Paris, 15 November 1897

Constance probably bought this notebook for housekeeping purposes, but forgot it when she left, so I shall take it for my use, and I am not going to tear a single page, because the paper is of good quality and the covers are made of calico. When I write in a small hand there is plenty of room for the text, and when I write in Swedish Constance will not understand, if she chances to see the notebook. She has promised to visit once or twice a week and continue to bring food and do the cleaning (we cleared up the differences of opinion that were related to her departure), even though she has now moved and married a retired officer, having been my housekeeper for nearly 30 years. The laundry she has delegated to Madame L., who lives in this house, although that lady is intolerably nosy and talkative, and she has six smutty children. I have decided to write my autobiography, so that posterity shall receive a full and proper impression of my work. (Let Prof. Schwendener from Berlin and Dr Louis Pasteur be content with minor roles!) I shall not begin until tomorrow, for today I intend to study the specimens of South American lichens Prof. D. has sent if there is enough daylight.

18 November 1897

For my autobiography: I was born in Oulu in 1822. My parents were John Anders N., and my mother, Margareta Magdalena F. My father was a merchant who later lost everything and he had nine children. I began University in 1839 and in 1841 I became a Master of Arts in Helsinki. In 1847 I earned a doctorate in medicine and surgery. From 1857 to 1863 I was Professor of Botany at the University of Helsinki. I resigned my professorship in 1863 and moved permanently to Paris, though no position or means of livelihood was forthcoming.

19 November 1897

I am adding to my autobiography: The first part of the first part of my magnum opus Synopsis methodica Lichenium appeared in 1858 and the second part in 1860.(The second part of the whole book is incomplete and still in preparation; in addition, I want to make corrections to the first part.) In a letter to docent Norrlin written years ago I said that perhaps when I am dead I shall receive appreciation in Finland, too!

27 November 1897

In the morning I went out to buy bread and milk, as I do every day. Today is Saturday, and although it is November, the sun shone from a blue sky. A crop-headed little boy cried out to me: ‘Good morning, Doctor, good morning, Doctor.’ The neighbours on the block call me ‘Dr William’, but fortunately they do not ring the doorbell to get help for their illnesses, for I have not served as a doctor since the Franco-Prussian War when I had to work as an ambulance doctor and a field surgeon. I cannot even take care of my own illnesses. I bought a newspaper and a bottle of Burgundy, which to judge by its expensive price is probably not too bad. C. visited yesterday bringing Navarin of lamb? and thick vegetable soup, so I have food for several days, perhaps the whole of next week. We did not talk a great deal, but I suppose that he is satisfied with her life as an officer’s wife (at home she calls her husband her ‘old man’). It was a great shock and sorrow to C. when her son Charles died of tuberculosis, only 28 years old, and I also mourned. Many people thought that Charles was my son (an impossible idea), but Constance had her child at the age of 19, when she moved from Nancy to Paris 27 years ago. I intend to leave the dirty laundry for Madame L. outside my door, as I do not want that nosy old woman to take even a peek into my home. Her eyes gleam like those of a bird.

21 December 1897

Pro memoria: During my research I discovered as early as the mid-1860s that the air of Paris air was so bad that the lichens were disappearing. The only place where they could still be found was the Jardin du Luxembourg, as the pollution of the air was less there than elsewhere. In a study I published a year ago I was able to relate that lichens no longer grow on the trees of Paris at all.

9 March 1898

A gloomy, cold and foggy day, so contrary to my habits I sat in the café that is situated in a side street off the Quai d’Anjou and ordered hot chocolate with whipped cream, I had enough coins in my pocket, but the taste of the chocolate brought an unpleasant memory to my mind (to be excluded from the biography). In 1857 I walked along these same streets and decided to to kill myself. My brother Oskar put a bullet in his skull in St Petersburg, and it was said that he did so because of a woman, which in my view was extremely stupid. Uncle F. went mad, and one of my brothers did also, but my intention was due not to insanity, but to failures in life, and melancholy. I was penniless, I could not afford to eat every day, and my residence was a dark corner in the Latin Quarter, I did not know whether I would get the post in Helsinki or not I, and my magnum opus the Synopsis was not finished, nor had I made much progress with it because of lack of money and all kinds of difficulties. I had decided to leave my scientific papers to my brother Edvin and jump into the river. I stood on the Pont Marie one cold and windy day and froze, I had forgotten to put on my gloves and my hands were chapped as red and as raw as they were in my days as a doctor in the Helsinki lepers’ hospital, when I had to wash my hands constantly. I had a thin, threadbare scarf around my neck. On my left I saw the embankment of the Île Saint-Louis and the houses along it, in front of me far away the city’s skyline and the Notre Dame cathedral. I peered over the railings into the water, which flowed green and muddy, with slats of timber goodness knows what else floating on it. Suddenly I lost the will to jump, and went to a cafe to drink cocoa with the last of my money. A few days later I wrote to Elise about that I had intended to do, and after reading my letter my sister was so frightened that in her reply she threatened to take train and boat and come and rescue me, but I sent an express letter to tell her not to bother, that I was not going to jump into the cold and dirty Seine. Now I note: I shall not write my autobiography.

23 March 1898

I did not feel up to going to the park or the Jardin du Luxembourg, but walked along the side streets of Plaisance, which stank in the heat of sewage, horse dung, rotten vegetables, wet laundry and smoke. I smelt the stench of all life!

27 September 1898

Summa summarum: Thinking is a great deal harder than talking! I visited the Jardin library, and in the bay between the bookshelves was approached by a Danish woman who had heard that I was a Swedish scientist, but I put her right by informing her that I was Finnish, and answered her in French. The Danish lady was about sixty, quite tall, dark-haired and bespectacled, and she said she was a history teacher who dabbled in botany and chemistry, and was ‘extremely interested in the major achievements of natural science’ such as the theories of Darwin and Pasteur. She took a deep breath and asked if I was really the Professor N. who had devised the chemical method of identifying lichens, and said I was. Her French grated on the ears, but I did not begin to speak Swedish to her, and in nay case did not need many words, for despite the shortcomings of her linguistic skills the lady kept up her oration. From the achievements of science the amateurs of science attempt to distill a world view, which is precisely what reveals their amateurishness. I expect that swarms of similar people hover around the artists, since nowadays even the bourgeois want to refine their tastes, and they will not be content with sugary landscape paintings bought at Place Montmartre, even though this the kind of art they actually like. Years ago in a café I happened to seee how a lady’s face melted with delight and amazement like strawberry ice cream when she found herelf at a table next to a ‘well-known actor’, although this person had just slumped dead drunk with his head on the table. When I finally got rid of the lady my head was completely spinning, and even though she was not the worst sort, I reflected that women’s talk is a kind of leakage of the brain, in which particles of reason are mingled with the phlegm of frivolity.

24 November 1898

I had some business down by the Sorbonne, but as I walked through those quarters I remembered without regret the Hôtel Midi, where I lived during my first sojourn in Paris. I sat down at a café, for I had once again left my gloves at home, the weather was cold and damp, and I and was shivering badly. I ordered hot water and sugar and a drop of rum. At the other tables sat young men, probably students, in the discussion I made out many mentions of the words ‘our time’, and I understood that they were talking about literature, which ought to deal with ‘our time’. I do not know if they mean this year through which we are living now and the events of which we can read about in the newspapers (those events do not greatly interest me), or the whole decade, or the century. Although I do not know much of history, and still less of literature, I found their use of the concept amusing, as these young men would have waved their hands and demanded that history be served immediately at their tables. I could only hear a word or two of the discussion here and there, but soon their red-cheeked zeal began to infuriate me, because I amputated limbs torn and sewed up stomachs in Paris during the Franco-Prussian war, and there I had quite enough of history – the young men used to talk about the ‘the spirit of the age’ , indeed, that was all they kept talking about, fervently hoping that someone (an author, evidently) would tie up the ends of the threads with a satisfactory explanation of the causes and consequences. Outside it was raining and the wind had got up, tugging at the umbrellas and women’s skirts, and raising peaked waves on the surface of the Seine. The rum did not do me any good, because on the way home I fell into dejection as I thought about how my work and my days are sinking to the bottom mud of history.

26 November 1989

Solitude is not dispiriting or sad, but it is sometimes boring, and conclude that this is due to the company in which I am alone.

27 November 1898

Today a pharmacist, D. (there have been many pharmacists in the circle of my acquaintances!), invited me to dinner at his home on Sunday. I went with some reluctance, as the D.’s live in a street off the Avenue de Messina where I had to travel by omnibus, and what was more, Dr D. did not belong to the same botanically cultured group as, for example, the pharmacist Dr R., who at one time did much to help me (my relations with him have broken) – Dr D. is just an ordinary, successful, wealthy pill-pusher. I accepted the invitation none the less, because he assured me that there would be no other guests apart from myself, and that his family had an excellent cook. The dinner was indeed first-rate: Potage velouté aux champignons, Filets de poisson en soufflé, Bifteck sauté béarnaise, Pommes normande en belle vue, vegetables, cheeses, and so on, and good wines. When we rose from the dinner table I had to pay for my meal with some culture! The children’s nanny and Madame D. led into the drawing-room two little girls with curled hair and decked out with bow-ribbons, whom they planted in front of the grand piano to play duets, and after the first piece I applauded, but when they began to play a third I began to fret and wondered when it was going to be the little girls’ bedtime, which fortunately arrived at the end of the fourth. I do not know what error led the D.’s to imagine that I was a lover of music, but luckily I managed to catch the omnibus.

22 March 1899

Whence these strange desires: today I felt an inclination for tobacco when at the window I smelled someone smoking a pipe in the yard, yet I have never smoked, perhaps as an undergraduate I tried it, I cannot remember, but tobacco would not have been good for my bad lungs. The spring flowers in the tumbler have faded, but I cannot bring myself to throw them away. It is pleasant to sense the odour of leaves and grass wafting in through the slightly open window, but I do not have the strength for walking, only for writing my article.

25 March 1899

In the morning I went out to buy bread and milk, but when I returned I could barely climb the stairs, for I was short of breath, and I had to stop several times to lean against the wall, but when I had rested for a short while I felt better. I remembered that one spring and summer I had some frogs in a glass terrarium. They ‘sang’ nicely, but in the winter they died. In April I would be able to buy them again, but obviously I won’t manage to look after them. I had boeuf bourguignon for dinner, it was good, but so heavy that I felt a little nauseous. For the last few nights I have been warm enough with just my coat on top of me, but because of the cough I keep a woollen scarf around my chest.

26 March 1899, Sunday

In the morning I looked out of the window and saw the L. family walking to church, the children had been washed and combed, but there are so many of them that they fill an entire row of pews. I managed to go and look at the flower beds in the yard. There are lots of crocuses now, and they are of many colours! My neighbour Madame R. told me that our baker has won a competition (perhaps at a department store or in a newspaper), and his prize is a trip to Buenos Aires. I wonder what a baker will do in Buenos Aires; the wheel of fortune spins in curious ways. I am tired, and towards evening the cough is worse, but I have no fever.

27 March 1899

It has rained all day, but the air is warm (+17°C), and the rain is merely drizzle, so it will do the plants good.

28 March 1899

Are ‘they’ happier than me, is ‘happiness’ anything more than smug satiety? Perhaps my soul is reminiscent of a dried raisin, but I cannot hate myself, for I have no one else. Annoyingly the letter I had just written (to send to Brussels) got splashed with soup. The letter must be written again, I shall do it tomorrow, for I do not want to give the wrong impression of myself.

Translated by David McDuff

‘The answer grows like the spring light. / In my desk drawer there’s something, important. / I slowly remember it.’ I wrote these words in my first published work, my collection of poetry Hämärän valo (‘Light of dusk’) from 1986. I was born in 1949, so I was something of a late bloomer.

Still I had been writing ever since I was a child. After a ten-year break, I published my first children’s book under a pseudonym. In the space of three years after that, a total of twelve books appeared in the Anni series. In 1999 I published my first novel, Maan ääreen (‘To the end of the earth’). Another ten years passed; my second novel, Herra Darwinin puutarhuri (‘Mr Darwin’s gardener’), was published last autumn.

I’ve often been asked – more often than I have asked myself – why I publish so rarely. I don’t find writing difficult, but it is difficult to write well. For me, writing well involves clarity, precision, brightness, finding just the right mood and rhythm. If it were simply a case of the classic ‘murder your darlings’ problem, it could easily be resolved through a process of sufficiently pruning the text, but such pruning would leave us with nothing but a bare tree.

Writing is such a synthetic process that it is hard to describe, as it is inherently bound up with one’s own language and mind.

Nowadays authors like to make a point of their own professionalism. Some start work at nine o’clock in the morning and continue until three in the afternoon. At the risk of mystifying and romanticising an author’s work, I admit that I am incapable of such self-discipline. I write when my soul tells me to write.

The material for my second novel built up slowly over a number of years. I would write in the evenings, at night, as once my funding had run out I had to support myself writing book reviews and columns and doing other literature-related odd-jobs. That being said, such external reasons are still almost nothing but excuses. This too may sound overly romanticised, but a novel will take as much time as it requires.

First of all, I needed a title. ‘Mr Darwin’s gardener’ is a title that just seemed to pop into my head. At the time I was living temporarily in a small village in the countryside; I used to look out of my window at the river bathing in the glow of the setting sun, behind a row of slender, bare tree trunks. And the name appeared. I had to write the book in that name, and after only a few seconds I knew that the title was not allegorical, but that the novel would tell the story of a real gardener working in Charles Darwin’s garden in the village of Downe in Kent.

Like a magnet, the title began to attract people and events, but all this happened slowly, little by little. I became frustrated that these imaginary villagers wouldn’t leave me in peace – and they wouldn’t give in to me either. At times I wondered whether I should shelve the project altogether.

Some time later I was in Berlin and went for a walk in the botanical gardens in Dahlem. All of a sudden I realised that there were tears in my eyes; I missed Lennart, the protagonist from my first novel, who eventually dies. And at the same time I missed Thomas, the man from my second novel, who had not yet been brought to life. I couldn’t bring myself to shelve Thomas, to leave him in a no-man’s-land somewhere between my head and the stuff on the page.

Reality finally gave me the kick I needed, as I daydreamed and emoted and wrote at leisure. In the summer of 2009 I was to turn sixty. I found myself thinking about this on New Year’s Eve and realised that I had to pull myself up by the scruff of the neck, up and out of the swamp. I began writing the novel using all the material that had accumulated over the years, and the moment was ripe. I achieved the kind of flow that brought my material together and honed it. I would write for many hours a day, barely having a shower or getting dressed.

Now a character called William N. is demanding my attention. He expresses himself in an irascible, croaky voice, because he’s not a particularly nice character. For personal reasons it has been weeks since I was last able to pay William any attention, but by this point I believe and know that, in my subconscious, he will be writing himself all the while.

Perhaps it is this sense of trust that keeps me going as a writer. It goes without saying that I hope I can have the mental and financial peace to concentrate fully on my writing. And it is not a question of having to meet publishing deadlines. Publishers and the literary world may try to pressure writers, but fictional characters couldn’t care less about such things.

I recently took comfort from watching a documentary about the filmmaker Wim Wenders. He confessed to being a very taciturn person. His friends and former wives said much the same thing. His latest wife, Donata, said that at first it felt as though Wim were not really listening to what she had to say. But a few days later, after giving the matter due consideration and without using any superfluous words, he would respond. In our hectic modern lives, such slowness and economy of expression seems very attractive.

If you’re not Wenders’ wife, that is.

Translated by David Hackston

The congregation sits in the church pews and the jackdaws caw in the belfry.
We smell of wet dog, the rain made us wet and it is cold but the singing warms us, the hymn rises to the roof and above the roof dwells God, Amen.
We saw Thomas Davies on the hill, he is working in Mr Darwin’s garden,
the atheist and lunatic, he stood in the field alone and the water lashed his face
an irreligious pit pony wandering in the darkness he is from Wales
does the godless man think he can stand in the rain without getting wet did he get an umbrella or bat wings from the devil
perhaps Thomas imagines that he can hold back the rain and the rain not hold him back, he thinks he is more exalted than God with his head in the clouds
The church’s hard pews press into posteriors, the poor man will not grow fatter, for there are no fat and lean years but only lean ones, and thin are the poor man’s sheep and cows and children too, but the rich man cultivates weeds for his amusement as Mr Darwin did and earns money and fame!
Weeds are an allegory, as the Bible says, and God had the devil of a time pruning the rushes the thistles the couch grass and the groves of Asherah which the pagans planted in honour of their heathen gods
Now the name of atheism is science
The Lord destroyed the groves of Asherah, and we believe that He walks in the kitchen gardens of the misbelievers and cuts the weeds with a burning sickle before they can scatter their seeds to all the world
calling them Knowledge & Wisdom, when they are blurring what has been clear since the Day of Creation
light on the waters, His is the kingdom, the power and the glory, forever and ever, amen.
When I pray I place my hands in a cross, I join the left and right sides of myself together and between the palms of my hands is a roof for God even though I am not in church
I pity Thomas Davies, for he may very well catch a mortal chill out there in the rain
pity is a strand of the mercy of Heaven in man,
for all God’s creations have their heart on the left side of their breast, though I do not know how it is with the fish and the serpents and the lizards, Thomas’s wife died and his eleven-year-old daughter has been feeble-minded since birth, and his six-year-old son is small and frail and strange and cannot hold his own in fights
We took Thomas soup and bread and comfort when Gwyneth died three years ago, but Thomas had smashed his wife’s bed to splinters with an axe and was burning the wood and bedclothes on a pyre in the garden which was spitting sparks and acrid smoke, the children’s faces were black with soot and the little boy was poking the fire with a stick
When a man sets up false gods for himself like the theory of Science and Evolution he mocks our Lord the Creator of all things and punishment will follow
therefore we must warn our fellow human beings off the rocks of sin and shine more brightly than the lamps of the wise virgins

like the Eddystone Lighthouse

Thomas refused our help, grimaced and laughed, the smoke made him cough and we ran on our way, and the freshly baked wheat loaf fell out of the cloth and rolled into the ditch, and when we had tea and spoke of the word of the Bible and the bread of life, we found many verses about this subject, for Christ is the bread of life
truly we began to laugh when we saw such a big loaf rolling into the ditch like a wheel that had fallen off a cart
Jesus’ light warns Christians off the rocks of sin
but Davies’ fire was a blasphemous pyre from Satan, we have heard that in India a wife is burned alive together with the body of her husband,
and on many coasts like Rhossil and Port Eynon unrighteous fires are lit to lead vessels astray in the darkness which is an allegory of the case of Davies
yet I wonder for according to the women of the village the bed was made of solid oak and fashioned with the finest handicraft goodness knows how many guineas it must have cost and burning in the open air like that the fire did not even warm the room

It is not good for a person to fawn on his superiors, though we want to be on good terms with everyone and keep life in the village harmonious,
and Mr Darwin himself is a sweet and pleasant gentleman who has travelled round the world and written big books and knows lords and Londoners and even foreign celebrities though I forget their names,
and in his house he has a shower from which water pours as from a watering-can just at the turn of a tap,
there are also many children in the family, though Mary Eleanor died in infancy and Charles Waring at the age of two and Anne Elizabeth at ten, for Darwin the deaths of his children were surely a great sorrow, one which many of us have also experienced
He is on good terms with our vicar the Reverend Innes,
but those who want to repudiate God invoke his books and Thomas Davies is surely one of them, Amen.

The most beautiful thing about plants is their silence. The second most beautiful thing is their motionlessness, I wrote when Gwyn died, am reading now, it is evening,
I wrote unscientifically,
when even sympathy boomed and good will would not leave me in peace
grief weighs heavy but it is a rock I bear myself,
in my view the victims of revenge and mercy are in the same situation because other people take up their case as their own.
I have decided to study the static electricity of plants on the basis of what Gustav Theodor Fechner and Edward Solly have written, I am going to try to adapt the use of electricity to the growth of plants, perhaps the plants’ sharp apices function as a kind of lightning conductor and collect electricity from the atmosphere, facilitating the alternation of electrical charges between the air and the soil, if I could connect the plants in metal pots to a static generator by hanging wire netting over them and earthing it in the soil with a rod, the plants would grow well, but I have no generator.
My benefactors understand illness and death also, but not the fact that I want to be alone, because being alone is what they themselves fear most of all.
When I lost my mind and the children were asleep, I wrote
The silence of plants calms the mind, and I rejoice because plants do not run away like animals or fly away like birds, they stay where they are sometimes for hundreds of years like the oaks, or they vanish in winter and like the oriental squill rise from the ground or they spread out joyfully like the balsam that hurls its seeds far and wide.
When Gwyn was dying I did not think about where she was going but what she was leaving behind for she rejected Catherine and John. She did not leave by a single opening of the door, instead death held the door ajar for many months. I wrote that
a plant dies easily, an annual withers when the seeds are ready.

The lights of the village gleam in the darkness like blurred dots as Thomas Davies pulls the curtains over his windows, the children are asleep, Cathy sleeps wrapped in the quilt and radiates warm breathing, John sleeps on his back with his head bent backwards, I lean over to look at John’s eyes
“One should pay attention to how the eyes look during sleep,” Hippocrates wrote. “If when the eyelids are half open a part of the whites become visible… this is a bad sign, which presages certain and early death.”
Old theories,
the space in the house grows when the sleepers leave their places to the one who keeps vigil
can one do anything but love.
I write things down to remember them, as if memory didn’t work by itself, a warm jacket for Cathy and those new shoes for John

When I stood alone on the hill and the rain struck my face I cursed heaven for not caring about me or my children,
the wolf’s prayer is a howl.
The vicar said to mother that in bad times one should think of good times, when father died in the mining accident with his legs and torso crushed, because good times would come. Father’s head rested on the pillow and stubble grew on his chin even after death, at the funeral I thought of the worms that were wriggling into his nose and ears, mother was thrilled by the new black shoes and my younger brothers and sisters by the iced chocolate cake, my school attendance was paid for by the mining company.

The lamp’s light is reflected in the window, the anguish presses my lungs together. I intended, I did not want what I intended, in other people’s talk my intention became truth and deed, my fame runs before me like a wild shadow.

After Gwyn’s death the vicar said that the parish helps its members to bear their sorrow, what does that mean?
The rain is pounding holes in the surface of the water, the circles widen and vanish and I cannot show my grief to anyone.
The vicar said that sophistry in matters of faith is a sickness of the soul and that irony has no place where God is concerned. I replied that nature does not know any irony either, nor do the animals, the plants and the stones, it is only man who is capable of it because he is able to think two contrary things at once. What then is human nature, when a volcanic eruption can be predicted but one cannot predict that a man will dig an axe out of his rucksack and on a train split the skull of a man he does not know at all. Cause and effect change places at random.
If there is no soul there is only the body, which you must carry yourself, when you’re dead it weighs more, six people are needed to carry it.
The vicar tried to console me, thank you thank you,
for grief is a muddy pool in which one cannot see one’s own reflection nor one’s children nor one’s neighbours but everything presses one into the mire and sorrow begets new sorrows.

I pray in rancour and in unbelief,
I pray to a God who does not exist
I pray against my better judgement, I pray to God out of coercion,
without trust,
my prayer is a cold drop of water on a bare branch,
I ask for strength for the children’s sake and for my own.

At nightfall the reflected light of the snow remains in the landscape when Thomas Davies and Cathy and John walk to the field, Thomas wants to make a drawing of the area whose dimensions are 55 x 22 yards as in the diagram:

Thomas leads the way and counts his paces, Cathy and John follow behind, they all
stamp their feet, treading a straight and narrow path through the snow, that way is north, that way is south. Thomas puts branches in the corners as markers, and later, when the wooden poles are hammered into the ground and the wire is stretched they will have to use a compass for accuracy because the ground circuits travel from east to west and the wire that is carried through the air by the poles must be
precisely positioned in a north-south direction,
they will have to carve poles and pins of the right dimensions, in the spring the task will be to turn the earth and dig ditches for the underground wires. That is the plan. In Scotland the harvest of a field was increased threefold by the use of electricity.
When back at home they are eating stew in the hot kitchen, Thomas says that the wires will be particularly effective at conducting electricity in thunderstorms, and that the electricity will stimulate the production of nitric acid which is good for the roots of the plants, and when they have finished eating and the plates have been cleared from the table John draws a house-shaped quadrangle on Cathy’s paper and a circle for a cabbage that is bigger than the house.

On the second Sunday in Advent it is snowing when Thomas Davies stands at the front door of his house viewing the measured area whose size is 55 x 22 yards, his footprints and the footprints of his children are visible in the old dry snow, large flakes are floating down on the field, the church bells are ringing, their echo carries on the cold air, recedes and disappears,
when the pealing of the bells and people’s voices die away, a snow-white silence dominates the landscape,
I no longer shout my cold prayers towards heaven,
although my despair is stretched by force of hand, my soul is nevertheless a strong, four-strand rope whose core is hemp or jute, when reason and hope rise up after a long season of despair, it is time to think and make plans and banish the God who has possessed me since childhood and whose voice has been planted in our heads and will not give us the chance to speak, now
God falls silent, but the sun rises and sets,
he departed, was silent at last, he
watched over Adam and Eve in the garden of paradise, punished women with pain and condemned the earth to grow thorns and thistles, he drove human beings to the east of Eden and placed watchmen at the gates, he wanted to wipe human beings from the face of the earth, to destroy the cattle, the reptiles and the birds of the air, he wanted the Flood to destroy all flesh, all that contains the spirit of life, though he did make a pact with Noah and put a rainbow in the sky as a sign of it yet he did not cease to torment human beings and tempted Job, Lot and Isaac, he punished Egypt with frogs and gnats and gadflies and cattle plague and boils and hailstones and locusts and darkness, he did not let Moses go to the promised land, he made laws and when they were imposed he rushed among the heathens to destroy their groves of Asherah and stoned the worshippers of false gods, he threatened to strike them with eczema, abscesses and madness, he cut off their thumbs and big toes, put them to the sword and set fire to their cities, he cried like a madman “You did not listen to my voice, What have you done?” and whenever his wrath was kindled he gave the people around him into the hands of their enemies,
he humiliated, killed and ordered to be killed, he interfered in the lives of nations, tribes, families and villages, his shouting split their ears and his thirst for revenge was insatiable, in my head was planted a cry which gave me no rest by day or by night, nor did he leave in peace those people who in the Lord’s name wished one another ill, that pious din nearly pierced my eardrums,
until the evening before last I saw God, he was short, thickset, swarthy, hirsute, with long hair, I saw him walking past the house with his head bowed, he said something just before he walked to the edge of the forest and vanished from sight,
he is silent, and the parish is silent, and I hear what silence sounds like when the wind does not even blow in the bare boughs of the trees and the snowflakes float to the ground, he has gone but has left me my daughter and my son who are the tender reinforcement of a four-strand rope

When the sun goes down, the coolness of the spring evening rises from the shadows.
A blackbird flies to the top of the bell-tower and sings a clear wandering melody that carries far across the treetops and the roofs of the houses.
In the garden of Down House Thomas cleans the soil from his spade, his manure fork, his rake and his harrow, hangs the tools in their places in the shed and closes the door. He washes his hands in the metal basin, takes his jacket from the nail on the wall of the shed and puts it on. Thomas goes out by the back gate and strides across the meadows up the hill. His haste resembles joy, for today he is going to set up the poles in the experimental plot where the wires are to be laid. On the kitchen table is the improved design and in the shed the poles and pins that were made during the winter. In the new design there are eight long poles, and in place of one above-ground wire there are so many that they make a network all over the surface area.
John is running downhill. He is wearing shoes that were made by a cobbler in London, and he can run fast in them. Because the bones in his right foot are half an inch shorter than those of his left foot, he got his own special shoes, and he surely suffers from no illness, for he can run from the church to the Gorringes crossroad and back again, faster than the Other Baileys’ boy. Cathy runs after John.
Thomas fetches an iron rod and a spade from the shed. He and the children carry the poles and the pins to the edge of the area that is marked out with sticks and branches.

If the red-cheeked young woman who is travelling in the carriage with a plump baby in her arms were now, at the bend in the road, to look out of the window, she would see against the sunset two children standing with hanging heads and a tall, slightly stooping man holding a spade and would perhaps suppose that someone was being buried on the hillside, but she would be wrong because the moment is not sorrowful but full of hope and excitement.
What does Thomas Davies plant in the electrified kitchen garden?
He plants barley, sugar beet and strawberries.
What did God say to Thomas Davies? That is something of which I know nothing.

Translated by David McDuff