A barren marriage
Herman Bang calls the woman Katinka and at the beginning of the novella, she has been married to stationmaster Bai for ten years. In a way she is happy and contented, but she is sexually inhibited. Whereas Mr Bai, a former lieutenant, looks quite handsome as he struts around the platform wearing his uniform, it makes Mrs Bai uncomfortable when at bedtime he pads about in his underwear right before her eyes instead of going to bed. No wonder the marriage is childless and the stationmaster ends up with sex on the brain.
Sparkling wit
Before finishing his novella, Herman Bang has exposed just about all the inhabitants of the small railway town. It is extremely funny because he is unable to repress his laughter when describing what they look like, and how they act and talk. For example, the clergyman's daughter Agnes Linde, who gesticulates so wildly when speaking that it looks like she is boxing people's ears. Herman Bang describes the clergyman's daughter, who is as tall as a guardsman, as "swinging her arms" and says that it looks like a violent assault when she throws them around someone she loves.
Anything but a happy ending
However, the Bais are the main characters of the novella, and they drift apart when an agronomist by the name of Huus comes to town. The sequence of events that follows makes it difficult even for Herman Bang to keep laughing. Let me put it this way: it all comes to a bad end -a very bad end.
Dorthe Sondrup Andersen is a Master of Arts of Comparative Literature and an author and writer on cultural affairs. Her books include "The Golden Age without the Gilt" ("Guldalder uden forgyldning") (People's Press, 2004).
Platform Clock, The Danish Railway Museum. Photo: Gitte Lundager.