Сельма Лагерлёф
The Miracles of Antichrist
He is an old man with a long, hooked nose which hangs down over his upper lip, a bushy beard, pale eyes with red eyelids. They are the ugliest eyes imaginable; the whites are yellowish, and they squint. The beggar is tall and very thin; he moves his body when he walks, so that it looks as if he wriggled forward. He walks so softly that Donna Silvia does not hear him. The first thing she notices is his shadow, which, slender as a snake, bends down towards her.
She looks up when she sees the shadow. Then the beggar bows to her and asks for a dish of macaroni.
“I have macaroni on the fire,” says Donna Silvia. “Sit down and wait; you shall have your fill.”
The beggar sits down beside Donna Silvia, and after a while they begin to chat. They soon talk of Falco.
“Is it true that you let your sons work on Donna Micaela’s railway?” says the beggar.
Donna Silvia bites her lips together, and nods an assent.
“You are a brave woman, Donna Silvia. Falco might be revenged on you.”
“Then he can take revenge,” says Donna Silvia. “But I will not obey one who has killed my father. He forced him to escape from prison in Augusta, and my father was captured and shot.”
And so saying she rises and goes in to get the food.
As she stands in the kitchen she sees the beggar through the window, sitting and rocking on the stone-bench. He is not quiet for a moment. And in front of him writhes his shadow, slender and lithe as a snake.
Donna Silvia remembers what she had once heard Caterina, who had been married to Falco’s brother, Nino, say. “How will you recognize Falco after twenty years?” people had asked her. “Should I not recognize the man with the snake-shadow?” she answered. “He will never lose it, long as he may live.”
Donna Silvia presses her hand on her heart. There in her yard Falco Falcone is sitting. He has come to be revenged because her sons work on the railway. Will he set fire to the house, or will he murder her?
Donna Silvia is shaking in every limb as she serves up her macaroni.
Falco begins to find the time long as he sits on the stone-bench. A little dog comes up to him and rubs against him. Falco feels in his pocket for a piece of bread, but he finds only a stone, which he throws to the dog.
The dog runs after the stone and brings it back to Falco. Falco throws it again. The dog takes the stone again, but now he runs away with it.
Falco remembers that it is the stone he picked up on Mongibello, and goes after the dog to get it back. He whistles to the dog, and it comes to him instantly. “Drop the stone!” The dog puts its head on one side and will not drop it. “Ah, give me the stone, rascal!” The dog shuts its mouth. It has no stone. “Let me see; let me see!” says Falco. He bends the dog’s head back and forces it to open its mouth. The stone lies far in under the gums, and Falco tries to force it out. Then the dog bites him, till the blood flows.
Falco is terrified. He goes in to Donna Silvia. “I hope your dog is healthy,” he says.
“My dog? I have no dog. It is dead.” – “But the one running outside?” – “I do not know which one you mean,” she says.
Falco says nothing more, nor does he do Donna Silvia any harm. He simply goes his way, frightened; he thinks that the dog is mad, and he fears hydrophobia.
One evening Donna Micaela sits alone in the music-room. She has put out the lamp and opened the balcony doors. She likes to listen to the street in the evening and at night. No more smiths and stone-cutters and criers are heard. There is song, laughter, whispering, and mandolins.
Suddenly she sees a dark hand laid on the balcony railing. The hand drags up after it an arm and a head; within a moment a whole human being swings himself into the balcony. She sees him plainly, for the street-lamps are still burning. He is a small, broad-shouldered, bearded fellow, dressed like a shepherd, with leather sandals, a slouch hat, and an umbrella tied to his back. As soon as he is on his feet he snatches his gun from his shoulder and comes into the room with it in his hands.
She sits still without giving a sign of life. There is no time either to summon help or to escape. She hopes that the man will take what he wishes to take, and go away without noticing her, sitting back in the dark room.
The man puts his gun down between his legs, and she hears him scratching with a match. She shuts her eyes. He will believe that she is asleep.
When the robber gets the match lighted, he sees her instantly. He coughs to wake her. As she remains motionless, he creeps over to her and carefully stretches out a finger towards her arm. “Do not touch me! do not touch me!” she screams, and can no longer sit still. The man draws back instantly. “Dear Donna Micaela, I only wanted to wake you.”
There she sits and shakes with terror, and he hears how she is sobbing. “Dear signora, dear signora!” he says. “Light a candle that I can see where you are,” she cries. He scratches a new match, lifts the shade and chimney off the lamp, and lights it as neatly as a servant. He places himself again by the door, as far from her as possible. Suddenly he goes out on the balcony with his gun. “Now the signora cannot be afraid any longer.”
But when she does not cease weeping he says: “Signora, I am Passafiore; I come with a message to you from Falco. He no longer wishes to destroy your railway.”
“Have you come to jest with me?” she says.
Then the man answers, almost weeping: “Would God that it were a jest! God! that Falco were the man he has been!”
He tells her how Falco went up Mongibello and crowned its top. But the mountain had not liked it; it had now overthrown Falco. A single little piece of pumice-stone from Mongibello had been enough to overthrow him.
“It is all over with Falco,” says Passafiore. “He goes about in the quarry, and waits to fall ill. For a week he has neither slept nor eaten. He is not sick yet, but the wound in his hand does not heal either. He thinks that he has the poison in his body. ‘Soon I shall be a mad dog,’ he says. No wine nor food tempt him. He takes no pleasure in my praising his deeds. ‘What is that to talk about?’ he says. ‘I shall end my life like a mad dog.’”
Donna Micaela looked sharply at Passafiore. “What do you wish me to do about it? You cannot mean that I am to go down into the quarry to Falco Falcone?”
Passafiore looks down and dares not answer anything.
She explains to him what that same Falco has made her suffer. He has frightened away her workmen. He has set himself against her dearest wish.
All of a sudden Passafiore falls on his knees. He dares not go a step nearer to her than he is, but he falls on his knees.
He implores her to understand the importance of it. She does not know, she does not understand who Falco is. Falco is a great man. Ever since Passafiore was a little child he has heard of him. All his life long he has longed to come out to the quarry and live with him. All his cousins went to Falco; his whole race were with him. But the priest had set his heart that Passafiore should not go. He apprenticed him to a tailor; only think, to a tailor! He talked to him, and said that he should not go. It was such a terrible sin to live like Falco. Passafiore had also struggled against it for many years for Don Matteo’s sake. But at last he had not been able to resist; he had gone to the quarry. And now he has not been with Falco more than a year before the latter is quite destroyed. It is as if the sun had gone out in the sky. His whole life is ruined.
Passafiore looks at Donna Micaela. He sees that she is listening to him, and understands him.
He reminds Donna Micaela that she had helped a jettatore and an adulteress. Why should she be hard to a brigand? The Christ-image in San Pasquale gave her everything she asked for. He was sure that she prayed to the Christchild to protect the railway from Falco. And he had obeyed her; he had made Mongibello’s pumice-stone break Falco’s might. But now, would she not be gracious, and help them, that Falco might get his health again, and be an honor to the land, as he had been before?
Passafiore succeeds in moving Donna Micaela. All at once she understands how it is with the old brigand in the dark caves of the quarry. She sees him there, waiting for madness. She thinks how proud he has been, and how broken and crushed he now is. No, no; no one ought to suffer so. It is too much, too much.
“Passafiore,” she exclaims, “tell me what you wish. I will do whatever I can. I am no longer afraid. No, I am not at all afraid.”
“Donna Micaela, we have begged Falco to go to the Christchild and ask for grace. But Falco will not believe in the image. He will not do anything but sit still and wait for the disaster. But to-day, when I implored him to go and pray, he said: ‘You know who sits and waits for me in the old house opposite the church. Go to her, and ask her if she will give me the privilege to go by her into the church. If she gives her permission, then I shall believe in the image, and say my prayers to him.’”
“Well?” questions Donna Micaela.
“I have been to old Caterina, and she has given her permission. ‘He shall be allowed to go into San Pasquale without my killing him,’ she said.”
Passafiore is still on his knees.
“Has Falco already been to the church?” asks Donna Micaela.
Passafiore moves somewhat nearer. He wrings his hands in despair. “Donna Micaela, Falco is very ill. It is not alone that about the dog; he was ill before.” And Passafiore struggles with himself before he can say it out. At last he acknowledges that although Falco is a very great man, he sometimes has attacks of madness. He had not spoken of old Caterina alone; he had said: “If Caterina will let me go into the church, and if Donna Micaela Alagona comes down into the quarry and gives me her hand, and leads me to the church, I will go to the image.” And from that no one had been able to move him. Donna Micaela, who was greatest and holiest of women, must come to him, or he would not go.
When Passafiore has finished, he remains kneeling with bowed head. He dares not look up.
But Donna Micaela does not hesitate a second, since there has been question of the Christ-image. She seems not to think of Falco’s being already mad. She does not say a word of her terror. Her faith in the image is such that she answers softly, like a subdued and obedient child: —
“Passafiore, I will go with you.”
She follows him as if walking in her sleep. She does not hesitate to go with him up Etna. She does not hesitate to climb down the steep cliffs into the quarry. She comes, pale as death, but with shining eyes, to the old brigand in his hole in the cliff and gives him her hand. He rises up, ghastly pale as she, and follows her. They do not seem like human beings, but like spectres. They move on towards their goal in absolute silence. Their own identity is dead, but a mightier spirit guides and leads them.
Even the day after it seems like a fairy tale to Donna Micaela that she has done such a thing. She is sure that her own compassion, or pity, or love could never have made her go down into the brigands’ cave at night if a strange power had not led her.
While Donna Micaela is in the robber’s cave, old Caterina sits at her window, and waits for Falco. She has consented, almost without their needing to ask her.
“He shall go in peace to the church,” she says. “I have waited for him twenty years, but he shall go to the church.”
Soon Falco comes by, walking with Donna Micaela’s hand in his. Passafiore and Biagio follow him. Falco is bent; it is plain that he is old and feeble. He alone goes into the church; the others remain outside.
Old Caterina has seen him very plainly, but she has not moved. She sits silent all the time Falco is inside the church. Her niece, who lives with her, believes that she is praying and thanking God because she has been able to conquer her thirst for revenge.
At last Caterina asks her to open a window. “I wish to see if he still has his snake shadow,” she says.
But she is gentle and friendly. “Take the gun, if you wish,” she says. And her niece moves the gun over to the other side of the table.
At last Falco comes from the church. The moonlight falls on his face, and Caterina sees that he is unlike the Falco she remembered. The terrible moroseness and arrogance are no longer visible in his face. He comes bent and broken; he almost inspires her with pity.
“He helps me,” he says aloud to Passafiore and Biagio. “He has promised to help me.”
The brigands wish to go, but Falco is so happy that he must first tell them of his joy.
“I feel no buzzing in my head; there is no burning, no uneasiness. He is helping me.”
His comrades take him by the hand to lead him away.
Falco goes a few steps, then stops again. He straightens himself up, and at the same time moves his body so that the snake shadow writhes and twists on the wall.
“I shall be quite well, quite well,” he says.
The men drag him away, but it is too late.
Caterina’s eyes have fallen on the snake shadow. She can control herself no longer; she throws herself across the table, takes the gun, shoots and kills Falco. She had not intended to do it, but when she saw him it was impossible for her to let him go. She had cherished the thought of revenge for twenty years. It took the upper hand over her.
“Caterina, Caterina,” screams her niece.
“He only asked me to be allowed to go in peace into the church,” answers the old woman.
Old Biagio lays Falco’s body straight, and says with a grim look: —
“He would be quite well; quite well.”
XI
VICTORY
Far back in ancient days the great philosopher Empedokles lived in Sicily. He was the most beautiful and the most perfect of men; so wonderful and so wise that the people regarded him as an incarnate god.
Empedokles owned a country-place on Etna, and one evening he prepared a feast there for his friends. During the repast he spoke such words that they cried out to him: “Thou art a god, Empedokles; thou art a god!”
During the night Empedokles thought: “You have risen as high as you can rise on earth. Now die, before adversity and feebleness take hold of you.” And he wandered up to the summit of Etna and threw himself into the burning crater. “When no one can find my body,” he thought, “the people will say that I have been taken up alive to the gods.”
The next morning his friends searched for him through the villa and on the mountain. They too came up to the crater, and there they found by the crater’s mouth Empedokles’ sandal. They understood that Empedokles had sought death in the crater in order to be counted among the immortals.
He would have succeeded had not the mountain cast up his shoe.
But on account of that story Empedokles’ name has never been forgotten, and many have wondered where his villa could have been situated. Antiquaries and treasure-seekers have looked for it; for the villa of the wonderful Empedokles was naturally filled with marble statues, bronzes, and mosaics.
Donna Micaela’s father, Cavaliere Palmeri, had set his heart on solving the problem of the villa. Every morning he mounted his pony, Domenico, and rode away to search for it. He was armed as an investigator, with a scraper in his belt, a spade at his side, and a big knapsack on his back.
Every evening, when Cavaliere Palmeri came home, he told Donna Micaela about Domenico. During the years that they had ridden about on Etna, Domenico had become an antiquary. Domenico turned from the road as soon as he caught sight of a ruin. He stamped on the ground in places where excavations should be made. He snorted scornfully and turned away his head if any one showed him a counterfeit piece of old money.
Donna Micaela listened with great patience and interest. She was sure that in case that villa finally did let itself be found Domenico would get all the glory of the discovery.
Cavaliere Palmeri never asked his daughter about her undertaking. He never showed any interest in the railway. It seemed almost as if he were ignorant that she was working for it.
It was not singular however; he never showed interest in anything that concerned his daughter.
One day, as they both sat at the dining-table, Donna Micaela all at once began to talk of the railway.
She had won a victory, she said; she had finally won a victory.
He must hear what news she had received that day. It was not merely to be a railway between Catania and Diamante, as she first had thought; it was to be a railway round the whole of Etna.
By Falco’s death she had not only been rid of Falco himself, but now the people believed also that the great Mongibello and all the saints were on her side. And so there had arisen an agitation of the people to make the railway an actuality. Contributions were signed in all the towns of Etna. A company was formed. To-day the concession had come; to-morrow the work was to begin in earnest.
Donna Micaela was excited; she could not eat. Her heart swelled with joy and thankfulness. She could not help talking of the tremendous enthusiasm that had seized the people. She spoke with tears in her eyes of the Christchild in the church of San Pasquale.
It was touching to see how her face shone with hope. It was as if she had, besides the happiness of which she was speaking, a whole world of bliss in expectation.
That evening she felt that Providence had guided her well and happily. She perceived that Gaetano’s imprisonment had been the work of God to lead him back to faith. He would be set free by the miracles of the little image, and that would convert him so that he would become a believer as before. And she might be his. How good God was!
And while this great bliss stirred within her, her father sat opposite her quite cold and indifferent.
“It was very extraordinary,” was all he said.
“You will come to-morrow to the ceremony of the laying of the foundations?”
“I do not know; I have my investigations.”
Donna Micaela began to crumble her bread rather hastily. Her patience was exhausted. She had not asked him to share her sorrows, but her joys; he must share her joys!
All at once the shackles of submission and fear, which had bound her ever since the time of his imprisonment, broke.
“You who ride so much about Etna,” she said with a very quiet voice, “must have also come to Gela?”
The cavaliere looked up and seemed to search his memory. “Gela, Gela?”
“Gela is a village of a hundred houses, which is situated on the southern side of Monte Chiaro, quite at its foot,” continued Donna Micaela, with the most innocent expression. “It is squeezed in between Simeto and the mountain, and a branch of the river generally flows through the principal street of Gela so that it is very unusual to be able to pass dry-shod through the village. The roof of the church fell in during the last earthquake, and it has never been mended, for Gela is quite destitute. Have you really never heard of Gela?”
Cavaliere Palmeri answered with inexpressible solemnity: “My investigations have taken me up the mountain. I have not thought of looking for the great philosopher’s villa in Gela.”
“But Gela is an interesting town,” said Donna Micaela, obstinately. “They have no separate out-houses there. The pigs live on the lower floor, the people one flight up. There is an endless number of pigs in Gela. They thrive better than the people, for the people are almost always sick. Fever is always raging there; malaria never leaves it. It is so damp that the cellars are always under water, and it is wrapped in swamp mists every night. In Gela there are no shops and no police, nor post-office, nor doctor, nor apothecary. Six hundred people are living there forgotten and brutalized. You have never heard of Gela?” She looked honestly surprised.
Cavaliere Palmeri shook his head. “Of course I have heard the name – ”
Donna Micaela cast a questioning glance on her father. She then bent quickly forward towards him, and drew out of his breastpocket a small, bent knife, such a knife as is used to prune grape-vines.
“Poor Empedokles,” she said, and all at once her whole face sparkled with fun. “You may believe you have mounted to the gods, but Etna always throws up your shoe.”
Cavaliere Palmeri sank back as if shot.
“Micaela!” he said, feebly fencing like some one who does not know how he shall defend himself.
But she was instantly as serious and innocent as before. “I have been told,” she said, “that Gela a few years ago was on the way to ruin. All the people there grow grapes, and when the phylloxera came and destroyed their vineyards, they almost starved to death. The Agricultural Society sent them some of those American plants that are not affected by the phylloxera. The people of Gela set them out, but all the plants died. How could the people of Gela know how to tend American vines? Well, some one came and taught them.”
“Micaela!” – it came almost like a wail. Donna Micaela thought that her father already looked like a conquered man, but she continued as if she had noticed nothing.
“Some one came,” she said with strong emphasis, “and he had had new vines sent out. He began to plant them in their vineyards. They laughed at him; they said that he was mad. But look, his vines grew and lived; they did not die. And he has saved Gela.”
“I do not think that your story is entertaining, Micaela,” said Cavaliere Palmeri with an attempt to interrupt her.
“It is quite as entertaining as your investigations,” she said, calmly. “But I will tell you something. One day I went into your room to get a book on antiquities. Then I found that all your bookshelves were full of pamphlets about the phylloxera, about the cultivation of grapes, about wine-making.”
The cavaliere twisted on his chair like a worm. “Be silent; be silent!” he said feebly. He was more embarrassed than when he was accused of theft.
Now all the suppressed fun shone once more in her eyes.
“I sometimes looked at the letters you sent off,” she continued. “I wished to see with what learned men you corresponded. It surprised me that the letters were always addressed to presidents and secretaries of Agricultural Societies.”
Cavaliere Palmeri was unable to utter a word. Donna Micaela enjoyed his helplessness more than can be described.
She looked him steadily in the eyes. “I do not believe that Domenico has yet learned to recognize a ruin,” she said with emphasis. “The dirty children of Gela play with him every day, and feed him with water-cresses. Domenico seems to be a god in Gela, to say nothing of his – ”
Cavaliere Palmeri seemed to have an idea.
“Your railway,” he said; “what did you say about your railway? Perhaps I really can come to-morrow.”
Donna Micaela did not listen to him. She took up her pocket-book.
“I have here a counterfeit old coin,” she said, – “a ‘Demarata’ of nickel. I bought it to show Domenico. He is going to snort.”
“Listen, child!”
She did not answer his attempts to make amends. Now the power was hers. It would take more than that to pacify her.
“Once I opened your knapsack to look at your antiquities. The only thing there was an old grape-vine.”
She was full of sparkling gayety.
“Child, child!”
“What is it to be called? It does not seem to be investigating. Is it perhaps charity; is it perhaps atonement – ”
Cavaliere Palmeri struck with his clenched fist on the table so that the glasses and plates rang. It was unbearable. A dignified and solemn old gentleman could not endure such mockery. “As surely as you are my daughter, you must be silent now.”
“Your daughter!” she said, and her gayety was gone in an instant; “am I really your daughter? The children in Gela are allowed to caress at least Domenico, but I – ”
“What do you wish, Micaela, what do you want?”
They looked at one another, and their eyes simultaneously filled with tears.
“I have no one but you,” she murmured.
Cavaliere Palmeri opened his arms unconditionally to her. She rose hesitatingly; she did not know if she saw right.
“I know how it is going to be,” he said, grumblingly; “not one minute will I have to myself.”
“To find the villa?”
“Come here and kiss me, Micaela! To-night is the first time since we left Catania that you have been irresistible.”
When she threw her arms about him it was with a hoarse, wild cry which almost frightened him.