Marie Grubbe Read online

  Then, after they were seated and had exchanged compliments, Ulrik Frederik asked Burrhi – they were conversing in French – whether he would offer those seeking wisdom in the land of Denmark the benefit of his experience and learning.

  Burrhi shook his head.

  “I know well,” he said, “that this secret art has noble and powerful followers in Denmark, but I have instructed so many noble princes and men of the cloth, and though I have not always received ingratitude and scant appreciation as my expected reward, yet I’ve encountered such wrong thinking, such foolishness that I’m no longer inclined to take on the mantle of teacher to such elevated scholars. I am not familiar with the principia or methodology which His Majesty the King of Denmark chooses to employ, so none of my comments can be interpreted as referring to him, but I can tell you confidentially that I have met men of the very finest blood – yes, even anointed princes and heirs to kingdoms – who were so ignorant of their historia naturalis and their materia magica that even the most vulgar charlatan would not share their peasant superstitions.

  “They even put their faith in common, contemptible, tittle-tattle according to which making gold is no different from concocting a sleeping potion or a medicinal pillula. If only one has the right recipe, mixes it all together, heats it over a fire, says an incantation, why then there’s gold. Such ideas are spread by tricksters and ignoramuses – the devil take them all! Can’t people understand that if this were true, why then the world would be swimming in gold. Be it true, as some good writers conjecture, no doubt correctly, that only a part of matter can be purified and take on the nature of gold, still we would be drowning in it. No, the art of making gold is difficult and costly. Fortune must lend a hand; certain constellations and planets must intertwine their course for gold to yield its true plenty. Not every year can substances yield the same amount of gold. No, no consider that this is not just a distilatio or sublimatio that has to occur, but a re-fashioning of nature itself. Yes, I would hazard the belief that a tremor passes through the very tabernacle of nature whenever some part of pure, shining gold is freed from its thousand-year-old embrace of materia vilis!”

  “But,” said Ulrik Frederik. “Forgive me for asking, but don’t these clandestine arts expose your soul to danger and damnation?”

  “No, no,” Burrhi replied eagerly. “Do not believe that! What sorcerer is greater than Solomon whose seals – both the small and the large – have been wonderfully handed down to us who are alive today? Who gave Moses the power of witchcraft? Was it not Zebaoth, the awesome lord of the storm?”

  And he pressed the stone of one of his rings to his lips.

  “Yes, yes,” he continued. “Certainly we use names that belong to an awesome darkness and perilous words. Yes, ours are awesome and secret signs, which, if they are used for evil as many witches, warlocks and vulgar medical imposters do, will immediately bind the soul of whoever says them in the chains of Gehenna. But we, we only call upon them to set the holy, primordial element free from its impure pollution and prison of earthly dust and ash; for that is what gold is, gold is the first, original matter that existed to bring light, before the sun and the moon had been fixed onto the vaults of the heavens.”

  They talked in this way for a long time about the art of making gold and other occult arts, and finally Ulrik Frederik asked him whether he had worked out his horoscope using the scrap of paper which he had sent him a few days previously through Ole Borch.

  “In broad strokes,” said Burrhi. “I could certainly tell you what fate has laid down, but when the star signs are not precisely noted at the moment of a child’s birth, then so many tiny details are lost, and a reading cannot really be relied upon. Yet, I do know something. Yes, yes indeed I do,” he continued, passing a hand across his eyes. “Were you a commoner born, and a humble doctor, then I would only have had glad tidings for you; but now the world won’t prove such an easy place. In some ways, it is unfortunately the way of the world that the son of an artisan becomes an artisan, a merchant’s son a merchant, a peasant’s son a peasant and so on in every case; for the misfortune of many is due to their taking up a different occupation from the one assigned to them at birth by the constellations.

  “So for instance, should someone born within the first few days of the ram take up the skills of war, nothing will turn out well for him: wounds, few promotions and an early death will be his. But if he were to work with his hands as a craftsman in metal or stone, he would enjoy a fine life.

  “Someone who is born at the beginning of Pisces should till the land, or if he is wealthy, acquire vast estates; he who is born towards the end of that sign should try his luck on the sea, whether as a common ferry captain or as an admiral. The first part of Taurus is for soldiers, the last part for lawyers, and as for Gemini, your birth sign, early Gemini should practise medicine, late Gemini should be merchants. But let me look at your palm!”

  Ulrik Frederik stretched out his hand, and Burrhi went over the triangle of horseshoes, rubbing his shoes on them in the way a tightrope walker rubs his soles on a resin-coated piece of wood before he ventures on the line. Then he looked at his palm.

  “Yes,” he said. “The line of honour is long and unbroken, I see, and it reaches as far as it can reach without a crown. The line of luck is weak at the start, but then it becomes stronger and stronger. This deep line signals life, and that alas looks terrible. You must take great care till you have reached your twenty-seventh year. Until then your life is at the mercy of terrible and secret threats, but then the line becomes clear and strong and stretches into a long old age, but it only has one shoot – wait a minute there is a small one here, right close by – you will have heirs in two litters that won’t fail, but few in each.”

  He let go of the hand.

  “Listen,” he said seriously. “There is danger in store for you, but from where it threatens, I cannot tell. It is certainly not on the field of battle; should there be a fall, or some other mishap during your journey, take these triangles of malachite, they are of a special kind. Look, I wear it myself, set in this ring here; it protects against falls or being thrown off a horse or from a carriage. Take them with you, wear them on your naked chest next to your skin, or if you have them set in a stone, make sure that the gold is removed at the back, because they must touch your skin to protect you. And look, here is a piece of jasper, can you see that there is something on it that resembles a tree? Such a rare and fine piece, it is good against stealthy knife wounds and liquid poisons. I beg you once more, my precious young lord, to beware, particularly where women are concerned. I do not know anything for certain, but there are signs that suggest that danger gleams in a woman’s hand, but I do not know, it is unclear, so beware too of false friends, disloyal servants and cold water and long nights.”

  Ulrik Frederik welcomed the presents and did not omit the following day to send the alchemist a precious chain to thank him for his good advice and protection stones.

  Then he continued his journey to Spain with no further stops.

  * * *

  14 The assembly was first convened on the 8th of September 1660. The three principal estates were represented: the clergy, the nobility and the commoners. The peasants who accounted for more than three quarters of the population were not represented. The objective of the meeting was to decide on new taxes, but the leaders of the clergy and the commoners, in a move against the nobility, decided that a vote should take place on a change of the constitution which would make the monarchy hereditary and allow the king to draw up a new constitution. This meant the end of the power of the nobles and the beginning of absolutism.

  15 Greek names for lovers who appear in the plays of Ludvig Holberg (1684-1754). Holberg was influenced by Molière. His play Masquerade, which contains a comic love story between a Leonora and a Leander, was turned into a popular opera buffa by the composer Carl Nielsen (1865-1931).

  16 Giuseppe Francesco Burrhi (1627-1695), a famous and colourful alchemist who found f
avour with both Frederik the Third and the eccentric Queen Christina of Sweden. Condemned by the Inquisition, Burrhi came to Amsterdam and later to Copenhagen. He left Copenhagen in 1670 when Christian V became king.

  X

  The place became so quiet on that spring day when he left to the sound of horses’ hooves dying away in the distance. All the doors were still standing open after the hurry of his departure, the table at which Ulrik Frederik had eaten was still set, his napkin still lay by his plate, crumpled up as he had left it, and damp prints of his big riding boots were still visible all over the floor.

  Over there, by the tall pier glass, he had pressed her to his breast, kissed her goodbye, trying to comfort her with sworn promises of a swift return.

  Instinctively she went over to the mirror to see whether that image of him she had seen only a moment ago while being held tight in his embrace might not still be there. Her own lonely, dejected figure, her pale, tear-covered face greeted her searching eyes from behind the mirror’s clear polished surface.

  The doors were being closed downstairs, and the servants were clearing the table. Nero, Passando, Rumor and Delphin, his beloved dogs who had been locked up, were running about, whimpering pitifully and sniffing for signs of him around the room. She wanted to call them to her, but she kept crying. Passando, the big, red foxhound, came up to her. She knelt down and stroked it, but it only moved its tail absent-mindedly, looking straight up into her face with its big eyes before whimpering.

  Those first days – how empty and sad everything was, how slowly time passed, and how heavy and oppressive her solitude, and razor sharp her longing, like salt in a fresh wound.

  Yes, such were the first days, but when it no longer felt new, but it just kept coming – the darkness, the emptiness, the longing and the sorrow, day upon day – like the slow continual fall of snow, one flake after another, then the strange dullness and calm of despair came over her. Yes, almost like an emptiness of feeling that makes itself comfortably at home in the snugness of sorrow.

  But then, suddenly, she would feel completely different: all her nerves would be on edge, the blood pulsing in her veins, hungry for life, her imagination full of bright images and beguiling visions like the air in the desert.

  On such days she would feel like a prisoner who sees life gliding past, season by season, barren and fruitless. And she felt as if the sum of time was being counted out in her presence, penny hour by penny hour, each and every one of them to fall at her feet with a stray sound as the clock struck before becoming dust; and then a painful longing for life would come over her, and she wanted to wring her hands and scream as if she were being tortured.

  She rarely appeared at court or visited her family, for etiquette demanded that she stay at home, and as she was little inclined to appreciate visits herself, they soon ceased, and she was completely left to herself.

  A dull indolence was the immediate consequence of such lonely inward thought and grief, and for days and nights on end she would lie in bed, trying to keep herself in a state between sleep and wakefulness, from which fantastic dreams of a much finer clarity than the misty dream images of a healthy sleep were born. They seemed almost real and a sweet consolation for the life she missed.

  She grew more sensitive day by day so that the slightest noise gave her pain, and she was prone to the strangest whims and sudden mad desires that could almost make one doubt her sanity.

  And perhaps only a hair’s breadth separated madness from that curious craving that would come over her to do some desperate thing or other, just for the doing of it, not because she had any reason or even really wanted it.

  So sometimes it would happen that, standing by the open window, leaning on the frame, looking down into the stone-paved yard far below, a sudden, tempting desire would come over her to hurl herself down there. But as soon as she had done that jump in her mind, had felt that sharp, cool tickle of air that a high jump produces, she would rush from the window into the furthest corner of the room, shaking with fear, seeing herself lying bloody on the hard stone, and with such clarity that she would have to go to the window again and look down to chase the image away.

  Less dangerous, and a little different, was the desire that sometimes came over her when, as often happened, her glance chanced to fall on her own naked arm. In idle curiosity, she would trace the course of blue and pale-purple capillaries running beneath her white skin. Then she would feel a desire to bite deeply into that white plumpness, and she really would follow her desire and bite like some cruel, small beast, bite upon bite. But as soon as it really hurt, she would immediately stop and begin to caress that poor, mistreated arm.

  At other times, she might, just as she was sitting comfortably, decide to go in and take off her clothes, to cover herself in only a thick, red silk quilt and to feel the touch of that cool shiny fabric against her skin, or she might place the ice cold steel of a foil against her naked back. She had many such whims.

  After a fourteen month absence Ulrik Frederik returned home. It was a July night. Unable to sleep, Marie was lying and listening to the slow wailing of the summer wind, troubled by all kinds of anxious thoughts. The last eight days, she had been expecting Ulrik Frederik every hour of the day, hoping and fearing his return.

  Would everything be the same as before, fourteen months ago? One moment the answer seemed to her no, the next yes. That trip to Spain, she could not really forgive him for that. She had become so old in all that time, so despondent and quiet, and now he would be coming home, so used to glory and romping about, younger and fresher than before. He would find her pale, faded, heavy in spirit, heavy in her step, not at all the old Marie, and when they would first meet, he would be so unfamiliar and cool, and that would make her even more timid, and he would turn away from her, but she would never turn away from him, no, no, no, she would keep a watch over him like a mother, and when the world was against him, then he would come to her, and she would comfort him, be so good to him, go without for his sake, suffer and cry, do everything just for him. Then she would imagine that, as soon as she saw him, everything would be as before, and yes, they would storm through the hall like bold pages, full of such sound and energy to make the walls echo their cries and laughter while remote corners whispered their kisses.

  Such were her thoughts when she fell into a light slumber. Noise and play filled her dreams, and when she woke, there was still noise, quick steps could be heard on the stairs, the main door was swung open, doors were slammed shut, carriages were rumbling in the drive and horses’ hooves were scraping across the stone bridge.

  “It’s him!” she thought, jumping up and grabbing the big embroidered quilt from their bed and throwing it round herself like a cape. She dashed through the rooms. She stopped in the large hall. A wooden lamp was burning on the floor, a couple of its branches lit. In a sudden hurry the servants had left it there. She could hear people talking. It was Ulrik Frederik’s voice. She began to shake with emotion.

  The door opened, and he charged in with a hat on his head and a cape slung round his shoulders. Wanting to grab her in his arms, he only got hold of her hand as she tried to escape. He was so strange looking and she did not recognise his clothes. He was so tanned and had become so stout, and underneath that cape was some strange outfit that resembled nothing she had ever seen before, the latest fashion, a long waistcoat and a coat trimmed with fur which completely changed his figure, making him even more unrecognisable.

  “Marie,” he shouted. “My darling girl.” And he pulled her violently towards him so her wrist hurt and she shouted out in pain. But he did not notice that, for he was quite drunk; the night not being warm, they had been well looked after at the last inn.

  It made little difference that Marie resisted: he, wild and out of control, kissed her and stroked her. Finally, she got away, and red in the face, bosom heaving, she escaped to the next room; then it occurred to her that this was perhaps a strange welcome and she returned.

  Ulrik Frederik
was standing in the same place, completely confused, torn between the effort of trying to make his fogged mind grasp what was happening, and the difficult task of unhooking the clasps of his cloak, but his thoughts and his hands were equally useless. And when Marie then returned and helped him get his cloak off, the thought came to him that what had happened had just been a bit of fun, and he began to laugh wildly, beating his thighs, twisting and turning about in his drunkenness; he made obscene threats to Marie and burst into a happy, good-natured laughter. There was apparently something funny he wanted to tell her, and he did make an attempt to tell her, but unable, he finally sank down onto a stool, completely overcome and seized with laughter, sighing and gasping with the effort of all that laughing, a broad happy smile covering his face.

  Slowly the smile was replaced by a dull seriousness. He rose and walked silently back and forth across the floor in displeased majesty, finally placing himself by the fireplace in front of Marie, one arm on his hip, the other resting on the mantelpiece and looked down on her, still overcome by deep drunkenness, and full of contempt.

  He then gave a long, incoherent, drunken man’s speech about his own greatness, about the honours that had been heaped on him abroad, and about what a great fortune it had been for Marie, the daughter of a low knight to have as a husband someone who, if he had only wanted, could have brought home a royal princess. Then suddenly, without reason, he said that he wanted to be the master in his own house, and he warned her that she would have to be obedient, so very obedient. He would hear no objections, not a whisper; however high he might have raised her, she still remained his slave, his little slave, his sweet little slave, and all at once, with the gentleness of a lynx at play, crying and fawning, he forced himself upon her with all of a drunken man’s insistence, and she could not escape his coarse fondling and obscene words of love. The morning of the next day, Marie woke up long before Ulrik Frederik. With something close to hatred, she gazed at the figure asleep by her side. Her wrist was all swollen and so sore from yesterday’s violent greeting. And there he lay, those strong arms beneath that hairy, muscular neck. He was arrogant and without a care in the world, she thought, as she watched the way his big chest breathed, and the stupid, satisfied smile on his red, damp and shiny lips.