by Isak Dinesen
During these reflections she had stepped out of her small silk slippers and stretched her fair, slim, strong body between the smooth sheets rich with lace, her dark silken tresses spread over the pillowcase.
She had been engrossed in the thought of her enemy, and she had become engrossed in the vision of herself. It was not till she heard steps in the corridor ouside that she gave any thought to the third party in the story, her unknown guest of the night. Then for a second a little cold draft of contempt for Mr. Clay’s hired and bribed puppet ran through her mind.
When the doorknob turned she cast down her eyes, and till the door was once more opened and shut she kept her glance fixed upon the sheet. But in this withdrawal there was as much energy and vigor as in any direct glance of deadly, uncompromising enmity.
Mr. Clay, in his long dressing-gown of heavy Chinese silk, came into the room leaning on his stick. Two respectful steps behind him a big, blurred shadow slowly crossed the threshold.
The one glass of wine he had taken with his guest had acted upon the invalid of many sleepless nights. He had also, a few minutes ago, been frightened a little, and although in the course of his life he had frightened many people, fear to himself was a rare experience and might well stir his blood in a new way. But the old man was drunk with a still stronger liquor. For tonight he was moving in a world created by his will and at his word.
His triumph had aged him; in a few hours his hair seemed to have grown whiter. But at the same time it had strangely rejuvenated him.
He was at this hour conquering and subjugating; he was indeed, in absorbing them into his own being, annihilating the forces which unexpectedly had bid defiance to him. He was materializing a fantasy and changing a fable into fact. Dimly he felt that he was about to triumph over the person who had attempted to upset his own idea of the world—the Prophet Isaiah.
He smiled a little; he was a little bit unsteady on his legs. For the first time in his life he was impressed by a woman’s beauty. He gazed almost happily at the girl in the bed, whom his command had called to life, and for a second the vague picture of a child long ago shown to him by a proud father appeared before him, and disappeared. He nodded his head in approval. His dolls were behaving well. The heroine of his story was pink and white, and her downcast eyes bore witness to alarmed modesty. The story was fetching headway.
This was the moment, Mr. Clay knew, for the speech of the old gentleman in the story. He remembered it word for word from the night fifty years ago, but the consciousness of his power was somehow going to the head of the nabob of Canton. The Prophet Isaiah is crafty; behind a pious mien he has knowledge of many ways and measures. Mr. Clay had been a child only a very short time, until he had learned to speak and to understand the speech of other people. Now, as he was about to enter the heaven of his omnipotence, the Prophet laid his hand on his head and turned him into a child—in other words, the old stone-man was quietly entering his second childhood. He began to play with his story; he could not let go the theme of the dinner table.
“You,” he began, poking his forefinger at the girl in the bed, “and you”—without looking at him he poked it at the boy—“are young. You are in fine health, your limbs do not ache, you sleep at night. And because you can walk and move without pain, you believe that you are walking and moving according to your own will. But it is not so. You walk and move at my bidding. You are, in reality, two young, strong and lusty jumping-jacks within this old hand of mine.”
He paused, the little hard smile still on his face.
“So,” he went on, “so are, as I have told you, all people jumping-jacks in a hand stronger than their own. So are, as I have told you, the poor jumping-jacks in the hands of the rich, the fools of this earth in the hands of the shrewd. They dance and drop as these hands pull the strings.
“When I am gone,” he finished, “and when you two are left to yourselves, and believe that you are following the command of your own young blood only, you will still be doing nothing, nothing at all, but what I have willed you to do. You will be conforming to the plot of my story. For tonight this room, this bed, you yourselves with this same young hot blood in you—it is all nothing but a story turned, at my word, into reality.”
It came hard for him to tear himself from the room. He remained standing by the end of the bed for another minute, hung on his stick. Then with fine dignity he turned his back on the small actors on the stage of his omnipotence.
As he opened the door Virginie raised her eyes.
She looked straight at the figure of her father’s murderer, and saw a withdrawing and disappearing figure. Mr. Clay’s long Chinese dressing-gown trailed on the floor, and as he closed the door behind him it was caught in it; he had to open and close the door a second time.
XIII. THE MEETING
The room remained without a sound or a stir till, in the very same instant, the boy took two long steps forward and Virginie, in the bed, turned her head and looked at him.
At that she was so mortally frightened that she forgot her high mission, and for a moment wished herself back in her own house, and even under the patronage, such as it was, of Charlie Simpson. For the figure by the end of the bed was not a casual sailor out of the streets of Canton. It was a huge wild animal brought in to crush her beneath him.
The boy stared at her, immovable except for his broad chest slowly going up and down with his deep regular breath. At last he said: “I believe that you are the most beautiful girl in the world.” Virginie then saw that she had to do with a child.
He asked her: “How old are you?”
She could not find a word to say. Was it possible, now, that her great dark tragedy was to be turned into a comedy?
The boy waited for an answer, then asked her again: “Are you seventeen?”
“Yes,” said Virginie. And as she heard her own voice pronounce the word her face, turned toward him, softened a little.
“Then you and I are the same age,” said the boy.
He took another slow step and sat down on the bed.
“What is your name?” he asked.
“Virginie,” she answered.
He repeated the name twice and sat for some time looking at her. Then he lay down gently beside her on top of the quilt. In spite of his size he was light and easy in all his movements. She heard his deep breathing quicken, break off, and start again with a faint moan, as if something was giving way within him. They lay like this for a while.
“I have got something to tell you,” he suddenly broke out in a low voice. “I have never till tonight slept with a girl. I have thought of it, often. I have meant to do it, many times. But I have never done it.”
He was silent once more, waiting to hear what she would say to this. As she said nothing he went on.
“It was not all my own fault,” he said. “I have been away for a long time, in a place a long way off, where there were no girls.”
Again he stopped, and again spoke. “I have never told the others on the boat,” he said. “Nor my friends with whom I came ashore tonight. But I thought that I had better tell you.”
Against her will Virginie turned her face toward him. His own face, quite close to hers, was all aglow.
“When I was in the place, far away from here, that I told you about,” he went on, “I sometimes fancied that I had a girl with me, who was mine. I brought her bird’s eggs and fish, and some big sweet fruits that grew there, but of which I do not know the name, and she was kind to me. We slept together in a cave that I had found when I had been in the place for three months. When the full moon rose it shone into it. But I could not think of a name for her. I did not remember any girl’s name—Virginie,” he added very slowly. “Virginie.” And once more: “Virginie.”
All at once he lifted the quilt and the sheet, and slid in beneath them. Although he still kept a little away from her she sensed his body there, big, supple, and very young. After a time he stretched out his hand and touched her. Her lace nightgown had sl
ipped up on her leg; as now slowly the boy put out his hand it met her round naked knee. He started a little, let his fingers run gently over it, then withdrew his hand and felt his own lean and hard knee over.
A moment later Virginie cried out in fear of her life. “God!” she screamed. “For God’s sake! Get up, we must get up. There is an earthquake—do you not feel the earthquake!”
“No,” the boy panted lowly into her face. “No. It is not an earthquake. It is me.”
XIV. THE PARTING
When at last he fell asleep he held her close to him as in a vise, with his face bored into her shoulder, breathing deeply and peacefully.
Virginie, who had lately thought of so many things, lay awake but could think of nothing in the world. She had never in her life felt such a strength. It would be useless and hopeless for her, here, to try to act on her own. She felt his mighty grip round her as a hitherto-unknown kind of reality, which made everything else seem hollow and falsified.
In the middle of the night she suddenly remembered things which her mother had told her about her own people, the seafaring men of Brittany. Old French songs of the sailor’s dangers, and of his homecoming, came back to her as on their own. In the end, from far away, came the sailor-wife’s cradlesong.
When in the course of the night the boy woke up, he behaved with the girl in his bed like a bear with a honeycomb, growling over her in a wild state of greed and ecstasy. A couple of times they talked together.
“On the ships,” he said, “I sometimes made a song.”
“What were your songs about?” she asked.
“About the sea,” he answered. “And the life of the sailors. And their death.”
“Say a little of them to me,” said she.
After a moment he slowly recited:
“As I was keeping the middle watch,
and the night was cold,
three swans flew across the moon,
over her round face of gold.”
“Gold,” he repeated, somewhat uneasily. And after a pause: “A five-guinea piece is like the moon. And then not at all like her.”
“Did you make other songs?” asked Virginie, who did not understand what he meant, but somehow did not want him to be worried.
“Yes, I made other songs,” he said. “About my boat.”
“Say a little of them to me, then,” she again asked.
Again he recited slowly:
“When the sky is brown,
and the sea yawns, three thousand fathoms down,
and the boat runs downward like a whale,
still Povl Veiling will not turn pale.”
“Is your name Paul, then?” she asked.
“Yes, Povl,” he answered. “It is not a bad name. My father was named Povl, and his father too. It is the name of good seamen, faithful to their ship. My father was drowned six months before I was born. He is down there, in the sea.”
“But you are not going to drown, Paul?” she said.
“No,” said he. “Maybe not. But I have many times wondered what my father thought of, when the sea took him at last, altogether.”
“Do you like to think of that sort of thing?” she asked, somewhat alarmed.
He thought her question over. “Yes,” he said. “It is good to think of the storms and the high sea. It is not bad to think of death.”
A little while after he called out, in a sudden, low cry: “I shall have to go back to my ship as soon as it grows light. She sails in the morning.”
At these words a long, sad pain ran through Virginie’s whole body. But the next moment it was again swallowed up in his strength. Soon after they both fell asleep in each other’s arms.
Virginie woke up when the morning showed in gray stripes between the window curtains. The boy had loosened his grasp of her, but was still, in his deep sleep, holding on to her hand.
The moment she woke she was gripped, as in a strange hold, by one single thought. Never before had one thought filled her so entirely, to the exclusion of everything else. “When he sees my face in the daylight,” she reflected, “it will be old, powdered and rouged. An aged, wicked woman’s face!”
She watched the light growing stronger. She had ten minutes yet, she had five minutes yet, she thought—her heart heavy, heavy in her breast. Time was up, and she called his name twice.
When he woke she told him that he must get up in order to be back on his ship before she sailed. He did not answer her, but clung to her hand, and in a while pressed it to his face, moaning.
She heard a bird singing in the garden and said: “Listen, Paul, there is a bird singing. The candles are burnt out, the night is over.”
Suddenly, without a sound, like an animal springing, he flung himself out of the bed, seized her, and lifted her up with him.
“Come!” he cried. “Come with me, away from here!”
His voice was like a song, like a storm; it lifted her higher than his arms.
“I shall take you with me,” he cried again, “to my ship. I shall hide you there, in the hold. I shall take you home with me!”
She thrust her hands against his chest to get away from him, and felt it going up and down like a pair of bellows, but she only made him, and herself within his embrace, sway a little, like a tree in the wind. He tightened his hold of her, raising her as if to throw her over his shoulder.
“I am not going to leave you!” he sang out. “I am not going to let anybody in the world part us. What! Now that you are mine! Never! never! never!”
Virginie at this moment caught sight of their two dim figures in one of the looking-glasses. She could not have asked for a more dramatic scene. The boy looked superhumanly big, formidable now, like an enraged bear, risen on his hind legs, and swinging his right forelimb in the air—and she herself, with her long hair hanging down, was the limp, defenseless prey in his left arm. Writhing, she managed to get one foot to the ground. The boy felt her tremble; he let her down, but still held her close.
“What are you afraid of?” he asked, forcing her face up toward his own. “You do not believe that I shall let anybody take you away from me! You are coming home with me. You will not be afraid of the storms, or the blizzards, or the big waves, when I am with you. You will never be afraid in Denmark. There we shall sleep together every night. Like tonight! Like tonight!”
Virginie’s deadly terror had nothing to do with storms, blizzards or big waves; she did not even, at this moment, dread death. She dreaded that he should see her face in the light of day. At first she dared not speak, for she did not feel sure of herself, and might say anything. But when she had stood on both feet for a minute she collected her whole being to find a way of escape.
“You cannot do that,” she said. “He has paid you.”
“What?” he cried out, bewildered.
“That old man has paid you!” she repeated. “He has paid you to go away at dawn. You have taken his money!”
When he grasped the meaning of her words his face grew white and he let go his hold of her so suddenly that she swayed on her feet.
“Yes,” he said slowly. “He has paid me. And I took his money.—But at that time,” he cried, “I did not know!”
He stared into the air before him, above her head. “I have promised him!” he said heavily. Letting his head drop upon her shoulder he buried his face in her hair and her flesh. “Oh! oh! oh!” he wailed.
He lifted her, carried her back onto the bed and sat down on it beside her, his eyes closed. Time after time he raised her and pressed her body to his own, then laid her down again. Virginie was calmer as long as he kept his eyes closed. She looked back over their short acquaintance to find a word to say to him.
“You will have your boat,” she said at last.
After a long silence he said: “Yes, I shall have the boat.” And again after a while: “Was that what you said: that I shall have the boat?”
Once more he lifted her and held her for a long time in his arms. “But you!” he said.
/> “But you?” he repeated, slowly, after a moment. “What is going to happen to you, my girl?”
Virginie did not say a word.
“Then I must go,” he said, “I must go back to my ship.” He listened and added: “There is a bird singing. The candles are burnt out. The night is over. I must go.” But he did not go till a little later.
“Good-bye, Virginie,” he said. “That is your name—Virginie. I shall name the boat after you. I shall give her both our names—Povl and Virginie. She will sail with both our names on her, up through the Storstroem and the Bay of Koege.”
“Will you remember me?” Virginie asked.
“Yes,” the sailor said. “Always, all my life.” He rose.
“I shall think of you all my life,” he said. “How would I not think of you in my boat? I shall think of you when I hoist the sails and when I weigh anchor. And when I cast anchor. I shall think of you in the mornings when I hear the birds singing. Of your body, of your smell. I shall never think of any other girl, of any girl at all. Because you are the most beautiful girl in the world.”
She followed him to the door and put her arms round his neck. Here, away from the window, the room was still dark. Here she suddenly heard herself weeping. “But I have got one minute more,” she thought, as she held him in her arms and they kissed.
“Look at me,” she begged him. “Look at me, Paul.”
Gravely, he looked her in the face.
“Remember my face,” she said. “Look at my face well, and remember it. Remember that I am seventeen. Remember that I have never loved anybody till I met you.”
“I shall remember it all,” he said. “I shall never forget your face.”
Clinging to him, her wet face lifted, she felt that he was freeing himself of her arms.
“Now you must go,” she said.
XV. THE SHELL
By the light of that same dawn Elishama walked up Mr. Clay’s graveled drive and entered the house, in order to be, in his quiet way, the full stop, or the epilogue, to the story.