The Saga of Gosta Berling

by Selma Lagerlof

  Most bitter of all, however, was the parting from the cavaliers.

  Round little Squire Julius, built more for rolling than for walking, felt tragic all the way to his fingertips. He remembered the great Athenian who calmly emptied the beaker of poison in the circle of weeping disciples. He remembered old King Gösta who prophesied to the people of Sweden that one day they would pull him up out of the ground.

  Finally he sang his best song for them. He thought about the swan who dies in song. He wanted them to remember him like that: a kingly spirit who does not lower himself to complaint, but instead goes forth, borne by euphony.

  At last the final beaker was emptied, the final song sung, the final embrace doled out. He put on his coat and held the whip in his hand. No eye was dry around him; his own were so filled with the rising mist of sorrow that he saw nothing.

  Then the cavaliers seized him and raised him up. Cheers thundered around him. They set him down somewhere, he did not see where. A whip cracked, the carriage moved beneath him. He was carried away. When he regained the use of his eyes, he was out on the highway.

  The cavaliers had indeed wept and been touched by deep loss, yet sorrow had not stifled all the happy emotions of the heart. One of them—was it Gösta Berling, the poet, or Beerencreutz, the kille-playing old warrior, or the world-weary cousin Kristoffer?—had arranged it so that old Kajsa did not need to be taken out of her stable, nor the moldering chaise out of its shed. But a large, rose white ox had been harnessed to a hayrack, and after the red trunk, the green keg, and the carved food box had been set there, Squire Julius himself, whose eyes were dim with tears, was lowered, not on the food box or the trunk, but on the back of the rose white ox.

  See, such is humankind! Too weak to meet sorrow in all its bitterness! The cavaliers grieved for this friend who was going off to die, this withering lily, this mortally wounded swan of song. Yet the heaviness of their hearts was lightened when they saw him go away riding on the back of the great ox, while his fat body was shaken by sobbing, his arms, extended in a final embrace, sinking down in despair, and his eyes sought justice in an unpro pitious heaven.

  Out there on the highway the mists began to disperse for Squire Julius, and he noticed that he was sitting on an animal’s swaying back. And then it is said that he began brooding about all that can happen during seventeen long years. Old Kajsa was visibly transformed. Could the oats and clover pastures at Ekeby have caused such a thing? And he shouted—I do not know if the stones on the highway or the birds in the thicket heard it—but it is true that he shouted. “Let the devil martyr me if I don’t believe you’ve got horns, Kajsa!”

  After yet another period of brooding he let himself glide slowly from the ox’s back, climbed up into the hayrack, sat down on the food box and drove on, deep in thought.

  In a while, as he came up toward Broby, he could hear measured song:One and two,

  six and seven.

  the hussars of Värmland are on their way.

  So it rang to meet him, but it was not a troop of hussars, but rather the happy misses from Berga and a couple of the judge in Munkerud’s beautiful daughters who came wandering along the road. They had set their small food bundles on long poles, which rested on their shoulders like rifles, and they marched courageously forth in the summer heat, singing in good measure, “One and two, six and seven . . .”

  “Where to, Squire Julius?” they cried as they met him, without taking notice of the cloud of sorrow that covered his brow.

  “I’m going away from the house of sin and futility,” replied Squire Julius. “I no longer wish to dwell among lazybones and miscreants. I am going home to my mother.”

  “Oh,” they cried, “that isn’t true! Squire Julius doesn’t want to leave Ekeby!”

  “Yes,” he said, striking his fist on the clothes trunk. “As Lot fled from Sodom and Gomorrah, so I flee from Ekeby. There is not a just man there now. But when the earth falls apart beneath them and the rain of sulfur clatters down from the sky, then will I rejoice at God’s righteous judgments. Adieu, girls, and watch out for Ekeby!”

  With that he wanted to travel on, but this was by no means the happy girls’ intention. Their intention was to hike up to Dunderklätten to climb the hill, but the road was long, and they had a good mind to ride all the way to the foot of the mountain in Julius’s hayrack.

  Fortunate are they who can rejoice at the sunshine of life and do not need a gourd to shield their head! Within two minutes the girls had their way. Squire Julius turned around and headed up toward Dunderklätten. Smiling he sat on the food box, while the hayrack was full of girls. Along the road daisies and chamomile and bitter vetch were growing. The ox had to rest awhile. Then the girls got off and picked flowers. Soon showy wreaths were hanging around Julius’s head and the horns of the ox.

  Farther along they encountered light young birches and dark alder bushes. Then they got out and broke off branches to decorate the hayrack. Before long it was like looking at a traveling grove. It was fun and games the whole day.

  Squire Julius became more and more gentle and light, the longer the day went on. He doled out his food supply among the girls and sang songs for them. When they stood at the top of Dunderklätten, with the wide landscape lying below so proud and lovely that they got tears in their eyes from its beauty, then Julius felt his heart beat powerfully, the words stormed forth across his lips, and he spoke about his beloved province.

  “Ah, Värmland,” he said, “lovely, magnificent! Often when I have seen you before me on a map, I have wondered what you might depict, but now I understand what you are. You are an old, pious hermit, who sits quietly and dreams, with legs crossed and hands resting in your lap. You have a pointed cap pulled down over your half-closed eyes. You are a brooder, a holy dreamer, and you are very lovely. Wide forests are your garments. Long ribbons of blue water and evenly running rows of blue hills border it. You are so simple that the stranger does not see how lovely you are. You are poor, as the pious wish to be. You sit quietly while the waves of Vänern rinse your feet and your crossed legs. To the left you have your ore fields and mines. There is your beating heart. To the north you have dark, lovely regions of desolation, of secrecy. There is your dreaming head.

  “As I see you, giantlike, serious, my eye must be filled with tears. You are stern in your loveliness, you are meditation, poverty, privation, and yet I see in the midst of your sternness the sweet features of gentleness. I see you and worship. If I simply look into the wide forest, if I simply touch a corner of your garment, my spirit is healed. Hour after hour, year after year I have looked into your holy face. What secrets do you conceal under lowered lids, you deity of privation? Have you solved the mystery of life and death, or do you still brood, holy, giantlike? For me you are the guardian of great, serious thoughts. But I see people crawl upon you and around you, beings who never seem to notice the majesty of seriousness on your brow. They simply see the beauty of your face and limbs and are so enchanted by it that they forget everything.

  “Woe to me, woe to us all, children of Värmland! Beauty, beauty and nothing else do we demand of life. We, children of privation, of seriousness, of poverty, raise our hands in a single long prayer and desire only this one good thing: beauty. May life be like a rosebush, bloom with love, wine, and amusements, and may its roses be available to every man! See, this we want, and our land wears the features of sternness, seriousness, privation. Our land is the eternal symbol of brooding, but we have no thoughts.

  “Oh, Värmland, lovely, magnificent!”

  Thus he spoke with tears in his eyes and a voice trembling with inspiration. The girls heard him with admiration and not without feeling. They scarcely sensed the depth of the emotions that were hidden under this glittering surface of jokes and smiles.

  As evening approached and they got into the hayrack again, the girls hardly knew where Squire Julius was driving them until they stopped before the stairs to Ekeby.

  “Now we will go in here and h
ave a dance, girls,” said Squire Julius.

  What did the cavaliers say when they saw Squire Julius arrive with a withered wreath around his hat and the hayrack full of girls?

  “We were sure the girls had gone off with him,” they said, “otherwise he would have been back here a few hours earlier.” For the cavaliers remembered that this was only the seventeenth time Squire Julius had tried to leave Ekeby, once each passing year. Now Squire Julius had already forgotten both this attempt and all the others. Once again his conscience slept its year-long sleep.

  He was a funny man, Squire Julius. He was light in the dance, keen at the gaming table. Pen, brush, and bow sat equally well in his hand. He had an easily moved heart, lovely words on his tongue, a throat full of songs. But of what use would all this be to him if he had not possessed a conscience that let itself be felt only once a year, like those mayflies who free themselves from the gloomy depths and take wing, simply to love for a few hours in daylight and sun-shimmer?

  CHAPTER 24

  THE CLAY SAINTS

  Svartsjö church is white both outside and inside: the walls are white, the pulpit, the pews, the balcony, the ceiling, the window frames, the altar cloth, all are white. There are no ornaments in Svartsjö church, no images, no coats of arms. Only a wooden cross with a white linen cloth stands over the altar. It was not like that before. Then the ceiling was full of paintings, and varied, gaudy images of stone and clay were found in this house of God.

  Once, a very long time ago, an artist in Svartsjö stood observing the sky on a summer day and noticed the flight of the clouds toward the sun. He had seen the white, shining clouds, which sit low on the horizon in the morning, pile up higher and higher, seen all the expectant colossi expand and rise to storm the heights. They set up sails like sailing ships. They raised banners like warriors. They went to invade whole heavens. Face to face with the sun, the ruler of space, these growing marvels play-acted, taking on a harmless appearance. There was a ravenous lion; it turned into a powdered lady. There was a giant with stifling arms. He lay down like a dreaming sphinx. Some adorned their white nakedness with gold-trimmed mantles. Others splashed rouge over cheeks of snow. There were plains. There were forests. There were walled fortresses with high towers. The white clouds became masters of the summer sky. They filled the blue arch entirely. They reached the sun and covered her.

  “Oh, how lovely,” the pious artist then thought, “if the yearning spirits could rise up on these towering mountains and be carried by them as on a swaying ship, ever higher and higher upward!”

  And suddenly he realized that the white clouds of the summer day were the sailing ships on which the souls of the departed travel.

  He saw them there. There they stood on the gliding masses with lilies in their hands and gold crowns on their heads. Space resounded with their song. Angels swooped down on broad, strong wings to meet them. Oh, what a throng of the departed! As the clouds expanded, more and more of them became visible. They rested on cloud beds like water lilies on a lake. They adorned them, as the lilies adorn the meadow. What an exultant ascent! Cloud rolled up behind cloud. And they were all filled by the heavenly hosts in armor of silver, of immortal singers in purple-edged mantles.

  This artist had then painted the ceiling in Svartsjö church. There he tried to reproduce the ascending clouds of the summer day, which transported the departed into the magnificence of heaven. The hand wielding the brush had been powerful, but also somewhat stiff, so the clouds ended up looking more like the curly locks of a full-bottomed wig than growing mountains of soft mist. And the artist had not been able to reproduce the holy ones as they had taken form in his imagination either; instead he had clothed them, modeled on the human race, in long, red cowls and stiff bishop’s caps or in black caftans with rigid, fluted ruffs. He had given them large heads and small bodies, and he had supplied them with kerchiefs and prayer books. Latin maxims flew from their mouths, and for those whom he believed to be the best, he placed sturdy wooden chairs on the backs of the clouds, so that, sitting comfortably, they could travel into eternity.

  But everyone knew that spirits and angels had never appeared to the poor artist, and so it was no great surprise that he had not been able to make them supernaturally lovely. The good master’s pious painting no doubt seemed exceedingly delightful to many a person, and it had aroused much holy emotion. It might well have been worthy of being seen by our eyes too.

  But during the cavaliers’ year Count Dohna had the whole church painted white. Then the ceiling painting was destroyed. Likewise all the clay saints were annihilated.

  Ah, those clay saints!

  It would be better for me if human distress could cause me as much sorrow as I have felt over their destruction, if human cruelty to other human beings could fill me with such bitterness as I have felt for their sake.

  But just think: there was a Saint Olaf with a crown on the helmet, ax in hand, and a kneeling giant under his feet; on the pulpit there was a Judith in red shirt and blue skirt, with a sword in one hand and an hourglass in the other, instead of the Assyrian general’s head; there was a mysterious Queen of Sheba in blue shirt and red skirt, with a goose foot on one leg and a hand full of sibylline books; there was a gray Saint George, lying alone on a pew in the choir, for both horse and dragon had been broken; there was Saint Christopher with the blossoming staff, and Saint Erik with scepter and broadax, clad in ankle-length, gold-flowered cowl.

  I have sat there in Svartsjö church on many a Sunday and grieved that the images were gone, yearning for them. I would not have looked too closely to see if there was a nose or foot missing, if the gilding had faded and the paint peeled off. I would have seen them irradiated by the glow of legends.

  It seems always to have been that way for these saints, that they lost their scepters or ears or hands and had to be repaired and cleaned up. The congregation grew tired of that and longed to be rid of them. But the farmers would probably not have done the saints any damage if Count Henrik Dohna had not existed. It was he who had them taken away.

  I have hated him for that, as only a child can hate. I have hated him, as the starving beggar hates the stingy housewife who denies him bread. I have hated him, as a poor fisherman hates a mischievous boy who has ruined his nets and cut holes in his boat. Was I not hungry and thirsty during those long church services? And he had taken away bread on which my soul could have lived. Did I not yearn out into infinity, up to heaven? And he had ruined my craft and torn the net with which I could have captured sacred visions.

  There is no room in the world of grown-ups for a proper hatred. Nowadays how would I be able to hate such a deplorable being as this Count Dohna or a crazed person such as Sintram or an enervated woman of the world such as Countess Märta? But when I was a child! It was their good fortune that they were dead so long ago.

  Perhaps the minister stood up there in the pulpit and spoke of peace and reconciliation, but his words could never be heard at our place in the church. Oh, if I had had them there, those old clay saints! They would probably have preached to me, so that I could have both heard and understood.

  But most often I sat thinking about how it was that they were stolen away and destroyed.

  When Count Dohna had his marriage annulled instead of seeking out his wife and having it legalized, this had aroused the indignation of everyone, for they knew that his wife had left his home simply not to be tormented to death. It now seemed as if he wanted to win back God’s grace and people’s respect through a good work, and so he had Svartsjö church repaired. He had the entire church painted white and the ceiling painting torn down. He and his assistants carried the images down in a boat and sank them into the depths of Löven.

  Yet how could he dare lay his hand on these, the Lord’s mighty ones?

  Oh, that the outrage was allowed to happen! The hand that cut off Holofernes’ head, did it not still wield a sword? Had the Queen of Sheba forgotten all secret knowledge, which wounds more dangerously than a poiso
ned arrow? Saint Olaf, Saint Olaf, old Viking, Saint George, Saint George, old dragon-slayer, so the thunder of your exploits is dead, the halo of miracles put out! But it was just as well that the holy ones would not use force against the destroyers. Because the Svartsjö farmers no longer wanted to pay for paint for their coats and gilding for their crowns, they allowed Count Dohna to carry them out and sink them in the bottomless depths of Löven. They no longer wanted to stand there and disfigure the house of God. Oh, those helpless ones, did they remember the time when prayers and genuflection were brought to them?

  I thought about this boat with its cargo of saints, gliding across the surface of Löven one quiet summer evening. The fellow who was rowing made slow strokes of the oar and cast shy glances at the unusual passengers who were lying at the prow and stern, but Count Dohna, who was also there, was not afraid. He took them one by one with upraised hands and threw them into the water. His forehead was clear, and he breathed deeply. He felt like a champion of the pure evangelical doctrine. And no miracle occurred for the glory of the old saints. Silent and dispirited, they sank down into annihilation.

  But next Sunday morning Svartsjö church was shining white. No longer did images disturb the peace of inner reflection. Only with the eyes of the soul would the pious observe the magnificence of heaven and the faces of the holy. People’s prayers would reach the Almighty on their own strong wings. No longer would they cling tightly to the hems of the saints’ garments.

  Oh, green is the earth, beloved dwelling place of humankind, blue is the sky, goal of her yearning. The world radiates colors. Why is the church white? White as winter, naked as poverty, pale as anxiety! It does not glisten from hoarfrost like a wintry forest. It does not radiate in pearls and lace like a bride dressed in white. The church is in white, cold whitewash, without an image, without a painting.