Last Tales

by Isak Dinesen

  At length at the end of the room he found on a shelf an old storybook from his boyhood. He took it down and laid it on the table. He let it fall open at random, and, standing up, by the light of the candles read one of the old tales through.

  Once upon a time, the story ran, there was in Portugal a proud and hasty young king. To him one day came an old knight, who in the past had led the armies of the king’s father to victory. The king received him with great honors. But when the baron stood before his liege, without a word he raised his arm and struck the king’s face. Angered as never before, the young king had the offender thrown into his deepest dungeon and had the scaffold raised for his execution.

  But in the night the king pondered the matter and counted the great services which this same old knight had rendered his father. So early in the morning he sent for his vassal, ordered all his courtiers out of earshot, and demanded from him the true reason for the affront.

  “My lord,” said the white-haired warrior, “I shall tell you the reason. Once, when I was a young man, such as you are today, I had an old steward who had served my family faithfully all his life. One day in a fit of unjust wrath I struck the servant who could not return my blow. My steward is dead these fifty years. I have looked for, but never found, means to atone for my blow. In the end I have decided that the best way to do so would be to strike the face of the man who, above all others, had power to return the blow. For that reason, my lord, did I strike your royal face.”

  “Verily,” the king said, “now I understand you. You have chosen for your blow the face of your king, of the mightiest man you knew. But if your arm had been long enough, it would have been the face of your God Himself, who justly deals out reward and punishment, that you had struck.”

  “It is so,” the old man said.

  “Verily,” the king said again. “This blow of yours, then, is the truest homage that I ever received from a vassal. And I shall answer you as truthfully myself.

  “I shall answer you, first, in the manner of a king.” With these words he loosened his gold-hilted sword from his sword-belt, held it out to the baron and said: “Take this, my good and faithful servant, as a token of your king’s grace and gratitude.

  “And,” he went on, “I shall answer you, secondly and in accordance with your wish, in the manner of Almighty God. I tell you, then, that I cannot quench the thirst for justice within your soul. For I shall not alter my own law. Until the hour when you meet again that old servant of yours whose face you struck, you will carry the burden of your shame with you wherever you go. Till then you will be, in your castle in the mountains, by the side of your wife and in the circle of your children and grandchildren, or in the arms of a young mistress, forever lonely, the loneliest man in my kingdom.”

  With these words the young king of Portugal dismissed his old liegeman.

  Eitel set back the book on the shelf, and seated himself in his armchair by the table, his chin in his hand.

  “Forever lonely,” he repeated in his thoughts. “The loneliest man in the kingdom.”

  For a long time his mind wandered to all sides.

  “The prisoner at Maribo,” he thought in the end, “is as lonely as I am. I shall go to him.”

  As he made this decision he felt like a man who, having lost his way in woods and moors, comes upon a road. He knows not whereto it leads, whether to salvation or destruction, but he follows it because it is a road.

  “Now,” he told himself, “now, after all, I shall sleep tonight.”

  “He alone, of all people,” he continued his thoughts, “will help me to sleep tonight. All through this long evening I have been fearing or hoping, that the rumor of his flight from prison were true, and have been waiting for him. It is no good waiting for him any longer. I shall go to Maribo tomorrow.”

  Early on Wednesday morning the old coachman of the manor got an order to get the carriage ready. A while after he was told to take out the closed carriage. The old man was puzzled; his young master was not in the habit of using the closed carriage in fair weather. But a little later he again had a different order; he was to take out the new, light open carriage from Hamburg.

  “What is the matter with Eitel today?” he asked himself. “Never before have I had, in one morning, three different orders from him.”

  With his foot on the hub, Eitel hesitated whether to take the reins himself, then he handed them over to the old man. “Drive quickly,” he told him, “until we come into the town of Maribo. Then go slowly through the street.” He thought: “I shall not try to hide my face from the people today.”

  The weather this morning was colder than the day before, and the landscape less rich in color and light. A wind blew in from the sea; there might be rain before evening. In the fields and above them the sea gulls were moving restlessly.

  The sound of the carriage wheels changed from a softer to a louder rumble as they rolled from the high road onto the paved street of Maribo.

  Eitel had the carriage stop outside the courthouse. There was a clock on the house. As on the stone stairs in front he was informed that he would find the police magistrate in his office, the clock above his head struck eight strokes.

  The police magistrate himself, old Counselor Sandoe, who came out in a hurry to meet him, was a small rigid official of the old school, who still wore his little pigtailed wig. He had sat in his peaceful office in Maribo as long as the people of the town could remember, but this was his first death sentence. It made him conscious of his own high significance; at the same time the idea of it was curious and disturbing to him. He was now cheered by the prospect of discussing the event with a young nobleman whom he had known from birth.

  He grew silent, pushing his lower lip over the upper lip, at Eitel’s demand to see the condemned man in his cell and to speak with him alone there.

  “This person,” he said, “hardly seems to have any human qualities left. He has passed more years of his life in the woods and on the moors than in a house. I suppose that he has never loved any human being. I gather from our good Pastor Quist, who has sacrificed much of his time to him, that he knows no more of the word of God than of law and justice. Verba mortuo facta.”

  He recounted how his prisoner, when seized red-handed in the manslaughter, had defended himself with most extraordinary strength, and had knocked down three men before he was taken. The counselor had had him put in chains, but even thus did consider him dangerous.

  “His mother was my nurse,” said Eitel. “She came to see me last evening. If anything can still be done for him, I shall want to see it done.”

  “For him?” said the old gentleman. “This person hardly has sufficient understanding of his position to take it to heart. I cannot even imagine any last wish that he might have to state. It is true, though, that this morning he asked that his hair should not be cut until on the scaffold itself, and that we would have him shaved. Out of commiseration with a man who is to die at noon, I sent for the barber. But does such a wish bespeak remorse or amendment?”

  “I wish to see him,” said Eitel.

  “Let it be so then,” said the counselor. “Possibly our humane feelings are most urgently called upon in the case of those deepest sunk. In the name of God, we will go to him.”

  He sent for the gaoler, and preceded by him the old and the young gentleman walked down a long whitewashed corridor and a few stone steps. The gaoler turned the heavy key in the lock.

  “Beware, there is one more step inside the door,” said the counselor.

  The small room which they entered had one narrow grated window high up in the wall. Its stone floor was covered with straw. To Eitel, coming from his drive through the light landscape, the cell seemed almost dark.

  The condemned man sat on a bench so low that his chained hands between his knees rested on the floor. His dark head dropped, so that his long brown hair was hanging down over the face. His clothes were in rags, one sleeve of his coat torn off, and he was barefooted. He made not the sligh
test movement at the entrance of his visitors.

  “Stand up, Linnert,” said the counselor. “There is a noble gentleman here who wants to see you.” He gave out Eitel’s name with much dignity, more in honor of Eitel than of the prisoner.

  Linnert for a while sat on as if not aware that he was being spoken to. Then he rose without raising his head or his eyes, and sat down again in exactly the same position as before.

  The counselor gave Eitel a short glance, confirming his statement as to the hopelessness of concerning oneself about a creature like this.

  To Eitel the filth and degradation before him were so loathsome that if he had wanted to, he could not have taken another step toward the figure. After a while he saw that this poacher and murderer, of his own age, ravished by a wild lawless existence, lean and tanned by sun and wind, was beautifully built, with long limbs and rich hair. He felt that this body would be strong and supple, every muscle and sinew of it hardened and trained to the utmost. In the movements of the prisoner as he had risen and again sat down, there had been an extraordinary collectedness and grace and a kind of obstinate joy of life. In his renewed immobility now there was the calm of the wild animal, which will keep more deadly still than any domestic animal. It was to Eitel as if he had, within his own wood, come upon a fox and was now himself standing immovable to watch him.

  He noticed that the wrists of the prisoner were swollen and raw from the iron round them, and a choking feeling, as at the sight of a pretty wild animal in a trap, oppressed the visitor’s chest.

  “Be pleased to unchain him while I talk to him,” he said to the counselor.

  “It will hardly be advisable,” the old magistrate answered, and added in German: “He is still most unusually strong, and he is probably desperate. You may be exposing your life.”

  “Nay, unchain him,” said Eitel.

  After some hesitation the counselor made signs to the gaoler to remove the chain from the prisoner’s wrists. It fell upon the stone floor with a hard clank. Linnert stretched his arms a little along his sides and lowly yawned or growled like a man waking from his sleep.

  “Leave us alone,” said Eitel.

  The counselor threw a last glance at the two men whom he was to leave alone. “I shall be waiting just outside the door with this man here,” he announced in a loud voice, and followed by the gaoler left the cell.

  Eitel stood looking at the man who was to die. “I shall speak to him,” he thought. “Shall I be able to make him speak? I myself may have half a century before me in which to say what I want. But what he has to say must be spoken before noon. And by the way, after noon, what will I myself find to speak of, for fifty years?”

  Linnert sat motionless as before. Eitel was uncertain whether he did realize that one of his three visitors had stayed on when the others left.

  “Knowest thou me, Linnert?” he at last asked.

  The prisoner remained dead still for a minute. Then he looked up askance, beneath his long hair, and Eitel was surprised to see how light the eyes were in the dark face.

  “Ay, thee I know well enough,” he said, and after a moment added: “And thy woods too, and that long marsh that thou hast got out westward.”

  He spoke the dialect of the island so markedly that Eitel had some difficulty in understanding him. In the fight when he was taken, he had had his upper lip split and a tooth knocked out; he pulled his mouth awry and lisped as he spoke, and all through the conversation he hesitated a little after each of Eitel’s questions, as if he had to set his mouth right before answering.

  His remark had not been offered as a challenge or a jeer, although he must have realized that it would be clear to Eitel in what manner he had acquired his intimate knowledge of his woods and marshes. It fell more like a light, sprightly communication between acquaintances exchanging news. In exactly that way, Eitel reflected, the fox on the forest path, in passing, would render the farmer a quick, snappish, jovial report on his poultry yard.

  “Thy mother once was nurse to me,” Eitel said.

  Once more Linnert hesitated a little, then asked in the same unconcerned manner as before: “What was her name now?”

  “She is named Lone Bartels today,” Eitel answered. “Many years ago she married the parish clerk. Thou, Linnert, art my milk-brother.” The word echoed through his mind, “Brother.”

  “Was it so?” said Linnert. He was silent for a while and then added: “It will have been but a poor drop of milk that I ever got out of those paps.”

  “I have come today to see whether I can help you in any way,” said Eitel.

  “In what way art thou to help me?” the prisoner asked.

  “Will there be nothing at all that I can do for thee?” Eitel asked.

  “Nay,” said Linnert. “They are going to help me here, I think, with all of it.”

  During the pause that followed, the prisoner a couple of times spat on the floor, stretched out his bare foot and rubbed out the spittle in the straw. No more than his remark did his gesture contain any mockery or spite of the visitor; it had all the character of some humble game or pastime, in which the guest, did he care to, might join.

  In the end Linnert himself, after having twisted and writhed his mouth, took up the conversation.

  “Aye, there is one thing,” he said, “that thou canst help me with if thou wilt. I have got an old bitch, she is mine. She has got but one eye. She is on a rope by the wheelwright at Kramnitze. She is not wont to be chained up. Thou might send down that keeper of thine and have her done away with.”

  “I shall have thy bitch brought up to my house and looked after there,” said Eitel.

  “Nay,” said Linnert, “she is no good to anybody except just me. But it might be well if thou wouldst shoot her thyself—and then, as thou takest her along with thee to do it, talk to her.” After a moment he said: “She is called Rikke, after someone.”

  Eitel slowly put his hand to his mouth and down again.

  “I will tell thee something, in return,” Linnert suddenly said. “Thou hast got a brace of otters in thy mill-brook that nobody knows of but me. Early one morning last winter I saw that the rime had melted on the grass round the air-hole of their den. Since then I have kept an eye on them. I was down there, time and another, this summer, and sat by them all day. I watched the old otters teach their four young ones to swim. They are big now; they have got fine skins. The hole is below the eastern brink; it will be easy to thee to take them there.”

  “It is all right,” said Eitel.

  “Aye, but thou hast got to remember,” said Linnert, “that their den is in the place where the river bends, by the five willows.”

  “Yes,” said Eitel, “I shall remember.

  “I have been thinking of thy lot in life,” he said after a pause, “ever since I heard of thee. My people have wronged thy people, and it ought not to have gone so with thee. I would do justice to thee today, were it in my power.”

  “Justice?” said Linnert wonderingly.

  Just then Eitel heard the clock on the front of the house slowly and as if pensively strike nine strokes, and wondered whether Linnert, too, counted these strokes.

  “Hast thou ever been told, Linnert,” he asked, “that the manor house stands where the farmstead of thy people was once standing, and has been built on top of it?”

  “Nay, that I have never heard,” said Linnert.

  There was a long silence in the cell, and Eitel’s mind was following the hands of the clock that were now slowly going on, tick, tick, marking the minutes. In the end Linnert shot up a swift glance, as if to find out whether his guest was still with him.

  “Linnert,” Eitel said. “Thy mother came to me last night to tell me a curious tale. She told me that by the time that she was nurse at the manner she sent away the lord’s child and put her own in its stead.”

  A new pause. “Is that so?” Linnert then asked. “That will have been a long time ago.”

  “Yes,” said Eitel. “It will have bee
n twenty-five years ago. At the time when neither of us knew who he was.”

  Linnert sat on, so still that Eitel could not tell if he had heard him or not.

  “Was it true what the woman told thee?” he asked at last.

  “No,” Eitel said. “It was not true.”

  “Nay, it was not true,” Linnert repeated. Then, suddenly, with the same kind of fox-joviality as before: “But if it had been true?”

  “If it had been true,” Eitel said slowly, “then thou, Linnert, wouldst today have been in my place. And I, who knows, in thine.”

  Linnert seemed to have once more come to rest on the bench, his eyes on the floor, and Eitel thought: “Is it all over now? Can I go away now?”

  At that same instant the prisoner rose and stood up straight, face to face with his visitor. The heavy chain at this rattled a little against his foot. The sudden, unexpected, light and noiseless movement was so extraordinarily vigorous that it had all the character of an assault meant to give the attacked party no time for defense.

  The two young men, now standing very close to each other, were of the same height. For the first time during their conversation they looked each other in the face meaningfully, conscious of a trial of strength. A strange, fierce light spread over Linnert’s face.

  “They would have been mine then,” he said, “the deer and the hares and partridges that I have shot in thy fields and thy woods?”

  “Yes,” said Eitel, “they would have been thine then.”

  The prisoner’s thoughts seemed to run away from the small dark cell to those fields and woods of which he had spoken.

  “And thou wouldst have owed it to me then,” he said, “that thou canst go out with thy gun in a fortnight, when the young partridges are fledged, and again in three months, when the tracks of the game are on the snow, and that thou mayst troat to a buck in thy woods next spring.”

  “Yes,” said Eitel.

  As Linnert stood so, without stirring, with his eyes in Eitel’s but sunk in his own thoughts, the blood mounted to his face twice in a deep dark wave. Only a short time ago, it seemed to Eitel, he had looked into a face which bore a likeness to this one. Was it the hard glint of triumph in Lone’s face which here, in the shade of death, did mellow into a smile?