The Saga of Gosta Berling Read online

  Pale friend, you may freely exercise your force against me, but I will tell you this: your struggle was harder with the women of bygone ages. The power of life was strong in their slender bodies; no cold could cool their hot blood.

  You had lain the lovely Marianne on your bed, oh Death, and you sat by her side, as an old nurse sits by the cradle to rock the baby to sleep. You faithful old nurse, who knows what is good for human children, how it must annoy you, when playmates come who waken your sleeping child with noise and commotion. How angry you must have been, when the cavaliers lifted the lovely Marianne from the bed, when a man placed her against his chest, and warm tears fell from his eyes down onto her face.

  At Ekeby all the lights were out and all the guests had gone. The cavaliers stood alone in the cavaliers’ wing around the final, half-emptied bowl.

  Then Gösta tapped on the edge of the bowl and gave a speech for you, women of bygone ages: To speak of you, he said, would be like speaking of heaven; you were pure fairness, pure light. Eternally youthful, eternally lovely and tender as a mother’s eyes, when she looks down at her child. Soft as young squirrels you curled around a man’s neck. Never was your voice heard quivering with rage, never did your brow furrow, never did your gentle hand become rough and hard. Sweet vestals, you stood like jeweled images in the temple of the home. Incense and prayers were offered to you, through you love performed its miracles, and poetry affixed a gold-gleaming halo around your head.

  And the cavaliers leaped up, dizzy with wine, dizzy from his words, their blood rushing in festive joy. Old uncle Eberhard and lazy cousin Kristoffer did not stay out of the game. With blazing speed the cavaliers harnessed the horses to sledge and sleigh and hurried out into the cold night to give homage once again to those who are never honored enough, to sing a serenade to each one of them with the rosy cheeks and the clear eyes that so recently shone in the broad halls of Ekeby.

  Oh, women of bygone ages, how it must have pleased you as you journeyed into the sweet heaven of dreams, to be wakened by a serenade from the most faithful of your knights. Well must it please you, as it well pleases a departed soul to be wakened by the sweet music of the heavens.

  But the cavaliers did not get far on this pious crusade, for as soon as they had come to Björne, they found the beautiful Marianne lying in the drift, just by the gateway to her home.

  They shook with wrath upon seeing her there. It was like finding a venerated saint lying mutilated and plundered outside the gate of the church.

  Gösta shook his clenched fist toward the dark house. “You children of hatred,” he shouted, “you hailstorms, you northern storms, you devastators of God’s paradise!”

  Beerencreutz lit his horn lantern and shone it down into the pale-blue face. Then the cavaliers saw Marianne’s wounded hands and the tears that had frozen to ice in her eyelashes, and they wailed like women, for she was not only a sacred icon but a beautiful woman, who had been a source of joy for old hearts.

  Gösta Berling fell down on his knees beside her.

  “Now here she lies, my bride,” he said. “She gave me the bridal kiss a few hours ago, and her father has promised me his blessing. She lies waiting for me to come and share her white bed.”

  And Gösta lifted the lifeless one up in his strong arms.

  “Let us take her home to Ekeby!” he cried. “Now she’s mine. I’ve found her in the snowdrift, now no one shall take her from me. We won’t waken those people inside there. What would she do there within those doors, against which she has struck her hand bloody?”

  He was allowed to do as he wished. He set Marianne down into the first sleigh and sat down by her side. Beerencreutz positioned himself behind and took the reins.

  “Rub her with snow, Gösta!” he ordered.

  The cold had paralyzed her limbs, but no more than that. Her wildly agitated heart was still beating. She had not even lost consciousness; she was aware of everything about the cavaliers, and how they had found her, but she could not move. So she was lying stiff and rigid in the sleigh, while Gösta Berling rubbed her with snow and alternately wept and kissed her, and she felt an overwhelming desire to be able simply to raise her hand enough that she could return a caress.

  She remembered everything. Lying there stiff and unmoving, she thought clearly like never before. Was she in love with Gösta Berling? Yes, she was. Was that simply a fancy for an evening? No, it had existed a long time, for many years.

  She compared herself to him and the other people in Värmland. They were all as spontaneous as children. Whatever desire moved them, they followed. They lived only the outer life, had never investigated the depths of their souls. But she had become the sort of person one becomes by traveling out among people; she could never abandon herself completely to anything. When she loved—or whatever she did—it was as though half of her self stood and looked on with a cold sneer. She had longed for a passion to come and pull her along with it in wild recklessness. And now he had arrived, the mighty one. As she kissed Gösta Berling on the balcony, then for the first time she had forgotten herself.

  And now the passion again came over her; her heart was beating so that she could hear it. Would she not soon be master of her limbs? She felt a wild joy at being shut out of her home. Now she could be Gösta’s without hesitation. How silly she’d been, having suppressed her love for so many years. Oh, it’s grand, it’s grand to yield to love. But would she ever be free of these chains of ice? She had been ice on the inside and fire on the surface, now it was the other way around, a soul of fire in a body of ice.

  Then Gösta feels how two arms slowly rise up around his neck in a weak, powerless embrace.

  He barely felt it, but Marianne thought that in her suffocating embrace she had given expression to the bound-up passion inside her.

  And when Beerencreutz saw this, he let the horse run as it liked along the familiar road. He raised his gaze and peered stubbornly and unceasingly at the Seven Sisters.

  CHAPTER 7

  THE OLD CONVEYANCES

  Friends, children of humankind! If you should find yourselves reading this at night, whether sitting or lying down, just as I am writing this during the silent hours, then you must not heave a sigh of relief here and think that the good gentlemen cavaliers of Ekeby were allowed an undisturbed sleep, after they had come home with Marianne and found her a good bed in the best guest room next to the large parlor.

  They did go to bed, and they did fall asleep, but it was not their lot to sleep in peace and quiet until midday, as it might perhaps have been mine and yours, dear readers, if we had been awake until four and our limbs were aching with fatigue.

  After all, it must not be forgotten that at this time the old majoress was wandering around the countryside with her beggar’s pouch and walking stick, and that it was never her way, when she had any important business, to show any regard for the comfort of a tired-out sinner. Now she was even less inclined to do so, as she had decided to drive the cavaliers from Ekeby that very night.

  Gone was the time when she sat in splendor at Ekeby, sowing joy across the earth, the way God sows stars across the heavens. And while she was wandering homeless around the countryside, the great estate’s power and honor was left to be tended by the cavaliers, like the wind tends the ashes, like the spring sun tends the snowdrift.

  It sometimes happened that six or eight of the cavaliers would drive out on a long sleigh with a team and sleigh bells and braided reins. If they then encountered the majoress as she wandered like a beggar, they did not lower their eyes.

  The boisterous group would raise clenched fists toward her. With a sudden turn of the sleigh she would be forced up into the roadside drifts, and Major Fuchs, the bear killer, always took the opportunity to spit three times to remove any evil effects of this encounter with the hag.

  They had no compassion for her. To them she was as ugly as a witch as she walked along the road. If an accident had befallen her, they would not have grieved any more than someone wh
o, firing a loaded shotgun on Easter Eve, grieves over striking a troll hag flying past.

  Persecuting the majoress was a matter of salvation to them, the poor cavaliers. People have often been cruel and tormented one another with great severity when they have feared for their souls.

  When, far into the night, the cavaliers staggered from the drinking tables over to the windows to see if the night was calm and starlit, they often noticed a dark shadow gliding across the yard, and they understood that the majoress had come to see her beloved home. Then the cavaliers’ wing was shaken by the old sinners’ scornful laughter, and jeers flew down to her through the open windows.

  In truth, lack of feeling and arrogance began to encroach upon the hearts of the cavaliers. Sintram had implanted hatred in them. Their souls would not have been in greater danger if the majoress had remained at Ekeby. More die in flight than during battle.

  The majoress did not feel overly angry with these cavaliers.

  If the power had been hers, she would have punished them with a birch rod like naughty boys, and afterward given them back her kindliness and favor.

  But now she feared for the beloved estate, which was left to be cared for by the cavaliers, the way the wolves watch the sheep, the way the cranes watch the spring grain.

  There must be many who have suffered the same sorrow. She is not the only one who has seen destruction ravage a beloved home and knows what it feels like when well-tended farms decline. They have seen their childhood home gaze at them like a wounded animal. Many feel like miscreants, when they see the trees there wither away under mosses and the sanded pathways covered by tufts of grass. They want to throw themselves on their knees on these fields, which in times past gloried in rich harvests, and beg them not to blame them for the shame that has befallen them. And they turn away from the poor old horses; let someone bolder look them in the eye! And they dare not stand at the gate and see the cattle coming home from pasture. No spot on the earth is as odious to enter as a dilapidated home.

  Oh, I beg you, all of you who tend fields and meadows and parks and beloved, joy-bringing flower gardens, tend them well! Tend them in love, in labor! It is not good that nature grieves for people.

  As I think about what this proud Ekeby must suffer under the governance of the cavaliers, then I wish that the majoress’s attack had achieved its goal and that Ekeby had been taken from the cavaliers.

  It was not her intention to come back to power herself.

  She had but one goal: to free her home from these lunatics, these grasshoppers, these wild robbers, after whose rampaging no grass would grow.

  While she went begging around the countryside, living off alms, she constantly had to think of her mother, and the thought took firm hold in her heart, that there would be no respite for her until her mother lifted the curse from her shoulders.

  No one had yet reported the old woman’s death, so she must still be alive up there at the ironworks in the Älvdal forests. Ninety years of age, she still lived a life of unremitting labor, watching over milk pans in summer, over charcoal stacks in winter, working until her death, longing for the day when she would have completed her life’s calling.

  And the majoress thought that the old woman must have had to live so long in order to be able to lift the curse from her existence. A mother who had called down such misery on her child would not be allowed to die.

  The majoress wanted to go to the old woman so that they both might find peace. She wanted to wander up through the dark forests beside the long river to her childhood home. Until then she would find no peace. There were many who in those days offered her warm homes and gifts of faithful friendship, but she remained nowhere. Bitter and angry she went from farm to farm, for she was oppressed by this curse.

  She wanted to wander up to her mother, but first she wanted to care for her beloved estate. She did not want to go and leave it in the hands of irresponsible spendthrifts, of useless drinking champions, of negligent embezzlers of God’s gifts.

  Should she leave only to return and find her inheritance ravaged, her hammers silent, her horses emaciated, her servants stolen away?

  Oh no, once again she would rise up in her power and drive away the cavaliers.

  She well understood that her husband gleefully saw that her inheritance was being embezzled. But she knew him well enough to know that if only she were to drive away his grasshoppers, he would be too sluggish to acquire new ones. If the cavaliers were removed, then her old foreman and inspector could manage the activities of Ekeby in the accustomed ways.

  And so for many nights her dark shadow had glided along the dark paths of the ironworks. She had sneaked in and out of the crofters’ cottages, she had whispered with the miller and the mill hands in the lower floor of the large mill, she had conferred with the smiths in the dark coal shed.

  And they had all sworn to help her. The honor and power of the great ironworks would no longer be left to be tended by negligent cavaliers, the way the wind tends the ashes, the way the wolf tends the herd of sheep.

  And on this night, when the merry gentlemen had danced, played, and drunk until they had sunk down into their beds in dead-tired slumber, on this night they had to leave. She has let them exult, the carefree ones. She has been sitting in the smithy in bitter expectation, biding her time for the end of the ball. She has waited even longer for the cavaliers to come back again from their nocturnal journey. She has been sitting in silent expectancy, until she was told that the last candle flame was extinguished in the windows of the cavaliers’ wing and the great estate was sleeping. Then she got up and went out.

  The majoress ordered all the people of the estate to gather by the cavaliers’ wing; she herself went ahead up to the courtyard. There she went up to the main building, knocked, and was admitted. The Broby minister’s young daughter, whom she had brought up to be a capable servant, met her.

  “My lady is so warmly welcome,” the servant said, kissing her hand.

  “Blow out the candle!” said the majoress. “Do you think I can’t find my way here without a light?”

  And then she began her circuit through the silent house. She went from the cellar to the attic and said farewell. With stealthy steps she passed from room to room.

  The majoress was conversing with her memories. The servant neither sighed nor sobbed, but tear upon tear flowed unchecked from her eyes as she followed her mistress. The majoress had her open the linen cabinet and the silver cabinet and stroked the fine damask tablecloths and stout silver tankards with her hand. She caressed the massive pile of down bolsters up in the linen closet. All the implements, looms, spinning wheels, and spindles, she had to feel them all. She stuck her hand probingly down into the spice barrel and felt the rows of tallow candles hanging from rods in the ceiling.

  “The candles are dry now,” she said. “They can be taken down and put away.”

  She was in the cellar, carefully lifting the beverage barrels and feeling the rows of wine bottles.

  She was in the pantry and the kitchen, touching everything, examining everything. She reached out her hand and said farewell to everything in her house.

  Finally she went into the living quarters. In the dining hall she felt the top of the large drop-leaf table.

  “Many have eaten their fill at this table,” she said.

  And she proceeded through all the rooms. She found the long, broad sofas in their places; she laid her hand on the cool surfaces of the marble tables, which, borne up by gilded griffins, supported mirrors with a frieze of dancing goddesses.

  “This is a wealthy house,” she said. “A splendid man he was, who gave me all this to preside over.”

  In the parlor where the dance had just whirled, the stiff-backed armchairs were already standing rigidly ordered along the walls.

  She went over to the clavier and very slowly struck a note.

  “Nor have joy and merriment been lacking here in my time either,” she said.

  The majoress also went into the g
uest room next to the parlor.

  It was coal-black in there. The majoress fumbled around with her hand, ending up right in her servant’s face.

  “Are you crying?” she said, for she felt her hand wet from tears.

  Then the young girl burst into sobs.

  “My lady,” she cried, “my lady, they will destroy everything. Why does my lady leave us and let the cavaliers devastate her house?”

  Then the majoress pulled on the curtain tie and pointed out at the yard.

  “Am I the one who taught you to cry and complain?” she exclaimed. “Look outside, the yard is full of people; tomorrow there will no longer be a single cavalier at Ekeby.”

  “Then will my lady come back again?” asked the servant.

  “My time is not yet come,” said the majoress. “The highway is my home and the haystack my bed. But you will tend Ekeby for me, girl, while I am away.”

  And they went on. Neither of them knew or realized that Marianne was sleeping in this very room.

  Nor was she asleep. She was wide awake, heard everything, and understood everything.

  She had been lying there on the bed, composing a hymn to love.

  “You splendid man, who has raised me above myself,” she said, “I was in bottomless misery, and you have transformed it into a paradise. On the iron handle of the closed doorway my hands were caught and torn, on the doorstep of my home my tears were frozen into pearls of ice. The chill of anger turned my heart to ice, when I heard the blows on my mother’s back. I wanted to sleep away my anger in the cold drift, but you have come. Oh love, you child of fire, you have come to someone frozen through from much cold. If I compare my misery to the splendor I have thereby won, it seems to me nothing. I am freed from all bonds, I have no father, no mother, no home. People will believe everything bad about me and turn away from me. Well, so has it pleased you, oh love, for why should I stand higher than my beloved? Hand in hand we will travel out into the world. Gösta Berling’s bride is poor. He found her in the snowdrift. So let us make a nest together, not in high halls, but in a crofter’s cottage at the forest edge. I will help him to watch the charcoal pile, I will help him set snares for grouse and hares, I will cook his food and mend his clothes. Oh, my beloved, I will miss you and grieve while I sit alone at the forest edge and await you, do you believe it? I will, I will, but not for days of riches, simply for you, simply for you will I peer and long, for your footsteps on the forest path, for your happy song, as you come with your ax on your back. Oh, my beloved, my beloved! As long as my life continues, I could sit and wait for you.”