Ida Brandt (13 page)

“Yes, I have.”

The minister stood for a moment in front of the tearless face. He tried to think of a text, but failed to find one.

“Aye,” he said then, “a mother’s a mother. May God give you strength.”

Miss Sørensen showed the minister out and crossed the road to go home for a moment. She could not quite forget that episode with the myrtle: she had really only wanted, with the best of intentions, to provide some “embellishment” for the sacred act.

But it was well known that Dr. Berg was a man without much sensitivity.

All was quiet now. The only sounds were those of the clocks’ ticking and the night nurse when she moved quietly in some way.

Ida sat in the same chair while Sofie tiptoed to and fro.

“Is she asleep?” Ida whispered.

“She’s still awake.”

Again, they heard the ticking of the clocks while Sofie lit a solitary candle on which the wax curled up in the form of long threads towards the flame and then fell.

“Is she asleep?” Ida asked again.

“She’s awake.”

They could hear the laboured breathing and a voice mumbling.

“Is she saying something?” Ida asked.

She had got up. She felt hope almost like a thorn in her breast when the night nurse opened the door.

“Has she asked for me?” Ida could scarcely speak.

The night nurse shook her head.

“She is probably not going to ask for anyone any more,” she said.

“She is asleep now.”

They all three stood listening for a moment in front of the silent candle: she was asleep.

“Then I’m going in,” whispered Ida.

Carefully, she took her shoes off and crept in. She looked at her mother’s face for a moment. Then, quietly, she sat down on the floor at the end of her own bed without drawing a breath.

Mrs Brandt did not wake again. She died about midnight.

∞∞∞

It was cold and empty now. From door to door nothing but the white, dead floors. On the walls only patch after patch, above which were rusty nails.

Ida went from room to room for one last time.

“Well then, you’ll close the doors,” she said to Sofie.

Sofie stood with her hand on the latch.

“Yes,” she said, weeping so the tears streamed down her face as she spoke:

“I don’t think I’ve told you…that the upshot is we’ re going to get married…”

“Married? But he has nothing, Sofie.” (Christian from the Mill was becoming more and more hopeless, and now he was out of work all the time.)

“No,” said Sofie, still weeping. “But Hansen’s wanted this for a long time…and then he’s got his three children to look after…”

“Oh,” said Ida, who only now realised that Sofie was not talking about Christian from the Mill; Hansen was a widower; he worked at the gasworks, and he drank.

As though she understood what Ida was thinking, Sofie, continuing to sniff, said:

“And it’s not everyone who can be left to live on their own…”

Ida looked at her. She did not herself know why the tears came to her eyes.

“Then I hope it may bring you happiness,” she said.

Sofie stared ahead through her tearful eyes, and her voice sounded quite different.

“And I’ll be sure of a place to live and a bed to sleep in,” she said. “And one’s got to live.”

She was overcome with tears again, and in despair Ida put her arms around this ageing woman and she, too, wept, though she hardly knew why.

Then, slowly, Sofie closed all the doors, one by one, and left.

She slept at Miss Thøgersen’s that night.

Ida had gone to Olivia’s house and had supper there on her last evening.

Now she and Olivia were sitting on the veranda steps, looking in the dusk out towards the Sound and Boller Woods, the outline of which was dark and heavy. They had not spoken. Olivia had simply gently slipped her arm under Ida’s, and they were standing shoulder to shoulder.

Jørgensen’s rocking chair could be heard rocking up and down on the veranda…Rolf, the dog, crept down the steps and lay down at Olivia’s feet.

“So I suppose I’ll be a nurse,” said Ida.

“But why, Ida? You don’t need to.”

Ida looked out over the darkening sound, and her voice sounded very gentle:

“I suppose it’s the only thing I can do.”

Olivia made no reply, and they sat for a while in silence.

“And then I’ll be of some use to someone.”

Ida suddenly thought of Sofie and, still in the same tone, said:

“Now Sofie is going to get married.”

“To Christian?” Olivia asked, suddenly in a louder voice.

“No, to Hansen from the gasworks.”

“Oh, good Lord,” said Olivia. “Is she going to have him to fight with now?”

“Yes,” said Ida with a half smile. “I don’t think she can live without something like that.”

They fell silent again and could hear nothing but the dog’s deep breathing as it lay at their feet.

“How quiet Rolf is.”

“Yes.”

They were both whispering. Not a leaf stirred in the darkening garden.

“It’s as though everything knew you were going away.”

They sat motionless. But Olivia felt a couple of tears fall on her hand in the dark.

“Let’s go up to the children,” said Ida.

They stood for a moment more, looking out over the still garden. Then they went in.

Ida ran in first into her own room; then they crept up to the sleeping children. The lamp was burning low beneath the ceiling and the maid sat knitting in a corner.

“How sweet they are,” said Olivia.

Ida said nothing, but she lingered for a long time by each of the white beds.

“What are you doing now?” whispered Olivia.

Ida put a small sealed package down under each pillow.

“You do nothing but give things,” said Olivia.

Ida stood in front of Dumpling’s bed.

“If only I had someone to give to,” she said.

They came down into the sitting room and Olivia told Fritz about the parcels.

“I must be allowed to do that,” said Ida. “It’s my last evening.”

“Oh yes, I suppose so,” said Olivia with a laugh. “But if you fall in love one day, my dear, you’ll give him everything down to your last stitch.”

Olivia had gone up with Ida and came back to the quiet sitting room. She and Fritz sat in silence, each in their own chair, in front of the white stove.

“Oh,” said Olivia, “if only Ida could be made happy.”

Fritz sat for a time looking at the smoke from his cigar and said:

“I don’t think she ever will be.”

Olivia seemed to ponder this.

“But why?” she asked.

“Because she will never learn to seek her own happiness,” said Fritz.

“No.”

There was silence again before Olivia said in a voice that betrayed much emotion:

“Do you realise how grateful happy people should really be?”

Fritz merely nodded. But, as though the words were coming from deep down inside her, Olivia said:

“And then death comes even so.”

∞∞∞

The following afternoon, Ida left on the steamer.

Darkness was beginning to fall – the first day in Copenhagen. Ida had wandered around among unfamiliar things and had sat at table among unfamiliar people. Now she went out, across squares and along streets. She wanted to see a ship, the
Brage
, which was to sail back home again.

She walked along the quayside, where ships lay side by side. There it was, at the far end. She stood there and looked at it, the big hull and the masts and the cabin doors that were all closed. It was going home to sail the waters over there.

The windlasses were working and there were still people working in the holds. They were going to go along the shore and past the woods and all those lovely meadows.

And Karen would stand there watching for the ship and raise the ladies’ flag above the white bathing hut.

Ida stood there for a long time. She hid herself, beneath the eaves of the big warehouse.
There
, it was dark.

∞∞∞

Ida was tossing about in her bed.
One
moment, she was dreaming and the
next
she was awake.

The doors were opened and slammed. The porters were bringing patients.

Two long shouts from “the noisy ward” resounded throughout the building and then the doors closed.

Half awake, Ida heard the porters’ footsteps and the cries of the difficult patients, as though they were coming from far, far below, from deep down beneath the earth.

“Come along, Holm, get those hands of yours washed.”

The four patients in the main ward, known as the Hall, were out of bed and standing in the anteroom, each in front of a bowl of water. Josefine put the breakfast down and tapped Holm cheerfully over both his wrists so that his wrinkled hands flew down into the water.

“There,” she said, “in with your paws.”

Josefine tapped him again and stood there fresh and high-bosomed, with her hands on her hips, while Bertelsen, apathetic and silent, swilled water up around his powerful neck.

“Look happy, Bertelsen,” she said. “The sun’s shining.”

There was something fresh and full about Josefine’s voice in the mornings that seemed to be telling people that she had come from outside and that she spent her nights away from the hospital.

“Good morning, nurse.”

Josefine nodded in towards the Hall, where Ida was sitting on the sun-lit bed with one of the two old patients, and turned on her heels –Josefine wore rather higher heels in the ward than the rules allowed.

“Good morning, Josefine.”

“There,” said Ida as she dried the old man’s hands, “now you are fine, Sørensen.”

The old man smiled and nodded.

The keys rattled energetically in the doors: “Good morning, good morning, what lovely weather.” It was Nurse Kjær, smart and rosy-cheeked, who was looking in through the door to the women’s ward.

“Isn’t it lovely,” said Ida, washing down a panel that had been warmed by the sun, while Nurse Kjær hurried out through the kitchen.

“Are you up yet, Petersen?” she shouted, knocking hard on Petersen’s door.

“Ach, how schön it is over the Lakes,” said Nurse Petersen behind a locked door. Nurse Petersen did not approve of having visitors in the morning while she was taking elaborate care of her thirty-year-old body and dressing in very white and youthful underclothes.

“Speak Danish, my dear German colleague,” shouted Nurse Kjær and banged on the door again.

The keys rattled again, and she was gone.

Ida removed the bowls of water; she was busy and worked quickly to butter the bread for them all. Yes, it would be lovely along the lakes today. Her morning walk round them after night duty was the best thing she knew.

She went around, humming and chatting with each patient as she gave them their food until she quietly opened the door to Ward A, where all was still dark.

“Good morning, doctor,” she said.

Ida opened the shutters to allow the light to pour in, while the sick man lay there, silent, with his long pale hands motionless on the blanket. She saw to him and he expressed his unswerving gratitude in the same tone (he always said this in a voice as though he felt some profound sympathy with whoever he was thanking) while raising a cautious eye to watch not the sun, but her.

Ida went on cheerfully.

“I’m going to go for a walk now,” she said.

The sick man merely nodded.

“Yes,” he said. “The sun is tempting.”

Ida laughed:

“Yes, after night duty…Good morning.”

“Nurse Petersen had emerged and, washed and wearing a starched uniform, was starting her duty. Nurse Petersen looked after the ward as meticulously as the manageress in a milliner’s shop.

“I’ll be off now,” said Ida, opening the door to the corridor, where she was met by the morning air, strong and fresh, pouring in through the open window.

Ida ran up the stairs to her attic room. The rattling of her bunch of keys sounded like the ringing of a set of cheerful little bells as she ran.

Once up in her room, she opened the windows: how fresh everything was, and all the bushes in the gardens were resplendent.

She stayed at the window and suddenly she smiled. She thought of Karl von Eichbaum, who, when she met him yesterday morning, had said:

“Yes, I really think spring is coming.”

And they had both laughed, and she had told him about Mrs Franck, who in past times, around the feast of Epiphany, would open her window a little when the sun was shining and sit there with her nose in the chink and say:

“Do you know, children, I can smell spring now.”

Ida continued to smile: she had recently been thinking so often of the old days and the year, that lovely year, before mother fell ill; and all the other years seemed almost never to have existed – there was only that time, that sunny time.

It was probably also because she had met them again, almost all of the people from home at Ludvigsbakke: Miss Rosenfeld, who had looked her up, and Karl von Eichbaum, whom she came across every day in the hospital.

Ida looked up at her clock and had to hurry: it had grown so late. She dressed and ran down the stairs and through the garden, closing and locking, closing and locking. There were three maids in the laundry, all singing. When Ida emerged into the big courtyard, Dr Quam was sitting on one of the stone steps, sunning his white trousers.

“Hey, where are you off to in such a hurry?”

“I’m going for a walk.”

Without getting up, Dr Quam handed her a rose.

“Take it with you, in the sunshine,” he said, and Ida fixed it on her coat.

Dr Quam sat there and watched her. “She has a nice way of walking,” he thought as the door closed and Ida went off into the daylight.

The bells could be heard clanging on the tramcars and in the botanical gardens the huge maize tops nodded their heads. Above her, at all the open windows, maids were beating dust out into the fresh air while Ida was walking. How energetically they were beating the rugs, and
there
were two who were talking to each other over the street. Faces and people and every single tree, all so dazzlingly clear on such a morning, as though one’s eyes became new.