The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge

by Rainer Maria Rilke

  Beside this lady sat the little son of a cousin, a boy about my own age, but smaller and more weakly. His slender, pale neck rose from a pleated ruff and disappeared beneath a long chin. His lips were thin and shut tight, and his nostrils trembled slightly. He could move only one of his beautiful dark brown eyes; from time to time, it gazed across at me, tranquil and melancholy, while the other always remained fixed in the same direction, as if it had been sold and there were no longer any point in considering it.

  At the head of the table stood my grandfather's enormous armchair, which a servant with nothing else to do pushed in beneath him, and in which the old man took up very little room. He was an imperious old gentleman, hard of hearing, and some people addressed him as ‘Your Excellency’ or ‘Marshal’, while others styled him ‘General’. And undoubtedly he possessed all the distinction that went with these titles; but it had been so long since he had held any position that using them no longer made much sense. For myself, I had the sense that no particular name could attach to his personality, which at times was so keen and yet was forever losing its focus. I could never bring myself to call him Grandfather, although on occasion he could be friendly to me and would even call me to him, trying to say my name in a playful way. The fact was that the entire family was overawed and intimidated by the Count, and little Erik was the only one to enjoy any kind of intimacy with the ancient master of the house; at times his one good eye would flash a look of accord, which Grandfather returned with an equal swiftness; and sometimes on the long afternoons they could be seen appearing at the end of the long gallery and walking hand in hand past the dark old portraits, not saying a word but evidently communicating in some other way.

  I spent most of the day in the grounds or out in the beech forests or on the heath. As good fortune would have it, there were dogs at Urnekloster to keep me company; and there would be a tenant's house or dairy croft here and there, where I could get milk and bread and fruit. I think I took a fairly carefree pleasure in my freedom, without letting the thought of the evening gatherings frighten me, at least for the next week or so. I spoke to hardly anyone, for I delighted in solitude; the dogs were the only ones I had the odd brief conversation with, and we understood each other very well. Taciturnity ran in the family, anyway; I was used to it from my father, and it did not surprise me that next to nothing was said at dinner.

  In the first few days after we arrived, however, Mathilde Brahe was distinctly talkative. She asked my father about old acquaintances in foreign cities, she brought impressions of far-off times back to mind, and she moved herself to tears by recalling women friends who had died and a certain young man who, she intimated, had been in love with her, though she had felt unable to return his fervent, hopeless affections. My father listened politely, inclining his head now and then in agreement and offering only the essential minimum by way of reply. The Count, at the head of the table, had a constant smile on his down-turned lips; his face seemed larger than usual, as if he were wearing a mask. From time to time, he put in a word himself, addressing no one in particular in a voice which, though very soft, could nonetheless be heard in the whole dining hall. It had something of the regular, unconcerned tocking of a clock; the silence around it seemed to have an empty resonance all of its own, the same for every syllable.

  Count Brahe intended a particular courtesy towards my father in talking of his late wife, my mother. He called her Countess Sibylle, and whenever he finished a sentence it was as if he were enquiring after her. Indeed, for some unaccountable reason I felt he was referring to some very young girl dressed in white who might enter the room at any moment. I heard him speak in the same tone of ‘our little Anna Sophie’. And one day, when I asked about this young lady of whom Grandfather seemed so especially fond, I found that he was talking of the daughter of High Chancellor Conrad Reventlow, the second, morganatic wife of Frederick IV, who had been reposing at Roskilde for almost a hundred and fifty years.4 The passage of time was wholly immaterial to him, death was a minor incident which he completely ignored, and people whom he had once lodged in his memory continued to exist, regardless of whether they had passed away. Some years later, after the old gentleman had died, he was described as having perceived the future as present too, with the selfsame wilfulness. On one occasion, he reportedly spoke to one young woman of her sons, and in particular the travels of one of these sons, while all the time the young woman, then in the third month of her first pregnancy, sat there almost fainting with fright and dismay as the old man talked relentlessly on.

  But it all began with my laughing. To be exact, I laughed out loud and could not stop. That evening, Mathilde Brahe did not appear for dinner. The old and almost completely blind servant nonetheless proffered the dish when he came to her place at table. For a short while he stood there like that, then moved on with an air of satisfied dignity, as if everything were in order. I observed the scene, and at that moment, as I watched, it did not strike me as funny. But a little later, as I had just taken a mouthful of food, the laughter rose so fast within me, to my head, that I swallowed the wrong way and caused a commotion. And although I found the situation embarrassing, although I did everything I could to remain serious, the convulsive laughter kept on returning and had me totally in its power.

  My father, as if to cover for my conduct, enquired in his full but muted tones: ‘Is Mathilde unwell?’ Grandfather smiled in that way of his and replied with a comment – to which, being taken up with myself, I paid no attention – roughly to this effect: No, she simply does not wish to meet Christine. Nor did I grasp that it was in response to these words that my neighbour, the tanned major, rose and, with an indistinct murmur of excuses and a bow to the master of the house, left the room. I did notice, however, that he turned once more in the doorway, behind the Count's back, and beckoned and nodded to little Erik and suddenly, to my great astonishment, signalled to me as well, as if he wanted us to follow him. I was so surprised that my laughter ceased to trouble me. For the rest, I paid no further attention to the major; I found him unpleasant, and I noted that little Erik took no notice of him either.

  The meal dragged on as always, and we had just reached the dessert when my eye was caught and held by a movement at the far end of the hall, where it was half dark. A door which I had supposed was always locked, and which I had been told gave on to the mezzanine floor, had opened gradually, and now, as I looked on with an entirely unfamiliar feeling of curiosity and alarm, a slender woman in a light-coloured dress stepped into the darkness of the doorway and slowly came towards us. I do not know if I made any movement or sound myself; the racket of a chair being overturned forced me to tear my eyes from the strange apparition, and I saw my father, who had leaped to his feet, walking towards the woman, his face as pale as death, his fists clenched at his sides. She herself, quite unmoved by this scene, continued coming towards us, pace by pace, and she was already close to where the Count was sitting when he abruptly rose and, seizing my father by the arm, drew him back to the table and held him there; while the strange woman moved on, slowly and unconcernedly, through the space thus vacated, pace by pace, through an indescribable silence in which the only sound was the tremulous clink of a glass somewhere or other, and vanished through a door in the opposite wall of the dining hall. At that moment, I noticed that it was little Erik who, with a deep bow, closed the door behind the stranger.

  I was the only one who had remained sitting at the table; I had grown so heavy in my chair, I felt as if I would never be able to get up again by myself. For a time, I looked without seeing. Then my thoughts turned to my father, and I realized that the old man was still holding him by the arm. My father's face was angry and blood-red now, but Grandfather, whose fingers gripped my father's arm like a white claw, was smiling his mask-like smile. Then I heard him say something, and I made out every syllable but without understanding the meaning of his words. Nonetheless I must have registered them deep down inside, for one day about two years ago I found them buried in
my memory, and since then I have retained them. He said: ‘You are impetuous, Chamberlain, and discourteous. Why do you not let people go about their business?’ ‘Who is that?’ my father yelled, interrupting. ‘Someone who has every right to be here. Not a stranger. Christine Brahe.’ – The same strangely attenuated silence ensued, and once again the glass began to tremble. But then my father abruptly broke loose and rushed out of the room.

  I heard him pacing to and fro in his room all night long; for I could not sleep either. But suddenly, as morning approached, I awoke from a drowsiness close to sleep and, with a horror that numbed me to the very heart, saw something white sitting on my bed. In my desperation I finally mustered the strength to hide my head under the covers, and there, for fear and helplessness, I began to cry. Suddenly there was a coolness and brightness above my crying eyes; I scrunched them tight shut over my tears, so that I would not have to see anything. But the voice that now spoke to me from very near brushed my face with a mild sweetness, and I recognized it as that of Miss Mathilde. Right away I felt soothed, though I allowed her to go on comforting me even after I had become quite calm; I did feel that this kindness was too effeminate, true, but I enjoyed it nonetheless and thought that I had somehow deserved it. ‘Aunt,’ I said at last, trying to distinguish in her tear-blurred face the features of my mother: ‘Aunt, who was that lady?’

  ‘Ah,’ replied Miss Brahe, with a sigh that struck me as comical, ‘an unhappy person, my child, an unhappy person.’

  That morning, I noticed a number of servants busy packing in one of the rooms. I assumed this meant we were leaving, and I found it only natural that we should do so. Perhaps it was indeed my father's intention. I never found out what moved him to stay on at Urnekloster after that evening. But the fact was that we did not leave. We remained another eight or nine weeks in that house, enduring its oppressive strangeness, and we saw Christine Brahe on three further occasions.

  At that time, I knew nothing of her story. I did not know that she had died a long, long time before while giving birth to her second child, a boy, who was destined for a fearful, cruel life – I did not know that she was dead. But my father knew it. Did he mean to force himself, a passionate temperament with a strong sense of clarity and logic, to retain his composure as he saw out this adventure, without asking questions? I observed how he struggled with himself, without understanding what it meant; I saw that he mastered himself in the end, without grasping how he did it.

  It was on the occasion when we last saw Christine Brahe. This time Miss Mathilde had made her appearance for dinner too; but she was not her usual self. As in the early days after our arrival, she talked incessantly, confused and unstructured talk, and was physically restless, feeling some need to be forever adjusting her hair or her dress – till she abruptly leaped to her feet with a shrill wail and was gone.

  At the same moment, my eyes turned involuntarily to that one door, and there was Christine Brahe, entering the room. The major, beside me, made a short, agitated movement that ran on palpably through my own body, but he evidently no longer had the strength to rise. His tanned old flecked face turned from one to another, his mouth hung open, and his tongue worked behind his decayed teeth; and then all at once his face was not there, and his grey head lay on the table, and his arms lay over and under his head as if they were broken, and from somewhere a flecked and withered hand crept out, trembling.

  And now, pace by pace, moving slowly like a sick woman, Christine Brahe walked past, through an indescribable silence in which the only sound was a single whimper like that of an old dog. But then, to the left by the large silver swan filled with narcissi, the great mask of the old man appeared, with its grey smile in place. He raised his wine glass towards my father. And now, just as Christine Brahe was passing behind his chair, I saw my father reach for his glass and, as if it were extremely heavy, raise it a hand's-breadth above the table.

  And that same night we left.

  Bibliothéque Nationale

  [16] I am sitting here reading a poet.5 There are a large number of people in the room, but one is unaware of them. They are in the books. At times they move among the pages, like sleepers turning over between two dreams. Ah, how good it is to be among people who are reading. Why are they not always like this? You can go up to one and touch him lightly: he feels nothing. And if you happen to jostle against the next man as you get up, and apologize, he nods in the direction of your voice, with his face turned towards you but not seeing you, and his hair is like the hair of someone sleeping. How pleasant that is. And I am sitting here and have a poet. What good fortune. There are some three hundred people in the room right now, all reading; but it is not possible that every one of them has a poet. (God knows what they do have.) There are not so many as three hundred poets. But just consider this fate, that I, perhaps the sorriest of all these readers, and a foreigner, have a poet. Although I am poor. Although the suit I wear every day is starting to show signs of wear, although my shoes might be faulted in one way or another. True, my collar is clean, and so are my undergarments, and just as I am I might go into any café, even one of those on the great boulevards, and reach into a platter of pastries and help myself. No one would think anything of it, no one would shout at me or show me the door, for after all my hand bespeaks gentility and is washed four or five times a day. There is no dirt under my fingernails, there are no ink stains on my forefinger, and my wrists in particular are beyond reproach. It is a well-known fact that the poor do not wash that far up. So there are conclusions to be drawn from the cleanliness of my wrists. And people draw them. They draw them in shops. But nevertheless there are those, say in the boulevard Saint-Michel or the rue Racine, who are not deceived and are unimpressed by my wrists. They give me one look and they know. They know that really I am one of them, and am only play-acting a little. This is carnival season, after all. And they don't want to spoil my fun; but they grin and wink at each other when no one is looking. For the rest, they treat me as a gentleman. If someone else happens to be around, they even put on a servile show, behaving as if I were wearing furs and my carriage were in attendance. Now and then I tip them two sous, trembling in case they refuse them; but they accept them. And all would be well if they hadn't briefly exchanged their grins and winks again. Who are these people? What do they expect of me? Do they lie in wait? How do they recognize me? It is true that my beard looks a little unkempt, and it bears a very distant resemblance to their own sickly, old, faded beards, which have always made an impression on me. But do I not have the right to neglect my beard? Many a busy man does just that, and it never occurs to a soul to number them among the untouchables6 on that account. For it is clear to me that untouchables is what they are, not mere beggars; no, they really are not beggars, one must make distinctions. They are human refuse, the husks of men, spat out by fate. Moist with the spittle of fate, they cling to a wall, a lamp-post, a Morris column, or they dribble slowly down the street, leaving a dark, dirty trail behind them. What on earth did that old woman want of me, who had crept out of some hole carrying a bedside-table drawer with a few buttons and needles rolling about in it? Why did she keep walking at my side, watching me? As if she were trying to recognize me with those bleary eyes of hers, which looked as if someone with a disease had spat green phlegm under her bloody eyelids. And what possessed that little grey woman to stand beside me for a full quarter of an hour in front of a shop window, showing me some long old pencil thrust out infinitely slowly from her sorry, clenched hands? I affected to be studying the window display and to have noticed nothing. But she knew that I had seen her, she knew that I was standing there wondering what she was doing. For I was perfectly aware that it wasn't about the pencil: I sensed that it was a signal, a sign for the initiated, a sign the untouchables recognize; I felt intuitively that she was prompting me to go somewhere or do something. And the strangest thing of all was that I could not shake off the feeling that there was some kind of agreement between us, that the signal was part of an
assignation, and that essentially I ought to have been expecting the scene to occur.

  That was two weeks ago. Now, however, hardly a day goes by without some similar encounter, not only at dusk: in broad daylight, in the busiest of streets, a little man or an old woman will suddenly appear, nod, show me something and disappear again, as though all that was needed had now been attended to. It is possible that one day they will even venture as far as my room; they no doubt know where I live, and they'll have their ways of getting past the concierge. But here, my dears, here I am safe from you. One needs a special card to gain access to the reading room. I do have a card, and with it an advantage over you. I walk the streets somewhat warily, as may be imagined, but at length there I stand, at a glass door, open it as if I were at home, show my card at the next door (just as you show me your things, but with the difference that here they understand and know what I mean) – and then I am among these books, beyond your reach as though I were dead, and sit here reading a poet.