Winter's Tales

by Isak Dinesen

  There was only a small patch of straw standing in the rye field, when the woman, alarmed by the change in the light, turned her head a little to get a look at the sun. The while she did not stop her work, but grasped one handful of corn and cut it off, then another, and another. A great stir, and a sound like a manifold, deep sigh, ran through the crowd. The field was now mowed from one end to the other. Only the mower herself did not realize the fact; she stretched out her hand anew, and when she found nothing in it, she seemed puzzled or disappointed. Then she let her arms drop, and slowly sank to her knees.

  Many of the women burst out weeping, and the swarm drew close round her, leaving only a small open space at the side where the old lord stood. Their sudden nearness frightened Anne-Marie; she made a slight, uneasy movement, as if terrified that they should put their hands on her.

  The boy, who had kept by her all day, now fell on his knees beside her. Even he dared not touch her, but held one arm low behind her back and the other before her, level with her collar-bone, to catch hold of her if she should fall, and all the time he cried aloud. At that moment the sun went down.

  The old lord stepped forward and solemnly took off his hat. The crowd became silent, waiting for him to speak. But for a minute or two he said nothing. Then he addressed her, very slowly.

  “Your son is free, Anne-Marie,” he said. He again waited a little, and added: “You have done a good day’s work, which will long be remembered.”

  Anne-Marie raised her gaze only as high as his knees, and he understood that she had not heard what he said. He turned to the boy. “You tell your mother, Goske,” he said, gently, “what I have told her.”

  The boy had been sobbing wildly, in raucous, broken moans. It took him some time to collect and control himself. But when at last he spoke, straight into his mother’s face, his voice was low, a little impatient, as if he were conveying an everyday message to her. “I am free, Mother,” he said. “You have done a good day’s work that will long be remembered.”

  At the sound of his voice she lifted her face to him. A faint, bland shadow of surprise ran over it, but still she gave no sign of having heard what he said, so that the people round them began to wonder if the exhaustion had turned her deaf. But after a moment she slowly and waveringly raised her hand, fumbling in the air as she aimed at his face, and with her fingers touched his cheek. The cheek was wet with tears, so that at the contact her fingertips lightly stuck to it, and she seemed unable to overcome the infinitely slight resistance, or to withdraw her hand. For a minute the two looked each other in the face. Then, softly and lingeringly, like a sheaf of corn that falls to the ground, she sank forward onto the boy’s shoulder, and he closed his arms round her.

  He held her thus, pressed against him, his own face buried in her hair and head-cloth, for such a long time that those nearest to them, frightened because her body looked so small in his embrace, drew closer, bent down and loosened his grip. The boy let them do so without a word or a movement. But the woman who held Anne-Marie, in her arms to lift her up, turned her face to the old lord. “She is dead,” she said.

  The people who had followed Anne-Marie all through the day kept standing and stirring in the field for many hours, as long as the evening light lasted, and longer. Long after some of them had made a stretcher from branches of the trees and had carried away the dead woman, others wandered on, up and down the stubble, imitating and measuring her course from one end of the rye field to the other, and binding up the last sheaves, where she had finished her mowing.

  The old lord stayed with them for a long time, stepping along a little, and again standing still.

  In the place where the woman had died the old lord later on had a stone set up, with a sickle engraved in it. The peasants on the land then named the rye field “Sorrow-Acre.” By this name it was known a long time after the story of the woman and her son had itself been forgotten.

  THE HEROINE

  THERE WAS a young Englishman, named Frederick Lamond, who was the descendant of a long line of clergymen and scholars, and himself a student of religious philosophy, and who when he was twenty years old attracted his teacher’s attention by his talent and tenacity. In the year of 1870 he got a travelling legacy, and went away to Germany. He meant to write a book upon the doctrine of atonement, and had his mind all filled with his subject.

  Frederick had lived a seclusive life amongst books; now every day brought him new impressions. The world itself, like a big old book, fell open, and slowly, on its own, turned one leaf after another. The first great phenomenon that met him within it was the art of painting. One day he went up into the gallery of Das Altes Museum to look at Venusti’s picture of Christ on the Mount of Olives, of which a friend had told him. He was amazed to find himself surrounded by paintings connected with his study. He had not known that there were so many pictures in the world. He returned to see them again, and from the sacred paintings he turned to the profane work of the great masters. He was a simple young man. He had nobody to guide him, and no illusions as to his own knowledge of art; he came back to the pictures because he was happy amongst them. In the end he felt at home in the galleries. He recognized most Biblical characters by sight, and stood in a friendly relation to the mythological and allegorical figures as well. These indeed were the people of Berlin whom he knew best, for outside the galleries he was slow in making acquaintances.

  While he was thus wandering in his own thoughts, the world of hard facts round him was not standing still, but was, on the contrary, moving with feverish haste. A great war was about to break out.

  The situation was first made clear to him on a hot day in July, when he met a young man from the manor by his father’s rectory, who greeted him proudly with a quotation from Hamlet: “Upon my life, Lamond!” and went on to unburden to him his wild young mind, all seething with rumours of the coming Franco-Prussian war. This young man had a brother at the Embassy in Paris, and he explained to Frederick that there was not a button lacking in a gaiter in the French army, and that in Paris the crowds were crying: “A Berlin!” Frederick now realized that he had already for some time known of all this, from talk in the cafés where he dined, but only, as it were, with the surface of his mind. He also found that his sympathies were with France. “I had better get out of Berlin,” he thought.

  He collected his manuscripts and packed his clothes. Then he went to say good-bye to the pictures, and prayed that the coming siege and storm of Berlin might not affect them. And so he made for the frontier. But he had not gone far before he found that he had been too slow. By this time travelling was difficult; he could get neither forward nor back. He changed his plans and decided to go to Metz, where he knew people, but he could not get to Metz either. In the end he had to content himself on being allowed to stay in a small town, named Saarburg, near the border.

  In the modest hotel of Saarburg there were many stranded French travellers. Amongst them was an old priest, who came from a college in Bavaria, and two old nuns from a convent school, a widow who kept a hotel in a provincial town, a rich wine-grower, and a commercial traveller. All these people were in the greatest agitation of mind. The optimists amongst them hoped to get permission to pass the frontier of the Duchy of Luxembourg and to get to France that way; the pessimists repeated alarming tales of how Frenchmen were accused of espionage, and shot. The landlord of the hotel was unkindly disposed towards his guests, for some of them had hurried from their homes without luggage or money, and besides he was an atheist, and disliked the Church.

  The refugees now found a kind of sedative in the unconcernedness of the young English scholar; they came and talked to him of their troubles. He and the old priest, to pass the time, carried on long theological discussions. The old man confided to him that he had, in his young days, composed a treatise upon the denial of Peter. At that, Frederick translated bits of his manuscript to him.

  Within the last days of July the air and ground of Saarburg began to boil and smoke with coming even
ts. It was rumoured that German troops would arrive here on their way to France. In the foreshadow of their mightiness the landlord hardened in his manner to the Frenchmen; he made the two old nuns weep, and the widow, after a great scene with him, fainted, and went to bed. The rest of the party lay as low as they could.

  In the midst of these trials a French lady, with her maid, arrived at the hotel from Wiesbaden, and immediately became the central figure of its small world.

  She bore a name which to Frederick had all the sound of heroic French history. He first read it on a number of boxes and trunks in the hall of the hotel, and expected to see an old majestic lady, like a spectre out of the grand past. But when she appeared she was as young as himself, flourishing like a rose, a great beauty. He thought: “It is as if a lioness had calmly walked among a flock of sheep.” She had been, he reflected, so slow to leave Wiesbaden because she had it not in her to believe that any inconvenience could ever hit her personally; she refused to believe so now. She was not in the least afraid. She met the anxiety of the pale assembly of the hotel with undaunted forbearance, as if she realized that they must needs have been looking forward in suspense to her arrival. Confronted with the danger of the moment, the timidity of the little group and the hostility of its surroundings, she became still more heraldic, like a lioness in a coat of arms. In spite of her youthfulness and fragility, to Frederick she seemed, from hour to hour, and even as to her carriage, mien and speech, to grow into the orthodox and ideal figure of a “dame haute et puissante,” and an embodiment of ancient France.

  The refugees took shelter behind her. She wafted the landlord out of existence, changed the servants’ manners, and improved the table. She had the bills paid, and sent for a doctor for Madame Bellot. In these matters she had need of a courier, and thus she and Frederick became acquainted.

  If Frederick had met this lady six months earlier, before he left England, he would have felt shy and embarrassed in her society. Now he was familiar, if not with herself, at least with sisters and kinswomen of hers. For although she was so elegantly modern, she had all the looks of the goddesses of Titian and Veronese. Her long silky curls shone with the same pale golden tint as their tresses; her carriage had that female majesty with which they sit enthroned or dance, and her flesh had the mysterious freshness and lustre of their flesh.

  She had on a small chasseur hat with a pink ostrich feather, a dove-grey silk dress of unbelievable voluminousness, long suede gloves, and round her white throat a narrow black velvet ribbon. She had pearls in her ears and on her neck, and diamond rings on her fingers. He had never seen anything the least like her in real life, but she might well have sat within a gold frame in the gallery of Das Altes Museum. He learned that she was a widow, having been married very young, but not much more about her. But he knew, without being told, where she had spent the years till they now met: amongst the luminous marble columns, in the sweet verdure, in front of the burning blue sea and the silvery and coralline clouds, which he had seen in the paintings. Perhaps she had had a small Negro servant to wait on her. At times his thoughts would wander, and he would see her in divinely negligent attitudes—yes, in the attire of Venus herself. But these fancies of his were candid and impersonal; he would not offend her for the world.

  She was kind to him in an elder-sisterly way, but was at times a little curt, as if impatient with a world so much less perfect than herself. Frederick reflected that he and she had got something in common. They agreed in overlooking many facts of existence, which to other people were of the greatest importance. Only in his case this disregard arose from a sense of remoteness from, or estrangement to, the world in general. “While with her,” he thought, “it springs from the circumstance that she masters the world, and will stand no nonsense from it. She is the descendant, and the rightful heiress, of conquerors and commanders, even of tyrants, of this world.” Her Christian name, he learned from the trunks, was Heloïse.

  In the consciousness of Madame Heloïse’s power the refugees of the hotel lived through one or two happy days. In the end they all somewhat overdid their gallant assurance. At supper, over a roast chicken and some excellent wine, they talked freely and hopefully, and the commercial traveller, who was a small, timid man, but had a sweet voice, gave them a number of songs. There was a piano in the dining room, and the old priest accompanied him on it. At last the whole party joined in the hymn of: “Partant pour la Syrie.” In the midst of a verse there was a knocking, like thunder, on the door. They did not mind, they sang on, and parted for the night confidently. The next day the German troops made their entry into Saarburg, in a storm of excitement and triumph, and in the afternoon the refugees of the hotel, with the exception of Madame Bellot, who was still in bed, were arrested, and brought before the magistrate.

  To his surprise Frederick learned that he was, together with the old priest, accused of espionage, and that their long talks, and his manuscript and notes, formed the material for the accusation. The magistrate would have it that his quotations from Isaiah, 53.8: “For the transgression of my people” had reference to the hour, date and month of the German advance. Frederick reflected that he had, before now, heard Isaiah interpreted to strange purposes, and patiently tried to reason with the magistrate. But he found this gentleman obsessed by the great emotions of the hour, and inaccessible to arguments. The old priest would not, or could not, speak.

  Slowly, in the course of the day, it became clear to Frederick that he might in very earnest be shot before night. The certitude gave him a strange, deep tremor. “I shall know now,” he thought, “if there is a life after death.” He realized that the priest would know it as soon as he. The idea was difficult to conceive; the old man had been such a doctrinairian. But by sunset the magistrate himself grew tired of the case, and had both the accused brought before a party of officers, who were in residence in a big villa outside the town, from which the owners had fled in fear of a French invasion. They found the rest of the group from the hotel here.

  The atmosphere of the villa was very different from that of the municipality office. The three German officers had found it convenient to dine in the ease of the salon, which was richly done up in crimson brocade, with heavy curtains and large paintings on the walls. Their dessert and wine were still on the table before them. They were flushed with wine, but even more with triumph, for they had, an hour ago, had news of the action of Wissenburg, and the telegram lay by their glasses.

  One of the three was an erect, grey-haired man with a lean face, another seemed to be the leading spirit, or the spoiled child, amongst them. He was left a free hand in the cross-examination of the prisoners, for he spoke French better than the others, and amused them by his exuberant vitality. He was quite young, a giant in stature, and strikingly fair, with a fullness, or heaviness, that gave him the appearance of a young god. He met the people from the hotel with laughing surprise and disdain, and seemed to fear neither God nor the Devil—and still less any Frenchman—until he caught sight of Madame Heloïse. From then the case became a matter between him and her.

  Frederick could see that much. But he was no judge of this kind of warfare; and, although after the first glance she did not once look at the man, while his light, protruding eyes did not for a moment leave her face or figure, he could not have decided whether, in very truth, the offensive lay with him or with her.

  The two were alike, and might have been brother and sister. They were obviously afraid of one another. As the interview proceeded the German sweated with dread, and she grew pale, still nothing could have held them apart. Frederick was certain that they met here for the first time; all the same it was an old feud which was about to be settled in the salon of the villa. Was it, he wondered, a hereditary national combat, or would he have to go further back, and deeper down, to discover the root of it?

  The young German began by stating that he now hardly found it worth his while to proceed to Paris. He asked her how she had got into her present company, and whether sh
e considered her compeers to be more dangerous than herself? She replied curtly, her chin lifted. Frederick was aware that his own fate, with that of his fellows, now rested with her. He reflected that no human being, and least of all this young soldier, would for long put up with her look and manner, and still in his heart he applauded the fine display of insolence that she gave them. It was inevitable that in the end the German should come up close to her; as he held a paper up for her inspection he spoke straight into her face. At that, in a gentle movement, she swept back the ample skirt of her dress, so that it should get in no contact with him.

  He stopped short in the midst of his speech, and gasped for breath. “I am not, Madame,” he said very slowly, “going to touch your dress. I am going to make you a proposal. I shall write out the passport for you and your friends to get into Luxembourg, which you want from me. You may come and fetch it in half an hour. But you will have to come without that skirt, which you do, rightly, take such trouble to keep away from me. You will, in fact, have to come for your passports dressed like the goddess Venus. That is,” he added after a moment’s breathless silence, “at any rate, a handsome proposition, Madame.” At his own words he suddenly blushed dark crimson.