Authors: Herman Bang
But Ida continued to laugh, so very quietly.
Nurse Friis had also arrived and asked Nurse Kjær in passing what she was going to wear for Nurse Helgesen’s birthday.
Ida looked up suddenly and a great smile gradually spread over her face:
“I’m going in a yellow dress,” she said.
It came suddenly, so bright and so loud, that Nurse Kaas paused.
She had just repeated that they must assert themselves as a professional group.
Ida went upstairs.
The patients had settled down; only the doctor in Ward A was on duty, standing in front of the open window and staring out into the evening. Ida was looking in when the keys rattled. It was Quam, and he took up his usual position on the table.
“Do you think he’s mad?” he said nodding in the direction of Ward A.
Ida shook her head.
“No, I don’t think so,” she said.
“No, I don’t either,” said Quam. “I’ll be hanged if I would send him to the asylum.”
“But,” said Ida, still speaking in the same voice, a voice that seemed to come from other areas of the soul than the words she uttered, “why is he really here, then?”
“Well,” said Quam, lazily crossing one leg over the other: “He’s a statistician, of course.”
“Really?”
“And then he has got a bee in his bonnet about the inevitable – the law of inevitability, as the great Norwegians would call it (Quam always spoke in a tone as though poking a little fun at his own words). You see, he wants to work it all out. How, for instance, each year about the same number of letter-writers make a mistake and put a seven instead of a nine when addressing an envelope, just in the same way as exactly the same number of people drown every five years by walking on thin ice. It is because they
have
to do it, just as those who hang themselves
have
to hang themselves and can’t even be allowed to shoot themselves when they finish themselves off.”
Quam was silent for a moment.
“And it would be rather tough,” he said, “if you weren’t even allowed to choose your weapon.”
“But is it not true?” said Ida.
“Aye, that’s the question,” said Quam.
And shortly afterwards, changing his position:
“And it would be nice if you knew what task you had come into the world to undertake.”
“Why?” That was all Ida could say; but her voice almost sounded as though she was feeling some secret joy.
Quam looked at her.
“No, damn it,” he said, putting his feet down on the floor, “
that
doesn’t really matter.”
“Oh well,” he said in conclusion, “I must go in with the syringe.” He ruffled the hair up at the back of his head with his left hand. “That’s what I like best to give those patients.”
“But you never give them enough,” said Ida.
And before long, for the thoughts came and went so clearly and quickly to her mind, which otherwise worked so slowly:
“You know, doctor, everyone really ought to be happy.”
Quam opened the door to the women’s ward, and a couple of cries met them.
“Well, we’ll open the cage now.”
But Ida did not hear him.
The gentleman in Ward A had flung his door open.
Standing up straight on the threshold, Ida said: “Coming, doctor.” She had to close the shutters.
“Thank you.”
Dr Quam went down the corridor in the women’s ward.
“She looks like Frithjof when he’s listening to music,” he said to himself. He was thinking of Ida. Frithjof was a friend of his who was fond of Wagner.
When he had finished with the injections, he returned along the other corridor and gave a knock on Sister Koch’s door as he went past. Sister Koch opened it. “Good evening, Sister Koch,” he said.
He put his head inside, but when he saw Nurse Boserup, who had come to give an account of the meeting (late in the evening, Sister Koch usually also had baked apples standing on her stove), he said:
“Oh, it’s a business meeting.”
And then he went. “I am not particularly interested in ‘members’ ” was his usual comment.
Nurse Boserup continued with her pronouncements. She spoke about Brandt and could not deny that she was really amazed.
“When all is said and done,” she said, “she is one of us.”
Sister Koch sat smoking her cigar. She smoked like an old seaman, and she had taken her glasses off while sitting there staring up in the air with her kindly, grey eyes.
“Aye, God help her,” she said.
“But,” Nurse Boserup said, “she will obviously join us later.”
“Yes, probably,” said Sister Koch.
And she continued to sit there and watch the smoke from her fat cigar appear and disperse and fade away.
Josefine could never get away again in the mornings when she brought the breakfast. She talked the hind leg off a donkey. “For Nurse Brandt,” she said, “is a nurse you can talk to.” Josefine herself talked constantly, and her sole subject was Andersen.
She was standing by the kitchen table beside Ida and had poured out her entire heart to her.
“For oh, nurse,” she said, staring fixedly at the wall, “he’s got such lovely skin.”
Josefine remained standing.
“All over,” she concluded.
Then she turned and went.
It was Saturday afternoon.
Nurse Krohn from the women’s ward, who was off duty because of a cold, was sitting upstairs near the men’s ward, as Ida was in the kitchen. She was the best at preparing food.
There was a fire burning in the kitchen in the basement, and it was warm. Josefine, busy making pastries, was spreading egg white on them with a feather, and Ida was so eagerly whipping the yokes for the pudding that she was out of breath.
Josefine was talking about her mother in Holbæk, where they used to make bread every Sunday.
Over in the basement corridor, where the four were at work, there was the sound of Bertelsen’s saw as it bit into the firewood.
“And very good it was, too,” said Josefine, referring to the splendid bread in Holbæk.
Ida went on beating, the metal clacking against the sides of the bowl.
“Be careful, they’ re burning,” she said, and Josefine got the oven door open and moved and rearranged the pastries.
Ida rose and looked at them; such a lovely smell was rising from the browned cakes.
“We kneaded all the dough at Ludvigsbakke. Everything,” she said with a laugh; “just Schrøder and I.”
It was on summer mornings that Schrøder and she baked on their own; everyone else was asleep, and the windows were open to the dew-drenched fields. Then a long line of farmhands would come out of the farm gate and the steward would come across and say, “Good morning”, and be given his coffee and freshly baked bread as he sat on the bench.
“And there was plenty of it,” said Ida. She could not find bags that were big enough and deep enough.
“Oh,” said Josefine, “I suppose they get fed here as well.”
The door went. The nurses were coming off duty and came in to have a look. “Fingers off,” said Ida, tapping Nurse Kjær’s fingers. Boserup was over by the kitchen table, eyeing the food. She was given a little handful of blanched almonds in her back pocket before going.
“Be careful of the door,” said Ida. “Watch out for the doctors.”
The warm steam spread right up into the corridors.
All went quiet in the kitchen, while Bertelsen’s saw could be heard as it cut through the large pile of firewood.
“Josefine,” said Ida, “I’m going to give them some cakes in there after all.” And she quickly put some pastries on a plate and popped down the corridor, into the basement, where three old men sat weaving mats quite automatically, as though they did not themselves know what they were doing, while Sørensen, the porter, sat leaning sleepily against a wall and Bertelsen eagerly and haphazardly sawed away through his firewood.
“Look what I’ve brought,” said Ida, placing three buns on each of the mats, quickly, as though she had stolen them.
“Here you are, Bertelsen.”
“These are for you, Sørensen.” And she handed him the plate.
A voice was heard behind her:
“What’s this?”
It was Quam, standing in the doorway.
“They are cakes.” Ida gave a start and hurried past him.
But Quam followed her into the kitchen. “Oh, it’s like Sunday in here,” he said, sitting down by the chimney.
“No, it’s Saturday,” laughed Ida.
Quam also had a pastry and sat watching.
“Do you know what, Nurse Brandt,” he said. “I really like you, you know.”
Ida had finished in the kitchen. But Nurse Krohn nevertheless had to stay there for the whole of her time on duty: for there were a couple of things Ida had to go out and buy. Twilight was already gathering as she happily hurried across the courtyard. There she met Eichbaum, but she merely smiled at him and ran past.
“I’m in such a hurry,” she said and hurried on.
Karl stood there and watched her. He had not spoken to her since that evening, and he did not really know how things stood.
But down by the gate Ida turned round and smiled, showing him her purse and shaking it.
Quam had just come out of the middle gate and stood watching Ida with his hands in his trouser pockets.
“Do you know,” he said to Karl, “she’ d be a damned nice wife to have in a country practice.”
“You could ask her,” said Karl, who had suddenly started juggling with his bunch of keys.
“Yes,” said Quam reflectively, “but I would never have a wife with money even so.”
Karl simply laughed and threw his bunch of keys up in the air.
“We’ll have to see about that,” he said and went in through the door.
He did not himself know how he ended in the basement kitchen together with Josefine, who was clearing up.
“It’s lovely and warm in here,” he said, stretching his legs and looking around at all the food that Ida had been frying.
Ida had taken a cab. There were more and more things that had to be bought for Nurse Helgesen’s birthday. She was going to give her six bottles of really good wine in addition to that tray for visiting cards.
She could do that if she decorated the basket with flowers. And as for the flowers, they could use them on the table then, for there must be lots of flowers and plenty of light.
∞∞∞
It was Sunday evening, after dinner, at the home of the general’s wife.
When Karl came back from his walk, Julius was just bringing in the tea urn.
A quiet game of whist was being played at two tables, while Miss Kate looked on with rather heavy eyes, sitting in the corner of a sofa together with Miss Fanny Schleppegrell, a lady with a very pronounced lower jaw, who was preparing to be a lady-in-waiting at court.
Karl sat down beside them, and Miss Schleppegrell asked whether it was still snowing. That everlasting slush made an appalling mess of one’s shoes.
Kate suddenly said to Karl: “Do you know, I always imagined you to be quite different.”
“Really?” said Karl without any real interest.
“Yes,” said Kate. “I had quite honestly expected you to be much more fun.”
She sat for a while and looked at the two whist tables and their eager players, and then she said:
“Does this go on every Sunday?”
Karl burst out laughing, so they both laughed together.
Julius announced that the tea was ready, but the general’s wife said:
“We are expecting the admiral.”
After coffee, Admiral Schleppegrell went to the Atheneum by way of Østergade, going there and back a couple of times and not arriving back on board before the exact time arranged.
But Julius said:
“The admiral is in the entrance hall.”
They left the whist tables and in the midst of the discussion on the games Mrs Schleppegrell, who always spoke in a tone resembling a descant, was heard to say to Mrs Mourier:
“Good heavens, Vilhelmine, do you call that going to a lot of trouble? One always writes one’s orders short and to the point on a postcard.”
The admiral’s wife was talking about Printemps.
The sound of a voice saying good evening could be heard at the sitting room door, and the admiral, who was standing there rubbing his hands after his walk, said:
“They say that Madame Aline is in a terrible mess now.”
“Good heavens, Schleppegrell, how?” The general’s wife took a couple of steps towards him.
“Well, Vedel told me that the chap has deserted her and she’s left behind there.”
Mrs von Eichbaum – in the ensuing moment’s silence – put her hands to her eyes.
“Oh, poor thing,” she said quietly.
“Yes,” said the admiral, offering his arm to Mrs Mourier. “That’s what Vedel said, too.”
They started to go to table while, in the midst of the noise from the chairs, Mrs Schleppegrell was heard to say in her rather shrill voice:
“Yes, that is just like a man.”
And Karl, pushing chairs forward for Miss Fanny and Kate, murmured:
“You have to blame the men, of course.”
Kate, who heard this, started to laugh, and Karl said:
“What are you laughing at?”
“Hm,” said Kate, tossing her head a little, “I simply thought that it must have been six of one and half a dozen of the other.”
Up at the other end of the table, Mrs Schleppegrell continued to talk across the table in an eager but subdued voice until Mrs Mourier, who was drinking tea from a cup intended for use in an office, said:
“Well, it is no good denying it, Anna; Mourier is right: most people simply take what they can get.”
The admiral laughed and said: “There’s something in that, by Gad” and the general’s wife, sitting facing Kate and Miss Fanny, by whose place there was a bottle of tuberculin-tested milk, said:
“Yes, I think, of course that…”
But Mrs von Eichbaum, who was still very upset and had tears in her eyes, ignored her sister and said in a voice as though she was taking a decision:
“But she cannot be left down there.”
Mrs Schleppegrell gave a start and turned her head in a manner rather reminiscent of a wagtail, saying:
“Well then, but may I ask then where she should go? You surely can’t imagine her coming home?”
Mrs von Eichbaum said slowly: