Winter's Tales

by Isak Dinesen

  In her own house, as she took the child up the stairs and from one room into another, her bewilderment grew. Rarely had she felt so uncertain of herself. It was, everywhere, in the child, the same rapture of recognition. At times he would also mention and look for things which she faintly remembered from her own childhood, or other things of which she had never heard. Her small pug, that she had brought with her from her old home, yapped at the boy. She lifted it up, afraid that it would bite him. “No, Mamma,” he cried, “she will not bite me, she knows me well.” A few hours ago—yes, she thought, up to the moment when in Madame Mahler’s room she had kissed the child—she would have scolded him: “Fie, you are telling a fib.” Now she said nothing, and the next moment the child looked round the room and asked her: “Is the parrot dead?” “No,” she answered, wondering, “she is not dead; she is in the other room.”

  She realized that she was afraid both to be alone with the boy, and to let any third person join them. She sent the nurse out of the room. By the time Jakob was to arrive at the house she listened for his steps on the stairs with a kind of alarm. “Who are you waiting for?” Jens asked her. She was at a loss as how to designate Jakob to the child. “For my husband,” she replied, embarrassed. Jakob on his entrance found the mother and the child gazing in the same picture-book. The little boy stared at him. “So it is you who are my Papa!” he exclaimed, “I thought so, too, all the time. But I could not be quite sure of it, could I? It was not by the smell that you found me, then. I think it was the horse that remembered me.” Jakob looked at his wife; she looked into the book. He did not expect sense from a child, and was soon playing with the boy and tumbling him about. In the midst of a game Jens set his hands against Jakob’s chest. “You have not got your star on,” he said. After a moment Emilie went out of the room. She thought: “I have taken this upon me to meet my husband’s wish, but it seems that I must bear the burden of it alone.”

  Jens took possession of the mansion in Bredgade, and brought it to submission, neither by might nor by power, but in the quality of that fascinating and irresistible personage, perhaps the most fascinating and irresistible in the whole world: the dreamer whose dreams come true. The old house fell a little in love with him. Such is ever the lot of dreamers, when dealing with people at all susceptible to the magic of dreams. The most renowned amongst them, Rachel’s son, as all the world knows, suffered hardships and was even cast in prison on that account. Except for his size, Jens had no resemblance to the classic portraits of Cupid; all the same it was evident that, unknowingly, the shipowner and his wife had taken into them an amorino. He carried wings into the house, and was in league with the sweet and merciless powers of nature, and his relation to each individual member of the household became a kind of aerial love affair. It was upon the strength of this same magnetism that Jakob had picked out the boy as heir to the firm at their first meeting, and that Emilie was afraid to be alone with him. The old magnate and the servants of the house no more escaped their destiny—as was once the case with Potiphar, captain to the guard of Egypt. Before they knew where they were, they had committed all they had into his hands.

  One effect of this particular spell was this: that people were made to see themselves with the eyes of the dreamer, and were impelled to live up to an ideal, and that for this their higher existence they became dependent upon him. During the time that Jens lived in the house, it was much changed, and dissimilar to the other houses of the town. It became a Mount Olympus, the abode of divinities.

  The child took the same lordly, laughing pride in the old shipowner, who ruled the waters of the universe, as in Jakob’s staunch, protective kindness and Emilie’s silk-clad gracefulness. The old housekeeper, who had often before grumbled at her lot in life, for the while was transformed into an all-powerful, benevolent guardian of human welfare, a Ceres in cap and apron. And for the same length of time the coachman, a monumental figure, elevated sky-high above the crowd, and combining within his own person the vigour of the two bay horses, majestically trotted down Bredgade on eight shod and clattering hoofs. It was only after Jens’ bed hour, when, immovable and silent, his cheek buried in the pillow, he was exploring new areas of dreams that the house resumed the aspect of a rational, solid Copenhagen mansion.

  Jens was himself ignorant of his power. As his new family did not scold him or find fault with him, it never occurred to him that they were at all looking at him. He gave no preference to any particular member of the household; they were all within his scheme of things and must there fit into their place. The relation of the one to the other was the object of his keen, subtle observation. One phenomenon in his daily life never ceased to entertain and please him: that Jakob, so big, broad and fat, should be attentive and submissive to his slight wife. In the world that he had known till now bulk was of supreme moment. As later on Emilie looked back upon this time, it seemed to her that the child would often provoke an opportunity for this fact to manifest itself, and would then, so to say, clap his hands in triumph and delight, as if the happy state of things had been brought about by his personal skill. But in other cases his sense of proportion failed him. Emilie in her boudoir had a glass aquarium with goldfish, in front of which Jens would pass many hours, as silent as the fish themselves, and from his comments upon them she gathered that to him they were huge—a fine catch could one get hold of them, and even dangerous to the pug, should she happen to fall into the bowl. He asked Emilie to leave the curtains by this window undrawn at night, in order that, when people were asleep, the fish might look at the moon.

  In Jakob’s relation to the child there was a moment of unhappy love, or at least of the irony of fate, and it was not the first time either that he had gone through this same melancholy experience. For ever since he himself was a small boy he had yearned to protect those weaker than he, and to support and right all frail and delicate beings in his surroundings. The very qualities of fragility and helplessness inspired in him an affection and admiration which came near to idolatry. But there was in his nature an inconsistency, such as will often be found in children of old, wealthy families, who have got all they wanted too easily, till in the end they cry out for the impossible. He loved pluck, too; gallantry delighted him wherever he met it, and for the clinging and despondent type of human beings, and in particular of women, he felt a slight distaste and repugnance. He might dream of shielding and guiding his wife, but at the same time the little cool, forbearing smile with which she would receive any such attempt on his side to him was one of the most bewitching traits in her whole person. In this way he found himself somewhat in the sad and paradoxical position of the young lover who passionately adores virginity. Now he learned that it was equally out of the question to patronize Jens. The child did not reject or smile at his patronage, as Emilie did; he even seemed grateful for it, but he accepted it in the part of a game or a sport. So that, when they were out walking together, and Jakob, thinking that the child must be tired, lifted him on to his shoulders, Jens would take it that the big man wanted to play at being a horse or an elephant just as much as he himself wanted to play that he was a trooper or a mahout.

  Emilie sadly reflected that she was the only person in the house who did not love the child. She felt unsafe with him, even when she was unconditionally accepted as the beautiful, perfect mother, and as she recalled how, only a short time ago, she had planned to bring up the boy in her own spirit, and had written down little memoranda upon education, she saw herself as a figure of fun. To make up for her lack of feeling she took Jens with her on her walks and drives, to the parks and the zoo, brushed his thick hair, and had him dressed up as neatly as a doll. They were always together. She was sometimes amused by his strange, graceful, dignified delight in all that she showed him, and at the next moment, as in Madame Mahler’s room, she realized that however generous she would be to him, he would always be the giver. Her sisters-in-law, and her young married friends, fine ladies of Copenhagen with broods of their own, wondered at her abs
orption in the foundling—and then it happened, when they were off their guard, that they did themselves receive a dainty arrow in their satin bosoms, and between them began to discuss Emilie’s pretty boy, with a tender raillery as that with which they would have discussed Cupid. They asked her to bring him to play with their own children. Emilie declined, and told herself that she must first be certain about his manners. At the New Year, she thought, she would give a children’s party herself.

  Jens had come to the Vandamms in October, when trees were yellow and red in the parks. Then the tinge of frost in the air drove people indoors, and they began to think of Christmas. Jens seemed to know everything about the Christmas-tree, the goose with roast apples, and the solemnly joyful church-going on Christmas morning. But it would happen that he mixed up these festivals with others of the season, and described how they were soon all to mask and mum, as children do at Shrovestide. It was as if, from the centre of his happy, playful world, its sundry components showed up less clearly than when seen from afar.

  And as the days drew in and the snow fell in the streets of Copenhagen, a change came upon the child. He was not low in spirits, but singularly collected and compact, as if he were shifting the centre of gravitation of his being, and folding his wings. He would stand for long whiles by the window, so sunk in thought that he did not always hear it when they called him, filled with a knowledge which his surroundings could not share.

  For within these first months of winter it became evident that he was not at all a person to be permanently set at ease by what the world calls fortune. The essence of his nature was longing. The warm rooms with silk curtains, the sweets, his toys and new clothes, the kindness and concern of his Papa and Mamma were all of the greatest moment because they went to prove the veracity of his visions; they were infinitely valuable as embodiments of his dreams. But within themselves they hardly meant anything to him, and they had no power to hold him. He was neither a worldling nor a struggler. He was a Poet.

  Emilie tried to make him tell her what he had in his mind, but got nowhere with him. Then one day he confided in her on his own account.

  “Do you know, Mamma,” he said, “in my house the stairs were so dark and full of holes that you had to grope your way up it, and the best thing was really to walk on one’s hands and knees? There was a window broken by the wind, and below it, on the landing, there lay a drift of snow as high as me.” “But that is not your house, Jens,” said Emilie. “This is your house.” The child looked round the room. “Yes,” he said, “this is my fine house. But I have another house that is quite dark and dirty. You know it, you have been there too. When the washing was hung up, one had to twine in and out across that big loft, else the huge, wet, cold sheets would catch one, just as if they were alive.” “You are never going back to that house,” said she. The child gave her a great, grave glance, and after a moment said: “No.”

  But he was going back. She could, by her horror and disgust of the house, keep him from talking of it, as the children there by their indifference had silenced him on his happy home. But when she found him mute and pensive by the window, or at his toys, she knew that his mind had returned to it. And now and again, when they had played together, and their intimacy seemed particularly secure, he opened on the theme. “In the same street as my house,” he said, one evening as they were sitting together on the sofa before the fireplace, “there was an old lodging-house, where the people who had plenty of money could sleep in beds, and the others must stand up and sleep, with a rope under their arms. One night it caught fire, and burned all down. Then those who were in bed did hardly get their trousers on, but ho! those who stood up and slept were the lucky boys; they got out quick. There was a man who made a song about it, you know.”

  There are some young trees which, when they are planted, have thin, twisted roots and will never take hold in the soil. They may shoot out a profusion of leaves and flowers, but they must soon die. Such was the way with Jens. He had sent out his small branches upwards and to the sides, had fared excellently of the chameleon’s dish and eaten air, promise-crammed, and the while he had forgotten to put out roots. Now the time came when by law of nature the bright, abundant bloom must needs wither, fade and waste away. It is possible, had his imagination been turned on to fresh pastures, that he might for a while have drawn nourishment through it, and have detained his exit. Once or twice, to amuse him, Jakob had talked to him of China. The queer outlandish world captivated the mind of the child. He dwelled with the highest excitement on pictures of pig-tailed Chinamen, dragons and fishermen with pelicans, and upon the fantastic names of Hongkong and Yangtze-kiang. But the grown-up people did not realize the significance of his novel imaginative venture, and so, for lack of sustenance, the frail, fresh branch soon drooped.

  A short time after the children’s party, early in the new year, the child grew pale and hung his head. The old doctor came and gave him medicine to no effect. It was a quiet, unbroken decline: the plant was going out.

  As Jens was put to bed and was, so to say, legitimately releasing his hold upon the world of actuality, his fancy fetched headway and ran along with him, like the sails of a small boat, from which the ballast is thrown overboard. There were, now, people round him all the time who would listen to what he said, gravely, without interrupting or contradicting him. This happy state of things enraptured him. The dreamer’s sick-bed became a throne.

  Emilie sat at the bed all the time, distressed by a feeling of impotence which sometimes in the night made her wring her hands. All her life she had endeavoured to separate good from bad, right from wrong, happiness from unhappiness. Here she was, she reflected with dismay, in the hands of a being, much smaller and weaker than herself, to whom these were all one, who welcomed light and darkness, pleasure and pain, in the same spirit of gallant, debonair approval and fellowship. The fact, she told herself, did away with all need of her comfort and consolation here at her child’s sick-bed; it often seemed to abolish her very existence.

  Now within the brotherhood of poets Jens was a humorist, a comic fabulist. It was, in each individual phenomenon of life, the whimsical, the burlesque moment that attracted and inspired him. To the pale, grave young woman his fancies seemed sacrilegious within a death-room, yet after all it was his own death-room.

  “Oh, there were so many rats, Mamma,” he said, “so many rats. They were all over the house. One came to take a bit of lard on the shelf—pat! a rat jumped at one. They ran across my face at night. Put your face close to me, and I will show you how it felt.” “There are no rats here, my darling,” said Emilie. “No, none,” said he. “When I am sick no more I shall go back and fetch you one. The rats like the people better than the people like them. For they think us good, lovely to eat. There was an old comedian, who lived in the garret. He had played comedy when he was young, and had travelled to foreign countries. Now he gave the little girls money to kiss him, but they would not kiss him, because they said that they did not like his nose. It was a curious nose, too—all fallen in. And when they would not he cried and wrung his hands. But he got ill, and died, and nobody knew about it. But when at last they went in, do you know, Mamma—the rats had eaten off his nose!—nothing else, his nose only! But people will not eat rats even when they are very hungry. There was a fat boy in the cellar, who caught rats in many curious ways, and cooked them. But old Madame Mahler said that she despised him for it, and the children called him Rat-Mad.”

  Then again he would talk of her own house. “My Grandpapa,” he said, “has got corns, the worst corns in Copenhagen. When they get very bad he sighs and moans. He says: ‘There will be storms in the China Sea. It is a damned business; my ships are going to the bottom.’ So, you know, I think that the seamen will be saying: ‘There is a storm in this sea; it is a damned business; our ship is going to the bottom.’ Now it is time that old Grandpapa, in Bredgade, goes and has his corns cut.”

  Only within the last days of his life did he speak of Mamzell Ane. She h
ad been, as it were, his Muse, the only person who had knowledge of the one and the other of his worlds. As he recalled her his tone of speech changed; he held forth in a grand, solemn manner, as upon an elemental power, of necessity known to everyone. If Emilie had given his fantasies her attention many things might have been made clear to her. But she said: “No, I do not know her, Jens.” “Oh, Mamma, she knows you well!” He said: “She sewed your wedding-gown, all of white satin. It was slow work—so many fittings! And my Papa,” the child went on and laughed, “he came in to you, and do you know what he said? He said: ‘My white rose.’ ” He suddenly bethought himself of the scissors which Mamzell Ane had left him, and wanted them, and this was the only occasion upon which Emilie ever saw him impatient or fretful.

  She left her house for the first time within three weeks, and went herself to Madame Mahler’s house to inquire about the scissors. On the way the powerful, enigmatical figure of Mamzell Ane took on to her the aspect of a Parca, of Atropos herself, scissors in hand, ready to cut off the thread of life. But Madame Mahler in the meantime had bartered away the scissors to a tailor of her acquaintance, and she flatly denied the existence both of them and of Mamzell Ane.

  Upon the last morning of the boy’s life Emilie lifted her small pug, that had been his faithful playmate, onto the bed. Then the little dark face and the crumpled body seemed to recall to him the countenance of his friend. “There she is!” he cried.

  Emilie’s mother-in-law and the old shipowner himself had been daily visitors to the sick-room. The whole Vandamm family stood weeping round the bed when, in the end, like a small brook which falls into the ocean, Jens gave himself up to, and was absorbed in, the boundless, final unity of dream.

  He died by the end of March, a few days before the date that Emilie had fixed to decide on his fitness for admission into the house of Vandamm. Her father suddenly determined that he must be interred in the family vault—irregularly, since he was never legally adopted into the family. So he was laid down behind a heavy wrought-iron fence, within the finest grave that any Plejelt had ever obtained.