Part 15 (1/2)
”Yes, if we had a bathing-hut.”
And I, still absent-minded, murmured:
”Yes, if we had a bathing-hut.”
Suddenly we went off into fits of laughter. We could not stop ourselves.
Now Jeanne has gone hunting for workmen. We will make them work by the piece, otherwise they will never finish the job. I had some experience this autumn with the youth who was paid by the day to chop wood for us.
When the hut is built I will bathe every day in the suns.h.i.+ne.
They are both master-carpenters, and seem to be very good friends.
Jeanne and I lie in the boat and watch them, and stimulate them with beer from time to time. But it does not seem to have much effect. One has a wife and twelve children who are starving. When they have starved for a while, they take to begging. The man sings like a lark. He has spent two years in America, but he a.s.sures me it is ”all tommy-rot” the way they work like steam-engines there. Consequently he soon returned to his native land.
”Denmark,” he says, ”is such a nice little country, and all this water and the forests make it so pretty....”
Jeanne and I laugh at all this and amuse ourselves royally.
The day before yesterday neither of the men appeared. A child had died on the island, and one of them, who is also a coffin-maker, had to supply a coffin. This seemed a reasonable excuse. But when I inquired whether the coffin was finished, he replied:
”I bought one ready-made in the town ... saved me a lot of bother, that did.”
His friend and colleague had been to the town with him to help him in his choice!
The water is clear and the sands are white and firm. I am longing to try the bathing. Jeanne, who rows well, volunteered to take me out in the boat. But to bathe from the boat and near these men! I would rather wait!
Full moon. In the far distance boats go by with their white sails. They glide through the dusk like swans on a lake. The silence is so intense that I can hear when a fish rises or a bird stirs in its nest. The scent of the red roses that blossomed yesterday ascends to my window here....
Joergen Malthe....
When I write his name it is as though I gave him one of those caressing touches for which my fingers yearn and quiver....
Yes, a dip in the sea will calm me.
I will undress in the house and wrap myself in my dressing-gown. Then I can slip through the pine-trees unseen....
It was glorious, glorious! What do I want a bathing-hut for? I go into the sea straight from my own garden, and the sand is soft and firm to my feet like the pine-needles under the trees.
The sea is phosph.o.r.escent; I seemed to be dipping my arms in liquid silver. I longed to splash about and make sparkles all around me. But I was very cautious. I swam only as far as the stakes to which the fishermen fasten their nets. The moon seemed to be suspended just over my head.
I thought of Malthe.
Ah, for one night! Just one night!