Clouds

By Henrik Pontoppidan

Extract from the story "Gallows Hill at Ilum"

It was up on Gallows Hill that I saw him for the last time, that odd and mysterious stranger who had caused such an unwonted commotion throughout the village.

His appearance was altogether singular. He was a tiny goblin of a man, broad-shouldered and thin-legged, with bristly grey hair, a large sallow, beardless face and big round spectacles, through which his eyes, when the sun shone on them, looked out like two vertical lines and reminded one of a tawny owl, a cat or a tiger.

One summer evening some years back he had come wandering into the village with an oilcloth haversack on his back, his trousers rolled well up, and a thick, gnarled stick in his hand, terribly dusty and burned up by the sun, as if he had walked for days without resting.

At first he put up at the inn, but soon after, he rented a room with a couple who were smallholders on the outskirts of the village, and there he had been living since. He described himself as a "retired schoolmaster" and said that he was staying there to study the history of the neighbourhood because he was intending to write a description of it.

This sounded plausible enough, especially as he was indeed always out and about in the country. From morn till night he traversed the district; he looked in at the isolated cottages out on the common land, he fell into conversation with all those he met on the road, sat himself down beside harvesters, ditchers, and shepherdboys - always restless, lively, and communicative.

Just as you were going along the road with your own thoughts, he might suddenly rise up from the bank of the ditch at the side of the road, greet you with his usual familiarity, putting two fingers up to his broad-brimmed hat, and then ask leave to accompany you. He would trot happily along at your side with quick little steps (he always lifted his feet remarkably high as he walked, almost as if he were fearlessly wading in something invisible), chattering ceaselessly, questioning, telling stories, or cross-examining, at every other sentence clearing his throat and spitting drily to the side of the road.

At first, the conversation would be about the weather and the wind, but it would not be long before he brought it imperceptibly round to his favourite theme: history. As soon as you reached the top of a hill from which you could look out over an area of the district, he would halt and start to point things out in explanation with his stick. He knew the name and the site of each of the battles which in times past had been fought between the manor-house and the old Ilum peasants, and he told about them with a strange and vivid power, so that these bloodstained scenes lived before your eyes.

All in all, he was a strange man. He seemed to have seen and experienced more than other mortals. He had been in Berlin during the uprisings of ´48, and in Paris during the Commune of ´71. He had seen the Vendome column fall and the Tuileries burn, and he was tireless in his description of the savagery of those days of terror, of the howling mobs, the charging soldiers, the barricades in the streets, and the plundering of churches and convents.

And there was always something peculiarly inflammatory about his presentation of these experiences. When you left him, you had the feeling that your own blood was aflame. You felt a violent urge for action, and had the irrepressible courage to fight and sacrifice yourself to a great and sacred cause, for liberty, justice, and fraternity.

For it was just at this very time that political tension and agitation had reached their height in the land. Everyone had been dragged into the raging whirlwind which for a moment threatened to rend and divide the people once and for all.

From: Anthology of Danish Literature, Southern Illinois University Press, 1971

Translated by David Stoner