The Goose Girl and Other Stories (33 page)

Again the years passed, for there was nothing to stop them, and from Haparanda to Trälleborg people said to each other, ‘See what Trimander and Folander and Torssander will do next! Oh, what poets they are, and when next they write we shall not only see more clearly the beauty of the world, which so far is its only reality, save hunger and death and such-like fatalities, that we can put our hands to; but also, perhaps, something of the inner and coherent meaning of it all.'—For these simple people knew perfectly well that life was a trap for them, and that the function of poetry was to show their way out of it.

But year followed year, with the smoothness of water bending and falling over invisible rocky steps in a deep stream, and neither Trimander nor Folander nor Torssander published another verse. The result, however, Sweden being what it is, and the people having time to get by heart the contents of their second volumes, was not an obscuring of their fame, but its enlargement yet again by the most powerful and persistent of all agencies: by the aggravating warmth, that is, of pure faith.

Twenty years went by, and none of them wrote another line, but when they were all near seventy years old the general confidence in them was deeper than ever before, and there was a momentary expectation of their publishing, severally or together, something that should be like a mixture of the
Iliad
and Blake's
Songs of Innocence;
of Heine and the
Laxdale Saga;
of
Tartuffe
and
Fredmans
Sånger—
an expectation of God's plenty in swift yet pregnant, bold but
graceful phrases. But Trimander and Folander and Torssander chose differently. They chose instead to die.

Folander was the first to go. He was invited to a crayfish feast, and died of a surfeit. Now, in any less civilised or sensitive a country than Sweden, such a death would have been contemned and poor Folander denounced for vulgar greed. But in Sweden they perceived the truth of the matter, and knew that he had died, not of gluttony, but of romantic devotion to an idea, to a ritual, and a faith. For the dainty little crayfish are caught beneath a summer's moon, they are summer's river-fruit, and when they are piled like coral in a crystal dish everyone sees in them the token of summer's triumph over the prison gates that winter had closed upon the running streams for so many weary months; and so eats as many as he can to share the triumph as fully as he may.

Folander had eaten a prodigious number—but exactly how many is still a matter of dispute—when, reaching slowly forward for yet another, his companions saw his rosy face turn suddenly a darker red, as when the westering sun has touched the horizon, and with a shudder he clutched the tablecloth, his glass of schnapps fell with a little crash to the floor, and Folander sank backward into his chair. The sun had set.

Trimander was living in a castle on Lake Mälaren at that time. He cried openly when he heard the news, and sobbing still, retired to his room. He did not come down to dinner, and a servant said that he had gone for a walk. It was raining heavily. His host grew anxious, and sent out some young men to look for him. But it was after midnight before they found him, soaked to the skin, and brought him home. He died of pneumonia three days later, and in the stove in his bedroom they found a little heap of ashes. Whatever he had written in the last few years of his life he had taken with him to the grave, like helmet and sword and shield in a Viking's burial.

Torssander was found dead a week later. His chessboard was on the floor, and on either side the pieces were so disposed that a single false move would open their array to rout and dissolution. The board, as it stood, was taken with pious care to Skansen, where it still provokes endless discussion among devotees of the game.—Had Torssander, they ask, simply demonstrated his witty understanding of chess by arranging his men in such a way that a mere touch would undo them all? Or had he, in his last contest, brought by serious play and the deployment of equal forces, both sides to an abyss; and read the parable?

For Torssander, dead, sat at his table with an unfinished poem before him.—He had come, so he wrote, to a house that seemed empty,
but the plate on the door was well polished and its old lettering, almost rubbed away by time, spelt the name he looked for:
Death.
Here, to this house, his friends had come, and he must learn for himself what their welcome had been. He knocked, but no one came. The house indeed looked empty, but on a window a curtain moved. He knocked again, more loudly. Still no one came. He knocked a third time ....

There the poem ended, and Torssander's pen lay broken between his hands.

No work of literature could have pushed their fame to such a height as this common work of death. Now, having shed their mortal parts, they scared above Sweden like the three crowns of the kingdom that gleam over Stockholm in the sky; and they and their poems, as if under a great light, became visible to all. Death had established their immortality.

It did more, indeed, for in a curious way it brought the poets closer to the simple people who admired them. Resolved by death, their genius at once became part of the soil and history of Sweden, of which quite ordinary people such as clerks and sailors and village shopkeepers, were equal heirs with Counts and professors and fashionable ladies; and the greatness of Trimander, Folander, and Torssander, which in their time upon earth had held them at a little distance from their readers, now entered their readers' minds as a morsel of their natural heritage. By their solemn act of dying, the poets presently became one flesh with all their fellow-countrymen.

‘On Your Right is the largest and most beautiful cemetery in Noo Orleans. Now owing to the marshy nature of the ground more people are buried in tombs on top of the earth than in graves dug into the earth, and that broad white wall represents the latest way of disposing of the dear departed. It consists of compartments in three layers. Those on the bottom shelf cost sixty dollars, the middle ones seventy-five, and the top ones ninety dollars. You buy a compartment, you slide in the casket, you lock the door, and put the key carefully away with the deceas' photograph and the mortgage on your Chevrolet.'

The guide put down his small cardboard megaphone and smiled roguishly, benignly, at the twenty people in the motor coach, whose faces were always at different levels as they bumped up and down or looked here and there. Nineteen of them turned their heads half-right, and stared with respectful curiosity at the white chaos of tombs and statuary, of angels, crosses, broken columns, temples and little mausoleums. The meaningless names of many totally forgotten people were handsomely preserved. But modern economy or the American belief in concentration had prescribed for many more only a cell in the broad honeycombed wall to which the guide had called particular attention. The nineteen tourists, most of whom already lived in apartment houses, were apparently impressed by this homely and sensible innovation.

But the twentieth scarcely glanced at the cemetery. She was a plump woman of rather more than thirty-five, and she sat in the front seat. She had black hair, a wide mouth, and thick white skin. The guide's genial appearance seemed to attract her more than marble crosses.

The cemetery was left behind, and with a slight switchback movement the motor coach crossed a broad transverse street. The guide slipped the megaphone over his mouth again.

‘That bump which you felt just now,' he explained, ‘was due to crossing one of the main canals of the Noo Orleans drainage system. It is now the broadest covered drainage canal in the world, and as you could see it runs under one of our busiest streets. Formerly if a lady wanted to cross the street she had to take her shoes in her hand.

Now as soon as she steps off the sidewalk she takes her life in her hands.'

All the tourists showed some appreciation of the joke. Some, simply pleased, honestly chuckled. Some nodded as if to say, ‘How true!' And others displayed the sophisticated tooth of social mirth.

The dark-haired woman in the front seat, however, threw back her head and laughed outright, showing large handsome teeth that appeared rather yellow against her carmined lips. The guide, from his slightly higher seat, glanced down at her and smiled.

He was a jovial-looking man with little twinkling eyes and a red shiny face. His skin seemed tough, as if it had been exposed to extreme conditions of weather and would grow an abundant beard. When he took off his peaked official cap, to mop his warm head, a white line showed about an inch above his eyebrows, and his high round forehead (he was half-bald) looked astonishingly pale. It gave him a particoloured appearance that almost suggested a circus. From his nose to his mouth ran deep outward-curving lines that puckered his face into a lasting smile, and the corners of his mouth turned upwards to meet these lines and so increase their jovial effect. He wore, in fact, a smile that would not come off.

The tourists settled down to a period of cautious indifference as the guide began to recommend other excursions, and to suggest that those who intended to see the farther environs of New Orleans might as well buy their tickets from him.

‘This is how we make our living, ladies and gentleman,' he explained. ‘The driver and I get a small percentage on the tickets we sell, and if you care to do us a favour and at the same time profit by the new and varied experience you gain on these marvellous sightseeing tours . . . Leaving at two-thirty this afternoon, ma'am, and we call for you at your hotel.'

The woman in the front seat took a ticket, and led away from prudence by her example several other passengers engaged themselves to join the afternoon tour. The guide was pleased by his success, and while he distributed tickets he made little jokes and flattered his charges in a knowing voice.

‘. . . as nice a lot of folk as we've had this year. That's what I told Ed there'—he jerked a thumb at the driver—'as soon as I saw you. I knew I wouldn't have to use much persuasion to intelligent folk like you.' His grin deepened and he looked down at the woman in the front seat in a familiar way. ‘I'm a thought-reader,' he said, and winked at her. She laughed, vaguely flattered, and pulled her skirt farther over her knees.

The coach went on its way, through the City Park where the guide made a story of the Duelling Oaks and the wild young men, or angry old men, who had fought beneath them for various causes, some of which were the complications of love. The woman in the front seat stared at the trees with morbid curiosity.

The route then led down St Charles Avenue, and the guide pointed to the millionaires' houses with their handsome gardens, and mentioned their owners' wealth with a rich and easy familiarity.

When the morning's trip was over he said cheerfully, ‘Well, I ‘ll be seeing most of you again in a couple of hours' time, so we needn't say good-bye. See that you all get a good dinner, but don't eat so much that you want to go to sleep after it, or you'll miss a mighty fine tour.'

Most of the travellers were pleased with their morning's outing and made complimentary remarks to the guide as he helped them out of the narrow door of the coach. Some, however, were blasé, and said how stiff they felt after sitting so long in a crowded vehicle. The guide behaved to all alike, showing the same genial face, the same smile of unchanging good humour, to crabbed customers and contented ones; but as the last was stepping out he muttered to the driver, still without changing his expression, ‘For Christ's sake, Ed! They get dumber and dumber every day.'

The driver answered, ‘That dame sitting in front seems to have taken a fancy to you, Al.'

‘The bigger they are the harder they fall,' said the guide with his jovial look.

It was I, sightseeing in this unenterprising way, who left the coach last and so overheard this small conversation. I had bought no more tickets, and my normal appearance of diffident inconsequence was exaggerated by the oppressive heat. Obviously the guide had no reason to respect my feelings, and I was not insulted by his somewhat contemptuous indifference to my person and power of hearing. I was interested, however, by the contrast between his happy smile and the cynical boredom of his voice. His facial expression was apparently fixed as firmly as that of Ozymandias's statue in the sand, and bore no relation to his real feelings. It was a grinning mask, ingrown and permanent.

I lunched alone, in a Creole restaurant to which I had been recommended, but it was too hot to enjoy anything more solid than iced melon, and the admirably cooked, ingeniously seasoned chicken was almost wasted. It was foolish, perhaps, to have gone to New Orleans in June, but as I had no other opportunity of seeing that charming city I had determined to endure the unpleasantness
of its summer climate for the sake of its other attractions. But I was beginning to regret my enthusiasm, for I had arranged to meet a friend there with whom I was to travel across the continent to Los Angeles, and that morning I had received a telegram saying he had been delayed and would not arrive for another forty-eight hours. I was not made happier by the prospect of two more days and two more nights in windless air so excessively charged with hot moisture.

Because it was too hot to walk about, and because I could think of nothing else to do, I decided to go on the second sightseeing tour, for which, a little earlier, I had resolutely refused to buy a ticket. The thought of the guide's Ozymandias-grin had become rather entertaining.

When I arrived at the starting-terminus the woman who had occupied the front seat on the morning tour was already in her former place. She had taken the opportunity to paint her lips more brightly, with a bolder and more provocative line, and to buy some flowers for the front of her dress.

We drove for a considerable distance out of the city, and for some time passed nothing which Al, the guide, thought worth describing. He talked instead to the woman in front of him, and I was close enough to hear him asking her how long she had been in New Orleans, and whether she liked it.