Free Ida Brandt by Herman Bang Page B

Thøgersen rose from her chair.
    “Oh dear, oh dear…and I have to spread sand.”
    “It’s Christensen, the painter,” said Mrs Brandt.
    “Ach, ja, so sad,” said Miss Thøgersen, assuming a quite different voice. “And with four children.”
    “Will his widow stay in the house?” asked Mrs Brandt.
    Miss Thøgersen did not know. “But there are people,” she said, “who are kind to a widow.”
    There was something about the word “widow” that always touched Miss Thøgersen.
    “Yes,” said Mrs Brandt. “He was a freemason of course.”
    Miss Thøgersen had gradually moved into Ida’s seat by the window, when she suddenly shouted out in horror:
    “Gott, Gott, there comes the minister…”
    Miss Thøgersen lived in constant fear of clergymen on account of her illegitimate social position.
    The minister went past to the house of sorrow and Miss Thøgersen rushed away. Thønnichsen the coppersmith, spread box cuttings and sand on the road for all his more important customers.
    “Have you forgotten the cups?” said Mrs Brandt, and Ida took them.
    Mrs Brandt watched through the mirror to follow events in the house of mourning.
    The blind was down in Mr Sørensen’s window opposite to keep out the sun. It was always a source of irritation to him when funeral processions came down the street in the middle of the day.
    When they came out of school, the boys shrieked as they ran along the pavement. Olivia’s eldest boy was at the front with the remains of a snowball over his left ear.
    “Do they let him run about with bare legs now?” said Mrs Brandt. “Oh well, I suppose that’s supposed to be a good thing.”
    “Olivia says she thinks it toughens them, mother.”
    “Ach, there they are,” shouted Miss Thøgersen from outside on the pavement. She scattered the last handful of sand over the gutter plank and then helped with the box cuttings.
    Mrs Brandt had already seen the hearse in the mirror. It was the expensive one with curtains.
    The boys continued to run past on the pavement and the procession approached.
    “Oh, look at the children,” said Ida.
    Christoffersen’s two eldest were walking, stiff and shocked, in their new clothes, behind the hearse and in front of the minister, who was holding his white handkerchief up to his nose. The minister could not stand the smell of iodine.
    There was a squeal from the pavement as Miss Thøgersen struck out at a couple of boys.
    “Fie,” she said and went up her stone steps again. “You should be ashamed, getting in the way of that funeral procession…”
    The cortege continued to walk past, and the bells were ringing. The last were mourners coming now: two round-shouldered old men wearing grey mittens.
    Mrs Brandt looked away from the mirror.
    “I suppose it’s the masons who are paying,” she said.
    Miss Thøgersen still stood on the coppersmith’s stone steps. Miss Thøgersen wept bitterly every time she saw a coffin.
    “It’s one o’ clock,” said Mrs Brandt. Ida had already started to set the table for dinner, on the mahogany table, beneath the mantelpiece clock.

    ∞∞∞

    There was a loud noise by the door, awakening Mrs Brandt from her nap. It was the forester knocking the snow off his boots out in the corridor.
    “Hello, everyone,” he shouted, opening the door to the kitchen. “You have guests from afar.”
    “Good day, Ida my dear. Good day, Sofie.”
    “Hello. Hello…” Ida emerged, and her voice took on a quite different sound. Then she opened the door to the sitting room.
    “Good day, Mrs. Brandt,” said the forester in a rather more reserved voice as Mrs Brandt rose a little from her chair.
    “Well,” said Mrs Lund as she was divested of a mass of clothes, the innermost layer consisting of two red-striped capes: “It’s been a lovely time. But it makes one quite giddy,” she said. “And then I always feel a little strange travelling by train…”
    Mrs Lund sat down and Mrs Brandt said:
    “Are you not going to