Сельма Лагерлёф
The Miracles of Antichrist
II
PANEM ET CIRCENSES
In Diamante travellers are often shown two palaces that are falling into ruins without ever having been completed. They have big window-openings without frames, high walls without a roof, and wide doors closed with boards and straw. The two palaces stand opposite each other on the street, both equally unfinished and equally in ruins. There are no scaffoldings about them, and no one can enter them. They seem to be only built for the doves.
Listen to what is told of them.
What is a woman, O signore? Her foot is so little that she goes through the world without leaving a trace behind her. For man she is like his shadow. She has followed him through his whole life without his having noticed her.
Not much can be expected of a woman. She has to sit all day shut in like a prisoner. She cannot even learn to spell a love-letter correctly. She cannot do anything of permanence. When she is dead there is nothing to write on her tombstone. All women are of the same height.
But once a woman came to Diamante who was as much above all other women as the century-old palm is above the grass. She possessed lire by thousands, and could give them away or keep them, as she pleased. She turned aside for no one. She was not afraid of being hated. She was the greatest marvel that had ever been seen.
Of course she was not a Sicilian. She was an Englishwoman. And the first thing she did when she came was to take the whole first floor of the hotel for herself alone. What was that for her? All Diamante would not have been enough for her.
No, all Diamante was not enough for her. But as soon as she had come she began to govern the town like a queen. The syndic had to obey her. Was it not she who made him put stone benches in the square? Was it not at her command that the streets were swept every day?
When she woke in the morning all the young men of Diamante stood waiting outside her door, to be allowed to accompany her on some excursion. They had left shoemaker’s awl and stone-cutter’s chisel to act as guides to her. Each had sold his mother’s silk dress to buy a side-saddle for his donkey, so that she might ride on it to the castle or to Tre Castagni. They had divested themselves of house and home in order to buy a horse and carriage to drive her to Randazzo and Nicolosi.
We were all her slaves. The children began to beg in English, and the old blind women at the hotel door, Donna Pepa and Donna Tura, draped themselves in dazzlingly white veils to please her.
Everything moved round her; industries and trades grew up about her. Those who could do nothing else dug in the earth for coins and pottery to offer her. Photographers moved to the town and began to work for her. Coral merchants and hawkers of tortoise-shell grew out of the earth about her. The priests of Santa Agnese dug up the old Dionysius theatre, that lay hidden behind their church, for her sake; and every one who owned a ruined villa unearthed in the darkness of the cellar remains of mosaic floors and invited her by big posters to come and see.
There had been foreigners before in Diamante, but they had come and gone, and no one had enjoyed such power. There was soon not a man in the town who did not put all his trust in the English signorina. She even succeeded in putting a little life into Ugo Favara. You know Ugo Favara, the advocate, who was to have been a great man, but had reverses and came home quite broken. She employed him to take care of her affairs. She needed him, and she took him.
There has never been a woman in Diamante who has done so much business as she. She spread out like green-weed in the spring. One day no one knows that there is any, and the next it is a great clump. Soon it was impossible to go anywhere in Diamante without coming on her traces. She bought country houses and town houses; she bought almond-groves and lava-streams. The best places on Etna to see the view were hers as well as the thirsting earth on the plain. And in town she began to build two big palaces. She was to live in them and rule her kingdom.
We shall never see a woman like her again. She was not content with all that. She wished also to fight the fight with poverty, O signore, with Sicilian poverty! How much she gave out each day, and how much she gave away on feast-days! Wagons, drawn by two pairs of oxen, went down to Catania and came back piled up with all sorts of clothing. She was determined that they should have whole clothes in the town where she reigned.
But listen to what happened to her; how the struggle with poverty ended and what became of the kingdom and the palace.
She gave a banquet for the poor people of Diamante, and after the banquet an entertainment in the Grecian theatre. It was what an old emperor might have done. But who has ever before heard of a woman doing such a thing?
She invited all the poor people. There were the two blind women from the hotel-door, and old Assunta from the Cathedral steps. There was the man from the post-house, who had his chin bound up in a red cloth on account of cancer of the face; and there was the idiot who opens the iron doors of the Grecian theatre. All the donkey-boys were there, and the handless brothers, who exploded a bomb in their childhood and lost their fingers; and the man with the wooden leg, and the old chair-maker who had grown too old to work, both were there.
It was strange to see them creep out of their holes, all the poor in Diamante. The old women who sit and spin with distaffs in the dark alleys were there, and the organ-grinder, who has an instrument as big as a church-organ, a wandering young mandolinist from Naples with a body full of all possible deviltries. All those with diseased eyes and all the decrepit; those without a roof over their heads; those who used to collect sorrel by the roadside for dinner; the stone-cutter, who earned one lira a day and had six children to provide for, – they had all been invited and were present at the feast.
It was poverty marshalling its troops for the English signorina. Who has such an army as poverty? But for once the English signorina could conquer it.
She had something to fight with too and to conquer with. She filled the whole square with loaded tables. She had wine-skins arranged along the stone bench that lines the wall of the Cathedral. She had turned the deserted convent into a larder and kitchen. She had all the foreign colony in Diamante dressed in white aprons, to serve the courses. She had all of Diamante who are used to eating their fill, wandering to and fro as spectators.
Ah, spectators, what did she not have for spectators? She had great Etna and the dazzling sun. She had the red peaks of the inland mountains and the old temple of Vulcan, that was now consecrated to San Pasquale. And none of them had ever seen a satisfied Diamante. None of them had ever before happened to think how much more beautiful they themselves would be if the people could look at them without hunger hissing in their ears and trampling on their heels.
But mark one thing! Although that signorina was so wonderful and so great, she was not beautiful. And in spite of all her power, she was neither charming nor attractive. She did not rule with jests, and she did not reward with smiles. She had a heavy, clumsy body, and a heavy, clumsy disposition.
The day she gave food to the poor she became a different person. A chivalrous people live in our noble island. Among all those poor people there was not one who let her feel that she was exercising charity. They worshipped her, but they worshipped her as a woman. They sat down at the table as with an equal. They behaved to her as guests to their hostess. “To-day I do you the honor to come to you; to-morrow you do me the honor to come to me. So and not otherwise.” She stood on the high steps of the town-hall and looked down at all the tables. And when the old chair-maker, who sat at the head of the table, had got his glass filled, he rose, bowed to her and said: “I drink to your prosperity, signorina.”
So did they all. They laid their hands on their hearts and bowed to her. It would have perhaps been good for her if she had met with such chivalry earlier in life. Why had the men in her native land let her forget that women exist to be worshipped?
Here they all looked as if they were burning with a quiet adoration. Thus are women treated in our noble island. What did they not give in return for the food and the wine that she had offered them? They gave youth and light-heartedness and all the dignity of being worth coveting. They made speeches for her. “Noble-hearted signorina, you who have come to us from over the sea, you who love Sicily,” and so on, and so on. She showed that she could blush. She no longer hid her power to smile. When they had finished speaking, the lips of the English signorina began to tremble. She became twenty years younger. It was what she needed.
The donkey-boy was there, who carries the English ladies up to Tre Castagni, and who always falls in love with them before he parts from them. Now his eyes were suddenly opened to the great benefactress. It is not only a slender, delicate body and a soft cheek that are worthy to be adored, but also strength and force. The donkey-boy suddenly dropped knife and fork, leaned his elbows on the table, and sat and looked at her. And all the other donkey-boys did the same. It spread like a contagion. It grew hot with burning glances about the English signorina.
It was not only the poor people who adored her. The advocate, Ugo Favara, came and whispered to her that she had come as a providence to his poor land and to him. “If only I had met such a woman as you before,” he said.
Fancy an old bird which has sat in a cage for many years and become rough and lost all the gloss of his feathers. And then some one comes and straightens them out and smooths them back. Think of it, signore!
There was that boy from Naples. He took his mandolin and began to sing his very best. You know how he sings; he pouts with his big mouth and says ugly words. He usually is like a grinning mask. But have you seen the angel in his eyes? An angel which seems to weep over his fall and is filled with a holy frenzy. That evening he was only an angel. He raised his head like one inspired by God, and his drooping body became elastic and full of proud vitality. Color came into his livid cheeks. And he sang; he sang so that the notes seemed to fly like fireflies from his lips and fill the air with joy and dance.
When it grew dark they all went over to the Grecian theatre. That was the finishing touch to the entertainment. What did she not have to offer there!
She had the Russian singer and the German variété artists. She had the English wrestlers and the American magician. But what was that compared to all the rest: the silvery moonlight and the place and its memories? Those poor people seemed to feel like the Greeks and leaders of fashion when they once more took their places on the stone-benches of their own old theatre and from between the tottering pillars looked out at the most beautiful panorama.
Those poor people did not stint; they shared all the pleasure they received. They did not spare jubilation; there was no stopping their hand-clapping. The performers left the platform with a wealth of praise.
Some one begged the English signorina to appear. All the adoration was meant for her. She ought to stand face to face with it and feel it. And they told her how intoxicating it was, how elevating, how inflaming.
She liked the proposal. She immediately agreed. She had sung in her youth, and the English never seem to be afraid to sing. She would not have done it if she had not been in a good mood, and she wished to sing for those who loved her.
She came as the last number. Fancy what it was to stand on such an old stage! It was where Antigone had been buried alive and Iphigenia had been sacrificed. The English signorina stepped forward there to receive every conceivable honor.
It stormed to meet her as soon as she showed herself. They seemed to wish to stamp the earth to pieces to honor her.
It was a proud moment. She stood there with Etna as a background and the Mediterranean as wings. Before her on the grass-grown benches was sitting conquered poverty, and she felt that she had all Diamante at her feet.
She chose “Bellini,” our own “Bellini.” She too wished to be amiable and so she sang “Bellini,” who was born here under Etna; “Bellini” whom we know by heart, note for note.
Of course, O signore, of course she could not sing. She had mounted the tribune only to receive homage. She had come in order to let the love of the people find an outlet. And now she sang false and feebly. And the people knew every note.
It was that mandolinista from Naples. He was the first to grimace and to take a note as false as that of the English signorina. Then it was the man with the cancer, who laughed till he laughed his neckcloth off. Then it was the donkey-boy, who began to clap his hands.
Then they all began. It was madness, but that they did not understand. It is not in the land of the old Greeks that people can bear barbarians who sing false. Donna Pepa and Donna Tura laughed as they had never done before in their lives. “Not one true note! By the Madonna and San Pasquale, not one true note!”
They had eaten their fill for once in their lives. It was natural that intoxication and madness should take hold of them. And why should they not laugh? She had not given them food in order to torture their ears with files and saws. Why should they not defend themselves by laughing? Why should they not mimic and hiss and scream? Why should they not lean backward and split their sides with laughter? They were not the English signorina’s slaves, I suppose.
It was a terrible blow to her. It was too great a blow for her to understand. Were they hissing her? It must be something happening among them; something that she could not see. She sang the aria to its end. She was convinced that the laughter was for something with which she had nothing to do.
When she had finished a sort of storm of applause roared over her. At last she understood. Torches and the moonlight made the night so bright that she could see the rows of people twisting with laughter. She heard the scoffs and the jests now, when she was not singing. They were for her. Then she fled from the stage. It seemed to her that Etna itself heaved with laughter, and that the sea sparkled with merriment.
But it grew worse and worse. They had had such a good time, those poor people; they had never had such a good time before, and they wished to hear her once again. They called for her; they cried: “Bravo! Bis! Da capo!” They could not lose such a pleasure. She, she was almost unconscious. There was a storm about her. They screamed; they roared to get her in. She saw them lift their arms and threaten her to get her in. All at once it was all turned into an old circus. She had to go in to be devoured by monsters.
It went on; it went on; it became wilder and wilder. The other performers were frightened and begged her to yield. And she herself was frightened. It looked as if they would have killed her if she did not do what they wished.
She dragged herself on the stage and stood face to face with the crowd. There was no pity. She sang because they all wished to be amused. That was the worst. She sang because she was afraid of them and did not dare not to. She was a foreigner and alone, and she had no one to protect her, and she was afraid. And they laughed and laughed.
Screams and cries, crowing and whistling accompanied the whole aria. No one had mercy on her. For the first time in her life she felt the need of mercy.
Well, the next day she resolved to depart. She could not endure Diamante any longer. But when she told the advocate, Favara, he implored her to stay for his sake and made her an offer of marriage.
He had chosen his time well. She said yes, and was married to him. But after that time she built no more on her palaces; she made no struggle against poverty; she cared nothing to be queen in Diamante. Would you believe it? She never showed herself on the street; she lived indoors like a Sicilian.
Her little house stood hidden away behind a big building, and of herself no one knew anything. They only knew that she was quite changed. No one knew whether she was happy or unhappy; whether she shut herself in because she hated the people, or because she wished to be as a Sicilian wife ought to be.
Does it not always end so with a woman? When they build their palaces they are never finished. Women can do nothing that has permanence.
III
THE OUTCAST
When Donna Micaela heard how the poor people had hooted Miss Tottenham out, she hurried to the hotel to express her condolence. She wished to beg her not to judge those poor creatures by what they had done when they had been put out of their heads with pleasure and wine. She would beg her not to take her hand from Diamante. She herself did not care very much for Miss Tottenham, but for the sake of the poor – She would say anything to pacify her.
When she came to the hotel Etna, she saw the whole street filled with baggage-wagons. So there was no hope. The great benefactress was going away.
Outside the hotel there was much sorrow and despair. The two old blind women, Donna Pepa and Donna Tura, who had always sat in the hotel court-yard, were now shut out, and they were kneeling before the door. The young donkey-driver, who loved all young English ladies, stood with his face pressed against the wall and wept.
Inside the hotel the landlord walked up and down the long corridor, raging at Providence for sending him this misfortune. “Signor Dio,” he mumbled, “I am beggared. If you let this happen, I will take my wife by the hand and my children in my arms and throw myself with them down into Etna.”
The landlady was very pale and humble. She scarcely dared to lift her eyes from the ground. She would have liked to creep about on her knees to prevail upon the rich signorina to remain.
“Do you dare to speak to her, Donna Micaela?” she said. “May God help you to speak to her! Alas! tell her that the Neapolitan boy, who was the cause of the whole misfortune, has been turned out of the town. Tell her that they all wish to make amends. Speak to her, signora!”
The landlady took Donna Micaela to the Englishwoman’s drawing-room and went in with her card. She came back immediately and asked her to wait a few minutes. Signorina Tottenham was having a business talk with Signor Favara.
It was the very moment when the advocate Favara asked Miss Tottenham’s hand in marriage; and while Donna Micaela waited she heard him say quite loud: “You must not go away, signorina! What will become of me if you go away? I love you; I cannot let you go. I should not have dared to speak if you had not threatened to go away. But now – ”
He lowered his voice again, but Donna Micaela would hear no more and went away. She saw that she was superfluous. If Signor Favara could not succeed in keeping the great benefactress, no one could.
When she went out again through the gateway the landlord was standing there quarrelling with the old Franciscan, Fra Felice. He was so irritated that he not only quarrelled with Fra Felice, he also drove him from his house.
“Fra Felice,” he cried, “you come to make more trouble with our great benefactress. You will only make her more angry. Go away, I tell you! You wolf, you man-eater, go away!”
Fra Felice was quite as enraged as the landlord, and tried to force his way past him. But then the latter took him by the arm, and without further notice marched him down the steps.
Fra Felice was a man who had received a great gift from his Creator. In Sicily, where everybody plays in the lottery, there are people who have the power to foretell what numbers will win at the next drawing. He who has such second sight is called “polacco,” and is most often found in some old begging monk. Fra Felice was such a monk. He was the greatest polacco in the neighborhood of Etna.
As every one wished him to tell them a winning tern or quartern, he was always treated with great consideration. He was not used to be taken by the arm and be thrown into the street, Fra Felice.
He was nearly eighty years old and quite dried-up and infirm. As he staggered away between the wagons, he stumbled, trod on his cloak, and almost fell. But none of the porters and drivers that stood by the door talking and lamenting had time that day to think of Fra Felice.
The old man tottered along in his heavy homespun cloak. He was so thin and dry that there seemed to be more stiffness in the cloak than in the monk. It seemed to be the old cloak that held him up.
Donna Micaela caught up with him and gently drew the old man’s arm through her own. She could not bear to see how he struck against the lamp-posts and fell over steps. But Fra Felice never noticed that she was looking after him. He walked and mumbled and cursed, and did not know but that he was as much alone as if he sat in his cell.
Donna Micaela wondered why Fra Felice was so angry with Miss Tottenham. Had she been out to his monastery and taken down frescos from the walls, or what had she done?
Fra Felice had lived for sixty years in the big Franciscan monastery outside the Porta Etnea, wall to wall with the old church San Pasquale.
Fra Felice had been monk there for thirty years, when the monastery was given up and sold to a layman. The other monks moved away, but Fra Felice remained because he could not understand what selling the house of San Francisco could mean.
If laymen were to come there, it seemed to Fra Felice almost more essential that at least one monk should remain. Who else would attend to the bell-ringing, or prepare medicines for the peasant women, or give bread to the poor of the monastery? And Fra Felice chose a cell in a retired corner of the monastery, and continued to go in and out as he had always done.
The merchant who owned the monastery never visited it. He did not care about the old building; he only wanted the vineyards belonging to it. So Fra Felice still reigned in the old monastery, and fastened up the fallen cornices and whitewashed the walls. As many poor people as had received food at the monastery in former days, still received it. For his gift of prophecy Fra Felice got such large alms as he wandered through the towns of Etna that he could have been a rich man; but every bit of it went to the monastery.
Fra Felice had suffered an even greater grief than for the monastery on account of the monastery church. It had been desecrated during war, with bloody fights and other atrocities, so that mass could never be held there. But that he could not understand either. The church, where he had made his vows, was always holy to Fra Felice.
It was his greatest sorrow that his church had fallen entirely into ruin. He had looked on when Englishmen had come and bought pulpit and lectern and choir chairs. He had not been able to prevent collectors from Palermo coming and taking the chandeliers and pictures and brass hooks. However much he had wished it, he had not been able to do anything to save his church. But he hated those church-pillagers; and when Donna Micaela saw him so angry, she thought that Miss Tottenham had wished to take some of his treasures from him.
But the fact was that now, when Fra Felice’s church was emptied, and no one came any more to plunder there, he had begun to think of doing something to embellish it once more, and he had had his eye on the collection of images of the saints in the possession of the rich English lady. At her entertainment, when she had been kind and gentle towards every one, he had dared to ask her for her beautiful Madonna, who had a dress of velvet and eyes like the sky. And his request had been granted.
That morning Fra Felice had swept and dusted the church, and put flowers on the altar, before he went to fetch the image. But when he came to the hotel, the Englishwoman had changed her mind; she had not been at all willing to give him the valuable Madonna. In its stead she had given him a little ragged, dirty image of the Christchild, which she thought she could spare without regret.
Ah, what joy and expectation old Fra Felice had felt, and then had been so disappointed! He could not be satisfied; he came back time after time to beg for the other image. It was such a valuable image that he could not have bought it with all that he begged in a whole year. At last the great benefactress had dismissed him; and it was then that Donna Micaela had found him.
As they went along the street, she began to talk to the old man and won his story from him. He had the image with him, and right in the street he stopped, showed it to her, and asked her if she had ever seen a more miserable object.
Donna Micaela looked at the image for a moment with stupefaction. Then she smiled and said: “Lend me the image for a few days, Fra Felice!”
“You can take it and keep it,” said the old man. “May it never come before my eyes again!”
Donna Micaela took the image home and worked on it for two days. When she then sent it to Fra Felice it shone with newly polished shoes; it had a fresh, clean dress; it was painted, and in its crown shone bright stones of many colors.
He was so beautiful, the outcast, that Fra Felice placed him on the empty altar in his church.
It was very early one morning. The sun had not risen, and the broad sea was scarcely visible. It was really very early. The cats were still roaming about the roofs; no smoke rose from the chimneys; and the mists lay and rolled about in the low valley round the steep Monte Chiaro.
Old Fra Felice came running towards the town. He ran so fast that he thought he felt the mountain tremble beneath him. He ran so fast that the blades of grass by the roadside had no time to sprinkle his cloak with dew; so fast that the scorpions had no time to lift their tails and sting him.
As the old man ran, his cloak flapped unfastened about him, and his rope swung unknotted behind. His wide sleeves waved like wings, and his heavy hood pounded up and down on his back, as if it wished to urge him on.
The man in the custom-office, who was still asleep, woke and rubbed his eyes as Fra Felice rushed by, but he had no time to recognize him. The pavements were slippery with dampness; beggars lay and slept by the high stone steps with their legs heedlessly stretched out into the street; exhausted domino-players were going home from the Café reeling with sleep. But Fra Felice hastened onward regardless of all obstructions.
Houses and gateways, squares and arched-over alleys disappeared behind old Fra Felice. He ran half-way up the Corso before he stopped.
He stopped in front of a big house with many heavy balconies. He seized the door-knocker and pounded until a servant awoke. He would not be quiet till the servant called up a maid, and the maid waked the signora.
“Donna Micaela, Fra Felice is downstairs. He insists on speaking to you.”
When Donna Micaela at last came down to Fra Felice, he was still panting and breathless, but there was a fire in his eyes, and little pale roses in his cheeks.
It was the image, the image. When Fra Felice had rung the four-o’clock matins that morning he had gone into the church to look at him.
Then he had discovered that big stones had loosened from the dome just over the image. They had fallen on the altar and broken it to pieces, but the image had stood untouched. And none of the plaster and dust that had tumbled down had fallen on the image; it was quite uninjured.
Fra Felice took Donna Micaela’s hand and told her that she must go with him to the church and see the miracle. She should see it before any one, because she had taken care of the image.
And Donna Micaela went with him through the gray, chilly morning to his monastery, while her heart throbbed with eagerness and expectation.
When she arrived and saw that Fra Felice had told the truth, she said to him that she had recognized the image as soon as she had caught sight of it, and that she knew that it could work miracles. “He is the greatest and gentlest of miracle-workers,” she said.
Fra Felice went up to the image and looked into its eyes. For there is a great difference in images, and the wisdom of an old monk is needed to understand which has power and which has not. Now Fra Felice saw that this image’s eyes were deep and glowing, as if they had life; and that on its lips hovered a mysterious smile.
Then old Fra Felice fell on his knees and stretched his clasped hands towards the image, and his old shrivelled face was lighted by a great joy.
It seemed to Fra Felice all at once as if the walls of his church were covered with pictures and purple hangings; candles shone on the altar; song sounded from the gallery; and the whole floor was covered with kneeling, praying people.
All imaginary glory would fall to the lot of his poor old church, now that it possessed one of the great miracle-working images.