Part 7

He did not dance, and yet he loved balls. He enjoyed standing in a doorway and watching the others whirl by. What atmosphere was there around all their festivals of youth which fascinated him and made him meditative and sick with longing after the impossible? Look at the women! Held close in the arms of the men, with eyes half-shut and mouths open, the most innocent young girls flitted past in dresses which exposed or emphasized their young panting bosoms. What were they thinking of, what were they dreaming of? There were some no doubt who thought of nothing, dreamed of nonsense, and had no other longing than to stir their legs and keep in motion, regular young girls after the hearts of their mothers and aunts. But they were surely not all so. The daughters of men could not have changed so extraordinarily since the not too remote times when youths and maidens carried phallic images in procession, singing holy songs. What did they talk about, these young girls, when they sat together and whispered in a corner? «She is secretly engaged to him»; «He’s in love with her, but she’s fond of someone else.» What was in the books they read? The same thing: People who were in love with each other, and how it turned out, and who got whom. To «get,» what did that mean? That one found out on the bridal night.

But the years passed, and the bridal might have to wait. The young girl got to be twenty-five, she was nearly thirty, and still she danced at balls with half-closed eyes, but her mouth was no longer open; she now knew that this looked unseemly, so she held it convulsively shut, a blood-red streak. Would it never come, the great, the wonderful experience? Her glance was that of a drowning woman. «Save me, I’m sinking, I’m going under! Youth is so short. Look! my color is already fading, my bosom is sinking in, and my young flower is withering!» She tried being provocative and bold, she was afraid she had been too timid before, perhaps that was not the right way.... But the gentlemen were already laughing at her covertly when they drank healths over their punch, and some of them mocked her in public. Others understood her better and thought within themselves that she might make a good wife and an ardent mistress. But they had no desire to marry, and to seduce a girl of family would be a risky business. When they left the ball they could easily and without any ado find the way to their old place, to the room with the smoking lamp, or with a red night-lamp hanging from the ceiling.

«What are we doing with our lives, we men, and what are we doing with _theirs_?»

* * * * *

Martin turned back into the city.

On a street corner he met a poet, who was freezing in a thin yellow-green ulster. He was a few years older than Martin and already a bit famous, for he wrote with fabulous ease the loveliest verses on any theme, mostly about girls and flowers and June nights on the lowlands of Scania, whence he had come. He had a pale face and a thin red beard; and when he met a fellow-artist, his great childlike eyes took on a wild and staring expression, as if he were considering within himself: «Shall I murder him, or shall we go in somewhere and consume alcohol?»

They went up to the «Anglais» and drank green chartreuse.

The poet talked about himself. He confided to Martin that he was a decadent. He worshiped everything that was disintegrating, rotten at the core, and doomed to destruction. He hated the sun and light--here he shook a clenched fist at the gas candelabra on the ceiling--he loved the night and sin and all alcoholic drinks of a green shade. He had most of the well-known venereal diseases and an insane fear of crowded squares. Nothing in the world could make him go diagonally across Gustavus Adolphus Place. This disease gave him a very special pleasure, for he took it as the forerunner of general paralysis. And general paralysis was the great sleep; it was nirvana.

Martin listened absently. «Light is good,» he said to himself, «and darkness is good too. But sometimes darkness is bad, and light too.»

«But how is it,» he asked, «that your poems are really not in any essential way different from those which generally get the prize in the Academy?»

At these words the poet’s glance darkened, his lips suddenly became thin and narrow. He took a dirty sheath-knife from his pocket, pulled it halfway out, and laid his index finger on the bare blade.

«How deep can you stand cold steel?» he asked.

«You misunderstand me entirely,» said Martin, laying his hand calmingly on the other’s arm. «I love your poems. Only I don’t see rightly the connection between them and your inner life as you have just pictured it.»

The poet laughed.

«It’s amusing to hear that you love my poems,» he said. «The things I’ve allowed to be published up to now, you see, are mere skits. Good enough for the mob. Look here!»...

He took a newspaper clipping from his pocket, a review of his last volume signed by a well-known critic. This authority mildly deplored that some of the poems could not be acquitted of a certain tinge of sensualism which gave an unpleasing effect. In others again the poet struck purer tones, such as were fitted to give rich promise for the future.

«Well, that was quite friendly,» observed Martin, when he had read it.

«Friendly!» The poet again made a convulsive grab in his pocket where the knife lay. «Friendly, you say? Shouldn’t such an insect creep in the dust before the wretchedest of my poems?»

«Oh, yes,» said Martin, «yes, naturally; but since it isn’t the custom for older folks with younger----»

The poet was silent, took a drink, then was silent a long while.

Martin drank too. The strong green liquor burned in his palate and his brain. Thereupon the woman of the morning was there, the one who walked in the sunlight and smiled. Was she asleep now, did she dream, did she smile in her dreams? Or did she twist about sleepless on her bed in longing for a man?

Should he write to her? He could easily find out her name. No. She would only show the letter to her friends, and they would titter and laugh....

The café was nearly empty. In the farthest corner a regular customer sat alone behind a newspaper. In a mirror on the opposite wall was the vision of an old gentleman with white whiskers and a red silk handkerchief sticking out of his breast-pocket. He was fat and red and white, red by nature and white with powder, and as he leaned his chest and arms against the bar, he looked like a sphinx.

The poet emitted a sigh. Martin studied him: the face of a child under the red-bearded mask of a pirate. It occurred to him that he had possibly hurt this man’s feelings just now, and he felt the need of saying something agreeable.

«Do you know,» he said, «if you shaved off your beard you would certainly look like the most profligate kind of monk?»

The poet brightened up.

«I dare say you’re right,» he said, trying to get a look at himself in a mirror. «What’s more, I’ve written poems with a leaning toward Catholicism. You ought to read my poems sometime, the real ones, the ones that can’t be printed.»

«Surely,» said Martin. «Where do you live?»

The poet declared that he didn’t live anywhere. He hadn’t had any dwelling-place for three weeks, and he didn’t need any. He wrote his poems on the table of the café and slept with girls. In the house of one of them he had his green-edged traveling bag with some extra collars and the poems of Verlaine, and there too were his own manuscripts.

Martin began to be really impressed, but he found no outlet for his thoughts, and silence once more spread itself between the two whom chance had driven together on a street corner.

The clock struck twelve, the gas was turned half down, and the poet, feeling the approach of inspiration with the darkness, began to write verses on the table.

Martin said good night.

* * * * *

Sture Square lay white and empty. The snow had ceased, the moon was up, and it was more bitterly cold than ever. To the east a new street without houses opened like a great hole in a wall. To the west a snow-covered jumble of old shanties and stone gables was spread out in the misty moonlight, and from one of the streets of sin which slunk between them echoed a woman’s laugh and the sound of a gate being opened and shut.

--X--

It was late when Martin came home, and he was dead tired but could not sleep. Black butterflies fluttered before his eyes, and thoughts and rhythms came to him as he lay and stared into the dark. He raised himself in bed and relighted the candle on his bedside table, where paper and pen were at hand as always. He felt no feverish overexcitement, only a deep weariness, which pained him but did not delude. He saw clearly where his thought wavered and needed the support of a rhythm, a bit of melody; he changed and erased, and finally a poem evolved.

You up yonder Who are deaf and dumb! You up yonder, Who with your right hand squeeze The fresh and sweetly-smelling fruit of Good And with your left constrict The poison-dripping maggot nest of Ill, Looking upon them With equal satisfaction! You up yonder, Whose glance is dim With all the emptiness of space-- I have a prayer to you.

One prayer, but one, Which you can never hear And cannot fulfill: Teach me, Teach me to forget I ever met your glance. For look! In youthful days I myself made a god In mine own image, A warm and living and aggressive god, And on a spring day I went out To seek for him through all the world and heavens. Not him I found, But you. Not life’s divinity But death’s I found under the mask of life.

Take the memory of the sight of you Away, O horrible One! That memory is A hidden sickness, is a worm that gnaws My life-tree’s root. I know it well, with every barren year And every day that runs in vain It gnaws yet closer to my being’s nerve. It gnaws and preys upon All that in me which is of human worth, All that which dares, all that which wills and works; Nor does it spare The wondrous, brittle time-piece of the soul Which points out Good and Ill.

Speak, you up yonder, Is it your will To re-create me after your own image? Was that the meaning hidden in your word: «He who hath seen God, he must die the death»? O horrible One, Have you the heart to infect Me, a poor child of men, With your immortal vices?

--XI--

The afternoon sun fell across the writing table and gilded everything: the inkstand, the books, and the words he wrote on the paper. The smoke from the chimneys rose straight and tranquilly toward heaven, and in a window just opposite a young Jewess was playing with her child.

Martin was writing to his sister:

Dear Maria:

Thanks for your letter. Mamma is poorly as usual, perhaps a little better these last weeks. Papa keeps the same, only he gets more silent every year. It’s very quiet here at home, for as you know I am not one either to love idle talk. Silence is golden. Uncle Janne, Aunt Louise, etc., are still, unfortunately, alive and in health, though it doesn’t make much difference anyhow, since we are not likely to be their heirs. But they are always annoying me by asking about the prospects of my work, whether papa isn’t in line for the Order of Vasa soon, whether it’s true that your husband takes morphine, and so on. Otherwise there is no harm in them.

You ask whether I’m writing much just now. No, very little, but on the other hand I have an appointment for a long job as amanuensis, and last night I dreamed very clearly and distinctly that papa and I got an Order of Vasa together, since the king couldn’t manage to give us each one.

Thanks for the invitation to come to you in the summer, but it’s not likely I can get off--my appointment will last over the summer. Too bad your husband is nervous. Nice your little boy is well. Remember me to all.

Your brother Martin.

He put the letter in an envelope and laid it aside.

He sat and thought about his sister.

«Is she happy?» he asked himself. And he was forced to answer: «No, she is not happy. She does not perhaps know it herself. Six years ago she was very happy, when she was married and became a doctor’s wife and had her own little home in the country to look after--just what she had most dreamed of. She hasn’t had any sudden fall from the peak of happiness since then. She has just very quietly slipped down, as usually happens with the years. Her husband is amiable and talented and a clever doctor, but he offends the rich people in his district and has most of his practice among the poor. Therefore he is sometimes hard up. Besides, I am afraid his health is undermined and his disposition is sometimes rather bitter. However, he was in very good humor when he was up here last alone, without her. He amused himself as well as he could, and I fear he was a bit unfaithful.

«A curious bird, happiness....»

During these thoughts Martin had begun again to write. He wrote slowly and half in play, with an intention here and there yet without exactly knowing whither he was tending.

«You do not know me. I met you one day in the sunlight. It is weeks, yes, months since then. You went on the side of the street where the sun shone; you went alone with head lowered and smiled to yourself.

«It was one of those days when the snow was beginning to melt on the street and the pavement shone wet and bright. You stopped at the corner of a street, greeted an old lady and conversed with her. The old lady was very ugly and very stupid, and I imagine too a little cross, as stupid people generally are. But when you looked at her and talked with her, she at once grew less cross and less ugly.

«A little farther up the street a gentleman saluted you, and you bowed and returned his greeting. I felt my heart become bitter with envy, and I followed him with my glance as he went on down the street. But one could not see it in him that he had just spoken to you. One could rather believe he was a lieutenant who had just saluted a major.

«I have met you often since then. You do not know me, and it is not likely that you will ever know who I am. You go in the sunlight, I go for the most part in the shadow. I am dressed like many other men, and I always avoid looking at you so that you see it. No, you cannot find out who I am.

«You have a lamp with a yellow shade. Yesterday you stood long at the window in the yellow glow, after you had lighted the lamp, looking at the stars. You went to the window to pull down the curtains, but you forgot about it a little while. Straight in front of your window was a star which burned more brightly than the rest. I could not see it, for I stood shut in by a little black gate opposite the house where you live; but I know that on spring evenings it stands just so that you must see it from your window. It is Venus.

«You do not know me, and I do not know you otherwise than I do the women who sometimes give me the great joy of visiting me at night in my dreams. It is therefore I speak to you so intimately. But among these women you have for some time been the only one, the others have forsaken me, nor do I feel any longing after them.

«Read this letter and think no more of it; burn it, if you will, or hide it at the bottom of your little secret drawer, if you will. Read it and think no more of it, go out as before in the sunlight and smile in your own happy thoughts. But you are not to show it to your friends and let them giggle and snicker over it. If you do that, for three nights in a row you will not be able to sleep for bad dreams, and a little devil from hell will sit on the edge of your bed and look at you from evening till morning.

«But I know you will not do such a thing--you will not show it to any one. Good night, my beloved, good night!»

Martin sat long with this letter in his hand. «What could it lead to if I sent it?» he asked himself. «To nothing, presumably. It would set her imagination off a bit, her young girl’s longing would perhaps have an impulse toward the new and unknown. She might perhaps bring herself to show the letter to her friends, seeing that faith in devils is on the wane; but she wouldn’t go so far as to burn it. She might perhaps be amused with it, she might even consider it her duty to feel offended. But in reality it would in the long run cause her joy, and if in the process of nature she was married and had children and grew old with household cares and every year sunk deeper down in the inconsolable monotony of existence, she would come to remember this letter and wonder who wrote it and if perhaps it was there that the true seed of happiness lay hid. And she would never once recall that it ever made her angry. Nor as a matter of fact does it contain anything that could properly hurt her. It shows her only that she is desired by a man, and as she is twenty and from head to foot an uncommonly beautiful and glorious creation of nature, she must already have noticed that men desire her. And that doesn’t at all make her angry, but on the contrary happy and joyous, and that is why she walks in the sunlight and smiles.»

Amid such thoughts he sat a long while weighing the letter in his hand as if it had been a human destiny, till in the end he found his hesitation ridiculous, put the letter in an envelope of thick untransparent paper, and wrote the address in a thin and non-committal girlish style so as not to rouse any curiosity in the young lady’s family. Without revealing any special interest on his part he had succeeded in learning her name. She was a Miss Harriet Skottë. Her father had an estate in the country, in the Malar district, and she was now spending the winter in Stockholm with some relatives to study something or other, French or art-tapestry or something of the sort ... in order to get engaged, to put it briefly.

Harriet Skottë. He repeated the name to himself and tried to analyze the impression it evoked. He dwelt in particular on the forename and murmured, «Harriet, Harriet.» But this gave him no impression of her nature; it roused only an indefinite conception of something English and pale and blonde, a sensation of tea fumes and benevolence and chilly bedrooms with varnished floors as at a hospital. The surname, again, only suggested family, an uncle who was on the Board of Trade, and a cousin who was a lieutenant in the Army Service Corps. But if he whispered to himself the whole name, «Harriet Skottë,» there came in a new element which quite excluded the others, then it became something quite different and new, then he felt as if she herself passed through the room with her brown hair glinting in a sunbeam.

* * * * *

He started at the ringing of the hall bell; he heard the maid open the front door and a familiar voice asking if he was at home. He stuffed the letter into his pocket. The next instant the door opened and Henrik Rissler stood in the doorway blinking at the sunlight, whose copper-red rays struck horizontally across the room.

--XII--

Henrik Rissler had come down from Upsala. He had just taken his preliminary degree and in a couple of weeks was to make a tour down in Europe while he wrote his thesis, «On Romantic Irony.» He had no independent means, but his uncle--a bank lawyer, politician, and millionaire--had offered to pay for the trip. This Martin already knew from Henrik’s letters. But before he started he was to rest a few weeks. He was somewhat overworked, for he had studied hard so as to get away from Upsala as soon as possible, and he had also taken extra time to write some critical studies for a magazine and so become a little better known among the score or so of men who interested themselves in such things.

Martin had been expecting him for a couple of days and had a bottle of wine and a pack of cigarettes ready.

Henrik shaded his eyes from the sun and said: «Here everything is the same. Here time has stood still.»

«Yes, in this immediate region,» answered Martin. «Only they have built a big factory chimney over opposite. It has been quite a diversion for me in solitude. For a while I worked in competition with the masons, but I was beaten. I began on a poem when they had just begun on the chimney; now the chimney is done, but not the poem. It’s beautiful, what’s more--the chimney, I mean. Especially in the evening as a silhouette. The smoke no longer belches out, one forgets its purpose; it is no longer a chimney, it is a pillar tower built by some Chaldæan prince and priest, who mounts it when night comes on and measures the course of the stars.»

«Yes,» said Henrik, «one forgets the purpose, then first it becomes beautiful.»

«No,» replied Martin, «it doesn’t become beautiful because one forgets its purpose, but because one invents for it another which has the prestige of old and venerable poetic tradition. But outside of that, in and for themselves, without any fancification, factory chimneys are among the most beautiful of modern structures. They promise less than they make good, and at least they are no masquerade figures either in Gothic or Renaissance.»

Henrik smiled. «You’re talking in the style of the ‹’Eighties,›» he said.

* * * * *

Henrik Rissler sat in his old place in the sofa corner, Martin sat in the rocking-chair at the writing table. They were drinking wine and talking about Upsala, about books and women, and about a new philosopher by the name of Nietzsche. And as they talked, the sunbeam in which the motes danced like red sparks grew ever narrower and more oblique and more decidedly red.

Martin surveyed Henrik. He found him changed; his face was leaner, stronger, and more masculine in contour. Why had he said, «Here everything is the same, here time has stood still»? He had had an experience, but what? He was in love presumably; he would perhaps go so far as to get engaged--to whom? Was it his cousin Anna Rissler? She was fond of him and he knew it. No, that couldn’t be. Was it Maria Randel, or Sigrid Tesch?

«It’s curious,» observed Henrik. «Have you felt the same thing?--how painful it is to search for old associations and not to find them. To read over a book one has been fond of, or hear an opera into which one has formerly been able to put everything imaginable and a bit more--and sit empty-handed, wondering where it has all gone to!»

«Yes,» Martin agreed, «it’s a strange, oppressive feeling. One feels as if it was one’s duty to stick to the past, as if one were committing an infidelity.... And one can do nothing. Why is it really so painful? Is it perhaps because there is no plaintiff in the suit, no clearly formulated claim to meet? For the plaintiff is not the book or the music which one has lost touch with, not the mood which shrinks away; the plaintiff is one’s old self, and that is dead and buried, it is supplanted and refuted by the new, it has no plea to make and yet it does make a sort of plea. Therein lies the paradox, and there is nothing as vexatious as a paradox, when it is not comic.»

Henrik took up the thread.

«Yes, you are right; it is between the old and the new self that the battle is, and as long as there is a new which is the stronger, one can always master the phantoms. There is a continuous growth. The old goes, the new comes--or the old goes, that’s really the one certain thing, for how long can one be sure whether the new will come in its place? Suppose the supply should stop some day, suppose nothing under the sun should be new any more, and one only became poorer with every year and every day that passed!»