Last Tales (31 page)

“His mother was my nurse,” said Eitel. “She came to see
me last evening. If anything can still be done for him, I shall want to see it done.”

“For him?” said the old gentleman. “This person hardly has sufficient understanding of his position to take it to heart. I cannot even imagine any last wish that he might have to state. It is true, though, that this morning he asked that his hair should not be cut until on the scaffold itself, and that we would have him shaved. Out of commiseration with a man who is to die at noon, I sent for the barber. But does such a wish bespeak remorse or amendment?”

“I wish to see him,” said Eitel.

“Let it be so then,” said the counselor. “Possibly our humane feelings are most urgently called upon in the case of those deepest sunk. In the name of God, we will go to him.”

He sent for the gaoler, and preceded by him the old and the young gentleman walked down a long whitewashed corridor and a few stone steps. The gaoler turned the heavy key in the lock.

“Beware, there is one more step inside the door,” said the counselor.

The small room which they entered had one narrow grated window high up in the wall. Its stone floor was covered with straw. To Eitel, coming from his drive through the light landscape, the cell seemed almost dark.

The condemned man sat on a bench so low that his chained hands between his knees rested on the floor. His dark head dropped, so that his long brown hair was hanging down over the face. His clothes were in rags, one sleeve of his coat torn off, and he was barefooted. He made not the slightest movement at the entrance of his visitors.

“Stand up, Linnert,” said the counselor. “There is a noble gentleman here who wants to see you.” He gave out Eitel’s name with much dignity, more in honor of Eitel than of the prisoner.

Linnert for a while sat on as if not aware that he was being spoken to. Then he rose without raising his head or his eyes,
and sat down again in exactly the same position as before.

The counselor gave Eitel a short glance, confirming his statement as to the hopelessness of concerning oneself about a creature like this.

To Eitel the filth and degradation before him were so loathsome that if he had wanted to, he could not have taken another step toward the figure. After a while he saw that this poacher and murderer, of his own age, ravished by a wild lawless existence, lean and tanned by sun and wind, was beautifully built, with long limbs and rich hair. He felt that this body would be strong and supple, every muscle and sinew of it hardened and trained to the utmost. In the movements of the prisoner as he had risen and again sat down, there had been an extraordinary collectedness and grace and a kind of obstinate joy of life. In his renewed immobility now there was the calm of the wild animal, which will keep more deadly still than any domestic animal. It was to Eitel as if he had, within his own wood, come upon a fox and was now himself standing immovable to watch him.

He noticed that the wrists of the prisoner were swollen and raw from the iron round them, and a choking feeling, as at the sight of a pretty wild animal in a trap, oppressed the visitor’s chest.

“Be pleased to unchain him while I talk to him,” he said to the counselor.

“It will hardly be advisable,” the old magistrate answered, and added in German: “He is still most unusually strong, and he is probably desperate. You may be exposing your life.”

“Nay, unchain him,” said Eitel.

After some hesitation the counselor made signs to the gaoler to remove the chain from the prisoner’s wrists. It fell upon the stone floor with a hard clank. Linnert stretched his arms a little along his sides and lowly yawned or growled like a man waking from his sleep.

“Leave us alone,” said Eitel.

The counselor threw a last glance at the two men whom he was to leave alone. “I shall be waiting just outside the door with this man here,” he announced in a loud voice, and followed by the gaoler left the cell.

Eitel stood looking at the man who was to die. “I shall speak to him,” he thought. “Shall I be able to make him speak? I myself may have half a century before me in which to say what I want. But what he has to say must be spoken before noon. And by the way, after noon, what will I myself find to speak of, for fifty years?”

Linnert sat motionless as before. Eitel was uncertain whether he did realize that one of his three visitors had stayed on when the others left.

“Knowest thou me, Linnert?” he at last asked.

The prisoner remained dead still for a minute. Then he looked up askance, beneath his long hair, and Eitel was surprised to see how light the eyes were in the dark face.

“Ay, thee I know well enough,” he said, and after a moment added: “And thy woods too, and that long marsh that thou hast got out westward.”

He spoke the dialect of the island so markedly that Eitel had some difficulty in understanding him. In the fight when he was taken, he had had his upper lip split and a tooth knocked out; he pulled his mouth awry and lisped as he spoke, and all through the conversation he hesitated a little after each of Eitel’s questions, as if he had to set his mouth right before answering.

His remark had not been offered as a challenge or a jeer, although he must have realized that it would be clear to Eitel in what manner he had acquired his intimate knowledge of his woods and marshes. It fell more like a light, sprightly communication between acquaintances exchanging news. In exactly that way, Eitel reflected, the fox on the forest path, in passing, would render the farmer a quick, snappish, jovial report on his poultry yard.

“Thy mother once was nurse to me,” Eitel said.

Once more Linnert hesitated a little, then asked in the same unconcerned manner as before: “What was her name now?”

“She is named Lone Bartels today,” Eitel answered. “Many years ago she married the parish clerk. Thou, Linnert, art my milk-brother.” The word echoed through his mind, “Brother.”

“Was it so?” said Linnert. He was silent for a while and then added: “It will have been but a poor drop of milk that I ever got out of those paps.”

“I have come today to see whether I can help you in any way,” said Eitel.

“In what way art thou to help me?” the prisoner asked.

“Will there be nothing at all that I can do for thee?” Eitel asked.

“Nay,” said Linnert. “They are going to help me here, I think, with all of it.”

During the pause that followed, the prisoner a couple of times spat on the floor, stretched out his bare foot and rubbed out the spittle in the straw. No more than his remark did his gesture contain any mockery or spite of the visitor; it had all the character of some humble game or pastime, in which the guest, did he care to, might join.

In the end Linnert himself, after having twisted and writhed his mouth, took up the conversation.

“Aye, there is one thing,” he said, “that thou canst help me with if thou wilt. I have got an old bitch, she is mine. She has got but one eye. She is on a rope by the wheelwright at Kramnitze. She is not wont to be chained up. Thou might send down that keeper of thine and have her done away with.”

“I shall have thy bitch brought up to my house and looked after there,” said Eitel.

“Nay,” said Linnert, “she is no good to anybody except just me. But it might be well if thou wouldst shoot her thyself—and then, as thou takest her along with thee to do it, talk to
her.” After a moment he said: “She is called Rikke, after someone.”

Eitel slowly put his hand to his mouth and down again.

“I will tell thee something, in return,” Linnert suddenly said. “Thou hast got a brace of otters in thy mill-brook that nobody knows of but me. Early one morning last winter I saw that the rime had melted on the grass round the air-hole of their den. Since then I have kept an eye on them. I was down there, time and another, this summer, and sat by them all day. I watched the old otters teach their four young ones to swim. They are big now; they have got fine skins. The hole is below the eastern brink; it will be easy to thee to take them there.”

“It is all right,” said Eitel.

“Aye, but thou hast got to remember,” said Linnert, “that their den is in the place where the river bends, by the five willows.”

“Yes,” said Eitel, “I shall remember.

“I have been thinking of thy lot in life,” he said after a pause, “ever since I heard of thee. My people have wronged thy people, and it ought not to have gone so with thee. I would do justice to thee today, were it in my power.”

“Justice?” said Linnert wonderingly.

Just then Eitel heard the clock on the front of the house slowly and as if pensively strike nine strokes, and wondered whether Linnert, too, counted these strokes.

“Hast thou ever been told, Linnert,” he asked, “that the manor house stands where the farmstead of thy people was once standing, and has been built on top of it?”

“Nay, that I have never heard,” said Linnert.

There was a long silence in the cell, and Eitel’s mind was following the hands of the clock that were now slowly going on, tick, tick, marking the minutes. In the end Linnert shot up a swift glance, as if to find out whether his guest was still with him.

“Linnert,” Eitel said. “Thy mother came to me last night
to tell me a curious tale. She told me that by the time that she was nurse at the manner she sent away the lord’s child and put her own in its stead.”

A new pause. “Is that so?” Linnert then asked. “That will have been a long time ago.”

“Yes,” said Eitel. “It will have been twenty-five years ago. At the time when neither of us knew who he was.”

Linnert sat on, so still that Eitel could not tell if he had heard him or not.

“Was it true what the woman told thee?” he asked at last.

“No,” Eitel said. “It was not true.”

“Nay, it was not true,” Linnert repeated. Then, suddenly, with the same kind of fox-joviality as before: “But if it had been true?”

“If it had been true,” Eitel said slowly, “then thou, Linnert, wouldst today have been in my place. And I, who knows, in thine.”

Linnert seemed to have once more come to rest on the bench, his eyes on the floor, and Eitel thought: “Is it all over now? Can I go away now?”

At that same instant the prisoner rose and stood up straight, face to face with his visitor. The heavy chain at this rattled a little against his foot. The sudden, unexpected, light and noiseless movement was so extraordinarily vigorous that it had all the character of an assault meant to give the attacked party no time for defense.

The two young men, now standing very close to each other, were of the same height. For the first time during their conversation they looked each other in the face meaningfully, conscious of a trial of strength. A strange, fierce light spread over Linnert’s face.

“They would have been mine then,” he said, “the deer and the hares and partridges that I have shot in thy fields and thy woods?”

“Yes,” said Eitel, “they would have been thine then.”

The prisoner’s thoughts seemed to run away from the
small dark cell to those fields and woods of which he had spoken.

“And thou wouldst have owed it to me then,” he said, “that thou canst go out with thy gun in a fortnight, when the young partridges are fledged, and again in three months, when the tracks of the game are on the snow, and that thou mayst troat to a buck in thy woods next spring.”

“Yes,” said Eitel.

As Linnert stood so, without stirring, with his eyes in Eitel’s but sunk in his own thoughts, the blood mounted to his face twice in a deep dark wave. Only a short time ago, it seemed to Eitel, he had looked into a face which bore a likeness to this one. Was it the hard glint of triumph in Lone’s face which here, in the shade of death, did mellow into a smile?

All at once the prisoner threw back his head, so that his long hair was flung away from his brow. He raised his right hand. It was lean, dark-stained, and earth and blood stuck under the nails. The smell of it was nauseating to Eitel.

“Wilt thou then,” he asked, “go down on thy knees to kiss my hand, and thank me for my mercy?”

Eitel for a moment kept standing before him. Then he bent one knee on the stone floor, in the straw where Linnert had spat, and touched the outstretched hand with his lips.

Linnert very slowly withdrew his hand, very slowly raised it to the top of his head, and scratched deep down in his long hair. He twisted his swollen mouth into a smile or grin.

“They are biting,” he said. “It was well that thou didst set me loose.”

COPENHAGEN SEASON

T
he winter season in Copenhagen at the time of this tale, in the year 1870, opened with the big New Year’s levees at court and closed on the eighth of April with the birthday celebration of King Christian IX. (This chivalrous king and fine horseman was known to the great world as “Europe’s Papa-in-Law” because he was the father of lovely Alexandra, Princess of Wales, and graceful, witty Dagmar, Empress of Russia to-be.)

Climatically the season was characterized by the fact that it included the Vernal Equinox. It would thus begin with a day of seven hours and a night of seventeen, with hoar frost on the red-tiled roofs of the town and the ring of snow shovels against cobblestones, with skating on the citadel moats and torch-lighted sledge parties, with muffs, bashliks and
furred boots. Then, by the time when February’s carnivals were over and when legitimate matchmaking and secret love affairs, fashionable rivalries and lofty intrigues were in full blaze, it would allow days to grow longer and all pavements to be suddenly and blissfully dried by the sun and the spring wind. And before it took its leave there would be violets in the dry grass and velvety catkins for the promenaders on the old town ramparts and glass-clear green evening skies.

It was characterized socially by the invasion of the town by the country nobility.

In the streets and on the squares stately gray and red mansions, which had been blind and dumb over Christmas, stirred and opened their windows. They were cleaned and heated from basement to attics, and on festival nights would beam down, through rows of tall, rose- or crimson-curtained windows, upon a dark and icy outside world. Heavy gates, long barred, swung open before fiery pairs of horses which had been brought by sea from Jutland and all the islands of Denmark and were steered by stony, fur-caped coachmen on the boxes of landaus, clarences and coupés. The Copenhageners in the streets would know one of the shining vehicles from another by the colors of its liveries: here were the Danneskiolds, Ahlefeldts, Frijses and Reedtz-Thotts on their way to Court, to the opera or to one another, striking long sparks from the stones, and all of them with that scintillating bit of metal, which must be displayed by noble families only, in the headstalls of their horses. The big houses found their voices too; all through a winter night waltzes streamed from them; late night-walkers lingered outside, beat their fingers and listened: they were dancing in there.