The Saga of Gosta Berling

by Selma Lagerlof

  Around him stand his wife, his children, and servants. He has been fortunate, wealthy, respected. His deathbed is not abandoned. Impatient strangers do not surround him in his final hour. The old man speaks of himself as if he were standing before the face of God, and with frequent sighs and affirmative words those standing around him bear witness that what he says is true.

  “I have been a diligent worker and a good husband,” he says. “I have held my wife as dear as my right hand. I have not let my children grow up without discipline and care. I have not drunk. I have not moved boundary marks. I have not pressed the horse going uphill. I have not let the cows starve in winter. I have not let the sheep be tormented in their wool in summer.”

  And around him the weeping servants repeat like an echo: “He has been a good husband. Oh, Lord God! He has not pressed the horse on the hills, not let the sheep sweat in their wool in summer.”

  But through the door, completely unnoticed, a poor man has come in to ask for a meal. He too hears the dying man’s words, where he stands silently by the door.

  And the sick man continues: “I have cleared forest, I have drained meadows. I drove the plow in straight furrows. I built the barn three times larger for a harvest three times larger than in my father’s time. From shiny daler coins I had three new silver beakers made. My father made only one.”

  The words of the dying man reach the listener at the door. He hears him testify about himself as if he were standing before the throne of God. He hears the servants and children repeat in affirmation, “He drove the plow in straight furrows, yes, he did.”

  “God will grant me a good room in his heaven,” says the old man.

  “Our Lord will receive the husband well,” say the servants.

  The man at the door hears these words, and he is filled with horror, he who for five long years has been God’s plaything, a feather driven by the exhalation of his breath. He goes up to the sick man and takes his hand.

  “Friend, friend!” he says, his voice trembling with fear. “Have you considered who that Lord is, before whose face you will soon appear? He is a great God, a terrible God. Planets are his fields. The storm his horse. Broad skies quake under the weight of his foot. And you place yourself before him and say, ‘I have driven straight furrows, I have sown rye, I have chopped down forest.’ Do you want to praise yourself before him and compare yourself to him? You do not know how powerful the Lord is, to whose kingdom you will travel!”

  The old man’s eyes widen, his mouth twitches in horror, the rattling of his breath becomes heavier.

  “Do not step before your God with big talk!” the pilgrim continues. “The mighty on earth are like threshed straw in his barn. His day labor is building suns. He has dug the seas and raised the mountains. He has dressed the earth with herbs. He is a worker without equal; you must not compare yourself with him. Bow before him, you fugitive human soul! Lie deep in the dust before your Lord, your God! God’s storm rages over you. God’s wrath is upon you like a ravaging thunderbolt. Bow down! Take hold of the hem of his mantle like a child and pray for protection! Lie deep in the dust and beg for mercy! Humble yourself, human soul, before your creator!”

  The sick man’s mouth is wide open, his hands are folded, but his face lights up and the rattling ceases.

  “Human soul, fleeting human soul,” the man cries out. “As certain as you in your final hour have now placed yourself in humility before God, as certain he must set you on his arm like a child and carry you into the magnificence of heaven!”

  The old man lets out a final sigh, and all is over. Captain Lennart lowers his head and prays. Everyone in the room prays, with heavy sighing.

  When they look up, the old peasant is lying in quiet peace. His eyes still seem to glisten with the reflection of magnificent visions, his mouth is smiling, his face is lovely. He has seen God.

  “Oh, you great, lovely human soul!” they who see him think, “thus have you broken the bonds of matter! In your final hour you raised yourself to your creator. You humbled yourself before him, and he lifted you like a child on his arm.”

  “He has seen God,” the son says and closes the dead man’s eyes. “He saw heaven open,” sob children and servants.

  The old wife places her trembling hand in Captain Lennart’s.

  “You helped him over the worst, captain.”

  He stands mute. The gift of powerful words and great actions has been given to him. He does not know how. He quivers like a butterfly on the edge of the pupa, while his wings expand out into the sunshine, they too glistening like sunshine.

  It was that hour that drove Captain Lennart out among the people. Otherwise he might well have gone home and let his wife see his proper face, but from that moment on he believed that God needed him. Then he became God’s pilgrim, who came with help to the poor. The need at that time was great, and there was much misery, which wisdom and goodness could help better than gold and power would have.

  One day Captain Lennart came up to the poor farmers who lived in the vicinity of Gurlita Bluff. Among them need was great: the potatoes were gone, and the rye sowing, which should be done where the cleared forest debris had been burned, could not be accomplished, for there was no seed.

  Then Captain Lennart took a small rowboat and rowed directly across the lake to Fors and asked Sintram to donate rye and potatoes to the people. Sintram received him well: he brought him up to large, well-stocked grain bins and down into cellars where potatoes from last year’s harvest still remained, and let him fill all the sacks and bags he had with him.

  But when Sintram caught sight of the little rowboat, he found that it was too small for so large a load. The malevolent man had the sacks carried down to one of his large boats and had his farmhand, strong Måns, row it across the lake. Captain Lennart only had to tend to the empty rowboat.

  He fell behind strong Måns, however, for he was a master of rowing and tremendously strong. Captain Lennart sits too and dreams, and he is thinking about the strange fate of the little seeds of grain. Now they would be thrown out on the black, ash-enriched soil in the midst of stones and stumps, but they will probably grow and take root in the wilderness. He thinks about the tender, clear-green straws that will clothe the earth, and in his thoughts he bends over and caresses the tender tops. And then he imagines how autumn and winter will proceed over these weak little wretches and how they will still be healthy and brave when spring arrives and they can start growing in earnest. Then his old soldier’s heart is gladdened at the thought of the rigid straws that will stand straight and several ells high with pointed ears at the tops. The pistils’ small plumes will tremble, the powder of the stamens will whirl all the way up to the treetops, and then amid visible strife and anxiety the ears will be filled with a soft, sweet kernel. And then, when the scythe goes forth and the straws fall and the flail starts to thunder over them, when the mill grinds the kernels into flour and the flour is baked into bread, ah, won’t there be a lot of hunger stilled by the seed grain in the boat before him!

  Sintram’s farmhand tied up at the Gurlita people’s boat dock, and many hungry people came down to the boat. Then the fellow said, as his master had commanded him, “The mill owner is sending you malt and grain here, farmers. He has heard that you have no liquor.”

  Then the people became as if crazy. They rushed down to the boat and sprang out into the water to snatch bags and sacks, but such had not been Captain Lennart’s intention. Now he was there too, and he became angry when he saw the people’s behavior. He had never thought of asking for malt.

  He shouted to the people to let the sacks be, but they did not obey.

  “May the rye become sand in your mouths and the potatoes stones in your throat!” he called then, for he was extremely embittered that they snatched the seed for themselves.

  At the same moment it appeared as if Captain Lennart might have performed a miracle. Two women who were fighting over a bag tore a hole in it and found only sand. The men who had lifted up
the potato sacks felt how they weighed as if they were filled with stone.

  It was sand and stone, all of it, only sand and stone.

  The people stood in silent horror at the miracle man of God who had come to them. Captain Lennart himself stood for a moment, struck with amazement. Only strong Måns was laughing.

  “Get home now, fellow,” said Captain Lennart, “before the farmers realize that there was never anything other than sand in those sacks! Otherwise I am afraid they will sink your boat.”

  “I’m not afraid,” said the fellow.

  “Go anyway!” said Captain Lennart in such an authoritative voice that he left.

  Then Captain Lennart let the people know that Sintram had fooled them, but however it was, they did not want to believe anything other than that a miracle had occurred.

  The rumor soon spread, and as the people’s love for the miraculous is great, it was generally believed that Captain Lennart could perform miracles. In that way he gained great power among the peasants, and they called him God’s pilgrim.

  CHAPTER 26

  THE CEMETERY

  It was a lovely evening in August. Löven was mirror bright, sun-smoke veiled the hills, the cool of evening had come.

  Then Beerencreutz, the colonel with the white mustaches, short of stature, strong as a giant, and with a pack of kille cards in his back pocket, came ambling down to the lakeshore and took a seat in a flat-bottomed rowboat. Accompanying him was Major Anders Fuchs, his old comrade in arms, and little Ruster, the flute player, who had been a drummer with Värmland’s hussars and for many years had followed the colonel as his friend and servant.

  On the other side of the lake is the cemetery, the untended cemetery of Svartsjö parish, sparsely set with crooked, rattling iron crosses, mossy as a never-plowed meadow, overgrown with sedge and striped reed canary grass, which has been sown there as a reminder that no person’s life is like any other’s; they change like leaves of grass. There are no graveled pathways, no shadowing trees except the great linden tree on an old rector’s forgotten grave. A stone wall, steep and high, surrounds the poor field. Poor and inconsolable is the cemetery, ugly as a miser’s face withered by the woeful cries of those whose fortune he has stolen. And yet they who rest within are blessed, they who have been lowered into consecrated earth to the sound of hymns and prayers. Acquilon, the card player, who died at Ekeby the year before, had to be buried outside the wall. This man, who once was so proud and so gallant, the courageous warrior, the cunning hunter, the card player who held good luck captive, had ended up ruining his children’s inheritance, everything he himself had acquired, everything his wife had tended. He had abandoned wife and children many years ago to lead a cavalier’s life at Ekeby. One evening last summer he gambled away the estate that gave them their livelihood. Rather than pay off his debt, he shot himself. But the corpses of suicides were buried outside the poor cemetery’s moss-covered wall.

  After he died, there had been only twelve cavaliers; after he died, no one had come to occupy the thirteenth place, no one other than the black one who came creeping out of the smelting furnace on Christmas Eve.

  The cavaliers found his fate more bitter than that of his predecessors. Of course they knew that one of them must die every year. What was wrong with that? Cavaliers may not get old. If their clouded eyes cannot make out the cards, their trembling hands not raise the glass, then what is life to them, and what are they to life? But to lie like a dog at the cemetery wall, where the sheltering turf may not rest in peace, but instead is trampled by grazing sheep, wounded by spade and plow, where the wanderer passes without slowing his pace, and where children play without dampening their laughter and jokes, to rest there where the stone wall blocks the sound when the angel awakens the dead within on judgment day with his bassoon—oh, to rest there!

  Now Beerencreutz rows his boat across Löven. He travels at evening across the lake of my dreams, around whose shores I have seen gods wander, and from whose depths my magic castle rises. He travels past the lagoons of Lagön, where the spruce trees rise right up out of the water, growing on low, circular sand reefs, and where the remnants of the fallen pirate fortress still remain at the steep top of the island. He travels along under the spruce grove on the promontory at Borg, where the old pine tree still hangs out over the cliff on thick roots, where a massive bear has been captured, and where old cairns and burial mounds bear witness to the age of the place.

  He rows around the promontory, gets out below the cemetery, and then walks across mown fields that belong to the count at Borg, up to Acquilon’s grave.

  Once there, he bends down and pats the turf, the way one lightly caresses the blanket under which a sick friend is resting. Then he takes out a pack of kille cards and sits down beside the grave.

  “It’s so lonely for him out here, Johan Fredrik. Probably longs for a game.”

  “It’s a crying shame that such a man should be buried out here,” says the great bear hunter Anders Fuchs, sitting down by his side.

  But little Ruster, the flute player, speaks in an agitated voice, while tears drip steadily down from his small, red eyes.

  “Next to you, colonel, next to you he was the finest man I’ve ever known.”

  These three worthy men are now sitting around the grave, earnestly and fervently dealing out the cards.

  I look out over the world, I see many graves. There rests the mighty, weighed down by marble. The funeral march thunders over him. Banners are lowered over the grave. I see the graves of those whom many have loved. Flowers, wet with tears, caressed by kisses, rest lightly on their green grass. I see forgotten graves, presumptuous graves, mendacious resting places, and others that say nothing, but never before did I see the black-and-white-checked Harlequin and the Mask with the bells in his cap offered for the delight of a grave’s guest.

  “Johan Fredrik has won,” says the colonel proudly. “Didn’t I know it! I taught him to play. Yes, now we are dead, the three of us, and he is alone in life.”

  With that he gathers up the cards, gets up, and, followed by the others, retreats to Ekeby.

  Now the dead man must know and feel that not everyone has forgotten him or his abandoned grave. Wild hearts bring strange tribute to those they love, but the one who lies outside the wall, he whose dead body cannot find peace in consecrated earth, he may still be glad that not everyone has rejected him.

  Friends, children of mankind, when I die, I will surely rest in the midst of the cemetery, in the grave of my ancestors. Surely I have not stolen my family’s livelihood, not raised my hand against my own life, but I have certainly not won such a love; surely no one will do as much for me as the cavaliers for this miscreant. Certainly no one will come in the evening, as the sun goes away and the courts of the dead become solitary and mournful, to set the motley cards between my bony fingers.

  Nor will anyone come—which I would prefer, for cards hardly tempt me—with fiddle and bow to the grave, so that my spirit, hovering around the decaying matter, might rock in the stream of notes like a swan in glistening waves.

  CHAPTER 27

  OLD BALLADS

  Marianne Sinclaire sat in her room one quiet afternoon at the end of August, organizing her letters and other papers.

  Around her was disorder. Large leather knapsacks and trunks with iron fittings had been dragged into the room. Her clothes covered chairs and benches. Everything was pulled out of attics and cupboards and from the drawers of the stained chest, silk and linen glistened, the jewelry was set out to be cleaned, shawls and furs would be inspected and chosen.

  Marianne was preparing for a long journey. She was unsure whether she would ever again return home. She stood at a turning point in her life, and therefore she was burning a pile of old letters and diaries. She did not want to be weighed down by memories of the past.

  As she was sitting there, she found a bundle of old verses in her hands. They were transcriptions of old ballads that her mother used to sing for her when she was lit
tle. She untied the ribbon that held them together and began to read.

  She smiled in melancholy, when she had read awhile. The old ballads proclaimed strange wisdom to her:

  Believe not in fortune, believe not in the signs of fortune, believe not in roses and comely leaves!

  Believe not in laughter! they said. See, the lovely maiden Valborg rides in a golden carriage, and her lips smile, but she is so sorrowful, as if hooves and wheels should pass over her life’s good fortune.

  Believe not in the dance! they said. Many a foot swings lightly over a polished floorboard, while the heart is heavy as lead. Lusty and giddy was little Kerstin in the dance, while she danced away her young life.

  Believe not in jests! Many go to table with a joke on her lips, while she wants to die from sorrow. There sits young Adeline and lets Count Fröjdenborg offer her his heart in jest, certain that is the sight she needs to have the strength to die.

  Oh, you old ballads, in what should one believe, in tears and sorrow?

  The grieving mouth is easily forced to smile, but someone who is happy cannot weep. The old ballads believe in tears and sighs, in sorrow alone and the signs of sorrow. Sorrow is real, is lasting, it is the firm bedrock under loose sand. In sorrow one can believe and in the signs of sorrow.

  But happiness is only sorrow that is playacting. There is really nothing on the earth but sorrow.

  “Oh, inconsolable ones,” said Marianne, “your ancient wisdom falls short before the fullness of life!”

  She went over to the window and looked out into the garden, where her parents were taking a walk. They were walking up and down the broad pathways and talking about everything that met their eyes, about the grass of the ground and the birds of the sky.

  “Look,” said Marianne, “there goes a heart now, sighing with sorrow, while it has never been so happy before!”

  And she suddenly thought that in the end perhaps everything was in the individual person, that sorrow and happiness only depended on her various ways of looking at things. She asked herself whether it was good fortune or misfortune that had passed over her this year. She herself hardly knew.