The Prophets of Eternal Fjord Read Free

From morning to even- ing, and not infrequently in the night, when a message arrives from Høegh-Guldberg’s cabinet with an ordinance for urgent attention or a proclamation to be pasted up across the city, the compositors slam their type loudly in the letter cases, and the incessant rattle of the printing press causes plaster dust to descend from the ceiling and all the joints in his room. Early in the morning, long before the watchmen have retired, drowsy messengers come to collect printed matter to be sold in the streets or distributed in some other way, and these voices belong to boys before the onset of puberty, voices that make them eminently suited to their work and to terminating his sleep. Horse-drawn carts clatter in and out of the gateway, the iron cladding of the wheels resounding against the cobbles of the printer’s yard, echoing from all its walls. Carriages arrive with ordinances to be printed immediately, bundles of official notices and announcements, smelling sweetly of rolled pulp and the oil-based chem­icals of printer’s ink, are loaded onto carts and taken out into the city. So much on which to dwell, so much that is new and fascinating, things he has never before imagined, and his Greek and Latin gather dust. When he can afford to send a letter, he writes to his sister Kirstine in Nakskov and tells of his life in the royal city. She writes back and tells of hers in the market town, in the home of the pastor in which she lives, and he understands it to be as far from their life in Lier as Copenhagen itself.
    Morten lies on his bed and is kept awake by the eternal rattle and hum beneath him. He hears Schultz ordering his people about. He hears the syncopated rhythm of the press, the tramp of the printers’ and compos­itors’ wooden shoes, their coughing and hacking, and their arguments whenever the ink becomes smudged, the making up of a text has gone wrong, or if some object has contrived to become stuck and thereby halt the press.
    But all that keeps him awake in the beginning later lulls him to sleep. On occasion he sails with the packet boat from the Toldboden to visit his sister in Nakskov. The elderly provost in whose home she resides is a distant relative of their mother’s. The oppressive silence of Nakskov’s rectory makes him sleepless, and when finally he succumbs, the sycamore outside the window rouses him, dabbing its branches against the pane of his room. He attends service with his sister and sometimes sees the count on his way through the market town, drawn by a team of six horses, servants standing at the rear of the carriage, coat-tails flapping, one hand holding on to the vehicle, the other to their tall hats.
    The provost fulminates from the high pulpit. An imposing, red-haired man, stout as a smith, he holds forth on perdition and the lake of fire and brimstone, as though these were places and states under his personal and daily supervision. He then offers to issue loans to tenants who wish to purchase their freedom, and ends by discharging a volley against the Swedish enemy, who, under the protection of Beelzebub himself and his hordes of fallen angels, has robbed the town of its former glory. And in his concluding prayer he prays fervently for the royal household, his voice a tremble as he speaks the names of its members.
    After the service, the congregation file past and deliver their thanks for the sermon. Morten approaches. There is something the matter with the way the old man extends his hand, the expressionless stare of his eyes.
    Is the provost blind? he blurts out.
    Ssh, his sister breathes. It is forbidden for us to mention. But Magister Gram has been without his sight for two years now.
    How, then, can he carry out his office?
    No one dares get on the wrong side of him, she whispers. Besides, he knows the Bible and Luther and Pontoppidan inside and out, so I imagine he will remain in his living until the Lord calls