One year, a century ago, a spring was late in Denmark. During the last days of March, the Sound was ice-bound, and blind, from the Danish to the Swedish coast.
Not every one of the stories in this collection necessarily is dependent upon the winter season, but in a few the presence of winter is strategic and more than necessary. Peter from this story, for instance, is unusually connected to the barometer of subtle shifts in climate in a way that is inextricable. The strength of this connection becomes, in turn, highly influential in his symbolic relationship with his cousin Rosa.
King Erik of Denmark, surnamed Glipping was murdered in the bank of Finerrup, in the year of 1286, by a party of rebellious vassals. According to the tradition and the old ballads, the murderers were headed by the King’s Lord High Constable, Stig Andersen Hvide, who killed King Erik in revenge, because he had seduced his wife, Ingeborg.
“The Fish” is a kind of medieval mystery story in which a king consumes a fish revealed to contain a woman’s ring with a blue stone. The story unfolds over the course of twenty pages and then on the final page there is a gap between the next-to-last paragraph and the one quoted above. The effect is almost like the end of an episode of Dragnet in which trial and verdict is rendered off-screen and delivered by a narrator to quickly sum up the story.
Three-quarters of a century ago there lay in Antwerp, near the harbor, a small hotel named the Queen’s Hotel. It was a net, respectable place where sea captains stayed with their wives.
This is the opening sentence of the first story in the collection as it was published in the U.S. The order was re-arranged by American publishers from its original English version published in the U.K. It is a kind of a strange choice since the location is not Denmark, but Belgium and since the very next sentence situates the setting as March, which is just barely a winter month and certainly not the most wintry of the Danish climate. But the story is one of two in the collection featuring the writer character named Charlie Despard. That appears to be the deciding factor.
“No. Not a very good tale, really, you know. But it has moments in iti that might be worked up, and from which one might construct a fine tale.”
The decision to switch “The Sailor-Boy’s Tale” with “The Young Man with the Carnation” as the point of departure for the collection only finally makes sense when one reaches the paragraph of the last story in both versions: “A Consolatory Tale.” Despard is here referring to a story told by another he has been listening to attentively. He makes this final judgment on the quality coincident with his cigarette reaching the end of its usefulness. Shortly after igniting the flammable paper rolled around tobacco, Despard had concluded it was a good tale, but that it was time to go home. What a difference a cigarette makes.
