Читать книгу The Holy Sinner - Thomas Mann - Страница 7

Table of Contents

Now when some months had passed over the land, the Duke remarked a great bewilderment and dismay as well as a pining in his beloved; and her habit, which she shared with him, of sometimes looking sidelong out of the corners of her eyes as though listening, grew constant and permanent, so that she now never seemed able to look otherwise at all, and also her lovely lips were parted with dread.

‘What is it with you, nearest and dearest, precious friend, you only one, what frightens you?’

‘Nothing, no matter.’

Then he found her flung across a table, her face buried in her arms, quite dissolved in tears.

‘Sibylla, sweetheart, now you must tell me all. I can no longer bear your distress and cudgel my brains for its reason, which I find not, upon which, do all I can, I cannot come. Now I implore you, confess it to me!’

‘Ah, fool,’ said she with sobs, her face scarce lifted from her arms. ‘Ah, stupid, sweet at night but utterly stupid by day! What are you asking? Yet there is only one thing which can so fling me into despair and hellish fear, but you do not think of it. O Willo, how could you hide from me that from one’s own brother one can really be made a wife and become a mother? I did not know it and never thought it was possible. But now it is clear as day, or if not quite day, then must it very, very soon be rumoured, however wide and draped and flowing the garments, and we are both, we are all three lost!’

‘What, and you are—’

‘Of course and indeed I am. Why ask? So for long have I been, and bear in extremity my secret and thy fruit. E! Deus, si forz pechiez m’appresset! Willo, Willo, if you knew that a maid could be with child without husband and marriage just from her brother, then you have done very ill by me and yourself and our child as well, for which there is no place at all in God’s wide world except in my love. For I love it already, in its abjectness and its innocence, beyond everything, although, poor thing, it is our punishment. But as I did not know that one’s body can be blest from one’s brother, I mean curst, so also I did not know one can so love one’s punishment. Nothing will I do henceforward but pray that God bless our child, though both of us should roast in the fires of hell.’

Pallid, trembling, the poor wretch stood there, sank down beside her on his knees and mingled his tears with hers. Her hands he covered with kisses, seeking pardon, pressed her wet cheek to his, and his voice, still breaking with youngness, sounded piteous with weeping.

‘Ah, poorest, dearest, best beloved,’ so he wept, ‘how is my heart torn for your sake because of thy extremity and my great guilt! Forgive, forgive me! But can you even forgive me, what helps it and whom? Had we never been born, then this lawless and homeless child would not be, which takes away from ourselves the ground under our feet and renders us both unpossible in the world. For thy sake, beloved, it rends my heart, although in all your despair you are in a measure better off than I. For you can love our punishment with mother love, whereas I cannot love at all but only curse. What a contrary fate! Twenty years and longer had Baduhenna in lawful wedlock with Grimald to wait for us. Yet we were straightway so cruelly blest! Is sin in such haste to bear fruit? I did not know that sin is so fearfully fertile, not I. And then the sin of pride: that it will straightway bear fruit, truly and in faith I have not known that such was its way. But pride, my dearest, poorest thing, was our sin, and that in all the world we would hear of no one else but just of us very special children. Yet some guilt, with all respect be it said, the Lord Grimald, now laid to rest, bears too, not only because he begot us, but also because he was too knightly to you, my sweet, and in jealousy often drove me from your side—that drove me to your bed.—But ah, what helpeth all that? However the guilt be portioned out, lost and ruined are we both, our portion here shame and yonder hell-fire!’

And he wept afresh without words.

Then she left off weeping and said:

‘Duke Wiligis, I like not to see you so. Since you could be a man by night, only too well, then be one also by day. This womanish wailing helps us not out of our plight, which is so frightful that sooth nothing can help us out of it; yet something or other must happen, be it only with regard to our child the innocent and damned, this poor fruit of pride, for whom a status must be found on earth and in heaven, even if we are lost both here and there. So pluck up your heart, be a man, and think.’

He, thus admonished, dried his eyes and cheeks with his kercher, and responded:

‘I am ready and set store by being a man, as well by day. I have wept with you and said much of all sort about apportioned guilt and ill-apportioned fruitfulness. But one can very well at once weep and consider, and mingled with my talking I have silently considered a way out, or, since there is scarcely such a thing for us, then what conclusions must be drawn from our cruel and comfortless state. They can only be harsh, but they must be drawn and indeed we cannot draw them alone, save by one way, that we fling ourselves all three straight down from the highest louver of our donjon into hell. Is it your view that we should each for himself do so?’

‘By no means. I have told you that for the little one I here cherish a place must be found on earth and in heaven, not in hell.’

‘Then we must tell; and even though the words are unwilling to pass those lips, which in bed so fatally cling together, we must force them to confess it all. I have thought of whispering it all, groaning and stammering into the ear of our priest in the confessional, for him to give us counsel from heaven. But that must come in the second place, for meseems worldly counsel is here more urgent than priestly. Now I know in my lands a wise and goodly man, the Sieur Eisengrein, Cons du Châtel, my gouvernail and maistre de courtoisie, of whom I learned venery and light riding and the rules of chivalry. And in other ways too he gave me much good upright counsel, and I did not so greatly care for him, just because he was so stout and upright; and because I knew that our father, the lord Grimald, often called him to counsel. But aside from the fact that his very great uprightness rather weighed on my spirits, my confidence in him was always as solid as his own person. He has ice-grey eyes that look out with shrewdness and goodness from under thick bushy brows, a short grey beard; and he steps out strongly in his cote armour, whereon is embroidered the lyoness that he bears in his shield, suckling a lamb at her teats, the symbol of power and Christenity. To him shall we confess in our extreme need. He shall draw the hard conclusions from our state and be counsellor and judge what shall happen to us unblest ones in this world. If I send my Anaclet to him in his waterburg with urgent summons, he is sure to come.’

It is unbelievable how comforted Sibylla was for the moment by this proposal. Nothing was thereby altered or improved in the desperate case of the brother-sister pair, but to the unblessedly blest maiden it seemed even so that by the mere sending of the squire a way out of their misery was already found; and just so it seemed to her all-too-loved brother as well; so that with heads erect and hand in hand they paced to table behind the pages springing before them. And they had not deceived themselves as to the Sieur Eisengrein’s fealty: for not two weeks had passed, during which the unblest little fruit in the maiden’s womb had fed and waxed apace, when the knight rode with Anaclet across the drawbridge of Beaurepaire, had himself unarmed in the court, and mounted to the chamber where the sinners in hope and trembling awaited him.

He looked just as Wiligis had described him from memory to his beloved, and wore on his cote armour the lyoness suckling the lamb. Stout and stocky he appeared, saluted with fatherly respect, and asked after the Duke’s commands. But the latter spoke with small, stammering voice:

‘Dearest Baron and gouvernail, I have naught to command, rather I and this lovely sister mine have only to ask, yea, to beseech you, for advice and wise guiding; that out of the state and uttermost bredouille in which we find ourselves, you may draw the conclusions which our anxious youth does not know how to draw. For the bredouille is of such a kind that our honour is as good as lost except and unless God illumine your fealty with good counsel and teach you to resolve us to our deliverance. Behold us here!’

And thereupon both, as they had made up beforehand, flung themselves before him on their knees and with tears stretched up their hands to him.

‘Dear noble children,’ said the knight, ‘for God’s love, what do you? This land of greeting would cause me embarrassment even were I your equal. I beg you, make an end of this scene! But you, Duke, give your will words, against which I will never act! If it has to do with revealing to me your distress—well then, I am your servant, and what of counsel I can dispose, be assured that of it you shall dispose. Then speak!’

‘But we will not rise,’ answered the youth, ‘before we have disclosed ourselves, for one can by no means do that standing.’

And right knightly did he take the speech upon himself for both, so that Sibylla need say nothing but only kneel beside him with head bent low—said it all out as it was, and as it was hard to say, even kneeling, stammering, and sometimes quite losing his voice the words fell from his reluctant lips, and the Sieur Eisengrein had often to bend his ear, out of which grew a great grey tuft of heres, to understand the boy’s words. When at length he was silent, the old hero behaved quite splendidly. Not enough can I praise him and must here expressly thank him for his bearing. That was a whole man! He did not raise his voice to cry shame, he uttered no curse nor fell back in his seat, but only said:

‘How bad, how bad is this!’ so he spoke. ‘Oh, dear noble children, how bad! Here you have quite actually slept with each other so the brother’s fruit waxes in the sister’s little belly and you have made your blessed father on both sides a father-in-law as well as a grandfather, all in a very irregular way. For what you, damsel, there nourish is the Lord Grimald’s grandchild in all too direct line; and however he set store by unbroken descent, this is so much too direct that inheritance can no longer be talked of. I see you weep, because you fear shame which threatens you. But whether you really understand what you have set going in the world, that would I well like to know. The greatest disorder have you set up and a bafflement of nature, that she knows neither out nor in, no more than you yourselves. It is God’s will that life shall breed life; but you have made it so that it has overlapped and have made with each other a third brother-sister, or however one is to call this sleeping life. For since the father is brother of the mother, he is uncle to the child, and the mother since she is the father’s sister, is its aunt and fantastically carries her little nephew or niece about in her womb. Such a disorder and confusion have you unthoughted brought into God’s world!’

Wiligis, who had meanwhile stood up and helped his sister to rise, said in answer:

‘Gouvernail, we see it. We see it all ourselves, but much better with help of your words, in its whole evil meaning. But now, lord, for God’s love find us some counsel, for it is unspeakably pressing! Soon comes the time when my sister must lie down, and where shall she recover of the child, without revealing that we have overstepped? As for me, without wanting to step before you, I am considering if I should not in the meantime for the sake of restraint live far from here, and outside the country.’

‘Outside the country?’ asked the Sieur Eisengrein. ‘That is, Lord Duke, very gently put, for in the outlying kingdoms of Christendom under such circumstances as these there will be no place for you. Let me consider!’

And he bethought himself a while with very concentrated mien.

‘What I have to advise, I know,’ said he then. ‘But I give you the advice only on condition that you promise beforehand to follow it without delay or dicker.’

They said:

‘We do.’

‘You, Duke,’ said the knight, ‘should straightway bid all who govern your land, young and old, kinsmen and serving men and those who gave counsel to your father, in short all the best of the land, that they come to court, and give us to know that for the sake of God and your sins (I say sins and not sin) you have resolved to take the Cross upon you and journey to the Holy Sepulchre.—Then ask of us, and request, that we all take the oath of fealty to your sister, that she administer the land as long as you are away, be it even for ever. For travel and travail are close kin and it is possible you do not return but on the journey give up the body which sinned against God in order that your soul may come the easier to Him. In such case, which I would half welcome and half mourn (in truth more mourn), the oath would be so much more necessary in order that she be our liege lady. In presence of all the barons shall you commend her to my lealty and care, which will be bound to please them, for amongst them all I am the richest and most looked up to, since to me belong all the flaxfields round Rousselaere and Thorhout, for all which the glory belongs to God alone. Home to me and my wife will I take the maid, and I vow to afford her all such easements that without any noise she bear her niece or nephew. Take note, I do not advise that on account of her sin she renounce the world, give up her possessions, and shut herself up in a cloister. By no means. Penance for her sin and shame will be afforded far better facilities if her goodness and her goods remain together and she can welcome the poor with them. If she has no more goods, then there remains to her only goodness, and what good is goodness without goods? About as little as goods without goodness. Good seems to be, rather, that she keeps goodness and goods, for thus by means of the goods she can accomplish the goodness. Is my counsel agreeable to you?’

‘It is,’ answered the youth. ‘You have with strong hand drawn the conclusions from our state, harsh as they must be and mild as they may be. Everlasting thanks!’

‘But what,’ asked Sibylla, ‘will become of my dear punishment, my brother’s child, when I have borne it under your protection?’

‘That is a later question,’ answered Sieur Eisengrein, ‘and we will cross that bridge when we come to it. A great deal of advice have I already given you on the spot. You may not demand that I resolve at once everything that is put before me.’

‘Certainly we do not,’ they both assured him. ‘So much already, good sir, have you resolved and are truly like the lyoness at whose teats we lambs drink.’

‘Yes, you are certainly proper shorn lambs,’ said he, not without bitterness. ‘Even so! And now to work! Duke, send out messagers! In all haste must your will and request be told to your gentlemen. You have, we have all three or four no time to lose!’