The Countess von Rudolstadt

by George Sand

  May 1st.—For several days I’ve been unable to write. Various things have happened, and I’ll quickly fill you in.

  First, I haven’t been well. Every now and then since my arrival here I’ve had bouts of brain fever that feel like minor episodes of the major attack I suffered at the Castle of the Giants after going underground in search of Albert. I have cruel attacks of insomnia interspersed with dreams where I don’t know whether I’m waking or sleeping. In these moments it always seems to me that I hear that terrifying violin playing its old Bohemian tunes, hymns, and battle songs. This is so painful, yet when the fantasy starts to take hold, I can’t help pricking up my ears and avidly taking in the feeble sounds that seem to waft my way on a far breeze. Sometimes I imagine the violin playing as it glides over the still waters round the citadel; at other times the sound comes slipping down the walls or up out of a dungeon’s airhole. It has shattered my head as well as my heart. And yet when night comes, instead of thinking about entertaining myself by writing, I throw myself into bed and try my best to fall back into that half sleep that brings me my musical dream, rather my half dream, for there is something real at the bottom of it. A bona fide violin is surely resonating in some prisoner’s room, but what is it playing, and how? It’s too far away for me to hear anything but bits and pieces of sound. My sick mind is inventing the rest, I’m sure of it. This is my destiny henceforth: I can neither doubt that Albert is dead nor accept his death as a grievous fact. It’s apparently my nature to go on hoping despite everything and not to submit to the cruelty of fate.

  Three nights ago, having finally fallen into a deep sleep, I was awakened by a slight noise in my room. I opened my eyes. The night was very dark, and I couldn’t make out a single thing. Yet I distinctly heard someone walking near my bed, albeit carefully. I thought it was Frau Schwartz taking the trouble to come check on me, and I spoke to her; the only reply was a deep sigh, and someone tiptoed out; I heard the door shut and the bolt slip into place; prostrate as I was, I fell back asleep without giving it much thought. The next day I had such a dim, muddled recollection that I wondered if it hadn’t been a dream. That evening I had a final bout of fever worse than the others. Yet I much preferred the fever to my fretful insomnia and disjointed dreams. I had a deep sleep with lots of dreams but no sound of the lugubrious violin, and whenever I woke up, the difference between sleeping and waking was very clear to me. Once I heard the strong, regular breathing of a person sleeping not far from me. I even thought I could make out someone in my armchair. I wasn’t frightened in the least. Frau Schwartz had brought me some herbal tea at midnight; I assumed she was still there. I waited for a while, not wanting to wake her. When I thought she was waking up of her own accord, I thanked her for looking after me and asked the time. At that point the person left, and I heard what sounded like a stifled sob, so heartrending, so terrifying that my brow beads with sweat whenever I remember it. I can’t say why it made such an impression on me. I had the notion that they thought me very ill, perhaps dying, and were offering me a modicum of pity. Yet I didn’t feel bad enough to consider myself in danger. Besides, I didn’t care one way or another about dying a death that gave me so little pain or sensation, in the midst of a life that inspired so few regrets. As soon as Frau Schwartz returned at seven in the morning, since I had not gone back to sleep but spent the night’s remaining hours in a state of perfect lucidity, I had a very clear memory of that strange visit. I asked the jailer’s wife for an explanation, but she shook her head and said she didn’t know what I was talking about. She had not come back after midnight, and since she had under her pillow all the keys to the cells entrusted to her care, I had certainly had a dream or a vision. Yet I was so far from having been delirious that around noon I felt well enough to want a breath of air. I went down on the esplanade, accompanied yet again by my robin, who seemed to congratulate me on the return of my strength. The weather was very pleasant. It’s starting to get warm here, and balmy gusts of fresh air with faint scents of grasses blow in from the countryside, which lifts the heart, like it or not. Gottlieb ran up. He looked very different, and much uglier than usual. Yet there is an expression of angelic goodness and even lively intelligence in the chaos of that physiognomy when it lights up. His huge eyes were so red-rimmed and bloodshot that I asked if they hurt.

  “They indeed hurt,” he said, “because I’ve been crying a lot.”

  “What is making you so sad, my poor Gottlieb?”

  “At midnight my mother came down from the cell and said to my father, ‘Number 3 is very ill tonight. It’s running a real fever. We’ve got to send for the doctor. I don’t care to have that one die on us.’ My mother thought I was asleep, but I hadn’t wanted to nod off before knowing what she would say. I was well aware that you had a fever, but when I heard that it was dangerous, I couldn’t help crying myself to sleep. And I must have gone on crying all night long because when I woke up this morning, my eyes were on fire and my pillow drenched with tears.”

  Poor Gottlieb’s attachment touched me deeply, and I thanked him by squeezing that huge black paw of his that reeks of leather and cobbler’s wax from miles away. Then it occurred to me that Gottlieb, in his simpleminded zeal, could have paid me that highly improper nocturnal visit. I asked if he hadn’t got out of bed and come put an ear to my door. He assured me that he hadn’t budged, and now I’m convinced of it. His sleeping nook must be in just the right place so that from my room I can hear him breathing and moaning through some fissure in the wall, maybe the hiding place where I keep my money and my diary. Who knows if that little cranny doesn’t communicate by some invisible flue with the one in the kitchen hearth where Gottlieb also keeps his treasures, his book and cobbler’s tools? This way at least I have a very special bond with Gottlieb, since both of us, like rats or bats, have a wretched little hole-in-the-wall nest where all our treasures are tucked away in the dark. I was going to hazard a question or two on that score when I saw someone leave the Schwartzes’ place and march out on the esplanade, a person I hadn’t seen here before. I was incredibly frightened by the sight, even though I still wasn’t quite sure that it was he.

  “Who’s that?” I whispered to Gottlieb.

  “It’s nothing good,” he whispered back. “He’s the new adjutant. Just see how Beelzebub is arching his back and rubbing against his legs! I say, they’re certainly well acquainted!”

  “But what’s his name?”

  Gottlieb was about to answer when the adjutant gave him a kindly smile, pointed toward the kitchen, and said softly, “Young man, you’re wanted inside. Your father is calling.”

  This was merely a pretext to be alone with me, and once Gottlieb was gone, I found myself face to face with . . . guess who, my dear Beppo? That nice, ferocious recruiter with whom we had such an untimely encounter two years ago in the Bohemian Forest, Herr Mayer in person. After that experience I’d know him anywhere. Except for being even plumper now, he’s the same man, with that pleasant, easy manner, shifty look, treacherous affability, and the eternal brrmmm, brrmmm of his mouth as though he were always practising a trumpet piece. He had switched from supplying the army with musicians to finding them cannon fodder. Now, as a reward for his loyal, honorable services, he’s a fortress officer, rather a military jailer, a job that suits him quite as well, after all, as being an ambulatory jailer, a charge he fulfilled with such grace.

  “Mademoiselle,” he said to me in French, “your humble servant! What a sweet little platform for your walks! There’s air, space, a lovely view! Congratulations! It looks like you’ve got it easy in prison! On top of that, the weather’s splendid, and it’s truly a pleasure to be at Spandau with such beautiful sunshine, brrmmm! brrmmm!”

  This insolent banter so disgusted me that I made no reply. Undaunted, he went on in Italian, “I beg your pardon for speaking to you in a language that you may not understand. I was forgetting that you’re Italian, an Italian singer, right? A superb voice, I hear. As for me, I’m excessively fond
of music. So I feel inclined to make your life just as pleasant as my orders allow. But where the deuce have I had the pleasure of seeing you before? I know your face; I swear, I know it perfectly!”

  “At the theater in Berlin, no doubt, where I was singing this winter.”

  “No! I was in Silesia, second adjutant at Glatz. Fortunately that demon Trenck had his little escapade while I was out touring . . . on a mission, I mean, on the Saxon border. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have had a promotion and I wouldn’t be here, where things are pretty good, what with Berlin so close by; for it’s such a dreary life, Signora, that of a fortress officer. You can’t imagine how boring it is being so far away from a city, in some remote little backwater, for a passionate music-lover like me. . . . But where the devil have I had the pleasure of meeting you?”

  “I don’t remember ever having had the honor, Signore.”

  “I must have seen you on stage somewhere, in Italy, in Vienna. . . . Have you done a lot of traveling? How many theaters have you performed in?”

  As I made no reply, he went on in his cheeky, nonchalant way. “Never mind! It’ll come back to me. What was I saying? Oh yes, do you get bored, too?”

  “No, Signore.”

  “But aren’t you in solitary confinement? You’re the one called Porporina, right?”

  “Yes, Signore.”

  “Right! Prisoner no. 3. So, you don’t desire a little entertainment, some company?”

  “Not in the least, Signore,” I promptly replied, thinking he was going to offer me his own.

  “As you please. What a pity. There’s another prisoner here, very well bred . . . a charming woman indeed, who would have been delighted to meet you, I’m sure.”

  “May I ask her name, Signore?”

  “Amalia.”

  “Amalia what?”

  “Amalia . . . brrmmm! brrmmm! Well, I don’t have a clue! You’re certainly curious, from what I can see. That’s the malady of prisons.”

  Now I was sorry to have rebuffed Herr Mayer’s advances; for after having despaired of meeting this mysterious Amalia and renounced the desire, I once again felt drawn to her out of commiseration. I also wished to clarify my suspicions. So I tried to be a little nicer to that repulsive Mayer, and soon he offered to put me in contact with prisoner no. 2, which is how he refers to this Amalia.

  “If this breach of my arrest orders does not jeopardize your position, Signore, and if I can be of service to this lady who is said to be suffering from sadness and boredom. . . .”

  “Brrmmm! brrmmm! So you follow the letter of the law, do you? Still such a good little girl. It’s that fussy old Schwartz who must have put this fear of orders in you. Orders! Aren’t they just a bugaboo? Orders are good for doorkeepers and assistant wardens, but we officers (while pronouncing this last word, Mayer puffed up like a man still unaccustomed to such an honorable title) close our eyes to innocent infractions. So would the king, were he in our shoes. Now, Signora, when you want something or other, just turn to me and no one else, and I promise you won’t be needlessly bothered or browbeaten. Naturally indulgent and humane, I am. God made me that way. And then I love music. . . . If you wish to sing for me every now and then, in the evening, for instance, I’ll come here and listen to you, and that way you’ll have me wrapped around your little finger.”

  “I’ll do my best to avoid imposing on your kindness, Signor Mayer.”

  “Mayer!” the adjutant exclaimed, abruptly cutting short the brrmmm, brrmmm that was still fluttering over his black, chapped lips. “Why do you call me Mayer? My name is not Mayer. Where in hell did you dig that one up?”

  “How absentminded of me, Adjutant,” I replied. “I beg your pardon. . . . Once I had a singing teacher by that name, and I spent the morning thinking about him.”

  “A singing teacher? That’s not me. There are lots of Mayers in Germany. My name is Nanteuil. My family was originally from France.”

  “Well, Adjutant, how shall I announce myself to this lady? She doesn’t know me and may refuse my visit, just as I nearly refused to make her acquaintance a little while ago. Solitude makes people so unsociable.”

  “Oh, whoever she is, the lovely lady will be delighted to have someone to talk to, take my word for it. Do you want to write her a note?”

  “But I don’t have anything to write with.”

  “That’s impossible. Are you completely broke?”

  “Even if I had money, Herr Schwartz is incorruptible. Besides, I don’t know how to corrupt.”

  “Well then, this evening I’ll take you to no. 2 myself . . . that is, after you’ve sung for me a bit.”

  Alarmed by the notion that perhaps Herr Mayer, or Monsieur Nanteuil as he now preferred to be known, meant to worm his way into my room, I was about to refuse when he clarified his intentions. Either he hadn’t dreamed of paying me a visit, or he had read the feelings of horror and revulsion on my face.

  “I’ll listen from the platform that looks out over the little tower where you live,” he said. “Voices rise, and I’ll hear just fine. Then I’ll have a woman open the doors and take you over. I won’t see you. It wouldn’t do, in fact, if it looked as if I myself were encouraging you to disobey orders, even though, after all, brrmmm . . . brrmmm . . . in such a fix there’s a very simple solution. . . . You just grab your pistol, blow prisoner no. 3’s head off and say you caught her right in the middle of an escape attempt. Ha, ha! Pretty funny, don’t you think? You’ve always got to be cheerful in prison. Your most humble servant, Signora Porporina, till this evening.”

  I was at a loss to explain the wretched man’s kindness and consideration. Also, despite myself, I was dreadfully afraid of him. I could not believe that a soul so narrow and base had such love for music that he would do this for the sole pleasure of listening to me sing. I assumed that the prisoner in question was none other than the Prussian princess, that by order of the king an interview had been set up for the purpose of spying on us and intercepting the state secrets that she was thought to have confided in me. So I awaited the meeting with equal parts of dread and desire, for I have absolutely no idea what truth there may be to the alleged conspiracy in which I’m accused of having a hand.

  Nevertheless, considering it my duty to brave any and every danger to give moral support to a companion in misfortune, whoever she may be, I began singing at the appointed hour for the adjutant’s tin ears. I sang very poorly, hardly inspired by the audience, still a bit feverish, and also quite convinced that he was listening only as a matter of form or perhaps not at all. When the clock struck eleven, I was seized with a rather childish terror. I imagined that Herr Mayer had secret orders to get rid of me, that he was really going to kill me just as soon as I set foot outside my cell, as he had jokingly predicted. When my door swung open, I was shaking all over. An old woman, very dirty and very ugly (much more so even than Frau Schwartz), motioned that I should follow, and she led the way up a steep, narrow stairway cut into the wall. When we reached the top, I found myself on the platform of the tower, some thirty feet above the esplanade where I walk during the day, and eighty or a hundred feet above the moat that stretches quite a long ways on this side of the fortress. The dreadful old crone guiding me told me to wait there a second and disappeared I knew not where. My worries had scattered, and I felt such a sense of well-being out in the fresh, pure air, with a magnificent moon, and up so high that my eyes could sweep at last over a vast horizon that I didn’t fret about being left alone. The huge still waters into which the citadel plunges its black, motionless shadows, the trees and fields that I vaguely made out on the faraway shore, the immense sky, and even the bats freely flitting through the dark, my God! how grand and majestic all this seemed to me, after two months of contemplating slabs of wall and counting the rare stars that cross the narrow belt of sky that can be seen from my cell! But I didn’t have time to enjoy it for long. Hearing footsteps, I turned around, and all my dreadful fears returned when I found myself face to face with Herr Mayer. />
  “Signora,” he said, “I’m desperately sorry to have to say that you cannot see prisoner no. 2, at least for the time being. A very flighty person, in my view. Yesterday she was eager as could be for some company, but when I suggested yours just now, here’s what she said. ‘Prisoner no. 3? The one who sings in the tower, that I hear every evening? Oh, I know her voice well, and there’s no need to tell me her name. I’m infinitely obliged to you for wanting to provide me a companion, but I’d rather never see another living soul than suffer the sight of that miserable creature. She’s the cause of all my troubles, and I pray that she’ll pay for them as dearly as I’m paying for the reckless affection I had for her!’ That’s the lady’s opinion of you, Signora. It remains to be seen if you deserve it or not. That’s a matter, as they say, for the tribunal of your conscience. As for me, it’s none of my business, and I’m ready to take you back when you see fit.”