Books: Mogens and Other Stories
J >>
Jens Peter Jacobsen >> Mogens and Other Stories
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 | 5 |
6 |
7
Then he preached for a long time concerning the law and the power of
the law, that its every title must be fulfilled, and that every
transgression of which they were guilty would be counted against them
by grain and ounce. "But Christ died for our sins, say ye, and we are
no longer subject to the law. But I say unto you, hell will not be
cheated of a single one of you, and not a single iron tooth of the
torture wheel of hell shall pass beside your flesh. You build upon the
cross of Golgotha, come, come! Come and look at it! I shall lead you
straight to its foot. It was on a Friday, as you know, that they
thrust Him out of one of their gates and laid the heavier end of a
cross upon His shoulders. They made Him bear it to a barren and
unfruitful hill without the city, and in crowds they followed Him,
whirling up the dust with their many feet so that it seemed a red
cloud was over the place. And they tore the garments from Him and
bared His body, as the lords of the law have a malefactor exposed
before the eyes of all, so that all may see the flesh that is to be
committed to torture. And they flung Him on the cross and stretched
Him out and they drove a nail of iron through each of His resistant
hands and a nail through His crossed feet. With clubs they struck the
nails till they were in to the heads. And they raised upright the
cross in a hole in the ground, but it would not stand firm and
straight, and they moved it from one side to the other, and drove
wedges and posts all around, and those who did this pulled down the
brims of their hats so that the blood from His hands might not drop
into their eyes. And He on the cross looked down on the soldiers, who
were casting lots for His unstitched garment and down on the whole
turbulent mob, for whose sake He suffered, that they might be saved;
and in all the multitude there was not one pitiful eye.
"And those below looked up toward Him, who hung there suffering and
weak; they looked at the tablet above His head, whereon was written
'King of the Jews,' and they reviled Him and called out to Him: 'Thou
that destroyest the temple, and buildest it in three days, save
thyself. If thou be the Son of God, come down from the cross.' Then
He, the only begotten Son of God was taken with anger, and saw that
they were not worthy of salvation, these mobs that fill the earth. He
tore free His feet over the heads of the nails, and He clenched His
hands round the nails and tore them out, so that the arms of the cross
bent like a bow. Then He leaped down upon the earth and snatched up
His garment so that the dice rolled down the slope of Golgotha, and
flung it round himself with the wrath of a king and ascended into
heaven. And the cross stood empty, and the great work of redemption
was never fulfilled. There is no mediator between God and us; there is
no Jesus who died for us on the cross; there is no Jesus who died for
us on the cross, there is no Jesus who died for us on the cross!"
He was silent.
As he uttered the last words he leaned forward over the multitude and
with his lips and hands hurled the last words over their heads. A
groan of agony went through the church, and in the corners they had
begun to sob.
Then the butcher pushed forward with raised, threatening hands, pale
as a corpse, and shouted: "Monk, monk, you must nail Him on the cross
again, you must!" and behind him there was a hoarse, hissing sound:
"Yea, yea, crucify, crucify Him!" And from all mouths, threatening,
beseeching, peremptory, rose a storm of cries up to the vaulted roof:
"Crucify, crucify Him!"
And clear and serene a single quivering voice: "Crucify Him!"
But the monk looked down over this wave of outstretched hands, upon
these distorted faces with the dark openings of screaming lips, where
rows of teeth gleamed white like the teeth of enraged beasts of prey,
and in a moment of ecstasy he spread out his arms toward heaven and
laughed. Then he stepped down, and his people raised their banners
with the rain of fire and their empty black crosses, and crowded their
way out of the church and again passed singing across the square and
again through the opening of the tower-gate.
And those of Old Bergamo stared after them, as they went down the
mountain. The steep road, lined by walls, was misty in the light of
the sun setting beyond the plain, but on the red wall encircling the
city the shadows of the great crosses which swayed from side to side
in the crowd stood out black and sharply outlined.
Further away sounded the singing; one or another of the banners still
gleamed red out of the new town's smoke-blackened void; then they
disappeared in the sun-lit plain.
THERE SHOULD HAVE BEEN ROSES
There should have been roses
Of the large, pale yellow ones.
And they should hang in abundant clusters over the garden-wall,
scattering their tender leaves carelessly down into the wagon-tracks
on the road: a distinguished glimmer of all the exuberant wealth of
flowers within.
And they should have the delicate, fleeting fragrance of roses, which
cannot be seized and is like that of unknown fruits of which the
senses tell legends in their dreams.
Or should they have been red, the roses?
Perhaps.
They might be of the small, round, hardy roses, and they would have to
hang down in slender twining branches with smooth leaves, red and
fresh, and like a salutation or a kiss thrown to the wanderer, who is
walking, tired and dusty, in the middle of the road, glad that he now
is only half a mile from Rome.
Of what may he be thinking? What may be his life?
And now the houses hide him, they hide everything on that side. They
hide one another and the road and the city, but on the other side
there is still a distant view. There the road swings in an indolent,
slow curve down toward the river, down toward the mournful bridge. And
behind this lies the immense Campagna. The gray and the green of such
large plains. ... It is as if the weariness of many tedious miles rose
out of them and settled with a heavy weight upon one, and made one
feel lonely and forsaken, and filled one with desires and yearning. So
it is much better that one should take one's ease here in a corner
between high garden-walls, where the air lies tepid and soft and
still--to sit on the sunny side, where a bench curves into a niche of
the wall, to sit there end gaze upon the shimmering green acanthus in
the roadside ditches, upon the silver-spotted thistles, and the
pale-yellow autumn flowers.
The roses should have been on the long gray wall opposite, a wall full
of lizard holes and chinks with withered grass; and they should have
peeped out at the very spot where the long, monotonous flatness is
broken by a large, swelling basket of beautiful old wrought iron, a
latticed extension, which forms a spacious balcony, reaching higher
than the breast. It must have been refreshing to go up there when one
was weary of the enclosed garden.
And this they often were.
They hated the magnificent old villa, which is said to be within, with
its marble stair-cases and its tapestries of coarse weave; and the
ancient trees with their proud large crowns, pines and laurels, ashes,
cypresses, and oaks. During all the period of their growth they were
hated with the hatred which restless hearts feel for that which is
commonplace, trivial, uneventful, for that which stands still and
therefore seems hostile.
But from the balcony one could at least range outside with one's eyes,
and that is why they stood there, one generation after the other, and
all stared into the distance, each one with pro and each one with his
con. Arms adorned with golden bracelets have lain on the edge of the
iron railing and many a silk-covered knee has pressed against the
black arabesques, the while colored ribbons waved from all its points
as signals of love and rendezvous. Heavy, pregnant housewives have
also stood here and sent impossible messages out into the distance.
Large, opulent, deserted women, pale as hatred . . . could one but
kill with a thought or open hell with a wish! . . . Women and men! It
is always women and men, even these emaciated white virgin souls which
press against the black latticework like a flock of lost doves and cry
out, "Take us!" to imagined, noble birds of prey.
One might imagine a _proverbe_ here.
The scenery would be very suitable for a _proverbe_.
The wall there, just as it is; only the road would have to be wider
and expand into a circular space. In its center there would have to be
an old, modest fountain of yellowish tuff and with a bowl of broken
porphyry. As figure for the fountain a dolphin with a broken-off tail,
and one of the nostrils stopped up. From the other the fine jet of
water rises. On one side of the fountain a semicircular bench of tuff
and terracotta.
The loose, grayish white dust; the reddish, molded stone, the hewn,
yellowish, porous tuff; the dark, polished porphyry, gleaming with
moisture, and the living, tiny, silvery jet of water: material and
colors harmonize rather well.
The characters: two pages.
Not of a definite, historical period, for the pages of reality in no
way correspond with the pages of the ideal. The pages here, however,
are pages such as dream in pictures and books. Accordingly it is
merely the costume which has a historical effect.
The actress who is to represent the youngest of the pages wears thin
silk which clings closely and is pale-blue, and has heraldic lilies of
the palest gold woven into it. This and as much lace as can possibly
be employed are the most distinctive feature of the costume. It does
not aim at any definite century, but seeks to emphasize the youthful
voluptuousness of the figure, the magnificent blond hair, and the
clear complexion.
She is married, but it lasted only a year and a half, when she was
divorced from her husband, and she is said to have acted in anything
but a proper fashion towards him. And that may well be, but it is
impossible to imagine anything more innocent in appearance than she.
That is to say, it is not the gracious elemental innocence which has
such attractive qualities; but it is rather the cultivated, mature
innocence, in which no one can be mistaken, and which goes straight to
the heart. It captivates one with all the power which something that
has reached completion only can have.
The second actress in the _proverbe_ is slender and melancholy. She is
unmarried and has no past, absolutely none. There is no one who knows
the least thing about her. Yet these finely delineated, almost lean
limbs, and these amber-pale, regular features are vocal. The face is
shaded by raven-black curls, and borne on a strong masculine neck. Its
mocking smile, in which there is also hungry desire, allures. The eyes
are unfathomable and their depths are as soft and luminous as the dark
petals in the flower of the pansy.
The costume is of pale-yellow, in the manner of a corselet with wide,
up-and-down stripes, a stiff ruff and buttons of topaz. There is a
narrow frilled stripe on the edge of the collar, and also on the
close-fitting sleeves. The trunks are short, wide-slashed, and of a
dead-green color with pale purple in the slashes. The hose is
gray.--Those of the blue page, of course, are pure white.--Both wear
barrets.
Such is their appearance.
And now the yellow one is standing up on the balcony, leaning over the
edge, the while the blue is sitting on the bench down by the fountain,
comfortably leaning back, with his ring-covered hands clasped around
one knee. He stares dreamily out upon the Campagna.
Now he speaks:
"No, nothing exists in the world but women!--I don't understand it ...
there must be a magic in the lines out of which they are created,
merely when I see them pass: Isaura, Rosamond, and Donna Lisa, and the
others. When I see how their garment clings around their figure and
how it drapes as they walk, it is as if my heart drank the blood out
of all my arteries, and left my head empty and without thoughts and my
limbs trembling and without strength. It is as though my whole being
were gathered into a single, tremulous, uneasy breath of desire. What
is it? Why is it? It is as if happiness went invisibly past my door,
and I had to snatch it and hold it close, and make it my own. It is so
wonderful--and yet I cannot seize it, for I cannot see it."
Then the other page speaks from his balcony:
"And if now you sat at her feet, Lorenzo, and lost in her thoughts she
had forgotten why she had called you, and you sat silent and waiting,
and her lovely face were bent over you further from you in the clouds
of its dreams than the star in the heavens, and yet so near you that
every expression was surrendered to your admiration, every
beauty-engendered line, every tint of the skin in its white stillness
as well as in its soft rosy glow--would it not then be as if she who
is sitting there belonged to another world than the one in which you
kneel in adoration! Would it not be as if hers were another world, as
if another world surrounded her, in which her festively garbed
thoughts are going out to meet some goal which is unknown to you? Her
love is far away from all that is yours, from your world, from
everything. She dreams of far distances and her desires are of far
distances. And it seems as if not the slightest space could be found
for you in her thoughts, however ardently you might desire to
sacrifice yourself for her, your life, your all, to the end that that
might be between her and you which is hardly a faint glimmer of
companionship, much less a belonging together."
"Yes, you know that it is thus. But. . . ." Now a greenish-yellow
lizard runs along the edge of the balcony. It stops and looks about
The tail moves. . . .
If one could only find a stone. . .
Look out, my four-legged friend.
No, you cannot hit them, they hear the stone long before it reaches
them. Anyhow he got frightened.
But the pages disappeared at the same moment.
The blue one had been sitting there so prettily. And in her eyes lay
a yearning which was genuine and unconscious and in her movements a
nervousness that was full of presentiment. Around her mouth was a
faint expression of pain, when she spoke, and even more when she
listened to the soft, somewhat low voice of the yellow page, which
spoke to her from the balcony in words that were provocative and at
the same time caressing, that had a note of mockery and a note of
sympathy.
And doesn't it seem now as if both were still here!
They are there, and have carried on the action of the _proverbe_,
while they were gone. They have spoken of that vague young love which
never finds peace but unceasingly flits through all the lands of
foreboding and through all the heavens of hope; this love that is
dying to satisfy itself in the powerful, fervent glow of a single
great emotion! Of this they spoke; the younger one in bitter
complaint, the elder one with regretful tenderness. Now the latter
said--the yellow one to the blue--that he should not so impatiently
demand the love of a woman to capture him and hold him bound.
"For believe me," he said, "the love that you will find in the clasp of
two white arms, with two eyes as your immediate heaven and the certain
bliss of two lips--this love lies nigh unto the earth and unto the
dust. It has exchanged the eternal freedom of dreams for a happiness
which is measured by hours and which hourly grows older. For even if
it always grows young again, yet each time it loses one of the rays
which in a halo surround the eternal youth of dreams. No, you are
happy."
"No, you are happy," answered the blue one, "I would give a world, were
I as you are."
And the blue one rises, and begins to walk down the road to the
Campagna, and the yellow one looks after him with a sad smile and says
to himself: "No, he is happy!"
But far down the road the blue one turns round once more toward the
balcony, and raising his barret calls: "No, you are happy!"
* * *
There should have been roses.
And now a breath of wind might come and shake a rain of rose-leaves
from the laden branches, and whirl them after the departing page.
MRS. FONSS
In the graceful pleasure-gardens behind the Pope's ancient palace in
Avignon stands a bench from which one can overlook the Rhone, the
flowery banks of the Durance, hills and fields, and a part of the
town.
One October afternoon two Danish ladies were seated on this bench,
Mrs. Fonss, a widow, and her daughter Elinor.
Although they had been here several days and were already familiar
with the view before them, they nevertheless sat there and marveled
that this was the way the Provence looked.
And this really was the Provence! A clayey river with flakes of muddy
sand, and endless shores of stone-gray gravel; pale-brown fields
without a blade of grass, pale-brown slopes, pale-brown hills and
dust-colored roads, and here and there near the white houses, groups
of black trees, absolutely black bushes and trees. Over all this hung
a whitish sky, quivering with light, which made everything still
paler, still dryer and more wearily light; never a glimmer of
luxuriant, satiated hues, nothing but hungry, sun-parched colors; not
a sound in the air, not a scythe passing through the grass, not a
wagon rattling over the roads; and the town stretching out on both
sides was also as if built of silence with all the streets still as at
noon time, with all the houses deaf and dumb, every shutter closed,
every blind drawn, each and every one; houses that could neither see
nor hear.
Mrs. Fonss viewed this lifeless monotony with a resigned smile, but it
made Elinor visibly nervous; not actively nervous as in the case of
annoyance, but mournful and weary, as one often becomes after many
days of rain, when all one's gloomy thoughts seem to pour down upon
one with the rain; or as at the idiotically consoling tick-tack of a
clock, when one sits and grows incurably tired of one's self; or at
watching the flowers of the wall-paper, when the same chain of
worn-out dreams clanks about against one's will in the brain and the
links are joined and come apart and in a stifling endlessness are
united again. It actually had a physical effect upon her, this
landscape, almost causing her to faint. To-day everything seemed to
have conspired with the memories of a hope which was dead and of
sweet and lively dreams which had become disagreeable and nauseous;
dreams which caused her to redden when she thought of them and which
yet she could not forget. And what had all that to do with the region
here? The blow had fallen upon her far from here amid the surroundings
of bar home, by the edge of a sound with changing waters, under pale
green beech-trees. Yet it hovered on the lips of every pale brown
hill, and every green-shuttered house stood there and held silence
concerning it.
It was the old sorrow for young hearts which had touched her. She had
loved a man and believed in his love for her, and suddenly he had
chosen some one else. Why? For what reason? What had she done to him?
Had she changed? Was she no longer the same? And all the eternal
questions over again. She had not said a word about it to her mother,
but her mother had understood every bit of it, and had been very
concerned about her. She could have screamed at this thoughtfulness
which knew and yet should not have known; her mother understood this
also, and for that reason they had gone traveling.
The whole purpose of the journey was only that she might forget.
Mrs. Fonss did not need to make her daughter feel uneasy by
scrutinizing her face in order to know where her thoughts were. All
she had to do was to watch the nervous little hand which lay beside
her and with such futile despair stroked the bars of the bench; they
changed their position every moment like a fever-patient tossing from
side to side in his hot bed. When she did this and looked at the hand,
she also knew how life-weary the young eyes were that stared out into
the distance, how pain quivered through every feature of the delicate
face, how pale it was beneath its suffering, and how the blue veins
showed at the temples beneath the soft skin.
She was very sorry for her little girl, and would have loved to have
had her lean against her breast, and to whisper down to her all the
words of comfort she could think of, but she had the conviction that
there were sorrows which could only die away in secret and which must
not be expressed in loud words, not even between a mother and
daughter. Otherwise some day under new circumstances, when everything
is building for joy and happiness, these words may become an obstacle,
something that weighs heavily and takes away freedom. The person who
has spoken hears their whisper in the soul of the other, imagines them
turned over and judged in the thoughts of the other.
Then, too, she was afraid of doing injury to her daughter if she made
confidences too easy. She did not wish to have Elinor blush before
her; she did want, however much of a relief it might be, to help her
over the humiliation, which lies in opening the inmost recesses of
one's soul to the gaze of another. On the contrary the more difficult
it became for both, the more she was pleased, that the aristocracy of
soul which she herself possessed was repeated in her young daughter in
a certain healthy inflexibility.
Once upon a time--it was a time many, many years ago, when she herself
had been an eighteen-year old girl, she had loved with all her soul,
with every sense in her body, every living hope, every thought. It was
not to be, could not be. He had had nothing to offer except his
loyalty which would have involved the test of an endlessly long
engagement, and there were circumstances in her home which could not
wait. So she had taken the one whom they had given her, the one who
was master over these circumstances. They were married, then came
children: Tage, the son, who was with her in Avignon, and the
daughter, who sat beside her, Everything had turned out so much better
than she could have hoped for, both easier and more friendly. Eight
years it lasted, then the husband died, and she mourned him with a
sincere heart. She had learned to love his fine, thin-blooded nature
which with a tense, egotistic, almost morbid love loved whatever
belonged to it by ties of relationship or family, and cared nought for
anything in all the great world outside, except for what they thought,
what their opinion was--nothing else. After her husband's death she
had lived chiefly for her children, but she had not devoted herself
exclusively to them; she had taken part in social life, as was natural
for so young and well-to-do a widow; and now her son was twenty-one
years old and she lacked not many days of forty. But she was still
beautiful. There was not a gray thread in her heavy dark-blonde hair,
not a wrinkle round her large, courageous eyes, and her figure was
slender with well-balanced fullness. The strong, fine lines of her
features were accentuated by the darker more deeply colored complexion
which the years had given her; the smile of her widely sweeping lips
was very sweet; an almost enigmatical youth in the dewy luminosity of
her brown eyes softened and mellowed everything again. And yet she
also had the round fullness of cheek, the strong-willed chin of a
mature woman.
"That surely is Tage coming," said Mrs. Fonss to her daughter when she
heard laughter and some Danish exclamations on the other side of the
thick hedge of hornbeam.
Elinor pulled herself together.
And it was Tage, Tage and Kastager, a wholesale merchant from
Copenhagen, with his sister and daughter; Mrs. Kastager lay ill at
home in the hotel.
Mrs. Fonss and Elinor made room for the two ladies; the men tried for
a moment to converse standing, but were lured by the low wall of stone
which surrounded the spot. They sat there and said only what was
absolutely necessary, for the newcomers were tired from a little
railway excursion they had taken into the Provence with its blooming
roses.
"Hello!" cried Tage, striking his light trousers with the flat of his
hand. "look!"
They looked.
Out in the brown landscape appeared a cloud of dust, over it a mantle
of dust, and between the two they caught sight of a horse. "That's the
Englishman, I told you about, who came the other day," said Tage,
turning toward his mother.
"Did you ever see any one ride like that?" he asked, turning toward
Kastager, "he reminds me of a gaucho."
"Mazeppa?" said Kastager, questioningly.
The horseman disappeared.
Then they all rose, and set out for the hotel.
They had met the Kastagers in Belfort, and since they were pursuing
the same itinerary through southern France and along the Riviera, they
for the time being traveled together. Here in Avignon both families
had made a halt; Kastager because his wife had developed a varicose
vein, the Fonss' because Elinor obviously needed a rest.
Tage was delighted at this living together. Day by day he fell more
and more incurably in love with the pretty Ida Kastager. Mrs. Fonss
did not especially like this. Though Tage was very self-reliant and
mature for his age, there was no reason for a hasty engagement--and
there was Mr. Kastager! Ida was a splendid little girl, Mrs. Kastager
was a very well-bred woman of excellent family, and Kastager himself
was capable, rich, and honest, but there was a hint of the absurd
about him. A smile came upon people's lips and a twinkle into their
eyes when any one mentioned Mr. Kastager.
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 | 5 |
6 |
7