Anecdotes of Destiny and Ehrengard (15 page)
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Authors: Isak Dinesen
During the conversation that followed she in turn drew back from him in order to watch his face, and again pressed against him as if she sought a dark shelter where she did not need to see anything.
She first of all cried out lowly and hoarsely at his breast: “Ferdinand is dead!”
“Yes,” Herr Soerensen said gently and gravely. “Yes, he is dead.”
“Did you know?” she cried out as before. “Had you heard of it? Did you believe it?”
“Yes,” he answered. “I did so.”
She steadied herself and regained control of her voice, let go of him and stood back a step.
“Arndt Hosewinckel loves me!” she cried in full, ringing tones.
Herr Soerensen’s glance followed the change in her face.
“And do you love him too?” he asked. Because the question
lay close to a line in a beloved tragedy, he repeated it, this second time in the tragedy’s own words:
“And lovest thou him too, pure maiden?”
The tragedy’s cues were also retained in Malli’s heart, she immediately cried back to him with great force:
“—sun and moon
,
The starry host, the angels, God himself and men
may hear it: I am steadfast in my love for him!”
“Well,” said Herr Soerensen.
“Well,” he said again after a silence. “And what now, Malli?”
“Now?” Malli wailed in a cry of distress like a seabird in the breakers. “Now I must go away. God, I must go away before I make them all unhappy.”
She wrung her hands hanging down before her.
“I will not make people unhappy,” she said. “I will not! I will not! God himself knows that I was not aware I was doing so! I thought, Herr Soerensen, that I had told no lies, and made no mistakes!
“Now I must go away; I cannot stay here any longer,” she cried again, abruptly, as if it were some quite new decision of which she was informing him. “I cannot, you know that I cannot, go back into that house on the square, unless I know that soon, as soon as I can, I shall be leaving it again. For I have been shown the door of it, Herr Soerensen. A righteous man, who has never made wrong use of his scales or his measure, showed me the door yesterday evening. Righteous people can halt a gale, so that it changes from northwest to
due north. But I!” she lamented. “Our gale of Kvasefjord came straight to where I was. Yet I never prayed God to send it, I swear that I never did.
“My old grandmother’s sister,” she suddenly began, as if she was seeking a fresh course of thought, but once more found herself up against the misery of the preceding one, “was so angry with Mother for marrying Father, she would not set foot in her house. But one day she met me in the street, made me come into her room, and spoke to me of Father. She said: ‘Your father, Malli, did not come from Scotland, and was no normal seaman. He was one of whom many people have heard, and for whom they have a name. He was The Flying Dutchman.’—Do you think that is true, Herr Soerensen?”
After some consideration Herr Soerensen answered: “No, I don’t.”
Malli for a moment seemed to find consolation in his assurance, then a returning wave of despair again engulfed her.
“All the same,” she cried, “I betray them all, as Father betrayed Mother!”
Again Herr Soerensen considered for a while, then said: “Whom have you betrayed, Malli?”
“Ferdinand!” cried Malli. “Arndt!
“When I am far away,” she said, “then I shall have the courage to write to Arndt how matters stand with me. But I cannot, I dare not tell him to his face.”
At the thought of his face she grew silent for a while. Then she once more wrung her hands.
“I must go away,” she said. “If I do not go away I shall bring misfortune upon him. Oh, misfortune and misery, Herr Soerensen!”
Here she took one of her short steps backwards and looked him in the face with clear, wide-open eyes.
“You may well believe me, Herr Soerensen,” she said, “for I speak as one that has a familiar spirit, out of the ground.”
There was a long silence in the room.
“Well, yes,” said Herr Soerensen. “I can believe you all right, Malli. For see you, little Malli, I have been married myself.”
“Married?” Malli repeated in surprise.
“Yes,” he said. “In Denmark. To a good, lovable woman.”
“Where is she now?” Malli asked and looked around bewildered, as if the lost Madam Soerensen could be found in the small room.
“Thanks be to God,” said Herr Soerensen. “Thanks be to God, she is married now. To a good man. In Denmark. They have children together. She and I had no children.
“I went away,” he continued, “without letting her know, in secret. The last evening we sat together in our little home—we had a beautiful little home, Malli, with curtains and a carpet—she said to me: ‘Everything you do in life, Valdemar, you do to make me happy. That is so sweet of you.’ ”
“Oh, yes,” the girl cried out, as if struck to the heart. “That is how they talk to us, that is what they believe about us.”
Herr Soerensen for the third time stood deep in thought, then took Malli’s hand, said: “My girl,” and was silent as before.
“Let us sit down and talk together,” he at last said, and led her to a small sofa with broken webbing. They sat down side by side without it coming to any talk between them. But after a while Malli in her need of human sympathy and as if to appease a judge, or as in an attempt to comfort another unhappy person under the same sentence as herself, began to fumble over Herr Soerensen’s shoulders, neck and head. She let her fingers run through his wig, so that a lock or two of it stood right on end. And as, while beseeching or caressing
him, she did not look up at him, in order to avoid getting the imploring fingers in his eyes or his mouth he had to take aim with his head and butt it gently in the air to the right and left.
Herr Soerensen, who was accustomed to being obeyed and admired, but not to being caressed, allowed the situation to prolong itself for several minutes, and remained sitting as before, even after Malli had let fall her hands. He at first felt that their group was taking form like that of the old unhappy king and his loving daughter. But presently the center of gravity was shifted and he became fully conscious of his authority and responsibility: he was no fugitive, it was his young disciple who had fled to him for help. He once more became the man powerful above others: Prospero. And with Prospero’s mantle round his shoulders, without lessening his pity of the despairing girl by his side, he was aware of a growing, happy consciousness of fulfillment and reunion. He was not to abandon his precious possession, but she was still his and would remain with him, and he was to see his life’s great project realized.
At long last he spoke:
“… now I arise
.
Sit still, and hear the last of our sea-sorrow.”
He rose, and erect and with firm steps walked to a small rickety table by the other window in the room, which served him as writing-table. He took papers out of the drawer and buried himself in them, sorting them, making notes, putting some of them back and taking out others. It lasted a long time, and when Malli stirred, he beckoned her off without turning his head. In the end he pushed his papers and pencils aside, but remained sitting with his back to her.
“I shall,” he said, “give up my performances in Christianssand.”
There was no answer from Malli.
“Ay,” he continued in a firm voice. “Ay. I shall have it announced to the town that I cancel the performances and am moving on to Bergen. Why, of course,” he declared as if she had been raising objections, “it will be at a cost. We might have had a big, singular success in this town. On your account, my poor girl. It will be a loss. But not so big a loss as I had feared. The collection of the townsfolk will make up for it not a little. And in life, Malli, one must keep one’s profit-and-loss account open.
“I myself, and you,” he said, “will go away from here first, secretly. The others, on my instructions, will follow later.”
He heard Malli get up, take a step toward him and stop.
“When will you be going?” her trembling voice asked behind his back.
Herr Soerensen answered: “I am fairly sure there is a ship on Wednesday.” And briefly, with the authority of an admiral on his deck, he repeated: “On Wednesday.”
“On Wednesday,” came from Malli like a long sorrowful echo in the fells.
“Yes,” said Herr Soerensen.
“The day after tomorrow!” came in the same manner from her.
“The day after tomorrow,” from him.
As he gave his orders he still felt his own figure to be expanding, but he was at the same time sensitive to her deep silence behind him, and silence was ever a difficult thing for him to bear. As if he had had a pair of keen eyes at the back of his head he saw her standing in the middle of the small room, deathly pale from long hardships, as on the evening after the shipwreck, in the boat. Within this conflict between
his consciousness of power and his compassion, he for some moments wavered in spirit, and also rocked a little in his chair. Finally he spun right round, and laid his arms on the back of the chair and his chin on his arms, ready to face the sight of the whole world’s distress.
Malli stepped away from the spot on the floor where she was standing, and came toward him, tardily but with great strength, like a wave running toward the coast. Everything in the following conversation came from her very slowly, with each sentence slower, not loudly but with the clear, profound ring of a bell. She said:
“I prithee
Remember, I have done thee worthy service;
Told thee no lies, made no mistakings, serv’d
Without or grudge or grumblings:”
Herr Soerensen sat perfectly still, he thought: “God preserve me, how that girl’s eyes shine. She is not looking at me, perhaps she does not see me at all. But her eyes shine!”
There was a short pause, then she slowly continued:
“All hail, great master! grave sir, hail! I come
To answer thy best pleasure; be’t to fly
,
To swim, to dive into the fire, to ride
On the curl’d clouds: to thy strong bidding task
Ariel and all his quality.”
Another pause. And then again:
“the elements
Of whom your swords are temper’d, may as well
Wound the loud winds, or with bemock’d-at stabs
Kill the still-closing waters, as diminish
One dowle that’s in my plume.”
Herr Soerensen was in no way taken aback by Malli skipping from one place in the text of the drama to another; he was as much at home in the text as she and could skip in it himself.
Now she looked straight at him, altogether collected in glance and voice, and again spoke, so sweetly, meekly and straightforwardly that Herr Soerensen’s heart melted in his breast and came into his eyes as clear tears:
“Full fathom five my body lies
,
Of my bones are coral made
,
Those are pearls that were my eyes
,
Nothing of me that doth fade
,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange
.
Sea-nymphs hourly ring my knell
.
Hark! now I hear them—ding dong bell.”
There was a last and very long silence.
But Herr Soerensen could not let himself be beaten in the exchange like this. He raised his head, stretched his right arm straight toward her above the back of the chair and, slowly as she herself, spoke:
“My Ariel, chick, then to the elements
be free, and fare thou well!”
Malli stood on awhile, then looked about her for her cloak and put it on, and he noticed that it was her old cloak from home. When she had buttoned it she turned toward him.
“But why,” she asked him, “must things go with us like that?”
“Why?” Herr Soerensen repeated.
“Why must things go with us so disastrously, Herr Soerensen?” she said.
Herr Soerensen was mightily exalted and inspired after Prospero’s last words; he was conscious that he must now answer her out of his experience of a long life, and said:
“O girl, be silent. We must never question—it is the others shall come questioning us—it is our noble privilege to answer—o answers fine and clear, o wondrous answers!—the questions of a baffled and divided—humanity. And ne’er ourselves to ask.”
“Yes,” said Malli after a moment or two. “And what do we get for it?”
“What do we get for it?” he repeated.
“Yes,” she said again. “What do we get in return, Herr Soerensen?”
Herr Soerensen looked back over their conversation, then looked further back over that long life out of which he was to answer her.
“In return? Alas, my little Malli,” he said, in an altogether changed voice, and this time he was not aware that he continued in his chosen, sacred tongue: “And in return we get the world’s distrust—and our dire loneliness. And nothing else.”
When on Friday evening Arndt Hosewinckel came home from Stavanger they handed him a letter with a gold coin in it. The letter ran as follows:
Dear beloved Arndt
,
I am writing to you with streaming tears. When you read this, I shall be far away, and we shall never see each other again. I am not the one for you, for I have deceived you and been unfaithful to you
.
Yes, I had deceived you before I saw you for the first time, and you lifted me from the boat. But yet I swear to you that I did not know of it and did not understand how things were with me. And one more thing I swear to you, and this too you must believe. That as long as I live I shall love you
.
I have a secret to tell you in this letter. I know, Arndt, that you love me, and maybe when I have told this secret to you, you will forgive me and tell me that it shall be as it was between you and me. But it cannot be so. For I carry my unfaithfulness toward you within myself, and wherever I am there it is too. I believed that nothing in the world was stronger than our love. But my unfaithfulness to you is stronger
.
The very first time I understood this was when I heard that Ferdinand had died. For he has died, but of that you do not know in Stavanger. And when I saw him lying in his coffin and heard his poor mother’s sorrowing words, then I guessed, as if somebody had spoken it from far away, that his death would come to part you and me. Still I did not yet fully understand that things were as they were, but it seemed to me that perhaps even now everything could turn out lovely for me as before, alas, how lovely!
But there was more to it, as I went about in great sadness and uneasiness and knew not in my heart what to believe. For on Sunday evening, as we sat in the drawing room, your father to please me told me the story of Jens Aabel and the fire. Your father afterwards told me that if some
person in despair wanted good advice, he must let Jens Aabel’s Bible fall open on its own, and he would then find it there. In my sorrow I betook myself to do this. But what I read was terrible
.
I have tonight brought the Bible into my room here, and it is lying before me. And I have looked up the text to write it to you. In this way it is to me as if I were writing in the presence of that good, deserving man, Jens Aabel. And when you read, you must also imagine that he has been sitting by me while I wrote
.
What I came upon was the Book of Isaiah, the twenty-ninth chapter, which starts thus:
“Woe to Ariel, to Ariel! … And thou shalt be brought down, and thou shalt speak out of the ground, … and thy voice shall be as of one that hath a familiar spirit, out of the ground, and thy speech shall whisper out of the dust!”
These words of the Prophet Isaiah filled me with great fear. Yet it was not until I read further that I fully understood how to me all hope was gone. For I read then the eighth verse:
“It shall even be as when an hungry man dreameth, and behold, he eateth; but he awaketh, and his soul is empty; or as when a thirsty man dreameth, and behold, he drinketh; but he awaketh, and behold, he is faint, and his soul hath appetite.”
Yes, Arndt, this is as it would come to be with you if you kept me, and no otherwise. Therefore I tell you that you shall not think of forgiving me, because that is such a thing as cannot be done
.
We are both young, and I am the younger of us two. But in what I now write I speak to you as if I were as old as the Prophet Isaiah, for that I am at this hour. And as if I were as wise as he, for that I am at this hour. And it
seems to me as if, in my bottomless unhappiness, I shall yet find words that will console you a little. It shall never come to be of no avail to you, Arndt, that you have met me. And it shall never come to be of no avail to me that you grieve over me
.
I will write to you too that tonight I have made a poem. I have never before made a poem, so that this one is not as it should be. Still you shall read it, and have it in your thoughts when you remember me. For it goes like this:
I have made you poor, my sweetheart dear.
I am far from you when I am near.
I have made you rich, my dearest heart.
I am near when we are far apart.
And now I have gained courage, and I will write to you the secret of which you know nothing
.
You are to know then, Arndt, that when I was in the midst of the storm in Kvasefjord, on
Sofie Hosewinckel, then I was not in the least afraid.
People in Christianssand call me a heroine. But a heroine is such a girl as sees the danger and is afraid of it, but defies it. But I, I saw it not, and understood not that there was danger
.
Alas, Arndt, in that same hour your good father went about in great fear for
Sofie Hosewinckel,
and Ferdinand’s mother was in deep fear and dread for her son. And I understand now, and see well, that in a human being it is beautiful to fear, and also I see clearly that the one who does not fear is all alone, and is rejected, an outcast from among people. But I, I was not in the least afraid
.
For I thought or believed something that you can never
imagine on your own, but that I shall now explain to you. I thought that the storm was the storm in the play
The Tempest
in which I was then soon to play a part, and which I had read more than a hundred times. Therein I myself am Ariel, a spirit of the air, and a mighty magician, Prospero, is my master. And in that night I thought that if
Sofie Hosewinckel
went down, I could fly off and wing my way from her. When I heard the crew shout, “All lost!” then I recognized the words, and thought our shipwreck was the wreck in the first scene. And when in great distress they cried out, “Mercy on us,” I recognized these words also. And may God have mercy on me myself, I laughed aloud at them in the storm
.
They tell me that in that night I called out many times for poor Ferdinand. But that too was for the same reason, and because the hero in the play is called Prince Ferdinand. And so on board the
Sofie Hosewinckel
it was Ariel who in the roaring gale called Prince Ferdinand to him in a loud voice
.
In this play there is also a lovely island full of tones, sounds and music sweet, on it in the end all the shipwrecked folk are rescued unharmed. And I thought, in the midst of the snowstorm, that this island was not far away. Yes, now you know all. And it is for such a reason that you cannot keep me, for I belong elsewhere and must now go there. For it is possible, I know, that you might forget what had once happened. But it would ever be the same in all that happened between you and me. Ay, that the hungry man dreameth, and behold, he eateth; and he awaketh, and his soul is empty. And that the thirsty man dreameth, and behold, he drinketh; but he awaketh, and he is faint, and his soul hath appetite
.
I am putting a gold coin for you in this letter, by which you shall remember me. It comes from my father, but it is pure gold
.
Now I will sit quite still and wait an hour before I close my letter. So I have got one hour more in which I have disclosed nothing to you, and in which nothing is over between you and me. But I am your sweetheart, who am to be wedded to you
.
Now the hour is at an end. Within it I have thought of two things
.
The first of the two is this: That when soon I sail from here, I may again run into such a storm as the one in Kvasefjord. But that this time I shall clearly understand that it is not a play in the theatre, but it is death. And it seems to me that then, in the last moment before we go down, I can in all truth be yours. And I am thinking that it will be fine and great to let wave-beat cover heart-beat. And in that hour to say: “I have been saved, because I have met you and have looked at you, Arndt!”
But the other of the two is this: If now I heard your steps on the stairs from the office, and you came into the room to me! It seems to me now that those moments in which I did so hear your steps on the stairs were the happiest in my whole life. Then my arms ached so badly in their longing to lie round your neck that I could have cried out for pain. Ay, how they ache!
Farewell then. Farewell. Farewell, Arndt
.
Yours upon earth faithless and rejected, but in death, in the resurrection, in eternity faithful
,
Malli