Short Story: The Passing of Margit

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXVII, Issue 19626, 21 October 1933, Page 9

Short Story: The Passing of Margit

By B. BERGSON SPIRO.

YOUNG woman came out from the door leading to the kitchen with a pile of plates in her hand. She rried them carefully to the large ble, and there set them down among great conglomeration of other shes. In this boarding-house, as in ost others throughout Sweden, the stem prevailed by which the boards, sitting separately at their own bles, rose at regular intervals and rved themselves from the dishes on e large buffet. The meal had not yet :gun; Margit cast a speculative ance to see that nothing was missing om the first course; the colossal jandinavian hors d'oeuvres. Dish of ■own and pungent goat s cheese, ckled herrings, yellow, gnomish ushrooms, radishes, meat jellies, and ie flat, crackling hard-bread, crisply lbbled in the baking. All complete, ow the gong. She went towards the door of the randa. The boarders were all in the ounds in front of the lake, lying in zy, bloated hammocks, or reading on ie seats. Agnesvik was a quiet itablishment, frequented mostly by d ladies, or by mothers with very >ung families. It was a rare thing see a man about the place. Margit, irveying the familiar scene, was all ie more surprised, therefore, when ie suddenly perceived, walking across e grounds, a tall man wearing the >aked motoring cap of the Swedish jtomobile Club. He walked down wards the edge of the lake, and stood iere, with his hands in his trouser >ckets, staring across at the silent ne trees that came down on the op>site shore to meet their reflection l the warm summer water. Margit atched him for a moment. Then ie turned back to her duties. On the all above, there hung a gong com>sed of a series of hollow brass tubes, ’hen rhythmically stricken, these reased a circle of slow, deep notes, are as water. “Margit,” said Fru Oden, coming up ’ i her at that moment, “lay a small ble by the wall. We have an extra r dinner. A young man," Fru Oden Ided, and she scanned Margit's open ce. She had employed Margit at ;nesvik for nearly eleven years; the rl was an orphan, a fondling, from arlstad. Margit merely nodded, id moved away to get a tablecloth it of the cupboard. She was big. onde, gaunt, with a long head and iry light-coloured eyes, which many iople found disquieting. There was, deed, a curious lack of presence in leir prolonged gaze. No personal vareness; on defence. She had ie utterly white-blonde hair of the wedish peasant woman, flowering in s coarse and living fairness out of a rge, well-moulded skull. Having laid the table, she stood, apkin over-arm, in her accustomed lace, waiting for the boarders to come L. He sat alone at his table, eating and lading the sports page of the "Nya termlands Tidning. Every time that ie passed him to go to the central .ble he glanced slyly up, and his eyes allowed the line of her tall white, wkward body, her laden and sensible hands, up towards the strong iw-line, fleshly prow of that unconlious face, and the pallid, burning air. Her eyes he could not see; she apt the deep, expressionless lids iwered, intent on her momentary urden. The man watched her. He as a commercial traveller, employed >• a big firm of watchmakers in Malio. He had not come to Agnesvik afore; as a rule, when in the neighDurhood, he stopped at Filipstad, the aarest town; but this time, because of waitress in the Stadshotell there, he ad particular reason for avoiding the [ace . . . The meal went on. Spoons [inked. The peculair modulation of svedish voices rose and fell in the cm. Sunlight streamed through the >ft muslin curtains, illuminating the hite-painted furniture, the brass lucepans on the wall, the red, wooln tapestries. In its corner the randfather clock ticked away with olden and slender needles of time. The meal was over at last, and the id ladies trooped into the drawingx>m for coffee. But the man relained seated at his table. Presently largit came through from the kitchen, aarlng the coffee-tray. Then he >se and met her. He stood directly i her path. Tall, wearing a yellow lirt and a leather belt around his lim, powerful waist. He was smokig; the unfamiliar and Insinuating raiths of tobacco reached her from im. “What’s your name?” he asked, i a soft voice.

“Margit,” she said. “All right. Listen, Margit, I want a nice little bottle of punch with my coffee. See? And bring it to me out here, will you, Margit, there’s a nice girl. As cold as you can get it. See?” He placed his hand on her arm, above the elbow. Then he stepped aside, letting her pass with the tray. She served the old ladies with coffee; they were preparing to play cards on the large white table. In the centre of its was a cactus in full flower; from the midst of the crabbed, thorny leaves broke a naked blossom, a sole flower, petals parted to reveal a shower of stamens, thick with sweet, pale dust. The sting of frozen punch dissolved to an intimate mounting sweetness below his throat. He raised the glass to her. Unheeding the fact that Fru Oden might be watching her from the kitchen, Margit stood by his table. Her large, colourless eyes were fixed disquietingly on him. “Will you come?” he said. She was dignified and admirable in her surrender to him. He knew, then, as he watched her, that he was the first to trouble her emotions, and he hesitated for a moment; but the cravings of vanity made him incautious. “I'll meet you with the car,” he said, “on the road to Filipstad. At the level crossing.” The strange, pale night of the Swedish summer lay abroad in stillness. On either side stretched hundreds of miles of unbroken pine forest, a rooted population, arms linked, impenetrable. At the level crossing railway tracks sped their way in metallic phosphorescence. She had never been in a car before. She sat wonderingly in the warm, leathery becushioned box. watching him. At night, in control of this unfamiliar engine, he seemed to her more wonderful than before. She could smell his close aroma of tobacco, hair-oil, and punch; he placed one arm round her, and the car moved forward along the deserted road, his spare hand guiding the wheel with languid, subtle twist. Moving headlights blanched the wayside trees. Once a wild squirrel darted across the road. She said very little, But her face, like that of a dreamer, was set in a kind of exalted smile. When at last he slowed the car down on the outskirts of a clearing and took her in his arms, the detachment that sweet, intense somnambulism was not disturbed.

The moon had changed aspect. With luminous power it bewitched the countryside. They were back at the level crossing. "Well, here we are,” he managed to say. His hair was ruffled, and he looked curiously pale. Somehow these affairs, which he could never resist, always left him sick and exhausted .. . She was still sitting there. Why didn’t she go now? He couldn’t keep up his gallant atitude any longer. He wanted to be alone. He wanted to burrow himself deep down in his solitary bed and sleep as heavily and dully as he could. Must get rid of her. Ask to see her again.

that'll make it easier. “Listen, Margit," he said, trying not to yawn in his great lassitude and disgust, “you'd better go now, but we'll meet again here to-morrow night. You want to meet again, don't you?” His vanity, which ceaselessly drove him, could not resist this last sickly effort. “Of course," she said. Her voice was deep. Hearing it, he felt uneasy; he glanced at her; in the moonlight her white, fanatical eyes were full on him. Quick, his instinct warned him, anything, anything to get rid of her. “Tomorrow night, then, meet me again, meet me here, at this level crossing. Will that do? Will you meet me here, Margit?” “Yes,” she said, ‘Til meet you here.”

*i- •> -> •:* •;* *i* •> ■'.*%- %• * *:• *:* *:• *:• •> Next day he walked Into Fru Oden's ofdce, paid his bill and departed. His car roared joyfully along the white road to Filipstad, then disappeared at the bend. The last reverberations of escaping engines died slowly away He was not there for breakfast. He was not there far dinner. Or for supper. She said nothing, but each time her gaze went to his empty table. It did not really occur to her that he had left for good. That night she was standing at the level crossing, waiting. She waited an hour. He did not come. Next morning she was about her duties again, orderly, silent. But the

strange quality in her gaze had grown deeper. And that night she was again standing at the level crossing. She stood there every night for almost a week. Then Fru Oden got to hear of it, and because she felt a responsibility for this foundling she had brought up in her service, forbade her to go. Forbade; but nothing could prevent Margit from accomplishing her fixed purpose; in spite of all they could do, she succeeded in escaping to make her way to the level crossing. At last it became apparent to Fru Oden, who was a shrewd and kindly woman, that the girl might be left alone, for, in spite of this peculiar aberration, she remained decent and orderly in her daily work. They did not try to prevent her any longer. Every night she was to be seen, standing there, waiting. She became the by-word of the countryside: the peasants would come up to watch her, the workers from the iron factory call out coarse greetings; but she never heeded them, standing there motionless and expectant, her tranced eyes raised in an expression of quiet, happy waiting. Meanwhile, the summer had passed. The short Swedish autumn set in; the woods were full of grotesque yellow mushrooms, and slow hedgehogs crept in bristling sloth across the paths. Still she continued her pilgrimage. The laden air dissolved at last into white, noiseless showers of snow, the pine trees were deeply furred, and the lake stretched cold and solid, preserving, within its apparent eternity of unalterable chill clarity, the temporary incidents of sticks and spars and matchboxes. Every evening, faithful, Margit still made her way over the dry, creaking snow, and stood in her oki coat and bonnet and red woollen gloves, motionless, quietly and serenly waiting.

In the dining-room the white grandfather clock numbered, with golden and aristocratic needles, the proletariat of common moments that endlessly slipped by, registered the birth and death of second after second. Tick, tick, tick. Ceaselessly. Tick, tick, tick. Insane insistence; tapping on the very needle-point of the present, forever renewed. Meanwhile, in formless flow the days and weeks and months passed through the room. Margit came in with her tray. She served the food and cleared the table. She came in with her tray. Tick, tick, tick. A year gone by. They opened the double-paned windows: light was brightly painful; there was a fresh chill abroad, and the glad splintering of newly-breaking ice. Released waters sprang to the surface in bubbling liquid resurrection. Springtime again. She came in with her plates and served the dishes. Another meal begun. Another over. Margit, during this time, had not changed at all. She was still gaunt, white-fleshed, of prow-like jaw and fathomless eyes. She was quiet and efficient in her work; perfectly clean in her person: her flesh was always as clean as a peeled fruit. But every evening she was to be seen waiting at the level crossing. If any of the

peasants approached her there, she merely ignored their presence, hardly seeing them; they belonged to another plane of existence, remote from her inner life. They soon left her alone. She became known as “den stolliga”— the mad one. Few people could remember how the whole thing had begun. Some old story—years ago. An old story. Long forgotten. An old story, long forgotten. Forgotten? Watching those eyes which brooded over their inner dream, Fru Oden sometimes wondered. One evening, after supper, Margit was engaged, outside the door of the kitchen, in ranging on a ledge all the bowls of sour milk which were to set for the morrow, turning overnight from loose milk liquid into smooth mounds, bearing a yellow, wrinkled skin of cream, soft as velvet. It was early summer: all around, in the kitchen garden, the currant bushes were clotted with bitter and translucent berries which shone through the green camouflage of leaves. She was working slowly and carefully, setting each glass bowl in its place, cheek by cheek, when the sound of a car turning in tire drive at this late hour made her turn. The cars were all garaged here, opposite the kitchen, in a large shed filled with the mixed odour of petrol and fowl feathers. Her hand still on the ledge, she stood waiting. The car was coming. Headlights, pale in the lingering dusk, flashed their way along, and a moment later a dark saloon car slanted obliquely out of the shadows. Within a yard of where she stood, its movement was cut by the sudden rein of brakes. Screech, went grated metal. The car came to a standstill the humming of its engines died down. There was a moment’s stilness, in which she could hear the sound of a lorry passing along the road with its tarpaulined load of felled trees. Then the door of the car opened and a man got out. He slammed it behind him, loudly, and stood, drawing off his motoring gloves. He was tall, and wore the peaked cap of the Swedish Automobile Club. She stared. He looked round, and then he caught sight of her. “Oh, hallo,” he said. “I was just wondering if there was anyone about. Can I see the proprietress?” He took a step nearer: the light from the open kitchen fell upon him and upon her. A silence of three seconds. “If it isn’t—if it isn't Margit!” And a huge grin of incredulous amusement overspread his face. . He laughed uproariously. He slapped his thigh with his leather gloves. “Well, I never, after all these years! Well, I never!” He was highly amused. He kept on repeating. “Well I never, well, I never,” silently. Then he took a step nearer: while she watched him intently and the presence of gin hovered. “Can you imagine it, after all there, years! To remember you right away like that!” He leaned forward. Pungently, gin flowed from his breath. “Margit, don't you remember me? Of course you remember me, eh, Margit?” She stared at him. His face, in the light that fell from the open kitchen, hung foolishly before her: a face young no longer, the lines of it prematurely sodden, flaccid below the chin, and flushed evenly with a sharp, unnatural colour: the physiognomy of alcohol. He had been drinking that very evening; he swayed as he stood there grasping for her arm. He was still talking. “Well, call this luck. Call this luck. Li ten, Marget, I’m just going to have a bite of supper and a little drink, and then we’ll go away together, for a little ride in the car. You'd like that, wouldn't you, Margit?” She did not reply. Suddenly he put an arm around her and kissed her. “Good! I won't be long, I'm coming back." he said, and left her, to go round to the front of the house and find Fru Oden. She heard his laden feet stumble against the shallow wooden steps of the verandah. For a few moments she remained completely motionlers. Then she moved. She went over to the ledge and continued ranging the bowls of sour milk, carefully spreading over the top a frame of clean, protecting muslin. When he emerged from the house some time later he came face to face with her in the drive. It had grown darker now. and the whole countryside lay so still that they could hear the intermittent rushing of the weir on the road to Monkfors, almost a mile away. In the dim air. bats were swooping on noiseless wings. “Oil. there you are!” he said. “There you are.” He laughed fatuously. "Waiting lor me, eh?” He had a bottle In the

pocket of his coat. The corked neck protruded, sealing the pale, vicious liquid in its transparent receptacle. "I brought that for you and me,” he said. And then, quickly: "Hey, wait a minute! Where are you off to?” for she had steped aside. She did not answer. “Here!’’ He moved forward and grasped her arm. His fingers tightened angrily. “Here, Margit.” The grip on her flesh seemed to penetrate, to go deep; slowly she turned to stare at him: a new look crossed her face, an expression resembling the strange fear that passes over the features of one about to wake from sleep ~ , Then the expression vanished: her gaze became secure, remote, and with a strong movement she released her arm. “Here. Magit, you're not trying to give me the slip, are you? Were gouig out together, aren’t we?” His tone was urgent, disappointed, fuddled. She ignored him, as she ignored the clumsy peasants who sometimes annoyed her. Leaving him standing in the drive, frustrated, she walked away irom mm. In the stillness of the early summer night she walked down the drive and out mto the road. On either side the pine trees, locked deep m the earth, standing dry and erect anu serried. Impregnated the darkness with sharp savour. As she went, nocturnal animals winged in eJcnt aerial convolution above her head. She arrived at the levei crossing, where swilt tracks elongated, metallic gleam. Ar.d as she resumed t u her old position, standing quiet and expectant, vvitn her eyes on the read to Filipstad, it was evident that irom this stale of remote inner happiness it would now be forever impoa-.blc lo awaken her. t s