Copenhagen Tales
Page 25
But in the darkness, within the silent house, his eyes
were wide open. He did not know—and in this place felt
there could be no way of knowing—whether his madcap
dash had been a splendid idea, a game of hide-and-seek up
and down the houses, or more of a flight from deadly
danger, the Evil One himself out after him. There was no
one here to tell him whether the next moment he would be
hailed and hugged by flushed, laughing friends, or if a
pitiless hand, dreaded in dreams and in reality, would
suddenly descend upon him. He was alone.
He was alone, and in all his life he could not remember
ever having been alone before. The realization of his utter
isolation slowly but powerfully took hold of him, at first
making him giddy, but then lifting him up as on the crest
of a wave. It swelled into an immense and fitting revenge
over all who until now had confined him. A triumph.
At last, at last the apotheosis he had been promised!
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Passionately he clung to the person he had become in this
place, here in the dark, a statue of himself, pure as marble,
all of a piece, invulnerable and imperishable. But after a
while he began to shiver, until his teeth were chattering in
his mouth.
A little higher up, where the staircase ended, a light
shone out from beneath a door. The narrow beam, which
moved back and forth and seemed to multiply in strength,
had to mean something. Slowly he came to the realization
that just inside, behind the door and in the light, there
must be someone. But who? There were many hundred
faces in the dark city around him. There were, he had been
told, starving people who preyed on others, people who
murdered and people who gave themselves up to the dark
arts. Creatures from his boyhood fantasies appeared to
him, and it was possible, even reasonable, to suppose
they lived right here, where he had never been. But now
he became aware of sounds too, behind the door a woman
was crying, and a young man was comforting her. In a
trice—with surprising assurance and agility, and manag-
ing to avoid placing his hand on the greasy banister rail—
he mounted the last few steps, placed two fingers on the
door handle, and pressed it down. The door was not
locked, it opened.
The room he entered was small, peat-brown in the
corners since the only illumination came from a tallow-dip
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on a table, but with a vivid play of colours as far as the light
could reach. Beside the candle stood a clear pinch-bottle
and a couple of glasses. Apart from the table and a three
legged stool next to it, the room contained an old chest, an
armchair with worn gilding and shabby silk upholstery,
and a big four-poster bed with faded grey-and-red striped
cotton hangings. The whole little chamber glowed with the
heat of a pot-bellied stove against the wall, and the air was
filled with the good smell of apples baking on top of the
stove, sizzling and spitting once in a while.
The hostess in the room, a big flaxen-haired girl,
heavily powdered and rouged and stark naked under a
negligée with pink bows, was seated on the three-legged
stool and rocking it a little to and fro while inspecting a
white stocking which she had drawn over the outspread
fingers of her left hand and up her arm. As the door
opened, she ceased moving and turned a swollen, sulky
face towards it. A young man in shirt and breeches, with
buckled shoes and a bare foot thrust inside one of them,
lay across the bed gazing up at the canopy. Lazily he
turned his gaze upon the newcomer.
‘A pity, my lovely’, he said, ‘it seems we are no longer
free to discuss the nature of love in privacy. We have a
visitor—’, he eyed their guest again. ‘And a distinguished
visitor too—’, he continued slowly, sitting up, ‘a gentle-
man, a gallant gentleman from the court. A—’ Breaking off
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abruptly, he paused a moment, then swung his legs over
the edge of the bed and stood up.
‘We have,’ he exclaimed, ‘a visit from the ruler of all
faithful Muslims, the great Sultan Orosmane himself! It is
common knowledge that at times his glorious Majesty will
don disguise and visit even the humblest dwellings in his
good city of Solyme in order to get to know his people
without being recognized. Sire, never could you have
found anywhere better suited for such investigations
than right here!’
The stranger blinked at the light and the faces. Then he
stiffened and turned pale.
‘L’on vient!’ he whispered. Someone is coming!
‘Non!’ cried the young man in the one stocking,
announcing he would allow no mortal soul to cross the
threshold: ‘Non, jusqu’ici nul mortel ne s’avance!’
Brushing past his guest he turned the key in the door.
The faint grating of metal sent a shiver through the youth
in the cloak. But soon after the certainty of having a locked
door behind him seemed to lift his spirits. He heaved a
deep breath.
‘O mon Soudane!’ said his host. ‘As you see, Venus and
Bacchus hold equal sway in our little temple—and though
it be not the noblest of their grapes that we press here, it is
at least the pure stuff! That pair are the most honest of all
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the gods, and in this place we put our trust in them
entirely. You must do likewise.’
The newcomer looked around the room. Recognizing
in what sort of premises he found himself, a faintly lascivi-
ous little smile flitted across his face.
‘Does the gentleman take me for a poltroon, perhaps?’
he asked, still with a trace of that smile.
‘For a poltroon?’ cried his host. ‘Why no! For a senti-
mental traveller, your lordship. What is it one of my
beloved masters says? “The man who either disdains or
fears to walk up a dark entry may be an excellent good
man, and fit for a hundred things, but he will not do to
make a good sentimental traveller!” I suspect that you, like
myself, have before tonight set foot—alas, I suspect, like
myself, after this night will again set foot—inside many a
dark and unknown entry! Moreover I suspect that you and
I will tonight make a true sentimental journey together!’
A brief silence descended on the room. The girl, who
still sat with the stocking on her fingers, glanced from one
young man to the other.
‘What are your names, you two?’ asked the guest.
‘Ah yes, of course,’ answered his host. ‘Forgive me that
contrary to all good manners I failed at o
nce to introduce
your humble vassals, so close to heaven. Even though
you elect to remain incognito, it would plainly be most
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improper for us to withhold anything of our true nature
and condition from you.’
The host had reached more or less the same stage of
intoxication as his visitor. It made him somewhat unsteady
on his feet, and to some extent appeared also to encumber
his tongue, for he lisped a little. But at the same time it lent
wings to his speech and opened up his soul to powerful
and generous impulses. He bestowed an open, bright, and
loving gaze upon their visitor, and perceiving that still
more time and palaver were needed before the fugitive
would feel completely at home in the room and with the
company, he continued:
‘The name of our charming hostess’, he said, ‘is Lise.
I have called her Fleur-de-Lys after that deeply enchanting
heroine of a novel whom she resembles. But vulgar folk in
this neighbourhood, by altering a letter in her name, have
given it a bad odour. I mention all this purely en passant,
and as a matter of no consequence, for my friend may in
fact be called by whatsoever pet name her worshippers
may care to choose, and thus in her person represent the
entire sex. As my aforementioned master has said, “That
man who has not a sort of affection for the whole sex is
incapable of loving a single one as he ought.” Lise is thus,
as I have but now had the honour of explaining to you, her
sex incarnate!’
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‘And I?’ he continued, ‘I flatter myself you will already
have perceived I am a gentleman. Beyond that I am, sauf
votre respect, a poet—which is to say a fool. My name? As a
poet I have, God forgive the Danish public, no name as yet.
But in my capacity of fool I may, like the master whom
I have already twice cited, take the liberty of calling myself
Yorick. “Alas, poor Yorick! A fellow of infinite jest, of most
excellent fancy! And now—in this place and in this state!
How abhorred in my imagination it is! My gorge rises
at it. To what base uses”—my friend and brother—“we
may return!” ’ He stood for a moment lost in thought.
‘Return!’ he repeated to himself, then bitterly exclaimed:
‘ “You came to see my father’s funeral, and instead I think
it was to see my mother’s wedding!” ’
He collected himself quickly, and shook off his morose
mood.
‘And now’, he said, ‘now, Sire, be assured you are quite
safe with us, as safe as in heaven, or the grave! For who,
anywhere on this earth, would be less likely to betray a
King par la grȃce de Dieu than—by His same grace—a
poet? And by His same grace again, a . . . but Lise abhors
the word, so I shall not pronounce it.’
Again he fell silent a while, but remaining alert, obser-
vant, his entire being absorbed in the present moment, and
finally took a step forward. Seizing the pinch bottle, he
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filled the glasses, and with a smile extended a ceremonious
arm to pass one of them to the stranger.
‘A toast!’ he cried. ‘A toast to this hour! It is by its very
nature everlasting, and by that same token therefore non-
existent. Our door is bolted—hear how it rains!—and no
one in the whole world knows we are here! And the three
of us together here are equally favoured in that tomorrow
we shall have forgotten this hour, and never ever will
remember it again! Therefore in this hour shall the poor
speak freely with the rich, the poet conjure up his visions
for the prince, and even Sultan Orosmane himself—oh, in
ways that he never could before, and alas, in ways he never
will again—entrust his lofty and to mere mortals incom-
prehensible woes to the hearts of two human beings, the
hearts of a fool and a whore! Thus does this hour become a
pearl in an oyster shell at the bottom of the dark flood of
Copenhagen all about us. Vivat!—friend and mistress—
long live this our stillborn and death-doomed hour!’
He raised his arm high in the air, emptied his glass and
stood very still. Obedient as a reflection in a mirror, his
guest repeated his every movement.
This last glass, coming on top of all that each had
downed already that evening, had a powerful and mysteri-
ous effect. It caused the two small figures to grow, pumped
a deep and appealing flush into both pale faces, and
kindled a sparkling light in their two great pairs of eyes.
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Host and guest beamed at each other and stepped so close
that for a moment it appeared they were about to wrestle
or embrace.
Then it became apparent the guest wished to be
liberated from his cloak: ‘Ȏtez-moi donc’, he said softly,
‘ce manteau qui me pèse.’
He stood very still, his chin raised and his eyes fixed on
his host’s face, while the latter fumbled with the clasp and
finally freed him of the heavy encumbrance. Beneath, the
stranger wore a pearl-grey silk coat and a waistcoat with
aquamarine embroidery, the lace at the neck and cuffs was
torn. The pale costume gave his whole figure the effect of
something incorporeal and shimmering, as though he
were a young angel visiting the hot and close little room.
But as the cloak fell backwards and spread out across the
back and seat of the armchair its deep-gold velvet lining
gathered up all the colours in the room, transfiguring them
into a radiance of pure glowing ore. The young man who
called himself Yorick watched wide-eyed as the air about
him turned to gold, and in his delight squeezed his guest’s
delicate fingers.
‘Oh most welcome!’ he cried. ‘Oh long awaited! Our
lord and master, we are yours! See, we now offer you our
best chair, and can offer none better. Lise never cares to sit
in it herself for fear of straining the webbing with her
charms or wearing out the upholstery. So now it is yours,
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if you will deign to leave your imprint on it. Make it this
night a throne!’
Under the speaker’s powerful gaze the fugitive’s fea-
tures trembled for a second, then softened into a serene
calm. From having not long before searched so fearfully on
all sides, he became collected, self-possessed, exhilarated
by one joyous conviction. Yes, he was among friends, such
as he had read about and had sought but never found, such
as would know and understand who he truly was. Aided
by his host’s graciously raised hand,
he allowed himself to
be guided a step backwards to the chair, and rather
abruptly sat down in it, without in any way damaging his
dignity. Bolt upright against the golden velvet, his fine
hands resting on the arms of the chair as though already
holding sceptre and orb, he surveyed the room as from a
great height.
Yet when he spoke he changed again. His voice in his
few brief phrases in French had been fluid and melodious.
When he changed to Danish it was plain he had acquired
the language through mocking his tutors and plotting
pranks in the company of pages and stable boys.
‘Yes’, he said, ‘yes indeed, Poet! This is what I want.
I wish to hear my people’s complaints with my own ears.
Never have I been able to because you are kept from me.
Tonight I had to run away from the others, through dark
rooms and up long black staircases to find you, you who
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are poor and who suffer injustice. Tonight you may come
to me and speak freely.’
He stopped, searching for words, and then went on in a
raised voice:
‘ . . . dans ces lieux, sans manquer de respect,
chacun peut désormais jouir de mon aspect,
car je vois avec mépris ces maximes terribles,
qui font de tant de rois des tyrans invisibles! ’*
‘Well, come along now,’ he said reverting to Danish.
‘Complain away! Are you unhappy?’
The one who had called himself Yorick pondered a
while, then laid a hand on his chest and pressed it against
his collarbone, where his shirt lay open.
‘Unhappy?’ he repeated slowly. ‘Tonight of all nights
we cannot be unhappy. However, neither would we wish
to appear objects of pity to your eyes. A true-born courtier
does not insult his king by making himself smaller in his
presence, as though such were necessary to heighten a
sovereign’s majesty. No, he straightens his back and
makes himself as tall as he can, and says to the world:
“See, what proud men are this master’s servants!” All
credit to his Catholic Majesty of Spain that he has servants
* Not without due deference, in this place / henceforth may all safely behold my face, / for I scorn dire maxims where kings have been / in most part portrayed as tyrants unseen.
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