Last Tales. Isak Dinesen

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СКАЧАТЬ 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.”

NIGHT WALK

      After Leonidas Allori’s death a sad misfortune came upon his disciple Angelo Santasilia: he could not sleep.

      Will the narrator be believed by such people as have themselves experience of sleeplessness, when he tells them that from the beginning this affliction was the victim’s own choice? Yet it was so. Angelo walked out through the prison gate, behind which he had for twelve hours been hostage for his condemned master, into a world which to him contained no direction whatsoever. He was totally isolated, an absolutely lonely figure in this world, and he felt that the man whose grief and shame—like his own—exceeded that of all others must at the same time be exempt from the laws which governed those others. He made up his mind not to sleep any more.

      On this day he had no feeling of time, and he took fright when he realized that darkness had fallen, and the day was over. He was aware that his friends, other pupils of the dead artist, were tonight keeping watch together, but on no account would he join them, for they would be talking of Leonidas Allori and would greet him as the chosen disciple, upon whom the eye of the master had last dwelt. Yes, he thought, and laughed, as if I were Elisha, the follower of the great prophet Elijah, on whom the passenger of the chariot of fire threw his mantle! So he betook himself to the taverns and inns of the town, where casually collected people roared and rioted and where the air was filled with strumming and song, and was heavy with vapors of wine and the smell of the clothes and sweat of strangers. But he would not drink like the others. He left one inn to proceed to another, and both in the taprooms and in the streets he told himself, All this does not concern me. I myself will not sleep any more.

      In such a tavern, on the night between Monday and Tuesday, he met Giuseppino, or Pino, Pizzuti, the philosopher, a small man shrunken and dark of hue as if he had been hung up in a chimney to be smoked. Pizzuti had once, many years ago, owned the noblest marionette theater in Naples, but later on his luck had left him. In prison, and in chains, three fingers of his right hand had withered, so that he could no longer maneuver his puppets. He now wandered from place to place, the poorest of the poor, but luminous, as if phosphorescent, with love of humanity in general and with a knowing and mellifluous compassion for the one human being with whom he just happened to be talking. In this man’s company Angelo passed the next day and night, and while he looked at him and listened to him he had no difficulty in keeping awake.

      The philosopher at once realized that he had a desperate man before him. To give the boy confidence he for a time spoke about himself. He described his puppets one by one, faithfully and with enthusiasm, as if they had been real friends and fellow artists, and with tears in his eyes, because they were now lost to him. “Alas, the beloved ones,” he moaned, “they were devoted to me and they trusted me. But they are dispersed now, limp of arms and legs, with moldering strings; they are thrown away from the stage to the uttermost parts of the sea. For my hand could no longer lead them, nor my right hand hold them!” But presently—as ever in the vicissitudes of his existence—he turned his mind toward life everlasting. “That is not a matter for grief,” he said. “In Paradise I shall once more meet and embrace them all. In Paradise I shall be given ten fingers to each hand.”

      Later on, after midnight, Pino led the conversation to Angelo’s own circumstances, felt his way in them, СКАЧАТЬ