Complete Works of Henrik Ibsen (119 page)

PEER
Begone!

THE PASSENGER
But think, my dear sir — the advantage is yours!
I’ll have you laid open and brought to the light.
What I specially seek is the centre of dreams, —
and with critical care I’ll look into your seams —

PEER
Away with you!

THE PASSENGER
Why, my dear sir — a drowned corpse — !

PEER
Blasphemer! You’re goading the rage of the storm!
I call it too bad! Here it’s raining and blowing,
a terrible sea on, and all sorts of signs
of something that’s likely to shorten our days; —
And you carry on so as to make it come quicker!

THE PASSENGER
You’re in no mood, I see, to negotiate further;
but time, you know, brings with it many a change —
[Nods in a friendly fashion.]
We’ll meet when you’re sinking, if not before;
perhaps I may then find you more in the humour.
[Goes into the cabin.]

PEER
Unpleasant companions these scientists are!
With their freethinking ways —
[To the BOATSWAIN, who is passing.]
Hark, a word with you, friend!
That passenger? What crazy creature is he?

THE BOATSWAIN
I know of no passenger here but yourself.

PEER
No others? This thing’s getting worse and worse.
[To the SHIP’S BOY, who comes out of the cabin.]
Who went down the companion just now?

THE BOY
The ship’s dog, sir!
[Passes on.]

THE LOOK-OUT
[shouts]
Land close ahead!

PEER
Where’s my box? Where’s my trunk?
All the baggage on deck!

THE BOATSWAIN
We have more to attend to!

PEER
It was nonsense, captain! ‘Twas only my joke; —
as sure as I’m here I will help the cook —

THE CAPTAIN
The jib’s blown away!

THE MATE
And there went the foresail!

THE BOATSWAIN
[shrieks from forward]
Breakers under the bow!

THE CAPTAIN
She will go to shivers!
[The ship strikes. Noise and confusion.]

SCENE SECON
D

[Close under the land, among sunken rocks and surf. The ship sinks. The jolly-boat, with two men in her, is
seen for a moment through the scud. A sea strikes her; she fills
and upsets. A shriek is heard; then all is silent for a while.
Shortly afterwards the boat appears floating bottom
upwards.]
[PEER GYNT comes to the surface near the boat.]

PEER
Help! Help! A boat! Help! I’ll be drowned!
Save me, oh Lord — as saith the text!
[Clutches hold of the boat’s keel.]

THE COOK
[comes up on the other side]
Oh, Lord God — for my children’s sake,
have mercy! Let me reach the land!
[Seizes hold of the keel.]

PEER
Let go!

THE COOK
Let go!

PEER
I’ll strike!

THE COOK
So’ll I!

PEER
I’ll crush you down with kicks and blows!
Let go your hold! She won’t float two!

THE COOK
I know it! Yield!

PEER
Yield you!

THE COOK
Oh yes!
[They fight; one of the COOKS hands is disabled; he clings on with the other.]

PEER
Off with that hand!

THE COOK
Oh, kind sir — spare!
Think of my little ones at home!

PEER
I need my life far more than you,
for I am lone and childless still.

THE COOK
Let go! You’ve lived, and I am young!

PEER
Quick; haste you; sink; — you drag us down.

THE COOK
Have mercy! Yield in heaven’s name!
There’s none to miss and mourn for you —
[His hand slips; he screams:]
I’m drowning!

PEER
[seizing him]
By this wisp of hair
I’ll hold you; say your Lord’s Prayer, quick!

THE COOK
I can’t remember; all turns black —

PEER
Come, the essentials in a word — !

THE COOK
Give us this day — !

PEER
Skip that part, Cook;
you’ll get all you need, safe enough.

THE COOK
Give us this day —

PEER
The same old song!
One sees you were a cook in life —
[The COOK slips from his grasp.]

THE COOK
[sinking]
Give us this day our —
[Disappears.]

PEER
Amen, lad!
to the last gasp you were yourself. —
[Draws himself up on to the bottom of the boat.]
So long as there is life there’s hope —

THE STRANGE PASSENGER
[catches hold of the boat]
Good morning!

PEER
Hoy!

THE PASSENGER
I heard you shout. —
It’s pleasant finding you again.
Well? So my prophecy came true!

PEER
Let go! Let go! ‘Twill scarce float one!

THE PASSENGER
I’m striking out with my left leg.
I’ll float, if only with their tips
my fingers rest upon this ledge.
But apropos: your body —

PEER
Hush!

THE PASSENGER
The rest, of course, is done for, clean —

PEER
No more!

THE PASSENGER
Exactly as you please.
[Silence.]

PEER
Well?

THE PASSENGER
I am silent.

PEER
Satan’s tricks! —
What now?

THE PASSENGER
I’m waiting.

PEER
[tearing his hair]
I’ll go mad! —
What are you?

THE PASSENGER
[nods]
Friendly.

PEER
What else? Speak!

THE PASSENGER
What think you? Do you know none other
that’s like me?

PEER
Do I know the devil — ?

THE PASSENGER
[in a low voice]
Is it his way to light a lantern
for life’s night-pilgrimage through fear?

PEER
Ah, come! When once the thing’s cleared up,
you’d seem a messenger of light?

THE PASSENGER
Friend, — have you once in each half-year
felt all the earnestness of dread?

PEER
Why, one’s afraid when danger threatens; —
but all your words have double meanings.

THE PASSENGER
Ay, have you gained but once in life
the victory that is given in dread?

PEER
[looks at him]
Came you to ope for me a door,
‘twas stupid not to come before.
What sort of sense is there in choosing
your time when seas gape to devour one?

THE PASSENGER
Were, then, the victory more likely
beside your hearth-stone, snug and quiet?

PEER
Perhaps not; but your talk befooled me.
How could you fancy it awakening?

THE PASSENGER
Where I come from, there smiles are prized
as highly as pathetic style.

PEER
All has its time; what fits the taxman,
so says the text, would damn the bishop.

THE PASSENGER
The host whose dust inurned has slumbered
treads not on week-days the cothurnus.

PEER
Avaunt thee, bugbear! Man, begone!
I will not die! I must ashore!

THE PASSENGER
Oh, as for that, be reassured; —
one dies not midmost of Act Five.
[Glides away.]

PEER
Ah, there he let it out at last; —
he was a sorry moralist.

SCENE THIR
D

[Churchyard in a high-lying mountain parish.]
[A funeral is going on. By the grave, the
 
PRIEST and a gathering of people. The last verse of the psalm is
being sung. PEER GYNT passes by on the road.]

PEER
[at the gate]
Here’s a countryman going the way of all flesh.
God be thanked that it isn’t me.
[Enters the churchyard.]

THE PRIEST
[speaking beside the grave]
Now, when the soul has gone to meet its doom,
and here the dust lies, like an empty pod, —
now, my dear friends, we’ll speak a word or two
about this dead man’s pilgrimage on earth.
He was not wealthy, neither was he wise,
his voice was weak, his bearing was unmanly,
he spoke his mind abashed and faltering,
he scarce was master at his own fireside;
he sidled into church, as though appealing
for leave, like other men, to take his place.
It was from Gudbrandsdale, you know, he came.
When here he settled he was but a lad; —
and you remember how, to the very last,
he kept his right hand hidden in his pocket.
That right hand in the pocket was the feature
that chiefly stamped his image on the mind, —
and therewithal his writhing, his abashed
shrinking from notice wheresoe’er he went.
But, though he still pursued a path aloof,
and ever seemed a stranger in our midst,
you all know what he strove so hard to hide, —
the hand he muffled had four fingers only. —
I well remember, many years ago,
one morning; there were sessions held at Lunde.
‘Twas war-time, and the talk in every mouth
turned on the country’s sufferings and its fate.
I stood there watching. At the table sat
the Captain, ‘twixt the bailiff and the sergeants;
lad after lad was measured up and down,
passed, and enrolled, and taken for a soldier.
The room was full, and from the green outside,
where thronged the young folks, loud the laughter rang.
A name was called, and forth another stepped,
one pale as snow upon the glacier’s edge.
They bade the youth advance; he reached the table;
we saw his right hand swaddled in a clout; —
he gasped, he swallowed, battling after words, —
but, though the Captain urged him, found no voice.
Ah yes, at last! Then with his cheek aflame,
his tongue now failing him, now stammering fast,
he mumbled something of a scythe that slipped
by chance, and shore his finger to the skin.
Straightway a silence fell upon the room.
Men bandied meaning glances; they made mouths;
they stoned the boy with looks of silent scorn.
He felt the hail-storm, but he saw it not.
Then up the Captain stood, the grey old man;
he spat, and pointed forth, and thundered “Go!”
And the lad went. On both sides men fell back,
till through their midst he had to run the gauntlet.
He reached the door; from there he took to flight; —
up, up he went, — through wood and over hillside,
up through the stone-slips, rough, precipitous.
He had his home up there among the mountains. —
It was some six months later he came here,
with mother, and betrothed, and little child.
He leased some ground upon the high hillside,
there where the waste lands trend away towards Lomb.
He married the first moment that he could;
he built a house; he broke the stubborn soil;
he throve, as many a cultivated patch
bore witness, bravely clad in waving gold.
At church he kept his right hand in his pocket, —
but sure I am at home his fingers nine
toiled every bit as hard as others’ ten. —
One spring the torrent washed it all away.
Their lives were spared. Ruined and stripped of all,
he set to work to make another clearing;
and, ere the autumn, smoke again arose
from a new, better-sheltered, mountain farm-house.
Sheltered? From torrent — not from avalanche;
two years, and all beneath the snow lay buried.
But still the avalanche could not daunt his spirit.
He dug, and raked, and carted — cleared the ground —
and the next winter, ere the snow-blasts came,
a third time was his little homestead reared.
Three sons he had, three bright and stirring boys;
they must to school, and school was far away; —
and they must clamber where the hill-track failed,
by narrow ledges through the headlong scaur.
What did he do? The eldest had to manage
as best he might, and, where the path was worst,
his father cast a rope round him to stay him; —
the others on his back and arms he bore.
Thus he toiled, year by year, till they were men.
Now might he well have looked for some return.
In the New World, three prosperous gentlemen
their school-going and their father have forgotten.
He was short-sighted. Out beyond the circle
of those most near to him he nothing saw.
To him seemed meaningless as cymbals’ tinkling
those words that to the heart should ring like steel.
His race, his fatherland, all things high and shining,
stood ever, to his vision, veiled in mist.
But he was humble, humble, was this man;
and since that sessions-day his doom oppressed him,
as surely as his cheeks were flushed with shame,
and his four fingers hidden in his pocket. —
Offender ‘gainst his country’s laws? Ay, true!
But there is one thing that the law outshineth
sure as the snow-white tent of Glittertind
has clouds, like higher rows of peaks, above it.
No patriot was he. Both for church and state
a fruitless tree. But there, on the upland ridge,
in the small circle where he saw his calling,
there he was great, because he was himself.
His inborn note rang true unto the end.
His days were as a lute with muted strings.
And therefore, peace be with thee, silent warrior,
that fought the peasant’s little fight, and fell!
It is not ours to search the heart and reins; —
that is no task for dust, but for its ruler; —
yet dare I freely, firmly, speak my hope:
he scarce stands crippled now before his God!
[The gathering disperses. PEER GYNT remains behind, alone.]

PEER
Now that is what I call Christianity!
Nothing to seize on one’s mind unpleasantly. —
And the topic — immovably being oneself, —
that the pastor’s homily turned upon, —
is full, in its essence, of edification.
[Looks down upon the grave.]
Was it he, I wonder, that hacked through his knuckle
that day I was out hewing logs in the forest?
Who knows? If I weren’t standing here with my staff
by the side of the grave of this kinsman in spirit,
I could almost believe it was I that slept,
and heard in a vision my panegyric. —
It’s a seemly and Christianlike custom indeed
this casting a so-called memorial glance
in charity over the life that is ended.
I shouldn’t at all mind accepting my verdict
at the hands of this excellent parish priest.
Ah well, I dare say I have some time left
ere the gravedigger comes to invite me to stay with him; —
and as Scripture has it: What’s best is best, —
and: Enough for the day is the evil thereof, —
and further: Discount not thy funeral. —
Ah, the church, after all, is the true consoler.
I’ve hitherto scarcely appreciated it; —
but now I feel clearly how blessed it is
to be well assured upon sound authority:
Even as thou sowest thou shalt one day reap. —
One must be oneself; for oneself and one’s own
one must do one’s best, both in great and in small things.
If the luck goes against you, at least you’ve the honour
of a life carried through in accordance with principle. —
Now homewards! Though narrow and steep the path,
though Fate to the end may be never so biting —
still old Peer Gynt will pursue his own way,
and remain what he is: poor, but virtuous ever.
[Goes out.]