Marie Grubbe Page 19

  *

  In Lohendorf, about three miles from Vechta, there lay, just by the main road, an old inn, and here Marie and her travelling companions had stopped a few hours after the sun had set.

  Late in the evening, when the coach and the grooms had retired to the outhouses, Sti Høg, Marie and a couple of rustic-looking noblemen from Oldenborg were having a quite intimate conversation around a red table in front of the large tiled stove in the taproom of the inn.

  By a long table below the windows, at the end a bench, sat Lucie with her knitting, leaning her back on the table edge, and watching them.

  On the table intended for gentlefolk a tallow candle stood in a yellow earthenware candlestick, casting a sleepy light on the faces and throwing a greasy reflection in a row of pewter plates above the oven. In front of Marie stood a small pewter jar with warm wine, a larger one in front of Sti Høg, while the two men from Oldenborg were sharing a huge wooden tankard of beer that was being quickly emptied and just as quickly filled by a lad with an unruly mop of hair, who spent his time lying lazily in a corner of the room on a bench which doubled up as a nesting place for geese and chickens.

  Both Marie and Sti Høg would have preferred to retire to their rooms, as that pair of rustic noblemen were not good company; and they would have done so had their bedrooms not been so icy cold and difficult to heat, as they discovered as soon as their host brought in some braziers; the turf in that area was so rich in sulphur that only people who were used to it could breathe the fumes.

  The men from Oldenborg were not put in a good humour, as they were well aware that they were in superior company, and so they tried their best to express themselves as politely as they could, but as the beer had more and more effect, the reins which they tried to impose on their behaviour became slacker and slacker, and finally, indeed, quite loose. Their language gained a more local colour, and their wit became more solid, their questions quite intimate.

  As their entertainment became more coarse and rude, Marie became uneasy in her seat, and Sti Høg’s mute glance across the table asked whether they should leave. At that very moment, the one with blond hair made a really coarse insinuation that made Sti raise his brow and look threateningly at him, but that only egged him on the more, and he repeated his disgusting joke in even richer language, which made Sti swear that he would get a pewter jug in his head if he dared to utter another such word again.

  It was at that moment that Lucie approached the table with her knitting to pick up a lost stitch, and the other fellow, taking advantage, grabbed her round the waist, forced her onto his lap and gave her a big, loud kiss on her lips.

  Encouraged by this piece of impudence, the fair-haired man threw his arms around the neck of Marie Grubbe. Immediately Sti’s mug hit him in the forehead so straight and hard that he sank down by the oven with a deep groan. Next, Sti and the swarthy fellow were on the floor, and Marie and the maid had escaped to a corner of the room.

  The lad on the far bench jumped up, opened one door and shouted loudly, before running to the other and bolting it with a yard-long iron bar, and at the same time they could hear the loud noise of the backdoor being bolted shut. Whenever there was a fight in the inn, they would close all the doors in this way so that no one from outside could join in the fight and it would not spread more than absolutely necessary – but this was also their only involvement. When they had bolted all the doors, they would immediately sneak quietly off to bed, for someone who had not witnessed anything could not be called to give an account.

  Neither of them had any weapons, but only their fists to decide the issue. And so they stood there, Sti and the darker of the two, swearing and grappling with one another. They pulled each other from one part of the room to another and turned in slow, unyielding movements, forcing each other up against doors and walls; they grabbed each other by the arms, broke free, then bent down again and struggled, their chins pressed into one another’s shoulder. Finally they fell down onto the floor; Sti was on top and had just succeeded in knocking his adversary’s head heavily on the cold clay floor several times when he felt a strong pair of arms around his neck. That was the fair man who had regained consciousness.

  Sti began to choke, his breath was rattling in his throat, his eyes grew dim and his limbs weak. The swarthy man threw his legs around him and was dragging him down by the shoulders while the fair man had his hands around his neck and his knees in his side.

  Marie screamed and wanted to rush to his aid, but Lucie had thrown her arms around her and was holding her in an almost convulsive grip so that she could not move.

  Then just as Sti was about to lose consciousness, he jerked himself violently forward with a final show of strength, and the head of the swarthy man hammered against the floor, and the fair man lost his grip, allowing Sti to catch a bit of breath. With one lithe, strong movement Sti broke loose from under him and hurled himself on the fair man so that he fell to the ground. He then bent over the fallen man in fury, but received a kick in the chest so that he nearly fainted. Next he grabbed him by the ankle and got hold of his boot just below the knee, lifting the leg in the air and slamming it down on his outstretched thigh so that the bones snapped in the boot and the fair man tumbled over, losing consciousness. The swarthy man who had been lying there watching, confused from the blow to his head, uttered a loud, pitiful roar, as if it had happened to him and crept under the bench by the window, bringing the fight to an end.

  However, the savagery that Sti Høg on that occasion had revealed to be a part of him had a strong and curious effect on Marie; for that night when she had laid her head on the pillow, she said to herself that she loved him, and when in the following days Sti Høg noticed that something in her looks and behaviour implied a decisive change in her mind to his advantage, he asked for her love and received the answer he desired.

  XV

  They went to Paris. As much as half a year passed, and that bond of love so suddenly tied became loose and severed, as Marie Grubbe and Sti Høg slowly drifted apart.

  They both knew that it had happened, but they did not discuss it; there was so much bitterness and pain, so much humiliation and self-contempt lurking there that there was solace in silence.

  On this they agreed.

  But their way of handling their grief was so very different. For while Sti Høg, too dulled by pain to feel the sharpest edge of his hopeless misery, grieved in impotent fascination like a trapped wild beast wandering back and forth in his narrow cage, Marie was more like an animal which has torn itself loose and must remain forever in unrestrained, restless flight, continually driven, on and on, in mad fear of that trailing, clanking chain.

  She wanted to forget. But oblivion is like heather, it grows of its own free will, and not all the protection or tender care in the world can add an inch to its height.

  With full hands she poured out her gold, buying herself splendour; she grabbed every pleasure’s cup that gold could buy, that wit, beauty or rank might purchase, but it was all in vain.

  There was no end to her misery, and nothing could free her from it. If to leave Sti Høg would have offered some relief, just a change in the nature of her torment, then she would have done so long ago, but it made no difference and offered no salvation. It did not matter whether they were together or not, not a spark of hope or respite was there to be found in separation. They might as well be together as apart.

  But they did part, and it was Sti Høg who suggested it. They had not seen each other for a couple of days when Sti entered the first of the magnificent rooms they had rented from Isabel Gilles, the landlady of the La Croix de Fer. Marie was sitting there crying.

  Sti shook his head unhappily and sat down at the other end of the room. It was so hard to see her crying and to know that every comforting word from one’s mouth, every sympathetic sigh or compassionate look would only make her sorrow all the more bitter and make her shed even more tears. He came towards her.

  “Marie,” he said in a low, flat
voice. “Let us talk now, really talk, and then part.”

  “But what is the point?”

  “Don’t say that, Marie. Happy days await you still, a whole host of them.”

  “Never-ending days of weeping and nights of tears.”

  “Marie, Marie, beware of the hard, painful words you’re using, because I understand them better than you could possibly imagine, and they hurt.”

  “Those wounds that words can inflict, I’ve always reckoned at naught, and I never considered sparing you.”

  “Then do it, don’t have as much as a grain of pity. Tell me that you feel yourself degraded by your love for me, basely degraded! Tell me that you would give years of your life to wring out every memory of me from your soul! Make me a dog, and call me names fit for a dog. Call me the most vile names you can think of, and I shall accept every one of them and say you are right, because you are right, as painful as it is to say. Listen, Marie, believe me if you can: though I know that you loathe yourself because you have been mine, that your soul sickens every time you think of it, yet I do love you… yes, yes, with all my heart and all that is mine, I love you, Marie!”

  “No, shame on you, Sti Høg, yes shame on you! You don’t know what you are saying. And yet, God have mercy, it is true however frightening it sounds. Oh Sti, why are you the base soul you are, the creeping maggot that can be crushed and has no sting. If you only know how mighty I thought you! Proud, mighty and strong, you who are so weak. But it was your high-flowing words that wove lies about a power you never owned, that shouted about a soul that was all those things yours never was or would ever be. Sti, Sti, was it fair that I should find smallness instead of power, paltry doubt instead of confident hope and pride? Sti! What happened to your pride?”

  “Fairness and justice are small mercies, but I deserve no more, for I have behaved little better than a forger with you. Marie, I never believed in your love for me, no never, not even that time when you swore it to me did I have any faith. How I wanted to have faith, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t banish the dark face of doubt, it stared at me with cold eyes, blowing away all my rich hopes with just a bitter smile. I couldn’t believe that you loved me, Marie, and yet I grabbed the treasure of your love with both hands and all my soul, and I delighted in it – in fear and anxious happiness, the way a robber can find delight in his golden, shiny loot even though he knows that the true owner will appear any moment and snatch it out of his dearly laden hands. For he will come one day, Marie, he who is worthy of your love or whom you believe worthy, and he won’t have any doubts, will neither beg nor tremble. He will mould you like the finest gold in his hand and put his foot on your will, and you will be submissive, humble and happy; but it won’t be because he loves you more than I do, that he can’t, but because he has more faith in himself and appreciates less your priceless worth, Marie.”

  “Oh what a fortune-teller’s tale you’re reeling off, Sti Høg, but that’s the way you are, your thoughts always roaming. You remind me of those children who are given an intricate toy but instead of playing with it and enjoying it, must see what’s inside, and must tear it apart, bit by bit. Intent on catching and grabbing, you never had the time to hold and to treasure. You reduce the stuff of life to nothing but words.”

  “Goodbye, Marie.”

  “A goodbye, Sti Høg, as good as it can be.”

  “Thank you, thank you… it has to be… but I’m asking you for one thing.”

  “Yes?”

  “When you set out from here, let no one know the road you’ll be travelling on, so that I may not hear of it… For I cannot trust myself to stop following you.”

  Marie shrugged her shoulders impatiently.

  “God bless you, Marie, now and forever more.”

  He left.

  *

  It was a pale November dusk, and the sun’s bronze brown light retreated hesitantly from the lonely glare of high gabled windows, resting on the slender twin towers of the church, glistening on the cross and golden wreaths high above, before disappearing. The moon lifted its bright round disk above the distant soft brown hills.

  The fading colours of the sky were mirrored in sheets of yellow and violet, which turned blue in the river’s silent, translucent waters; leaves of willow, sycamore, elder and rose fell loose from the yellowing foliage and fluttered towards the water in trembling flight. Caught by the clear surface, they glided below overhanging walls and wet stone steps into the darkness under low, heavy bridges, and around wooden posts black with damp. They caught a gleam of the glowing embers in the red-lit smithy, got whirled round the rust-red stream from the grinder’s yard, and finally disappeared among the muddy rushes, leaking boats, sinking barrels and reed fences.

  A bluish twilight spread a transparent darkness over squares and open spaces, where darkened water shone, and streams from wet snake-snouts and the mouths of bearded dragons flowed. Fantastic curved jets of water fell in fountains and among slender, jagged spires, while the trickling, soft water bubbled gently and its sharp drips formed swiftly-growing rings on the dark mirror of the overflowing basin. A gentle gust of wind blew through the square, and all around, from dark portals, black windows and dim alleyways, darkness stared out.

  Then the moon appeared and cast a silver sheen over roofs and steeples, separating light from shadow in sharp outlines. Every beam, carved sign and humble pillar in the low railings of porches was drawn onto walls and buildings. Everything was etched in sharp, dark shapes: the finely carved, fragmented patterns above church entrances, Saint George with his lance on the house corner, the flower and its leaves in the window. What a light it cast through the broad street, reflecting itself in the water of the river. And there was not a cloud in the sky apart from a white ring, a halo around the moon. There was nothing but a myriad of stars.

  That was the kind of evening it was in Nürnberg, and in the steep street leading to the castle and in the house known as Von Karndorf’s a party was taking place that night.

  They were sitting round the table; and to a man they were full, merry and drunk. With the exception of one eighteen-year-old they were all past their youth. The young man did not wear a wig, for he had his own hair, and there was plenty of it, falling in long golden curls. His red and white face was as lovely as a girl’s, and his eyes were big, blue and serene.

  They all called him the Golden Remigius, not just because of his hair, but as a result of his great riches, for in spite of his youth he was the richest nobleman in the forest of Bavaria, his homeland.

  They were discussing the beauty of women, these merry gentlemen at the groaning table, and they all agreed that when they were young the world had been full of beautiful women with whom those who were now called beauties bore no comparison at all.

  “But who among you saw the finest pearl of them all?” asked a fat fellow with a ruddy complexion and little, sparkling eyes. “Who has seen Dorothea von Falkenstein of the Harzen Falkensteins? She was red as a rose and white as a lamb. She could put her hands around her waist and still have an inch left over. She could step on lark eggs without breaking them, so light were her feet, yet she wasn’t one of your scrawny birds. She was as plump as a swan that swims round a lake and as firm as a roe that leaps in the wood.”

  Then they drank to that.

  “God bless the grey hairs of every one of you!” shouted a tall old man at the end of the table. “But the world is becoming an uglier place by the day. Just look at us.” He looked round at them. “What men we were! But the devil take that. But can anyone in the world, by all the cups of merry men, tell me where they have all gone? Those plump serving wenches with their mouths full of laughter, their eyes full of play, their dainty feet, and the landlady’s daughter with the yellow, yellow hair and her eyes so blue, where have they all gone? Where? Or were they all a pack of lies? Was it possible to enter an inn, a tavern or a public house, was it ever possible to enter one without them being there? Oh, what misery of miseries, what hunchbacked daughters with pig
gy eyes and broad hips that innkeepers breed these days. What toothless, bald-headed witches that now are given licence to scare the wits out of hungry and thirsty folk, with their runny eyes and wrinkled hands. Oh, damnation, I’m as fearful of entering an inn as of having to deal with the devil, for I know that the tapster in there will be married to the very image of death from Lübeck, in all its horror, and when you are as old as I am then there is something about momento mori that you’d rather forget than be reminded.”

  Seated at the centre of the table was a thickset man with quite a full face that was yellow as wax. He had grey bushy eyebrows and clear watchful eyes. He did not look ill exactly, but like someone who has suffered great physical pain; when he smiled, his lips curved, as if he were swallowing something bitter.

  He spoke in a soft whisper and was a little hoarse:

  “The swarthy Euphemia of the Burtenbachers’ was more dignified than any queen I have laid eyes on. She could wear the stiffest gold cloth as if it were the most comfortable everyday dress there was. There would be chains and jewels around her neck and waist, on her breast and in her hair; and it would all sit or hang as if she were wearing those strings of wild berries that children like to put round their necks when they’re playing in the woods. There was nobody like her. Other maidens would dress themselves up in their finery like fancy reliquaries encrusted in gold filigree, gold chains and roses of precious stones, while she was so joyful, so fresh and fair, and light like a flag blowing in the wind. No one was, or is, her equal.”

  “Yes, yes, her equal and more!” shouted the young Remigius, leaping from his chair. He bent eagerly over the table, one hand resting on it while with the other he swung a polished goblet till the golden wine splashed over the rim, wetting his hand and wrist, and dripping in clear drops from the white foam of his lace ruffs. His cheeks were flushed with wine, his eyes shone and his voice quivered.