The Prophets of Eternal Fjord Read Online Free Page B

praises them and arranges for the room, a damp crypt whose origins are lost in the gloom of the Middle Ages, to be properly lit with modern lamps. He encourages Morten to enrol as an alumnus. Yet admission is restricted by quota, and objections of a finger-wagging, admonitory nature issue from the schoolmaster’s house in Lier, and Morten knows that the relative financial ease in which he exists is conditional upon his divinity studies being completed with a minimum of diversion. He has been a matriculated student for two years now, the time in which many complete their studies, but as long as he remains and does not abandon his course, his father’s patience with low marks and deferments appears to be almost boundless. He reports to the Procurator Gill on the first weekday of each month, and receives his allowance alongside detailed accounts of his progress at the university.
    The printer’s house, a solid, four-storey building erected in accor­dance with the most recent regulations, that is to say after the last fire in 1728, and therefore not held together by hazardously inflammable timber frames, is situated at the back of the courtyard. Its main entrance is by Studiestræde, though the family often uses the rear gateway. Morten has never been inside the door of the printer’s home. For a poor student and tenant of a modest room diagonally above the gateway, it is not a place into which he may expect to be invited. Schultz’s three daughters frequent the courtyard. They skip and sing, and play at Scotch-hoppers and tag. He hears the slap of their soft laced shoes against the cobbles, their giggles and disagreements. They grow up outside his window. At first, they are little girls he hardly notices, high voices and shrill laughter echoing in the cobbled yard. He hears the swish and snap of their skip­ping rope, and sees their dresses unfurl and fall into place, unfurl and fall into place, revealing their feet and legs in brief glimpses, long curls bobbing at their shoulders, their rather round and prominent brows, their clear, deep-set eyes, the harmonious triangles of nose and mouth exuding good humour and light-heartedness. And then they skip no more. They retire into the shade of the sycamore in the middle of the yard, where there is a bench. Here they sit and read, all three in the same book, the eldest of them flanked by the younger, who lean in from either side, legs swinging to and fro. Morten Falck passes them frequently on his way to the lunch room. He senses their eyes as they follow him and he hears their giggles. He has no idea of their names. He never speaks to them and has no reason ever to do so. There is something about girls yet to reach puberty that annoys and repels him, all that smugness and gaiety, the unquestioned assurance that a wonderful life awaits them, the clean white dresses, the soft and prissy shoes, the ribbons in their hair, all that as yet remains bound up and kept inside, the things of which they are ignorant. In a few short years they will be drawn into the stall and impregnated, swell and give birth, amid ejaculations of blood and slime and stifled gasps, into handkerchiefs splashed with anaesthetic alcohol and perfume. The corpses in the faculty cellar are preferable to the maidens Schultz, Morten tells himself with newly acquired cynicism. There, at least, no false hope resides, only honest, uncompromising decomposition.
    One of the girls sticks out from the trinity, the eldest. All of a sudden she has shot up and is a full head taller than her sisters. Morten sees that she has become a woman. She must be the same age as the Crown Prince, he calculates. Confirmed and ready to depart the nest, Miss Schultz moves about the yard as awkwardly as a lame foal. She is apportioned little time alone without the mother appearing in the doorway and calling her name.
    Abelone!
    Obediently she rises from the bench and goes into the