First Visit

Among the books I most recently had lent Ole was one about smooth stones, and this he had particularly enjoyed and given him food for thought.

‘Oh yes, they are extremely old characters, these smooth stones!’ he said, ‘and one passes them without giving them a thought! I’ve done so myself out in the fields and down on the beach, where they lie in great numbers. There one walks on cobbles, these lumps of the very oldest relics of the past! I’ve done so myself. Now every cobblestone commands my respect! Thank you for that book, it has filled my mind, pushed aside old thoughts and habits, made me most eager to read more of the same kind. The novel of the earth is definitely the most remarkable of all novels! A pity that one cannot read the first volumes, since they have been composed in a language we have not learnt; one must read in the earth’s strata, in the pebbles, in all the geological periods, and the actors do not appear on the stage until the sixth volume, Mr. Adam and Mrs. Eve, that’s a bit late for many readers who would like them there from the start, but I don’t mind. It is a fabulous novel, and we are all part of it. We creep and crawl away yet stay in the same place, but the globe revolves, without spilling the water of its oceans over us; the crust on which we move stays firm, we do not fall through it; and then it is a story lasting millions of years, with constant progress. Thank you for that book about the smooth stones! they are fellows that could say a thing or two if only they were able! Isn’t it enjoyable once in a while to be turned into nothing, as it were when one sits as high up as I do and then recall that all of us, even those with blacking to their boots, are merely minute-ants on the anthill of the world, even if we are ants with orders and ribbons, ants with rank and high-standing. One feels so shame-facedly young alongside these million-year-old venerable smooth stones. I was reading the book on New Year’s Eve and was so engrossed in it that I forgot my usual pleasure that night, which is to gaze at ‘the Wild Hunt to Amager!’ Yes, well, I don’t expect you know about that!

The journey of the witches on broomsticks is familiar enough, that is on Midsummer’s Eve and to Blocksberg, but we also have a Wild Hunt that is domestic and present-day, it goes to Amager on New Year’s Eve. All the bad poets, poetesses, fiddlers, hack journalists and literary figures, those that are no good, ride through the air on New Year’s Eve out to Amager; they sit astride their brushes or quill pens, a steel pen is too stiff to carry them. As I said, I always look at it every New Year’s Eve; I could mention the name of most of them, but it’s not worth falling foul of them; they don’t like people to know about their Amager trip on a quill pen. I have some sort of niece who is a fisherman’s wife and who writes scandal to three respected newspapers, she says that she has been out there as an invited guest, she was carried as she does not own a quill pen and is unable to ride. She has told me all this. Half of what she says is utter lies, but the other half is already more than sufficient. When she was out there, they started with songs, every guest had written a song and each sang his or her own, for it was the best one; they were all much of a muchness, and had the same ‘tune’. Then they marched past in small societies, those who only have the gift of the gab, they were the carillons that clanged away in turn, then came the small drummers that drum away out in families. – Their acquaintance was made with those who write without appending their name, in other words, where dubbin is passed off as blacking; there was the executioner and his assistant, and the latter was the more hard-boiled, otherwise no one take any notice of him; there was the good old dustman who up-ends the bin and calls it ‘good, very good, extremely good!’ – In the midst of all the entertainment which it appeared to be, a stalk rose from the pit, a tree, an enormous flower, a large toadstool, a whole roof, it was the cockaigne-pole of the honourable society that bore everything they had given the world in the past year; out of it burst sparks, like flames, it was all the borrowed thoughts and ideas they had used which were now escaping and shooting off, like a whole firework display. People played ‘you’re getting warm’, and the small poets played ‘the heart’s getting warm!’, the self-styled wits told puns, nothing less was accepted. The jokes rang out as if one struck doors with empty pots, or pots with peat-ash. It was most enjoyable! the niece said; in actual fact she said a great deal more that was most malicious, though amusing! I won’t say what it was, one must be a good person and not a raisonneur. You realise, though, that when, like me, one knows about the festivities out there, it is only fair that I take care to see the Wild Hunt fly off every New Year’s Eve; if one year I miss a few, then new ones have turned up, but this year I neglected to look at the guests, I rolled off on the smooth stones, rolled through millions of years, and saw the stones tumbling freely up in the North, saw them drifting on pieces of ice long before Noah’s Ark was built, saw them sink to the sea bed and come up again on a longshore bar, the one that stuck up out of the water and said ‘this is to be Sealand!’ I saw them become a seat for species of birds we do not know, a seat for wild chieftains we also do not know, until the axe bit runes into a pair of them which then could be placed in time, but I had ended up completely outside time and space, had turned into nothing. Then three or four lovely shooting stars fell, they lit up, my thoughts took a new turn. – You know what a shooting star is, don’t you? Scholars don’t seem to! – I have my own thoughts about them, and this is what I think: How often, in secret, are kind thoughts and blessings not expressed for anyone who has carried out something that is fine and good; often such thanks remains silent, but it doesn’t fall to the ground! What I think happens is that it gets caught by the sunshine, and a ray of the sun brings this silently felt secret thanks down over the benefactor’s head; if it is a whole people that through periods of time sends its thanks, then they come like a bouquet, fall like a shooting star on the benefactor’s grave. It gives me great pleasure when I see a shooting star, especially on New Year’s Eve, to figure out who is to be the recipient of this bouquet of thanks. A bright shooting star recently fell in the south-west: grateful thanks for many, many! who could it be meant for! it surely fell, I think, on the slope by Flensburg Fjord, where the Danish flag flutters over the graves of Schleppegrell, Læssøe and their comrades. One fell in the middle of the country, it fell down on Sorø, a bouquet on Holberg’s coffin, an annual thanks from so many for those wonderful comedies!

It is a great thought, a happy thought to know that a shooting star falls on our grave, though none will fall on mine, no ray of the sun will convey thanks to me, for I’ve done nothing to merit thanks! I will not attain blacking,’ Ole said, ‘my lot in the world is to get dubbin.’