the selamb stratagem had succeeded with tord and his wife. a couple of years had passed without anything being heard from them. stellan could celebrate his wedding without the slightest admixture of bohemianism. and tord had not again exercised his temperament in the press. everything was quiet and the pair had evidently settled for good out there by the sea.
but then a communication arrived at selambshof, signed tord of j?rn?, in which peter was enjoined in angry and haughty tones immediately to procure more money.
in less than three years the money had wasted away. let us see how this had happened.
first of all they had of course built beyond their means in the wildest manner. when tord and dagmar one still and radiant april day paid their first visit to j?rn?, they, of course, proudly ignored the insipid, idyllic southern glen with its little red tenant’s cottage and rushed up amongst the sparse stunted pines on the hill above. on the highest, most exposed point, where there was a view over both the bay and the sea, they stopped:
“this is where the house shall stand!”
and it must be built of thick, round logs with a covered verandah, and a dragon’s head and open fireplace. an eagle’s eyrie on the cliff it was to be. tord made the drawings himself. but not a tree must be felled on j?rn?, so all the timber must be brought in. labour might probably have been found on the islands round about if they 294had not been in such a hurry. but they had to get workmen from town. and terribly troublesome and expensive it was to trail the heavy logs from the pier up the steep hill, where there was not even a path.
anyhow, towards the middle of the summer the grating of the saws and the blows of the hammers were heard.
meanwhile tord and dagmar lived a glorious tent life on a meadow by the sea. they sailed in their new-built boat, swam, took sunbaths and ran about naked like savages on the rocks to the great amusement of the workmen up on top.
one day tord covered dagmar all over with fine clay taken from the bottom of the bay and she stood there in shining blue on the shell-covered sand, like a statue. mattson the bailiff came walking down between the juniper bushes with an unfinished oar on his shoulders. she, however, stood still and laughed aloud:
“selamb has made a statue of me! don’t you think i’m a funny statue, mattson?”
mattson blinked his eyes and walked on, shaking his grey head at such shamelessness. he wondered in his own mind what sort of gentlefolk had come out to j?rn?.
after dinner they went up towards the hill to see if their house was growing. tord always had a bottle under his arm, and when work was finished the men were treated all round to a drink. neither he nor dagmar despised the glass. these little festivities were not exactly ceremonious, for the men soon discovered that they had no need to choose their words. dagmar laughed and tord imitated their phrases as soon as the drink began to affect him. it was wonderfully easy to learn their language. “i am studying the people,” he thought, “i look straight through their simple minds. i will make something out of it some day, something uncommonly fresh and piquant....”
but then it grew suddenly silent as the weary workmen staggered down to sleep in the bailiff’s barn. and with 295the silence it seemed as if space had suddenly become a deep vortex. and the evening was cruelly cold and green over the serrated edges of the black forests in the west. then it was a comfort to have spirit in your body. tord threw back his head, a little too much back, he almost toppled over. “i am a poet,” he thought. “it is i, tord selamb, who am pleased to interpret the mysterious meaning of the dull song of the ground swell. the sea, the clouds, the cliffs are mine, and i do with them as i like. wait till i give myself up to it. then i shall produce a hymn, something powerful, rude, infernal, something of nature’s elemental beauty....”
and he felt a supreme contempt for the miserable slaves in town.
then he went to sleep in dagmar’s arms, which were brown and cool and soft.
towards autumn the eyrie in the cliffs was ready. it was visible from afar and became at once an excellent and recognized landmark for sailors both out at sea and in the bay. there was a large, high hall and a couple of small rooms with folding beds. tord furnished them with reindeer skins, elk horns, lapplanders’ knives, guns, axes and ice hooks. and over the door a bear’s skull glinted ghostlike in the twilight.
they had made a secret arrangement with the old gardener at selambshof, the philosopher in the neglected garden, and he used to come out as their only servant. he had been a sailor before he started growing cabbages and he felt a longing for the sea. his work was to carry water, make log fires, and open tins of preserves.
meanwhile the mattsons down in the dell lived their quiet workaday life, tied to the soil, the water, and the seasons of the year. they banked up their potatoes, cut their hay and their rye, milked their two cows, and plied their nets and lines, all with silent, disapproving side-glances at the queer folk on the hill.
296as long as there was summer and sunshine and the air vibrated with the hammer blows on his cliff fortress, tord was contemptuous of the silent disapproval that crawled about on its ridiculous daily round somewhere below his feet. but now it was autumn, silent, still, darkening autumn, far away from the noise and the lights of the town. and tord began by and by to realize that the mattsons were in their neighbourhood.
one evening he took a bottle in his pocket and climbed down into the valley: “i will feel that devil’s pulse,” he thought.
mattson sat in his workshop carving:
“well, mattson, shall we have a drink to clear our heads?”
“thank you, sir, but i don’t care about anything strong in the middle of the week like this.”
“all right, i’ll drink it myself then. what are you slaving away at?”
the old man thoughtfully turned a piece of lilac wood in his hand before he began to work with his knife:
“i am making pins for a rake.”
“now, for the winter?”
“summer will come again. and it’s not good for poor people to be idle....”
that was one for tord. he struck at the nettles outside the door with his stick. the calm in mattson’s eyes irritated him. both sea and sky became commonplace beside that miserable plodding. what was the use of the autumn coming and the leaves falling and the darkness and loneliness when mattson sat carving rake pins all the same?
“i will pay you back for that, old fellow,” thought tord. and he longed for an autumn storm, a real three-day autumn gale. especially when he had his nets out.
then came the autumn ploughing. nobody possessed beasts of burden out here by the sea, but mattson’s neighbours came sailing in with their wives. and then they 297yoked themselves to the plough. mattson’s wife also took part and pulled, though she was so old, but mattson drove. furrow after furrow they ploughed in the drizzling rain with tough sustained persistence.
tord ran into the forest to escape seeing it. but he found no peace, he had to go back to the ploughing. for a moment he stood behind a juniper bush and stamped with anger, then he suddenly rushed out into the clay:
“stop!” he cried. “this is my soil and i won’t look on at this miserable business.”
they stopped and stared at him:
“what is one to do when the island will not feed a beast?” suggested mattson.
tord stalked about with heavy lumps of clay under his shoes:
“how much can you get out of these miserable patches?”
“oh, about three bushels of rye,” mumbled the bailiff, and wiped the perspiration from his forehead with the back of his hand. “the soil is good.”
“all right, i’ll pay you for three bushels! but get away now!”
and tord took out some bank-notes.
but mattson looked at his neighbour and shook his head:
“no, sir, you mustn’t make fun of an old man. i have ploughed this soil for forty years, i have. you put your money back again.”
upon which mattson made a sign to the drawers, who put their backs into the work again and continued their furrow as if nothing had happened.
from that day on tord hated all that was mattson’s. incessantly he was running up against the object of his annoyance. mattson’s cock woke him in the mornings with his obstinate moralisings on the dung heap. when he went down to his boat he swore because he had to dive under the old man’s nets, and on the juniper slope he was 298irritated by the stupid bleating of the sheep. in the midst of his land he was again reminded of mattson by a lot of troublesome fences, cleverly built up of stones, branches and thorns. such things irritate a free man strolling about on his own property. tord did not step over them, no, he put his foot on the rubbish and enjoyed hearing it crash down, and he stepped through as proudly as if he were stepping over the walls of jericho. but the next time he came strolling along he found to his fury that the fence had been repaired as if by magic.
it was work, patience, foresight, civilization that tord hated in mattson. this hatred occupied him fully the whole of the autumn. if he sat down to write and could not get into the right mood it was mattson’s fault. if he got drunk it was as a protest against the sobriety of that damned old blockhead. when at last the gale came, tord had his great day. a real raging south-easterly gale so that the old man could not get out and save his catch but had to go about waiting anxiously to haul in his torn nets full of seaweed and rubbish.
one day tord flew into a real rage. one of his dogs, a big ferocious mastiff, had caught his leg in a fox trap which the bailiff persisted in putting out in spite of tord’s prohibition. there was a terrible scene and tord would probably have struck the old man in his own kitchen if dagmar had not come between them. but from that moment tord swore inwardly that mattson should leave j?rn?. he only waited for quarter day, which was the first of december, to give him notice.
you can imagine his malicious joy when the whole first week of december had passed without mattson bringing the rent.
the old man only stared when at last he came with his poor notes and was told that he was to leave at once.
“i have lived here forty years,” he mumbled calmly, “and i have always been accustomed to pay some time in 299december after i have been into town and sold my salted herrings and mutton.”
he could not realize anything so catastrophic as that he should leave j?rn?.
tord stood there grey in the face shaking the lease in his hand. “now i suppose i shall see something else than that damned calm in your eyes,” he thought.
“you have not paid in due time, and now you have got to clear out. j?rn? is mine, you see, and i don’t want you here any longer.”
mattson only shook his head. he went home with a very thoughtful expression, and the same day he hauled up the sail of his big boat to go into town to speak to the storekeeper and to people versed in law, in order to find out the rights of the matter. but his wife came up to dagmar crying. and dagmar begged for her and scolded tord and said that he was disgusting, but it was no use. and then she cried too, because she was afraid of the loneliness, when she would be the only woman on the island. but tord rushed out and stalked about alone the whole of the cold winter day with his lame dog and would not be mollified.
mattson returned from his journey with a gloomy face, and offered to compromise by a payment of damages. yes, he would even try to pay a higher rent. but tord only shouted that he wanted to be left in peace.
the following day mattson came again, and this time he was humble and alarmed, and begged as if for his life. and now it was a joy for tord to look into his eyes. yes, he had a great and lovely revenge on all the prudence and calmness of the world. he escaped with a cruel feeling of pleasure from the idler’s secret feeling of inferiority.
“no!” he cut him short. “i won’t move. you’ll find here, mattson, no use for your rake pins. clear out now!”
shortly before christmas a couple of sand barges arrived at the pier, and took on board mattson’s corn, cattle, furniture 300and tools. it cut one’s heart to see the kitchen table, the folding bed, the plants, moved out into the winter cold. tord stood up on his hill-top and watched. he meant to be defiant and hardhearted and enjoy the ice-cold wind. but as a matter of fact he was frightened and felt sick.
then four steady and determined men from the barges came up and demanded on mattson’s account a round sum for the autumn sowing, manure, newly planted fruit trees, and improvements to piers, fences, outhouses. tord paid without bargaining and with a certain tremulous eagerness.
mattson did not show himself except on a receipt.
then one of the barges set off with the old couple on board. the other remained a little behind. there, hidden among the alders by the shore, stood a powerful youth and peered up towards the hill. when he saw tord set out for a walk, he followed him unperceived. he chose a quiet, suitable place where there were no witnesses. there he suddenly sprang out and gave tord a blow on the back of his head, so that he fell unconscious for a time and awoke covered with blood and with two teeth missing. the barge had already disappeared, swallowed up by the grey ice-cold winter twilight across the bay.
that was the first time tord had suffered rough, bodily ill-treatment. it brought out again all the timid hatred of mankind that his marriage had seemed for a moment to thrust aside.
he came home late and said he had fallen and struck against a tree stump. dagmar could not help laughing for a moment at the ridiculous gap in his teeth. but she stopped short when she saw his expression, and her laugh turned to sobs. she had evil presentiments, dagmar, and they were to come true....
tord had not so many opportunities of kicking down mattson’s fences and revelling in his new eaglelike loneliness. it soon appeared that he must go and buy provisions if they were not to starve to death when the ice came 301and it was too thick to get through with a boat, and not thick enough to walk on. they had, as a matter of fact, cut away the ground beneath their feet by turning mattson out. where were they now to procure milk, fish, meat and wood? tord sailed about to the neighbouring islands and told the peasants to bring him these necessities, but they were annoyed at his treatment of mattson and therefore could not spare him even a herring.
tord was to learn to his annoyance that mattson with his foresight and experience had stood like a rock between him and a thousand worries and difficulties. but this only strengthened him in his angry resolve to help himself. in a furious north wind he and the old gardener sailed twelve miles to the nearest store and there he bought a boatload of preserved food, ham, potatoes, flour and lamp oil. they had to hack their way out of the harbour through ice half an inch thick, frozen during the night, so it was high time....
then came the real winter and locked them in with dark and unsafe ice.
at the end of february the old gardener fell on the very slippery ground when he was carrying water from the well, and broke his leg above the knee. fortunately the ice bore just then, so they were able to get him into hospital. they could not tempt another servant out to the eagle’s nest, so now they had to shift for themselves. tord was not able to climb the hill with water and wood, so they had to move into mattson’s humble cottage for the winter. in the spring tord had soundings made but they found no water up on the hill: so he had to bring out more workmen to construct a proper road up. all this cost money—so much that even tord realized he could not go on for ever. then he bought fishing and shooting implements and a few goats in order to help him out, and he took to cattle breeding. but now for the first time he really missed mattson’s experience.... he did not know where to try for the cod. he did not know 302how to deal with a tangled net. the ducks flew past when he lay out in the skerries. and the goats soon dried up; and besides, they became so wild that he could not catch them. so during the course of the summer these means of support failed him, and he had to turn to expensive preserved food again.
dagmar had not much time to run about naked in the sunshine this summer. there was not so much left that was “beautiful and wonderful and lovely.” but she had not quite lost her gypsy-like boisterousness and freedom from care, though when there was no alcohol left and the bad weather really set in, it might happen that she grew sulky and quarrelsome. once towards the autumn when she had had special cause for anxiety she mentioned town, but tord flew into such a rage that she was frightened and flew out into the kitchen with her cards and her pipe. and tord strolled about the shores for weeks cogitating in dull anger on the shameless weakness and faithlessness of women.
the whole of this winter tord went about plaguing himself with his money worries, so that he had no energy left for anything else. the great book that he was to write, his masterpiece, his hymn to nature, weighed him down like a dead weight. it was like loose ballast which only increased the lurch, when he inclined to melancholy. nature swayed around him like a helpless chaos. he had moments of hatred of the frequent gales that would never yield a song. he grew furious with the eternal, rolling, breaking seas whose rhythm he could not catch.
“money,” he thought, “that cursed money. i am never free!”
towards the spring he at last wrote the letter to peter. it had cost him weeks of effort and disgust, such a terror had he of everything in the nature of business. his haughty insolence was only an armour to shield him against his lack of confidence, his fear, and his suspicions.
303peter had not expected such news so soon. he rubbed his hands. and he took good care not to show the letter to his brother and sisters. this time he meant to settle the business alone. peter delayed his reply for a whole fortnight in order to humble tord. then he came sailing out himself to j?rn?, not in his own cutter, but in a humble little fisherman’s boat. it was in the twilight of an april day. nobody seemed to have noticed him up in the big, grey, log house. the island looked completely deserted. peter took the opportunity of looking round a little. neglect and waste struck him like a cold blast. broken down fences, unploughed fields, empty cattle sheds, plundered outhouses with half open doors hanging on a single hinge. not a cow or a pig or a hen. he scratched his chin thoughtfully, but his expression was not of discontent, on the contrary! “i see, that’s how things are,” he thought, “i shall escape cheaper than i had thought. why give a lot of money to people who can’t look after anything?” and he mentally lowered his bid for the remainder of tord’s shares in selambshof by several tens of thousand crowns.
that neglect cost tord selamb dear.
at last peter struggled up the hill panting, and knocked at the door; he was greeted by an infernal barking from the brutes inside.
tord had been watching peter the whole time from the window, but had not cared to go and meet him. such is the custom of the skerries! and then, he did not want to appear too eager, poor fellow!
the first evening they did not talk business, but they drank the whiskey peter had brought. but he broke up early. he wanted to get up early to shoot duck.
so at dawn they lay out at kall? skerries, which belonged to j?rn?. in front of them lay the grey sea with smooth patches to the lea of white drifting ice floes, where the little waves lapped the point of land and the silly eider decoys nodded in their wooden way and pretended to be alive. but 304here tord’s horror of business lifted a little. he felt a grim, fierce kind of excitement. “this is the struggle for life in all its hellish nakedness,” he thought, not without satisfaction. “here i lie in the icy cold on a primitive rock in an arctic sea and wait for the opportunity to lure and kill.” under the open sky with a gun in his hand he felt hardened and reckless, capable of any struggle. yes, he even became intoxicated at the crazy thought that peter was in some way in his power out here in the wilderness of j?rn?. where it was a matter of deceiving himself he could be a poet right enough, poor tord!
but peter lay there in his greasy old fur coat and peeped at tord with his cunning little bear eyes. he appreciated those little, nervous twitchings which suddenly stiffened into defiance. “but how mad is he?” thought peter. “how far can i go?” he made little frightened delicious guesses, and he felt much easier in the region of his pocketbook.
then a flight of ducks approached from the south. it looked at first like a dark, billowing ribbon against a low, bright rift in a cloud. then it quickly became a stormy, vibrating wave. the wind held its breath before this space-devouring speed, which made sea and sky shrink. the living wave swung around in a curve towards the decoys. a confusion of wings beat the air to froth around their heavy bodies. the ducks did not seem to want to descend. all the same tord had time to let go his two barrels into the flight. peter’s gun boomed a little later. his furs were too heavy for him. the old gardener who lay concealed with the boat was able to bring in three birds. “of course, one can get a shot in when peter is here,” thought tord, with a certain bitterness. the fact was that he had never had the patience to wait when he was alone. but peter loudly praised tord’s shot and confessed that he himself had missed.
they shot quite a lot of eiders and also longtailed ducks later on in the day. peter was lost in admiration. he 305warmly praised the fine shooting and the wonders of j?rn? generally. he himself was a heavy-witted, clumsy, impossible rustic whilst tord appeared to be a master shot and a splendid sportsman. and it ended in tord, under the influence of the several drinks, indulging in the wildest bragging of his fierce, free, eagle’s life betwixt sea and cliff.
then they returned home.
dinner was quite festive. dagmar had, in honour of the occasion, put on some gaudy silk rags and had powdered her nose. it was of no importance that her fingers were sooty. tord’s excited pride derived new strength from the burgundy, the brandy, and the whiskey. he clenched his fists and stalked to and fro between his bear skins and elk heads in the high resounding hall. the firelight from the burning logs flickered over his jersey, lapp shoes and untrimmed beard. he showed his contempt, with terrible oaths, of the miserable herds that thronged the streets out there in the town. he was the lonely, free, scornful ... superman. he recognized no other relations and friends than the sea, the wind and infinite space.
peter also seemed to be very far from claiming the honour of relationship. he shrank up in his seat. he enjoyed doing so before the magnificent tord. he was not well, he was dusty, worried, tired. business worried him. there was no difficulty in making oneself small if only one’s pocketbook grew fat in the process.
they did not talk of tord’s affairs.
three days of constant drinking passed. then peter suddenly got it into his head that he must go back home at once. he had a great big bill falling due the following day. he groaned over that bill as he was packing up his things. he had still not said a word of tord’s affairs. “you begin, old man,” he thought.
tord stood there with a sick headache and bit his lips. “cash! cash! cash!” throbbed in his head. it was sickening to talk money after all his wild, eagle-like boasting. he 306caught hold of peter’s arm in a way that rather resembled pinching:
“well, curse you, what about my letter?” he cried. “what will you give for my shares?”
peter shrank more than ever, smaller and smaller until he was like a little grey mouse:
“buy shares? impossible! these are not the times ... i have no ready money.”
“why the devil did you come here then?” tord said brutally.
dagmar went about tidying up with a fur coat on top of her chemise and her hair down:
“what a polite host!” she laughed.
“yes, i suppose i’d better clear out at once,” whined peter.
for once tord said something sensible.
“all right, i will come in with you to talk to stellan and laura about the shares.”
peter suddenly became very thoughtful. he sat down at a table and began to calculate in a small greasy notebook:
“i might try to renew that bill, and then i could perhaps help you,” he mumbled.
tord had an instinctive feeling that his last proposal had been the best one, and that he ought to talk to his sisters and brother. but he did not stick to it, so incurably lazy was he.
“well, what will you give?” he asked in a voice that was thick with excitement.
peter writhed. he seemed quite in despair.
“i might risk about fifty thousand.”
tord thought it sounded too absurdly little compared with what he had received before.
“damn you!” he shouted.
peter began again with an injured expression to pack 307his bag. and tord asked dagmar to bring out his town clothes.
“sixty-five thousand,” peter suddenly ejaculated.
“a hundred thousand!” tord hissed through the gap in his teeth.
then peter felt a wild joy. but it was deep, deep-seated. not a spark of it came to the surface. he took out his shapeless pocketbook and slowly counted out seventy-five notes of a thousand crowns each.
“that is all i have with me.”
tord suddenly closed. such is the power of cash over weak minds. and of course he could not know that peter had exactly the same amount in his other pocketbook.
but he had scarcely signed peter’s paper and parted with his shares when he felt that he had been tricked.
“clear out now, you cheat!” he shouted. “and don’t come near j?rn? again, because if you do you will get a bullet in your head.”
and peter quickly disappeared with the old gardener, who was to sail him over to the steamer. he calculated that he had earned about two hundred thousand on this stroke of business. but it had been too easy. he felt almost uncomfortable as he sat there huddled up on the lee side and looked out at the calm april day. yes, there was something uncanny in a selamb having such wretched ideas of business.
tord did not go into town to put his seventy-five thousand in the bank. he kept them out at j?rn?. no signing of papers, no hanging over a counter. the money must not link him to the town, the community.
“now i am free,” thought tord, “absolutely free....” he went out to devour the living spring. alone like a cock he walked about and endeavoured to seek inspiration. yes, now the moment had come when tord selamb would become a poet.
308but alas! no notes would come. he had a big grey lump in his chest that would not melt. his work, his cursed masterpiece simply oppressed him like a quintessence, a rude microcosm of his vague conceit. there came cramp, but nothing else. and it was not easy to go about with that cramp in the wild teeming life of spring....
may is once and for all not a month for the selambs.
it was already growing summerlike. tord came to meet it with staring, feverish eyes and a thin emaciated face. he began to keep to the sea more and more. it seemed as if the soil burnt his face.
it had been a long, wet, windy day, but towards evening the clouds lifted a little and it grew calm. tord rowed out over the great shallow bay covered with reeds and with only a narrow passage out to the big buoy. from the wet oars and thwarts arose a damp chill. the shores, already beginning to look mysterious in the twilight, echoed back the flapping of the cuckoos’ wings. when tord bent over the side he could imagine the brown, tangled swamp of lakeweed down there in the shallow water. but above him in the cool endless depth of the sky there glowed a chaos of vanishing cloud, flung out by the storm but now forgotten and left to the stillness. there were clouds that had stiffened in every gesture of perplexity, of terror and of suffering, clouds on the whipping post, clouds on the rack, clouds that had had the “swedish draught.” but all seemed to have died in torture.
mute immeasurable disruption.
tord rested on his oars. he felt it to the very bottom of his being, this disruption. the cramp suddenly relaxed within him. he felt a strange, shivering relief. then he rowed homewards, but slowly, carefully, as if he were afraid of breaking everything with his oars. afraid to meet anybody, silently as a thief he stole into his house, crept up to his bed and fell asleep voluptuously tired with the sky beneath his eyelids.
309at dawn he awoke and at once sat down to write with this mute, wild disruption still within him.
his poetic rapture lasted for several weeks. it was a wonderful joy at last to be able to pour it forth, to reveal himself, to shout out all he felt, to take revenge on all the thousand impressions that had weighed him down to earth with their luxuriant wealth.
when tord was not writing he wandered about with staring eyes and careful, groping steps, as if he were fragile and afraid to fall to pieces. if dagmar spoke to him he told her to shut up, though in an anxious, almost gentle voice.
tord had already filled a tremendous packet of notepaper when his imagination suddenly dried up one long, gloomy, wet day. he sat down to copy it out, but he had some difficulty in finding the way in the maze of his own inspiration. what did they really mean, all those strange figures resembling a barometric curve during a storm or the seismograph record registering an earthquake? certain after-echoes of his inspiration and an infinite reverence for his own selambian genius helped him, however, over the worst. only here and there a brief humdrum phrase crept in to make it more intelligible and as a sacrifice to the philistines.
on an absolutely still, sultry day in july, with distant thunder in the air, tord copied out with trembling hand the last line of his poem. then he rushed out into the kitchen and tore dagmar away from the stove, where she stood in her chemise and an underskirt with her pipe in the corner of her mouth, cooking sausage for supper. he trailed her with him into the bedroom, forced her into a chair, pulled down the blind, and began to read.
it was unrhymed verse, of course, in the shortest possible lines, abrupt sentences and inarticulate phrases. a collection of exclamations, questions, curses, shouts of jubilation, 310all expressive of tord selamb’s relation to woman, the clouds, the sea, the lightning and the eagles.
tord read with a hoarse, trembling voice. he seemed to whisper the most extraordinary secrets of his life with a wild emotion. and still, had he not, in the presence of the uninitiated, been seized already at the very first line by a terrible doubt? was this ... was this really poetry? he looked at his wife above the sheets of papers with the eyes of a beggar, but of a mad beggar beseeching prostrate adoration.
dagmar responded rather badly to his expectations. at first she looked a little embarrassed, almost like a child when its parents speak of something it should not understand. then she looked at the door and mumbled:
“pray excuse your slave, but i am afraid the sausages will be burnt....”
“let them burn then, idiot,” shouted tord. after which he continued his reading in a more threatening voice.
dagmar listened again. she sat quite still and good for a long while. then her mouth began to twitch quite irresistibly, though she looked frightened.
tord then hissed out the following lines:
“in a blue flash of lightning
with a blue hissing sound
creaking
manly
zig-zag
i saw it suddenly
the filth
the original filth
in the recesses of your body ...
damnation
unclean one!”
311“splendid,” dagmar snorted. “thunder and filth!”
whereupon she burst out laughing just as when tord came home with his teeth knocked out, a thoughtless irrepressible feminine laugh, cruel without malice, pitiless though with no ill-will. but tord hated her at this moment, hated her. she laughed! when she ought to have sunk at his feet, and adored his genius, saved him from doubt! oh! the weakling’s dream of power is often far more intense than that of the strong man. it is not the bad poets who are the least devoted to their verses. just the line that most challenges the ridicule of the world is often aglow with the most intense passion. just the very wretchedness of the form often reflects a seriousness from which there has been no deliverance. yes, the bad poets are the unborn children of emotion. their sufferings are cruel. people seem to them empty, blind, perverse, malevolent. how can anyone laugh at red, flowing blood? how can anyone help trembling in the presence of a volcano in eruption?
tord ran to the door and tore it open. his eyes shrank and his beard shook when he looked at his wife:
“get out,” he shouted. “out with you into the kitchen. that’s your place!”
and dagmar went, without any such refinement as injured pride, but with her heart suddenly filled with compassion, a sort of slovenly, annoyed pity.
for several weeks tord did not open his mouth. he strolled about alone along his shores or locked himself in to file away at his verse. his ambition soon discovered the usual solace for the wounds and doubts of the hermit. “i am too singular, too wildly original and deep,” he thought. “they can’t understand me. i must fill out my voids, if i want any followers. i must soften down, moderate and chasten my verse.” so he sat down with intense suffering to convert his poems to a more human note: a process 312which really consisted in his striking out a few oaths and putting in a few “ands” and “buts” instead of a simple comma.
then he sent in his revised work to a publisher in stockholm, this time taking good care not to read anything to dagmar. he had to wait a long time for a reply. already after the first week he sailed across to the store for his post. then he went every second day. as it was a long way, he spent most of his time with the tiller in his hand. in the end he did not trouble to sail home, but stayed away in the harbour. and it was as if the store had become his home.
poor tord! so little was his proud self-sufficiency worth.
at last one day the storekeeper flung a parcel to him. it contained tord’s poems. they had been returned. pale and trembling with fury he staggered down to his boat. he did not sail directly home, but roamed about for several days among the skerries, calling the elements to witness the shocking injustice he had suffered.
but at last he had to return to his home on the cliff, which he saw wherever he sailed. his hatred began to long for her, the woman. he must have somebody to vent his spleen on.
there was something dark, startling and fierce in his face when he stepped into the hall, without a greeting, and flung himself down on one of the benches in the wall. he could not even wait for an excuse for a quarrel. dagmar only needed to ask him where he had been so long when he poured a torrent of abuse and accusations over her. she was a stupid, dirty, greedy animal who couldn’t help pulling a man down and degrading him. yes, a short time ago humanity had been a lot of scoundrels who would not recognize his greatness, now he was pulled down and degraded. suffering knows no logic. he wanted to see her suffer and groan and hate as he himself suffered and 313groaned and hated. but alas! already long ago during the loneliness of the cold winter’s evenings he had dulled the effect of hard words. dagmar did not even trouble to get angry:
“poor boy, so they have been returned,” she muttered.
then he rushed up and struck her with his clenched fist on her soft breast so that she fell to the floor. and with her cry in his ears he rushed out and sat down in a crack in the hillside. he stared into the gloomy darkness that lay so close to his eyes and blended the sea and sky to a lifeless mass. his hand shuddered after having struck something too soft. but his outburst had not brought him any relief. it was himself he had struck, himself he had hated because he was not capable of doing what he wanted to; because he had not the liberating sense of form; because he was closed off from the great brotherhood of souls. but his was a selfish self-hatred without any spirit of resignation or reconciliation. there was not a trace of self-conquest. and until he has overcome himself a selamb does not become a poet.
now tord sat mostly indoors absorbed in zoology. if he sometimes went out shooting or fishing he locked up the oars and the sails of the boats he was not using himself. he was afraid of finding the house empty on his return.
already in early childhood tord had turned to animals. there was something of the timid idleness of the savage in him. he was too lazy for most people. perhaps already then he felt a sentimental attraction to dumb animals, which was natural in one who himself lacked the power of expression. now he fled to them again—in protest. that was his attitude towards a coarse, degenerate humanity, which did not understand how to appreciate him. no! crows and common snakes are better! but tord’s new devotion to animals was without any sentimentality. 314he enjoyed seeing them pursue and hurt each other. he hunted them and killed them himself without hesitation. and he studied them—scientifically, as he liked to imagine—in thick folios and with knife and microscope.
it was a cool and sweet-smelling evening in spring. tord stood in a clearing in the open copse and waited for a flight of woodcocks. the leaves were nicely wrinkled like the fingers of a newborn babe and shimmered reddish brown in the level sunlight. but tord bit his lips together and did not suffer as he did before in the spring. his gun was his salvation. now they were coming, flying low over the treetops: “rrrt! rrrt! pisp!” it was the mating call, the love flight of the male. tord threw up his gun and the warm body of the bird fell down among the tree trunks. he hurried home, eager to examine his bag. the little bird’s heart still beat when he plunged the knife into it, its fibres still trembled beneath the glass of the microscope.
it was a knife in the heart of the spring. there was revenge in this selambian thirst of knowledge.
but soon tord’s interest was caught in a quite special way by a branch of the animal world that he had hitherto overlooked—insects. he became in his own way a passionate entomologist.
to tord the study of insects was that of a diabolical collection of caricatures. here life and nature unveiled their whole cruelty and amorality. on most parts of the surface of the earth the spread of humanity has swept away the most gorgeous forms of wildness and cruelty. the larger animals seem on the whole rather tame. but the little animals of the soil and the air our civilization has, for the most part, proudly passed over. here theft, parasitism, poison-murder, crude cannibalism, and the most terrible perversity still rage without check. tord learnt to observe and enjoy the jaws of the lion-ant in the 315treacherous sandpit, the graceful poisonous thrust of the hymenoptera, the erratic frenzy of the golden beetle, the horrible life of the burning beetle amidst putrefaction, the devouring by the female cross spider of the male after impregnation. yes, this was a lovely lilliputian world. the devilish struggle for existence at first seemed to him a parody on this miniature scale. but as he penetrated deeper into his mysteries the elements of parody disappeared and only horror was left. the little animal males grew in his eyes to gigantic creatures, still more horrible because of the glistening stiffness of the cutaneous skeleton that made them resemble living machines. they peopled his dreams with horrible sights. they laid their parasitical larv? in the intestines of his thoughts. they became the pretext and symbol of his new philosophy of life....
in this way tord selamb soon fell into black naturalism. he overlooked the fact that if, as he supposed, everything was nature, this must also apply to our human reaction against nature’s cruelty. and that therefore nature contained within herself the correction of this evil. horror itself is in the last resort a promise. there is a profound contradiction. but these are not selambian truths.
what lies behind the selambian egoism is the “blind spot,” the blind spot of the soul. they are simply insensitive to rays from certain directions.
during his studies of insect life tord had a special favourite. that was the praying cricket, nature’s most exquisite wonder. with her, his brooding spirit celebrated its gloomy mass. one dark, sultry august evening he fell a victim to her charm in old henri fabre, the homer of insects. round the lamp there was a restless buzzing of daddy-longlegs and grey night-moths that seemed to be made of dust. he watched them, with a mixed feeling of voluptuousness and sickness, blind themselves and burn themselves on the hot lamp funnel. and then he read 316about the praying cricket, and how with crossed front legs and lifted head she seems to assume a pious attitude of prayer beneath the nun’s veil of folded wings. but as soon as a victim approaches she unveils herself. then she resembles a vampire, a flying dragon. then the scissors of her crossed legs open, she seizes a victim, much bigger than she herself, and devours it as quickly as lightning. of course, she also seizes the opportunity of devouring the male after mating. but—this is the exquisite point—it has also been noticed how, during the very act of copulation, she turns backwards and begins to devour the male’s head. yes, she positively devours him whilst the hind part of his body continues to fulfil the function of sex, till her greed has reached the most vital organs....
when tord had come so far, he rose vehemently and rushed in to dagmar. his face was pale and wet with perspiration and a mingled expression of disgust and triumph. and without any preliminaries he flung the love story of the praying cricket in the face of his wife:
“do you hear, woman, she eats the male’s head? but he goes on all the same, just goes on! say, then, if love is not stronger than death!”
dagmar did not answer. she did not bother to understand what he was saying. she did not care a straw for his praying cricket. but she was frightened at his tone. yes, from that moment she felt a kind of terror of tord selamb and of life out at j?rn?.
