The Saga of Gosta Berling Page 15

  He goes to the parish clerk’s home, wakens the parish clerk, brings him out half dressed and half naked, and says that he should shoot at the bear that is sneaking around outside Faber’s woodshed.

  “If you shoot that bear, then he will no doubt give you his sister,” he says, “for then at once you will be an honored man. This is no ordinary bear, and the best men in the country would take it as an honor to fell it.”

  And he sets his own rifle in his hand, loaded with a bullet of silver and bell metal, cast in a church tower on a Thursday evening at the new moon, and he cannot keep from shaking with jealousy, because someone other than he will get to shoot the great forest king, the old bear of Gurlita Bluff.

  The parish clerk aims, God help us, aims as if he intended to fell the great bear otherwise known as Ursa Major, which goes in orbit around the North Star high up in the sky, and not a wandering bear on flat ground, and the shot goes off with a bang heard all the way up to Gurlita Bluff.

  But however he aimed, the bear falls. That’s how it is when you shoot with a silver bullet. The bear is hit in the heart, even if you’ve aimed at Ursa Major.

  People immediately come rushing out of all the nearby farms and wonder what’s going on, for never has a shot thundered louder and wakened more sleeping echoes than this one, and the parish clerk is much praised, for the bear had been a true plague upon the land.

  Little Faber also comes out, but now Major Fuchs is cruelly deceived. There stands the parish clerk surrounded with honor, and he has even saved Faber’s cows in the bargain, but the little organist is neither moved nor grateful. He does not open his arms to him nor does he greet him as a brother-in-law and hero.

  The major stands, furrowing his eyebrows and stamping his foot in wrath over such wretchedness. He wants to speak and explain to the greedy, pinch-hearted little fellow what a deed this is, but then he starts to stammer so that he cannot get out a word. And he becomes angrier and angrier at the thought that he has forsaken the honor of felling the great bear to no avail.

  Oh, this is plainly impossible for him to grasp, that someone who has done such a great deed would not be worthy of winning the proudest bride!

  The parish clerk and a few fellows are going to flay the bear; they go over to the whetstone and sharpen the knives. The others go inside and go to bed; Major Fuchs remains alone with the dead bear.

  Then he goes up to the church once again, once again puts the church key in the lock, climbs up narrow stairs and crooked steps, wakens the sleeping doves, and once again approaches the tower room.

  Later, when the bear was being flayed under the major’s supervision, a bundle of five hundred riksdaler in banknotes is found between his jaws. It is impossible to say how they got there, but this is after all a marvelous bear, and because the parish clerk has felled the bear, the money is his, that’s clear enough.

  When this becomes known, little Faber also realizes what an honorable deed the parish clerk has performed, and he explains that he would be proud to become his brother-in-law.

  On Friday evening Major Fuchs returns to Ekeby after having been present at a shooting feast in the parish clerk’s home and an engagement party at the organist’s residence. He walks along the road with a heavy heart: he experiences no joy that his enemy has fallen, and he feels no pleasure at the splendid bear hide the parish clerk has given him.

  Now many might believe that he is grieving that the fine little miss will belong to another. Oh no, he feels no sorrow about that. But this is what bothers him: that the old, one-eyed forest king is now fallen, without his having been able to shoot the silver bullet at him.

  So then he comes up to the cavaliers’ wing, where the cavaliers are sitting around the fireplace, and without a word throws down the bearskin in the midst of them. No one should think that he told about his mission! It was only long, long afterward that anyone could pry out of him what really happened. Nor did he reveal the Broby minister’s hiding place, and perhaps the minister never noticed the theft.

  The cavaliers inspected the hide.

  “This is a beautiful hide,” says Beerencreutz. “I can only imagine how this lad came up out of his winter sleep, or maybe you shot him in his lair?”

  “He was shot in Bro.”

  “Yes, he wasn’t as big as the Gurlita bear, was he,” says Gösta, “but this was a fine animal.”

  “If he had been one eyed,” says Kevenhüller, “then I would believe you had felled the old one yourself, but this one has no wounds or scars by the eye, so it can’t have been the one.”

  Fuchs swears at his stupidity, but then his face lights up, so that he becomes truly handsome. So the great bear has not fallen from another man’s shot after all.

  “Lord God, how good you are!” he says, clasping his hands together.

  CHAPTER 9

  THE AUCTION AT BJÖRNE

  We young ones often had to wonder at the old people’s stories. “So was there a ball every day, throughout your radiant youth?” we asked them. “Was life just one long fairy tale then?”

  “Were all the young ladies lovely and charming at that time, and did every banquet end with Gösta Berling running off with one of them?”

  Then the old people would shake their venerable heads and go on to tell about the whirring of spinning wheels and the rustling of the loom; about kitchen utensils, about the thumping of the flail and the rhythm of the ax in the forest; but it didn’t take long before they were back on the old pathways. Then sleighs drove up to the entry stairs, then horses hurried away through dark forests with merry young people, then the dance whirled and the fiddle strings snapped. With thunderous crashing the wild pursuit of adventure surged round Löven’s long lake. From far away its rumble was heard. The forest shook and fell, all the forces of destruction let loose: the conflagration blazed, the rapids raged, the wild animals prowled hungrily around the farms. Under the hooves of the eight-legged horses all quiet contentment was trampled into dust. Wherever the chase surged past, there the hearts of men flared up in wildness, and the women had to flee from their homes in blanched terror.

  And we young ones sat marveling, silent, ill at ease and yet blissful. “Such people,” we thought. “We will never see their like.”

  “Didn’t the people of that time ever think about what they were doing?” we asked.

  “Of course they thought, children,” the old people would answer.

  “But not like we think,” we persisted.

  And then the old people did not understand what we meant.

  But we were thinking, we, in the peculiar spirit of self-observation, which had already made its way inside us. We were thinking about him with the eyes of ice and the long, crooked fingers, he who sits in the soul’s darkest corner and tears apart our being, the way old women pick apart scraps of silk and wool.

  Bit by bit the long, hard, crooked fingers had plucked, until our entire self was lying there like a heap of rags, and thus our best feelings, our most original thoughts, everything we had done and said, had been examined, cross-examined, picked apart, and the eyes of ice had been watching, and the toothless mouth had smiled scornfully and whispered, “See, it’s rags, only rags.”

  There was one of the people of that time too, who had opened her soul to the spirit with the eyes of ice. He sat by one of them, keeping watch at the source of action, smiling scornfully at evil and good, fathoming everything, judging nothing, investigating, searching, picking apart, paralyzing the movements of the heart and the force of thought by smiling scornfully without return.

  The lovely Marianne carried the spirit of self-observation within her. She felt his eyes of ice and scornful smile follow every step, every word. Her life had turned into a play, where he was the only spectator. She was no longer a person: she did not suffer, she did not rejoice, she did not love, she performed the role of the lovely Marianne Sinclaire, and self-observation sat with staring eyes of ice and diligent, disassembling fingers and watched her perform.

&n
bsp; She was divided into two halves. Pale, unsympathetic, and scornful, one half of herself sat and watched how the other half acted, and never did the peculiar spirit that picked apart her being have a word of feeling or sympathy.

  But where then had he been, the pale watcher at the source of action, that night when she learned to feel the fullness of life? Where was he, when she, the sensible Marianne, kissed Gösta Berling before a hundred pairs of eyes, and when in anger she threw herself down into the snowdrift to die? Then the eyes of ice were blinded, then the scornful smile was paralyzed, for passion had stormed forth through her soul. The roar of the wild pursuit of adventure had thundered in her ears. She had been a whole person for this one, terrible night.

  Oh, you god of self-mockery, when Marianne with endless effort managed to lift her rigid arms and throw them around Gösta’s neck, then, like old Beerencreutz, you had to turn your eyes away from the earth and look at the stars.

  During that night you had no power. You were dead, while she composed her hymns of love, dead, while she hurried down to Sjö after the major, dead, when she saw the flames coloring the sky red above the treetops.

  Look, they had come, the powerful storm birds, the griffins of demonic passions. With wings of fire and claws of steel they came rushing down upon you, you spirit with the eyes of ice, they sank their claws into your neck and flung you away into the unknown. You were dead and crushed.

  But now they have rushed on, those proud, those mighty birds, whose path knows no calculation and no observer has followed; and out of the depths of the unknown the strange spirit of self-observation was resurrected and had once again settled down in the soul of the lovely Marianne.

  For the entire month of February Marianne lay ill at Ekeby. When she sought out the major at Sjö, she had been infected with smallpox. With all its violence this horrible disease had thrown itself upon her, who was terribly sickened and exhausted. She had been near death, but toward the end of the month she was, however, restored. She was still weak and very disfigured. She would never again be called the lovely Marianne.

  This, however, was not yet known by anyone other than Marianne and her nurse. Even the cavaliers did not yet know it. The sickroom, where the smallpox raged, was not open to everyone.

  But when is the power of self-observation greater than during the long hours of recovery? Then it sits and stares and stares with its eyes of ice and picks and picks with its knotted, hard fingers. And if you look carefully, behind it sits an even paler being, who stares and paralyzes and smiles scornfully, and behind that another and another, smiling scornfully at one another and at the whole world.

  And while Marianne was looking at herself with all those staring eyes of ice, all original feelings inside her died.

  She was lying there, pretending to be sick; she was lying there, pretending to be unhappy, pretending to be in love, pretending to be vengeful.

  She was all of that, and yet it was only pretend. Everything turned to pretense and unreality under the eyes of ice that were watching her, while they in turn were watched by a pair behind them, who were watched by another pair in an infinite perspective.

  All of life’s strong forces were slumbering. She had power for fervent hatred and devoted love for a single night, not more.

  She did not even know if she loved Gösta Berling. She longed to see him, to test whether he could move her outside of herself.

  While the reign of illness lasted, she had only one lucid thought: she had taken care that her illness would not become known. She did not want to see her parents, she did not want reconciliation with her father, and she knew that he would change his mind if he was allowed to see how sick she was. Therefore she ordered that her parents, and everyone else besides, should be told that the troublesome eye disease that always came over her when she visited her home parish forced her to remain indoors behind drawn curtains. She forbade her nurse from saying how sick she was, forbade the cavaliers from fetching a doctor from Karlstad. She had smallpox, to be sure, but only a mild case; there were medicines enough in the cabinet at Ekeby to save her life.

  She never thought about dying; she was simply waiting for a day of health to be able to go to the minister with Gösta and request to have the banns published.

  But now the sickness and fever were gone. She was again cold and sensible. To her it was as though she alone was wise in this world of madmen. She neither hated nor loved. She understood her father; she understood them all. Anyone who understands does not hate.

  She had found out that Melchior Sinclaire intended to have an auction at Björne and be rid of all his possessions, so that she might not inherit anything after him. It was said that he would make the devastation as thorough as possible: first he would sell furniture and household utensils, then the livestock and implements, and finally the farm itself, and he would put all the money in a sack and sink it into the depths of Löven. Her inheritance would be embezzlement, confusion, and devastation. Marianne smiled with approval when she heard this: such was his character, so must he act.

  It seemed strange to her that she had composed the great hymn of love. Like others, she had dreamed of a charcoal burner’s hut. Now it seemed peculiar to her that she had ever had a dream.

  She sighed for nature. She was tired of this constant playacting. She never had a strong feeling. She scarcely grieved for her beauty, but she shuddered at the pity of strangers.

  Oh, one moment of forgetfulness of herself! A gesture, a word, an action that was not calculated!

  One day, when the contagion has been cleared from the rooms and she was dressed, lying on a sofa, she had Gösta Berling summoned. The reply came that he had gone to the auction at Björne.

  It was in truth a great auction at Björne. It was an old, wealthy home. People had come a long way to attend the sale.

  The great Melchior Sinclaire had thrown together all the property of the household into the large drawing room. There were thousands of objects, assembled in piles that reached from the floor to the ceiling.

  He himself had gone round the house like an angel of destruction on judgment day throwing together what he wanted to sell. Things belonging to the kitchen: the black kettles, wooden chairs, pewter tankards, copper pans, all this was left in peace by him, for there was nothing about them that reminded him of Marianne; but this was also the only thing that escaped his wrath.

  He broke into Marianne’s room, devastating everything. Her dollhouse was there and her bookshelf, the little chair he had had made for her, her trinkets and clothes, her bench and bed, all of that must go.

  And then he went from room to room. He snatched up everything he found displeasing and carried large loads down to the auction room. He panted under the weight of sofas and marble tops, but he persevered. And he tossed it all together in frightful confusion. He threw open the sideboards and took out the magnificent family silver. Away with it! Marianne had touched it. He filled his arms with snow-white damask and smooth linen tablecloths with handsbreadth hemstitching, honorably hand crafted work, the fruits of many years of labor, and threw it all down on the piles. Away with it! Marianne was not worthy of owning it. He stormed through the rooms with piles of porcelain, hardly being careful not to break plates by the dozen; he seized the genuine cups on which the family coat of arms was branded. Away with them! May whoever wants to, use them! He threw down mountains of bed linens from the attic: bolsters and pillows so soft that you sank down into them as if into a wave. Away with them! Marianne had slept on them.

  He threw indignant glances at the old, familiar furniture. Was there a chair that she hadn’t sat on once, or a sofa that she hadn’t used, or a picture that she hadn’t looked at, a chandelier that had not illuminated her, a mirror that had not reproduced her features? Gloomily he clenched his fists against this world of memories. He would have gladly rushed at them swinging a club and crushed them into tiny bits and pieces.

  Yet it seemed to be an even more brilliant revenge to have an auction of all t
his. It would all go to strangers! Off to be soiled in crofters’ cottages, to decay under the care of indifferent strangers. Did he not know the chipped auction furniture in farm cottages, fallen into disrepute like his lovely daughter? Away with them! May they stand with torn-open stuffing and worn-off gilding, with broken legs and stained surfaces, and long for their former home! Away with them to all the corners of the sky, so that no eye may find them, no hand collect them!

  When the auction began, he had filled half the room with an unbelievable muddle of piled-up household utensils.

  On the other side of the room he had set up a long counter. Behind it stood the auctioneer making outcries, the scriveners sat there making notes, and Melchior Sinclaire had a cask of liquor standing there. In the other half of the room, in the entryway, and in the yard were the buyers. There were lots of people, much noise and merriment. Purchases were steady, and the auction lively. But at the cask of liquor, with all his property in enormous confusion behind him, sat Melchior Sinclaire, half drunk and half crazy. His hair rose in wiry tufts over his red face, his eyes were rolling, bitter and bloodshot. He shouted and laughed as if he had been in the best of spirits, and he called anyone who made a good offer over to him and offered him a drink.

  Also among those who saw him there was Gösta Berling, who had slipped in among the crowd of buyers, but avoided coming before the eyes of Melchior Sinclaire. He became thoughtful at that sight, and his heart felt a premonition of misfortune.

  He wondered where Marianne’s mother might be during all this. And now he went, intractable in his will, but driven forward by fate, to seek out Mrs. Gustava Sinclaire.

  He had to pass through many doors before he found her. The great iron magnate had a short temper and little patience for lamentation and women’s complaining. He had tired of seeing her tears flow at the fate that had befallen the treasures of her home. He became furious that she could weep for linen and bedsheets, when what was more important was that his lovely daughter herself was lost, and so with clenched fists he had chased her ahead of him through the house out into the kitchen all the way into the pantry.