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Entry tags:
writing | death at sunset
[ trigger warning: description of suicide. ]
THE FINAL CHAPTER
Never had Gudrun seen a more beautiful sunset than on the evening when Theodor's family brought her along on their weekend trip to the rugged West Coast, where the waves foamed at the mouth, rising like rows of fortressed walls, many miles out. Only the horizon remained a steady line, weighed down by the sky, bound to the earth by its burdens.
All day, the sunshine had pounded down upon the beach, drying the sand and heating it up; as if hiding some portal to the Inferno, the smooth dunes would turn scorching hot during the hours around noon. Where the fine grains of it stuck to her soles in her light summer sandals, it was now – the clock striking a late nine in the living room of the old country house awaiting their return half a mile farther up the shore – rather a mild and warm touch, like a kiss between tender friends or a fleeting caress that she would never again feel from another person.
It was a Thursday.
Looking out across the coastline from the top of the rock-bound cliffs, Gudrun thought this could indeed be the last Thursday to ever exist, and it would be quite enough. Yes, she thought, letting Theodor and his parents walk ahead, while leaning contemplatively on the rickety, old wooden railing that had been constructed to safeguard the heights before which she stood, this could be a better day than any other to die.
The cliffs were so steep, they created a towering border of chalk deposit and bare rock between beach and upland, the wall of solid matter utterly exposed; nude, raw, as the Lord had created it – and likewise disintegrating over centuries, just like mankind itself. It was difficult not to forget, how once this landmark had stretched into the sea and broken apart the waves. That was to say, when the Vikings had roamed these lands. Yet, the rotten wooden railing and the long fall were everything which remained of a more grandiose era.
Gudrun inclined her head, looking down, down, down, at the gently swaying lyme grass and the dunes that grew hot as Hell at midday, as if some trap door had been buried under the sand, and she repeated these words to herself, unheard by all living souls, as well as by the one who had once instilled them in her memory. The wind swiftly blew them off into the offing, playing with the straps of her straw bonnet cap on the way.
“When a day has been very beautiful, the fall into darkness will only feel longer.”
“Gudrun!” Theodor’s voice resounded then, across the distance that had separated them for years and which had only grown greater after she joined him and his mother, his esteemed father, in the carriage to take them to Hanstholm the previous day. They had sat next to each other, his hand supporting the slight slouch of his posture on the seat very near to her thigh while he spoke animatedly to his parents, but never had they in reality been farther apart.
Lifting the hem of her white dress, pale and see-through like the thinnest of skin, as if she too was nude and raw, exposed, the way she had been made by God Himself, Gudrun stepped over the railing that was a poor sense of security, only extending to the height of her hip.
The same place where Theodor’s hand had sought to find rest, once, twice and more – although almost immediately she lost count of the times. Chilled to the bone, despite the mildness of the night. It has been a long fall, she thought.
“Careful!” Theodor yelled, his pleasant baritone voice shriller than usually, travelling the half hundred meters between them, but never far and never fast enough. The wind ate away at it, and the landscape was so flat, there was nothing and no one to catch the words, send the messenger back with reply. “Don’t slip, Gudrun! My God!”
Ought one not end one’s life on the best of days, rather than on the worst of them, someone had once philosophized with her lips pressed to Gudrun’s nude, exposed shoulder and as if blowing in once more with the sun-seared gusts, she heard Magda speak so maddeningly in her ear: His name is Carl, he is the answer to all my prayers.
How beautiful that little boy child had been in his mother’s arms last they saw each other. More beautiful than any sunset, even this one.
Slowly, Gudrun raised her face and stared directly into the bright red sun disc, sinking as it was into the sea, another burden on the horizon which already carried so much on its shoulders. Like that, she was blinded. Magda’s son would be one year old today; at the other end of the country, the Mikkelsen family would be celebrating that he had lived, and that he would continue to live, and his mother would never cease to live for him in much the same manner as she had done until this moment that existed maybe solely in Gudrun’s frenzied imagination.
Perhaps none of it was real. Perhaps none of it had ever been real.
For Magda, she imagined, today would truly be the happiest day; every day that little Carl lived would be happier still, and Gudrun did not wish to subtract from that equation. Like an ill omen, she did not actively seek to bring harm, but knew no other way to stay true to her nature.
A long fall, she thought.
And thus, silently, she jumped from atop the Hanstholm cliffs, the thick, golden-orange rays of the day’s last sunlight not thick enough to break her rapid descend towards the dunes waiting below with their trap doors to Hell. Ready.
It was over in mere seconds.
[ Hougaard, Gertrud:
"Death at Sunset",
Page 199-201.
First edition, 1905.
Printed in Aarhus,
Bojsen Publishing. ]
____________
Never had Gudrun seen a more beautiful sunset than on the evening when Theodor's family brought her along on their weekend trip to the rugged West Coast, where the waves foamed at the mouth, rising like rows of fortressed walls, many miles out. Only the horizon remained a steady line, weighed down by the sky, bound to the earth by its burdens.
All day, the sunshine had pounded down upon the beach, drying the sand and heating it up; as if hiding some portal to the Inferno, the smooth dunes would turn scorching hot during the hours around noon. Where the fine grains of it stuck to her soles in her light summer sandals, it was now – the clock striking a late nine in the living room of the old country house awaiting their return half a mile farther up the shore – rather a mild and warm touch, like a kiss between tender friends or a fleeting caress that she would never again feel from another person.
It was a Thursday.
Looking out across the coastline from the top of the rock-bound cliffs, Gudrun thought this could indeed be the last Thursday to ever exist, and it would be quite enough. Yes, she thought, letting Theodor and his parents walk ahead, while leaning contemplatively on the rickety, old wooden railing that had been constructed to safeguard the heights before which she stood, this could be a better day than any other to die.
The cliffs were so steep, they created a towering border of chalk deposit and bare rock between beach and upland, the wall of solid matter utterly exposed; nude, raw, as the Lord had created it – and likewise disintegrating over centuries, just like mankind itself. It was difficult not to forget, how once this landmark had stretched into the sea and broken apart the waves. That was to say, when the Vikings had roamed these lands. Yet, the rotten wooden railing and the long fall were everything which remained of a more grandiose era.
Gudrun inclined her head, looking down, down, down, at the gently swaying lyme grass and the dunes that grew hot as Hell at midday, as if some trap door had been buried under the sand, and she repeated these words to herself, unheard by all living souls, as well as by the one who had once instilled them in her memory. The wind swiftly blew them off into the offing, playing with the straps of her straw bonnet cap on the way.
“When a day has been very beautiful, the fall into darkness will only feel longer.”
“Gudrun!” Theodor’s voice resounded then, across the distance that had separated them for years and which had only grown greater after she joined him and his mother, his esteemed father, in the carriage to take them to Hanstholm the previous day. They had sat next to each other, his hand supporting the slight slouch of his posture on the seat very near to her thigh while he spoke animatedly to his parents, but never had they in reality been farther apart.
Lifting the hem of her white dress, pale and see-through like the thinnest of skin, as if she too was nude and raw, exposed, the way she had been made by God Himself, Gudrun stepped over the railing that was a poor sense of security, only extending to the height of her hip.
The same place where Theodor’s hand had sought to find rest, once, twice and more – although almost immediately she lost count of the times. Chilled to the bone, despite the mildness of the night. It has been a long fall, she thought.
“Careful!” Theodor yelled, his pleasant baritone voice shriller than usually, travelling the half hundred meters between them, but never far and never fast enough. The wind ate away at it, and the landscape was so flat, there was nothing and no one to catch the words, send the messenger back with reply. “Don’t slip, Gudrun! My God!”
Ought one not end one’s life on the best of days, rather than on the worst of them, someone had once philosophized with her lips pressed to Gudrun’s nude, exposed shoulder and as if blowing in once more with the sun-seared gusts, she heard Magda speak so maddeningly in her ear: His name is Carl, he is the answer to all my prayers.
How beautiful that little boy child had been in his mother’s arms last they saw each other. More beautiful than any sunset, even this one.
Slowly, Gudrun raised her face and stared directly into the bright red sun disc, sinking as it was into the sea, another burden on the horizon which already carried so much on its shoulders. Like that, she was blinded. Magda’s son would be one year old today; at the other end of the country, the Mikkelsen family would be celebrating that he had lived, and that he would continue to live, and his mother would never cease to live for him in much the same manner as she had done until this moment that existed maybe solely in Gudrun’s frenzied imagination.
Perhaps none of it was real. Perhaps none of it had ever been real.
For Magda, she imagined, today would truly be the happiest day; every day that little Carl lived would be happier still, and Gudrun did not wish to subtract from that equation. Like an ill omen, she did not actively seek to bring harm, but knew no other way to stay true to her nature.
A long fall, she thought.
And thus, silently, she jumped from atop the Hanstholm cliffs, the thick, golden-orange rays of the day’s last sunlight not thick enough to break her rapid descend towards the dunes waiting below with their trap doors to Hell. Ready.
It was over in mere seconds.