Stories by Sigfrid Siwertz
The Lady in White
The little town slept in the noonday sunlight. Even the flowers leaned slumberously against the lowered blinds of the open windows. Not a human being remained in the courthouse square. Down at the harbor it was equally quiet. A little beyond the big bridge lay a lumber barge with limp sail. It seemed that it would be hours before she could get in.
From a dressing room of the bath-house came a middle-aged man of rather spare figure, with a very white and delicate skin. He carefully hung his eye-glasses on a nail, sat down on the sunny side of a bench, blinked at the light and smiled to himself.
With that, there emerged into the vista toward the bay a veritable walrus head; a coarse, hairy body shone through the green shimmering water; and with several sharp, panting strokes the giant plunged forward to the stairway, climbed up, and threw himself blinking upon the hot bridge of the bath-house.
The small white-skinned man surveyed anxiously but with interest the face of the other; the eagle nose, the bushy eyebrows, and the bristly drooping mustache.
Where the deuce had he seen that face before?
Thereupon the walrus suddenly got up and stretched out his flipper.
“Why, devil’s in it if that isn’t little Modin!”
“Yes, I surely thought it was someone I knew. Good-day, Brother Axelson! Lord! but it’s hard to recognize folks out of their clothes.”
“Aye, your own dog barks at you when you’re naked. I’m scared to death of myself when I look at myself in a glass.”—Axelson surveyed his new-found acquaintance with the critical look of a doctor.—“You seem to be in good condition, Modin. Aren’t you going to plunge in?”
“No, thanks; I’m just enjoying a sun bath. I love to sit here like this and take in the special bath-house smell of water and sun-steeped wood. It has a holiday scent, don’t you think?—Well, do you know, I hadn’t a notion it was in this town you were a doctor. That’s how folks lose sight of each other.”
“Aye, I’ve stuck it out here these seventeen years now, you faithless little devil.—And you’ve taken over your father’s big antiquarian book business.”
“Oh, you know everything of course. The same horse’s memory as ever. I taught a while, but that didn’t suit me at all. And so when my father died”——
“Your catalog is always prized by connoisseurs.”
“The first assistant, old Salin, deserves the credit of that. He’s a faithful martinet. It’s really the etchings and engravings that interest me. There’s certainly a bad feeling among our regular customers because I can’t let the finest things go away from me. I’m here to look at the collection of the deceased banker. I was here once fifteen years ago, while I was still a teacher. I didn’t suspect then either that you were in the neighborhood. That visit is connected with an exquisite memory, a fleeting yet pervasive experience, which I can only compare with the fragrance of certain delicate perfumes.”
“You’re very keen about perfumes, my dear Modin; I remember that from of old. Is it because the sense of smell is the weakest of the senses?”
Modin made the gesture of pushing up his absent spectacles.
“The weakest? On the contrary, smell is an extraordinarily fine sense. We can distinguish the smallest nuances with it. The truth of the matter is simply this, that we have only fixed a few of these nuances in words.”
“True. But at any rate smell belongs to those senses which have least to do with our thought.”
“It has infinitely much to do with all that lies above or below our comprehension. It is in the highest degree a poetic sense, and I am sorry for anyone who has a weak power of smell.”
Axelson turned over with a grunt so as to be burnt evenly all over.
“Well, my dear Modin, now for your experience! This isn’t ordinarily a town for great experiences.”
“Very good. I came here by accident on a vacation trip. The ticket was good for a longer journey, but the train stopped, it looked pretty, and I got off. I left my knapsack at the hotel of Comfort and betook myself to strolling along the select avenues of Peace.”
“Hm! Traveling is nothing but trying to get away from yourself with lies.”
Modin seemed not to hear. He looked down into the water, which tossed up a thousand splinters of sunlight.
“It was a royal day in June: lofty blue heavens, a light breeze, transfiguration in the air. The gardens blossomed within their red palings and the daws cried merrily around the high church steeple. It was a day when one suddenly stands still in the blue shade, looks over the crosses in the churchyard grass, and finds that even death is gentle.”
“Hm, hm!”
“Well, so I ate a light dinner and adventured out along the road into the wide land of summer leafage. I have never in my life seen so much white bloom: hedge, sloe, apple, pear, cherry. I recall too a linden avenue—the gravel was quite yellow with the rain of blossoms—and the branches murmured solemnly.”
Axelson twisted himself over on his back again.
“Excuse me, my dear brother, but did you meet anything?”
“Everything and nothing, old friend. Without meeting a living soul I had got out into a landscape of billowy grain fields and meadows with islets of splendid old oaks. I walked along a blossoming ditch side and sat down on a mossy stone close to a fence that ran around one of the knolls of oak. It began to draw on a bit towards evening. The light had not yet the garish colors of sunset; it was merely a thought more golden than before. And in the low, warm light the green of the fields took on a full-toned richness, a vehement intensity, which I shall never forget. One speaks more often of an intense blue, but green too can take on such a tone toward evening.
“I don’t know how long I had sat absorbed in all this, when for some reason or other I turned around and on the other side of the half-dilapidated fence discovered a young lady dressed in white who was sitting on the same slope with me. She had let the book she had been reading sink down on her knees and was gazing similarly out into the wondrous living sea of color.
“At first I was almost taken aback at not being absolutely alone with my emotion, which was so overpowering. But I soon came to myself. Very good, thought I, at any rate there are at this moment no more than two persons in the world, she and I. And—can you imagine it?—I, who am ordinarily so shy and embarrassed in ladies’ society, began a conversation: ‘Here we are sitting, we two, as staffage for the loveliest picture in the world.’ Words glided off my tongue of themselves with a sort of gentle irresistibility which I have never felt before or since. Perhaps my words fitted in in some way with what she had just read in her book. She nodded with a slight smile: ‘Yes, it’s wonderfully lovely.’ I leaned against the fence. ‘How insignificant is all that happens in life compared to such a moment of afternoon as this?’ I said. ‘Even fate seems old and dusty, dusty with stage dust.’
“This was the introduction to a long conversation, at the beginning very lively—a conversation about everything and nothing, of various colors, of flowers and perfumes, of the flight of the swallows that wheeled above our heads.”
Axelson pricked up his ears.
“Swallows,” he muttered; “then there was a barn or a dwelling-house in the neighborhood.”
But Modin meanwhile heard only his own voice.
“Gradually the evening grew utterly quiet. I can still hear the soft incessant rustling among the dry leaves heaped up in the ditch, a rustling that told of minute unknown lives. And I can still see her white skirt against the green hillside. Behind her the thick blossoms of the hawthorn shone mysteriously under black, dead branches in the green half-darkness of the oak wood. It was in truth a wood for the imagination, a Shakespeare’s Forest of Arden. And the young woman I talked with was Rosalind. I told her so, and she seemed to appreciate it.
“Gradually our conversation grew more serious. We spoke of special, intimate, personal memories and of our common interests in life. We weighed life and death with swift, light sensitive words. What we said was simple, frank, stamped with the most eager and honest wish to give a living impression of our true character. It was a genuine contact of soul with soul.
“Well, then the shadows of the trees on the field began to grow long and contemplative, so we said good-bye. She picked up her book and gave me her hand across the fence, for I had kept on standing on the other side. ‘Thanks and good evening,’ she murmured, ‘thanks and farewell.’ With that she was gone into the woods. As for me, I went home to the hotel and lay down in my clothes with my hands under my head, and there I lay awake all night. That was the loveliest night of my life, I may tell you. I felt myself marvelously cleansed and exalted, lonely and yet not alone.—Next day I went on where my ticket was made out for. And that was the whole thing.”
Axelson smiled:
“That wasn’t so terribly much.”
“It was much to me, my dear friend. You have, to be sure, a more robust appetite.”
“But why the devil did you go on? Why didn’t you go back to your Forest of Arden?”
Modin blinked at the sun with a smile of quiet fanaticism:
“I am no fool.”
“But it might have been something for your whole life.”
“As it is it’s something for my whole life, though of course you can’t understand it. I dare affirm that never has a meeting of two persons been so unconstrained, so deep and free. People talk of intuitive thought, but here was an intuitive companionship without selfish purpose or social barrier. Never a second time would such a flood of clear and radiant ideas have surged through my consciousness. I tell you, the most involved concatenation arranged itself automatically with lightning speed like nodal figures at the stroke of the bow. And the memory of our communion remains always equally fresh and pure just because I did not wear it stale with further acquaintance. I don’t lie when I say that I have lived in a sort of spiritual wedlock with that unknown woman. Who can prove that the long years give more than one exquisite hour? Humanity is so brittle and changeful that a long life together must always be precarious. I have no idea whether she was married or became married later. But it may very well be that I know that woman better than her husband does. Strong impressions wear away. People can’t be true to each other over a long period. For truth the great requisite is freshness, immediateness. Truth must always be new, according to my philosophy. Habit is truth’s worst enemy. How then can a lifelong marriage be true?”
Axelson raised his eyebrows:
“Wait a bit. I must strike in and put a few questions before I get angry. For instance, it would be nice to hear a closer description of this lady with whom you have lived in such a remarkable wedlock.”
“Very good, I can answer you, since I’m fully armed against all sarcasms. She was a woman of an altogether unusual feminine spirit. In her archness there was a delicate acknowledgment of her womanly limitations. And he who knows his bounds is already beyond them. She had, perhaps, no thoughts that were actually her own, but she had a quick, gentle receptivity which gave one the pleasant feeling that everything fell upon good ground and bore fruit a hundredfold. I begot thoughts and dreams upon her and enjoyed a sort of intellectual fertilization.”
“But may I permit myself to doubt whether this glorified bridal mood really made such a permanent impression on the other person?”
“What right have you to do that?”
“Oh, one might suppose it was only for a moment that she reverted to the usual flighty sentimentality which lies like a broken husk around a woman’s realism. The realism is genuine because it is rooted in suffering and the hard limitations of nature. No, woman is not what the bachelor thinks, not what either the ethereal or the crude bachelors think. It may well be that her instinct was whispering all the time in the depths: Look out for this man, because he is in reality a damned little egoist.”
Modin did not seem to be impressed.
“That’s just like you, Axelson,” he muttered. “You were in the landscape then, too. You were the corncrake. Just a harsh, obstinate noise.”
Axelson grew all the more contentious. He strode back and forth over the hot bridge, unconsciously holding his fists where his trousers pockets should have been. At last he halted in front of Modin:
“My dear brother, we have come into a condition of moral nakedness. Permit me to be wholly frank. It looks from your body as if you had never tried a tussle with life. I take back the term bachelor, for, with your pardon, there is more of the old maid about you. Yes, don’t be angry. But, you see, you keep irritating me damnably with your misuse of the word marriage. For me marriage is a deep word, deeper even than the word love. Marriage is something big, hard; even rough, if you like. It is brimmed with sweetness and suffering and bitter necessity as inescapable as the fact that you as a little delicate creature have lain crumpled up in your tortured mother’s body. One may say in a certain manner that a fleeting, loose relation is purer and finer than marriage, but that is a desertion from reality, an unorganic arabesque, a petty splendor. Marriage is an heroic word. Yes, because man and woman must inflict heavy suffering upon each other. Sex, which frets them both, must at certain times be felt as a curse. Between even the best and most sober couples there are times of despair and hate. There is a disease of hatred which is inborn in man. But still it is great to endure together. And an honest and deep despair is something quite different from a little cold and limp aversion without marrow in its bones. Everything that’s honest, everything that doesn’t falsify the fundamentals of life, has a worth, let it look as devilish bitter as it may.”
Modin looked away, troubled by the other’s confidence.
“My dear friend, I haven’t desired to hear all this. From your experience you will hardly succeed in making an apology for marriage.”
Axelson gave a jump.
“On the contrary, you little idiot, my marriage is an uncommonly good one. We have five children and are inseparable till death. I tell you this: Cut out woman from your life and you are only half a man! But that’s enough of this. I’m now—deuce take it!—roasted through. Shall we get dressed?”
“All right.”
Axelson dove into his cabin. But he had scarcely got on his shirt and trousers before he came rushing into Modin’s compartment.
“Listen! Excuse a question. You were telling about an avenue of lindens and a grove of oaks. Do you happen to remember anything more definite about the road out?”
“I don’t know of what use all this is. For the matter of that I remember less about localities than of my own feelings.”
“Come, try now, or I’ll think you are tricking me.”
“I’ve a notion that I passed over a little bridge and under a high red shaky gable, that somehow made me think of Almkvist’s story, The Mill. That was surely just before my digression.”
Axelson’s eyes gleamed.
“My good fellow, you must have taken a remarkable circuit, because the mill lies just two and a half minutes’ journey outside the town. Do you by any chance remember a giant oak almost dead, which stood down on the slope away from the others?”
“Yes, I think I do.”
“Good, good! Then I may tell you that about a hundred yards from the place of your meeting stood a dwelling-house, though you could not see it; an ordinary, white-plastered, fire-insured, fairly well mortgaged, decent two-story house with young folks and servants and a croquet ground. So the wonderful loneliness didn’t amount to much.”
Modin carefully tied his necktie.
“You’re making a fantastically vain attempt to rob me of my illusions.”
“Just one more question: Do you remember something special in the white lady’s appearance?”
“By something special you mean of course a blemish. Yes, I was really fascinated by a little scar she had on her forehead. It was a very decorative scar, because it drew up one eyebrow a trifle and at first glance gave her a lively and somewhat mocking appearance.”
Axelson’s whole countenance glowed.
“Splendid, splendid! I sewed that scar together. I know as much as you like of the lady in question. The doctor is the whole town’s father confessor.”
Modin made a gesture of refusal with both hands.
“I wish to know absolutely nothing, I beg you, nothing!”
But Axelson was merciless.
“This much you must know at any rate, that she got the scar when she fell off a bicycle. And that she lived with her parents in the white-plastered two-story house. And that she worked at the post office from nine to one. And furthermore that she had probably just been betrothed in that very dress. You see that I know my community.”
“But all this is most uninteresting, my dear Axelson.”
“Not altogether, my dear brother, not altogether.”
Axelson dived back into his cabin.
The two men were soon ready. Despite the summer heat Modin was attired in black, and very jauntily; Axelson on the other hand wore a gray check suit. The walrus looked very masterful and imposing when he was dressed. One understood directly that he amounted to something in his community. He stood forth on the quay and slapped the other man on the shoulder.
“Hope you’ll do me the honor of eating dinner with me.”
Modin as a matter of fact was much disinclined but did not see how he could refuse. Axelson lived a little way out of the town. They passed through an avenue of lindens. The doctor from time to time ogled his friend sidewise. Modin walked slowly and often looked about him. He seemed irresolute. They passed a bridge and the high red gable of a mill. They branched off on a somewhat narrower by-road by the side of the pond. They rounded a hillside with oaks and soon stood before a fruit orchard, behind which rose a white-plastered two-story house. Axelson hastened to open a gate at the gable end.
“Be so good as to come in, my dear brother.”
Modin hesitated, paled and grew faint, but Axelson took him by the arm and drew him hastily along.
Up on the veranda stood a robust lady of middle age, and on the lawn played several bare-legged boys.
Modin just saved himself from falling on the steps. He looked toward the edge of the woods with a helpless glance. But his host introduced him with a grim quiver of the mustache.
“Doctor Amadeus Modin—my wife.”
With that Axelson’s commanding voice rang out across the lawn, “Come children, aren’t you going to say how-do-you-do to uncle?”
The five boys came forward and bowed in turn. It was agony to Modin. He sank down on a sofa and cast an anxious sidelong glance over their close-cropped heads at the lady of the house. She was still dressed in white, and the scar over her eyebrow was still visible. It became her as well as ever, though in a different way. Her figure was full but firm. She had in her something of the matron, in the proud Roman significance of the word. They were a seasoned and vigorous couple, she and her husband. A noticeably stern matrimonial resemblance had arisen between these two persons, whom it never would have occurred to him to associate with each other. Their mouths had the same expression of sharp humor. Two veterans who had fought their battles side by side, they might have been marching along together for many years.
All of this passed like lightning through poor Modin’s brain. He no longer believed actually that he knew more about the lady in white than did her husband.
Axelson was on the watch when his wife went in to arrange about dinner and pounced on his guest.
“Beware of white ladies, dear brother. So far it seems that she doesn’t recognize you. But at dinner I may perhaps make her memory clearer. It’s uncanny when the dead come to life, eh?”
And with that if the brutal dog didn’t go on to hum:
“Look out, my boy, look out, look out!
’Tis the White Lady beyond a doubt.”
He then hurried in for a moment after his wife, presumably to order the wine. But Modin used the moment. He had no wish whatever to be recognized by the bride of his dreams. On the contrary he seized his hat, bounded away over cucumber frames and strawberry patches, and swift as the timid doe threw himself among the sheltering trees of the wood.