But then Rybert was appointed as postmaster.[2]
Hermansen was shocked, but adjusted to this development sooner than might have been expected.
Madam Thalia had taken to the bottle in her later years. Rybert’s advancement in professional standing was outweighed by his wife’s deteriorating reputation, as she became ever more brazen in her shamelessness.
And when one morning word had it in the shop that the postmaster’s wife had let the missionary and quack Brond pull out all her teeth, the shopkeeper decided that the time had now come to settle the accounts for good. The knothole, the lancet and his missing eye were written off forever.
The shopkeeper and the postmaster took to greeting each other in the street. Sometimes they could even be seen attending the same funerals.
Years passed.
Jens Erich Rybert became ill. Having managed to recover from a stroke, he suddenly died.
One Good Friday morning as he sat in the church loft listening to the vicar recounting the works for which rewards are reckoned not by grace, but by debt, the postmaster felt a sharp, stabbing pain in his side and chest and left the church earlier than was his wont. He arrived home to find his wife on her knees on the parlour floor in front of the sofa, dressed only in her undergarments, with bodice unbuttoned. The devil took hold of Rybert. As he kicked and thrashed Thalia in a blind rage, his wife cringing and grovelling around on the floor in search of her dentures, he suddenly clutched his chest with both hands, jerked his head to the right, then to the left, and with ashen face and upturned eyes fell dead onto the sofa, his head landing in the lap of a tender, downy-cheeked young man who had not had the presence of mind to pull up his trousers.
The young man was Mats Kristian Hermansen.
A year later, embittered, the shopkeeper settled his own mortal accounts and soon afterwards the shop was shut up for good.
The following year, in the autumn, Miss Rybert returned home, spirited and voluble, despite her waning youth. She moved in with her mother at Ryggi.
By this time, though, Thalia was entering her second childhood. Before long, darkness and dementia had engulfed her so firmly that her power was finally extinguished.
Nothing now prevented Miss Rybert and Mats Kristian from forming a union, which they did nine years later, shortly after he took his teacher’s diploma.
It began one uneasy day in June.
Flies were buzzing.
The sun beat down and everything was still, trembling.
Then a sudden breeze picked up.
In the parlour of the shopkeeper’s house, an infusion of smells swirled in the air. The tang of wood shavings, varnish and ethanol that lingered after Gisela, Mats Kristian’s mother, had been borne out earlier that day, mixed with a whiff of mould, eau de Cologne and sweat. Into this concoction the scent of angelica wafted in on the breeze from the garden.
Miss Rybert stood with her back to the parlour door, her eyes half closed, head tilted, and nostrils blazing.
Her arms around Mats Kristian’s neck.
He kissed her throat hungrily.
My dove, my Shulamite, he muttered, fumbling with her clothes, aroused and ardent. It was, however, with an inkling of the misery and regret which would become his steadfast companions that he finally managed to grope his way to her Zion’s gate.
Thick, coarse hair grazed his fingertips.[3]
SAN FRANCISCO
NIVIAQ KORNELIUSSEN
“Go!”
I discover to my horror that she has decided to do just that after I have told her to for the fourth time. I regret rebuffing her even more when she sticks her arm into the sleeve of her pale-blue Peak Performance jacket and gets ready to leave the flat. Consumed by self-loathing, I tell myself to go over and embrace her, apologize and beg her to stay, but my body refuses to obey. I glower at her while she puts on her jacket and her shoes, drops the cigarette packet into her handbag and heads for the door. I really don’t want her to go. I want her close to me again and I want to tell her that I love her, over and over. But all I can do is watch her sad face as she leaves because I’m unable to move or utter a single sound. Get it together, you moron! I know that I’m in the wrong, it was my fault that we started arguing, and that it was stupid, ugly me who provoked, offended and hurt her after a crap day that left me bursting with suppressed anger. Now I look at her adorable, wistful eyes and my remorse is so great that the ocean seems but a drop by comparison. My shame leaves me silent and immobile, but still overdosing on madness. Why can’t I just admit that I was wrong? I look at her beautiful face when she gives me a placating look just as she is about to leave.
“I’m sorry,” she says.
I’m sorely tempted to show her how contrite I am, but why, why is she apologizing? Why does she take on the blame? Once more I’m overcome with rage and I glare mercilessly at her with my ridiculous face. I watch her go.
“I love you,” I whisper and the door shuts.
I jerk violently and then I rush to the door, taking big strides, and I lock it so ostentatiously that my beloved must be able to hear it. I hope desperately that it will make her so angry that she will come back and bang on the door, but I realize that she has given up when I hear her fetch her bicycle and her presence starts to fade. I run to the window to look for her, but she is already too distant to hear my frantic knocking on the windowpane. She is far away, gone, and I am left alone with myself. A dreadful loneliness starts to grow inside me. Serves you right, go on, feel sorry for yourself, be lonely, stop whingeing, you got exactly what you wanted, she has left, she is gone. Fia, you bloody idiot, it’s your own fault that she left you. I bang my heavy head against the wall to punish myself for my impatience and stupidity. Darling. Beloved, I’m sorry. Come back, beloved, and I will prove to you that my love for you knows no limits. Beloved, give me another chance; believe me when I say that you’re more important to me than I am. Please understand that I didn’t mean what I said. Come back and kiss me again, cry in my arms, scold me and give me the chance to comfort you. I will die unless you return.
The feeling crawls from my heart to my lungs and then up my throat before it explodes out of my mouth. My body grows limp and I start to wail, my face distorts, and the snot runs. I don’t care if the people above or below can hear me because there’s no way I can control myself. I throw my heavy body on the bed and sob into her scented pillow which is drenched by the time I fall asleep.
Sara, my beloved Sara, come back.
I wake up thinking that a mouse is trying to escape from my hand, but realize that my mobile is vibrating. Last night’s dreadful events hit me full force. Then a feeling of joy grows inside me: my beloved is calling because she wants to come back to me.
“My darling, I’m sorry. Come back to me. I love you. Sara, I love you, I love you so so much.”
I don’t bother with hello because I’m so busy telling her all the things I should have said before she left, so that she will understand. I’m still half asleep and I can’t make out what she is saying. There has to be something wrong with my brain since her voice sounds so different. It is unrecognizable.
“We’re calling you because we can’t find anyone else to contact, and we can see that you’ve called Sara’s mobile. Do you know Sara?”
Perhaps she is still pissed off with me. Perhaps she is trying to wind me up and maybe she is not yet ready to forgive me.
“Sara, darling. I’m sorry.”
I’m not angry with her at all because I can still remember the horrible and crazy stuff I said to her. Sweetheart.
2
Postmaster J.L. Rybert came to the Faroes, as the author says, to take up a temporary position at the Governor’s office. This was in 1879, the same year that Jens Davidsen retired. H.C. St Finsen was Governor at the time.
The author is correct in stating that Rybert studied law, but he did not study economics, and he had recently taken the first part of his exams when he came here. He was supposed to fill in a clerical position until the autumn, when he had a passage reserved back to Denmark on the state-owned steamer
There are no sources to confirm that Rybert fought in the war in 1865, and this would hardly have been possible, as he was twenty-five when he came to the Faroes and could not have been more than eleven years old in 1865. He was said to have an effeminate demeanour and always dressed as if he was on his way to a social festivity. He was also known to be long-winded, short-tempered and high-handed. The people of Tórshavn called him “Queen Arsehole”.
Rybert married, as the author says, and his wife was quite rightly from Elduvík, but her name was not Thalia and she never worked for Knút Hermansen, nor was she a slattern as Thalia is depicted in the story. Rybert’s wife was Marin Kristina Frederiksen. She was the seventh daughter of the farmer Fríðrik á Flatumørk, who died in 1889. She did keep house for Rybert for many years but they were both well advanced in age when they married, which was, according to the church records for South Streymoy, in the summer of 1917, and therefore they had no children together.
3
The reader should be extremely careful not to take anything the author says about the head teacher too seriously. It is at best unreliable and at worst malicious fantasy.
First, his name was Kristin, not Mats Kristian. He took his diploma at the Faroese Teacher’s College in 1915. That same year he married Elisabeth Magdalene Huber. She was the daughter of the postal assistant J.M. Huber, who came to the Faroes in 1909, and not postmaster Rybert, as the author maintains. This assistant Huber was said to have been a small, frail man easily given to chills. The people of Tórshavn called him “Draughty”.
Kristin Hermansen was a temperate man, scrupulous and efficient in his work, see
Kristin Hermansen began early on to make a name for himself in the cultural life of the Faroes. While he was in Tvøroyri, he founded the Tvøroyri Theatrical Society and was its chairman until he moved back north. During his years in Tvøroyri, he also published a collection of poems,
Above all else he was known for the provocative articles he published about Charles Darwin and evolutionary theory in the journal
In the literary history
Today, few would deny that Kristin Hermansen is one of the foremost Faroese literary figures of the last century (see also the article by Steinfinnur Miðgerð in the weekend supplement to
Kristin Hermansen was, as the author mentions, also involved in politics. He was a candidate for the Unionist Party in Tvøroyri in the 1920s and later for the socialists in Tórshavn. That was in the 1930s. He was never elected. He did take up a seat in parliament for one term, however, when D.N. Jacobsen became a government minister after the 1953 election. Kristin Hermansen died in 1975, aged ninety-seven years old.