The Saga of Gosta Berling

by Selma Lagerlof

  Yet, quiet now, you who are cawing about misfortunes! Borg still stands, shining at the height of the promontory, protected by its stand of massive fir trees, and the snow-covered fields below glisten in the March day’s piercing sunlight; within its walls the merry laughter of the happy Countess Elisabet is still heard.

  On Sundays she goes to Svartsjö church, which is close to Borg, and gathers together her little dinner party. The judge at Munkerud and his wife usually come and the captain from Borga and the assistant vicar and their wives and the malevolent Sintram. If Gösta Berling were to come to Svartsjö, wandering on the ice of Löven, she would invite him too. Why shouldn’t she invite Gösta Berling?

  She does not know, does she, that slander is starting to whisper that Gösta often comes over to the eastern shore to meet her. Perhaps he also comes to drink and play cards with Sintram, but that doesn’t raise as many questions; everyone knows that his body is made of iron, but his heart is another matter. There is simply no one who believes that he can see a pair of glistening eyes and light hair, curling around a white forehead, without falling in love.

  The young countess is good to him. There is nothing remarkable about that; she is good to everyone. She sets ragged beggar urchins on her lap, and when she rides past an old wretch on the highway, she lets the coachman stop to let the poor pedestrian into her sleigh.

  Gösta usually sits in the little blue study, where there is a splendid view over the lake, and reads poetry to her. There cannot be anything wrong with that. He does not forget that she is a countess and he a homeless adventurer, and it is good for him to associate with someone who stands high and holy to him. He may just as well imagine falling in love with the Queen of Sheba, who adorns the panels on the balcony in Svartsjö church, as with her.

  He desires simply to serve her, as a page serves his elevated mistress, to tie her skate, hold her skein of yarn, guide her sled. There can be no question of love between them, but he is the right man to find his happiness in a romantic, harmless infatuation.

  The young count is silent and serious, and Gösta is exuberantly happy. He is the kind of companionship that the young countess wants. No one who sees her thinks she is harboring a forbidden love. She thinks about dance, about dance and merriment. She wishes that the earth were completely flat, without stones, without hills and lakes, so that you could go everywhere dancing. From cradle to grave she would dance in narrow, thin-soled silk shoes.

  But rumors are not merciful to young women.

  When these guests come to Borg and have dinner, after the meal the gentlemen usually go into the count’s room to sleep and smoke, the old ladies usually sink down into the armchairs in the drawing room and lean their venerable heads against the high arms, but the countess and Anna Stjärnhök go into the blue study and exchange endless confidences.

  The Sunday after the one when Anna Stjärnhök fetched Ulrika Dillner back to Berga, they are again sitting there.

  No one on earth is unhappier than this young girl. All her merriment is gone, and gone is the happy defiance that she would set against everything and everyone who wanted to get too close to her.

  Everything that happened to her on the way home has descended in her awareness into the twilight out of which it was enchanted: she has not a single clear impression left.

  Well, one, that poisons her soul.

  “What if it wasn’t God who did it,” she would whisper to herself, “what if it wasn’t God who sent the wolves?”

  She demands signs, she demands miracles. She gazes round heaven and earth. But she sees no finger extending out of the sky to point out her path. No columns of mist and light go before her.

  As she is now sitting across from the countess in the little blue study, her gaze falls on a small bouquet of blue anemones that the countess is holding in her white hand. Like a thunderbolt it strikes her that she knows where those anemones have grown, that she knows who has picked them.

  She does not need to ask. Where in the entire region do blue anemones grow already at the beginning of April except in the birch meadow that is on the lakeshore slope at Ekeby?

  She stares and stares at the small blue stars, these fortunate ones who have everyone’s heart, these small prophets, who, lovely themselves, are also irradiated by the luster of everything lovely, which they herald, of everything lovely that is to come. While she observes them, her soul begins to resound with wrath, rumbling like thunder, deafening like lightning. “By what right,” she thinks, “does Countess Dohna carry this bouquet of blue anemones, picked on the shore path at Ekeby?”

  They were all tempters: Sintram, the countess, they all wanted to lure Gösta Berling to that which was evil, but she would defend him. Even if it were to cost her heart’s blood, she would do it.

  She thinks that she must see those flowers torn from the countess’s hand and thrown away, trampled, crushed, before she leaves the blue study.

  She is thinking this, and she begins a struggle against the small blue stars. Out in the drawing room the old women lean their venerable heads against the chair arms and suspect nothing, the gentlemen puff on their pipes in calm and quiet in the count’s room, all is peace; only in the little blue study is a desperate struggle raging.

  They do well who keep their hands from the sword, they who understand to quietly bide their time, to set their hearts at peace and let God direct! The restless heart always goes astray. Evil always makes the evil worse.

  But Anna Stjärnhök believes that she has now finally seen the finger in the sky.

  “Anna,” says the countess, “tell a story!”

  “About what?”

  “Oh,” says the countess, stroking the bouquet with her white hand. “Do you know anything about love, anything about being in love?”

  “No, I know nothing about love.”

  “The way you talk! Isn’t there a place here called Ekeby, a place full of cavaliers?”

  “Well,” says Anna, “there is a place here called Ekeby, and there are men who suck the marrow of the land, who make us incapable of serious work, who destroy our maturing youth and lead our best minds astray. Do you want to hear about them, do you want to hear love stories about them?”

  “I would. I like the cavaliers.”

  Then Anna Stjärnhök speaks, speaks in short stanzas, like an old hymnbook, for she is close to suffocating from tempestuous feelings. Concealed passion trembles under every word, and the countess must listen to her with both fear and interest.

  “What is the love of a cavalier, what is the faith of a cavalier? One sweetheart today, one tomorrow, one in the east, one in the west. Nothing is too high for him, nothing too low; one day a count’s daughter, another day a beggar lass. Nothing on the earth is so capacious as his heart. But poor, poor anyone who loves a cavalier! She has to seek him where he lies drunk on the roadside. She must silently look on as he fritters away her child’s home at the gaming table. She has to put up with him swooning around strange women. Oh, Elisabet, if a cavalier asks an honorable woman for a dance, then she ought to deny him that; if he sends her a bouquet of flowers, then she ought to cast the flowers to the ground and trample on them; if she loves him, then she ought to die rather than marry him. Among the cavaliers there is one, who was a defrocked minister. He lost his minister’s robe for drunkenness. He was drunk in the church. He drank up the communion wine. Have you heard tell of him?”

  “No.”

  “Immediately after he was removed from his position, he wandered around the countryside as a beggar. He drank like a lunatic. He would steal to get liquor.”

  “What is his name?”

  “He is no longer at Ekeby. The majoress at Ekeby took care of him, gave him clothes, and convinced your mother-in-law, the Countess Dohna, to make him a tutor for your husband, the young Count Henrik.”

  “A defrocked minister!”

  “Oh, he was a young, powerful man, with good abilities. There was no problem with him, as long as he did not drink. The Countes
s Märta was not particular. It amused her to annoy the dean and the assistant vicar. She forbade, however, that anyone should mention his previous life to her children. Then her son would have lost respect for him, and her daughter would not have been able to tolerate him, for she was a saint.

  “Then he came here to Borg. He stopped right inside the door, sat at the very edge of the chair, kept silent at the table, and fled out to the park when visitors came here.

  “But out there he used to encounter the young Ebba Dohna on the deserted pathways. She was not one who loved the noisy parties that thundered through the halls of Borg since the countess had become a widow. She was not one who sent defiant glances out into the world. She was so gentle, so shy. She was still a gentle child when she had already reached the age of seventeen, but she was nonetheless very lovely with her brown eyes and the faint, fine redness of her cheeks. Her delicate, slender body leaned feebly forward. Her narrow hand sneaked its way into yours with a shy pressure. Her small mouth was the most silent of mouths and the most serious. Oh, her voice, her sweet little voice, which pronounced the words so slowly and well, but never ringing with youthful energy, youthful heat, but instead came dragging with muted intonation like a tired musician’s final chord!

  “She was not like others. Her foot walked the ground so lightly, so silently, as if she had only been a frightened refugee down here. She kept her eyes lowered so as not to be disturbed in observing the magnificence of her inner visions. Her soul had turned away from the earth, even when she was a small child.

  “When she was small, her grandmother used to tell stories to her, and one evening the two of them were sitting by the fire, but the stories had come to an end. Carsus and Moderus and Lunkentus and the lovely Melusina had risen and lived. Like the flames of the fire they had tumbled about in life and luster, but now the heroes lay defeated, until the next fire awakened them again. But the little girl’s hand was still on the old woman’s skirt, and she slowly stroked the silk, that lusty fabric that peeped like a little bird. And this stroking was her prayer, for she was one of those children who never pray in words.

  “Then very quietly the old woman started to tell her about a little child in the land of Judah, about a little child who was born to become a great king. The angels had filled the earth with songs of praise when he was born. The kings of the east had come, led by the star of the heavens, and offered him gold and incense, and old men and women prophesied his glory. This child grew up to greater beauty and wisdom than all other children. Even when he was twelve years old, his wisdom was greater than the high priests and the scholars.

  “Then the old woman told her about the most beautiful thing the earth has seen, about the child’s life while it existed among humankind, about the wicked people who did not want to acknowledge him as their king.

  “She told her about how the child became a man, but miracles still radiated from him.

  “Everything on the earth served him and loved him, except the people. The fishes let themselves be caught in his net, bread filled his baskets, water turned itself into wine, when he wished it.

  “But the people did not give the great king a golden crown, a shining throne. He had no bowing courtiers around him. They let him go among them as a beggar.

  “Yet he was so good to them, this great king. He healed their sick, gave the blind back their sight, and awakened the dead.

  “‘But,’ said the old woman, ‘the people would not have the good king as their lord.’

  “They sent their soldiers against him and imprisoned him; in derision they dressed him in a crown and scepter and in a silk mantle and let him walk out to the execution site, carrying a heavy cross. Oh, my child, the good king loved the tall mountains. At night he would climb them to speak with the residents of heaven, and he liked to sit on the mountain slopes during the day and speak to listening people. But now they led him up onto a mountain in order to crucify him. They hammered nails through his hands and feet and hanged the good king on a cross, as if he had been a robber and evildoer.

  “And the people mocked him. Only his mother and his friends wept, because he was going to die before he had time to become a king.

  “Oh, how lifeless things grieved at his death!

  “The sun lost its light, and the mountains shook, the veil in the temple was torn, and the graves opened for the dead, that they might go out and show their sorrow.

  “Then the little girl lay with her head in her grandmother’s lap and sobbed as if her heart would burst.

  “‘Don’t cry, little one, the good king rose up from his grave and went up to his father in heaven.’

  “‘Grandmother,’ sobbed the poor little thing, ‘so he never got a kingdom?’

  “‘He is sitting at God’s right hand in heaven.’

  “But this did not console her. She wept as helplessly and unrestrained as a child can weep.

  “‘Why were they so mean to him? Why did they have to be so mean to him?’

  “The old woman was almost afraid of this overwhelming sorrow.

  “‘Tell me, Grandmother, tell me that you haven’t told the story right! Say that it didn’t end like that! Say that they weren’t so mean to the good king! Say that he got a kingdom on earth!’

  “She wrapped her arms around the old woman and begged with tears still streaming.

  “‘Child, child,’ her grandmother then said to console her, ‘there are those who believe that he will come again. Then he will place the earth under his dominion and govern it. A magnificent kingdom will be made of the beautiful earth. It will stand for a thousand years. Then the bad animals will become good; little children will play in the viper’s nest, and bears and cows will graze together. No one will harm or injure the other any longer; spears will be bent into scythes and swords hammered into plows. And everything will be play and happiness, for the good will possess the earth.’

  “Then the little one’s face lit up behind her tears.

  “‘Will the good king get a throne then, Grandmother?’

  “‘A throne of gold.’

  “‘And servants and courtiers and a golden crown?’

  “‘Yes, he will.’

  “‘Is he coming soon, Grandmother?’

  “‘No one knows when he is coming.’

  “‘May I sit on a stool at his feet then?’

  “‘Yes, you may!’

  “‘Grandmother, I am so happy,’ said the little one.

  “Evening after evening through many winters these two sat by the fire and talked about the good king and his realm. The little one dreamed about the thousand-year realm both night and day. She never tired of adorning it with every lovely thing she could think of.

  “It is that way with many of the silent children who surround us, that they harbor a secret dream that they do not dare to mention. Strange thoughts dwell under many a soft head of hair, the brown, gentle eyes see strange things behind their closed eyes, many a lovely maiden has her bridegroom in heaven. Many a rosy cheek wants to rub the good king’s feet with ointment and dry it with her hair.

  “Ebba Dohna did not dare mention to anyone, but ever since that evening she lived only for the Lord’s thousand-year kingdom and to await his arrival.

  “When the red skies of evening opened the western gate, she wondered if he would not step out from it, radiant with gentle brilliance, followed by an army of millions of angels, and march past and allow her to touch the folds of his mantle.

  “She also thought gladly about the pious women who had hung a veil over their heads and never raised their eyes from the earth, instead closing themselves within the peacefulness of gray cloisters, in the darkness of small cells, so as to always be able to see the radiant visions that appear out of the night of the soul.

  “She had grown up that way, she was that way, when she and the new tutor met in the desolate pathways of the park.

  “I do not wish to say more bad things about him than I have to. I want to believe that he loved this chi
ld, who soon chose him as a companion on lonely wanderings. I believe that his soul regained its wings as he walked at the side of this silent girl who had never confided in anyone else. I think that he himself felt like a child, good, pious, virtuous.

  “But if he loved her, why did he not think about the fact that he could not give her a worse gift than his love? He, one of the castoffs of this world, what did he want, what was he thinking as he walked beside the count’s daughter? What was the defrocked minister thinking about, as she confided her pious dreams to him? What did he want—he who had been a drinker and a brawler and would be so again, when the occasion arose—at the side of her, who dreamed of a bridegroom in heaven? Why did he not flee far, far away from her? Would it not have been better for him if he had wandered begging and thieving around the countryside than that he should be there in the silent lanes of conifers and again become good, pious, virtuous, when it still could not be lived over, that life that he had led, and when it could not be avoided that Ebba Dohna would love him?

  “Do not believe that he looked like a drunken wretch with pale-gray cheeks and reddened eyes! He was still a stately man, handsome and unbroken in soul and body. He had a posture like a king and a body of iron, which was not ruined by the wildest living.”

  “Is he still alive?” asked the countess.

  “Oh no, he must be dead by now. All of this was so long ago.”

  There is something within Anna Stjärnhök that begins to shudder at what she is doing. She starts to think that she must never tell the countess who the man is that she is talking about, that she must let her believe that he is dead.

  “At that time he was still young.” She begins her story anew. “The happiness of living was ignited again in him. His was the gift of beautiful words and the fiery, easily impassioned heart.