Last Tales. Isak Dinesen

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СКАЧАТЬ The child was thus at an early age schooled in the art of equipoise.

      He kept his small head by adopting and perfecting, in the innocent manner of a child, the doubleness of his elders. He saw the lovely and beloved form of his mother with the eyes of the priest, the spiritual physician and gardener, watching her with tenderness and forbearance, and at times gently remonstrating with her and imposing upon her light, graceful penances. He saw his father with the eyes of the artist, and followed the stern figure with the attention and approval with which a connoisseur follows the movements of an accomplished actor or ballet dancer. To the perception of this child-connoisseur his papa was the brilliant, finishing coal-black brush stroke within the exquisite color scheme of the palazzo. The papa himself, who had never been a picturesque figure to anyone, faintly sensed the fact; as the boy grew up he became almost indispensable to his father.

      In this way the hand of a child out of the elements of an anomalous family life produced a reconciling synthesis.

      It is seemly, here, to say a few words about Ercole. The heir to the name—otherwise a taciturn and sullen boy, who showed no partiality to any human being, and only distinguished himself by growing up to a most unusual height—all through their childhood together displayed a staunch and loyal friendship toward his little brother. In the life of Atanasio he was, during that time, a support and a comfort, possibly on account of the fact that he had but one eye.

      At the age of twenty-one the young Prince was ordained to the priesthood, and six months later his brother and friend quite suddenly died from nothing more alarming than a cold in the head caught at a levee. Out of the three sons born to Pompilio and Benedetta, Atanasio was now the sole heir to the great name and wealth of the family. In the course of time the old Prince completed his role on the stage of life, draped his grandeur and loneliness round him in heavy folds of black marble, and lay down to rest in the mausoleum, at Dionysio’s side. Even that fair lady the Princess Benedetta, like to a child at eventide, yawned and let go of her dolls. Her son, by then a bishop, had the happiness of administering extreme unction to her.

      * * * *

      “I have seen your mother,” said the lady in the armchair. “She was a friend of Mama’s and, when I was a very little girl, from time to time came to the house—in the most lovely frocks and bonnets! I adored her because she could smile and weep at the same time. She made me a present of a bowl of goldfish.”

      “A week ago,” said the Cardinal, “in going through the drawers of an old cabinet, I came upon a small flask of the perfume which she had made for her in Bologna—the recipe will have been lost by now. The flask was empty, but still gave out a faint fragrance. A multitude of things were in it, all in one. Smiles, as you say, and tears, dauntlessness and fear, unconquerable hope and the certainty of failure—in short: what will, I suppose, be found in the belongings of most deceased ladies.”

      “And so her son,” said the lady after a pause, “early trained in the art of equipoise, was left to promenade in the high places of this world, in one single magnificently harmonious form, two incompatible personalities.”

      “Oh, no, Madame,” said the Cardinal, “use not that word. Speak not of incompatibility. Verily, I tell you: you may meet one of the two, speak to him and listen to him, confide in him and be comforted by him, and at the hour of parting be unable to decide with which of them you have spent the day.

      “For who,” he continued very slowly, “who, Madame, is the man who is placed, in his life on earth, with his back to God and his face to man, because he is God’s mouthpiece, and through him the voice of God is given forth? Who is the man who has no existence of his own—because the existence of each human being is his—and who has neither home nor friends nor wife—because his hearth is the hearth of and he himself is the friend and lover of all human beings?”

      “Alas!” whispered the lady.

      “Pity him not, this man,” said the Cardinal. “Doomed he will be, it is true, and forever lonely, and wherever he goes his commission will be that of breaking hearts, because the sacrifice of God is a broken and contrite heart. Yet the Lord indemnifies his mouthpiece. If he is without potency, he has been given a small bit of omnipotence. Calmly, like a child in his father’s house binding and loosening his favorite dogs, he will bind the influence of Pleiades and loose the bands of Orion. Like a child in his father’s house ordering about his servants, he will send lightnings, that they may go and say to him: ‘Here we are.’ Just as the gate of the citadel is opened to the vice-regent, the gates of death have been opened to him. And as the heir apparent will have been entrusted with the regalia of the King, he knows where light dwells, and as to darkness, where is the place thereof.”

      “Alas!” the lady again whispered.

      The Cardinal smiled a little.

      “Oh, do not sigh, dear and kind lady,” he said. “The servant was neither forced nor lured into service. Before taking him on, his Master spoke straightly and fairly to him. ‘You are aware,’ he said, ‘that I am almighty. And you have before you the world which I have created. Now give me your opinion on it. Do you take it that I have meant to create a peaceful world?’ ‘No, my Lord,’ the candidate replied. ‘Or that I have,’ the Lord asked, ‘meant to create a pretty and neat world?’ ‘No, indeed,’ answered the youth. ‘Or a world easy to live in?’ asked the Lord. ‘O good Lord, no!’ said the candidate. ‘Or do you,’ the Lord asked for the last time, ‘hold and believe that I have resolved to create a sublime world, with all things necessary to the purpose in it, and none left out?’ ‘I do,’ said the young man. ‘Then,’ said the Master, ‘then, my servant and mouthpiece, take the oath!’

      “But if indeed,” the Cardinal went on after a moment, “your kind heart yearns to melt in compassion, I may tell you, at the same time, that to this chosen officeholder of the Lord—so highly favored in many things—certain spiritual benefits, granted to other human beings, are indeed withheld.”

      “Of what benefits are you speaking?” she asked in a low voice.

      “I am speaking,” he answered, “of the benefit of remorse. To the man of whom we speak it is forbidden. The tears of repentance, in which the souls of nations are blissfully cleansed, are not for him. Quod fecit, fecit!”

      He was silent for a second, then added thoughtfully: “In this way, because of his steadfast renunciation of repentance, and even though he be rejected as a judge and as a human being, Pontius Pilate took immortal rank amongst these elect at the moment when he proclaimed: ‘Quod scripsi, scripsi.’

      “For the man of whom I speak,” he once more added, after a longer pause, “within the play and strife of this world, is the bow of the Lord.”

      “. . . the arrow of which,” the lady exclaimed, “each time strikes the heart!”

      “An ingenious jeu-de-mots, Madame,” said he and laughed, “but I myself used the word in a different sense and had in mind that frail implement, mute in itself, which in the hand of the master will bring out all music that stringed instruments contain, and be at the same time medium and creator.

      “Then answer me now, Madame,” he concluded, “who is this man?”

      “It is the artist,” she answered slowly.

      “You are right,” he said. “It is the artist. And who more?”

      “The priest,” said the lady.

      “Yes,” said the Cardinal.

      She rose СКАЧАТЬ