Malafrena

by Ursula K. Le Guin

  “I know. I’m sorry.” He took off his coat and stock and sat down on the bed in waistcoat and shirtsleeves. His face looked grave and shadowed in the light of the single candle. She watched him, studied his face, as she always did, as if by watching him she could find out what he was.

  “At the Illyrica,” she said. “Talk and talk and talk. Words and words and words…”

  “No, I was with a friend. From that school I taught at for a while. He’s out of work.”

  “You’re all out of work, always.”

  She knew he did not like to be teased about the erratic jobs he had taken to pay for his rent and bread, until Novesma Verba, thriving, could pay him a tiny salary. She knew the subject of his relative poverty was one of the most dangerous ones that lay between them. It was precisely because it was dangerous that she began to edge near the crater. But no temper stirred in him now; he merely nodded, and said, “Egen quit his job, he had a good one, tutoring a family, some grain-merchant in the Trasfiuve. He’s consumptive and a doctor told him that living with the children he put them at risk. So he moved out. They tried to make him stay. I don’t know what to do for him. If he could just have a year or so to get his health back—” Itale put his head in his hands. “I don’t know, I don’t see how he can get free at all, but it can’t…”

  “Yes, it can; it probably will; it generally does. And there is nothing you can do about it! Why do you torment yourself?”

  “I don’t. He’s my friend.”

  “You do. None of your friends is worthy of you. They are all doomed, defeated in advance.”

  “Estenskar?” he said with a kind of laugh.

  “Estenskar most of all. He is in love with defeat.”

  “I don’t want to talk about all that now,” he said impatiently. “I’m tired.” He turned to her, but she swung off the bed with a lazy, evasive motion, gathering her silk dressing-gown about her, went to the dressing-table, sat down before the glass and began to brush her hair. He lay back across the bed, his arms over his head.

  “Don’t forget to wind the clock and say your prayers,” Luisa said.

  “What have I done wrong now?” he asked in a dry tone, but goodhumoredly enough.

  “Marriage is not what I want.”

  “I know that.”

  “Do you?”

  There was a pause before he answered. “Luisa, there has to be a certain amount we take for granted, an area of trust between us, or we can’t get on at all. We can’t start over every time.”

  “Yes, we can. That is precisely what I want, what we should do. Nothing taken for granted. Nothing settled, expectable, cut-and-dried. Each night the first night.—But there’s no use, so long as you come to it from…where you do come from.”

  “What do you mean, where I come from?”

  “All the men you waste your breath on. All the second-rate people. The people you don’t belong with. Let the weak lean on one another. You cannot share pain; that’s the worst hypocrisy of all, the most degrading. Charity, humility, the vile Christian virtues—what are you doing in that cage?” Her voice was light and mild, she continued to brush her hair with a long rhythmic stroke. “You come to me from a cage and never know you’ve left it. And run back to it in the morning…”

  He sat up on the bed and sat for a while gazing off into the shadowed end of the room, where long white drapes hid the windows. “I come to you for…for what no one else ever gave me, ever offered me,—it is trust; the greatest trust. I don’t know how to handle it. I’m no good at it, I know I hurt you. All I do is offer you what you give me, that trust, that care.”

  “That cage…” He had stood up as he spoke, and she rose, turning to him, meeting him in the center of the room, her hair loose and her body warm and fresh in the flowered robe; the sleeves dropped back from her arms as she put them up to embrace him. “I want to fly beside you, like falcons, like eagles over the mountains, never looking down, never looking back…”

  “I love you,” he whispered, gathering her against him, a much more expert lover now than he had been in the garden in Aisnar but no less tender, responsive to her response, so that although she wanted to go on talking, wanted to tell him “I am your freedom, and what I see in you is freedom,” she said nothing, feeling the words dissolve and the barriers go down and the joy she feared so deeply pick her up and sweep her off like foam on the torrents of the thaw.

  He lay asleep beside her when she roused in early dawn. She lighted a candle; he did not stir. Again she studied his face, warm and heavy in sleep, undefended. To lie together all night naked, that was trust; yes; but she did not like the word; if there was only a way to get free of words altogether…But the servants would be getting up. He liked to leave while it was still dark, he had been bitterly resentful of the humiliation he had felt once when he slept in her bed till ten and had to be spirited out by her and her maid in a comic opera scene that she would have found very funny if only he had found it funny. He was so naive and so provincial, still; the disapproving schoolboy, the humorless Robespierre, the bumpkin pedant; self-righteous. So the fear hastily reinstating its rights and boundaries within her, rebuilding the barriers, denied gratitude, denied the yearning, brooding warmth of her body against his, her face watching his, and made her wake him sharply, saying his name.

  He started up, then lay back with some inarticulate word.

  “Wake up, wake up.”

  “I am,” he said, turning his face against her shoulder.

  “What a nose you have,” she murmured, sinking back for a moment into the warmth. “Like a ship’s prow. Ever onward.”

  He was asleep again.

  “It’s getting light.”

  “I don’t want to go,” he groaned, and sleepily began kissing her throat and breasts. She tensed, slipped away and out of the bed, and put the flowered gown about her, turning her back on him. “I’ll tell Agata to watch the back for you.”

  “Luisa. Wait.”

  She half turned, impatient.

  He sat up, scratching his head. “I meant to talk about this last night. But it was late, and we…” He pushed back his hair and looked at her through the dim sphere of the candle light; his face still had the heavy, defenseless look in it, the innocence of sleep, the lips slightly swollen. “I may be out of town for a while.”

  “Where? How long?” she responded without emotion.

  “Amadey has asked me to go home with him. I’d like to do that. And then go on to Rakava, and do a series of articles on the situation there, or find a correspondent there who can do it for us. A few weeks in all, I suppose.”

  She did not like the sensation of her long, heavy, fair hair loose and tangled on her head and over her shoulders; she had not braided it last night, because they had had to make love. She went to the dressing table and brushed her hair back from her face with harsh, practiced strokes. “When did Amadey finally make up his mind?”

  “He asked me to come with him a couple of days ago.”

  “Well, he’s been on the brink of going back to the Polana ever since I met him five years ago. He won’t stay long…” If Itale went there would be a month, two months, that she could sleep alone, that her mind would not have to go through all the miseries of jealousy, anxiety, resentment, and terror that her body, or her soul, or some blind stupid omnipotence, forced upon her. She would be free. “Don’t stay too long,” she said.

  “I won’t. No fear!” he said with naive gratitude. He got up and began dressing; in the mirror she watched him put on his shirt and button it, then his collar and stock, the stately mysteries of male clothes, the waistcoat, the tailed coat. “I’ll be back by mid-November at the latest,” he said. He had obviously been afraid she would object to his going, and was relieved that she did not.

  “Perhaps I’ll go to Vienna with Enrike while you’re gone,” she said. “He’ll never get up the energy to go by himself, and he’s got to meet the ambassador if he’s ever going to get any sort of position. Though I su
ppose if I went I’d have to stay through Christmas. What a bore. I don’t know. Why don’t you come to Vienna? It would broaden your mind a good deal more than Estenskar’s sheep-farm and dirty Rakava…We’ll stay at the König von Ungarn, just behind the Dom…Do, Itale!”

  Sitting on the bed to put on his shoes he looked up to meet her mocking, challenging glance over her shoulder. “Oh, God, you are so beautiful even at five in the morning,” he said, muffled, bending down; then, standing up again. “I can’t go to Vienna…Some day,” a little sheepishly, but also ready to take offense if she went too far, for it was a question of money, of course. It was always a question of money.

  She nodded politely, dismissively, and went to put Agata on the alert. Most of the servants were reliable, she knew exactly whose servants they exchanged news with, and did not care what they said; but Enrike had hired a footman away from Count Raskayneskar recently, and she did not want to be discussed by that lot. Raskayneskar was exactly the sort of man who got his gossip from his servants, and then used it maliciously.

  “Pier’s still asleep, ma’am,” Agata murmured.

  She looked back into the room and said to Itale, “All clear.” He came up to her in the doorway, dressed, armored in the wholecloth of this age of respectability, formidable, a stranger; she shivered, barefoot, in her thin silk gown. “I don’t want to go,” he said softly, not touching her. “I don’t want to go now. I don’t want to go to Rakava.” He leaned down, kissed her very lightly on the lips, and went out. She could not even hear his step on the stairs.

  She went back to bed and curled up in the place under the covers that was still warm. Now I can sleep, now I’m alone, she thought, but instead of sleeping she began to cry, hiding her face under the sheet, grinding her fists into her eyes like a child.

  PART FOUR

  The Way to Radiko

  I

  In the cool dawn of the equinox the statue of St Christopher of the Wayfarers stood distinct over Old Bridge, over the river and the light mist on the surface of the water. A purity of light, a stillness of air and sky effaced the boundaries between living and inanimate; the stone saint seemed to have paused there to look eastward, smiling and unseeing. There were no clouds. The sun rose over dark hills and sent its first rays straight in the eyes of two horsemen riding over Old Bridge, dazzling them, making them squint and smile. The bridge was crossed, the riders entered the shadow of a long street, eight hooves clattered with a clipped, brisk noise on the cobbles of the Trasfiuve between files of sleeping houses. One rider turned in the saddle to see the new light on the towers of the cathedral behind them, across the river. “Look there, Amadey, the light.”

  Estenskar did not turn. He looked ahead, down the long straight street, and said, “Come on, this horse wants to run.” The fretting bay, then the brown mare broke into a trot. They were spirited, their riders good horsemen, a handsome sight as they rode from the city towards the first sunrise of the year’s fall.

  By eight o’clock, from the climbing streets of Grasse, Itale could look back and see all Krasnoy lying along its sunlit river, beautiful and smoky in the morning warmth. Then leaving the little town they crossed the crown of the ridge and lost the valley, its river and city, behind them on their way.

  Down all day among the hills, a faint warm wind in their faces bearing the smells of earth, hay, woodsmoke; at dusk a village ahead in the next fold of the hills, trees and thatched roofs and chimney smoke, offering rest, firelight after the long day’s ride. “There’ll be an inn,” Itale said. He began to sing “Red are the berries on the autumn bough,” and his mare pricked her ears and stepped along towards hay and dinner. Dusk was heavy under old trees as they rode up into the village, and the sign of the Golden Lion creaked in the evening breeze. “What a good place,” Itale said, dismounting. There were no other travellers at the inn; they were served good beer before the fire, and a big old hen roasted crisp; they left nothing of her but bones. Then Itale stretched out his legs and, for the ritual and completeness of the thing, lighted the clay pipe provided by the host of the Golden Lion.

  “Never saw you smoke before,” said his friend.

  “Never smoke,” said Itale. “How do you keep the damn thing going?”

  Estenskar went on watching him, since Itale, extended in profound comfort and puffing hard on the pipe, was oblivious. “I’m glad we’re travelling together,” he said.

  “Of course.”

  Estenskar smiled, and turned his gaze back to the fire.

  “It’s good to get out of the city. You must take the mare tomorrow, she has a lovely gait. How long since I rode a horse, let alone a good one? This is a holiday. More than holiday. Escape…” Itale waved the pipe, which has gone out. “I was full up, Amadey. Absolutely full up. Now I’m empty again. At last! Air, sunlight, silence, space…”

  Estenskar got up and went to the door of the inn room, which gave directly on the village street without threshold between the hard earth outside and the hard earth of the inn floor. The darkness under the wide-armed oaks was cool and soft. Wind stirred now and then, the sign creaked, in the black foliage a few stars shone fitfully and eclipsed behind the restless leaves.

  “Is it so easy?” he said after so long that Itale, befogged with exercise, fresh air, beer, and well-being, was not sure what he was talking about. “You set out…you set out to make yourself. To make the world. All the things you must do, and see, and learn, and be, you must go through it all. You leave home, come to the city, travel, miss nothing, experience it all, you make yourself, you fill the world with yourself and your purposes, your ambitions, your desires. Until there’s no room left. No room to turn around.”

  “There is, here,” Itale put in. “I told you. I’m as empty as that beer-jug. Air, sunlight, silence, space.”

  “That won’t last.”

  “It will. It’s we who don’t last.”

  Estenskar leaned against the doorway, gazing out into the country darkness.

  “Now that I know that I can’t choose,” he said, “now that I’ve finally learned that there are no choices, that I can’t make my way and never could, that it was all deceit and conceit and waste—now that I’ve given up trying to make my way, I can’t find it; I can’t hear the voice. I’m lost. I went too far and there’s no way home.”

  In later years when Itale heard his friend’s name spoken what came to him always was this moment, the big dirt-floored room, the candle and beer-jug on an oaken table, the fire, the stir of autumn wind in dark branches, the silence that underlay and surrounded and closed over Estenskar’s voice so that the last word, softly spoken, seemed to fail and die away in the immense unheeding quiet.

  “But by going back to Esten—” Itale began, and stopped, knowing his words were stupid, but wanting to change Estenskar’s mood. He had been happy that day and was sorry to let happiness go.

  “That’s not my home. It’s too late. One road goes east, another west, but there’s no destination unless you’re given it. Given it! You don’t choose it. You only accept it—when it’s offered—if it’s offered. Why am I going to Esten, then? I don’t know.” He spoke harshly, glancing around at Itale with a vindictive stare, but Itale had learned long ago that Estenskar’s anger was never for him.

  “It always makes a difference where you are,” he said. “Come back and sit down. We just got free. No point worrying about where we’re going, yet.”

  Estenskar obeyed him; he came back to the table and sat down, putting his elbows on the table and his head between his hands, ruffling up his coarse reddish hair. “All I do is think about myself and talk about myself,” he said miserably.

  “It’s a worthwhile subject. But I wish I…”

  “If it hadn’t been for you, this last year…”

  They were both embarrassed and there was a short silence between them.

  “That dream of yours. Are you chasing it?”

  Estenskar shook his head.

  “Was Esten a part of it?�
�

  “I don’t know. I only know that since it I’ve known I had to get out of Krasnoy, get away.”

  “You knew that the first time we talked together. At my place.”

  “And ate that cheese. Two years ago. And I was still living with Rosalie then—right in the depths of it. God! What a fool!”

  Itale investigated the beer-jug again, found what he expected, nothing, and got up, stretching his arms. “I’ll be stiff tomorrow morning, I’m out of condition for riding.”

  “Look here, Itale. While we’re talking.”

  “Aye. While we’re talking?” Itale looked down at him, grave.

  “What about Luisa Paludeskar?”

  “So I ask myself.”

  “What’s gone wrong?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t understand…what it is she wants.”

  “You never will.—What is it you want?”

  Itale put his hands against the heavy mantel-piece, looking down into the fire. “To sleep with her.”

  “Is that what she wants?”

  “I thought it was.”

  “But now she wants more than that?”

  “No.—Less.” Itale spoke very slowly, trying to say what he did not know how to say. “I don’t understand it. We are in love but we…we don’t get on. We hurt each other a good deal. I don’t understand why.”

  “‘I don’t understand, I don’t understand,’ said the straw in the fire.—In love…Love is an invention of the poets, Itale. Believe me, I should know! It is a lie. It is the worst of all the lies. A word without meaning. Not a rock but a whirlpool, the emptiness that sucks down the soul.”

  “But there must be…Oh, well, I don’t much want to talk about it. I’m running away, for a while, maybe I’ll see things clearer. Afterwards. You wouldn’t look back when we left Krasnoy. You were right.”

  Estenskar nodded; but twenty-four hours later, after their night at the Golden Lion and a day’s ride through pleasant, quiet country, when they were lying on a great strawmound in a barn loft, each wrapped in a horse-blanket lent them by the hospitable farmer, all the smells of barn and stable strong in their nostrils and all the stars brilliant outside the great loading-window of the loft, he returned to the subject.