I have written this to pass the time. It has amused me to look back to
that summer in Nordland, when I often counted the hours, but when time
flew nevertheless. All is changed. The days will no longer pass.
I have many a merry hour even yet. But time--it stands still, and I
cannot understand how it can stand so still. I am out of the service,
and free as a prince; all is well; I meet people, drive in carriages;
now and again I shut one eye and write with one finger up in the sky; I
tickle the moon under the chin, and fancy that it laughs--laughs broadly
at being tickled under the chin. All things smile. I pop a cork and
call gay people to me.
As for Edwarda, I do not think of her. Why should I not have forgotten
her altogether, after all this time? I have some pride. And if anyone
asks whether I have any sorrows, then I answer straight out, “No--none.”
Cora lies looking at me. Æsop, it used to be, but now it is Cora that
lies looking at me. The clock ticks on the mantel; outside my open
window sounds the roar of the city. A knock at the door, and the postman
hands me a letter. A letter with a coronet. I know who sent it; I
understand it at once, or maybe I dreamed it one sleepless night. But in
the envelope there is no letter at all--only two green bird's feathers.
An icy horror thrills me; I turn cold. Two green feathers! I say to
myself: Well, and what of it? But why should I turn cold? Why, there is
a cursed draught from those windows.
And I shut the windows.
There lie two bird's feathers, I think to myself again. I seem to know
them; they remind me of a little jest up in Nordland, just a little
episode among a host of others. It is amusing to see those two feathers
again. And suddenly I seem to see a face and hear a voice, and the voice
says: “Her, Herr Lieutenant: here are your feathers.”
“Your feathers.”...
Cora, lie still--do you hear? I will kill you if you move!
The weather is hot, an intolerable heat is in the room; what was I
thinking of to close the windows? Open them again--open the door too;
open it wide--this way, merry souls, come in! Hey, messenger, an
errand--go out and fetch me a host of people...
And the day passes; but time stands still.
Now I have written this for my own pleasure only, and amused myself with
it as best I could. No sorrow weighs on me, but I long to be
away--where, I do not know, but far away, perhaps in Africa or India.
For my place is in the woods, in solitude...