“What were you thinking of?” his father raged. “What possessed you?”
Harald did not want to cower in his bed like a child. He threw off the sheet and stood up. Because the weather was warm, he had slept in his undershorts.
“Cover yourself, boy,” his father said. “You’re practically naked.”
The unreasonableness of this criticism stung Harald into a rejoinder. “If underwear offends you, don’t enter bedrooms without knocking.”
“Knocking? Don’t tell me to knock on doors in my own house!”
Harald suffered the familiar feeling that his father had an answer for everything. “Very well,” he said sulkily.
“What devil took hold of you? How could you bring such disgrace upon yourself, your family, your school, and your church?”
Harald pulled on his trousers and turned to face his father.
“Well?” the pastor raged. “Are you going to answer me?”
“I’m sorry, I thought you were asking rhetorical questions.” Harald was surprised by his own cool sarcasm.
His father was infuriated. “Don’t try to use your education to fence with me-I went to Jansborg, too.”
“I’m not fencing. I’m asking whether there’s any chance you’ll listen to anything I say.”
The pastor raised his hand as if to strike. It would have been a relief, Harald thought as his father hesitated. Whether he took the blow passively, or hit back, violence would have been some kind of resolution.
But his father was not going to make it that easy. He dropped his hand and said, “Well, I’m listening. What have you got to say for yourself?”
Harald gathered his thoughts. On the train he had rehearsed many versions of this speech, some of them most eloquent, but now he forgot all his oratorical flourishes. “I’m sorry I daubed the guard post, because it was an empty gesture, a childish act of defiance.”
“At the least!”
For a moment he considered whether to tell his father about his connection with the Resistance, but he quickly decided not to risk further ridicule. Besides, now that Poul was dead, the Resistance might no longer exist.
Instead, he concentrated on the personal. “I’m sorry to have brought disgrace on the school, because Heis is a kindly man. I’m sorry I got drunk, because it made me feel dreadful the next morning. Most of all, I’m sorry to have caused my mother distress.”
“And your father?”
Harald shook his head. “You’re upset because Axel Flemming knows all about this and he’s going to rub your nose in it. Your pride has been hurt, but I’m not sure you’re worried about me at all.”
“Pride?” his father roared. “What has pride to do with anything? I’ve tried to bring up my sons to be decent, sober, God-fearing men-and you’ve let me down.”
Harald felt exasperated. “Look, it’s not that much of a disgrace. Most men get drunk-”
“Not my sons!”
“-once in their lives, at least.”
“But you were arrested.”
“That was bad luck.”
“It was bad behavior-”
“And I wasn’t charged-the police sergeant actually thought that what I did was funny. ‘We’re not the joke patrol,’ he said. I wouldn’t even have been expelled from school if Peter Flemming hadn’t threatened Heis.”
“Don’t you dare try to minimize this. No member of this family has ever been to jail for any reason. You’ve dragged us into the gutter.” The pastor’s face changed suddenly. For the first time, he showed sadness rather than anger. “And it would be shocking and tragic even if no one in the world knew of it but me.”
Harald saw that his father was sincere in this, and the realization threw him off balance. It was true that the old man’s pride was wounded, but that was not all. He genuinely feared for his son’s spiritual welfare. Harald was sorry he had been sarcastic.
But his father gave him no chance to be conciliatory. “There remains the question of what is to be done with you.”
Harald was not sure what this meant. “I’ve only missed a few days of school,” he said. “I can do the preliminary reading for my university course here at home.”
“No,” his father said. “You’re not getting off so lightly.”
Harald had a dreadful foreboding. “What do you mean? What are you planning?”
“You’re not going to university.”
“What are you talking about? Of course I am.” Suddenly Harald felt very afraid.
“I’m not going to send you to Copenhagen to pollute your soul with strong drink and jazz music. You’ve proved you aren’t mature enough for the city. You’ll stay here, where I can supervise your spiritual development.”
“But you can’t phone the university and say, ‘Don’t teach this boy.’ They’ve given me a place.”
“They haven’t given you any money, though.”
Harald was shocked. “My grandfather bequeathed money for my education.”
“But he left it to me to dispense. And I’m not going to give it to you to spend in nightclubs.”
“It’s not your money-you don’t have the right!”
“I most certainly do. I’m your father.”
Harald was stunned. He had not dreamed of this. It was the only punishment that could really hurt him. Bewildered, he said, “But you’ve always told me that education was so important.”
“Education is not the same as godliness.”
“Even so. .”
His father saw that he was genuinely shocked, and his attitude softened a little. “An hour ago, Ove Borking died. He had no education worth speaking of-he could barely write his name. He spent his life working on other men’s boats, and never made enough to buy a carpet for his wife to put on the parlor floor. But he raised three God-fearing children, and every week he gave a tenth of his meager wages to the church. That’s what God considers a good life.”
Harald knew and liked Ove, and was sorry he had died. “He was a simple man.”
“Nothing wrong with simplicity.”
“Yet if all men were like Ove, we’d still be fishing from dugout canoes.”
“Perhaps. But you’re going to learn to emulate him before you do anything else.”
“And what does that mean?”
“Get dressed. Put on your school clothes and a clean shirt. You’re going to work.” He left the room.
Harald stared at the closed door. What next?
He washed and shaved in a daze. He could hardly believe what was happening.
He might go to university without his father’s help, of course. He would have to get a job to support himself, and he would not be able to afford the private tuition that most people considered essential to supplement the free lectures. But could he achieve all he wanted in those circumstances? He did not want merely to pass his exams. He wanted to be a great physicist, the successor to Niels Bohr. How could he do that if he did not have the money to buy books?
He needed time to think. And while he was thinking, he had to go along with whatever his father was planning.
He went downstairs and ate without tasting the porridge his mother had made.
His father saddled the horse, Major, a broad-backed Irish gelding strong enough to carry them both. The pastor mounted, and Harald got up behind.
They rode the length of the island. The journey took Major more than an hour. When they reached the dock, they watered the horse at the quayside trough and waited for the ferry. The pastor still had not told Harald where they were going.
When the boat docked, the ferryman touched his cap to the pastor, who said, “Ove Borking was called home early this morning.”
“I expected as much,” said the ferryman.
“He was a good man.”
“Rest his soul.”
“Amen.”
They crossed to the mainland and rode up the hill to the town square. The stores were not yet open, but the pastor knocked at the door of the haberdashery. It was opened by the owner, Otto Sejr, a deacon of the Sande church. He seemed to be expecting them.
They stepped inside, and Harald looked around. Glass cases displayed balls of colored wool. The shelves were stacked with lengths of material, wool cloth and printed cotton and a few silks. Below the shelves were drawers, each neatly marked: “Ribbon-white,” “Ribbon-fancy,” “Elastic,” “Buttons-shirt,” “Buttons-horn,” “Pins,” “Knitting needles.”