Ol‐Kanelesa, Smith and Sacristan

It was four in the morning; Sigismund was already at his desk. He sat resting his cheek on his hand, waiting for the sun.

Full of zeal he had wakened while it was still almost dark. He had got up at once and done his usual morning exercises.p. 42 Then he had lit a candle and started work. He would soon have his inaugural sermon ready.

For two days he had walked around the streets of Bergstaden in his clerical attire. He had called on all the most important people in the town. And yesterday he had ordered two intoxicated smelters to come to his office today. Not later than 9 o’clock! He had nothing against a modest glass at home in the bosom of one’s family or amongst friends—but drunkenness on the streets, he intended to put a stop to that! He would give these two smelters a severe reprimand. And in addition he would summon them to the vestry on the first Sunday after his installation, so that they could do penance. He wished to give them a distaste for any future drunkenness.

Now that the daylight began to increase around him and the smoky candle burned down in the candlestick, he began to feel sleepy. There was deep peace, there was an increase in security in the first light of morning; it was an hour for beautiful dreams! Night was the time for sleep, not for dreams.

The pastor nodded. A couple of times his head slipped out of his hand. He straightened himself up. It seemed to him that just then a hand, not a strange hand but a young woman’s hand, was stroking his hair. He had seen the pale face of a girl, not a strange one either; but what her name was he couldn’t say, for he didn’t know it, did he?

“Well!” he said to himself. “This is not the time for pretty visions but for work!”

He began to work again on his inaugural sermon. He based it on the words of Jeremiah concerning the fearful tenacity of evil of this earth: “The bellows are burned, the lead is consumed of the fire; the founder melteth in vain: for the wicked are not plucked away.”

Sigismund’s quill pen scratched. He struggled with weighty words. He forced out images of violent power. He became gripped by them himself. He, Benjamin Sigismund, was delivering a new Sermon on the Mount.

Then the door opened. A thickset man with a strong face and bushy eyebrows came in. He looked to be somethingp. 43 over fifty. He was dressed in his Sunday best—a suit of yellow, tawed elk‐skin, a jabot, and a yellow‐red silk neckerchief.

Sigismund turned round in his chain and stared back at the man.

“Are you the sacristan?”

“Yes.”

Sigismund looked him up and down sharply. His face and head were as if carved in stone, there was something distinguished about his features, something aristocratic, which at once attracted Sigismund.

“I sent for you yesterday.”

“I was up at Aursunna.”

“Aur— Aur— Where’s that?”

“Doesn’t the pastor know, then?”

“No.”

“No. No. That’s like, that is.”

Sigismund started in his chair. He heard some of the same cold contempt in the sacristan’s voice as he had heard in the charcoal wagoner’s. It occurred to him that it was very strange that the man had come to his office so early, long before most people were up. He jumped up and put some high‐backed gilt, leather chairs as a screen in front of the bed where Kathryn still lay sleeping. It wasn’t really necessary, Kathryn slept like a stone; but out of regard for the sacristan. . . . Not that it was really necessary on his account either. The common people had no sense of modesty. Not the slightest!

And Sigismund peered out of the window and up at the church tower. Soon the clock would strike five.

It was only then that he noticed the street was already full of traffic. He had been so preoccupied with his inaugural sermon that he hadn’t even heard the carilloning from the bells of the hundreds of horses which were on their way up to the Works, with charcoal and ore.

He held out his hand to the sacristan.

“Good morning, I am glad to see you.”

“Yes, morning. You’re welcome here.”

The sacristan glanced shyly in the direction of the bed.

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“I’d best be coming back later; the mistress is asleep, I see.”

He spoke quietly as if he was afraid of waking her, and made sure he stood with his back to her. Sigismund was taken aback. He was astonished at the man’s tact.

“Now, now!” Sigismund said, and patted him on the back. “We can sit down here by the door and talk quietly.”

He pointed with his quill pen to an old chair with a broken back and a red‐painted seat.

“Honor to him who honor deserves!” The sacristan sat down on the doorstep. “It’s more than good enough for me here.”

“He that shall humble himself shall be exalted, sacristan.” Sigismund sat down carefully on the chair. “So your name is Ole Korneliusen?”

“Ol‐Kanelesa, yes.”

“What?” Sigismund said, and got up again. “Isn’t your name Ole Korneliusen?”

He went over to the table and picked up the church register. “Sacristan Ole Korneliusen, parents Kornelius Olsen Bonde and his wife Gunhild Erlingsdatter, born—” Sigismund held the book closer to his eyes. “Is it Hjulmager?”

“Right!”

“Right?”

Sigismund didn’t quite understand.

“I mean you’ve read it right.”

Sigismund threw the book down over on the table. Was he another one of them who spoke with a cloven tongue? He would break these mountain dwellers of their irritating double talk. He felt like giving the sacristan a warning now at once, but as this was the first time they had met he had better keep his tongue between his teeth.

“Tell me, my good Korneliusen, what is the state of morals here in Bergstaden?”

“Oh, much as in the days of Noah, marrying and giving in marriage.”

“What is the state of the different vices—let us take drunkenness for example?”

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“Oh, about the same as before, d’you see; it might have been worse, it might have been better.”

And they sat there silent for a while. Then it dawned on Sigismund that he was just as wise from the sacristan’s answers. His words were as slippery as polished quartz. The pastor’s annoyance at this smooth and meaningless answer changed nevertheless to amusement. This man from the mountains was certainly no fool. This calm, this assurance, and this tact and impudence at the same time were old Norse; Sigismund could have said old Norse culture.

“So we can say that on the whole the people in this parish are sober, Ole Korneliusen?”

“If we put it any other way, then people would have to be drunk the whole time. Then the Works would stop and the smeltery too, and the bigwigs would get nothing to eat.”

Sigismund got up again. He couldn’t exactly say that the sacristan gave him detailed information. And his time was a little too precious to throw away on this difficult man. Sigismund had still a good part of his inaugural sermon to write.

Ol‐Kanelesa got up too. He was both hungry and thirsty and wanted to get back home to Elisabeth Cottage to get a little food inside him. Just then the church clock struck six; he should have been in his smithy long since.

They stood there side by side, pastor and sacristan, listening to the heavy strokes from the iron hammer in the tower.

“Our bell tolls, our time unfolds——”

“And eternity claims soon our souls,” Ol‐Kanelesa added hurriedly.

“Yes. And you’re already an old man, sacristan.”

Sigismund still felt that he wanted to penetrate the sacristan’s armor a little. It would do him good to be reminded that all is vanity; his own too.

“I’m fifty‐five. And the pastor?”

“I am thirty‐three.”

“The rest will go quickly,” Ol‐Kanelesa said. “After you’re thirty, it goes like a flash.”

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He opened the door and stepped over the threshold. Sigismund remained standing in the door‐opening holding the latch.

Ol‐Kanelesa bent down and picked up a fiddle wrapped in a cloth, from the corner behind the door.

“You are a fiddler too?”

“Oh, nothing to speak of.”

“But you have a violin.”

“Oh, there’s many here with a fiddle. And if all of them could play, there would be more than enough fiddling and dancing here in the world.”

“So you were playing last night, sacristan?” Sigismund said sternly. “Is that not a frivolous occupation for a servant of the Church?”

Ol‐Kanelesa put the fiddle under his arm.

“Is it worse playing at night than by day? I’ve never seen it forbidden.”

It seemed to Sigismund that he was talking to a brick wall; this man was possessed of a cold, unbelievable calm, a calm which nothing and nobody could shake.

“Just one thing, sacristan, you must listen to the voice of conscience.”

Ol‐Kanelesa remained standing there thoughtfully for a long time, staring down at the floor. Sigismund became impatient, it seemed to him that their conversation would never end.

“So, does the pastor have to listen to that voice, then?”

“Yes, certainly I do.”

“Then the pastor’s conscience is too quiet. I think conscience has the loudest voice of all.”

Now it was Sigismund’s turn to stand there and reflect at length. He had a good mind to reprimand this low person for his speech and conduct. His speech was uncouth. He spoke as if he was speaking to an equal rather than his superior. Besides, he was not quite certain whether the man was sober.

“We will talk about that another time.”

“Yes, we must have something to talk about another time, too.”

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And Ol‐Kanelesa went down the steps.

“One thing more, sacristan.” Sigismund leaned far out of the door. “Is there much dancing here?”

“Not so much as before.”

“What can have caused dancing to decline?”

“I don’t think they have the strength to dance quite so much as before; it’s mainly dancing with their feet together.”

Sigismund didn’t understand. This was no doubt something poisonous, something quite impossible again. He thought, too, that he noticed a mocking smile on the sacristan’s face.

He said severely: “What do you mean?”

“I mean people are too hungry now. Bad years and war all the whole time, that’s nothing much to dance about.”

“Is there famine here?”

“Yes, there’s not much to eat up in the snowdrifts.”

“Sad,” Sigismund said. “Sad. Very sad.”

His heart softened suddenly. It looked as if nature was now sowing with the wrong hand. War, pestilence, and famine! Jeremiah was right: “The bellows are burned; the founder melteth in vain: for the wicked are not plucked away.” All the same. Finally the wicked would be plucked away. In the meanwhile one must not lose faith in the light.

“Farewell, sacristan.”

“Yes, farewell.”

Ol‐Kanelesa left. As he reached the lowest step, a fiddle string vibrated. The sound touched his heart. He was both fiddler and blacksmith; steel, iron, the fiddle, and the stream up at the Works in the spring, they all sang the same song.

Sigismund sat down at his desk again. He sat and turned over the pages of the manuscript of his inaugural sermon; a new Sermon on the Mount! He had lost the thread of it. It was as if the sacristan, that infernal sacristan, had given him something bitter to swallow.

Sigismund read through page after page of his manuscript. His eyebrows contracted more and more threateningly. It was a worldly sermon. Just empty sword‐play. No attack on wickedness, on the opponents of the Kingdom of God. Whatp. 48 he had written was a contribution to his own honor and glory and not to the glory of Christ. “A new Sermon on the Mount!” he exclaimed. “I who in no wise am worthy to unloose the Master’s shoe‐latchet. I write a Sermon on the Mount? What folly! Folly!” He was deeply moved. He threw himself down on his knees by the chair and prayed: “Lord God of Hosts! My crucified Saviour crowned with thorns! Because of Thy bitter suffering and death, forgive me that I have sought my own honor and not Thine. Forgive me that I forgot Thy precious promise that that which we shall speak and say shall be given us at that selfsame moment. Lord, think mercifully of me in Thy Kingdom.”