by Isak Dinesen
The young mistress of the house stood on the tips of her toes in the middle of the room. She had on the very short diaphanous frock of a ballet dancer, and her little heelless shoes were fastened with black ribbons laced around her delicate ankles and legs. She held her arms over her head, gracefully rounded, and stood quite still, watching the music, her face like the placid, happy face of a doll.
As her bar of music fell in, she suddenly came to life. She lifted her right leg slowly, slowly, the toe pointing straight at the Councilor, higher and higher, as if she were really rising from the ground and about to fly. Then she brought it down again, slowly, slowly, on the tip of the toe, with a little gentle pat, no more than a fingertap upon the table.
The spectator outside held his breath. As before, on watching the ballet at Vienna, he had the feeling that this was too much; it could not be done. And then it was done, lightly, as in jest. One begins to doubt the fall of man, and not to worry about it, when a young dancer can thus rise from it again.
Standing upon the tip of her right toe now, she lifted her left leg, slowly, high up, opened her arms in a swift audacious movement, whirled all around herself, and began to dance. The dance was more than a real mazurka, very fiery and light, lasting perhaps two minutes: a humming-top, a flower, a flame dancing, a play upon the law of gravitation, a piece of celestial drollery. It was also a bit of acting: love, sweet innocence, tears, a sursum cordœ expressed in music and movement. In the middle of it there was a little pause to frighten the audience, but it went on all the same, only even more admirably, as if transposed into a higher key. Just as the music box gave signs of running down, she looked straight at the Councilor and sank down upon the floor in a graceful heap, like a flower flung stem upward, exactly as if her legs had been cut off with a pair of scissors.
The Councilor knew enough about the art of the ballet to value this as a very high-class performance. He knew enough about the pretty things in life altogether to value this early morning apparition altogether as a vision worthy of the Czar Alexander himself, if it came to that.
At her direct clear glance he took alarm and drew back a little. When he looked in again she had got up, but remained as if irresolute, and did not turn on the box again. There was a long mirror in the room. Pressing the palm of her hand gently upon the glass she bent forward and kissed her own silvery image within it. Then she took up a long extinguisher, and one by one she put out the candles of the chandelier. She opened the door and was gone.
In spite of his reluctance to be seen there by anybody, the Councilor stood still on the terrace for a minute or two. He was as astonished as if he had happened to surprise, upon this early May morning, Echo, practicing all on her own in the depths of the woods.
As he turned from the house he was struck by the greatness of the view from La Liberté. He had not noticed it before. From this terrace he looked out over all the surrounding country, verdant and undulating, even over the top of the forest. In the far distance the Sound shone like a strip of silver, and above the Sound the sun arose.
He walked back to his carriage in deep thought. Stupidly, a bit of a nursery rhyme, with a lovely little tune to it, came into his head:
Oh, it is not the fault of the hen,
That the cock be dead.
It is the fault of the nightingale,
Within the green garden.
He had forgotten all about the rope. On being informed by Kresten that he had managed to do the repair without it, he did not find a word to say to him.
During the rest of the drive he was very wide awake. It seemed to him that he had much to do, that he must rearrange all the chess men upon the board. The occupation carried in its train many ideas pleasantly refreshing to a man who in his daily life deals much with books and law, and who had been playing omber with three old bachelors only this last night.
The apothecary’s widow was no Christiane Vulpius, that was clear. She was not a person to anchor anybody. She might on the contrary have it in her to lift the young man, whom he had decided for her, off the ground, and together those two might fly, nobody could tell where to, all away from his supremacy. That she had thus deceived him he did not mind. He liked her for it; he was so rarely surprised in life. But it was a lucky thing that he had found her out, for he would not lose his poet. Indeed, he thought, he should like to keep them both. He took off his hat for a moment, and the wind of the young morning played around his temples. He was not an old man; he was young, compared with what she was used to. He was a rich man, a man who valued and deserved the rarest things in life. Could he make her dance for him of an evening? That would make a different married life from what he had before experienced. The poet would remain his protégé, and the friend of the house.
His thoughts went a little further while the sun rose up higher. An unhappy love is an inspiring feeling. It has created the greatest works of history. A hopeless passion for his benefactor’s wife might make a young poet immortal; it was a dramatic thing to have in the house. The two young people would remain loyal to him, however much they might suffer, and though love and youth are such strong things. And if they did not remain so?
The Councilor helped himself to a pinch of snuff, in the relish of which his delicate nose seemed to twist a little. His drive was nearly finished now. In the still limpid morning air the little town looked like a town at the bottom of the sea. The tiled roofs blossomed forth like a growth of bold or pale coral; the blue smoke arose like thin seaweeds rising to the surface. The bakers were taking their fresh bread from the ovens. The morning air made the Councilor feel a little sleepy, but very well. He came to think of that old saying which the peasants call the bachelors’ prayer:
“I pray thee, good Lord, that I may not be married. But if I am to be married, that I may not be a cuckold. But if I am to be a cuckold, that I may not know. But if I am to know, that I may not mind.”
These are the thoughts which only such a man can allow himself who has within the structure of his mind a perfectly swept room to which he is absolutely sure that no one but himself has the key.
The next evening, that being Saturday, Anders came to the Councilor’s house for supper. Afterward he read to his host a poem about a young peasant who watches three wild swans at night transform themselves into three maidens, and bathe in the lake. He steals the wings of one of them, which she has laid off while bathing, and makes her his wife. She bears him children. But one day she recovers her wings from where he has hidden them, and puts them on. She circles above the house in ever larger rings, and at last disappears in the air.
How is it that he writes this, that he should write this? the Councilor thought. It is curious. He has not seen her dance.
Now the beech forests of the province unfolded themselves. The gray rain fell for a few days around all the world as the veil around a bride, and there came a morning when all the woods were green.
This happens in Denmark every year in May, but impresses you every year, and it impressed these people of a hundred years ago as something entirely surprising and inexplicable. Through all the long months of winter you have been, even within the deep of the woods, exposed to the winds and the bleak light of heaven. Then, all of a sudden, the month of May builds a dome over your head, and creates for you a refuge, a mysterious sanctuary for all human hearts. The young light foliage, soft as silk, springs out here and there like little tufts of down, little new wings which the forest is hanging out and trying on. But the next day, or the day after, you walk in a bower. All perpendicular lines may give the impression of either a fall or a rise. The beech trees’ pewter-gray columns not only raise themselves, and reach forth from the ground toward infinity, the ether, the sun as the earth swings around it, but they lift and carry the lofty, the tremendous, roof of the airy hall. The light within, less bright than before, seems more powerful, filled with meaning, pregnant with secrets which are light in themselves, although unknowable to mortals. Here and there an old rugged oak, slow in puttin
g out its leaves, opens a peephole in the ceiling. The fragrance and freshness encircle you as in an embrace. The branches, swaying down from above, seem to caress you or bless you, and as you walk onward you go under an incessant benediction.
Then all the country goes to the woods! to the woods! to make the most of a glory which does not last, for soon the leaves will darken and harden, and a shadow sink within. Driving and walking, the towns emigrate to the forest, sing and play amongst the tall trees, and bring bread and butter and make coffee upon the sward.
The Councilor also walked in the woods, and Domine, non sum dignus, he thought. Young Anders also confused the registers in the office, and left his bed untouched at night, and from La Liberté Fransine went out, her new straw bonnet upon her arm.
When the landscape was at its prettiest, the Councilor received a visit from his friend, Count Augustus von Schimmelmann. In spite of a difference in age of fifteen years, the two were real friends, united by many sympathies and common tastes. When the young Count was fifteen years old, the old Councilor had for a year filled the place of a friend of his, who had died, as tutor to the boy, and later they had met abroad, in Italy, and could talk together of books and religions, and of far people and places. For some years they had not met, but this was due to no estrangement between them, but to a development through which the Count had been passing, during which he had been engaged in making for himself a sort of modus vivendi, in which undertaking his old friend could have been of no use to him.
Count Augustus was by nature of a heavy and melancholy disposition. He wanted to be very happy but he had no talent for happiness. He had suffered during his youth. Somewhere, somewhere in the world, he had thought, there must be a great, a wonderful, happiness, the fons et origo of the power which manifests itself in the delights of music, of flowers, and friendship. He had collected flowers, studied music, and had many friends. He had tried a life of pleasure and had been made happy many times. But the road leading from it all into the heart of things he had not found. As time went on a dreadful thing had happened to him: one thing had become to him as good as another. Now, later in life, he had accepted the happiness of life in a different way, not as he really believed it to be, but, as in a reflection within a mirror, such as others saw it.
This inner development had begun when he had unexpectedly come into a very large fortune. Left to himself, he would have thought very little of it, for he did not know what he was to do with the money. But upon this occasion he was impressed by the attitude of the world around him: the happening occupied it much; the world thought it a great and splendid thing for him. Count Augustus was by nature very envious himself, and had housed this particular agony many times, mostly toward people in books, so that he was in a position to value the weight of the feeling. Next to painting a picture of which you yourself approve, the most pleasant thing is perhaps to paint a picture about which the whole world agrees to approve. Thus with the happiness of Count Augustus. Slowly he took to living, so to say, upon the envy of the outside world, and to accept his happiness according to the quotation of the day. He never let himself be deceived into believing that the world was right; he worked upon a system of bookkeeping by double entry. Under the entry of the world he had much to be proud or thankful for; he had hardly anything but assets in this account. He had an old name, one of the greatest estates and finest houses in Denmark, a beautiful wife, four pretty and industrious boys, the eldest twelve years old, a great fortune, a high prestige. He was an unusually handsome man, and became even more so with age, which went well with his type, and at this time of life he was a majestic figure. In the Consultation Chamber he had been called the Alcibiades of the North. He looked stronger than he was, like a man who enjoys his food and wine and sleeps well at night. He did not enjoy his food or wine much, and thought that he slept very badly, but to be envied by his neighbors for these goods of life became to him quite an acceptable substitute for the real goods.
Even the jealousy of his wife was, from this point of view, useful to him. The Countess had no reason to be jealous of her husband. Indeed it was doubtful whether, amongst all the women he had met, he did not like his wife best. But fifteen years of married life and four big sons had not cured her of her watchfulness and distrust, of the tears and long scenes, sometimes ending in her fainting away, which as a young man Count Augustus had thought a heavy cross. Now her jealousy took its place in his scheme of things, suggesting or proving to him the possibility, not of the ladies of the surrounding country seats and of the court falling in love with him—for that they unquestionably did—but of him himself falling in love with them, or with one of them. He came to depend upon her attitude, and had she reformed and done away with her jealousy, he would have missed it. Like to the Emperor in his new clothes, he was walking on, dignified, his life a continual procession, entirely successful in every respect except perhaps to himself. He did not think highly of his system, but it did not work badly, and during the last five years he had been happier than before.
While he had thus, like a coral polyp, been building up his moral world the Councilor could have done him no good whatever. For he had not got it in him to be envious of anybody, and he might have shaken the whole building. But now that it was firmly fastened, and he himself safely encysted within it, with no soft parts exposed, even to the extent of taking the whole matter a bit in jest, he met his old friend again with great pleasure. The Councilor, for his part, would always have been pleased to meet him. So would probably Diogenes always have been pleased to meet Alexander. Alexander was pleased with the moment when he declared that had he not been Alexander he would have been Diogenes. But who knows whether the great conqueror, who was very likely to a certain extent dependent upon the opinion of the world, would at the time have liked to hear the philosopher of the tub declare that had he not been Diogenes he would have liked to be Alexander. Later on in his career he might have allowed himself the luxury of a second meeting, and a real discussion upon the nature of things, with the Cynic. So did Count Augustus.
The two friends might still have passed as Alexander and Diogenes of 1836 as they walked in the woods, along roads strewn with the silky fallen teguments of the young leaves. In their dark clothes they were like two sedate birds, rooks or magpies, out to enjoy the May afternoon with their gayer colleagues.
They sat down upon a rustic seat in the forest and talked.
“As we live,” said Count Augustus, “we become aware of the humiliating fact that as we are dependent upon our subordinates—and without my barber I should be, within a week, socially, politically, and domestically a wreck—so are we, in the spiritual world, dependent upon people stupider than ourselves. I have, as you may know, some time since given up any artistic ambitions and have been occupying myself, within the sphere of the arts, with connoisseurship.” (He was indeed a shrewd critic of all objects of art.) “Here I have learned that it is not possible to paint any definite object, say, a rose, so that I, or any other intelligent critic, shall not be able to decide, within twenty years, at what period it was painted, or, more or less, at what place on the earth. The artist has meant to create either a picture of a rose in the abstract, or the portrait of a particular rose; it is never in the least his intention to give us a Chinese, Persian, or Dutch, or, according to the period, a rococo or a pure Empire rose. If I told him that this was what he had done, he would not understand me. He might be angry with me. He would say: ‘I have painted a rose.’ Still he cannot help it. I am thus so far superior to the artist that I can mete him with a measure of which he himself knows nothing. At the same time I could not paint, and hardly see or conceive, a rose myself. I might imitate any of their creations. I might say: ‘I will paint a rose in the Chinese or Dutch or in the rococo manner.’ But I should never have the courage to paint a rose as it looks. For how does a rose look?”
He sat for a while in thought, his walking stick upon his knees.
“Thus,” he said, “with the general
human idea of virtue, justice, or, if you will, of God. If anybody were to ask me what was the truth about these things, I should answer: ‘My friend, your question is without meaning. The Hebrews conceived their God like this; the Aztecs of America, about whom I have just read a book, like that; the Jansenites again, like that. If you want any details of the various views I shall be pleased to give them, having devoted a certain amount of my time to this study. But let me advise you not to repeat your question in intelligent company.’ But at the same time I should be, for this superior view of mine, in debt to the naïve people who have believed in the possibility of obtaining a direct and absolutely truthful idea of God, and who were mistaken. For had they made it their object only to create a special Hebrew, Aztec or Christian idea of God, where would the presuppositions of the observer have been found? He would be in the position of the Israelites, who were to make bricks without straw. Indeed, my friend, while the fools could have done without us, we are dependent upon the fools for our better knowledge.
“When,” he went on after a little pause, “you and I, on our morning walk, pass a pawnbroker’s shop, and, pointing at a painted board in the window, on which is written ‘Clothes mangled here,’ you say to me: ‘Look, clothes are mangled here—I shall go and bring my washing,’ I smile at you, and inform you that you will find neither mangle nor mangier here, that the painted board is for sale.
“Most religions are like that board, and we smile at them.
“But I should have no opportunity of smiling, or of feeling or showing my superiority, and, in fact, the painted board would not be there at all, if, at some time or other, some people had not believed firmly in the possibility, in the wisdom, of mangling clothes, had not even been firmly convinced of the existence of their own mangle, with which clothes were indeed mangled.”
