+TORD SAILS OUT TO SEA+
With its knife-sharp stem the big motor boat cut straight through the
September storm. In the stern Stellan and Laura were lying, well
protected from both draught and spray by canvas and bevelled glass
screens. The splash of the waves mingled with the sound of jingling
mirrors and trays in the elegant saloon.
“The motor runs nicely today,” observed Laura.
“It always runs well when you are on your way to something
disagreeable,” mumbled Stellan.
“Do you think there is more vibration in the bows?”
“Of course there is nearer the motor. Why do you ask?”
“The vibration is nearly as good as massage. I have not had any for a
whole week. It’s perfectly awful. I think I will move up there.”
Laura stepped up to the bows. Her life was now characterised by an
incessant struggle against incipient corpulency. She took massage, had
gymnastics, played games and rode. The fear of getting old forced her
out of her feline laziness. She positively dared not sit still. “If I
rest or if I lie on my back, then old age will come over me,” she
thought. This new restlessness went hand in hand with an ardent desire
to be in at everything, not to miss anything. She had fallen a helpless
victim to the disease of seeing and being seen. Dances, first nights,
private views, bazaars, matches:—everywhere you saw Countess von Borgk.
And everywhere you saw her flirt with young men, preferably very young
men.
It had not been exactly an agreeable surprise for Stellan to discover
her at the great autumn shooting party at Granö. Stellan was no longer
fond of female company. His wife he fortunately escaped. She was always
at the seaside or at some sanatorium, but Laura he often met. But with
the old bachelor Major von Brauner he had thought he would be free from
her. Certainly Brauner had figured at Laura’s gambling evenings out in
the Narvavägen, but Stellan did not know that relations had continued.
Judge of his annoyance, then, when he turned in his motor boat and saw
his pretty sister on the pier; Laura in short skirts, with puttees on
her legs and a young painter fool carrying her gun.
And at dinner she came down, the only lady amongst so many men, half
naked, wrapped in some green silk stuff that really cried aloud of her
lost youth. And she herself gave the signal for the naughty stories
after dinner. Grotesque!
As if that were not unpleasant enough they began to talk about the
neighbouring Järnö. And who should start that topic but Laura. She was
half lying in her chair and told lots of stories about dear old Tord.
There was a moment of painful silence, but as the family itself did not
seem to mind ... well, then they let their tongues wag. Nobody mentioned
such a trifle as that Tord had the Governor of the province at him all
the time for neglect. That was to be seen in any paper. But now he had
put up big notices:
“Landing forbidden on penalty of death.
Tord of Järnö.”
And he actually did shoot at people who entered his waters. Von Brauner
himself had once sought shelter there during a thunderstorm and had
heard the bullets whizz about his ears. The people round about were so
furious that an accident might happen at any moment.
“A philosopher who has read too much Darwin and Nietzsche,” mumbled
Stellan. “He wants to be a living protest against the more sentimental
theories.”
Stellan tried to save the situation by being objective at the same time
as he appealed to the sportman’s individualism and the aristocratic
prejudices of the company.
But Laura laughed:
“Nonsense, he is just mad. But anyhow, madmen may be rather jolly.”
The following day Stellan left Gränö in order to go to Järnö and talk to
Tord. It was not so easy to get Laura to come with him, because she felt
very much at home amongst the shooting party. But now they were on their
way anyhow. The motor boat already began to plunge in the rougher and
heavier seas of the big Järnö bay.
Stellan put on an old oilskin and went up on the captain’s bridge:
“Are you quite sure of the chart?” he asked the man at the wheel.
“Yes, sir, I was born in this neighbourhood.”
Between the seas Stellan took the opportunity of looking down into the
engine room. Because he had his suspicions of Laura’s vibration. The
mechanic, who was a handsome dark youth, might also have something to do
with it.
Stellan was an old gambler, who was very frightened of leaving anything
to chance.
The rocking of the boat soon made Laura leave the fumes from the engine
room and quietly creep into the saloon.
They were approaching Järnö. Tall and foreboding rose the dark,
rusty-looking hill surmounted by its log castle. The boat steered
straight for the entrance to the harbour.
Was the madman really going to shoot? Not even through his Feiss-glasses
could Stellan distinguish any sign of life.
Bang! A shot rang out above the lapping of the waves but nobody saw
where it went.
“One ought to come here in warships,” the man mumbled.
Stellan slowed down. They slipped under the lee of the hill beside a
dilapidated old shed.
Another shot of welcome! This time the shot struck only a few yards to
starboard. But it was impossible to discover who had fired it.
Laura cried out that she wanted to go back. Stellan looked as if he felt
sick. He waved a handkerchief eagerly as a flag of truce. There were no
more shots. The boat floated quietly in towards a tumbledown fishing
pier. But still no living soul was visible.
Stellan had some trouble in getting Laura out of the saloon. Not that he
had any illusions about Tord’s chivalry, but he felt safer all the same
when he had her with him. Silent and hesitating they went ashore, still
with the reports of the shots on their nerves. They passed through an
old field which was now running wild and full of little shoots of
birches and aspens, then they cut across a little garden quite overgrown
with pestilence weed out of which a few half suffocated black currant
bushes stretched up their arms like drowning people, whilst the poor
naked apple trees writhed in grey despair in front of a rotting cottage
wall with broken windows and grass-grown porch. Nature crept in over the
work of man and began to resume its power. Over the whole there lay, in
the gloomy autumn day, an indescribable odour of dampness, decay and
dismal neglect.
Shivering, Laura and Stellan took the path up the hill. Up there,
whipped by the winds, the big house lay with its weathered logs,
surrounded by a litter of empty tins and broken bottles.
Nobody came out when Stellan knocked. The door was not locked and they
walked in. The big hall was cold, dirty and filled with a strange smell
of animals. The whole house shook in the gale, and on the windows
towards the north a pine branch knocked persistently as if the wind
wished to enter as a guest.
They cautiously penetrated further. On one of the folding beds in the
bedroom something lay huddled up under a reindeer skin. It moved when
Laura lifted the fur rug and an untidy head peeped out. It was Dagmar.
She stared in dull amazement at the visitors, without recognizing them.
“I am Laura ... Laura Selamb ... and this is Stellan.”
“Oh, I see, it’s you....”
Dagmar crept down. She was dressed in some grey rags. She had the grey
complexion of the really poor, she looked emaciated, worn out. She gave
at the same time the horrible and pitiful impression of a starved and
tormented woman. She shook herself, and her teeth chattered:
“I am lying down as I am not quite well.”
“We wanted to speak to Tord,” said Stellan. “Where is he?”
Dagmar’s face hardened:
“I don’t know at all.”
“He greeted us with his gun, so he must be in the neighbourhood.”
“I suppose he ran away when he recognized you. He is not very fond of
visitors.”
Then Dagmar suddenly approached Laura and stroked the smooth sleeve of
her raincoat timidly, like a frightened dog:
“Goodness, how pretty you are! Do you know I have not talked to a woman
for several years.”
Laura shrugged her shoulders and giggled:
“Well, that is nothing to long for.”
An expression of terror suddenly came over Dagmar’s face.
“You must be hungry,” she mumbled. “And I have only got a little salted
herring.”
Stellan went out and blew three short sharp signals on a whistle. Then
he returned.
“Don’t trouble about food,” he said. “My men will bring up all we need.
But how shall we get hold of Tord?”
“Oh, he has not eaten anything today, and when he is hungry he will come
and feed out of your hand.”
The men soon arrived carrying up boxes of food and wine. Dagmar excused
herself for a moment and dived into a wardrobe to make herself smart....
She returned dressed in an old-fashioned, frayed red silk frock which
hung round her thin body. But there still glimmered a last spark of
beauty in her features.
When dinner was over she went out into the porch and hammered a broken
zinc tub with a poker and shouted into the forest:
“Food, food, food!”
It sounded like the cry of an angry bird through the roaring of the
wind.
Tord did not come.
“Well, then we can eat without the beast,” said Dagmar.
Her eyes suddenly grew wet as she sank down by the dazzlingly white
tablecloth. Such a lot of lovely food—so many fine bottles! And then
there was the man with “Rapid” in white letters across his jersey, just
like a footman behind her chair! And then Laura’s jewels and Stellan’s
yachting suit!
“Goodness me,” she mumbled. “Goodness me!”
And then she drank her first cocktail.
Stellan pointed to Tord’s empty chair:
“How has our amiable host got into the habit of shooting at people who
call on him?”
Dagmar quickly drank her second cocktail. A wild smile lit up her face
like lightning:
“He is afraid they will come and take me from him.... So you can see he
is mad.”
They ate for a moment in silence. The firelight from the logs in the
fireplace flickered over the faces in the big dark hall, which was still
shaken by the gale, and where the pine branch still persistently knocked
at the window:
Knock, knock, knock...!
Dagmar drank and drank—with trembling hands and staring eyes. Suddenly
she flung herself forward with her hands stretched across the table and
her forehead on the cloth. She was seized by a paroxysm of weeping:
“It is terrible here!” she mumbled, “it is terrible here! I shall never
be a human being again, never!”
She again lifted her face, distorted and dirty from her tears. She shook
her clenched fists and by fits and starts there broke from her a wild
and disconnected wailing over the drudgery, the loneliness, the hatred,
the savagery of life out here on the stormbeaten cliff’s.
“He is mad!” she cried. “Tord is mad! He can’t bear to see people. He
hides his money under trees. If I had not stolen from him, we should
have starved to death!”
At the mention of money Laura pricked up her ears and across Stellan’s
rigid mask a glimpse of a melancholy grin appeared. There was thus at
least something comprehensible in this misery.
“What happened to the money?” he mumbled.
Stellan was told. Dagmar’s tears dried suddenly. She spluttered out
fragments of the long, bitter monologues of years. Into her voice there
entered the shrill accents of old quarrels. Peter had brought the money.
And it was an enormous bundle of notes. But Tord did not put them into
the bank. No, he pushed them all into a drawer, so mad was he. And he
carried the key on a string round his neck. And he was mean with the
money so that he need not go into town and talk business any more. He
wanted to be free from that mob, he said. The money must last as long as
he lived. And that was why they went half starved, and dressed in old
rags. In the end Tord got it into his head that they did not need any
food from the shops, but could live by shooting and fishing. It was no
use begging or talking, for then he simply went away. Once he lay out in
the skerries for a whole fortnight and then Dagmar had only some plaice
to live on. But when Tord came home she saw no other way out than to
make him drunk with his last bottle, and then she took the key and stole
some of his money and sent the old gardener into town for winter
supplies. For the old gardener was still alive then.
Tord said nothing when the old man came sailing back with his load of
provisions. He was so hungry that he just threw himself over the food.
So things went on for a long time. Dagmar had learnt to open the drawer
with a hairpin, and she had to watch for an opportunity to send the old
man out when Tord was drunk or asleep. It seemed almost as if he
acquiesced in the arrangement so long as he need not give out the money
himself. But one day Dagmar found the drawer empty. All the notes were
gone. She became dreadfully frightened. She began to spy on Tord to
discover where he had hidden his money. And he was on his guard to see
if she were following him. And thus they stole about silently and spied
on each other like two criminals. And at last she managed to discover
where he kept his treasure. It was in a hole underneath a tree root
behind Mattson’s barn. She took a whole bundle of notes and hid them for
herself. Tord noticed that the pile had suddenly diminished and he came
home white with fury and threatened to kill her. But she defied him and
would not tell her hiding place. And Tord did not find it.
One fine day the old gardener died. His pipe just fell out of his mouth
and he was dead. Tord wanted to dig a grave for the old man down there
without further ado. “We can say that he was drowned, if anybody asks,”
he said. Dagmar frightened him by saying that they would be arrested as
murderers if they did not notify the death. At last she got him to put
up the sails of his boat. Dagmar sat down in the deckhouse and cried.
She felt as if she had lost both father and mother when they sailed into
the cemetery with the old man.
And now she had only herself to fall back on if they were to keep body
and soul together out there at Järnö. Soon everything was eaten up again
and Tord would not go to the shops. And when she herself was going to
set out in the skiff he had hidden the oars. She became so desperate
that she sat down alone on the pier and howled like a wild animal. Then
she remembered she had one more refuge and that was her red blanket. She
had arranged once with the storekeeper that if they were in distress she
was to hang out a big red rug in the window of the big house. And then
he would take the motor boat and bring food to them. She had not much
hope; she sat for an eternity out on the cliff only staring out over the
water to see if the signal worked. On the third day a motor boat
actually rounded the point and so their distress was staved off for that
time. This had happened last autumn. The winter was cruel. They had no
longer anybody to carry wood and water. Dagmar became ill from all the
drudgery. For two months they were isolated when the ice would neither
break nor bear. At last the ice froze properly everywhere except over an
under current.
But then the peasants smashed up the yacht which was lying in the
steamer track through the ice, and then it was impossible to get across
as they were too weak to drag out another boat. People had begun to
damage everything of Tord’s that they could lay hands on, nets, piers,
boats; so hated was he now. And Tord no longer swore and raged. He only
walked about like a dumb animal for days and weeks together. And about
that time the lamp oil also ran out, so that they had to sit there in
the darkness in the evenings after the logs in the fireplace had burnt
out. So they sat there in the dark and dared not let each other go and
still they couldn’t help nagging. She was ill, and she wanted to die
merely to annoy him. And he tried to keep quiet until she should go mad.
“Yes, this has been a terribly long winter,” said Dagmar, “a terribly
long winter.”
After which she was quiet for a moment and sat there rocking her head
and staring straight in front of her.
Laura had risen from the table and stood warming her back at the open
fireplace:
“But why, in God’s name, woman, why have you not left him long ago?” she
exclaimed.
Dagmar started. It seemed as if she had been cruelly torn out of the
voluptuous intoxication of at last shouting out her misery.
“Why didn’t I leave him?” she mumbled; “it must be because I am mad,
because he has infected me, because I have not spoken to a woman for
years. But now there must be an end. Now I must get away. Fancy, I was
quite young when I came here! Quite young and pretty! And look what he
has made of me now!”
She tore her frock open and showed her thin neck and shrunken chest.
“Yes, that’s how I am now. I must get away. I must come with you to
town. He says he will shoot me if I run away—but that doesn’t matter. I
can’t live another winter out here anyhow.”
During Dagmar’s outpourings Stellan had been sitting motionless sucking
an unlighted cigar. Now he exchanged a quick glance with Laura.
Unpleasantness and scandal threatened from all sides. They must be
careful. He called in the men and ordered them to clear the table and
take the things down to the boat. Then he turned to Dagmar:
“To take you with us now is absolutely out of the question,” he said
coldly. “But if you can persuade Tord to go abroad, preferably out of
Europe, I am prepared to give you some money.”
Dagmar had begun to pull out some clothes at random and put them in a
knapsack. She looked up and shook her head:
“You don’t understand,” she muttered hurriedly. “He is impossible. It is
impossible to talk to him. I must get away!”
Stellan rose:
“Good-bye,” he said. “Thank you. We must get away before it grows dark.
Think over what I have said.”
Dagmar stamped on the floor:
“No,” she cried. “I must come with you! You can put me ashore wherever
you like. I can very well sleep in the gutter tonight! But I must get
away!”
Laura and Stellan walked quickly out. Dagmar came after them, without
hat, in her red silk frock and with her bundle in her hand. The gale
tore her untidy fair hair. Mumbling, crying, stumbling, she ran after
Laura and Stellan down the rock hillside.
“If you don’t take me with you, I will throw myself in the water!”
And so she did. When by Stellan’s orders the man pulled in the gangway
and the boat began to back out she flung herself in, scorning death,
with bundle and silk frock and all.
The men had to pick her up. Pale, shivering, dripping, but full of the
determination of despair she clung to the mast on the foredeck. But
Stellan steered into the pier again....
At that moment a grey figure appeared round the corner of the shed. It
was Tord. For hours he had been sitting there in the smell of herrings,
amongst torn nets and worm-eaten decoy ducks, and staring at an ant’s
trail that began in a hole in a floor board and disappeared between some
stones at the side of the lake. Now he walked half way out along the
tottering dilapidated pier. He was dressed in a worn fur cap, grey
Iceland sweater and torn Lapp boots. In his hand he held a rifle. His
rough unshaven face was as grey as a lichen, shrunken, and set in
hopeless defiance. For a moment he stood motionless, staring at Dagmar,
who still tremblingly clung to the mast. The gust of wind ruffled the
pools on deck and tore at her wet ragged skirt. The vibration of the
motor set the water in the whole of the little harbour nervously
trembling. It was as if the water, the boat and the woman were shivering
from the same cold squall.
“I can jump into the water again,” she cried.
Stellan was going to jump ashore, but Tord fingered his rifle.
“Back,” he shouted. “Let go! You shall not land at my pier again. To
hell with you all!”
Yes, that is what Tord cried out. For years he had watched over Dagmar
like a red Indian, so that she should not run away. But now he suddenly
stood there telling her to go to hell!
Laura had settled down comfortably on the bridge. She pulled Stellan’s
arm:
“Don’t say anything,” she whispered. “Let us see what he will do. This
is interesting. I have not seen Tord for many years. He really is
interesting.”
But Stellan took no notice of her. He was ashamed before his men and
stepped up to Tord. He stood there straight and stiff in his yachting
suit with the mien of an officer before a drunken recruit.
“This won’t do,” he said in a low tone. “Damn it, what a figure you cut!
You are completely impossible. If you will take your wife and go away to
South America I will find the money.”
Tord came face to face with his brother:
“South America? Because you have a badge on your cap? By your snobbish
order? You just get aboard. Access to this island is forbidden by Tord
Selamb!”
Tord planted the muzzle of his rifle in Stellan’s stomach and forced
him, with his fingers on the trigger, to retire on board. After which he
took his curved knife and cut the moorings.
“Back,” he commanded again, and the man at the wheel obeyed.
The big red mahogany boat glided quickly out of the harbour.
Dagmar still clung to the mast and stared shivering at the lonely grey
man out on the pier:
“The key of the larder lies under my pillow,” she called. And there was
suddenly a tremulous note of pity in her voice at the sight of his
terrible loneliness.
Then she crept down in the machine room.
They were already in the open. The gale had increased and the motor boat
rolled and pitched in the high seas in Järnö bay. Laura got out some dry
things for Dagmar. She looked up with a grimace at Stellan:
“Why the devil had you to go out to Järnö? There was more fun at
Brauner’s!”
Stellan shrugged his shoulders.
“It might be as well to have her with us. Tord will soon follow and then
we will deport them.”
Tord did not see the motor boat for a long while from the pier. It was
hidden by a tongue of land. “I won’t go up the hill,” he thought. “What
the deuce have I to do on the hill?” But soon after he was up there all
the same. The boat was visible far out in the channel. It looked like a
dark spot on the grey waters. Sometimes there was a flash of light as it
dashed through a big sea. It got smaller and smaller. He had to fasten
his gaze upon it intently if the water was not to appear absolutely
deserted. Then the boat disappeared far, far away beneath a grey
headland.
Tord started. When his hand moved on to the rifle barrel the steel was
so cold that it burnt. Somebody had drawn a deep, moaning sigh. It must
have been himself.
He was alone now. It was ghastly how everything suddenly grew in the
loneliness, how everything grew big and heavy and terrible, the trees,
the clouds, the wind, the sea.
Quickly, as if pursued by an enemy, he dived into his house. The fire
had gone out. The pine branch still beat against the window: knock!
knock! knock! He went up to the wall and tried with his hand the draught
from a chink between the logs, then he suddenly rushed out into the
kitchen and swallowed some remains of food. It was the first food he had
tasted that day. A drop of wine was left in a glass. He poured it into
him. Then he spat it out again feeling nauseated. And then he was in the
bedroom by Dagmar’s bed. The pillow was still pressed down after her
head. He raised his clenched fist for a blow but suddenly stopped and
raised the rifle that he still trailed with him. The shot went straight
into the pillow so that the feathers whirled about. Afterwards it became
horribly quiet. Tord shivered. Why make a noise and shoot? There was
nobody to hear him, nobody. Then the pine branch began to beat against
the window again. Knock! knock! No, he could not stay here!
Tord went down to the little reed-grown bay. He half ran but stopped now
and then like a child that stops crying for a moment to feel its pain.
Down there the old yacht lay riding at anchor. For days and weeks its
deckhouse had been his last refuge when everything else was disgusting
and hateful. The punt lay beneath the alder trees. Tord got it afloat
and rowed out through the scattered, rustling reeds. On board the yacht
the deck was covered with withered leaves. The water had risen up into
the cockpit. Water is never so unpleasant as when, brown with rust from
the ballast, it rises up in an old boat. Tord pumped. With difficulty he
opened the swollen doors of the cabin. Down below it smelt of rotting
oak, rotten ropes, mildew and damp. He pushed away a lot of rubbish and
lay down on a cushion. Flap, flap! went the eternal waves as they
splashed against the stem. Rat-tat! the foresail halyard beat against
the mast as the wind swept in. And the alders and the hill swung to and
fro through the little window, to and fro, to and fro!
The chill rose out of the cold, stinking cushion so that Tord could no
longer lie on it. He climbed up on deck and began mechanically to hoist
sail. The stiff grey hemp creaked in his hands. Out of the wet, mildewed
folds of the sail crawled swarms of earwigs. The sheets were full of
kinks and doublings. The boom suddenly knocked him down on the deck, but
he rose groaning, pulled in the shiny, green anchor chain and hauled up
the anchor, which was a mass of mire and mud. Then he sprang to the
helm.
As by magic the yacht found its way out through the narrow, difficult
channel. Now it lay in Järnö bay, under the lee of the familiar hill.
Black, gusty squalls puffed in all directions over the leaden grey
water. At first the old hull did not seem to know what it wanted to do.
The sails filled, shivered and went over. The main-sheet struck off
Tord’s fur cap. He did not care. He sat huddled up by the helm looking
at a feather that had fastened on his sleeve. He stared at the soft,
white down that trembled at each puff. The memories of past kisses,
caresses and embraces softly, wonderfully softly, flattered his soul.
There to starboard was the course to town, to the people, to Dagmar....
He fell away before an easterly gust; he was already out in the more
steady wind of Järnö bay.... But then the yacht suddenly went about with
whipping sails and headed out towards the open sea visible through “The
Iron Door.” Tord did not know why he had tacked. It was as if the old
boat had known better than he.
As soon as Tord had rounded the point, the gale cast itself upon him as
if a window had blown in. The yacht luffed, slowed down with flapping
sails and vibrated till you could feel it through the whole hull. Then
it slowly fell away and gathered speed.
Tord seemed to waken up. Beneath his blown coarse tufts of hair his
glance grew keen again. “By Jove, now we shall have some sailing!”
Muttering sturdy oaths, he worked himself up for a quarrel, a wild
quarrel with his beloved old sea. It was the last thing he had to fight
with. Everything else had gone.
He was still under the Kall-skerries, and the worst had not yet begun.
There are gales and gales. This was no puffing, impatient, spring
squall, nor yet a black, summer squall, but a big heavy, autumn gale
with all the grimness of the coming winter behind it. It came from the
north, too. Sky, water and hills had all the hues of iron. The clouds
hung with shades of darkish blue between the lighter clearings in the
sky. The distant cliffs flashed suddenly with a ghostlike, dead,
metallic sheen.
Now he would soon be out in the open sea. Now it was time to put about
if ever he wanted to get back. But Tord did not. The sea was stronger
than he.
East of Järnö the sea is almost always deserted. There are no buoys or
lighthouses, no sails and no smoke from steamers. No man stood with
glasses to his eyes following the death struggle of the yacht out in the
raging twilight of the sea.
Tord did not give in so easily. He sailed like an old sailor. He sat
huddled up to windward and spat out the salt water and avoided the worst
breakers. With a kind of pale and passionate devotion he saw the seas
grow and grow. Every heavy, onrushing, crested wave out there in the
desolate expanse was like a confirmation of something he had long, long
known. Stiff with cold in his dripping rags, shivering to the very
marrow with weariness, he felt a mysterious inward joy as both the boat
and himself irresistibly succumbed. Then the peak blew down and the boom
trailed in the water. Then the waves began to crash in through the
missing hatch in the bows. It became more and more difficult for the
heavy half-disabled hull to lift itself out of the troughs. Then Tord
was flung overboard just at the moment when the boat capsized and sank.
He saw the faded red pennant at the masthead dive a few fathoms away
from him. He still kept afloat, he was still swimming. But he did not
swim towards the land, but further out, towards the sea. The last thing
he saw was a high, wonderfully tall, mountain of water, iron-grey,
ice-green, rising above his head, with a crest of coldest, palest foam.
In the middle of the wave he sucked the water into his lungs, lost
consciousness and passed without pain.
Thus finished Tord Selamb’s last great wild quarrel. Defiance you might
call it, a wild mad defiance unto death. A philosopher might perhaps
mumble something about the negative in all egoism. Tord had driven the
Selambian selfishness to the point at which it annihilates itself.
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