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Authors: Peter Hoeg
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burnished to a gleaming, preternaturally dazzling sheen.
Not a single word was spoken during the serving of refreshments, which followed, with unerring accuracy, the program with which all the guests were somehow familiar and which made every word superfluous. These refreshments consisted of a sweet, heavy vintage Madeira and small slices of dry cake.
Nothing was said until the moment for the judging of the competition arrived. This competition had been the only public intimation of the Old Lady’s anniversary. It had been announced on the front page of the newspaper along with two lines of verse:
This newspaper’s praises are easily sung,
But if fault with it we must find
and all the guests had known beforehand that they were supposed to bring with them a suggestion for the completion of this poem. The entries were now read out one by one by Christoffer’s father-in-law, who kept going until all fifty-two had been read. Then it became clear to everyone, at one and the same time, that Dr. Mahler’s suggestion was splendid, the best, the winner, and the two golden lines were recited in chorus:
It has to be said, when all’s said and done,
That nothing springs to mind.
After this, everyone fell silent as the room shook with the simultaneous striking of all the clocks in the house. A last round of refreshments was then offered, and the fifty-two guests all looked, as one, at the Old Lady—who had not uttered one word, nor would, according to the program—and everyone knew that this would be the last time they would ever see her. For a brief moment, of previously determined length, their thoughts left the room and they recalled how they had known her in their capacities as judges and department heads and doctors and lawyers and chartered surveyors and town councilors and pastors and magistrates and company directors and landowners and captains, and then they reached for their glasses to toast the woman who had, like some great clockmaker, set in motion a mechanism which did not need to be wound up but which could continue to run for all time.
Then two things occurred that one can never completely guard against. The first was that Amalie opened the door. The second was that Christoffer got to his feet and, as one, the other fifty-one guests put down their glasses. Each in his own way, they understood that, for the first time since his wedding-day “Yes” in the church, Christoffer Ludwig was going to say something in company and that, for the first time ever, he was himself going to make a speech. This had not been foreseen in the Old Lady’s schedule.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” says Christoffer—and everyone remarks upon how surprisingly clear his voice is—”I would like to submit another possible solution, outside of the competition. My poem goes like this:
“This newspaper’s praises are easily sung,
But if fault with it we must find,
Then of all that is writ in the Danish tongue
Know that ne’er was a rag so lacking in spine—
Please, glue it and bind.”
After which he sits down and the party’s schedule vanishes in a fog of chatter and murmuring and voicing of opinions. Just at that moment the house clocks start to chime, far too early and all slightly out of step with one another, as though Christoffer’s breach of time in the oval room has spread to the rest of the building. Everyone talks even louder to drown out the grating dissonance of all these timepieces, and, amid this din, only the Old Lady and Amalie were silent: Amalie because, for the first time ever, she was thinking that perhaps, at heart, her father was not, after all, constructed out of weights and pulleys and springs and soulless machinery, as the mechanical chess player she had seen demonstrated in one of the markets of her childhood had been; the Old Lady because she was in danger of bursting with indignation. Not until much later, when the last of the Madeira had been drunk and the guests had taken themselves off,
Not a single word was spoken during the serving of refreshments, which followed, with unerring accuracy, the program with which all the guests were somehow familiar and which made every word superfluous. These refreshments consisted of a sweet, heavy vintage Madeira and small slices of dry cake.
Nothing was said until the moment for the judging of the competition arrived. This competition had been the only public intimation of the Old Lady’s anniversary. It had been announced on the front page of the newspaper along with two lines of verse:
This newspaper’s praises are easily sung,
But if fault with it we must find
and all the guests had known beforehand that they were supposed to bring with them a suggestion for the completion of this poem. The entries were now read out one by one by Christoffer’s father-in-law, who kept going until all fifty-two had been read. Then it became clear to everyone, at one and the same time, that Dr. Mahler’s suggestion was splendid, the best, the winner, and the two golden lines were recited in chorus:
It has to be said, when all’s said and done,
That nothing springs to mind.
After this, everyone fell silent as the room shook with the simultaneous striking of all the clocks in the house. A last round of refreshments was then offered, and the fifty-two guests all looked, as one, at the Old Lady—who had not uttered one word, nor would, according to the program—and everyone knew that this would be the last time they would ever see her. For a brief moment, of previously determined length, their thoughts left the room and they recalled how they had known her in their capacities as judges and department heads and doctors and lawyers and chartered surveyors and town councilors and pastors and magistrates and company directors and landowners and captains, and then they reached for their glasses to toast the woman who had, like some great clockmaker, set in motion a mechanism which did not need to be wound up but which could continue to run for all time.
Then two things occurred that one can never completely guard against. The first was that Amalie opened the door. The second was that Christoffer got to his feet and, as one, the other fifty-one guests put down their glasses. Each in his own way, they understood that, for the first time since his wedding-day “Yes” in the church, Christoffer Ludwig was going to say something in company and that, for the first time ever, he was himself going to make a speech. This had not been foreseen in the Old Lady’s schedule.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” says Christoffer—and everyone remarks upon how surprisingly clear his voice is—”I would like to submit another possible solution, outside of the competition. My poem goes like this:
“This newspaper’s praises are easily sung,
But if fault with it we must find,
Then of all that is writ in the Danish tongue
Know that ne’er was a rag so lacking in spine—
Please, glue it and bind.”
After which he sits down and the party’s schedule vanishes in a fog of chatter and murmuring and voicing of opinions. Just at that moment the house clocks start to chime, far too early and all slightly out of step with one another, as though Christoffer’s breach of time in the oval room has spread to the rest of the building. Everyone talks even louder to drown out the grating dissonance of all these timepieces, and, amid this din, only the Old Lady and Amalie were silent: Amalie because, for the first time ever, she was thinking that perhaps, at heart, her father was not, after all, constructed out of weights and pulleys and springs and soulless machinery, as the mechanical chess player she had seen demonstrated in one of the markets of her childhood had been; the Old Lady because she was in danger of bursting with indignation. Not until much later, when the last of the Madeira had been drunk and the guests had taken themselves off,
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