The Tower at the Edge of the World Read online

  The Author

  William Heinesen (1900–1991) was born in Torshavn in the Faroe Islands, the son of a Danish mother and Faroese father, and was equally at home in both languages. Although he spent most of his life in the Faroe Islands he chose to write in Danish as he felt it offered him greater inventive freedom. Although internationally known as a poet and a novelist he made his living as an artist. His paintings range from large-scale murals in public buildings, through oil to pen sketches, caricatures and collages.

  It is Dedalus’ intention to make all of William Heinesen’s novels available in new translations by W. Glyn Jones. Published so far are: The Black Cauldron, The Lost Musicians, Windswept Dawn, The Good Hope, Mother Pleiades and The Tower at the Edge of the World, to be followed in 2019 by Noatun.

  William Heinesen is generally considered to be one of the greatest, if not the greatest, Scandinavian novelist of the twentieth century.

  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 Faroese 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, Faroese and Finland-Swedish literature including studies of Johannes Jorgensen, Tove Jansson and William Heinesen. He is 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, Mother Pleiades and The Tower at the Edge of the World by William Heinesen, Ida Brandt and As Trains Pass By (Katinka) by Herman Bang and My Fairy-Tale Life by Hans Christian Andersen.

  Before he died, Glyn translated William Heinesen’s novel Noatun which Dedalus will publish in 2019.

  Contents

  Title

  The Author

  The Translator

  The Tower at the Edge of the World

  In the Days when the Earth was not yet Round but had a Beginning and an End

  The Evening Horn

  The Tap

  Smoke

  The Words

  God’s Floor

  The Summer Girls

  Time Flies

  The Earth Girl Lonela

  Debes, the Lighthouse Keeper

  The Sledge Ride

  New Year

  It’s Late in the Year and Late in the Day and Late in Life.

  Music from the Sea

  Deaf Jane

  Stare-Eyes

  If –

  Sailing at Dawn

  The Green Storehouse

  Fortune

  The Wise Virgins

  Fina the Hut

  The Old Poet

  Howler Hans

  The Sorrows of Little Brother

  Stare-Eyes in the Snow

  Black Christmas

  The Almanac

  Uncle Harry

  The Poppies

  The Organ Grinder

  Grey, Windy Winter’s Day with no Sun or Shade.

  Hannibal

  The Skull

  The Snilk

  Gale

  The Feckless Idiots

  The Little Singer

  A Bright, Frosty Evening at New Year 1974 and I

  The Life Bridge

  Merrit

  The Foal Girl

  The Cup Woman

  Ekka in the Well House

  The Big Sluggish Beast

  The Churchyard

  The Kiss

  The Willow Grove

  The Calf

  The Concert

  When, Last Night, I, Amaldus the Aged, put out my Writing Lamp at about Two O’Clock

  The Lunar Eclipse

  The Death of Platen

  Cadenza in the Willow Grove

  Embarkation in Cloudy Weather

  The Steam Engine

  Exile

  The Banshee

  Catastrophe

  Fate

  Diamonds in the Dark

  The Wise Man in the Tower

  The Dream of the Magnetic North Pole

  The Dream of the Woman Suspended between Heaven and Earth

  The Dream of the House of Weeping

  Lambert the Watchmaker

  Everyday Reality

  Today, the 11th of February 1974, I am Sitting by an Open Window in my Cabin, looking

  Vesta

  The Path of Sin

  Young Pain

  The Explosion

  The Generous Dark

  Light

  Heavy Snowfall and Compact Darkness, Indeed so Intense that from the Window in my Tower I

  Epilogue

  Copyright

  The Tower at the Edge of the World

  A poetic mosaic novel about earliest childhood

  See, my friends; the grass turns green.

  The cold bites, the wind blows,

  The snow swirls,

  But the grass turns green,

  And deep, deep is my green happiness.

  See, my friends: the grass turns green.

  Tired is my foot, hairless my head,

  Toothless my mouth, dimmed my eye.

  Soon I shall leave you,

  But my heart flowers

  And deep, deep

  Is my green happiness today.

  Li Po

  In the Days when the Earth was not yet Round but had a Beginning and an End,

  a splendid tower could be seen at the furthermost edge of

  the world.

  During the daytime an endless procession of clouds floated slowly past out there in the void under the eye of the sun.

  At night, the tower shone out and competed with the Northern Lights and the stars over the void, for it was a tower of light.

  On clear evenings you could see the tower’s beautiful light shining out in the darkness over the sea, and then you could be caught by an irresistible urge to reach this shining tower rising in isolation out there towards the vast unknown areas where the world ends and begins and the Spirit of God hovers over the waters.

  It was in the far-off time of beginnings, when you still didn’t know that the magical light from the tower was the light from a quite ordinary lighthouse, a work of human hands and ingenuity, a useful and sensible provider of light whose task it is to be a guide for those sailing the seas.

  And it was also before you yet knew that the Earth is a star among other stars in an inconceivable gulf of time and Space, and that you yourself are a star dweller.

  The Evening Horn

  Yes, the Earth with its lighthouses and ships, islands and lands, cities and peoples, is a star, one of the many beautiful radiant heavenly bodies in the firmament.

  But you don’t know that yet, for you are quite new to the world of words and for the time being you must cope with sounds and images as best you can.

  You are at the restless but delicious focal point of your beginning. It’s early spring, and you are lying in your bed, new in time, unknowing, but filled with immense intimations.

  There you lie, listening to the Evening Horn.

  The Evening Horn, that’s the sound made by the golden stripe in the sky, over there where the sun sank into the sea.

  It’s a big, happy bird cackling and clucking.

  It’s the Evening Bird.

  No, it’s the Ferryman sitting out there on the rocks outside his house, blowing his hor
n.

  The Evening Bird clucks and cackles in the Ferryman’s horn. The yellow line in the sky is his horn. There’s a quiet lapping sound of happily rocking waters in his horn.

  Then twilight comes. Then darkness comes. Then the horn falls silent.

  The Tap

  Then night comes.

  Night rests on all roofs.

  Night twinkles in all windows and in the pools of rain on the lids of the blue paraffin drums.

  Now everyone is slumbering in their bedrooms, where sleep flowers float down in the darkness.

  The distant sound of star drops falling from the heavens can be heard in the silence. The sound echoes throughout the vast vault of heaven.

  The sound is the only sound in Heaven and on Earth.

  It’s only the sound of a tap that hasn’t been turned off properly.

  The dripping tap is alone, alone in the world.

  Smoke

  There are no beams spanning the heavenly loft.

  There is an empty bed in the garden outside the Old Man’s house. It is made of wood and has recently been scrubbed. It is to stand there and dry in the sunshine, but there is no real sunshine, for the Old Man is sitting on the edge of his bed smoking his pipe, and in the huge cloud of smoke the sun turns red and dull.

  The Old Man sits looking up at the heavenly loft, where the smoke gathers in great clouds.

  Finally, there is no cloud to be seen either, just smoke and mist.

  ***

  Both the bed and the Old Man are gone in the evening, and the sun is shining beautifully on the Old Man’s roof now.

  The Words

  The words come flying in. Or they drift down quite gently. Or they fix themselves on the windowpane in the shape of raindrops or ice flowers.

  The words stand there like flower bulbs in vases, covered by grey paper cones. Then one day the cones are gone, and that means the sweet-smelling hyacinths and tulips are on their way.

  Hyacinth and tulip are the loveliest of words. You never tire of saying them and playing with them. “Tulip and hyacinth, hyalip and tulicinth – citilip – hyatul – tulihy.”

  God’s Floor

  The world is vast.

  It is made up partly of land and partly of water, but mostly of water. Wherever you turn your eyes, you can see water twinkling somewhere or other and you can hear the sound it makes, and sometimes you can even stand there and see God floating over the waters like a shining cloud.

  But there is a lot of land too, with mountains and valleys.

  Far towards the north there is the heath with its heather-covered hills and busy babbling brooks, some of them babbling in the darkness under the ground. Even further away to the north, where the sun sets in the summer, stand the Faraway Mountains. The highest of the Faraway Mountains has a flat top. That is God’s floor. That is where He rests when He’s tired of floating over the waters out in the abyss.

  God’s Floor is set with grey tablets of stone that are swept and scrubbed clean by the wind and the rain. Somewhere among the stones there is a big grey expanse of moss filled with little pink flowers. That is God’s pillow.

  God’s tablets are full of writing.

  God stands on his stone floor and looks out over the world during the white nights. “His eye seeth every precious thing”.

  Then he kneels down and fills the big tablets with writing.

  The Summer Girls

  There is no night during the summer. So it’s always light, and the world is filled with Summer Girls.

  You can hear them laughing and singing everywhere – in living rooms and kitchens, on stairs and in doorways, in the wind down by the shore and out on the billowing fields.

  They are always there with their hair and their clothes and hands that smell of pencil or salami or of tansy and cress. The summer girls sit swinging their big legs on swaying branches. They walk on stilts. They play hide and seek among fences and outbuildings. They sit on the edges of ditches and thread flowers on strings. They look at picture books. They make little fans of pictures on the walls above their beds.

  They sit and sing by your bed in the evening.

  One of them comes to you only when you are asleep. Suddenly, she is there, staring at you with big eyes. She doesn’t speak; she doesn’t touch you; she simply stares.

  You have to go with her, floating low over the earth, through streets that are deserted at night, across stretches of heather and gently whispering waters and into the pale heavens far away at the End of the World, where the Tower stands.

  Time Flies

  Fly is a lovely word. The wind flies past, the clouds fly past, the waves fly out on the water.

  Time flies.

  “Why does time fly?”

  “Because it’s in a hurry.”

  “Why is it in a hurry?”

  “Because there’s so much it has to do.”

  “Where does it hurry to?”

  Silence.

  “What is time?”

  Long silence.

  “Is it everything that flies?”

  “Yes, that’s it. It’s everything that flies.”

  The Earth Girl Lonela

  The Earth isn’t round yet and God has still not established a borderline between dreaming and waking or between fleeting shadows and living persons.

  Down in the coal cellar’s everlasting night sits the Earth Girl Lonela. She is only to be seen for a brief moment just as we go down with the torch to fetch coal. There she is, sitting in the corner, and behind her there is a host of grey faces and hands. These are all the other earth girls who live down here.

  Then they all vanish, and where the Earth Girl Lonela was there is nothing to be seen but the shadow of an old notched piece of driftwood.

  But then for a moment you have seen how she sits staring at you, for she knows you well.

  ***

  The Earth Girl Lonela and all the other earth girls live in the dark beneath the house and they never see the light of day, for they are dead.

  The Earth Girl Lonela has big night eyes. She sits there longing to go up into the daylight, but she has to stay down in the dark.

  Who is the Earth Girl Lonela?

  Perhaps a girl who once lived in the house long ago. But then one evening she was gone. Her parents searched high and low for her, going around lighting up the darkness with torches and lamps, but all they could see was the old tree root and its shadow. Lonela could see her parents all right. But she had to stay where she was, for she was dead.

  ***

  On Judgement Day, when the trumpet sounds, the whole house will collapse with a great din, and the cherubs will come with their flaming swords and split the old tree root.

  Then the dead will come back to life. Then Lonela and all the other pale earth girls will come milling up out of the ground and float into the light and the day.

  But the Earth Girl Lonela isn’t so dead that during the night she can’t creep up out of the coal cellar into the hallway and further up the stairs into the loft and the bedroom where you lie dreaming. Then you know that she has come to fetch you and that the two of you are going out to float. Out to float on great wings, over sea and over land, all the way to the End of the World, where the Tower stands.

  Debes, the Lighthouse Keeper

  The Tower at the End of the World isn’t the only tower in the world, for the world is full of towers. The “Tower of Babel”. The “Leaning Tower of Pisa”. The “Round Tower” in Copen-hagen. The “Eiffel Tower” in Paris.

  But the Tower at the End of the World is the highest and strangest of all towers. There it stands on the edge of the great abyss shining out in the darkness, and so huge is it that it takes a whole day to get up to the shining eye at the top.

  Debes, the Lighthouse Keeper is to be found up there.

  “Debes, the Lighthouse Keeper – is he a spirit? Or is he a cherub?”

  “Don’t talk silly. Debes the Lighthouse Keeper is a perfectly ordinary man.”

  “B
ut why does he stay up in the tower?”

  “He stays up there to make sure the light doesn’t go out.”

  Debes the Lighthouse Keeper sits staring out into the darkness and listening to the great rushing sound from the abyss. Sometimes, the light from the tower catches a big cloud coming floating slowly over the abyss, and when it gets closer, the lighthouse keeper can see that it has a huge face and dreadful eyes. That’s God floating by on His endless travels. Then the lighthouse keeper has to hide his eyes in his hands and sit and wait until the cloud has floated past. He peeps out through his fingers to see whether it’s still there – ugh yes, it’s still there giving him threatening looks.

  So it’s a good job he hasn’t been asleep. For sometimes the lighthouse keeper is so tired from having to stay awake all night that he can’t keep his eyes open. But then he is awakened by a deafening voice:

  “Debes! Are you asleep?”

  “Oh no. Oh no.”

  “Yes you were. You were asleep. Why do you lie to me, the Lord your God?”

  Then the lighthouse keeper has to admit that he had been asleep, for it’s no use lying to God, who sees everything.

  And God shakes His great cloud head, and His voice reechoes in the abyss, full of anguish.

  “I thought I could rely on you, Debes the Lighthouse Keeper.”

  Then the lighthouse keeper weeps the bitter tears of repentance, while the solitary cloud floats away and disappears in the void.

  The Sledge Ride

  Oh, winter has come. It’s snowing and snowing.

  After a brilliant day with games in the snow: now it is evening, green and alluring over darkening fells.

  Just one more last sledge ride down the hill and out into the desolate evening space!

  Alone in the world. Alone with the snow’s pure scent of nothing! All the daytime children have gone, but tiny white Night Children are dancing in the dusk, dancing in the drifting snow, dancing joyfully and ecstatically up and down the evening’s green icy steps.