Book: Invisible Links

S >> Selma Lagerlof >> Invisible Links




They talked of it in the whole town, talked of it and nothing else.
As the cities of ancient times had loved their martyrs, the little
village loved the unhappy Petter Nord; but no one liked to go into
the graveyard and talk to him. He looked wilder each day. The
obscurity of madness sank ever closer about him. "Why does she not
try to get well?" they said of Edith. "It is unjust of her to die."

Edith was almost angry. She who was so tired of life, must she be
compelled to take up the heavy burden again? But nevertheless she
began an honest effort. She felt what a work of repairing and
mending was going on in her body with seething force during these
weeks. And no material was spared. She consumed incredible
quantities of those things which give strength and life, whatever
they may be: malt extract or codliver oil, fresh air or sunshine,
dreams or love.

And what glorious days they were, long, warm, and sunny!

At last she got the doctor's permission to be carried up there. The
whole town was in alarm when she undertook the journey. Would she
come down with a madman? Could the misery of those weeks be blotted
out of his brain? Would the exertions she had made to begin life
again be profitless? And if it were so, how would it go with her?

As she passed by, pale with excitement, but still full of hope,
there was cause enough for anxiety. No one concealed from
themselves that Petter Nord had taken quite too large a place in
her imagination. She was the most eager of all in the worship of
that strange saint. All restraints had fallen from her when she had
heard what he suffered for her sake. But how would the sight of him
affect her enthusiasm? There is nothing romantic in a madman.

When she had been carried up to the gate of the graveyard, she left
her bearers and walked alone up the broad middle path. Her gaze
wandered round the flowering spot, but she saw no one.

Suddenly she heard a faint rustle in a clump of fir-trees, and she
saw a wild, distorted face staring from it. Never had she seen
terror so plainly stamped on a face. She was frightened herself at
the sight of it, mortally frightened. She could hardly restrain
herself from running away.

Then a great, holy feeling welled up in her. There was no longer
any thought of love or enthusiasm, but only grief that a fellow-being,
one of the unhappy ones who passed through the vale of tears with
her, should be destroyed.

The girl remained. She did not give way a single step; she let him
slowly accustom himself to the sight of her. But she put all the
strength she possessed in her gaze. She drew the man to her with
the whole force of the will that had conquered the illness in
herself.

He came forward out of his corner, pale, wild and unkempt. He
advanced towards her, but the terror never left his face. He looked
as if he were fascinated by a wild beast, which came to tear him to
pieces. When he was quite close to her, she put both her hands on
his shoulders and looked smiling into his face.

"Come, Petter Nord, what is the matter with you? You must go from
here! What do you mean by staying so long up here in the graveyard,
Petter Nord?"

He trembled and sank down. But she felt that she subdued him with
her eyes. Her words, on the other hand, seemed to have absolutely
no meaning to him.

She changed her tone a little. "Listen to what I say, Petter Nord.
I am not dead. I am not going to die. I have got well in order to
come up here and save you."

He still stood in the same dull terror. Again there came a change
in her voice. "You have not caused my death," she said more
tenderly, "you have given me life."

She repeated it again and again. And her voice at last was
trembling with emotion, thick with weeping. But he did not
understand anything of what she said.

"Petter Nord, I love you so much, so much!" she burst out.

He was just as unmoved.

She knew nothing more to try with him. She would have to take him
down with her to the town and let time and care help.

It is not easy to say what the dreams she had taken up there with
her were and what she had expected from this meeting with the man
who loved her. Now, when she was to give it all up and treat him as
a madman only, she felt such pain, as if she was about to lose the
dearest thing life had given her. And in that bitterness of loss
she drew him to her and kissed him on the forehead.

It was meant as a farewell to both happiness and life. She felt her
strength fail her. A mortal weakness came over her.

But then she thought she saw a feeble sign of life in him. He was
not quite so limp and dull. His features were twitching. He
trembled more and more violently. She watched with ever-growing
alarm. He was waking, but to what? At last he began to weep.

She led him away to a tomb. She sat down on it, pulled him down in
front of her and laid his bead on her lap. She sat and caressed
him, while he wept.

He was like some one waking from a nightmare.

"Why am I weeping?" he asked himself. "Oh, I know; I had such a
terrible dream. But it is not true. She is alive. I have not killed
her. So foolish to weep for a dream."

Gradually everything grew clear to him; but his tears continued to
flow. She sat and caressed him, but he wept still for a long time.

"I feel such a need of weeping," he said.

Then he looked up and smiled. "Is it Easter now?" he asked.

"What do you mean by now?"

"It can be called Easter, when the dead rise again," he continued.
Thereupon, as if they had been intimate many years, he began to
tell her about the Spirit of Fasting and of his revolt against her
rule.

"It is Easter now, and the end of her reign," she said.

But when he realized that Edith was sitting there and caressing
him, he had to weep again. He needed so much to weep. All the
distrust of life which misfortunes had brought to the little
Vaermland boy needed tears to wash it away. Distrust that love and
joy, beauty and strength blossomed on the earth, distrust in
himself, all must go, all did go, for if was Easter; the dead lived
and the Spirit of Fasting would never again _come into power_.




THE LEGEND OF THE BIRD'S NEST

Hatto the hermit stood in the wilderness and prayed to God. A storm
was raging, and his long beard and matted hair waved about him like
weather-beaten tufts of grass on the summit of an old ruin. But he
did not push his hair out of his eyes, nor did he tuck his beard
into his belt, for his arms were uplifted in prayer. Ever since
sunrise he had raised his gnarled, hairy arms towards heaven, as
untiringly as a tree stretches up its branches, and he meant to
remain standing so till night. He had a great boon to pray for.

He was a man who had suffered much of the world's anger. He had
himself persecuted and tortured, and persecutions and torture from
others had fallen to his share, more than his heart could bear. So
he went out on the great heath, dug himself a hole in the river
bank and became a holy man, whose prayers were heard at God's throne.

Hatto the hermit stood there on the river bank by his hole and
prayed the great prayer of his life. He prayed God that He should
appoint the day of doom for this wicked world. He called on the
trumpet-blowing angels, who were to proclaim the end of the reign
of sin. He cried out to the waves of the sea of blood, which were
to drown the unrighteous. He called on the pestilence, which should
fill the churchyards with heaps of dead.

Round about stretched a desert plain. But a little higher up on the
river bank stood an old willow with a short trunk, which swelled
out at the top in a great knob like a head, from which new,
light-green shoots grew out. Every autumn it was robbed of these
strong, young branches by the inhabitants of that fuel-less heath.
Every spring the tree put forth new, soft shoots, and in stormy
weather these waved and fluttered about it, just as hair and beard
fluttered about Hatto the hermit.

A pair of wagtails, which used to make their nest in the top of the
willow's trunk among the sprouting branches, had intended to begin
their building that very day. But among the whipping shoots the
birds found no quiet. They came flying with straws and root fibres
and dried sedges, but they had to turn back with their errand
unaccomplished. Just then they noticed old Hatto, who called upon
God to make the storm seven times more violent, so that the nests
of the little birds might be swept away and the eagle's eyrie
destroyed.

Of course no one now living can conceive how mossy and dried-up and
gnarled and black and unlike a human being such an old plain-dweller
could be. The skin was so drawn over brow and cheeks, that he
looked almost like a death's-head, and one saw only by a faint
gleam in the hollows of the eye sockets that he was alive. And the
dried-up muscles of the body gave it no roundness, and the
upstretched, naked arms consisted only of shapeless bones, covered
with shrivelled, hardened, bark-like skin. He wore an old,
close-fitting, black robe. He was tanned by the sun and black with
dirt. His hair and beard alone were light, bleached by the rain and
sun, until they had become the same green-gray color as the under
side of the willow leaves.

The birds, flying about, looking for a place to build, took Hatto
the hermit for another old willow-tree, checked in its struggle
towards the sky by axe and saw like the first one. They circled
about him many times, flew away and came again, took their
landmarks, considered his position in regard to birds of prey and
winds, found him rather unsatisfactory, but nevertheless decided in
his favor, because he stood so near to the river and to the tufts
of sedge, their larder and storehouse. One of them shot swift as an
arrow down into his upstretched hand and laid his root fibre there.

There was a lull in the storm, so that the root-fibre was not torn
instantly away from the hand; but in the hermit's prayers there was
no pause: "May the Lord come soon to destroy this world of
corruption, so that man may not have time to heap more sin upon
himself! May he save the unborn from life! For the living there is
no salvation."

Then the storm began again, and the little root-fibre fluttered
away out of the hermit's big gnarled hand. But the birds came again
and tried to wedge the foundation of the new home in between the
fingers. Suddenly a shapeless and dirty thumb laid itself on the
straws and held them fast, and four fingers arched themselves so
that there was a quiet niche to build in. The hermit continued his
prayers.

"Oh Lord, where are the clouds of fire which laid Sodom waste? When
wilt Thou let loose the floods which lifted the ark to Ararat's
top? Are not the cups of Thy patience emptied and the vials of Thy
grace exhausted? Oh Lord, when wilt Thou rend the heavens and come?"

And feverish visions of the Day of Doom appeared to Hatto the
hermit. The ground trembled, the heavens glowed. Across the flaming
sky he saw black clouds of flying birds, a horde of panic-stricken
beasts rushed, roaring and bellowing, past him. But while his soul
was occupied with these fiery visions, his eyes began to follow the
flight of the little birds, as they flashed to and fro and with a
cheery peep of satisfaction wove a new straw into the nest.

The old man had no thought of moving. He had made a vow to pray
without moving with uplifted hands all day in order to force the
Lord to grant his request. The more exhausted his body became, the
more vivid visions filled his brain. He heard the walls of cities
fall and the houses crack. Shrieking, terrified crowds rushed by
him, pursued by the angels of vengeance and destruction, mighty
forms with stern, beautiful faces, wearing silver coats of mail,
riding black horses and swinging scourges, woven of white
lightning.

The little wagtails built and shaped busily all day, and the work
progressed rapidly. On the tufted heath with its stiff sedges and
by the river with its reeds and rushes, there was no lack of
building material. They had no time for noon siesta nor for evening
rest. Glowing with eagerness and delight, they flew to and fro, and
before night came they had almost reached the roof.

But before night came, the hermit had begun to watch them more and
more. He followed them on their journeys; he scolded them when they
built foolishly; he was furious when the wind disturbed their work;
and least of all could he endure that they should take any rest.

Then the sun set, and the birds went to their old sleeping place in
among the rushes.

Let him who crosses the heath at night bend clown until his face
comes on a level with the tufts of grass, and he will see a strange
spectacle outline itself against the western sky. Owls with great,
round wings skim over the ground, invisible to any one standing
upright. Snakes glide about there, lithe, quick, with narrow heads
uplifted on swanlike necks. Great turtles crawl slowly forward,
hares and water-rats flee before preying beasts, and a fox bounds
after a bat, which is chasing mosquitos by the river. It seems as
if every tuft has come to life. But through it all the little birds
sleep on the waving rushes, secure from all harm in that
resting-place which no enemy can approach, without the water
splashing or the reeds shaking and waking them.

When the morning came, the wagtails believed at first that the
events of the day before had been a beautiful dream.

They had taken their landmarks and flew straight to their nest,
but it was gone. They flew searching over the heath and rose up
into the air to spy about. There was not a trace of nest or tree.
At last they lighted on a couple of stones by the river bank and
considered. They wagged their long tails and cocked their heads on
one side. Where had the tree and nest gone?

But hardly had the sun risen a handsbreadth over the belt of trees
on the other bank, before their tree came walking and placed itself
on the same spot where it had been the day before. It was just as
black and gnarled as ever and bore their nest on the top of
something, which must be a dry, upright branch.

Then the wagtails began to build again, without troubling
themselves any more about nature's many wonders.

Hatto the hermit, who drove the little children away from his hole
telling them that it had been best for them if they had never been
born, he who rushed out into the mud to hurl curses after the
joyous young people who rowed up the stream in pleasure-boats, he
from whose angry eyes the shepherds on the heath guarded their
flocks, did not return to his place by the river for the sake of
the little birds. He knew that not only has every letter in the
holy books its hidden, mysterious meaning, but so also has
everything which God allows to take place in nature. He had thought
out the meaning of the wagtails building in his hand. God wished
him to remain standing with uplifted arms until the birds had
raised their brood; and if he should have the power to do that, he
would be heard.

But during that day he did not see so many visions of the Day of
Doom. Instead, he watched the birds more and more eagerly. He saw
the nest soon finished. The little builders fluttered about it and
inspected it. They went after a few bits of lichen from the real
willow-tree and fastened them on the outside, to fill the place of
plaster and paint. They brought the finest cotton-grass, and the
female wagtail took feathers from her own breast and lined the nest.

The peasants, who feared the baleful power that the hermit's
prayers might have at the throne of God, used to bring him bread
and milk to mitigate his wrath. They came now too and found him
standing motionless, with the bird's nest in his hand. "See how the
holy man loves the little creatures," they said, and were no longer
afraid of him, but lifted the bowl of milk to his mouth and put the
bread between his lips. When he had eaten and drunk, he drove away
the people with angry words, but they only smiled at his curses.

His body had long since become the slave of his will. By hunger and
blows, by praying all day, by waking a week at a time, he had
taught it obedience. Now the steel-like muscles held his arms
uplifted for days and weeks, and when the female wagtail began to
sit on her eggs and never left the nest, he did not return to his
hole even at night. He learned to sleep sitting, with upstretched
arms. Among the dwellers in the wilderness there are many who have
done greater things.

He grew accustomed to the two little, motionless bird-eyes which
stared down at him over the edge of the nest. He watched for hail
and rain, and sheltered the nest as well as he could.

At last one day the female is freed from her duties. Both the birds
sit on the edge of the nest, wag their tails and consult and look
delighted, although the whole nest seems to be full of an anxious
peeping. After a while they set out on the wildest hunt for midges.

Midge after midge is caught and brought to whatever it is that is
peeping up there in his hand. And when the food comes, the peeping
is at its very loudest. The holy man is disturbed in his prayers by
that peeping.

And gently, gently he bends his arm, which has almost lost the
power of moving, and his little fiery eyes stare down into the
nest.

Never had he seen anything so helplessly ugly and miserable: small,
naked bodies, with a little thin down, no eyes, no power of flight,
nothing really but six big, gaping mouths.

It seemed very strange to him, but he liked them just as they were.
Their father and mother he had never spared in the general
destruction, but when hereafter he called to God to ask of Him the
salvation of the world through its annihilation, he made a silent
exception of those six helpless ones.

When the peasant women now brought him food, he no longer thanked
them by wishing their destruction. Since he was necessary to the
little creatures up there, he was glad that they did not let him
starve to death.

Soon six round heads were to be seen the whole day long stretching
over the edge of the nest. Old Hatto's arm sank more and more often
to the level of his eyes. He saw the feathers push out through the
red skin, the eyes open, the bodies round out. Happy inheritors of
the beauty nature has given to flying creatures, they developed
quickly in their loveliness.

And during all this time prayers for the great destruction rose
more and more hesitatingly to old Hatto's lips. He thought that he
had God's promise, that it should come when the little birds were
fledged. Now he seemed to be searching for a loop-hole for God the
Father. For these six little creatures, whom he had sheltered and
cherished, he could not sacrifice.

It was another matter before, when he had not had anything that was
his own. The love for the small and weak, which it has been every
little child's mission to teach big, dangerous people, came over
him and made him doubtful.

He sometimes wanted to hurl the whole nest into the river, for he
thought that they who die without sorrow or sin are the happy ones.
Should he not save them from beasts of prey and cold, from hunger,
and from life's manifold visitations? But just as he thought this,
a sparrow-hawk came swooping down on the nest. Then Hatto seized
the marauder with his left hand, swung him about his head and
hurled him with the strength of wrath out into the stream.

The day came at last when the little birds were ready to fly. One
of the wagtails was working inside the nest to push the young ones
out to the edge, while the other flew about, showing them how easy
it was, if they only dared to try. And when the young ones were
obstinate and afraid, both the parents flew about, showing them all
their most beautiful feats of flight. Beating with their wings,
they flew in swooping curves, or rose right up like larks or hung
motionless in the air with vibrating wings.


But as the young ones still persist in their obstinacy, Hatto the
hermit cannot keep from mixing himself up in the matter. He gives
them a cautious shove with his finger and then it is done. Out they
go, fluttering and uncertain, beating the air like bats, sink, but
rise again, grasp what the art is and make use of it to reach the
nest again as quickly as possible. Proud and rejoicing, the parents
come to them again and old Hatto smiles.

It was he who gave the final touch after all.

He now considered seriously if there could not be any way out of it
for our Lord.

Perhaps, when all was said, God the Father held this earth in His
right hand like a big bird's nest, and perhaps He had come to
cherish love for all those who build and dwell there, for all
earth's defenceless children. Perhaps He felt pity for those whom
He had promised to destroy, just as the hermit felt pity for the
little birds.

Of course the hermit's birds were much better than our Lord's
people, but he could quite understand that God the Father
nevertheless had love for them.

The next day the bird's nest stood empty, and the bitterness of
loneliness filled the heart of the hermit. Slowly his arm sank down
to his side, and it seemed to him as if all nature held its breath
to listen for the thunder of the trumpet of Doom. But just then all
the wagtails came again and lighted on his head and shoulders, for
they were not at all afraid of him. Then a ray of light shot
through old Hatto's confused brain. He had lowered his arm, lowered
it every day to look at the birds.

And standing there with all the six young ones fluttering and
playing about him, he nodded contentedly to some one whom he did
not see. "I let you off," he said, "I let you off. I have not kept
my word, so you need not keep yours."

And it seemed to him as if the mountains ceased to tremble and as
if the river laid itself down in easy calm in its bed.




THE KING'S GRAVE

It was at the time of year when the heather is red. It grew over
the sand-hills in thick clumps. From low tree-like stems
close-growing green branches raised their hardy ever-green leaves
and unfading flowers. They seemed not to be made of ordinary, juicy
flower substance, but of dry, hard scales. They were very
insignificant in size and shape; nor was their fragrance of much
account. Children of the open moors, they had not unfolded in the
still air where lilies open their alabaster petals; nor did they
grow in the rich soil from which roses draw nourishment for their
swelling crowns. What made them flowers was really their color, for
they were glowing red. They had received the color-giving sunshine
in plenty. They were no pallid cellar growth; the blessed gaiety
and strength of health lay over all the blossoming heath.

The heather covered the bare fields with its red mantle up to the
edge of the wood. There, on a gently sloping ridge, stood some
ancient, half ruined stone cairns; and however closely the heather
tried to creep to these, there were always rents in its web,
through which were visible great, flat rocks, folds in the
mountain's own rough skin. Under the biggest of these piles rested
an old king, Atle by name. Under the others slumbered those of his
warriors who had fallen when the great battle raged on the moor.
They had lain there now so long that the fear and respect of death
had departed from their graves. The path ran between their
resting-places. The wanderer by night never thought to look whether
forms wrapped in mist sat at midnight on the tops of the cairns
staring in silent longing at the stars.

It was a glittering morning, dewy and warm. The hunter who had been
out since daybreak had thrown himself down in the heather behind
King Atle's pile. He lay on his back and slept. He had dragged his
hat down over his eyes; and under his head lay his leather
game-bag, out of which protruded a hare's long ears and the bent
tail-feathers of a black-cock. His bow and arrows lay beside him.

From out of the wood came a girl with a bundle in her hand. When
she reached the flat rock between the piles of stones, she thought
what a good place it would be to dance. She was seized with an
ardent desire to try. She laid her bundle on the heather and began
to dance quite alone. She had no idea that a man lay asleep behind
the king's cairn.

The hunter still slept. The heather showed burning red against the
deep blue of the sky. An anthill stood close beside the sleeper. On
it lay a piece of quartz, which sparkled as if it had wished to set
fire to all the old stubble of the heath. Above the hunter's head
the black-cock feathers spread out like a plume, and their
iridescence shifted from deep purple to steely blue. On the
unshaded part of his face the burning sunshine glowed. But he did
not open his eyes to look at the glory of the morning.

In the meanwhile the girl continued to dance, and whirled about so
eagerly that the blackened moss which had collected in the
unevennesses of the rocks flew about her. An old, dry fir root,
smooth and gray with age, lay upturned among the heather. She took
it and whirled about with it. Chips flew out from the mouldering
wood. Centipedes and earwigs that had lived in the crevices
scurried out head over heels into the luminous air and bored down
among the roots of the heather.

Copyright (c) 2007. knowncrafts.net. All rights reserved.