The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge

by Rainer Maria Rilke

  *(As for my father, his attitude to God was perfectly correct and courteous beyond reproach. In church I sometimes felt that he was veritably God's Master of the Hunt when he stood there waiting, head bowed. To Maman, on the other hand, it seemed almost offensive that someone might have a polite relationship with God. If she had happened to belong to a religion with distinct and elaborate observances, she would have thought it bliss to kneel for hours on end and to prostrate herself and to make a sweeping sign of the cross in the proper fashion upon her breast and shoulders. She did not strictly speaking teach me to pray, but she found comfort in the pleasure I took in kneeling with my hands now clasped, now held palms together, whichever seemed the more expressive to me at the time. Left largely to my own devices, I early in life passed through a series of evolutionary stages which I related to God only much later, in a period of despair; and then with such vehemence that God took on form and then shattered almost in the same instant. And during that beginning there were times when I felt I needed Maman, although of course the more proper way was to live through it alone. And besides, by then she had long been dead.)

  Towards Dr Jespersen, Maman behaved almost with levity. She would begin conversations with him which he took seriously, and once he was holding forth she felt she had done quite enough and promptly forgot him, as if he were already gone. ‘However can he go around visiting people,’ she would sometimes remark, ‘just when they are dying?’

  He came to visit her too, when her time had come, but she most certainly did not see him. Her senses were failing, one by one, and the first to go was her sight. It was in the autumn, and we were on the point of returning to town when she fell ill, or rather, she began to die, right away, the entire surface of her body dying off slowly and inconsolably. The doctors came, and on one particular day they were all there together, holding sway over the whole house. For a few hours it seemed to belong to the privy councillor and his assistants, and we no longer seemed to have any say in things. But in no time at all they had lost interest and came only one at a time, as if out of mere courtesy, for a cigar and a glass of port. And meanwhile Maman was dying.

  Now the family were waiting for Maman's only brother, Count Christian Brahe, who it will be recalled had been in Turkish service for a time, where (it was always said) he had been decorated highly. One morning he arrived accompanied by a foreign servant, and I was surprised to see that he was taller than Father and apparently older as well. The two gentlemen exchanged a few swift words, which I assumed had to do with Maman. There was a pause. Then my father said: ‘She is badly disfigured.’ I did not understand the expression, but I shuddered when I heard it. I had the impression that it had cost my father an effort to utter it, too. But it was doubtless his pride that suffered most in admitting how things stood.

  [34] It was several years before I again heard any mention of Count Christian. It was at Urnekloster, and it was Mathilde Brahe who was fond of talking about him. If I come to think about it, I am sure that she took some liberty in elaborating the individual episodes, for the life of my uncle, of which only rumours were known to the public or indeed to the family, rumours that he never denied, afforded infinite possibilities for embellishment. Urnekloster is now in his possession. But no one knows whether he lives there. Perhaps he is still on his travels, according to his custom; perhaps news of his death is on its way from some remote part of the world, written by the foreign servant in poor English or some unfamiliar language. Or perhaps the man will send no word at all when one day he remains behind on his own. Perhaps both of them have long since disappeared and only exist on the passenger list of some lost ship, under assumed names.

  In those days, at all events, whenever a carriage drove up to Urnekloster I always expected to see him make his entrance, and my heart pounded in a particular way. Mathilde Brahe declared that that was just how he would come. That was him all over – suddenly he would be there, just when one least thought it possible. He never did come, but for weeks he kept my imagination busy; I felt we owed each other some real contact, and I should have liked to have genuine information about him.

  When my interest found a new object shortly afterwards, however, and, as a result of certain occurrences, shifted entirely to Christine Brahe, I curiously enough made no attempt to learn anything about the facts of her life. What did trouble me, though, was the speculation about whether there was a portrait of her in the gallery. And the wish to find out became so exclusive and so tormenting as it grew that I could not sleep for several nights, till quite unexpectedly the night came when, Lord knows why, I got up and went upstairs with my candle, which seemed to be afraid.

  For myself, I had no thought of fear. I had no thoughts at all; I simply went. The lofty doors yielded so easily before and above me; the rooms I passed through kept quiet. And at length I could tell from the breath of depth upon me that I had entered the gallery. I sensed to my right the windows giving upon the night, and to the left the paintings had to be. I raised my candle as high as I could. Yes, there the paintings were.

  At first I decided I would look only at the women; but then I recognized one, and then another, of whom a similar portrait hung at Ulsgaard, and if my light fell on them from below they moved and wanted to come out into the light, and it seemed heartless not to allow them that much time at least. There was Christian IV, time and again, with his beautifully braided queue hanging down by his broad, gently rounded cheek. There were his wives, presumably, of whom I recognized only Kirstine Munk; and all at once Mistress Ellen Marsvin was looking at me, suspicious in her widow's weeds and with the same string of pearls on the brim of her high hat. There were King Christian's offspring, forever more of them, by different wives, the ‘incomparable’ Eleonore on a white palfrey, at her most dazzling, before the ordeal. The Gyldenløves: Hans Ulrik, who the ladies in Spain imagined painted his face, so full-blooded was he; and Ulrik Christian, whom no one ever forgot. And nearly all the Ulfelds. And that one there, with one eye overpainted in black, might well be Henrik Holck, who was a count of the empire and a field marshal at the age of thirty-three. The story was that on his way to the damsel Hilleborg Krafse, he dreamed that instead of a bride he was given a naked sword: and he took this to heart, and turned back, and embarked on his brief and audacious career, which the plague put an end to. I knew them all. At Ulsgaard we also had the ambassadors to the Congress of Nijmegen, who bore a slight resemblance to each other because they had all been painted at the same time, each with that narrow, close-trimmed moustache above the sensual, almost staring mouth. That I recognized Duke Ulrich goes without saying, and Otte Brahe and Claus Daa and Sten Rosen-sparre, the last of his line; or I had seen portraits of all of them in the dining hall at Ulsgaard, or I had come across copper engravings that depicted them, in old portfolios.24

  But then there were a great many others I had never seen; few women, but there were children. My arm had long since grown tired and was trembling, but I held up the candle again and again to see the children. I understood them, these little girls who carried a bird on their hand and never gave it a thought. On occasion a little dog was at their feet, a ball lying near, and on the table beside them were fruits and flowers; and behind, on the pillar, small and provisional, hung the coat of arms of the Grubbes or the Billes or the Rosenkrantzes. Such a lot had been gathered about them, as if a great deal had to be made up for. They, however, simply stood there in their dresses and waited; you could see that they were waiting. And that made me think of the women again, and Christine Brahe, and whether I would recognize her.

  I was intending to walk swiftly to the far end of the gallery and then look as I walked back, but then I bumped into something. I turned around so abruptly that little Erik recoiled with a bound, whispering: ‘Watch out with your candle.’

  ‘Is that you?’ I said, breathless, uncertain whether it was good or distinctly bad. He merely laughed, and I had no idea what to do next. My candle was flickering, and I could not easily make out the expre
ssion on his face. It could only be a bad thing, surely, that he was there. But then, as he drew closer, he said: ‘Her picture isn't there. We're still looking for it upstairs.’ With his low voice and his one movable eye, he made a kind of upward gesture, and I realized that he meant the attic. But suddenly an odd thought occurred to me.

  ‘We?’ I asked. ‘Is she up there too?’

  ‘Yes,’ he nodded, standing very close to me.

  ‘She is looking for it too?’

  ‘Yes. We're looking.’

  ‘So it has been removed, the picture?’

  ‘Yes – just imagine!’ he said indignantly. h

  But I did not quite understand what she wanted with the picture.

  ‘She wants to see herself,’ he whispered, close to.

  ‘Ah, yes,’ I returned, as if I understood. At this he blew out my candle. I saw him stretch forward, into the patch of light, his eyebrows arched. Then it was dark. I took an involuntary step back.

  ‘Whatever are you doing?’ I exclaimed in a stifled voice, my throat quite dry. He leaped after me and caught hold of my arm and giggled.

  ‘What is it?’ I demanded brusquely, and I tried to shake him off, but he clung tight. I could not prevent him from putting his arm around my neck.

  ‘Shall I tell you?’ he hissed, and a little saliva flecked my ear.

  ‘Yes, yes, quick.’

  I did not know what I was saying. He was now holding me in a full embrace, stretching as he did so.

  ‘I took her a mirror,’ he said, and giggled again.

  ‘A mirror?’

  ‘Yes, because the picture isn't there.’

  ‘No, no,’ I muttered. d

  All at once, he pulled me a little further over to the window and pinched my upper arm so hard that I yelled.

  ‘She isn't in,’ he breathed into my ear.

  Involuntarily I pushed him away from me; there was a cracking sound, and I wondered if I had broken him.

  ‘Get off with you!’ I said, and now I couldn't help laughing myself. ‘Isn't in? What do you mean, isn't in?’

  ‘You're stupid,’ he retorted maliciously, no longer whispering. His tone had changed, as if he were beginning to perform a new and as yet unfamiliar part. ‘You're either in,’ he pronounced with a precocious severity, ‘in which case you aren't here; or else, if you're here, you can't be in.’

  ‘Of course,’ I answered hastily, without thinking. I was afraid that otherwise he might go and leave me alone. I even reached out to him.

  ‘Let's be friends,’ I proposed. He wanted me to ask.

  ‘It's all the same to me,’ he said insolently.

  I attempted to make a beginning of our friendship, but I did not dare embrace him. ‘Dear Erik,’ was all I could muster, and I touched him somewhere, lightly. Suddenly I was extremely tired. I looked around; I no longer had any idea how I had got there or why I had not been afraid. I did not rightly know where the windows were, or the pictures. And when we left, he had to lead me.

  ‘They won't do anything to you,’ he assured me magnanimously, and giggled again.

  [35] My dear Erik, you were perhaps my one and only friend. The fact is, I never did have one. It is a shame you set no store by friendship. I should have liked to tell you so many things. Maybe we would have got on with each other. One can never know. I remember that your portrait was being painted at the time. Grandfather had hired someone to come and paint you. One hour every morning. I cannot recall what the painter looked like, and his name escapes me, although Mathilde Brahe used to repeat it all the time.

  I wonder if he saw you as I see you? You wore a suit of heliotrope-coloured velvet. Mathilde Brahe waxed rhapsodic about that suit. But that is neither here nor there now. I should merely like to know whether he saw you. Let us suppose he was a real painter. Let us suppose it never occurred to him that you might die before he had finished the portrait; that he did not see his subject in a sentimental light; that he simply did his work. That the dissimilarity of your two brown eyes delighted him; that he was not embarrassed for a single moment by the eye that did not move; that he had the tact not to place anything on the table by your hand, on which you were lightly supporting yourself –. Let us suppose whatever else would have been necessary, and let it stand: the upshot is a picture, your picture, the last portrait in the gallery at Urnekloster.

  (And when people walk through it, and have seen them all, there is still a boy to come, at the end. Just a moment: who is that? A Brahe. Do you see the silver palisade on the sable field, and the peacock feathers? There is the name, too: Erik Brahe. Was it not an Erik Brahe who was executed?25 Absolutely; it is a familiar enough story. But this cannot be the same person. This lad died when he was still a boy; it's of no consequence when. Can't you see?)

  [36] Whenever there were visitors and Erik was called, Miss Mathilde Brahe would invariably aver that his resemblance to the old Countess Brahe, my grandmother, was truly astounding. They say she was a most imposing lady. I never knew her myself. I do have a very clear recollection of my father's mother, though – the real mistress of Ulsgaard. For the mistress she had remained, much as she resented Maman for entering the house as wife to the Master of the Hunt. From then on, she was forever affecting to behave in a self-effacing manner, and referring the servants to Maman for every trivial thing, while she herself placidly took the decisions on matters of importance, and carried them out, without accounting to anyone. Maman, I believe, was perfectly happy with this arrangement. She was so ill constituted to run a big establishment; she was wholly unable to distinguish secondary matters from what was of genuine importance. Whatever people spoke to her about became the one thing of overriding consequence, and she forgot the other matters that also needed attending to. She never complained about her mother-in-law. And to whom should she have complained? Father was an extremely respectful son, and Grandfather had little say in anything.

  Mistress Margarete Brigge had always been, as far back as I can remember, a tall, unapproachable old lady. I can only imagine that she must have been much older than the Chamberlain. In our very midst she lived her own life, without any consideration for anyone. She depended on none of us, and always had with her a sort of lady companion, the ageing Countess Oxe, whom she had placed under a limitless obligation by some favour or other. This must have been an exception, since good deeds were not normally in character. She was not fond of children, and did not suffer animals to come near her. I do not know whether she had an affection for anything else. The story went that as a very young girl she had been engaged to Prince Felix Lichnowski, that handsome man who so cruelly lost his life in Frankfurt.26 And after her death a portrait of the Prince was indeed found among her belongings, and returned to his family, if I am not mistaken. I now think that perhaps, in leading that retired country existence which life at Ulsgaard increasingly became as the years went by, she failed to live another life, a radiant life that was by nature hers. It is hard to say whether she lamented it. She may have despised it for not coming her way, for missing the opportunity of being lived with such talent and panache. She had buried all of this deep within her, and had covered it with carapaces, a large number of brittle carapaces with a faintly metallic sheen, the uppermost of which would always seem new and cool. At times, it is true, she did give herself away, by a naïve impatience at not being paid sufficient attention; in my day, she would suddenly choke at table in some patent and complicated way that guaranteed her the sympathy of all present and, at least for a moment, made her appear as sensational and fascinating as she would have liked to appear on a larger stage. Looking back, I suspect that my father was the only one who took these much-too-frequent accidents seriously. He would watch her, courteously inclining his head, and you could tell that he was mentally offering her his own fully operative windpipe, as it were, and placing it entirely at her disposal. The Chamberlain had of course likewise stopped eating; he took a sip of wine and voiced no opinion whatsoever.

  At table he ha
d only on one occasion asserted his own opinion in the teeth of his wife's. It was a long time ago, but the story was still repeated, maliciously, furtively; almost everywhere there was someone who hadn't yet heard it. It seemed there had been a time when the Chamberlain's wife would get quite worked up over wine stains clumsily made on the table linen; any such stain, however occasioned, would be noted by her and exposed, as it were, in tones of the harshest rebuke. This even happened once when a number of distinguished guests were present. A few innocent stains, which she made much of, afforded her a pretext for sarcastic accusations, and, try as Grandfather might to warn her, by means of subtle signals or jocular remarks, she would have persisted mulishly in her reproaches, had she not been compelled to break off mid-sentence. For something happened that was unprecedented and utterly incomprehensible. The Chamberlain had asked for the red wine, which had just been offered around the table, and was now most studiously filling his glass himself. But, strange to say, he did not cease pouring when the glass was long since full, but slowly and steadily, amid a deepening hush, continued to pour, till Maman, who could never contain herself, laughed out loud and thus made the whole incident acceptable by transforming it into a laughing matter. For everyone now joined in the laughter, relieved, and the Chamberlain looked up and handed the bottle back to the butler.

  At a later time, another idiosyncrasy got the better of my grandmother. She could not bear it if anyone in the house fell ill. Once when the cook had cut herself, and my grandmother chanced to see her with her hand bandaged, she claimed the whole house reeked of iodoform, and it was difficult to convince her that the woman could not be dismissed for this reason. She did not want to be reminded of sickness. If anyone was so incautious as to mention a minor complaint in her presence, she took it as a personal affront, pure and simple, and long resented it.