Hammer of God by Bo Giertz

Author:Bo Giertz
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Augsburg Books

III. On This Rock

New Life

Through the tender mercy of our God;

Whereby the dayspring from on high hath visited us,

To give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death,

To guide our feet in the way of peace.

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son,

And to the Holy Ghost:

As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be,

World without end. Amen

They shall be abundantly satisfied with the fatness of Thy house;

And Thou shalt make them drink of the river of Thy pleasures.

The deep bass voice filled the empty room, which resounded with the monotone of the reader as though it were a sound from a distant seashore. At the Gloria Patri the tone rose a trifle as though lifting itself into a hymn of praise, and with the antiphon dropped again to its former level.

The April sun flowed through the two windows and painted large golden panes on the worn wooden floor. The curtains and even the curtain hooks had been removed. The room was completely empty. The dark brown wallpaper with its large designs in gold and black was pale in spots and showed plainly where pictures had hung and where the china closet had stood in times past. In the center of the ceiling a severed wire hung from a greasy plaster ornamentation.

On the exterior wall, halfway between the windows, stood the only piece of furniture in the room, a miniature altar with two brass candlesticks and a small crucifix hanging above it on the wallpaper. In front of the altar stood a low prie-dieu with a white rail and red plush upholstering, evidently intended to be used at weddings in the parsonage. Behind the prie-dieu stood Pastor Torvik with a blue prayer book in his hand, from which he was reading. He was a big, heavily built man. His chest was enormous. His arms were long, and his wrists unnaturally slender. His hair was extremely blonde, and his eyebrows seemed almost white against the sunburned face. His features were plain and angular, his cheeks protruded too far, and his nose had a slight depression at the middle as if it had figured in some childhood accident. His forehead was high, and his large head came to a point in the back, where a few strands of hair stuck upwards from an otherwise smoothly groomed head of hair.

Pastor Torvik finished with the Laudes, knelt in a brief moment of silent prayer, made the sign of the cross, and then walked pensively through the room. His clergy coat was unbuttoned and hung clumsily on his heavy body. He had his hands deep in his pockets.

He stopped at one of the windows and whistled softly. The sun shown warmly, and the gravel outside the window was dark and moist in the thawing weather. On the lawn last summer’s grass, which had never been cut, lay yellow, snarled and uneven. A cat snatched at the big blue flies which had awakened to life, and scared away the gray sparrows from the unclipped lilac hedge.

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