Excerpts from
Laterna Magica
By William Heinesen
Master Jakob and Miss Urd
A Hopeful Account of Belated Eros
The old gabled roof, battered by wind and weather and the years, rises darkly against the pale twilight sky. Nearby you can hear a child crying, a cat meowing, and a girlīs laughter muffled behind a wall.
And the sound of Master Jakob`s violin.
Look, there he is standing under the low timbered ceiling in his tiny living room. A single candle is lit in the candlestick on his desk amid papers and open books and a large portfolio. The shadow of this lively fiddler with his fiddle and bobbing right elbow dances on the knotty-pine wall.
What is he playing? A morning hymn, of all things: "Wake up, and strike your chords," Kingo`s beautiful words set to the melody of an old hymn. Then he adds some homemade variations to it, with trills and double stops - it`s such a warm sound.
Who is he, this Master Jakob?
You have probably never met him, for he lived long before your time, in the decades around 1800. He was a learned man, a researcher and a collector. He was a fanatic collector of words, just as misers collect coins and entomologists collect beetles and butterflies and rare millipedes. He traveled over land and sea (on meager, graciously granted stipends), gathering words and proverbs, ballads and poems hundreds of years old that still lived on the lips of people but were about to die out. But at that time no one cared much about his well-ordered, beautifully hand-copied collections; he met with only scant appreciation of his meticulous language and tireless labor. He had little or no means of support for his life`s work; he just managed to keep body and soul together, consoling himself in moments of repose with his violin and his homemade tunes, and now and then with a few drams of cheer from the decanter in the cupboard - a glass or two, occasionally several, and sometimes he simply gave up counting.
Besides music and his drams, he had a third source of comfort, which is what we are going to hear about now.
So here he stands in this evening hour playing his long-forgotten Kingo variations, with his hopelessly bright red nose; he is still of an active age, with a vigorous shock of hair and broad, friendly features, and with that absurd childlike joy of expectation in his eyes.
Everyone knows that Master Jakob liked children and was fond of women, in an honorable way, yet these traits never led to marriage. But he was not entirely alone, either. For one thing, he had a cat named Risna. At the moment she is outdoors, in a difficult situation - she is sitting on top of the great boulder jutting out of Gutte Hanna`s whitewashed yard and she can`t come down because that big black dog, Slendrian, is standing there barking up at her and foaming at the mouth. The dog is on his hind legs, with his black forepaws braced against the white rock, while the fur on Risna`s back is sticking straight up, turning her into a fearsome saber-toothed tiger emitting hostile, sinister hissing sounds from the primeval jungle.
But that`s the way life probably was in nature before human beings intervened to straighten things out. See, here comes the human being - in the form of Gutte Hanna - to take care of the matter, squinty-eyed with bitterness and armed with a bucket and broom. And in the next moment you see Risna leaping down from the rock in an elegant arc of dry fur, while the dog is busy shaking and spraying the punishing cold water out of his coat.
(You may observe other small stormy things like this on your way out to Gray Skull Wharf and the end. Darker, more urgent events are waiting at the door. But let us enjoy the little everyday comedies and quarrels - in fact, without them how can you really endure such an agonizing experience as life?)
From: Laterna Magica
Fjord Press Seattle, 1987
Translated by Tiina Nunnally
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