by Isak Dinesen
The closet which he entered, and to which he shut the door, was a modest place, a small dark room in a narrow street. Here he slept on an old sofa rented from his landlady. But in the room there were a few objects which did really belong to him—a painted, ink-stained table, two chairs and a chest. These objects to their owner were of great significance. Sometimes, in the night, he would light a small candle to lie and gaze at them, as if they proved to him that the world was still fairly safe. He would also, at night, draw comfort from the idea of the numeral series. He went over its figures—10, 20, 7000. They were all there, and he went to sleep.
Elishama, who despised the goods of this world, passed his time from morning till night amongst greedy and covetous people, and had done so all his life. This to him was as it should be. He understood to a nicety the feelings of his surroundings, and he approved of them. For out of those feelings came, in the end, his closet with the door to it. If the world’s desperate struggle for gold and power were ever to cease, it was not certain that this room or this door would remain. So he used his talents to fan and stir up the fire of ambition and greed in people round him. He particularly fanned the fire of Mr. Clay’s ambition and greed, and watched it with an attentive eye.
Even before the time of their nocturnal readings there had existed between Mr. Clay and Elishama a kind of relation, a rare thing to both of them. It had first begun when Elishama had drawn Mr. Clay’s attention to the fact that he was being cheated by the people who bought his horses for him. Some unknown ancestor of Elishama’s had been a horse-dealer to Polish princes and magnates, and the young bookkeeper in Canton had all this old Jew’s knowledge of horses in his blood. He would not for anything in the world have been the owner of a horse himself, but he encouraged Mr. Clay’s vanity about his carriage and pair, from which, in the end, his own security might benefit. Mr. Clay on his side had been struck by the young man’s insight and judgment; he had left the superintendence of his stable to him and never been disappointed. They had had no other direct dealings, but Mr. Clay had become aware of Elishama’s existence, as Elishama had for a long time been aware of Mr. Clay’s.
The relationship showed itself in a particular way. It might have been observed that neither of the two ever spoke about the other to anybody else. In both the old and the young man this was a breach of habit. For Mr. Clay constantly fretted over his young staff to his overseers, and Elishama had such a sharp tongue that his remarks about the great and small merchants of Canton had become proverbial in the storehouses and the offices. In this way the master and the servant seemed to be standing back to back, facing the rest of the world, and did indeed, unknowingly, behave exactly as they would have behaved had they been father and son.
In his own room Elishama now thought of Mr. Clay, and put him down as a greater fool than he had held him to be. But after a time he rose to make a cup of tea—a luxury which he permitted himself when he came back from his nightly readings—and while he drank it, his mind began to move in a different way. He took up Mr. Clay’s question for serious consideration. It was possible, he reflected, that such books as Mr. Clay had asked about did really exist. He was accustomed to getting Mr. Clay the things he wanted. If these books existed, he must look out for them, and even if they were rare he would find them in the end.
Elishama sat for a long time with his chin in his hand, then stood up and went to the chest in the corner of the room. Out of it he took a smaller, red-painted box which, when he first came to Canton, had contained all that he owned in the world. He looked it through carefully and came upon an old yellow piece of paper folded up and preserved in a small silk bag. He read it by the candle on the table.
III. THE PROPHECY OF ISAIAH
In the party of Jews who in their flight from Poland had taken Elishama with them, there had been a very old man who had died on the way. Before he died he gave the child the piece of paper in the red bag. Elishama tied it round his neck, and managed to keep it there for many years, mainly because during this time he rarely undressed. He could not read, and did not know what was written on it.
But when in London he learned to read, and was told that people set a value on written matter; he took his paper out and found it to be written in letters different from those he had been taught. His master from time to time sent him on an errand to a dark and dirty little pawnshop, the owner of which was an unfrocked clergyman. Elishama took the paper to this man and asked him if it meant anything. When he was informed that it was written in Hebrew, he suggested that the pawnbroker should translate it to him for a fee of three pence. The old man read the paper through and recognized its contents; he looked them up in their own place, copied them out in English and gravely accepted the three pence. The boy, from now on, kept both the original and the translation in his small red bag.
In order to help Mr. Clay, Elishama now took the bag from his box. Under other circumstances he would not have done so, for it brought with it notions of darkness and horror and the dim picture of a friend. Elishama did not want friends any more than Mr. Clay did. They were, to him, people who suffered and perished—the word itself meant separation and loss, tears and blood dripped from it.
Thus it came about that a few nights later, when Elishama had finished reading the accounts to Mr. Clay, and the old man growled and prepared to send him off, the clerk took from his pocket a small dirty sheet of paper and said: “Here, Mr. Clay, is something that I shall read to you.” Mr. Clay turned his pale eyes to the reader’s face. Elishama read out:
“The wilderness and the solitary places shall be glad for them. And the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose. It shall blossom abundantly. And sing even with joy and singing. The glory of Lebanon shall be given to it …”
“What is that?” Mr. Clay asked angrily.
Elishama laid down his paper. “That, Mr. Clay,” he said, “is what you have asked for. Something besides the account books, which people have put together and written down.” He continued:
“The excellency of Carmel and Sharon. They shall see the glory of the Lord. And the excellency of our God. Strengthen ye the weak hands. And confirm the feeble knees. Say to them …”
“What is it? Where did you get it?” Mr. Clay again asked.
Elishama held up his hand to impose silence, and read:
“Say to them that are of a fearful heart: be strong, fear not. Behold, your God will come with a vengeance. Even God with a recompense. He will come and save you. Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped. Then shall the lame man leap as a hart, and the tongue of the dumb sing. For in the wilderness shall waters break out. And streams in the desert. And the parched ground shall become a pool, and the thirsty land springs of water, and the habitation of dragons, where each lay, shall be grass with reeds and rushes.”
When Elishama had got so far, he laid down his paper and looked straight in front of him.
Mr. Clay drew in his breath asthmatically. “What was all that?” he asked.
“I have told you, Mr. Clay,” said Elishama. “You have heard it. This is a thing which a man has put together and written down.”
“Has it happened?” asked Mr. Clay.
“No,” answered Elishama with deep scorn.
“Is it happening now?” said Mr. Clay.
“No,” said Elishama in the same way.
After a moment Mr. Clay asked: “Who on earth has put it together?”
Elishama looked at Mr. Clay and said: “The Prophet Isaiah.”
“Who was that?” Mr. Clay asked sharply. “The Prophet—pooh! What is a prophet?”
Elishama said: “A man who foretells things.”
“Then all these things should come to happen!” Mr. Clay remarked disdainfully.
Elishama did not want to disavow the Prophet Isaiah; he said: “Yes. But not now.”
After a while Mr. Clay ordered: “Read again that of the lame man.”
Elishama read: “ ‘Then the l
ame man shall leap as a hart.’ ”
Again after a moment Mr. Clay ordered: “And that of the feeble knees.”
“ ‘And confirm the feeble knees,’ ” Elishama read.
“And of the deaf,” said Mr. Clay.
“ ‘And the ears of the deaf,’ ” said Elishama “ ‘shall be unstopped.’ ”
There was a long pause. “Is anybody doing anything to make these things happen?” asked Mr. Clay.
“No,” said Elishama with even deeper contempt than before.
When after another pause Mr. Clay took up the matter, Elishama by the tone of his voice realized that he was now wide-awake.
“Read the whole thing over again,” he commanded.
Elishama did as he was told. When he had finished, Mr. Clay asked: “When did the Prophet Isaiah live?”
“I do not know, Mr. Clay,” said Elishama. “I think that it will have been about a thousand years ago.”
Mr. Clay’s knees were at this moment hurting badly, and he was painfully aware of his lameness and infirmity.
“It is a foolish thing,” he declared, “to foretell things which do not begin to take place within a thousand years. People,” he added slowly, “should record things which have already happened.”
“Do you want me,” Elishama asked, “to take out the books of accounts once more?”
There was a very long pause.
“No,” Mr. Clay said. “No. People can record things which have already happened, outside of account books. I know what such a record is called. A story. I once heard a story myself. Do not disturb me, and I shall remember it.
“When I was twenty years old,” he said after another long silence, “I sailed from England to China. And I heard this story on the night before we touched the Cape of Good Hope. Now I remember it all well. It was a warm night, the sea was calm, and there was a full moon. I had been sitting for some time by myself on the afterbody, when three sailors came up and sat down on the deck. They were so close to me that I could hear all that they said, but they did not see me. One of the sailors told the others a story. He recorded to them things which had happened to him himself. I heard the story from the beginning to the end. I shall tell it to you.”
IV. THE STORY
“The sailor,” Mr. Clay began, “had once come ashore in a big town. I do not remember which, but it does not matter. He was walking by himself in a street near the harbor, when a fine costly carriage drove up to him, and an old gentleman descended from it. This gentleman said to the sailor: ‘You are a fine-looking sailor. Do you want to earn five guineas tonight?’ ”
Mr. Clay was so completely unaccustomed to telling a story, that it is doubtful whether he could have gone on with this one except in the dark. He continued with an effort and repeated: “ ‘Do you want to earn five guineas tonight?’ ”
Elishama, here, put the prophecy of Isaiah back into its bag and into his pocket.
“The sailor,” Mr. Clay related, “naturally answered yes. The rich gentleman then told him to come with him, and drove him in his carriage to a big and splendid house just outside the town. Within the house everything was equally grand and sumptuous. The sailor had never believed that such riches existed in the world, for how would a poor boy like him ever have come inside a really great man’s house? The gentleman gave him a fine meal and expensive wine, and the sailor recounted all that he had had to eat and drink, but I have forgotten the names of the courses and the wines. When they had finished this meal, the master of the house said to the sailor: ‘I am, as you see, a very rich man, the richest man in this town. But I am old. I have not many years left, and I dislike and distrust the people who will inherit what I have collected and saved up in life. Three years ago I married a young wife. But she has been no good to me, for I have no child.’ ”
Here Mr. Clay made a pause to collect his thoughts.
“With your permission,” said Elishama, “I, too, can tell that story.”
“What is that?” exclaimed Mr. Clay, very angry at the interruption.
“I shall tell you the rest of that story, with your permission, if you will listen, Mr. Clay,” said Elishama.
Mr. Clay did not find a word to say, and Elishama went on.
“The old gentleman,” he recounted, “led the sailor to a bedroom which was lighted by candlesticks of pure gold, five on the right side and five on the left. Was it not so, Mr. Clay? On the walls were carved pictures of palm-trees. In the room there was a bed, and a partition was made by chains of gold before the bed, and in the bed lay a lady. The old man said to this lady: ‘You know my wish. Now do your best to have it carried out.’ Then from his purse he took a piece of gold—a five-guinea piece, Mr. Clay—and handed it to the sailor, and after that he left the room. The sailor stayed with the lady all night. But when the day began to spring, the door of the house was opened to him by the old man’s servant, and he left the house and went back to his ship. Was it not so, Mr. Clay?”
Mr. Clay for a minute stared at Elishama, then asked: “How do you come to know this story? Have you too met the sailor from the ship near the Cape of Good Hope? He will be an old man by now, and these things happened to him many years ago.”
“That story, Mr. Clay,” said Elishama, “which you believe to have happened to the sailor on your ship, has never happened to anyone. All sailors know it. All sailors tell it, and each of them, because he wishes that it had happened to him himself, tells it as if it were so. But it is not so. All sailors, when they listen to the story, like to have it told in that way, and expect to have it told in that way. The sailor who tells it may vary it a little, and add a few things of his own, as when he explains how the lady was made, and how in the night he made love to her. But otherwise the story is always the same.”
The old man in the bed at first did not say a word, then in a voice hoarse with anger and disappointment he asked: “How do you know?”
“I shall tell you, Mr. Clay,” said Elishama. “You have traveled on one ship only, out here to China, so you have heard this story only once. But I have sailed with many ships. First I sailed from Gravesend to Lisbon, and on the ship a sailor told the story which tonight you have told me. I was very young then, so I almost believed it, but not quite. Then I sailed from Lisbon to the Cape of Good Hope, and on the ship there was a sailor who told it. Then I sailed to Singapore, and on my way I again heard a sailor tell the story. It is the story of all sailors in the world. Even the phrases and the words are the same. But all sailors are pleased when, once more, one of them begins to tell it.”
“Why should they tell it,” said Mr. Clay, “if it were not true?”
Elishama thought the question over. “I shall explain that to you,” he said, “if you will listen. All people, Mr. Clay, in one respect are the same.
“When a new financial scheme is offered for subscription, it is proved on paper that the shareholders will make on it a hundred per cent, or two hundred per cent, as the case may be. Such a profit is never made, and everybody knows that it is never made, still people must see these figures on paper in the issue of stocks, or they will have nothing to do with the scheme.
“It is the same, Mr. Clay, with the prophecy which I have read to you. The Prophet Isaiah, who told it, will, I believe, have been living in a country where it rained too little. Therefore he tells you that the parched ground becomes a pool. In England, where the ground is almost always a pool, people do not care to write it down or to read about it.
“The sailors who tell this story, Mr. Clay, are poor men and lead a lonely life on the sea. That is why they tell about that rich house and that beautiful lady. But the story which they tell has never happened.”
Mr. Clay said: “The sailor told the others that he held a five-guinea piece on his hand, and that he felt the weight and the cold of gold upon it.”
“Yes, Mr. Clay,” said Elishama, “and do you know why he told them so? It was because he knew, and because the other sailors knew, that such a thing could never hap
pen. If they had believed that it could ever happen, they would not have told it. A sailor goes ashore from his ship, and pays a woman in the street to let him come with her. Sometimes he pays her ten shillings, sometimes five, and sometimes only two, and none of these women are young, or beautiful, or rich. It might possibly happen—although I myself doubt it—that a woman would let a sailor come with her for nothing, but if she did so, Mr. Clay, the sailor would never tell. Here a sailor will tell you that a young, beautiful and rich lady—such a lady as he may have seen at a distance, but has never spoken to—has been paying him, for the same thing, five guineas. In the story, Mr. Clay, it is always five guineas. That is contrary to the law of demand and supply, Mr. Clay, and it never has happened, and it never will happen, and that is why it is told.”
Mr. Clay at this moment was so upset, puzzled and angry that he could not speak. He was angry with Elishama, because he felt that his clerk was taking advantage of his weakness, and was defying his authority. But he was upset and puzzled by the Prophet Isaiah, who was about to annihilate his whole world, and him himself with it. The two of them, he felt, were holding together against him. After a while he spoke.
His voice was harsh and grating, but as firm as when he was giving an order in his office.
“If this story,” he said, “has never happened before, I shall make it happen now. I do not like pretense, I do not like prophecies. It is insane and immoral to occupy oneself with unreal things. I like facts. I shall turn this piece of make-believe into solid fact.”
The old man when he had spoken was a little easier at heart. He felt that he was getting the better of Elishama and the Prophet Isaiah. He was still going to prove to them his omnipotence.