Seven Gothic Tales

by Isak Dinesen

  “ ‘And you, Marcus,’ she said, ‘you have given me many things; now I shall give you this good advice. Be many people. Give up this game of being one and of being always Marcus Cocoza. You have worried too much about Marcus Cocoza, so that you have been really his slave and his prisoner. You have not done anything without first considering how it would affect Marcus Cocoza’s happiness and prestige. You were always much afraid that Marcus might do a stupid thing, or be bored. What would it really have mattered? All over the world people are doing stupid things, and many people are bored, and we have always known about it. Give up being Marcus Cocoza now; then what difference does it make to the world if one more person, one old Jew, does a stupid thing, or is bored for a day or two? I should like you to be easy, your little heart to be light again. You must, from now, be more than one, many people, as many as you can think of. I feel, Marcus—I am sure—that all people in the world ought to be, each of them, more than one, and they would all, yes, all of them, be more easy at heart. They would have a little fun. Is it not strange that no philosopher has thought of this, and that I should hit upon it?’

  “I thought over what she said, and wondered whether it would be likely to do me any good. But I knew that it would not be possible for me to follow this advice of hers while she was still alive. Were she dead I might find refuge in her whim. The moon must follow the earth, but if the earth were to split and evaporate, it might perhaps swing itself free of its dependency, and be, in an unfettered flight in the ether, for a short time the moon of Jupiter, and for another, that of Venus. I do not know enough about astronomy to tell. I leave it to you, who may have more insight into the science.

  “ ‘What a lovely morning,’ said Pellegrina. ‘One thinks that it is dark still, but really the air is as filled with light as a glassful of wine. How wet everything is. But soon all the world will be dry again, and it will be hot on the roads. It does not matter to us. We shall be here together all day.’

  “ ‘And what do you want me to do?’ I asked her.

  “She sat for a very long time in deep silence.

  “ ‘Yes, Marcus,’ she said, ‘we must part. Tonight I am going away.’

  “ ‘Shall we not meet again?’ I asked.

  “She put her finger on her lips. ‘You must never speak to me,’ she said, ‘if we ever happen to meet. You once knew Pellegrina, you know.’

  “ ‘Let me,’ I said, ‘follow you, and be near you, so that you can send for me if ever you want a friend to help you.’

  “ ‘Yes, do that,’ she said. ‘Be near me, Marcus, so that if ever anyone should mistake me for Pellegrina Leoni, I can get hold of you, and you can help me to get away. Be never far off, so that you can always keep the name of Pellegrina away from me. But speak to me you must never, Marcus. I could not hear your voice without remembering the divine voice of Pellegrina, and her great triumphs, and this house, where we stand now, and the garden.’ She looked around at the house as if it were a thing which no longer existed.

  “ ‘Oh, the currents of life are cold, Pellegrina,’ I said.

  “She laughed a little in the morning air, then became again very still. The swallows are cruising about now,’ she said. ‘What,’ she said after a moment, ‘do you think of this paradise that they talk about? Is it anywhere, really? There we two shall walk again into this house, and the paradise-winds shall lift the curtains a little. There it is spring, and the swallows are back, and everything is forgiven.’

  “She went away,” said the old Jew, “as she had said, upon the evening of that day.

  “I have never spoken to her since,” he said, “but she has written to me from time to time, to make me help her when she wanted to get away and to change from one thing into another. In Rome, if you had not”—he turned to me—“told her that your father was an enthusiast for the Italian opera, she would have gone with you to England. But only for a year or two. She would have left you again. She would never let herself become tied up in any of her rôles.”

  Thus the old man finished his tale. He looked around at us, then quieted down again, rested his chin upon the golden button of his walking stick, and sank into deep thought, always watching the face of the dying woman on the stretcher.

  We three, who had been listening to him, sat on in silence, feeling, I should say, a little sheepish, all of us.

  Lincoln himself, here, fell into a reverie, and for some time said nothing.

  And I ought to tell you here, now, Mira, that afterward in life my friend Pilot took the advice of Pellegrina Leoni.

  It is like this: I do not now quite remember whether, many years later, I met, at the Cape of Good Hope, an elderly German clergyman, by the name of Pastor Rosenquist, who, while we were discussing the strangeness of human nature, recounted to me this tale of my friend, or whether I amused myself, many years later, by imagining that I had met, at the Cape of Good Hope, a German clergyman who told me all this about him.

  But there it is, in any case. Pilot followed her advice, and took to being more than one person. From time to time he withdrew from the hard and hopeless task of being Friederich Hohenemser and took on the existence of a small landowner in a far district, by the name of Fridolin Emser. He surrounded this second existence of his with the greatest secrecy, and let nobody know what he was doing. He felt, when he got away, as if he were running for his life, and he cuddled up in Fridolin’s little house, outside a village, like an animal safe in his den. Had anyone become suspicious of him and followed up the track which he took such pains to cover, to find out what, in the end, he did in his concealment, he would have found that Pilot as Emser did absolutely nothing. He looked after his little place with care, collected day by day a little money for Fridolin, and sat of an evening in the arbor of his garden, beneath a blackbird in a cage, smoking his long pipe; or sometimes he would go and drink beer in the inn, and discuss politics with friendly people. Here he was happy. For since he himself, from the beginning, knew Fridolin to be nonexistent, he was never worried by efforts to make him exist. The one thing which troubled him was that he dared not remain too long in his holiday existence for fear that it might put on too much weight, and tilt him over. He had to return to the country place of the Hohenemsers. But even Friederich Hohenemser was happier after he had begun to follow the plan of Pellegrina, for a secret in his life was an asset to him as well as to Fridolin.

  I do not know if, in any of his existences, he married. The marriage of Friederich Hohenemser would have been bound to be miserably unhappy, and I would have pitied the woman who had to drag him along with her in it; but Fridolin might well have married and given his wife a peaceful and pleasant time. For he would not have been occupied all the time in proving to her that he really existed, which is the curse of many wives, but might have quietly enjoyed seeing her existing. I do not know why it should be so, but whenever I think of Pilot now, I picture him under an umbrella—he who was so exposed, once, to all weathers. Beneath this shelter the sun shall not smite him by day, nor the moon by night.

  Shaking himself out of these reflections, Lincoln resumed his account of the old Jew’s tale:

  Suddenly a violent change came over the face of the old Jew. It was as if we, to whom he had just lately recounted the story of his life, had all at once been annihilated. Lowering his stick, he bent forward, his whole being concentrated on Pellegrina’s face.

  She stirred upon her couch. Her bosom heaved, and she moved her head slightly on the pillow. A tremor ran over her face; after a minute her brows lifted a little, and the fringes of her dark eyelids quivered, like the wings of a butterfly that sits on a flower. We had all got up. Again I looked at the Jew. It was obvious that he was terrified lest she should see him, in case she opened her eyes. He shrank back and took shelter behind me. The next second she slowly looked up. Her eyes seemed supernaturally large and somber.

  In spite of the Jew’s move to hide himself, her gaze fell straight upon him. He stood quite still under it, deadly pale as if h
e feared an outburst of abhorrence. But none came. She looked at him attentively, neither smiling nor frowning. At this I heard him drawing in his breath twice, deeply, in a sort of suspense. Then he timidly approached a little.

  She tried to speak two or three times, without getting a sound out, and again closed her eyes. But once more she opened them, looking again straight at him. When she spoke it was in her ordinary low voice, a little slowly, but without any effort.

  “Good evening, Marcus,” she said.

  I heard him strain his throat to speak, but he said nothing.

  “You are late,” she said, as if a little vexed.

  “I have been delayed,” said he, and I was surprised at his voice, so perfectly calm and pleasant was it, and nobly sonorous.

  “How am I looking?” asked Pellegrina.

  “You are looking well,” he answered her.

  At the moment when she had spoken to him, the face of the old Jew had undergone a strange and striking change. I have spoken before of his unusual pallor. While he was telling us his tale he had grown white, as if there were no blood in him. Now, as she spoke and he answered her, a deep, delicate blush, like that of a young boy, of a maiden surprised in her bath, spread all over his face.

  “It was good that you came,” she said. “I am a little nervous tonight.”

  “No, you have no reason to be,” he reassured her. “It has gone very well up till now.”

  “Do you really mean that,” she asked, scrutinizing his face. “You do not criticize? Nothing could have been improved? I have done well, and you are pleased with it all?”

  “Yes,” he answered, “I do not criticize; nothing could be improved. You have done well, and I am well content with the whole thing.”

  She was silent for perhaps two or three minutes. Then her dark eyes slid from his face to ours. “Who are these gentlemen?” she asked him.

  “These,” he said, “are three foreign young gentlemen, who have traveled a long way to have the honor of being introduced to you.”

  “Introduce them, then,” she said. “But I am afraid that you must be quick about it. I do not think that the entr’act can last much longer.”

  The Jew, advancing toward us, took us by the hand, one by one, and led us nearer to the stretcher. “My noble young Sirs,” he said, “from beautiful, distant countries, I am pleased to have obtained for you an unforgettable moment in your lives. I introduce you herewith to Donna Pellegrina Leoni, the greatest singer in the world.”

  With this he gave her our names, which for each of us he remembered quite correctly.

  She looked at us kindly. “I am very glad to see you here tonight,” she said. “I shall sing to you now, and, I hope, to your satisfaction.” We kissed her hand with deep bows, all three. I remembered the caresses which I had demanded of that noble hand. But immediately after she turned again to the Jew.

  “Nay, but I am really a little nervous tonight,” she said. “What scene is it, Marcus?”

  “My little star,” said he, “be not nervous at all. It is sure to go well with you tonight. It is the second act of Don Giovanni; it is the letter air. It begins now with your recitative, Crudele? Ah nò, mio bene! Troppo mi spiace allontanarti un ben che lungamente la nostr’ alma desia.”

  She drew a deep sigh and repeated his words: “Crudele? Ah nò, mio bene! Troppo mi spiace allontanarti un ben che lungamente la nostr’ alma desia.”

  As she spoke these words of the old opera a wave of deep dark color, like that of a bride, like that in the face of the old Jew, washed over her white and bruised face. It spread from her bosom to the roots of her hair. The three of us who were lookers-on were, I believe, pale faced; but those who, looking at each other, glowed in a mute, increasing ecstasy.

  Suddenly her face broke, as the night-old ice on a pool was broken up when, as a boy, I threw a stone into it. It became like a constellation of stars, quivering in the universe. A rain of tears sprang from her eyes and bathed it all. Her whole body vibrated under her passion like the string of an instrument.

  “Oh,” she cried, “look, look here! It is Pellegrina Leoni—it is she, it is she herself again—she is back. Pellegrina, the greatest singer, poor Pellegrina, she is on the stage again. To the honor of God, as before. Oh, she is here, it is she—Pellegrina, Pellegrina herself!”

  It was unbelievable that, half dead as she was, she could house this storm of woe and triumph. It was, of course, her swan song.

  “Come unto her, now, all, again,” she said. “Come back, my children, my friends. It is I—I forever, now.” She wept with a rapture of relief, as if she had in her a river of tears, held back long.

  The old Jew was in a terrible state of pain and strain. He also swayed for a moment where he stood. His eyelids swelled and heavy tears pressed themselves out under them and ran down his face. But he kept standing, and dared not give way to his emotion, although tried to his utmost. I believe that he held out against it so strongly for fear that he might otherwise, very weak as he was, die before her, and thus fail her in her last moments.

  Of a sudden he took up his little walking stick and struck three short strokes on the side of the stretcher.

  “Donna Pellegrina Leoni,” he cried in a clear voice. “En scène pour le deux!”

  Like a soldier to the call, or a war horse to the blast of the trumpet, she collected herself at his words. Within the next minute she became quiet in a gallant and deadly calm. She gave him a glance from her enormous dark eyes. In one mighty movement, like that of a billow rising and sinking, she lifted the middle of her body. A strange sound, like the distant roar of a great animal, came from her breast. Slowly the flames in her face sank, and an ashen gray covered it instead. Her body fell back, stretched itself out and lay quite still, and she was dead.

  The Jew pressed his tall hat on his head, “lisgadal rejiiskadisch schemel robo,” he said.

  We stood for a little while. Afterward we went into the refectory to sit there. Later, when it was nearly morning, it was announced to us that our two coaches had at last arrived. I went out to give orders to the coachmen. We wanted to go on as soon as it was quite light. That would be best, I thought, although I did not know at all where to go.

  As I passed the long room the candles were still burning, but the daylight came in through the windows. The two were there: Pellegrina on her stretcher and the old Jew by her side, his chin resting on his stick. It seemed to me that I ought not to part from him yet. I went up to him.

  “Then, Mr. Cocoza,” I said, “you are this time burying, not the great artist, whose grave you made many years ago, but the woman, whose friend you were.”

  The old man looked up at me. “Vous êtes trop bon, Monsieur,” he said, which means: You are too good, Sir.

  “This,” Lincoln said, “is my tale, Mira.”

  Mira drew in his breath, blew it out again slowly, and whistled.

  “I have thought,” said Lincoln, “What would have happened to this woman if she had not died then? She might have been with us here tonight. She was good company and would have fitted in well. She might have become a dancer of Mombasa, like Thusmu, that tawny-eyed old bat, the mistress of his father and grandfather, for whose arms Said is even now longing. Or she might have gone with us into the highlands, on an expedition for ivory or slaves, and have made up her mind to stay there with a war-like tribe of the highland natives, and have been honored by them as a great witch.

  “In the end, I have thought, she might perhaps have decided to become a pretty little jackal, and have made herself a den on the plain, or upon the slope of a hill. I have imagined that so vividly that on a moonlight night I have believed that I heard her voice amongst the hills. And I have seen her, then, running about, playing with her own small graceful shadow, having a little ease of heart, a little fun.”

  “Ah la la,” said Mira, who, in his quality of a story-teller, was an excellent and imaginative listener, “I have heard that little jackal too. I have heard her. She barks:
‘I am not one little jackal, not one; I am many little jackals.’ And pat! in a second she really is another, barking just behind you: ‘I am not one little jackal. Now I am another.’ Wait, Lincoln, till I have heard her once more. Then I shall make you a tale about her, to go with yours.”

  “Well,” said Lincoln, “this is my tale. The lesson for Said.”

  “I know all your tale,” said Mira. “I have heard it before. Now I believe that I made it myself.”

  “The Sultan Sabour of Khorassan was a great hero, and not that only, but a man of God, who had visions and heard voices which instructed him in the will of the Lord. So he meant to teach this to all the world, with fire and sword. But alas, he was betrayed by a woman, a dancer, just at the zenith of his orbit; it is a long story. His great army was wiped out. The sand of the desert drank their blood; the vultures fed on it. The wails of the widows and orphans rose to heaven. His harem was scattered amongst his enemies. He himself was wounded, and only dragged away and saved by a slave. For the sake of his soldiers, then, he will not show himself or let himself be known in his beggar’s state. He has become, like your woman, many persons, and gives up, like her, to be one. Sometimes he is a water carrier, again a Khadi’s servant, again a fisherman by the sea, or a holy hermit. He is very wise. He knows many things and leaves deep footprints wherever he goes. He does all people whom he meets much good and some harm; he is a king still. But he will not remain the same for long. When he gains friends and women to love him, he flees the country from them, too much afraid of being again the Sultan Sabour, or any one person at all. Only his slave knows. This slave, I now remember, has had his nose cut off for Sabour’s sake.”

  “Alas, Mira, life is full of disagreeables,” said Lincoln.

  “Ah, as to me,” said Mira, “I am safe wherever I go. You yourself have it written down in your Holy Book that all things work together for good to them that love God.”