Excerpts from
A Certain Time
By Knud Sørensen
There were a couple
of occasions that summer when life became too monotonous for them. In any case,
they persuaded their mother to have an early night, and then they cycled the
eight kilometres to the fishing village where there was a dance on Saturdays at
the new seaside hotel. Naturally, this was mainly for the hotel guests, but of
course the local kids were also allowed in. The first time they went they met
some people they knew. Thomas drank a beer, while Oline had a lemonade. They
sat watching the dancers, chatted a bit and then cycled home.
The second time, there was a lad who
had a couple of dances with Oline. He was one of the locals. And as the evening
wore on, and they had fortified themselves with the contents of the bottles
which some of them had concealed in their inside pockets, a number of them had
started to lose their inhibitions, when the tones from the piano and violin
were not too unfamiliar. Thomas sat observing them while they danced. It was
plain to see that she was enjoying it. And she was good-looking, more
attractive than most. She was also more attractive than the majority of the
hotel guests.
“Who was that you were dancing
with?” Thomas was impelled to ask as they cycled home.
“Just a lad who was a groom at the
vicarage while I was there,” she answered.
They cycled on for a while in
silence. They reached the path, which ran through the plantation, and Thomas
rode in just in front of Oline.
“It’s not really much fun,” said
Thomas.
But Oline said that she thought it was quite nice to see some other people once
in a while.
A fox darted across the path a bit further ahead. The sky was bright to the
north, heavy dew had fallen and the fragrance of the fir trees seemed
obtrusive.
“Where does he work now?” asked Thomas.
“I don’t know. He didn’t say anything about that.”
“They say that he has a fiancée now,” she added after a while, “although he
wasn’t wearing a ring.”
Thomas started to whistle and cycled a bit faster. Oline followed after. They
reached the road along the dunes and were able once again to cycle side by
side. Neither of them spoke.
It wasn’t until they reached the farmyard that Thomas said, “We’d better put
the bikes away.”
They went over to the barn door.
*
In this way the days became a new kind of everyday life for Thomas.
“It’s great to think that I won’t
have to attend the commercial college this winter,” he would sometimes remark,
if one of us on a rare occasion asked him how things were going. But as for the
job he had done before, the possibilities he had had, and his involvement with
the political youth organization, he never said a word. At least, not directly.
Sometimes of an evening he might say to Oline, “In a way it’s a relief not
having to think about the future.” And then he might add, “Even though it could
have been interesting.”
That summer, every day was enough in itself, and the work was manageable. One
day he repaired the stable door. It had needed mending for several years, and
had scraped against the cement every time it was opened or closed. Now he had
straightened the hinges and nailed a piece of wood across the door diagonally.
And several times a day he felt satisfied with himself when he used that door.
One Sunday afternoon towards the end of October, when he and Oline had been for
a walk to see if the newly sown rye had begun to sprout, as it should, they
stood removing their clogs outside the scullery door, and Oline said, “I think
I’m going to have a wee one.” And while Thomas was left standing there with a
slipper in one hand and such an overwhelming sensation that he was unable to
gather his thoughts about it until much later, she walked on to the kitchen and
started to make the coffee that their mother was sitting in her bedroom waiting
for.
That is what had happened beforehand. It is that story that all of us have
taken a part in writing, and that we have never talked about directly, but that
we not that unseldom have managed to make an innocent reference to.
For example, we might say “at the Thomases’”, in the same way in which we would
say “at the Peters’”, when we meant at the home of Peter and his wife Marie.
Translated by Carl King
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