Babette's Feast and Other Stories

by Isak Dinesen

  He next reflected that he was now to lose his Ariel, and that the great enterprise of his life would never materialize. At this he grieved. Why, he asked himself, must the hideous, wet tempest in Kvasefjord break right into the middle of his William’s Tempest? Could it be that it had been brought about by the will of that forceful, fearless, formidable child?

  Yet as soon as the old director had to some extent regained the modulated register of his voice, he paid a return visit to the shipowner’s house. For the occasion he had purchased a pair of lavender-colored gloves, which stood out against his old frock coat and frayed top hat, but was in harmony with his carriage and tone of voice. His manner was so courteous and obliging that Fru Hosewinckel, who was not accustomed to such self-effacing men of the world, became almost bashful. He made a bow each minute and was untiring in his praise of everything in the rooms. If he had overlooked any single object, he hastened to make good the neglect, as if he were making the lofty mirrors between the windows or the view over the marketplace the humblest apologies for his forgetfulness.

  He burst out: “What glorious, magnificent possessions—collected in old Europe at what cost! What treasures brought from China and the Indies! Oh, what extremely charming chandeliers—and brilliant paintings of majestic ships!”

  Herr Soerensen and Malli for a moment were alone in the drawing room. Herr Soerensen put a finger to his lips, blew Malli a little kiss, and solemnly announced: “My girl, you are Dame Fortune’s favorite!” As Malli looked back at him in a clear, firm gaze, he himself looked aside, pulled an old silk handkerchief out of his coat pocket, mopped his forehead, and finished up, somewhat subdued and more to himself than to her:

  “My Pegasus is slack,

  Plays truant when he can!

  But wait, thou ancient hack,

  I am thy master man.

  (I’ll show thee who’s the man.”)

  When he had again taken his leave in a series of sweet bows, Malli kept standing by the window, letting her eyes follow his figure as it strode proudly across the square, grew smaller and disappeared.

  XI. The Story of an Engagement

  The thought or notion that Malli, instead of continuing the journey with Herr Soerensen and his company, might remain in the town and come to belong to it, first arose among the people who had cheered her when her boat came into the harbor. One might say that in the town community this thought or notion moved in a spiral; as its rings became narrower it constantly rose higher, both socially and emotionally. When in the end it reached those on whom it turned, it also reached its zenith of tension and destiny.

  In a small community where not many things happen, as a rule there is much talk. There an engagement is the supreme topic of conversation and discussion, and the more interest beforehand existent in the young persons who are believed to become engaged, the more lively the talk. It may therefore be worth recording that in this case so little was said. Arndt Hosewinckel was the town’s darling and its best match; Malli was its heroine. But as the two drew closer together and to the mind of the people became one, it was as if their figures eluded observation. A deep breath of comprehension passed through the town, but the names were spoken less often than before.

  The plain people of the town took pleasure in the idea that Arndt Hosewinckel and Mamzell Ross might become a pair. It was once again the happy ending, both surprising and foreseen, to the old tale in which Cinderella marries the Prince. Their town in reward for a handsome deed handsomely gave the best it had to give. That the yellow house in the marketplace should come to open its door to a poor daughter-in-law, a drowned skipper’s child, rejoiced and moved the sailors’ wives, and there was in their joy no kind of malice toward the shipowner or his lady. For had it not been proclaimed in the very harbor that the bride was a treasure? Inasmuch as she symbolized the sea, the breadwinner and the fate of all, she united, even as the sea itself, the town’s humble folk with its richest citizen.

  The thought or notion climbed its spiral path to a higher and narrower circle and gained access to the houses of the best society. Then Malli’s good name for a day or two trembled on the brink of an abyss. For up here one asked oneself whether the heroine was not in reality an adventuress gambling on the town’s admiration and gratitude in order to make a match above her station. But something in the picture of the girl herself almost immediately tipped the balance in her favor. The old gentlemen of the ball were the first to acquit her. Their wives, who were honest folk and who had often trembled for ships and crews, examined Malli’s behavior in the night of the storm and acknowledged that nothing in it could be interpreted as calculation.

  Possibly each single one of the young burghers’ daughters, to whose dancing Malli had sung, reasoned that if she could not herself have Arndt Hosewinckel, the girl from the wreck was the one to whom she could easiest renounce him. Or perhaps those girls, who had known one another from their days of curved combs and pantalets, knew too much of one another’s shortcomings. Of one young beauty, who was specially admired for her small feet, they knew that she had her shoes made yet a size smaller and so had acquired a corn. Of another charmer they knew that her shining golden tresses did not all grow on her own head. Of the stranger the fair young girls knew that she was poor, badly dressed and too big to be elegant, and that she could not dance. But there was in her special shy manner so much trust in, and so much recognition of, all beauty round her that in her presence everyone thought herself more beautiful. It also happened that they suddenly felt the girl from the sea to have in her a laughter different from their own. It had rung out through a storm, or had accompanied it.

  The thought or notion reached the house on the square. It found a foothold in the servants’ hall before it rose to the first floor and was here felt to be of extreme importance. The servants’ hall finished by accepting Malli; it even silently closed a ring round the house’s young lady-to-be, who owned only one frock and three shifts, and who sang so sweetly.

  The thought or notion came up the stairs and into the drawing room of the paintings of majestic ships, and filled it with pregnant silence. It had reached high in its course; in here it was the future itself.

  It found the atmosphere in the drawing room prepared or expectant, like the tuned instrument for the melody. The old master of the house at this time was in high spirits, with a delicate pink in his cheeks; he put on chokers and brought home presents of lace for his lady and sugarplums for Malli. With his ship’s miraculous rescue in the night of the storm something romantic and heroic had come into his precisely regulated life—a gale’s breath, the song of the wind in the sails. It was very fitting that he himself as father-in-law should in the end be taken by storm by a heroine. It may be considered a dangerous thing to extend one’s enthusiasm for a heroic deed to everyday life, and the experienced shipowner might well have been somewhat uneasy about a heroic daughter-in-law—had she been the Maid of Orleans herself—whose exploits had been carried out ashore. But Malli’s halo had been won at sea, amid salt breakers and surf spray. Jochum Hosewinckel as a very young man had suffered shipwreck on one of his father’s ships. He would not mind a daughter-in-law in whose presence he would once more be eighteen years.

  Malli’s obscure origin might have cast a shadow over her young figure as it moved about the house. But since the sea had once shown itself to be the girl’s ally, it was taken for granted that the harmony between the two was perfect, and that Alexander Ross had gone down with his ship an honorable man. Indeed his daughter’s steadfastness on the Sofie Hosewinckel in some mystic way became a proof of this fact. Jochum Hosewinckel called to mind the name of an old Swedish Commander Ross, a friend of his father’s, who had also been of Scotch origin, and about whose figure some mystery had also rested. The Commander could well have been a relative of the lost ship’s captain, and one might well here have to do with a family of heroes.

  Fru Wencke Hosewinckel, ever a woman of few words, in silence wondered at the quickness with which all
men seemed able to take up a standpoint in face of life’s events. She watched her son’s face, listened to his voice, and bided her time.

  The thought or notion finally reached its close and its summit with the two young people themselves who were to be the happy pair. It took them both by surprise like an amazing, brilliant idea from an outside world which they had forgotten. For some weeks they had dwelt among immortal powers. As now the mortal world too gave them its blessing, they happily accepted that too, and from now on their eternity could become their everyday.

  For Malli this came to be the completion and perfection of her own mighty rise. She had once been given wings; they had grown miraculously and had been able to carry her, ever upward, to this unspeakable glory. She stood on a dizzying height, but she could fearlessly cast herself out from it anywhere, because anywhere Arndt’s arms would catch her and bear her. Now she was also to become his wife, to have his name and make his house her home, she was to

  “share all that he doth possess,

  by having him making herself no less.”

  She had tremblingly dreamt of playing Juliet, now life had given her a role as fine as Juliet’s. And she was the maid of Arendal who would not consent to be anybody’s prize!

  Arndt’s happiness was of a different kind. Promises of long ago, which his own mind had rejected, now rose again and were fulfilled. The world had been restless, disorganized and empty. A young girl looked at it, and under her eyes it became united, became a cosmos.

  He had received, at the harbor, the penniless, valiant girl who had saved one of his house’s ships. Such a young maiden was the last human being he wanted to make unhappy; he was not going to become her destiny. He had kissed her, and to make up for the kiss had at first in his parents’ house kept away from her. But one day Malli had looked at him with bright, candid eyes, openly enough to make him feel that neither he nor anyone else in the world could make this young lass unhappy. This struck the rich youth as a jest on the part of Fate; he looked back at the girl, approached her and spoke to her. And behold, he himself then had a destiny—clear-eyed, generous, without arrière-pensées.

  Ay, she was a heroine, a lion-hearted maiden, as they all said. But she was so in a manner other than they knew of. She had no need to fear, for where she was, danger was not. There were still shipwrecks, distress and misfortune. But shipwrecks, distress and misfortune were changed, and became evidence of God’s omnipotence and mercy.

  Later in the night he saw, strangely, the picture of himself as he had been before she came. He thought: “She has power to wake the dead.”

  Just before daybreak came also the picture of Guro, of whom he had not thought for many years. And he remembered that they had been friends and happy together, rich in desire and tenderness in spring nights, in such nights as this one. He understood that in the very last spring night the sea had taken Guro in a mighty embrace wherein there was power and love, forgiveness and forgetfulness.

  “And sweet sprites, the burden bear!” echoed around him in the dim house.

  It is reasonable to assume that Arndt asked Malli to become his wife in a completely ordinary suitor’s fashion and that she answered “yes” in the manner of an ordinary girl. But the question was put and answered as if it was to decide his and her eternal salvation.

  They stood closely embraced, borne and elevated on the same wave. But they did not kiss; a kiss did not fit into this instant of eternity.

  A while later as they were sitting together on the sofa by the window, she asked him lowly and gravely: “Are you happy?” He answered her slowly: “Yes, I am happy. But it is not happiness that you are, Malli. It is life. I was not sure that life was to be found anywhere in the world. People said: ‘That is a matter of life and death,’ and I thought: ‘What a small matter it is.’ I thought of myself that I knew about everything, and that I portended ruin. Oh, Malli, today I am an enigma to myself, and a harbinger of joy to the world.”

  Shortly after he had spoken she sank down before him, and as he would raise her up she prevented him by laying her clasped hands upon his knee.

  “Nay, let me lie here,” she said. “This is the most fitting place of all.”

  Her gentle, enraptured and humble face shone up toward him.

  “Yes,” she went on very slowly. “Yes. ‘I am the resurrection and the life,’ said Malli. “ ‘He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live. And whosoever liveth and believeth in me, shall never die, but have everlasting life.’ ”

  Arndt had to go to Stavanger for the firm; owing to a sudden bankruptcy a ship was for sale there. He set out a few days later, early in the morning.

  He had not known how much it would cost him to part from Malli; now at the last moment he had to force himself to leave. Malli too, on her side, had taken this separation of a few days lightly; she almost felt that she needed to draw her breath. It was only when at his departure she saw him so pale that she herself became very pale. Something terrible might happen to him on the journey. She ought to have prevented him from going away, or she ought to have gone with him in order to ward off the misfortune that threatened him. In the chill spring morning she stood on the front steps of the house, in the East Indian shawl her mother had given her, and watched his cariole depart.

  “My God!” she thought. “If it goes with him as with Father! If he never comes back!”

  XII. Ferdinand

  It now happened, the day after Arndt had left, that a couple of ladies of the town were paying a call on Fru Hosewinckel, and that while they were sitting around the coffee table Malli came into the room in cloak and bonnet, radiant with happiness, ready to go out. Fru Hosewinckel asked her where she was going, and she answered that she was going to see Ferdinand. The ladies fell silent and looked at each other. Fru Hosewinckel got up from her chair, went toward Malli and took her hand.

  “My dear girl,” she said, “you cannot see Ferdinand any more.”

  “Why not?” ask Malli in amazement.

  “Alas, Ferdinand is dead,” said Fru Hosewinckel.

  “Ferdinand!” Malli cried aloud.

  “Yes, our poor, good Ferdinand,” said Fru Hosewinckel.

  “Ferdinand!” Malli cried again.

  “Such was the will of God,” said Fru Hosewinckel.

  “Ferdinand!” Malli cried for the third time, as if to herself.

  The two ladies of the town said that they were very sorry indeed, and then went on to report in detail what had happened to Ferdinand. On board the Sofie Hosewinckel he had, on the night of the tempest, been struck by a falling piece of the yardarm and had suffered severe internal injuries. These at first had not appeared to be serious, but yesterday he had died.

  “So after all it was the tempest,” said one of the ladies, “which brought on the death of the brave young man.”

  “The tempest!” Malli exclaimed. “The tempest! No, how can you think that? I must go to him. Then will you see that you are utterly mistaken!”

  “Unfortunately there can be no doubt about it,” said another lady. “And it is such a very poor home. How, now, is his poor mother to get along? Alas no, Mamzell Ross, there is no doubt at all.”

  Malli stood for a while considering.

  “Indeed yes,” she then burst out forcefully. “He stood on the deck with me, you know! We were together the whole night through. In the morning, in the fisherman’s hut, he was the one who helped me change my clothes. And you have seen for yourselves,” she went on, turning to face the ladies, “that he came ashore in the boat with me. No, Ferdinand is not dead!” Once more she was silent.

  “I must go to him at once!” she cried. “God! To think that I have not gone before!”

  The ladies did not know what to do about this wild, disturbed agitation, so remained silent and let the girl go her way.

  Malli came into Ferdinand’s home just as the young seaman was being laid in his coffin. His mother and small brothers and sisters, and a few relatives who had assisted
them, stood around and in their dark clothing filled up the small dark room. They all made way for the girl, and the dead boy’s mother greeted her, took her by the hand and led her forward, so that she should see Ferdinand for the last time.

  Malli had sped through the streets like a gale and was panting after her run; now she stood as if turned to stone. Ferdinand’s young face on its pillow of shavings was as peaceful as if he were asleep. Suffering and agony had passed over it and again away, and had left behind, as it were, a deep, solemn experience. Malli had never before seen a corpse; neither had she ever seen Ferdinand so quiet.

  The strangers in the room had been about to leave when she came; they now said good-bye to her and she shook hands with them one by one, with wide-open, dumb eyes. Ferdinand’s mother saw the visitors out; Malli was alone with him.

  She fell on her knees by the coffin.

  “Ferdinand!” she called out very gently. And again: “Ferdinand! Dear Ferdinand!”

  As he did not answer, she stretched out her hand and touched his face. Death’s icy chill penetrated through her fingers; she felt it go right into her heart and withdrew her hand. But a little after she laid it back again, let it rest on the boy’s cheek until she thought that her hand had become as cold as that cheek itself, and so began slowly to stroke the still face. She felt the cheekbones and the eyesockets against the tips of her fingers. Her own face the while took on the expression of the dead sailor boy’s face; the two grew to resemble each other like brother and sister.