair and in the goat milk. I have always preferred winter. It’s less filthy, more callous.

      I decide to lie down in the straw for a moment.

      My body aches all over—in the bones, in the joints, and in my crooked legs.

      I close my eyes and say a prayer. It’s a prayer that I’ve often repeated.

      The next morning Terje is dead.

      A SPIDER’S WEB of slime fills the Scoundrel’s throat. His mouth with the three teeth gapes open all the way down to his guts. His lips are blackish blue.

      I study him with curiosity. Terje’s gaze is fixed on eternal heavens. The Devil, not God, has come to get his soul, because the Scoundrel belongs to the Evil One. It’s in Hell that a man will quench his thirst. It’s in Hell that he meets buxom gypsy women and enjoys the most fiery liquors. Hell can only be a solace after Bremerholmen and consumption.

      I try to roll Terje onto his side, but he’s too heavy. So I stick a hand under his body, down into the straw, down to the mice and the rats and the vermin. And there, as I thought, I find a little leather pouch. It contains no less than twelve gold rigsdaler. A fortune to me.

      I give the Scoundrel a reproachful look and try to close his mouth, but it keeps falling open. As if Terje is trying to say something, as if there’s a drinking song that he wants to sing before he loses his audience. Or maybe it’s just something that he wants to complain about—the way everyone complains in this rathole called Copenhagen.

      I shove an angry hand under Terje’s jaw.

      Suddenly something gives way. I let loose a sob. No more than one protracted howl, before I pull myself together again.

      I look around the cellar. Soon I have to go up to the castle, but first I need to find the night-soil man so that he can come and get Terje. It usually costs three skillings, unless the body is especially heavy.

      The cellar has changed. You would think that something had been removed, but instead something has been added.

      When I step out into the street, I sense that Terje is going with me, that he’s lurking near my left shoulder, and that he’s looking at the world with a more blissful form of disgust.

4.

      I MET MY SCOUNDREL WHEN HE WAS WORKING AT TORVET, the marketplace square, with the executioner. He had just started as the executioner’s assistant and was carrying out his work with great zeal. There was plenty of variety for a restless soul like his. Some of the poor wretches were beaten with the bat; others were flayed or broken alive on the wheel. It was hard work, but well-paid. A branding paid four rigsdaler, decapitation by sword brought ten daler, breaking on the wheel paid twelve, while drawing and quartering on the post and wheel paid no less than fourteen rigsdaler. A man could live well on wages like that.

      I couldn’t stand Terje’s occupation. The performances at Torvet were sheer barbarism, but as any knave knows, people must have their entertainment. Even the respectable townswomen turn up when the body of some poor wretch is put on the post and wheel. And when the executioner holds up the severed head, they cheer along with the most bloodthirsty rogues.

      I don’t know what’s wrong with goodfolk. Do their own lives have meaning only if other people suffer? Is that what it means to be a human being on this earth? I find all forms of bloodletting abominable. Nothing in my soul wishes to watch the dismemberment of poor folk.

      I should say that Terje was not a bad scoundrel. He took no joy in the suffering of others. Beneath his hard surface was a sensitive scoundrel, but you had to know him well to realize that.

      One day Terje had finally had enough of his work at Torvet. It started one November night when things began to haunt him. A pauper appeared before him and began zealously pursuing him—not just at night but also in the daytime. More of the executed appeared, all of them threatening the torments of Hell. The apparitions showed him their split-open skulls, they pointed to their broken wrists and crushed hips.

      I tried to help the Scoundrel as best I could. I brewed elixirs and whispered incantations, but I was up against forces that I couldn’t control.

      One fine day in January a shadow settled over Terje. It crept inside of him at night, and from that moment on he suffered from consumption. And something else took hold—something that grew even bigger with his visits to the taverns. The Scoundrel turned into a real scoundrel. The goodness was sucked out of him until only a hull remained—the hull of a person who was barely even alive.

      I turn around one last time in Vintapperstræde. I suddenly know that I’m not coming back, and that I’ll never see this pit again. The realization fills me with incomparable elation—and fear.

      I walk along my street, heading for the castle, wearing a hat, a homespun jacket, and short men’s trousers. The farther I get from home, the more people stare. I always make my face into a mask—a mask to show the goodfolk that I’m anything but adorable and that I don’t want to be picked up and shown around. That I would prefer to be keelhauled than to be chucked under the chin. That I refuse to hide under bureaus because children find it so charming. I can’t abide toddlers. The only thing we have in common is our small size. That’s the mask that I wear. It’s my salvation.

      I turn another corner. Two calves peer at me from their stall. The street is littered with piss and paper. Mostly piss.

      “A little turd,” shouts a shopkeeper. “Look at the little turd.”

      I swing my cane and manage to avoid slipping. Who knows what the day will bring. Nothing good. That much I do know.

5.

      I’M BEING ESCORTED THROUGH THE NARROW, CLAUSTROPHOBIC passages inside Copenhagen Castle, up and down stairs that put a strain on my deformed limbs. The passages are lit by meager wax candles that go out at the slightest provocation. The candles have been stuck in holders along discolored walls. Here only servants are admitted. No member of the royal court would dream of frequenting this desolate part of the castle, where the inhabitants are sweaty and where knives sit loosely in the sleeves of toadies and flunkies.

      We pass footmen, master cooks, carpenters, and chamberlains—all of them with faces rigid with importance. Most of the court puppets cast sidelong glances at me and smirk. Afterward they rush onward with their tankards, documents, and ivory trays.

      The footman accompanying me is the

Скачать книгу