Читать книгу The Ice People 35 - The Flute - Margit Sandemo - Страница 6

Chapter 1

Their steps crunched faintly on small stones beneath their feet as they moved along the passageway. They could hear a whistling sound from the carbide lamps as the wind rushed through them. Whenever they spoke their voices resounded far off, rolling away or ricocheting against the walls.

Every so often a vast echo was created as they entered enormous vaults over fifty metres high.

Scenes of tremendous beauty revealed themselves to the three young people as they slowly made their way. Dripstone columns of the most fantastic formations succeeded one another: some resembled burnt-down candles in subdued yet brilliant colours; others looked like sleeping trolls. From the ceiling, limestone stalactites reached down, sparkling white or gold or flickering red, and sometimes translucent. From the floor of the cave similar columns poked up, the stalagmites. They reached dizzying heights, and in some places they were so thin that they looked as if they might break off at any minute.

However, they had been standing there, growing infinitesimally, for millennia.

But the three young researchers examined these groups of stones without much interest. This was, after all, the tourist section of the big network of caves. It was well known and mapped. The researchers wanted to take a look at some of the other areas.

A local guide was accompanying them, otherwise they would never have been given permission to walk around in the caves in pitch darkness. But their guide knew the explorers well: this wasn’t the first time they had wandered through the darkness in this way.

All three of them could see the guide’s back far ahead of them, for he was much better accustomed to the ribbed floor in these passageways. Through the ages, the process of erosion had furrowed the bedrock in that way, and in fact it wasn’t often that they came across areas scattered with small stones. For the river that flowed here in prehistoric times had washed everything away, leaving the bedrock bare.

They didn’t talk to one another. They just walked determinedly in silence through the parts that were already familiar to them. For they were now going to explore an area that even their guide didn’t know.

The area was near Adelsberg, in Slovenia.

The year was 1914.

Adelsberg was the Austro-Hungarian name for the place. It was where Sölve Lind of the Ice People had been executed in 1779, when his unhappy little son, Heike, had wept at his fate – the only one in the world able to mourn Sölve of the Ice People.

The Slovenians’ own name for the town was Postojna.

It is where Europe’s greatest and most beautiful limestone caves are situated. As long ago as the thirteenth century, “the old cave” was a known phenomenon. At the moment of his death, Sölve had stared right into the opening of that cave – and understood.

In 1818, it was discovered that the cave system was infinitely bigger than had previously been known. The Pivka River once flowed there, dissolving the limestone and creating the caves. The Pivka now disappears into a gorge high up, and flows down through the enormous network of passageways and cavities under the mountain.

Tourists and cave experts naturally found their way into the system. A passable route was created for tourists, to ensure that they wouldn’t get lost inside the mountain or risk falling down bottomless shafts.

Geological researchers had a bit more freedom, although they too needed guides to show them the way, guides who were robust local men.

Many of those who have visited the Postojna caves claim that one has not truly seen the world from all angles until one has seen these caves.

There is probably some truth in this. You can ride on a small railway about one and a half kilometres into the mountain, and it is a wonderful experience for even the most blasé visitor.

But the overall length of the passages that criss-cross one another inside the mountain are much greater. There are many kilometres of branching passageways, some still unexplored.

In 1914, when the young researchers and their guide were feeling their way through the darkness, there were still large areas that hadn’t been examined, and the railway hadn’t yet been built, of course.

The guide stopped and waited for them to catch up.

In German he said: “We are approaching a narrow shaft now. It’s a good thing that you’re all small and slim. We’ll need to use a rope, because even though the entrance looks flat, it quickly falls away straight down a shaft leading to the next level, about half a rope’s length down.”

They nodded doggedly and got ready.

Sliding down into unfamiliar territory was something they were used to. One by one they softly landed on the floor of the new level and continued behind the guide along a rather inaccessible passage, with stalagmites blocking the way everywhere.

The guide stopped again. “We know this branch up to this point,” he said in a low voice. “I did go farther in with someone else, but ... we turned back.”

“Was it blocked?”

“Not in terms of walking.”

He didn’t say any more. Not about that. But he did add: “They say that others went there. Approximately twenty-five years ago. They, too, had to turn back.”

“For the same reason?”

“I can’t imagine any other. They subsequently died, so there was never an opportunity to ask them.”

The youngest of the three men said boldly: “But we’re going on, aren’t we?”

“Of course,” said the others with confidence.

The guide was silent.

As it turned out, they had a very hard time forcing their way over the next heap of stalagmites, that is, the stone columns growing up from the floor. At times the space was so narrow that they had to elbow their way through, and in one place there were marks left by someone who had attempted to chip away some of the rock wall in order to create a passage.

“That was probably one of those who came here before,” the guide muttered.

One of the lanterns went out, and it was impossible to bring it back to life again. The owner practically felt abandoned.

They continued to fumble their way along the passage, and it felt as though they had been scratching and scraping their hips and knees for a thousand years. Then they stopped.

“What is it?” one of them asked incredulously.

“I can sense that it is still here,” said the guide.

They all sniffed the air.

“Good Lord!” another one murmured.

“Although it’s faint, it’s a horrible stench!” a third one said.

“Let’s go on.”

They continued, somewhat more cautiously than before.

The stench grew stronger. Finally, one of them stopped.

“I ... I can’t stand it anymore. I’m about to be sick!”

Everyone was coughing.

“Did you get this far last time with the others?” someone asked the guide.

“No, not nearly so far.”

“What could it be?”

They sniffed the nauseating smell in an attempt to determine what it was.

“I’ve never experienced anything like it,” one of the men muttered. “There is something frighteningly ancient permeating the rock. A chemical combination!”

“It’s not a dead animal, even though the stench is rotten.”

The guide, who was a simple yet civilized man, said in a subdued voice: “I know it sounds stupid, but I think it smells ... evil somehow. Malicious, that is.”

He laughed a little to take the sting out of his words, but the others didn’t laugh with him.

“I would say the same thing myself,” said one of them.

“Had it not been for the fact that the era of the dragons is over,” said the youngest, “you would have thought we had entered the dragon’s very den.”

”Let’s turn back,” one of the others suggested.

“Just a few more steps,” a third pleaded.

“Not me,” the guide said. “You’ll have to go on your own, then.”

They discussed it for a moment. The youngest one took a few steps and shone his lamp on the way before him.

“We won’t get any farther,” he said flatly.

They turned to see what he was looking at.

In the glow from his lantern they could see the shaft opening at his feet, only to disappear in pitch darkness.

And that was where the stench was coming from. Later, when they were out in the fresh air, they could have sworn that they had seen dust-like steam rising from the abyss.

They never went there again. And no one else did, either. Because the guide blocked up the entrance at the place where they had lowered themselves down with a rope. “Already searched. Danger of death. No value,” he wrote on the sign he had put up.

And the strange thing was that none of them felt like telling anyone else about their experience down there.

In truth, they never had a chance to. One contracted a fearful disease with boils and failing lymph nodes. He died after a very short time. Another developed a tendency to get dizzy and lost his balance while climbing in a cave, plummeting to his death. The third had been so badly affected by the stench – the swamp gas, as he called it – that his lungs were ruined. The same thing happened to the guide.

In other words, no witnesses were left.

The new century had brought many changes with it on every level. Mostly in good ways, but there were also many good things that had disappeared. Verner von Heidenstam’s poem “Sweden” contains the line: “Now bells are ringing where armies used to glitter.”

Alas! It was a long time since sleigh bells had jingled in Sweden’s forests and mountains!

Everything went so fast, the changes came so suddenly, that people, especially the elderly, had difficulty keeping up with them.

In all areas of cultural life, many changes took place in an explosive way.

And in the field of music, all ideas were turned upside down.

Concepts such as polytonal elements, chromatic scales and atonal expressionism emerged. In 1909, Arnold Schoenberg composed “Three piano pieces”, opus 11, and with this work he started a veritable revolution in music. Igor Stravinsky’s ballet The Rite of Spring created havoc at its premiere in Paris. The raw, heathen tones and the varying rhythms were too much for the gala-dressed audience, and several got up and left the hall.

But the new music had come to stay. Many followed in these ground-breaking footsteps – great composers as well as minor, poor ones.

Great experiments were made with different keys, the twelve-tone scale, and gliding, mysterious sounds.

For the Ice People it was catastrophic.

But they didn’t realize it. They didn’t really concern themselves with music and seldom went to a concert.

They knew nothing of the dreadful things that were taking place.

Not until the headstrong young Vetle was paid a visit one night.

But much had happened before then.

At the place where a great Spanish river flows into the sea, an enormous delta has been created, an area of marshland so boundlessly big that you can’t see from one end to the other.

Out of that swampy area, outcrops of rock emerge here and there. Tall, grassy mounds or barren cliffs.

On the summit of one of these crags a castle clung. It was surrounded by an area of a dying forest so swampy that there were only small islands of firm ground in a sea of mud. The forest is gone now, the castle is nothing but barely visible ruins, and the marshland has been drained. But in 1914 it was all still there.

The castle clearly showed the influence of the Moorish period in Spain. But its exterior was now dilapidated, and some of its stones had fallen down into the bog. Inside, however, everything was just as refined as before, with a staff of servants to tend to the extremely eccentric lord of the castle and his family.

It wasn’t too far from the castle to the city of Seville, and the lord, who was musically gifted himself, would often visit the concert halls there.

This man played the flute. He also dabbled in composing pieces of his own, which he shouldn’t have done because he was completely hopeless at it. But he was tremendously interested in the new musical styles of the age and absorbed them all wholesale. He would experiment for hours on end with chromatic scales on his flute, and he used up huge amounts of music paper and never threw anything away. Because everything he wrote was, of course, extremely precious!

Once in a while he actually managed to produce something worth playing. But most of it was mere rubbish: incomplete phrases without style or value.

The marsh that surrounded the castle was rather frightening. Travellers needed to be very familiar with it before venturing across it. A single track led through the swampy terrain to the hill on which the castle stood, and at the beginning of the road there was a gatekeeper’s lodge housing big, aggressive dogs. So the castle was well protected, which suited the lord, Don Miguel, very well. He was, as mentioned, very eccentric: he believed himself to be virtually without peer in the world, the envy of others who wished to see him dead. His loyal servants were carefully selected, trigger-happy and not particularly scrupulous.

Don Miguel saw himself as the genius of the century. What were Schoenberg and Stravinsky compared with him? Rubbish! Forget them! But no one was to steal Don Miguel’s creations, no one would ever be allowed to hear or play them! No one else was to take credit for his great works!

His train of thought was a little bizarre.

And then one day he accidentally came upon a kind of theme on his flute.

A strange theme.

True, the basic idea of the atonal expressionist style was stolen from Schoenberg, but the melody itself was Don Miguel’s own creation.

He didn’t get very far with it, and didn’t have the patience to follow through with his idea. It merely resulted in a few bars that sounded mysterious and incomprehensible.

He managed to jot down the notes in two bars. Then he played them again.

Wrote a few more bars ...

But he never had the chance to play them, because the servant came to remind him about a visit he had to pay in town. The carriage was waiting for him outside.

Careless as he was, Don Miguel threw the sheet of manuscript paper onto a pile of others lying in a beautifully carved chest – and forgot all about it.

But those two bars had already been played ...

Far, far away ...

An echo on the wind?

Notes.

Long, long sought-after notes. Centuries, ages had passed.

In his resting place, Tengel the Evil opened his narrow yellow-grey eyes.

He listened to the echo that was still vibrating in the deepest cavities of the Postojna Cave.

Irritation grew within him.

It had merely been the prelude. So go on, then! Play on!

But the music itself had faded. Only the echo remained.

Play on! That wasn’t enough! More, there must be more, otherwise I can’t ...

But nothing more came.

The beginning ... the beginning had been right! And then – nothing.

He waited for a long time, Tengel the Evil, waited with frenetic, raging impatience. Waited ... waited ...

After a long, long time, he came to realize that someone had been teasing him. Someone who had the capacity to do so. Who was it? And where were they?

He didn’t have time to find out now. Right now he needed to concentrate on how far the notes had managed to release his spellbound body.

In recent centuries he had often been awake. But he had never been able to move.

The disturbance under his chosen mountain had annoyed him a great deal. Big groups of people now walked about in this magnificent hiding place that he had discovered in the thirteenth century. Silence had reigned there then. But it was not so anymore. There were times when they had been into the cave right next to his. It hadn’t been hard to cast a spell on them so they wouldn’t tell anyone about his cave. Still, the whole thing had worried him deeply.

For example, the latest ones to come: they had been there this year. They had come confoundedly close, he could sense them at the very threshold of his cave. Well, they were dead and gone now.

But more might come ...

Tengel the Evil wanted to get up and go out. He deeply loathed his more or less constant state of hibernation. The time had now come for him to take action, finally to seize power over the world and flood it with evil. His evil. So that he could control all the bad qualities of human beings and make slaves of those who were good. Or simply destroy them.

Many were prepared to help and serve him when the time came. Now ... perhaps now he would succeed?

No, how could he? After those few miserable notes?

He took a deep breath, tremendously slowly. Should he try to move?

What if he failed?

Should he lift his hand?

His brain commanded his hand to move, tighten his muscles and lift himself from his resting-place.

No, that was too much.

His malicious brain was already absorbed with thoughts of revenge on the bastard who had taken the liberty of insulting him by merely playing the introductory notes to his signal. He would have to find that devil and torture him to death unless he played the tune to its conclusion.

But the first thing he needed to do was get out of there.

Carefully he nudged one of his index fingers and tried to move it. His terrifyingly long nail had turned into a thick claw and there seemed to be an obstacle, but then it worked!

He was free!

No ...

Instinctively he knew that those few notes couldn’t possibly have been enough.

Damn!

But he had no intention of giving up, this was the closest he had ever come to actually waking up!

So there was no way he was giving up!

If he could move another finger ...

Time passed. Tengel the Evil fought a battle against his reluctant body.

The finger moved.

Could he get his whole hand to move?

Yes!

Yes, it was working now, he was able to lift his whole hand!

The only help he needed was time.

Time? He didn’t have the patience for that now, he had had too much of time. He wanted to get up and get out now!

Get out and seize his terrible power over the human vermin!

What felt like eons of patient time-consuming work passed.

Then he reached a critical point.

With great effort, Tengel the Evil tried to grip with both his hands in order to raise himself.

Slowly, like a mummy about to wake up – which wasn’t so far from the truth – he lifted his head from his resting place of centuries. He sensed it in his body: every tendon ached, and rotten, stinking clouds rose around him.

But he didn’t pay attention to that. He had lived with that stench for centuries and he thrived in it.

He hardly felt the rocky ground around him trembling as though from fear, as the whole cave system rumbled, the stinking vapour rose from the cave and drifted up through the passages, and the tourists in the public areas fled in panic back out into the daylight.

It was beneath Tengel the Evil’s dignity to concern himself with those sorts of things.

He was sitting up! He was sitting upright for the first time since 1295, when he had taken refuge here.

It was a strange feeling. The evil sizzled within him and he felt infinitely strong! His time had come!

And it was going to be long-lasting. Hadn’t he been promised eternal life?

The world was now going to see what Tengel the Evil was capable of.

But, alas! It was all going so slowly! He could barely move, and his brain was working at an alarmingly sluggish pace.

Which wasn’t good. For he had to be strong if he was going to conquer the whole world, which he couldn’t do in his present state.

The truth rushed in on him, followed by a wave of limitless disappointment.

He was able to use only half his resources.

Tengel the Evil uttered a long curse in his own, Altaic language. His people had had their own evil deities, whom they could invoke.

But his hatred was deepest for those who had betrayed him, made fun of him and scorned him in the current era.

They would be the first to experience a taste of his anger!

And here he was, still spellbound, slow and helpless like a child! Damn, damn, damn!

But never mind! Despite everything, he would manage with the resources he still possessed. It was now or never!

Laboriously, he continued his resurrection.

It was like trying to move a colossus with feet of clay. Nothing worked as he wished it to, he had to make a great effort to achieve every tiny move and then take a rest afterwards.

That pack – the Ice People! His own descendants!

They were soon going to pay!

They were the ones in whom he had initially put his trust. And then his namesake had emerged, someone who had made them turn their backs on him, Tengel the Evil! Yes, before that Tengel the Good (he grimaced at the mere thought of the word “good”), before him there had been other renegades. Not many but ...

His rage threatened to stifle him. He mustn’t waste his energy on things that were irrelevant.

But which members of the Ice People should he attack? Were there any that were dangerous?

The confounded Benedikte. She was still alive. But there were no stricken ones in the next generation. A child who had belonged to the clan had been killed on the bank of a mountain river. No, not killed. It had died of natural causes. What a shame!

The other living members of the family he didn’t care about. They were just waste.

Oh, he knew all about his own descendants!

Except ...

Except for one?

The one who was hiding. Who was it? The one who counteracted him so efficiently time and again and whom he couldn’t get to grips with? It wasn’t one of the ancestors, it was someone who was alive! That wretched creature, where was he to be found? Or was there more than one?

Tengel the Evil sat for a long time in a state of deep hatred, which exhausted him far too rapidly.

Then his abominable face suddenly lit up, if you could refer to light when speaking of him.

He had another one now. A slave, a loyal helper!

Someone about whom the Ice People knew nothing.

Of course, he could call on a host of like-minded subordinates, but he didn’t plan to use them just yet, he was saving them for the day he conquered the world.

No, he would manage just fine with one.

Tengel the Evil hadn’t contacted this helper. But he might have to now. If it became necessary, that is, if he continued to have problems moving as much as he wanted to. He would have to see.

Time passed. It was dark outside. The caves were empty.

With an enormous effort, he managed to get to his feet and stagger slowly towards the opening of his cave.

Oh, he was moving so slowly, and making his brain work was an enormous effort.

Great clouds of stinking dust emanating from himself made it hard for him to see what lay ahead.

Night was his time – this was when he had the strength to wake up ...

He was standing in an archway. In the ceiling he discerned a gap. Although it was pitch black in the caves, his eyes could penetrate the darkness. It was the same gap that the three researchers and their guide had looked down into and which had made them turn back.

They had been so close to Tengel the Evil’s hiding place that it had cost them their lives.

The small, ghastly creature, grey-green with age and evil, looked up and calculated his strength.

It wasn’t impressive, however annoying it was for him to admit that. Would his brain power be able to manage it?

The power he had received at the time when he had reached the black source of evil ... the very source of the power of darkness ...

He crouched and prepared to jump. If he failed now, everything would have been in vain. This was his only chance.

Like a vulture trying to take off, Tengel the Evil ascended laboriously and slowly towards the opening in the ceiling. His cape, which had once been black but was now dusty grey, fluttered about him as he extended his arms with the clawlike hands in order to gain momentum. The terrible stinking dust filled the entire cave, but up he came. He stretched his thin, wrinkled neck towards the opening in his frenetic eagerness to reach it – and then he was there. Triumphant and vindictive, he landed on the level above, where the three researchers had recently stopped.

If only his legs would move a little faster. But his limbs wouldn’t obey him properly as he dragged himself through the passageways, impatient and irritated. At last he reached the opening that the guide had barricaded and where he had put up a sign. Tengel the Evil tore it all away with a single, furious motion of his hand, but he had to stop to catch his breath for his wavering power had been sorely taxed.

Damn, he couldn’t do anything properly! And damn that idiot who hadn’t managed to play that melody all the way through. He would be the first to die: crushing that creature would be an utterly joyful act!

But not until he had played the tune in its entirety, of course!

Tengel had recovered now. He was able to continue. His eyes searched the darkness, he sniffed the night air. There ... that was the direction he had to go in!

What had they done to his mountain? What was all this? Traces of humanity were to be found everywhere!

But then, what did he care about the cave now? He had to get out, his freedom was just outside the door ...

There! Finally, dragging himself along with stiff strides, he was able to see a dim light ahead of him. He dragged himself forward the last part of the way.

He would have to conceal himself once he was safely out, conceal his identity so no one would register his presence. No one!

That was extremely important.

And then ... then ... he was there!

The sky. The stars.

After six hundred and nineteen years Tengel the Evil was out in the world he planned to conquer.

It was already his. Wielding power over humanity had been one of the promises he had been given at the source of evil.

The other promise was eternal life.