that they were in fact miserable sinners, squandering their existence in calculated acts of ungodliness and excess. They congregated for Bible reading and confession in the ecstasy of a new day dawning. There they had the opportunity both to recall the crowning moments of their own past sinfulness and to savor the sweetness of denouncing others.
Thorvald Bak was wise enough not to interfere when these meetings developed into appalling relapses during which these saintly souls would start giving themselves alcohol enemas and singing disgusting songs, before going on to tear down the mission house, rip off their clothes, and hare around the village—stark naked and with seaweed from the roofs in their hair—on the hunt for kerosene, because the aquavit had run out. When that also had been drunk, they rubbed their gums with axle grease, which drove them right out of their minds. Thorvald Bak waited until their ravings subsided because he, too, was familiar with sin and knew how closely related it is to remorse, and remorse to loneliness, and loneliness to a longing for fellowship, and fellowship to the religious submission that brought these righteous folk even closer together. Then he could preach to them and berate them until they wept and wailed and had to put their hands over their ears, because all around them they heard the laughter of hell.
Over the years these relapses occurred less often, as the people of Lavnœs gradually became aware that they were the chosen ones, and even though this awareness manifested itself more slowly for them than it had done for Thorvald Bak (when his mother’s portrait fell off the wall), nevertheless it was every bit as strong. They understood that they had been chosen to suffer more than anyone else, that their fortitude was to be tested. It was then that they went back to work (after centuries of progressive idleness): to making nets and building boats and planting potatoes, obsessed with the idea that though they might have lived in poverty, they would die wealthy. In just a few years they grew tremendously tight-fisted. They resumed commercial links, severed long before, with Rudkøbing and had virtually all of their meager crops and salted fish carted off to the town while they and their children ate soup made from the seaweed off the roofs. Only in their gifts to the church and the mission house did they retain their former generosity, because they felt that this house belonged to them all, and constituted a safe way of conserving their assets.
Through all of Thorvald Bak’s early years as pastor of Lavnœs the town was obsessed by divine stockpiling. All the inhabitants were seized by the conviction that they were, by dint of their hard, fruitless labor, their exceptional powers of endurance, and their pious conversation, making a divine investment that would one day be redeemed, with interest, in the sunlit groves of paradise. Even the climate seemed, during these years, to alter, as their new love for one another and their passionate faith cast golden rays of sunlight over the frozen deserts of winter and a protective shade across the heat of summer. Brimming with fresh energy, they turned their eyes upon one another, there to drive out the sin that they sensed as a faint tremor in the subsoil and a particular smell off the sea. They put a stop to all sales of alcohol and the lethal axle grease in the town, and naturally they took away all the musicians’ instruments and put a stop to the Saturday night dances (they knew all about music and how it begets lust). Then, when Anna was six years old, all the true believers of Lavnœs painted their houses black and took to wearing the same clothes of coarse linen—its stiffness against their skin meant to remind them of the difference between good and evil, while its color, together with that of the houses, was intended, in its monotony, to ensure that eyes remained fixed on the future and were not sidetracked by earthly
Thorvald Bak was wise enough not to interfere when these meetings developed into appalling relapses during which these saintly souls would start giving themselves alcohol enemas and singing disgusting songs, before going on to tear down the mission house, rip off their clothes, and hare around the village—stark naked and with seaweed from the roofs in their hair—on the hunt for kerosene, because the aquavit had run out. When that also had been drunk, they rubbed their gums with axle grease, which drove them right out of their minds. Thorvald Bak waited until their ravings subsided because he, too, was familiar with sin and knew how closely related it is to remorse, and remorse to loneliness, and loneliness to a longing for fellowship, and fellowship to the religious submission that brought these righteous folk even closer together. Then he could preach to them and berate them until they wept and wailed and had to put their hands over their ears, because all around them they heard the laughter of hell.
Over the years these relapses occurred less often, as the people of Lavnœs gradually became aware that they were the chosen ones, and even though this awareness manifested itself more slowly for them than it had done for Thorvald Bak (when his mother’s portrait fell off the wall), nevertheless it was every bit as strong. They understood that they had been chosen to suffer more than anyone else, that their fortitude was to be tested. It was then that they went back to work (after centuries of progressive idleness): to making nets and building boats and planting potatoes, obsessed with the idea that though they might have lived in poverty, they would die wealthy. In just a few years they grew tremendously tight-fisted. They resumed commercial links, severed long before, with Rudkøbing and had virtually all of their meager crops and salted fish carted off to the town while they and their children ate soup made from the seaweed off the roofs. Only in their gifts to the church and the mission house did they retain their former generosity, because they felt that this house belonged to them all, and constituted a safe way of conserving their assets.
Through all of Thorvald Bak’s early years as pastor of Lavnœs the town was obsessed by divine stockpiling. All the inhabitants were seized by the conviction that they were, by dint of their hard, fruitless labor, their exceptional powers of endurance, and their pious conversation, making a divine investment that would one day be redeemed, with interest, in the sunlit groves of paradise. Even the climate seemed, during these years, to alter, as their new love for one another and their passionate faith cast golden rays of sunlight over the frozen deserts of winter and a protective shade across the heat of summer. Brimming with fresh energy, they turned their eyes upon one another, there to drive out the sin that they sensed as a faint tremor in the subsoil and a particular smell off the sea. They put a stop to all sales of alcohol and the lethal axle grease in the town, and naturally they took away all the musicians’ instruments and put a stop to the Saturday night dances (they knew all about music and how it begets lust). Then, when Anna was six years old, all the true believers of Lavnœs painted their houses black and took to wearing the same clothes of coarse linen—its stiffness against their skin meant to remind them of the difference between good and evil, while its color, together with that of the houses, was intended, in its monotony, to ensure that eyes remained fixed on the future and were not sidetracked by earthly
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