Читать книгу Last Tales - Karen Blixen - Страница 5

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When the great old master, the sculptor Leonidas Allori, whom they called the Lion of the Mountains, was arrested for rebellion and high treason and condemned to death, his pupils wept and stormed. For to them he had been spiritual father, archangel and immortal. They assembled in Pierino’s hostelry outside the town, in a studio or in an attic, where they could sob, two or three, in each other’s arms, or—like a big tree in a gale with its bare branches reaching upward—crowded in a cluster could shake ten pairs of clenched fists to the sky, in a cry for rescue of their beloved, and for revenge on tyranny.

Only one out of all of them in those days continued to live as if he had neither heard nor understood the terrible news. And that one was the disciple whom the master had loved above all others, whom he had called son, as the young man had called him father. Angelo Santasilia’s schoolfellows took his silence to be the expression of infinite sorrow; they respected his pain and left him alone. But the real reason for Angelo’s absence of mind was that his heart was filled with passion for the master’s young wife, Lucrezia. The love and understanding between her and him just at this time had gone so far that she had promised him her total surrender.

In vindication of the faithless wife it must be pleaded that for a long time, and in deep agitation and alarm, she had resisted the divine and merciless power which held her in its hands. With the most sacred names she had sealed—and had made her lover seal—an oath: that never again should word or glance at which the master himself could not have rejoiced pass between the two. As she felt that neither of them could keep the oath, she entreated Angelo to go to Paris to study. Everything was prepared for his journey. It was only when she realized that this resolve could not be carried out, either, that she gave herself up to her destiny.

The faithless disciple, too, might have pleaded extenuating circumstances, even if these might not have been accepted by every judge or juryman. Angelo in his young life had had many love affairs, and in every single case had surrendered himself utterly to his passion, but none of these adventures had ever for any length of time left a deep impression on his being. It was inevitable that, someday, one of them must become the most important of all. And it was reasonable, it was perhaps inevitable, that the chosen mistress should be the wife of his teacher. He had loved no human being as he had loved Leonidas Allori; no other human being had he at any time whole-heartedly admired. He felt that he had been created by the hands of his master, as Adam by the hands of the Lord; from these same hands he was to accept his mate. The Duke of Alba, in Spain, who was a handsome and brilliant man, married a plain and simple-minded lady of the court and remained faithful to her, and when his friends, amazed at the fact, jestingly questioned him upon it, he answered them that the Duchess of Alba must needs, in her own right, and irrespective of personal qualities, be the most desirable woman in the world. So it was with the disloyal pupil. Once his strong amorous urge was joined with that great art which to him was the highest ideal of all—and was, moreover, coupled with a deep personal devotion—a fire was kindled, which later on he himself could not restrict.

Neither was Leonidas himself without blame in regard to the two young people. Day by day, in conversations with his favorite pupil, he had dwelt on Lucrezia’s beauty. While making the young woman pose for his lovely and immortal Psyche with the Lamp he called upon Angelo to try, at his side in the studio, his hand at the same task, and did indeed interrupt his own work in order to point out the beauties in the living, breathing and blushing body before them, enraptured and inspired as in front of a classic work of art. Of this strange understanding between the old and the young artist neither of them was really conscious, and if a third person had spoken to them of it, they would have rebuffed him with indifference, perhaps with impatience. The one who suspected it was the woman, Lucrezia. And through it she suspected—at the same time with a kind of dismay and giddiness—the hardness and coldness which may be found in the hearts of men and artists, even with regard to the ones whom these hearts do embrace with deepest tenderness. Her own heart lamented, in complete loneliness, much as a lamb laments when led by its shepherd to the shamble.

As now, through various unusual occurrences in his daily life, Leonidas realized that he was being watched and followed, and as from this fact he concluded that he was in great danger, he was seized so deeply by the idea of his own death, and of the approaching end to his artistic career, that his whole being closed round it. He spoke no word of his danger to the people surrounding him, because these people, in the course of a few weeks, to him had become infinitely distant and thus, in accordance with the law of perspective, infinitely small. He might have wished to complete the work on which he was engaged, but soon his work, too, to him seemed an unreasonable and inconvenient distraction from the matter which really engrossed him. In the last days before his arrest, he stepped out of his isolation, unwontedly gentle and considerate toward all those around him. He now also sent Lucrezia away to the house of a friend, the owner of a vineyard, in the mountains a few miles from town. As, in order to give a reason for this arrangement—for he did not wish her to have any suspicion of the actual position—he explained to her that she looked pale and feverish, he himself believed that he was using a casual pretense to persuade her to leave him, and he smiled at the deep concern with which she received his command.

She at once sent word to Angelo and told him of her husband’s decision. The lovers, who in anguish had been seeking an opportunity to meet and fulfill their love, looked each other in the eyes in triumphant certainty that now, and from now on, all powers of life were uniting to serve them, and that their passion was the loadstone which according to its will attracted and ranged everything around them. Lucrezia before now had visited the farm; she instructed Angelo as to how, by a certain path in the mountains, he could approach the house unseen, and come to her window. The window faced west, the moon would be in her first quarter, she would be able to discern the figure of her lover between the vines. When he picked up a pebble from the ground and threw it against the windowpane, she would open the window. As, in the course of their deliberation, they came to this moment, the voices of both faltered. To regain his equilibrium Angelo told her that for the nocturnal journey he had bought himself a large and fine cloak of violet goat’s wool with brown embroidery, which a friend from the country, who was hard up for the moment, had offered him. All this they discussed in Lucrezia’s room next to the studio where the master was working, and with the door to it open. The meeting, they decided, was to take place on the second Saturday evening.

They parted; and just as, all through the following week, the thought of death and eternity accompanied the master, the thought of Lucrezia’s body against his own accompanied the young disciple. This thought, without having at any time really left him, constantly seemed to return to him anew like a forgotten, surprising, joyful message—“Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my undefiled: for my head is filled with dew, and my locks with the drops of the night. Thou art all fair, my love; there is no spot in thee. I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine.”

On Sunday morning Leonidas Allori was arrested and taken to prison. In the course of the week several interrogations of him followed, and possibly the old patriot might have justified himself in some of the accusations brought against him. But in the first place the government was resolved this time to make an end of such a dangerous enemy, and in the second place the accused himself was resolved not to upset, by any ups and downs, the sublime balance of mind he had attained. There was from the very beginning no real doubt as to the outcome of the case. Judgment was passed, and orders were given that next Sunday morning that most famous son of the people should be stood up against the prison wall, to fall against the cobbles with six bullets in his breast.

Toward the end of the week the old artist asked to be paroled for twelve hours in order to go to the place where his wife was staying, and to take leave of her.

His plea was refused. But such great strength had this man still in him, and with such an aura of radiance did his fame and his integrity of heart surround his person, that his words could not die quickly in the ears of those to whom they were addressed. The last request of the condemned man was brought up again and weighed by his judges, even after he himself had give up hope.

It so happened that the topic was raised in a house where Cardinal Salviati was present.

“No doubt,” said His Eminence, “clemency here might set a dangerous precedent. But the country—and the royal house itself which possesses some of his works—is in debt to Allori. This man has often by his art restored men’s faith in themselves—maybe men should now have faith in him.”

He thought the matter over and continued: “It is said that the master—do they not call him the Lion of the Mountains?—is deeply loved by his pupils. We might find out if he has really been able to awaken a devotion which will defy death. We might, in his case, make use of the old rule which will allow a prisoner to leave his prison for a specified period, on the condition that he produce a hostage to die in his stead, if he does not return in time.

“Allori,” said the Cardinal, “last summer did me the honor of executing the reliefs on my villa at Ascoli. He had with him there his beautiful young wife and a very handsome young disciple, Angelo by name, whom he called his son. We might let Leonidas know that he can obtain his freedom for a period of twelve hours, during which, as he wishes, he can take leave of his wife. But the condition will be that this young Angelo shall enter the prison cell as he himself leaves it, and that it will be made clear to both the old and the young artist that at the expiration of the twelve hours, at all events an execution will be carried out in the prison yard.”

A feeling that in the circumstances it would be correct to decide on something unconventional made the powerful gentlemen with whom the matter rested accept the Cardinal’s suggestion. The condemned man was informed that his request had been granted, and on which conditions. Leonidas sent word to Angelo.

The young artist was not in his room when his schoolfellows came to bring him the message and to fetch him to prison. Even though he had not paid any attention to the sorrow of his friends, it had nevertheless upset and distressed him, since at this moment he himself conceived the universe as perfect in beauty and harmony, and life in itself as boundless grace. He had kept apart from his fellows in a sort of antagonism, just as in respect and commiseration they had kept apart from him. He had traveled afoot the long way to the Duke of Miranda’s villa to see a recently unearthed Greek statue of the god Dionysus. Still without really knowing it, he had wished and resolved to have a powerful work of art confirm his conviction of the divinity of the world.

His friends thus had to wait for him a long time in a small room high above the narrow street. When the chosen one finally entered, they pounced on him from all sides and informed him of the sad honor that awaited him.

So little had the master’s favorite understood the nature and extent of the misfortune that had befallen himself and all of them, that the messengers had to repeat their tidings to him. When at last he comprehended, he stood petrified for a while, in the deepest grief. In the manner of a sleepwalker he inquired about the sentence and the execution, and his comrades, with tears in their eyes, gave him their answers. But when they came to the offer made to Leonidas, and the prisoner’s request for Angelo, light returned to the young man’s eyes and color to his cheeks. He asked his friends, indignantly, why they had not informed him at once—then without words he tore himself from their grasp to hasten to the prison.

But on the doorstep he stopped, seized by the solemnity of the moment. He had walked a long way and had slept on the grass, his clothes were covered with dust, and he had torn a rent in one sleeve. He did not wish to appear before his master like this today. He lifted his big new cloak from the hook on which it hung, and put it on.

The warders in the prison knew in advance of his coming. He was led to the condemned man’s cell, and let in. He threw himself into his master’s arms.

Leonidas Allori calmed him. To make the young man forget the present, he turned the conversation round to the stellar heavens, of which he had often talked with his son, and in the knowledge of which he had instructed him. Soon his great gaze and deep, clear voice lifted his pupil up there with him, as if the two of them, hand in hand, had slipped back many years, and were now speaking together all by themselves in a lofty, carefree world. Only when the teacher had seen the tears dry on the pale young face did he return to the ground, and he asked his pupil if he was indeed prepared to spend, in his place, the night in the prison. Angelo replied that he knew he was.

“I thank you, my son,” said Leonidas, “for giving me twelve hours which will be of boundless importance to me.

“Aye, I believe in the immortality of the soul,” he continued, “and perhaps the eternal life of the spirit is the one true reality. I do not know yet, but I shall know tomorrow. But this physical world around us, these four elements—earth, water, air and fire—are these not realities as well? And is not also my own body—my marrow-filled bones, my flowing, never-pausing blood, and my five glorious senses—divinely true? Others think that I am old. But I am a peasant and of peasant stock, and our soil to us has been a stern, bountiful nurse. My muscles and sinews are but firmer and harder than when I was a youth, my hair is as luxurious as it was then, my sight is not in the least impaired. All these my faculties I shall now leave here behind me, for as my spirit goes forth on new paths, the earth—my own well-loved Campania—will take my honest body in her honest arms and will make it one with herself. But I wish to meet Nature face to face once more, and to hand it over to her in full consciousness, as in a gentle and solemn conversation between friends. Tomorrow I shall look to the future, I shall collect myself and prepare myself for the unknown. But tonight I shall go out, free in a free world, among things familiar to me. I shall observe the rich play of light of the sunset, and after that the moon’s divine clarity, and the ancient constellations of the stars round her. I shall hear the song of running water and taste its freshness, breathe the sweetness and bitterness of trees and grass in the darkness and feel the soil and the stones under the soles of my feet. What a night awaits me! All gifts given to me I shall gather together into my embrace, to give them back again in profound understanding, and with thanks.”

“Father,” said Angelo, “the earth, the water, the air and the fire must needs love you, the one in whom none of their gifts have been wasted.”

“I believe that myself, son,” said Leonidas. “Always, from the time when I was a child in my home in the country, have I believed that God loved me.

“I cannot explain to you—for the time is now but short—how, or by what path, I have come to understand in full God’s infinite faithfulness toward me. Or how I have come to realize the fact that faithfulness is the supreme divine factor by which the universe is governed. I know that in my heart I have always been faithful to this earth and to this life. I have pleaded for liberty tonight in order to let them know that our parting itself is a pact.

“Then tomorrow I shall be able to fulfill my pact with great Death and with things to come.” He spoke slowly, and now stopped and smiled. “Forgive my talking so much,” he said. “For a week I have not talked to a person whom I loved.”

But when he spoke again his voice and mien were deeply serious.

“And you, my son,” he said, “you, whom I thank for your faithfulness throughout our long happy years—and tonight—be you also always faithful to me. I have thought of you in these days, between these walls. I have fervently wished to see you once again, not for my own sake, but in order to tell you something. Yes, I had got much to say to you, but I must be brief. Only this, then, I enjoin and implore you: keep always in your heart the divine law of proportion, the golden section.”

“Gladly, gladly do I remain here tonight,” said Angelo. “But even more gladly would I tonight go with you, such as, many nights, we have wandered together.”

Leonidas smiled again. “My road tonight,” he said, “under the stars, by the grass-grown, dewy mountain paths, takes me to one thing, and to one alone. I will be, for one last night, with my wife, with Lucrezia. I tell you, Angelo, that in order that man—His chief work, into the nostrils of whom He had breathed the breath of life—might embrace and become one with the earth, the sea, the air and the fire, God gave him woman. In Lucrezia’s arms I shall be sealing, in the night of leave-taking, my pact with all these.” He was silent for a few moments, and motionless.

“Lucrezia,” he then said, “is a few miles from here, in the care of good friends. I have, through them, made sure that she has learned nothing of my imprisonment or my sentence. I do not wish to expose my friends to danger, and they shall not know, tonight, that I come to their house. Neither do I wish to come to her as a man condemned to death, with the breath of the grave on me, but our meeting shall be like our first night together, and its secrecy to her shall mean a young man’s fancy and a young lover’s folly.”

“What day is it today?” Angelo suddenly asked.

“What day?” Leonidas repeated. “Do you ask that of me—me who have been living in eternity, not in time? To me this day is called: the last day. But stay, let me think. Why, my child, to you, and to the people around you, today is named Saturday. Tomorrow is Sunday.

“I know the road well,” he said a short while later, thoughtfully, as if he were already on his journey. “By a mountain path I approach her window from behind the farm. I shall pick up a pebble and throw it against the windowpane. Then she will awake and wonder, she will go to her window, discern me amongst the vines, and open it.”

His mighty chest moved as he drew his breath.

“Oh, my child and my friend,” he exclaimed, “you know this woman’s beauty. You have dwelt in our house and have eaten at our table, you know, too, the gentleness and gaiety of her mind, its childlike tranquillity and its inconceivable innocence. But what you do not know, what nobody knows in the whole world but I, is the infinite capacity of her body and soul for surrender. How that snow can burn! She has been to me all glorious works of art of the world, all of them in one single woman’s body. Within her embrace at night my strength to create in the daytime was restored. As I speak to you of her, my blood lifts like a wave.” After some seconds he closed his eyes. “When I come back here tomorrow,” he said, “I shall come with my eyes closed. They will lead me in here from the gate, and later, at the wall, they will bind a cloth before my eyes. I shall have no need of these eyes of mine. And it shall not be the black stones, nor the gun barrels, that I shall leave behind in these my dear, clear eyes when I quit them.” Again he was silent for a while, then said in a soft voice: “At times, this week, I have not been able to recall the line of her jaw from ear to chin. At daybreak tomorrow morning I shall look upon it, so that I shall never again forget it.”

When again he opened his eyes, his radiant gaze met the gaze of the young man. “Do not look at me in such pain and dread,” he said, “and do not pity me. I do not deserve that of you. Nor—you will know it—am I to be pitied tonight. My son, I was wrong: tomorrow, as I come back, I shall open my eyes once more in order to see your face, which has been so dear to me. Let me see it happy and at peace, as when we were working together.”

The prison warder now turned the heavy key in the lock and came in. He informed the prisoners that the clock in the prison tower showed a quarter to six. Within a quarter of an hour one of the two must leave the building. Allori answered that he was ready, but he hesitated a moment.

“They arrested me,” he said to Angelo, “in my studio and in my working smock. But the air may grow colder as I get into the mountains. Will you lend me your cloak?”

Angelo removed the violet cloak from his shoulders and handed it to his teacher. As he fumbled at his throat with the hook, with which he was unfamiliar, the master took the young hand that helped him, and held it.

“How grand you are, Angelo,” he said. “This cloak of yours is new and costly. In my native parish a bridegroom wears a cloak like this on his wedding day.

“Do you remember,” he added as he stood ready to go, in the cloak, “one night, when together we lost our way in the mountains? Suddenly you collapsed, exhausted and cold as ice, and whispered that it was impossible for you to go any farther. I took off my cloak then—just as you did now—and wrapped it around us both. We lay the whole night together in each other’s arms, and in my cloak you fell asleep almost immediately, like a child. You are to sleep tonight too.”

Angelo collected his thoughts, and remembered the night of which the master was speaking. Leonidas had always been a far more experienced mountaineer than he himself, as altogether his strength had always exceeded his own. He recalled the warmth of that big body, like that of a big friendly animal in the dark, against his own numb limbs. He remembered, further, that as he woke up the sun had risen, and all mountain slopes had become luminous in its rays. He had sat up, then, and had cried out, “Father, this night you have saved my life.” From his breast came a groan, wordless.

“We will not take leave tonight,” said Leonidas, “but tomorrow morning I shall kiss you.”

The jailer opened the door and held it open, while the towering, straight figure stepped over the threshold. Then the door was once more shut, the key turned in the lock, and Angelo was alone.

Within the first seconds he felt the fact that the door was locked, and that nobody could come in to him, as an incomparable favor. But immediately after, he fell to the floor, like a man struck by, and crushed beneath, a falling rock.

In his ears echoed the voice of the master. And before his eyes stood the figure of the master, illuminated by the radiance of a higher world, of Art’s infinite universe. From this world of light, which his father had once opened to him, he was now cast down into darkness. After the one whom he had betrayed had gone from him, he was completely alone. He dared not think of the stellar heavens, nor of the earth, nor of the sea, nor of the rivers, nor of the marble statues that he had loved. If at this moment Leonidas Allori himself had wanted to save him, it would not have been possible. For to be unfaithful is to be annihilated.

The word “unfaithful” was now flung on him from all angles, like a shower of flints on the man who is being stoned, and he met it on his knees, with hanging arms, like a man stoned. But when at last the shower slackened, and after a silence the words “the golden section” rose and echoed, subdued and significant, he raised his hands and pressed them against his ears.

And unfaithful, he thought after a time, for the sake of a woman. What is a woman? She does not exist until we create her, and she has no life except through us. She is nothing but body, but she is not body, even, if we do not look at her. She claims to be brought to life, and requires our soul as a mirror, in which she can see that she is beautiful. Men must burn, tremble and perish, in order that she may know that she exists and is beautiful. When we weep, she weeps, too, but with happiness—for now she has proof that she is beautiful. Our anguish must be kept alive every hour, or she is no longer alive.

All my creative power, his thoughts went on, if things had gone as she wished, would have been used up in the task of creating her, and of keeping her alive. Never, never again would I have produced a great work of art. And when I grieved over my misfortune, she would not understand, but would declare, “Why, but you have me!” While with him—with him, I was a great artist!

Yet he was not really thinking of Lucrezia, for to him there was in the world no other human being than the father whom he had betrayed.

Did I ever believe, Angelo thought, that I was, or that I might become, a great artist, a creator of glorious statues? I am no artist, and I shall never create a glorious statue. For I know now that my eyes are gone—I am blind!

After a further lapse of time his thoughts slowly turned away from eternity and back to the present.

His master, he thought, would walk up the path and stop near the house, among the vines. He would pick up a pebble from the ground and throw it against the windowpane, and then she would open the window. She would call to the man in the violet cloak, such as she was wont to do at their meetings, “Angelo!” And the great master, the unfailing friend, the immortal man, the man sentenced to death, would understand that his disciple had betrayed him.

During the previous day and night Angelo had walked far and slept but little, and the whole of the last day he had not eaten. He now felt that he was tired unto death. His master’s command: “You are to sleep tonight,” came back to him. Leonidas’ commands, when he had obeyed them, had always led him right. He slowly rose to his feet and fumbled his way to the pallet where his master had lain. He fell asleep almost immediately.

But as he slept, he dreamed.

He saw once more, and more clearly than before, the big figure in the cloak walk up the mountain path, stop and bend down for the pebble and throw it against the pane. But in the dream he followed him farther, and he saw the woman in the man’s arms—Lucrezia! And he awoke.

He sat up on the bed. Nothing sublime or sacred was any longer to be found in the world, but the deadly pain of physical jealousy stopped his breath and ran through him like fire. Gone was the disciple’s reverence for his master, the great artist; in the darkness the son ground his teeth at his father. The past had vanished, there was no future to come, all the young man’s thoughts ran to one single point—the embrace there, a few miles away.

He came to a sort of consciousness, and resolved not to fall asleep again.

But he did fall asleep again, and dreamed the same, but now more vividly and with a multitude of details, which he himself disowned, which his imagination could only have engendered when in his sleep he no longer had control of it.

As after this dream he was once more wide awake, a cold sweat broke out over his limbs. From the pallet he noticed some glowing embers on the fireplace; he now got up, set his naked foot upon them and kept it there. But the embers were almost dead, and went out under his foot.

In the next dream he himself, silent and lurking, followed the wanderer on the mountain path and through the window. He had his knife in his hand, he leaped forward, and plunged it first in the man’s heart, then in hers, as they lay clasped in one another’s arms. But the sight of their blood, mingled, soaking into the sheet, like a red-hot iron, burned out his eyes. Half awake, once more sitting up, he thought, But I do not need to use the knife. I can strangle them with my hands.

Thus passed the night.

When the turnkey of the prison awakened him, it was light. “So you can sleep?” said the turnkey. “So you really trust the old fox? If you ask me, I should say he has played you a fine trick. The clock shows a quarter to six. When it strikes, the warden and the colonel will come in, and take whichever bird they find in the cage. The priest is coming later. But your old lion is never coming. Honestly—would you or I come, if we were in his shoes?”

When Angelo succeeded in understanding the words of the turnkey, his heart filled with indescribable joy. There was nothing more to fear. God had granted him this way out: death. This happy, easy way out. Vaguely, through his aching head one thought ran: And it is for him that I die. But the thought sank away again, for he was not really thinking of Leonidas Allori, or of any person in the world round him. He felt only one thing: that he himself, within the last moment, had been pardoned.

He got up, washed his face in a basin of water brought by his guard, and combed his hair back. He now felt the pain of the burn in his foot and again was filled with gratitude. Now he also remembered the master’s words about God’s faithfulness.

The turnkey looked at him and said, “I took you for a young man yesterday.”

After some time footsteps could be heard up the stone-paved passage, and a faint rattling. Angelo thought, Those are the soldiers with their carbines. The heavy door swung open, and between two gendarmes, who held his arms, entered Allori. In accordance with his words the evening before, he let himself be led forward with closed eyes by the warders. But he felt or perceived where Angelo was standing and took a step toward him. He stood silent before him, unhooked his cloak, lifted it from his own shoulders and laid it around the young man’s. In this movement the two were brought close, body to body, and Angelo said to himself, Perhaps, after all, he will not open his eyes and look at me. But whenever had Allori not kept a given word? The hand which—as it put the cloak round him—rested against Angelo’s neck forced his head a little forward, the large eyelids trembled and lifted, and the master looked into the eyes of the disciple. But the disciple could never afterward remember or recall the look. A moment later he felt Allori’s lips on his cheek.

“Well, now!” cried the turnkey with surprise in his voice. “Welcome back! We were not expecting you. Now you must take potluck! And you,” he added, turning to Angelo, “you can go your way. There are still a few minutes to six o’clock. My lords are not coming till after it has struck. The priest is coming later. Things are done with precision here. And fair—as you know—is fair.”