Copenhagen Tales
Page 26
so grand that they have the right to keep their hats on before
his throne! And similarly do we honour our God, not by
crawling, but by holding our heads up high before him!
‘Nevertheless’, he continued still more slowly, ‘some
petty human woes we shall always have, since we are
humans and fools. Would you care to hear them?’
‘Yes, that is what I said’, answered the one called
Orosmane.
‘Then hear’, said Yorick, ‘the first of our woes. You would
see, were you to look closer, that Lise’s salt tears have worn
pathways, two noble runnels through the rouge on her
cheeks which recently she took much trouble to apply. This
for the simple reason that in a squabble another young lady
in this house called her an alabaster whore! If I had just two
rixdollars—which alas I do not—I should this very night go
into town to procure some object of alabaster so that Lise
might comprehend with what a feminine masterstroke her
normally uncommonly good friend Nille described her per-
son. Ah, how I long to console Lise! For you must know,
Orosmane, that I owe a great deal to this girl, far more than
the paltry four marks which in her goodness she has allowed
me to have on credit for the time being. What a boon and
blessing for the likes of myself, and solace to our souls as well as our bodies, that such girls exist!’
Orosmane looked at Lise, who tossed her head and
turned away.
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306 n Karen Blixen
‘Your debt with Lise, Poet’, he said, with a gracious
movement of the hand, ‘shall be borne by us. Tomorrow
she will receive an alabaster jar containing 100 rixdollars.
For know this: no whore shall ever weep in our city. No,
they shall hold high office—comme d’un peuple poli les
femmes adorées. No less of a boon and a blessing is it for
the likes of oneself that such girls exist.’
‘Bénissons le seigneur, Lise’, said Yorick.
‘And now’, said Orosmane, ‘now let les prudes, all
righteous dames weep over their hymn books in resent-
ment at our generosity to Lise. For there is no generosity in
them at all. They mince and flounce and simper just to
dupe and ruin us. And’—he burst out, his face suddenly
twisting with anger and bitterness—‘and in bed they want
to talk!’
‘Well said, Sire!’ said Yorick. ‘In bed they want to talk,
the impossible creatures! At the very moment we have
granted them our entire being up to—and beyond—the
limits of our strength, granted them our life and our
eternity—then they want to talk! They know nothing of
man’s, of mankind’s unutterable longing for silence, and
the relief of silence. Instead they wish to hear from us
whether there is life after death, or if that adrienne
model which they wore yesterday became them!’
Orosmane thought long, and again that little grin
played over his face.
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Conversation One Night in Copenhagen n 307
‘Do you know something?’ he said. ‘Something Kirch-
off told me?—Well, in paradise Adam and Eve went on all
fours, just like the dumb animals they lived among. There-
fore in those days Adam kept his sex beneath him, in the
shelter of his body, in accordance with his perception of les
décences, which far exceeds that of women. But his lady
wife could hide nothing, went about entirely exposed to his
gaze. Then one day Madame Eve got up on her two legs,
and assured her husband that only this posture and this
manner of walking befitted human beings. And thereby
immediately she concealed her own sex, and from that
moment could practically deny all knowledge of it. But
lo!—from that day on Adam had to carry his own on full
display before him, revealing for all the world how very
accurately his maker had shaped and crafted him for his
wife’s secret little crucible. So then Madame was able to
strut about and make the sign of the cross and shrill: “Oh
my God, what is the world coming to?!”—Good, eh? But
yes, yes, tell me, isn’t that precisely how it is? And therefore’, he finished, with a fleeting but intense grimace, ‘therefore
the more inoffensive a woman and the more inclined to
resemble a dumb animal and go down on all fours, the
greater ease man finds in her company. Is it not so?’
‘It is! It certainly is’, answered Yorick with a laugh.
‘You put it well! And in fact I too have thought the same
before tonight. For see here, Orosmane—I have never had
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308 n Karen Blixen
the opportunity of observing Lise at her meal, but when-
ever I have pictured her it has been plain to me she does
not dine or sup like the rest of us, but of necessity must
graze like a white lamb in the meadow. Down by the
murmuring brook—down there in the shade!’
Orosmane studied Yorick for a while, and then his
young face smoothed over.
‘Not here’, he said with dignity, ‘not tonight will we
speak of Kirchoff. He is a scoundrel, a valet de chambre
who should definitely not put his words in Lise’s ears, or in
yours or our own! What were we talking about?’
‘About our woes’, said Yorick. ‘And about your muni-
ficence which has drowned Lise’s sorrows.’
‘Yes’, said Orosmane. ‘Lise’s sorrows. And now yours.
How many sorrows do you have?’
‘I have two sorrows’, answered Yorick, ‘since Lise has
almost finished mending my stocking, and thereby most
lovingly removed my third. And one of the two is this:
there is a hole in the sole of my shoe and it lets in a great
deal of water—but never mind, I have more or less grown
used to it. My other sorrow, Orosmane, is this: that I am
not almighty.’
‘Omnipotence?’ said Orosmane slowly. ‘You want
omnipotence?’
‘Alas’, said Yorick, ‘forgive me for coming to you with
so worn, so banal a complaint! But all we sons of Adam
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Conversation One Night in Copenhagen n 309
have an unutterable longing for omnipotence, just as
though we had been accustomed to it, born and bred to
it—and afterwards had been grievously and cruelly
deprived of it.’
‘So you wish for absolute power, do you?’ asked
Orosmane as before, fixedly regarding his host. ‘Ha!
Then come to me—I have it! I have it, so everyone tells
me. Didn’t they put a crown on my head and a sceptre in
my hand—Danneskjold and the Lord Chamberlain him-
self carried my train. They even swore to it in rhyme—wait
a moment and I shall remember it and quote it to you.’
He bethought himself a while, then calmly and clearly
recited:
‘What shall I call thee, our young Solomon?
A King, a God
?—Oh both, for see, your seal
Is stamped with wisdom and omnipotence:
Almighty Monarch with a mind divine!
‘Did you perhaps create this verse yourself, you who are a
poet?’
‘No, not this verse’, said the poet.
‘Well, so would you like to be me?’ asked Orosmane in
a high merry voice. ‘Should we swap roles tonight, and see
if we feel any different? For do you know what? Just now,
when you handed me the glass, I was of the opinion it was
you who was all-powerful.’
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310 n Karen Blixen
‘You are right once again, Sire’, said Yorick. ‘Of all here
in Copenhagen, probably you and I, the monarch and the
poet, come nearest to possessing absolute power. No, we
should feel no difference.’
At this point in the conversation Lise got up to remove
the apples from the stove before they started burning. She
put them on the table and sprinkled sugar on them with
her fingers, so that her guests could regale themselves at
their leisure. From time to time, while the others talked on,
she took a mouthful herself, leaving a trace of crimson on
the apple flesh, and licked her fingers. Orosmane followed
her movements with his eyes, but absentmindedly, as if
only half-seeing her.
‘All sons of Adam, you said!’ he exclaimed. ‘Then what
of his wife’s brood, what about the females of this world?
Do you honestly suppose they have no craving for omnip-
otence? You may be certain my sweet Katrine would love
nothing more than to govern the world, just as our con-
sort’s preneuse de puces would like nothing more than to
determine our own bedtime!’
‘No, probably they do not crave it’, said Yorick. ‘But for
one reason alone: in her heart every woman believes her-
self all-powerful already. And they are right to believe so.
Look at Lise here! She hasn’t spoken a word during all our
conversation, nor will she. And yet it is she who allows our
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conversation to arise, and had she not been in this room it
would never have happened!’
‘Well now,’ said Orosmane, ‘what would you do with
your omnipotence? Because I’, he announced, and for a
moment his delicate face assumed an astonishingly wild
and fierce expression, ‘know very well what I should most
like to do with mine!’
‘Mon Soudane’, said Yorick humbly. ‘I should like to
live.’
Orosmane considered a moment. ‘Why?’ he asked.
‘Well’, said Yorick,.‘It is genuinely the case, sauf votre
respect, that people would like to live. First of all they
would like to live from today until tomorrow, and what
they need for this to happen is food. It is not easy to
procure. And when we starve we moan and we howl, not
from the pain precisely, but because in our stomachs we
can feel our life itself is threatened. That is why a baby cries
for the breast, because it wants to live from today until
tomorrow—though it knows not what that means!
‘But next’, he went on, ‘we desire to live longer than
from today until tomorrow, and somewhat longer than the
lamentable span of years called a lifetime. We desire to live
down through the generations, through the ages. For this
to happen we need to take another in our arms, we need a
beloved who will receive, house and bring forth this our
earthly everlasting life. That is why a youth will moan and
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312 n Karen Blixen
howl—even in verse, some of us—because he yearns for
his own blood to greet the dawn and the rising moon a
hundred years hence. And because with all his blood and
in every limb he feels that if he is denied a loving embrace
his very life will be denied him.
‘But lastly’, he concluded very slowly, ‘lastly and most
powerfully man desires life everlasting.’
‘Ah yes’, said Orosmane, ‘life everlasting, I know all
about what that is. Much praise was heaped on my old
tutor Nielsen when I performed so well in my catechism.’
And quickly he reeled off: ‘The forgiveness of sins, the
resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting! Is that
what you want?’
‘More or less’, said Yorick. ‘Even though my body is
not what I take most pride in. Light enough in itself, and
yet often a burden and terribly painful to carry around. As
far as I am concerned it can stay where it is, and I could
then contemplate it from a distance and gloat a little. Even
so—I never cease to hope for everlasting life and can’t
resign myself to being without it.
‘But you, Sire, being the Lord’s anointed’, he continued,
‘are sitting very pretty, being assured of eternal bliss
amongst your hallowed forbears. My own poor soul, though,
blunders about in uncertainty, both blinded by the light and
shrinking from the dark, and in this wise must duly suffer
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both the gnawing hunger and the unquenchable longing for
the loving embrace. Alas, and I would so like to help it!’
Orosmane, his fond memories of former glories re-
awakened, now proceeded to declaim these lines from an
old Danish hymn:
‘How sweet to taste
All that His house doth own,
To know no waste
Who stand before His throne!
And there to see
The persons three
Who reign above alone!’
Losing the thread of the verse, he broke off and gazed
intently first at his own hand, and then at Lise and Yorick.
Yorick too grew thoughtful, pausing a while, before
taking a sip from his glass.
‘Yes’, he said at last. ‘It may well be very sweet to taste,
and the house up above undoubtedly has much to offer.
But what I would never dare confide to anyone I shall
tonight confide to you, Orosmane—because you under-
stand everything one says to you: never shall I quite be able
to turn my back on this earth! Yes, I have kept it ever alive
in my thoughts, just as when I was a boy I kept a bird
in a cage alive, and a plant in the window, by giving it
water when it was thirsty, turning it towards the sun, and
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314 n Karen Blixen
covering it at night. This earth has been so delectable and
precious to me. From up there I would ever be on the look-
out to see if it could survive without me. Oh, and I would
insist it preserve me, I would so long to see my heavenly
bliss reflected far down there, as in a mirror. Do you know
what that sort of reflection is called?’
‘No, I do not’, answered Orosmane.
‘It is called mythos!’ cried Yorick, in a transport. �
�My
mythos—that is the earthly mirror of my heavenly exis-
tence. And mythos in the Greek language means speech. Or
at least—for I’m not so well up in Greek, and learned folk
might think me wrong in this—you and I, just for tonight,
will agree to interpret it this way. Uncommonly pleasing
and delectable is speech, Orosmane, so we feel tonight.
Yet, before speech, and higher than speech, we must rec-
ognize a greater phenomenon. Logos! Logos, which in
Greek means the word. And the Word created all things!’
A certain rhythm to their mutual happy intoxication
had, like some unimpeachable law, guided and borne
along the speakers throughout their conversation. It now
subtly seemed to part them, as when two dancers separate,
and one, though still at hand and indispensable to the
figure, momentarily stands inactive to one side to contem-
plate his partner’s big solo. With a mighty movement, the
room’s host swung away from his guest and took the stage
on his own.
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‘Oh!’ he cried. ‘Oh how I have always loved the word—
few have loved it so much as I! The secrets of its nature and
its ways are familiar to me! Which is why I know and
understand more than any other that at the moment my
Almighty Father created me with His Word he also de-
manded and expected of me that in time I should return to
Him, bringing back His Word in the form of speech. This,
and only this, shall be my work during my sojourn here on
earth. Out of His divine logos—the creative force, the
beginning—I will fashion my human mythos—the lasting
record. Yes, and when through His infinite mercy I am
once more united with Him in heaven, then the two of
us—I abjectly and in tears, He with a smile—will gaze
down and expect and demand that my mythos remain
after me on earth.
‘Terrible’, he continued in an altered, and slower, more
oppressive tempo, ‘terrible is the recognition of our obli-
gation toward the Creator. Heavy and unremitting is the
acorn’s obligation to yield Him the oak tree—yet it is
lovely too, with its young leaves after the rain. And crush-
ing in its weight is my own covenant with the Lord! Yet
joyous too, and magnificent! For if only I can hold to it, no
adversity or privation shall ever make me bend. No, on the