Old Ulrika plays, as if she wanted to break the strings. There is so much to drown out: cries of distress from poor farmers, curses from tormented crofters, scornful laughter from defiant servants, and first and last the shame, the shame of being a wicked man’s wife.
To these notes Gösta Berling has led young Countess Dohna up in the dance. Marianne Sinclaire and her many admirers have danced to it, and the majoress at Ekeby has moved to its rhythm when the handsome Altringer was still alive. She sees them pair by pair, united in youth and beauty, whirling past. A stream of merriment passed from them to her, from her to them. It was her polska that made their cheeks glow, their eyes radiate. She is separated from all that now. May the polska thunder—so many memories, so many sweet memories to drown out!
She plays to deaden her anxiety. Her heart wants to burst in terror when she sees the black dog, when she hears the servants whispering about the black bulls. She plays the polska over and over again to deaden her anxiety.
Then she notices that her husband has come home. She hears him come into the room and sit down on the rocking chair. She recognizes the rocking so well, as the rocker creaks against the floor plank, that she does not even turn around.
All the while as she is playing, the rocking continues. Now she no longer hears the notes, only the rocking.
Poor old Ulrika, so tormented, so lonely, so helpless, gone astray in a hostile country, without a friend to complain to, without anyone to console her other than a rattling piano, that answers her with a polska!
This is like loud laughter at a burial, a drinking song in church.
While the rocking chair continues to rock, she suddenly hears how the piano laughs at her lament, and she stops in the middle of a measure. She gets up and looks over at the rocking chair.
But the very next moment she is lying unconscious on the floor. It was not her husband who sat in the rocking chair, but another—the one whose name small children dare not speak, the one who would frighten them to death, if they encountered him in the desolate attic.
Can anyone, whose soul has been fed with legends, ever free herself from its control? The night wind is howling outside, a ficus and oleander are whipping the balcony pillars with their stiff leaves; the sky vaults dark over the extended hills, and I, sitting alone in the night and writing, with the lamp lit and the curtain drawn, I, who am old now and ought to be wise, I feel the same shivers creeping up my spine as when I heard this story for the first time, and I have to keep raising my eyes from my work to see whether someone hasn’t come in and hidden in the corner over there; I have to look out at the balcony to be certain that a black dog does not spring up over the railing. It never leaves me, this terror that is aroused by the old stories, when the night is dark and solitude profound, and at last it becomes so overpowering to me that I have to drop the pen, creep down into my bed, and pull the blanket up over my eyes.
It was my childhood’s great, secret admiration that Ulrika Dillner survived that afternoon. I would not have.
It was fortunate that Anna Stjärnhök came driving to Fors immediately thereafter, and that she found her on the parlor floor and wakened her to life again. But it would not have gone as well with me. I would already have been dead.
I wish for you, dear friends, that you might avoid seeing the tears of old eyes.
Or that you might not stand helpless when a gray head leans against your breast to get support, or when old hands are clasped around yours in silent prayer. May you avoid seeing the old drowned in sorrow that you cannot comfort!
What are the complaints of the young, then? They have strength, they have hope. But what a misery it is, when the old weep, what despair when they, who have been the support of your youthful days, sink into powerless complaint!
There sat Anna Stjärnhök listening to old Ulrika, and she saw no way out for her.
The old woman wept and trembled. Her eyes were wild. She talked and talked, sometimes so confusedly, as if she no longer knew where she was. The thousand wrinkles that crisscrossed her face were twice as deep as usual; the loose locks of hair that hung down over her eyes, straightened by tears; and her entire long, emaciated form was shaking with sobs.
Finally Anna Stjärnhök had to put an end to the moaning. She made a decision. She would take her back to Berga with her. It was true that she was Sintram’s wife, but she could not remain at Fors. The mill owner would drive her crazy if she stayed with him. Anna Stjärnhök decided to take old Ulrika away.
Oh, how the poor thing was happy and terrified at this decision! But she would not dare leave her husband and her home. Perhaps he would send the big, black dog after her.
But Anna Stjärnhök overcame her resistance, partly with joking, partly with threats, and in half an hour she had her beside her in the sleigh. Anna drove herself, and old Disa pulled the sleigh. The going was miserable, for it was long into March, but it did old Ulrika good to ride in the familiar sleigh again behind the familiar horse, which had been a faithful servant at Berga at least as long as she.
As she now was in good spirits and in a fearless mood, this old household thrall, she stopped crying as they drove past Arvid storp, by Högberg she was already laughing, and as they drove past Munkeby, she was in the process of telling about how it was in her youth, when she served with the countess at Svanaholm.
They now drove into the desolate, unpopulated areas north of Munkeby on a hilly, stony road. The road made its way to all the hills it could possibly reach, it crept up to their tops in a slow curl, but rushed as fast as it could across the level valley bottoms in order to immediately find a new precipice to climb over.
They were just about to drive down Västratorp Hill when old Ulrika suddenly fell silent and seized Anna hard by the arm. She was staring at a big, black dog by the roadside.
“Look!” she said.
The dog set off into the forest. Anna did not see much of him.
“Drive,” said Ulrika, “drive as fast as you can! Now Sintram will get word that I have gone.”
Anna tried to laugh away her anxiety, but she kept on.
“Soon we’ll be hearing his sleigh bells, you’ll see. We’ll hear them before we come up to the top of the next hill.”
And as Disa panted a moment at the top of Elof’s Hill, the peal of sleigh bells was heard below them.
Now old Ulrika became completely crazy with anxiety. She shook, sobbed, and moaned just like a short while ago in the parlor at Fors. Anna wanted to urge Disa on, but the horse simply turned its head and gave her a look of inexpressible astonishment. Did she think that Disa had forgotten when it was time to run and when it was time to canter? Did she want to teach her how to pull a sleigh, teach her, who knew every stone, every bridge, every gate, every hill, going back more than twenty years?
During this the peal of sleigh bells was getting closer and closer.
“It’s him, it’s him! I know his sleigh bells,” old Ulrika moans.
The peal is getting closer and closer. Sometimes it is so unnaturally loud that Anna turns around to see if the head of Sintram’s horse isn’t next to the sleigh; sometimes it dies away. They hear it first to the right, then to the left of the road, but they see no one driving. It is as if the peal of the sleigh bells alone was pursuing them. The way it is at night, when you go home from a dinner party, that’s the way it is now. These sleigh bells peal in melodies, sing, speak, reply. The forest resounds with the din they create.
Anna Stjärnhök almost longs that the pursuers would finally get so close to them that she would see Sintram himself and his red horse. She gets a gruesome feeling from this dreadful peal of sleigh bells.
“Those sleigh bells are torturing me,” she says.
And immediately the words are picked up by the bells. “Torture me,” they ring. “Torture me, torture, torture, torture me,” they sing in all possible melodies.
It was not so long ago she drove this same way, pursued by wolves. In the darkness she had seen the white teeth glisteni
ng in wide-open jaws, she had imagined that her body would be torn apart by the wild animals of the forest, but then she had not been afraid. She had not experienced a more magnificent night. The horse that had pulled her had been strong and beautiful, strong and beautiful was the man who shared the adventure’s delight with her.
Ah, this old horse, this old, helpless, trembling travel companion! She feels so powerless that she wants to cry. She cannot escape this dreadful, arousing peal of sleigh bells.
Then she keeps quiet and gets out of the sleigh. This must have an end. Why should she run away, as if she were afraid of this malevolent, despicable wretch?
Finally she sees a horse’s head come forth out of the gathering twilight and after the head a whole horse, a whole sleigh, and in the sleigh sits Sintram himself.
She notices, however, that it is not as if they had come along the highway, this sleigh and this horse and mill owner, but rather as if they had been created right there before her eyes and appeared out of the twilight when they were finished.
Anna throws the reins to Ulrika and goes up to Sintram.
He reins in the horse.
“Look, look,” he says, “what good luck for a poor man! Dear Miss Stjärnhök, let me move my travel companion over into your sleigh. He’s going to Berga this evening, and I am in a hurry to get home.”
“Who is your travel companion, mill owner?”
Sintram rips open the carriage apron and shows Anna a fellow who is lying asleep on the floor of the sleigh. “He’s a little drunk,” he says, “but what does that matter? He’ll keep on sleeping. It’s a familiar person by the way, Miss Stjärnhök, it’s Gösta Berling.”
Anna shudders.
“Look, I should say,” Sintram continued, “that anyone who abandons his beloved sells him to the devil. That was the way I got him in my claws. You think you are doing so well, of course. Forsake, that’s a good thing, and love, that’s a bad thing.”
“What do you mean, mill owner? What are you talking about?” asked Anna, quite shaken up.
“I mean that you should not have let Gösta Berling leave you, Miss Anna.”
“God willed it, mill owner.”
“Sure, sure, that’s how it is, to forsake is good, to love is bad. The good Lord does not like to see people happy. He sends wolves after them. But what if it wasn’t God that did that, Miss Anna? Could it not just as well have been me, who called my little gray lambs from Dovrefjäll to pursue the young man and the young girl? Think if it was me who sent the wolves, because I didn’t want to lose one of my own! Think if it wasn’t God who did it!”
“You will not tempt me into doubting that matter, mill owner,” says Anna in a weak voice, “then I am lost.”
“Look here now,” says Sintram, leaning down across the sleeping Gösta Berling, “look at his little finger! That little wound will never heal. We took blood there when he signed the contract. He is mine. Blood has a power of its own. He is mine, it is only love that can release him, but if I get to keep him, he will be delightful.”
Anna Stjärnhök struggles and struggles to be free of this enchantment that has seized her. All of this is just madness, madness. No one can swear away his soul to the evil tempter. But she has no power over her thoughts, the twilight is settling so heavy over her, the forest stands so dark and silent. She cannot escape the ghastly terror of the hour.
“Perhaps you think,” the mill owner continues, “that there is not much left of him to corrupt? Don’t believe it! Has he tortured farmers, has he betrayed poor friends, has he cheated at cards? Has he, Miss Anna, been the lover of married women?”
“I think that you are the evil one himself!”
“Let us trade, Miss Anna! Take Gösta Berling, take him and marry him! Keep him and give them at Berga the money! I relinquish him to you, and you know that he is mine. Think about the fact that it is not God who sent the wolves after you here in the night, and let us trade!”
“What do you want in exchange, mill owner?”
Sintram sneered.
“Me, what do I want? Oh, I’ll be content with a little. I will only have that old woman in your sleigh, Miss Anna.”
“Satan, tempter,” cries Anna, “get away from me! Should I betray an old friend who is relying on me? Should I leave her to you, so that you can torment her into madness?”
“Look, look, calm, Miss Anna! Think about it! Here is a young, splendid man and there an old, worn-out hag. I must have one of them. Which of them will you let me have?”
Anna Stjärnhök laughed in desperation.
“Do you think, mill owner, that we should stand here and trade souls, the way you trade horses at Broby market?”
“Yes, exactly. But if you wish, Miss Anna, we will arrange it in a different way. We will think about the honor of the Stjärnhök family name.”
With that he begins to call and shout in a loud voice to his wife, who is sitting in Anna’s sleigh, and to the girl’s inexpressible horror she obeys the call at once, gets out of the sleigh, and comes shaking and shivering over to them.
“Look, look, look, such an obedient wife!” says Sintram. “It’s not your fault, Miss Anna, that she comes when her husband calls. Now I’ll lift Gösta out of my sleigh and leave him here. Leave him forever, Miss Anna. Whoever wants to can pick him up.”
He bends over to pick up Gösta, but then Anna leans all the way down to his face, setting her eyes on him and hissing like a provoked animal, “In the name of God, go home with you! Don’t you know who is sitting in the rocking chair in the parlor waiting for you? Do you dare let that gentleman wait?”
For Anna, it is almost the high point of the day’s atrocities to see how these words affect the malevolent man. He pulls the reins to him, turns, and drives homeward, driving the horses to a wild gallop with whip strokes and wild shouts. Down the terrifying hill goes the life-threatening ride, while sparks flash in a long row under the runners and hooves in the thin March snow cover.
Anna Stjärnhök and Ulrika Dillner stand alone on the road, but they do not say a word. Ulrika shudders at Anna’s wild glances, and she has nothing to say to the poor old woman, for whose sake she has sacrificed her beloved.
She wanted to cry, rage, roll around on the road and strew snow and sand on her head.
Before she had felt the sweetness of abandonment; now she felt its bitterness. What was it to sacrifice your love against sacrificing the soul of your beloved!
They drove up to Berga in the same silence, but when they were there and the parlor door was opened, Anna Stjärnhök fainted for the first and last time in her life. Inside both Sintram and Gösta Berling were sitting, conversing in calm. The toddy tray was already there. They must have been there at least an hour.
Anna Stjärnhök fainted, but old Ulrika stood calmly. She had no doubt noticed that there was something not quite right about the one who had pursued them on the highway.
Then Captain Uggla and his wife made financial arrangements with the mill owner so that old Ulrika was allowed to stay at Berga. He yielded quite good-naturedly. “He certainly doesn’t want to drive her crazy,” he said.
Oh, latter-day children!
I do not ask anyone to give credence to these old stories. They may be nothing more than lies and poetry. But the remorse that rocks back and forth in the heart, until it complains, as the floorboards in Sintram’s parlor complained under the rocker; but the doubt that rings in your eyes, the way the sleigh bells rang for Anna Stjärnhök in the desolate forest, when does that turn into lies and poetry?
Oh, if they only could!
CHAPTER 12
EBBA DOHNA’S STORY
You must be wary of entering the fair promontory on Löven’s eastern shore, around which the inlets glide in with silky waves, the proud promontory where Borg’s manor sits.
Löven was never more magnificent than when seen from this height.
No one can know how fair it is, this lake of my dreams, until he has seen the morning mists gli
ding away across the polished surface from Borg’s point; before he has seen it reflect a pale red sunset from the windows in the little blue study, where so many memories reside.
But I say to you still: do not go there!
For perhaps you will be seized by a desire to remain in the old manor’s sorrow-laden halls, perhaps make yourself owner of this fair soil, and if you are young, rich, and fortunate, you, like many another, make your home there with a young spouse.
No, it is better not to see the beautiful promontory, for no happiness can reside at Borg. Know that however rich, however fortunate you may be, once you move in, those old tear-drenched floors would soon be drinking your tears as well, and those walls, which could repeat so many sounds of sorrow, would collect your sighs too.
An unfavorable fate hangs over this lovely estate. It is as if misfortune were buried there, but, finding no peace in its grave, constantly rises up out of it to torment the living. If I were master at Borg, I would ransack the ground, both the bedrock of the stands of fir and the cellar floors of the houses and the fertile soil out on the fields, until I found the witch’s worm-eaten corpse, and then I would give her a grave in hallowed ground at the Svartsjö churchyard. And at the burial I would not skimp on payment for the bell ringer; the bells would sound long and powerful over her, and I would send expensive gifts to the minister and organist, so that with doubled energy they might consecrate her to eternal rest with oratory and song.
Or if this did not help, one stormy night I would let the fire approach the buckling wooden walls and let it ravage everything, so that people might no longer be enticed to dwell in this home of misfortune. Then no one would be able to enter this doomed place, only the church steeple’s black jackdaws would found a colony in the large chimney, rising, blackened and eerie, over the desolate ground.
Yet I would surely be anxious when I saw the flames intertwined over the roof, when thick smoke, reddened by the firelight and interspersed with sparks, poured forth out of the old count’s estate. In the crackling and sighing I would think I heard the lament of homeless people; at the blue tips of the flames I would think I saw disturbed phantasms hovering. I would think about how sorrow beautifies, how misfortune adorns, and weep, as if a temple to old gods had been doomed to disintegration.