by Isak Dinesen
Through Thy precepts I get understanding.
Ps. 119
King Christian VII of Denmark (1749-1808)—son of the much-beloved Louise, daughter of George II of England, and married, at the age of seventeen, to fifteen-year-old Caroline Mathilde, sister of George III—as a boy gave promise of capacity and talent, but was both physically and mentally degenerate and did further ruin his health by debauch. At his accession to the throne, in 1766, he declared to his tutors and ministers that he would now “rage” for a year; in this task he was assisted by his mistress Katrine, a former prostitute. A few years later his mind gave way altogether, and he lived for the rest of his life almost entirely shut off from the world.
Johannes Ewald (1743-1781), now acknowledged Denmark’s greatest lyrical poet, was the son of a pietistic clergyman, but at the age of sixteen ran away from home to try his luck as a drummer and soldier in the Seven Years’ War, and later for a while led the life of a Bohemian and “cavalier” in Copenhagen. From 1773 to 1776, ill and destitute, he lived as a lodger at the inn at Rungsted, the present Rungstedlund, and there wrote some of his finest poetry.
CONVERSE AT NIGHT
IN COPENHAGEN
It rained in Copenhagen on a November night of the year 1767. The moon was up, and a good way gone in its second quarter; from time to time, when the rain made a short pause, as if between two verses of an endlessly long song, its pale, distressful, backward-flung mask came in sight high up in the sky, behind layer upon layer of shifting, verdigris-green mists. Then the rain tuned up again, the moon-mask withdrew into the heavens, and only the street lights and a window here and there in the dark maze below revealed themselves, like phosphoric jellyfish on the bottom of the sea.
There was still some scanty night traffic in the streets. A few steady-going sailing vessels kept their course for home, and unruly privateers and buccaneers beat up against the wind on doubtful voyages between black rock walls down which the moisture streamed. A sedan chair was hailed, took up its load, and swayed on upon its way to some unknown goal in the town and the night. A coach with heavy, gilt ornaments and winking lamps, with coachman on box, lackeys behind and precious contents, came from an assembly, the wheels squirted rain water and street mire in all directions, and the high-stepping horses’ hoofs struck long sparks from the cobblestones.
In the small streets and alleys Copenhagen night life was still in high spirits. From them was wafted music and song, with a steady accompaniment of rowdy merriment and scuffle.
Suddenly the noise increased; a din burst out like a conflagration. There was shouting of many voices, smashed windowpanes clinked on the cobbles, and heavy objects, hurled from the first or second story, boomed and banged against them. Roars and bellows of laughter were hurled together in a whirlpool, and from the midst of it cascades of women’s squeals rose high in the air.
Two Copenhagen burghers, one long and thin, the other a short figure with a heavy belly—the collars of their greatcoats turned up, their hats rammed down over their ears, and a servant with a lantern on a pole preceding them—came to a halt a little way down an alley. The rain had made them take this short cut home, and they had fallen into talk about ships going round the Cape of Good Hope with spices for Copenhagen, until they seemed to draw a tiny sweet wake of cinnamon and vanilla through the fluctuating swell of the alley’s reek. As the hubbub in front of them grew, and the shouting came straight toward them, they made their man with the lantern halt, spied thoughtfully at a house, the door of which stood open, and round which a crowd of people thronged and broke, and grew long in the face, and in the limbs, at the sight. But they said not a word.
For it was not certain that the offense going on over there was an ordinary night riot, against which one could call upon the help of law and order and the wrath of the Lord. Nay, it might quite possibly be exactly the opposite: their own shame and sorrow. The gang in the alley was not canaille; fine gentlemen from the court were raging here. It was not impossible, it was even credible, that the land’s young King himself, a child in years, was running at the head of them.
Aye, he was a child in years, and it was told that he had been much too strictly kept in his boyhood, even ill-treated by his tutor, old Count Ditlev Reventlow, so that the mothers of Denmark had wept over the motherless boy. Surely a loyal people might shut their eyes to a youthful king’s excesses. But he had got his young, pink and white English Queen up at his palace; within two months, under God’s will, she would be delivered of a crown prince to both of his father’s hereditary kingdoms. And here he was, kicking up an uproar in the dark, fuddled and mad with wine, assisting his mistress in wiping off old scores of hers against other women of the profession. What bad people were not the King’s servants and favorites—the counts, Masters of the Horse and Bang’s Counsels—alluring the young Anointed of the Lord, a beloved mother’s son, into evil ways! The two Copenhageners remembered, their feet growing cold where they stood, a story told in town, of how, recently and in a night like this, the King by the grace of God in a hand-to-hand tussle with the night watchmen had got himself a black eye, and in revenge had carried back to his palace the trophy of a spiked mace. What would they be thinking, now, in foreign kingdoms and principalities, of the Majesty of Denmark and Norway? And as to his own people, who for many hundred years had prided themselves upon their loyalty to the King and his house, how might they now, with unbroken hearts, submit themselves to so great a distress?
Still they said not a word; they swallowed down their own and their country’s grief in silence. With them, in any case, it would be preserved as in a grave.
The long masterful shrill of a watchman’s whistle cut through the noise. The tumult exploded and in a few minutes burst asunder in all directions. Shouts and screams, the crash of a heavy door banging to and the whirl of quick-running feet followed the explosion. The light from a window for an instant caught the rosy lining of a cloak and caressed a hurrying turquoise-colored silk ribbon; immediately after the street lights glimmered on the braid of a naval officer’s uniform which seemed to enclose very round young forms. A laughing French exclamation was flung over a retreating shoulder, and a handful of biting, bitter Danish oaths were hurled back in retaliation. Then colors and voices washed away through the side streets, and the adventure was over. Only a few heavy watchman’s cloaks were outlined against the luminous mist round the open street doors.
The two burghers set off again, turning their steps round the first corner and their minds back to happier fairways and the price of pepper and nutmeg. The thin twirl of fragrance behind them was seasoned with an odor of resigned sanctity.
A very young man, a small frail figure in a large cloak, during the disturbance had become separated from his companions, and had now lost himself in row upon row of backyards, passages and steps. He gazed round him, ran on, gazed round him again, and at last was stuck on the topmost landing of a steep, narrow, moldering stairway. Here he stopped, breathless after his ascent, and remained standing, with the slim person pressed into a corner. When he had regained his breath a little, his hands moved to his throat to loosen the clasp of his cloak. He held a naked rapier in his hand, the sheath was gone, and the weapon was in his way. He put it down, and reeled a little as he did so. But still he could not get the clasp undone, and now had to fumble for a while with his stretched-out fingers on the filthy floor before he again got hold of the rapier’s hilt. When once more he had it in his hand, he made a few passes with the blade straight forward in the air. All the time he was as silent as a fish; not a cry, not an oath, no sound whatever came from him.
But in the dark, in the silent house, his eyes stood wide open. He did not know—and he felt that in this spot he could not possibly come to know—whether his mad run was a superb joke, a game of puss-in-the-corner up and down through the houses, or whether it was a flight, deadly danger, the Evil One himself out after him. There was no one to tell him whether next moment he would be hailed and embraced by flushe
d, laughing friends, or whether a relentless hand, dreaded in dreams as in reality, would suddenly descend upon him. He was alone.
He was alone, and he did not remember ever having been alone in his life before. The consciousness of his complete isolation came upon him slowly and powerfully; at first he was a bit giddy or seasick with it, then it lifted him up like a wave. It grew to be a great and just revenge on all who till now had surrounded him, a triumph—at last, at last the promised apotheosis! He held onto the idea fanatically. Here, in the dark, he became a statue of himself, one single piece of pure hard marble, invulnerable and imperishable. But after a while he began to shake until the teeth chattered in his mouth.
A little higher up, where the stairs ended, a light shone out beneath a door. The narrow, clear streak of fire which went up and down and multiplied itself must mean something. Slowly he came to the conclusion that behind this door and within that light there would be someone. But who was in there? There were many hundred faces in the dark city around him. There were people, he remembered having been told, who starved and were set on plundering, people who murdered, people who gave themselves up to secret witchcraft. Phantoms from old nightmares came upon him, and it was possible, indeed probable, that they were living just here, where he himself had never been.
Noises, too, now entered his sphere of consciousness: behind the door a woman was crying, and a young man was comforting her. All at once—surprisingly sure and dignified, and avoiding the while to put his hand on the greasy banister—he mounted the last steps, put two fingers on the door handle, and pressed it down. The door was not locked; it opened.
The room he entered was small, peat-brown in the corners, because only lit by a tallow-dip on the table, but with a play of live colors as far as the dip’s power reached. Beside the candle stood a clear brandy flask and a couple of glasses. Apart from the table and a three-legged wooden chair next to it, there were in the room an old chest, an armchair with worn gilding and shabby silk upholstery, and a large four-poster with hangings of faded crimson. The whole of the little chamber glowed with the heat of a fat-bellied stove by the wall, and there was quite a pleasant smell of apples, roasting on the top of the stove and at intervals sizzling and spitting.
The hostess of the room, a big fair-haired girl, painted white and red and stark naked under a negligee with pink bows, sat on the three-legged chair and rocked it a little as she examined a white stocking that she had drawn over the outspread fingers of her left hand and up her arm. As the door opened she stopped her movements and turned a swollen, sulky face toward it. A young man in shirt and breeches, with buckled shoes and a bare leg in one of them, lay on the bed and stared up in the canopy. He lazily turned his eyes toward the visitor.
“Hallo, my sweet,” he said. “We are no longer allowed to discuss the nature of love in privacy. We have a visitor.” He glanced at his guest. “An elegant visitor, too,” he continued slowly as he sat up. “A gentleman, a fine courtier from the royal palace. We are …” he broke off his speech suddenly, paused, swung his legs over the edge of the bed and stood up. “We are,” he exclaimed, “honored by a visit from the Ruler of all faithful Moslems, the great Soudane Orosmane himself! Well is it known to everyone that this glorious Majesty from time to time visits even the meanest lodgings in his good town of Solyme in order that, himself unknown, he may learn to know his people. Sire, you could never have come to a place better suited to such investigations than this one!”
The stranger blinked at the light and the faces. The next instant he stiffened and turned pale.
“L’on vient” he whispered.
“Non” cried the young man in the one stocking, “jusqu’ici nul mortel ne s’avance!”
He brushed past his guest and turned the key in the door. The faint grating of the iron sent a shiver through the youth in the cloak, but presently the certainty of a locked door behind him seemed to set him at ease. He drew his breath deeply.
“O mon Soudane” said his host. “You see that Venus and Bacchus hold equal sway in our little temple—and even if it be not their most noble grapes we press here, it is in any case the unadulterated fluid—the thing itself! Those two are the most honest of all godheads, and we in here put our trust entirely in them. You must now do likewise.”
The newcomer looked round the room. When he realized into what kind of milieu he had made his way, a feeble, lascivious smile flitted over his face.
“Does he take me for a poltroon?” he asked, the smile still on his lips.
“For a poltroon?” his host answered. “By no means. Nay, for a sentimental traveler, Your Mightiness. What does not a wise and beloved master of mine announce: ‘The man who either disdains or fears to walk up a dark entry may be an excellent good man, and fit for a hundred things, but he will not do to make a good sentimental traveler.’ I feel that, just like me myself, you will before tonight have set foot—alas, I feel that, just like me myself, you will also after tonight set foot in many a dark and unknown entry. I furthermore feel that you and I will tonight make a true sentimental journey together!”
There was a short silence in the room. The girl still sat with the stocking in her hand and gazed from one of the two young men to the other.
“What are your names, you two?” asked the guest.
“Indeed,” his host answered, “forgive me that I did not immediately, in accordance with all good breeding, present to Your Majesty your humble servants so near heaven. Even though you yourself choose to remain unknown, it is evidently not seemly for us to hold back from you anything whatever of our nature or condition.”
The host was at about the same stage of intoxication as the guest. It had made him a trifle uncertain on his feet, and seemed somewhat to encumber his tongue; he lisped a little as he spoke. But it had, at the same time, given wings to his speech and opened his soul to strong and happy emotions. He met his guest with an open, bright and tender look, and as he realized that more time and palaver were needed before the fugitive could feel at home in the room and the company, he went on.
“The name of our sweet hostess, then,” he said, “is Lise. I myself have called her Fleur-de-Lys, after that lily-pure heroine of the old troubadours whom she resembles. Other adorers of hers, though, name her Ticklish Lise, that being their blunt way of acknowledging her aloofness and the sensitiveness of her skin. These names, however, I mention entirely en passant and as a matter of no consequence whatever. For she may in fact be addressed by any woman’s name which a young man of Copenhagen may have imprinted in his heart, and thuswise in her own small person may be said to represent the whole sex. My recently quoted master has said: ‘The man who has not a sort of affection for the whole sex is incapable of ever loving a single one as he ought.’ Lise, therefore, is the genuine and worthy priestess of our goddess.
“And I myself,” he continued, “I myself! Your Majesty—I venture to believe—will already have noticed that I am a cavalier. Apart from that I am, sauf votre respect, a poet, which is to say: a fool. My name? As a poet—may God forgive the readers of Denmark—I have today no name. But in my quality of fool I can, like the master whom I have twice quoted, take the liberty of calling myself Yorick. Alas, poor Yorick! A fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. And now—in such a place and under such conditions!—to what base uses, my friend and brother, we may return!”
For a moment he was sunk in his own thoughts. “Return,” he repeated to himself, then burst out with deep bitterness: “You intended to return in time for my father’s funeral, and you arrived instead just in time for my mother’s wedding!”
Then he collected himself and shook the sourness off him.
“And now, Sire,” said he, “now you must feel at home and at ease with us, as in heaven—or in the grave. For taking all in all, who will ever be less likely to betray a king par la grâce de Dieu than—by that same grace—a poet? And, by the same, once more—but Lise does not like the word, and I shall not speak it.”
&nb
sp; Again he stood silent, but alive, observant, with the whole of his being concentrated upon the present moment, and then took a step forward. He grasped the flask, filled the glasses, and solemnly and happily in his outstretched hand presented one of them to the stranger.
“A toast,” he cried. “A toast for this hour! It is by its very nature everlasting, and at the same time, and once more in accordance with its nature, nonexistent! Our door is bolted—hear how it rains!—and nobody in the whole world knows that we are inside it! We three, too, are all of us in such a way favored that tomorrow we shall have forgotten the hour and shall never, never again bethink ourselves of it. In this hour, then, the poor speaks freely to the rich, and the poet conjures up his fancy to the Prince. The Soudane Orosmane himself can here—as he has never before been able to, as, alas, he will never be able to again—sink his lofty burden of grief, incomprehensible to the common mortal, into human hearts, into the hearts of a poet and a whore. So be this hour a pearl in an oyster shell, on the bottom of dark Copenhagen swaying all around us. Vivat, my master and my mistress. Vivat this our stillborn, death-doomed hour!”
He raised his glass high up in the air, emptied it and stood immovable. His guest, obedient as a reflection in a mirror, followed every one of his movements.
This last glass, over and above what earlier in the evening the two had gulped down, had a powerful and mysterious effect upon them. It caused both small figures to grow, and sent a deep, noble flush into both pale faces and a radiating light into two pairs of big eyes. Host and guest beamed on each other, and for a moment came so close together as if they were in for a wrestling match or an embrace.
“Ôtez-moi donc,” the guest said suddenly in a low voice, “ce manteau qui me pèse!”
He stood still, his chin a little in the air, his eyes on his host’s face, while the latter fumbled with the clasp and got the heavy cloak off him. Under the cloak the stranger wore a pearl-gray silk coat and waistcoat with water-blue embroidery; the lace at the neck and wrists was torn. The pale costume gave to his whole figure something immaterial and flickering, as if he were a young angel on a visit to the hot and close room. But as, in its fall backwards, the cloak unfolded itself over the back and seat of the armchair, its deep-golden velvet lining seemed to collect in it all the colors of the room and to uplift them into a glow and gleam of pure ore. The young man who had called himself Yorick saw the room round him suddenly gilt, and in a kind of rapture squeezed his guest’s delicate fingers.
