Читать книгу The Holy Sinner - Thomas Mann - Страница 9

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There was no need of that at all, for the infant which the maiden mother brought in her hour to the light of day screamed to heart’s content, a boy so finely shaped and well made that it was a marvel to see, with long lashes, longish skull, brown hair, and lovely features, like the mother and also the uncle, in short so pretty that Dame Eisengrein confessed: ‘Indeed and deed, I had wished me a mægde, but this one here is quite right with me.’

Six months had her dear prisoner sat in the chamber like a Strasbourg goose, then she came to her labour and lying-in, with the lady of the castle quite alone to aid her, for it must all come about without scandal and the midwif allowed no one in. That was hot work, for although it was the summer season, Dame Eisengrein had fanned up a blazing fire in the chimney (she held that to be good) and both their faces were swollen, scarlet, and sweating at their work under the bed-canopy.

But everything went as nature would, as favourably and regularly as though the child were not at all begotten in such sin with its own flesh and blood but as it should be with a stranger man. The women quite forgot the sin; it escaped them entirely that on this earth there was no place for this perfectly acceptable and winsome infant. When it was washed and swaddled they were both on fire to show it to the master Eisengrein, that he might share in their joy. So then he came, summoned by the lady of the castle, looked at the newborn, and spoke:

‘Yes, it is a splendid babe and more princely, that I must confess, than it ought to be, seeing it was born of such great sin. In short, it is a pity, I too have eyes and a heart and deny it not. Only I ask: What shall we do with it now?’

‘Do?’ cried the young mother in terror.

‘Would you kill it then, you Herod?’ asked Dame Eisengrein.

‘I, kill?’ So he. ‘Woman, would you put on me the murder of this fine child? Dead,’ said he, ‘it came into the world, though it lives, that is the dilemma, and it has no status, even though it is here. That is the contradiction which you present me to resolve, and call me all sorts of names on top of it. Shall the boy grow up here in the chamber? For outside it no man’s eye must see him. I have not made the gentlemen of this land swear to this maiden that she be our liege lady for now her transgression and shame to become open and my honour go hence with hers. But you women have brains like sparrows, with feeling only for fine plump children but none at all for honour and politics.’

Then the two women wept: Sibylla wept into her pale hands under the bed-canopy, and Dame Eisengrein, who held the infant in her arms, wet it with her tears.

‘I will consider,’ he said, ‘and reflect carefully what we can best do. Only such names as you named me, I cannot permit.’ Then he chucked the infant a little under the chin with his finger. ‘Hey, you young sprig you, hey, chickabiddy, poor sinner, don’t be downcast, there will some half way be found, and some sort of counsel.’

But another day he spoke to his wife in the hall:

‘Eisengrein, best for us to do as little as possible with this fine child but give it wholly into God’s hand. He must know what He means to do with the homeless, and whether it is to live or die, let us put that in all humility up to Him. I vote that we only do just what is necessary in order to give the boy entirely into God’s hand, no more and no less. Therefore I have resolved to put him out to sea, but, with the carefulness with which I do it, to indicate to God that we, for our part, would be glad if He would save the child. I will put it in a little tun, I have my eye on one already, very solid and good, and this tun in a boat, which we will give to the waves. If they swallow it, so much the worse, then it was God’s providence, not ours, for we have taken every care. But if His hand bear bark and barrel somewhere to shore, where people live, then may the little one be brought up there as a foundling and be glad of life in the way of the land and his rank in it. What do you think?’

‘Meseems God gave you, my lord, but a harsh good nature,’ spoke the woman, and repeated to Sibylla, sitting on her bed, all that her wedded lord had opened to her. She held the child to her mother-breast and wailed aloud, so that the little one was feared, lost the nipple, and screwed up his face in bitter wailing.

‘Alas and woe, my sweet punishment whom I so love, since first it stirred within me! The one thing remaining me from my beloved, gift of his body, which I cherished in suffering and in such great heat brought into the world! O Knight Eisengrein, O monster, is this your fealty and lealty? Ah, tu es mult de pute foi! And did you call him chickabiddy and promise good counsel, now to fling him to the wild waves in a little tun, but I, whether he die or live as foundling, shall in no case ever see him more with my eyes? No, no, I cannot bear it! Rather shall you put me too in the cask, me too along, that the wild waves swallow us both, me and my child, my precious pledge! Oh woe, Mother Eisengrein, as you helped me at my hour, help me now too, for I despair!’

‘Now listen, lady mine, one must after all be reasonable,’ the old dame advised her soothingly. ‘What land of little cag would that have to be into which you both could go, on the ondes so wild? The one he has in mind, the good solid one, is much too small for both of you. And besides, you have to govern the land as liege lady, in your brother’s stead, so it is agreed, and what would become of him if he came back and found you too gone with the child? Look at me, for me four children I bore have died early, and one fell in combat, and have I therefore lost my reason? We have had a fine pregnancy and a beautiful childbed, but that the child would have no place on earth, that unfortunately was not unknown to us. It can at most find one by sea, in so far Eisengrein is quite right. But what we must actually do, that he has only sketched out. The finer details we must think out, we women. He would just simply stick the little love-bird into the tun, but not like that, God forbid! Rather we will put under him the very best silk, of the richest sort and spread richly of the same kind over him. What else shall we put? Of red gold a sum, not less than princely, that he may be well brought up and in the best way, if God graciously bring him to land. What say you? Has Dame Eisengrein in such a way a lytel refined on Sieur Eisengrein’s counsel? But if you think I am at the end of my tether, then you are wrong. For we will do the following too: we will put in a tablet, written like a letter, on it we will write, with réserve and without giving name of man and country, the connexions of the babe. High of birth it is, will we write, only unfortunately things so shaped themselves that his parents are brother and sister and his mother his aunt, accordingly his father his uncle. On such account and to conceal this he has been put out to sea and the finder adjured by his Christianity (for we hope he will be a Christian) to have the boy baptized and with the money pay himself for the upbringing. He shall, of course, increase Christ-like his property and make it breed. Also he must faithfully preserve the tablet and before all else make him master of the writing art, that one day when he has become a man he can read the whole story from his tablet. So will he learn that he is by birth very high, yet very, very sinful, and will not be over-proud but rather turn his mind to heaven and by a godly life atone for the misdeeds of his parents, so that you all three come in the end to God. Then early and late you all must tell Dame Eisengrein advised well.’

She in her bed pressed the child to her breast and only sobbed, but said no more and thus betrayed a rueful consent. And she could not quite help being pleased with the costly silk stuffs which the lady of the castle proposed to spread over and under the child, and also with the assigned treasure, of twenty marks, baked in two loaves of bread which she would lay at its feet. But best of all was the tablet which she brought her—would God so splendid a writing-tablet ever came my way! I have a love of writing and good tools for it, but I am a poor monk, and such a tablet of finest yvorie, framed in gold and set round with all sorts of gems, will never be mine. I can only tell of it and pay myself for my poverty with prize of praise. On this fair surface, then, the mother wrote with ink made of galls the connexions of the child, just as her hostess had said, and put down amid tears: ‘Be mindful, shouldst thou live, of thy parents, whom I may not name by name, not with hatred and bitterness! Far too much they loved each other, and themselves the one in the other, and that was their sin and thy begetting. Forgive them and make good with God, by all thy life turning thy love towards other blood and striving as knight for it at need—’ She would have written more on the margin and filled every little corner but Dame Eisengrein took away the tablet.

The hour came when she took away the babe too, gently and consolingly. Only seventeen days old it was, when the lord of the castle found they could no longer give it harbourage, but rather must with all due carefulness lay it in God’s hand. He had once more drunken his fill at the mother-breast and was swollen red for fullness. Then the hostess took him away and secretly, under the hands of her lord and herself, the plump little cask became his dwelling, a new mother-womb out of whose darkness if God pleased he should be born again; with dowry of silken stuffs, gold-filled loaves, and written word. Swiftly and secretly it came to pass, and when the bottom of the cask was repitched, then came a strange progress by mist and midnight from the citadel down to the sea: the Sieur himself, disguised as a carrier, urged his little horse through sand and dune grass; behind him in the care of a discreet servant the bellying casket with painted hoops, a bung-hole, and iron ears at the sides; they were needed, for the bark, which lay ready on the desolate shore, had inside it other such ears and with straps the little cask was bound fast; they worked silently, while hurrying clouds now hid the moon, now let it shine. Then master and man pushed the bark with its tender little skipper into the water, and the dear Christ gave favouring breeze and current. Gently rocking, the bark pushed off, the child glided away and was in God’s hand.

But from the battlements of the castle, whither she, leaving her childbed before her time, went up with the help of the mistress, Sibylla peered out by the o’erhurried moon to watch the descent as the cortège swayed through the dunes. Yes, even on the shore beyond she thought to see the men moving and the cask floating away. But when even she could not persuade herself that she saw aught, she hid her face in the bosom of her nurse and moaned: ‘There he flies, my dragon, woe, oh woe!’

‘Let him fly,’ Frau Eisengrein consoled her. ‘They always fly and we in all our fullness of pain must look after them. Come, I will help you down from the tower into the place of your sacred childbed, for that is where you belong.’