Excerpts from
Mogens and other Stories
By J. P. Jacobsen
Summer it was, in the middle of the day, at a corner of the preserve. Opposite stood an old oak tree, and it might well be said that its trunk was writhing in despair at the lack of harmony between its quite new yellow-hued foliage and its gnarled, thick black branches, which more than anything else resembled crudely drawn, ancient Gothic arabesques. Behind the oak there was a luxuriant thicket of hazel shrubs with dark, dull leaves so dense that neither trunks nor branches could be seen. Above the hazel thicket rose two joyous, straight sycamore trees with gaily notched leaves, red stalks, and long baubles of green fruit clusters. Beyond the sycamores the woods began - a green, evenly rounded slope where birds darted in and out like elves from a grassy barrow mound.
All this was visible as you came along the meadow path outside the fence. If you were lying in the shadow of the oak, however, with your back against its trunk and looking the other way - and there was someone doing just that - the first thing you saw would be your own legs, then a little patch of short, thick grass, a large clump of dark nettles, then the hawthorn hedge with the big white convolvulus flowers, the stile, part of the rye field outside, and finally the Councilor´s flagpole on the distant hill, and then the sky.
It was oppressively hot, the air shimmered with heat, and it was quiet.The leaves hung sleeping on the trees; nothing moved except the ladybugs over on the nettles and a few withered leaves that lay on the grass, curling up with abrupt little movements as if they were shrinking beneath the rays of the sun.
And the man under the oak; he lay there sighing and gazing mournfully, helplessly up at the sky. He hummed a bit and gave it up, whistled, then gave that up too, turned over, turned over again, and rested his eyes on an old molehill that had been turned a dusty gray by the dry spell. Suddenly a little round dark spot appeared on the light gray soil, then another, a third, fourth, more and still more; the entire mound had turned dark gray. The air was all long dark streaks, the leaves nodded and swayed, and there was a rushing sound that turned to seething; water poured down.
Everything glinted, sparkled, spluttered. Leaves, branches, trunks, everything glistened with wetness; each little drop that fell on the ground, on the grass, on the stile, on anything at all, split and scattered in thousands of tiny beads. Here and there little drops hung on and became larger drops, dripped down, joined with other drops, turned into small streams, vanished into narrow furrows, rushed into big holes and out of small ones, sailed away with dust, with splinters and fragments of leaves, depositing them on land, setting them afloat, spinning them around, and putting them ashore once more. Leaves that have not been together since they were in a bud were reunited by the wettness; moss that had shrunk to nothing in the dry weather swelled up and grew soft, fuzzy, green, and succulent; and gray lichen that had almost turned to snuff unfolded in elaborate lobes, flaring like brocade and with the sheen of silk. The concolvuluses let their white crowns be filled to the brim, they toasted each other and poured the water onto the heads of the nettles. The fat black forest snails blithely squirmed along with a glance of acknowledgement toward the sky. And the man? The man was standing bare-headed in the midst of the downpour, letting the drops run down into his hair and eyebrows, his eyes, nose, and mouth as he snapped his fingers at the rain, occasionally picking up his feet slightly, as if he were about to dance, now and then shaking his head when too much water collected in his hair, and singing at the top of his lungs without realizing what it was he sang, he was so engrossed in the rain ...
Extract from Mogens and Other Stories
Fjord Press 1992
Translated by Tiina Nunnally
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