Last Tales. Isak Dinesen

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СКАЧАТЬ Those living dead will never know what happened, or what was said, while they themselves lay huddled and gaping. I alone know. For I never sleep.”

      Suddenly he turned in his chair toward his guest. “He said so Himself,” he remarked, “and had He not been so hard driven, with what high disdain would He not have spoken! Now it was a moan, like the sea breaking against the shore for the very last time before doomsday. He Himself told them so, the fools: ‘What, could ye not watch with me one hour?’”

      For a minute he looked Angelo straight in the face.

      “But no one,” he concluded slowly, in indescribable pride, “no one in the world could ever seriously believe that I myself did sleep—on that Thursday night in the garden.”

OF HIDDEN THOUGHTS AND OF HEAVEN

      It was a lovely spring day, and the almond trees were blossoming, delicately pink and coral like flamingo feathers, down the slope in front of the white villa. From the terrace at the top there was a wide view over the landscape, and all shapes and colors within it—the far-off, air-blue mountains, the greenish-gray olive groves on the nearer slopes; the serpentine, dust-gray road through the valley below; the free, fleeting groups of big clouds; and the noble, mathematically straight, darker blue line of the sea on the horizon—in the cool of the evening were as beautifully harmonious as if an angel had stood behind the shoulder of the observer and poured out it all from his flute.

      Angelo Santasilia, the famous sculptor who owned the villa, was sitting on the terrace, shaping tiny figures in clay. His long workday was over, and he was satisfied with his work. But his three children—two fair-limbed little boys and a little girl with a skin as transparent as an almond blossom and big, childishly unfathomable dark eyes—before consenting to go to bed had demanded that these three equestrian statues should be ready by the next morning. No one horseman was to be superior to another, yet they all were to be so different that each of the children could immediately pick out its own from among them. The task had gripped the artist’s imagination, so that he was now deeply engrossed in it. His wife, Lucrezia, wrapped in a crimson shawl, sat a little behind him, and smiled at her husband’s gravity.

      A nightingale sang in a distant thicket, and all of a sudden another struck up, enraptured, quite close by.

      Angelo was still in his working smock. His great beauty since we last saw him had become richer, almost blooming like that of a woman.

      A small man came from the house down toward husband and wife. He did not carry his hat in his hand, for he had no hat, but his attitude was as dignified and deferential as if he had been sweeping the ground with the panache of one. Lucrezia first caught sight of him, and drew her husband’s attention to him—but Angelo, who was just about to shape a rearing horse, did not want to be interrupted. Still when he turned his head, and recognized in the approaching figure the wanderer, Giuseppino Pizzuti, a friend of old times, he waved his hand to him.

      Giuseppino greeted his host as if their parting had taken place that very morning. All the same, the years had not passed over him without leaving their mark. He was even leaner than before and more poorly dressed. His eyebrows were raised high on his forehead, as if a permanent deep amazement had placed them there. He seemed to be without weight, like a withered, rolled-up leaf.

      At first he seemed quite unaffected by the changed circumstances of his old companion in misfortune; indeed, he hardly seemed to notice them at all. But when he was introduced to Lucrezia and saw what a lovely wife Angelo had, he was so deeply impressed that he styled him “Signor Santasilia” and “Maestro.”

      “Nay,” Angelo interrupted him, “speak not so. I am no fine gentleman and no master. Do you remember where we last spoke together?”

      “Yes,” Pizzuti answered after some deliberation, “it was at the inn of Mariana-the-Rat, the good home of thieves and smugglers, down by the harbor.”

      “Aye, and let us talk together as we did there,” said Angelo.

      Lucrezia after a while noticed that her husband’s guest had three fingers missing on his right hand, and turned her face away. She was expecting her fourth child, and feared any impression of ugliness which might put its stamp upon the unborn baby. She therefore rose as quickly as with courtesy she could, remarked that the wanderer must be in need of something to eat and drink, and walked back to the villa to prepare something. The two men followed her with their eyes until she disappeared through the door.

      “And how, Pino,” asked the host, “have you been doing since I saw you last?”

      The old man began to tell his story. He had traveled far and wide, had seen famous places and people and witnessed remarkable natural phenomena. He had also consoled the distressed and set on the right path those who had strayed from it. Suddenly he gave himself up to tears.

      “Why do you weep, Pino?” asked Angelo.

      “Oh, my friend, weep with me,” Pino answered. “I have loved since last we met.”

      “Loved?” Angelo repeated, slowly and with astonishment, as if he were repeating a word of a foreign tongue.

      “Oh, loved, loved!” cried Pino. “Life’s sorest pain has penetrated and torn asunder even this heart of mine. A woman, radiant, triumphant like a song, smiled upon me—and went away again!”

      “Life’s sorest pain?” Angelo repeated as before.

      “She was a great lady traveling from England,” said Pino. “Three years ago, in Venice, as she got into her gondola, she gave me such a deep, friendly, animated glance, such a goddess glance, that thereby heaven came down and walked on earth! I followed her, we met again, and each time her eyes gave me the same greeting out of her soul’s inexhaustible riches. Once she spoke to me. She was tall like a statue, she wore a silk robe that rustled gently, her hair was like red-golden silk!”

      Pizzuti raised his right hand to the sky. “But I,” he cried out, “I lack these my three fingers, and will nevermore make my puppets dance! When she had gone away, the world was a void—and yet how full of pain! I had just one thing left to me in my infinite destitution: to talk with somebody who might possibly, just once in the course of the day, speak her name. I remained in Venice for two years, solely to sit with her gondolier, a plebeian who could neither sing nor play, hoping for this: that he would pronounce her name, as if waiting for sweet music to come from his lips. But he married, and his wife forbade me her house. O Angelo Santasilia—all life that I have in me consumes itself!”

      Pino let his head fall onto his breast; tears poured down his face onto his greasy black cloak.

      “You must not let that worry you,” said Angelo. “It is a good thing to have a great sorrow. Or should human beings allow Christ to have died on the cross for the sake of our toothaches?”

      After a while he continued: “Tell me her name, Pino. Then you will stay on in my house, and I will speak it once a day.”

      Pino closed his eyes, made two attempts to speak, but remained silent. He whispered, “I cannot.”

      Lucrezia’s red-cheeked maid came from the house, smiling, with a tray containing wine, cheese and bread, and a cold chicken. Angelo poured out wine to his friend and to himself. The old wanderer was obviously hungry, yet he ate and drank slowly, as now he did everything.

      “And you, Angelo,” he said, “how have things gone with you?”

      It СКАЧАТЬ