Сельма Лагерлёф
The Miracles of Antichrist
That autumn she at last received a letter from Gaetano. Alas, such a letter! Donna Micaela’s first thought was to burn it.
She had gone up to the roof-garden in order to be alone when she read the letter. She had once heard Gaetano’s declaration of love there. That had not moved her. It had neither warmed her nor frightened her.
But this letter was different. He prayed that she would come to him, be his, give him her life. When she read it she was frightened at herself. She felt how she longed to cry out into the air, “I am coming, I am coming,” and set out. It drew her, carried her away.
“Let us be happy!” he wrote. “We are losing time; the years are passing. Let us be happy!”
He described to her how they would live. He told her of other women who had obeyed love and been happy. He wrote as temptingly as convincingly.
But it was not the contents; it was the love that glowed and burned in the letter which overcame her. It rose from the paper like an intoxicating incense, and she felt it penetrate her. It was burning, longing, speaking, in every word.
Now she was no longer a saint to him, as she had been before. It came so unexpectedly, after two years’ silence, that she was stunned. And she was troubled because it delighted her.
She had never thought that love was like this. Should she really like it? She found with dismay that she did like it.
And so she punished both herself and him by writing a severe reply. It was moral, moral; it was nothing but moral! She was proud when she had written it. She did not deny that she loved him, but perhaps Gaetano would not be able to find the words of love, they were so buried in admonitions. He could not have found them, for he wrote no more letters.
But now Donna Micaela could no longer think of Gaetano as a shelter and a support. Now he was more dangerous than the men from the mountains.
Every day graver news came to Diamante. Everybody began to get out their weapons. And although it was forbidden, they were carried secretly by every one.
All travellers left the island, and in their place one regiment after another was sent over from Italy.
The socialists talked and talked. They were possessed by evil spirits; they could not rest until they had brought on the disaster!
At last the ringleaders had decided on the day on which the storm was to break loose. All Sicily, all Italy, was to rise. It was no longer menace; it was reality.
More and more troops came from the mainland. Most of them were Neapolitans, who live in constant feud with the Sicilians. And now the news came that the island had been declared in a state of siege. There were to be no more courts of justice; only court-martials. And the people said that the soldiers would be free to plunder and murder as they pleased.
No one knew what was to happen. Terror seemed to make every one mad. The peasants raised ramparts in the hills. In Diamante men stood in great groups on the market-place, stood there day after day, without going to their work. There was something terrible in those groups of men dressed in dark cloaks and slouch hats. They were all probably dreaming of the hour when they should plunder the summer palace.
The nearer the day approached when the insurrection was to break out, the sicker Don Ferrante became; and Donna Micaela began to fear that he would die.
It seemed to her a sign that she was predestined to destruction, that she was also losing Don Ferrante. Who would have any regard for her when he was no longer alive?
She watched over him. She and all the women of the quarter sat in silent prayer about his bed.
One morning, towards six o’clock, Don Ferrante died. And Donna Micaela mourned him, because he had been her only protector, and the only one who could have saved her from destruction; and she wished to honor the dead, as is still the custom in Diamante.
She had them drape the room where the body was lying with black, and close all the shutters, so that the glad sunlight should not enter. She had all the fires put out on the hearths, and sent for a blind singer to come to the palace every day and sing dirges.
She let Giannita care for Cavaliere Palmeri, so that she herself might sit quiet in the death-room, among the other women.
It was evening on the day of death before all preparations were completed, and they were waiting only for the White Brotherhood to come and take away the corpse. In the death-chamber there was the silence of the grave. All the women of the quarter sat there motionless with dismal faces.
Donna Micaela sat pale with her great fear, and stared involuntarily at the pall that was spread over the body. It was a pall which belonged to the family; their coat of arms was heavily and gorgeously embroidered on the centre, and it had silver fringes and thick tassels. The pall had never been spread over any one but an Alagona. It seemed to lie there so that Donna Micaela should not for a moment forget that her last support had fallen, and that she was now alone, and without protection from the infuriated people.
Some one came in and announced that old Assunta had come. Old Assunta; what did old Assunta want? Yes, it was she who came to sing the praises of the dead.
Donna Micaela let Assunta come into the room. She appeared just as she looked every day, when she sat and begged on the Cathedral steps; the same patched dress, the same faded headcloth, and the same crutch.
Little and bent, she limped forward to the coffin. She had a shrivelled face, a sunken mouth, and dull eyes. Donna Micaela said to herself that it was incarnate helplessness and feebleness who had come into the room.
The old woman raised her voice and began to speak in the wife’s name.
“My lord is dead, and I am alone! He who raised me to his side is dead! Is it not terrible that my home has lost its master? – Why are the shutters of your windows closed? say the passers-by. – I answer, I cannot bear to see the light, because my sorrow is so great; my grief is three-fold. – What, are so many of your race carried away by the White Brethren? – No, none of my race is dead, but I have lost my husband, my husband, my husband!”
Old Assunta needed to say no more. Donna Micaela burst into lamentations. The whole room was filled with the sound of weeping from the sympathetic women; for there is no grief like losing a husband. Those who were widows thought of what they had lost, and those who were not as yet widows thought of the time when they would not be able to go on the street, because no husband would be with them; when they would be left to loneliness, poverty, oblivion; when they would be nothing, mean nothing; when they would be the world’s outcast children because they no longer had a husband; because nothing any longer gave them the right to live.
It was late in December, the days between Christmas and the New Year.
There was still the same danger of insurrection, and people still heard terrifying rumors. It was said that Falco Falcone had gathered together a band of brigands in the quarries, and that he was only waiting for the appointed day to break into Diamante and plunder it.
It was also whispered that the people in several of the small mountain towns had risen, torn down the custom’s offices at the town-gates, and driven away the officials.
People said too that troops were passing from town to town, arresting all suspicious people, and shooting them down by hundreds.
Every one said that they must fight. They could not let themselves be murdered by those Italians without trying to make some resistance.
During all this, Donna Micaela sat tied to her father’s sick-bed, just as she had sat before by Don Ferrante’s. She could not escape from Diamante, and terror so grew within her that she was nothing but one trembling fear.
The last and worst of all the messages of terror that reached her had been about Gaetano.
For when Don Ferrante had been dead a week Gaetano had come home. And that had not caused her dismay; it had only made her glad. She had rejoiced in at last having some one near her who could protect her.
At the same time she decided that she could not receive Gaetano if he came to see her. She felt that she still belonged to the dead. She would rather not see Gaetano until after a year.
But when Gaetano had been at home a week without coming to the summer palace, she asked Giannita about him. “Where is Gaetano? Has he perhaps gone away again, since no one speaks of him?”
“Alas, Micaela,” answered Giannita, “the less people speak of Gaetano, the better for him.”
She told Donna Micaela, as if she was telling of a great shame, that Gaetano had become a socialist.
“He has been quite transformed over there, in England,” she said. “He no longer worships either God or the saints. He does not kiss the priest’s hand when he meets him. He says to every one that they shall pay no more duties at the town-gates. He encourages the peasants not to pay their rent. He carries weapons. He has come home to start a rebellion, to help the bandits.”
She needed to say no more to chill Donna Micaela with a greater terror than she had ever felt before.
It was this that the sultry days of the autumn had portended. It would be he who would shake the bolt from the clouds. Why had she not understood it long ago?
It was a punishment and a revenge. It would be he who would bring the misfortune!
During those last days she had been calmer. She had heard that all the socialists on the island had been put in prison, and all the little insurrection fires lighted in the mountain towns had been quickly choked. It looked almost as if the rebellion would come to nothing!
But now the last Alagona was come, and him the people would follow. Life would enter into those black groups on the market-place. The men in the linen garments would climb up out of the quarries.
The next evening Gaetano spoke in the market-place. He had sat by the fountain, and had seen how the people came to get water. For two years he had foregone the pleasure of seeing the slender girls lift the heavy water-jars to their heads and walk away with firm, slow step.
But it was not only the young girls who came to the fountain; there were people of all ages. And when he saw how poor and unhappy most of them were, he began to talk to them of the future.
He promised them better times soon. He said to old Assunta that she hereafter should get her daily bread without needing to ask alms of any one. And when she said that she did not understand how that could be, he asked her almost with anger if she did not know that now the time had come when no old people and no children should be without care and shelter.
He pointed to the old chair-maker, who was as poor as Assunta, and moreover very sick, and he asked if she believed that the people would endure much longer having no support for the poor, and no hospitals. Could she not understand that it was impossible for such things to continue? Could they not all understand that hereafter the old and the sick should be cared for?
He also saw some children who, as he knew, lived on cresses and sorrel, which they gathered on the river-banks and by the roadside, and he promised that henceforward no one should need to starve. He laid his hand on the children’s heads, and swore as solemnly as if he were prince of Diamante, that they should never again want for bread.
They knew nothing in Diamante, he said; they were ignorant; they did not understand that a new and blessed time had come; they believed that this old misery would continue forever.
While he was thus consoling the poor, more and more had gathered about him, and he suddenly sprang up, placed himself on the steps of the fountain, and began to speak.
How could they, he said, be so foolish as to believe that nothing better would come? Should the people, who possessed the whole earth, be content to let their parents starve, and their children grow up to be good-for-nothings and criminals?
Did they not know that there were treasures in the mountains, and in the sea, and in the ground? Had they never heard that the earth was rich? Did they think that it could not feed its children?
They should not murmur among themselves, and say that it was impossible to arrange matters differently. They should not think that there must be rich and poor. Alas, they understood nothing! They did not know their Mother Earth. Did they think that she hated any of them? They had lain down on the ground and heard the earth speak? Perhaps they had seen her make laws? They had heard her pass sentence? She had commanded some to starve, and some to die of luxury?
Why did they not open their ears and listen to the new teachings pouring through the world? Would they not like to have a better life? Did they like their rags? Were they satisfied with sorrel and cresses? Did they not wish to possess a roof over their heads?
And he told them that it made no difference, no difference, if they refused to believe in the new times that were coming. They would come in spite of it. They did not need to lift the sun up from the sea in the morning. The new times would come to them as the sun came, but why would they not be ready to meet them? Why did they shut themselves in, and fear the new light?
He spoke long in the same strain, and more and more of the poor people of Diamante gathered about him.
The longer he continued, the more beautiful became his speech and the clearer grew his voice.
His eyes were full of fire, and to the people looking up at him, he seemed as beautiful as a young prince.
He was one of the race of once powerful lords, who had possessed means to shower happiness and gold on everybody within their wide lands. They believed him when he said that he had happiness to give them. They felt comforted, and rejoiced that their young lord loved them.
When he had finished speaking they began to shout, and call to him that they wished to follow him and do what he commanded.
He had gained ascendency over them in a moment. He was so beautiful and so glorious that they could not resist him. And his faith seized and subdued.
That night there was not one poor person in Diamante who did not believe that Gaetano would give him happy days, free from care. That night they called down blessings on him, all those who lived in sheds and out-houses. That night the hungry lay down with the sure belief that the next day tables groaning under many dishes would stand spread for them when they awoke.
For when Gaetano spoke, his power was so great that he could convince an old man that he was young, and a freezing man that he was warm. And people felt that what he promised must come.
He was the prince of the coming times. His hands were generous, and miracles and blessings would stream down over Diamante, now that he had come again.
The next day, towards sunset, Giannita came into the sick-room and whispered to Donna Micaela: “There is an insurrection in Paternó. They have been shooting for several hours, and you can hear them as far away as here. Orders for troops have already gone to Catania. And Gaetano says that it will break out here, too. He says that it will break out in all the towns of Etna at one time.”
Donna Micaela made a sign to Giannita to stay with her father, and she herself went across the street and into Donna Elisa’s shop.
Donna Elisa sat behind the counter with her frame, but she was not working. The tears fell so heavy and fast that she had ceased to embroider.
“Where is Gaetano?” said Donna Micaela, without any preamble. “I must speak to him.”
“God give you strength to talk to him,” answered Donna Elisa. “He is in the garden.”
She went out across the court-yard and into the walled garden.
In the garden there were many narrow paths winding from terrace to terrace. There was also a number of arbors and grottos and benches. And it was so thick with stiff agaves, and close-growing dwarf palms, and thick-leaved rubber-plants, and rhododendrons, that it was impossible to see two feet in front of one. Donna Micaela walked for a long time on those innumerable paths before she could find Gaetano. The longer she walked, the more impatient she became.
At last she found him at the farther end of the garden. She caught sight of him on the lowest terrace, built out on one of the bastions of the wall of the town. There sat Gaetano at ease, and worked with chisel and hammer on a statuette. When he saw Donna Micaela, he came towards her with outstretched hands.
She hardly gave herself time to greet him. “Is it true,” she said, “that you have come home to be our ruin?” He began to laugh. “The syndic has been here,” he said. “The priest has been here. Are you coming too?”
It wounded her that he laughed, and that he spoke of the priest and the syndic. It was something different, and more, that she came.
“Tell me,” she said, stiffly, “if it is true that we are to have an uprising this evening.” – “Oh, no,” he answered; “we shall have no uprising.” And he said it in such a voice that it almost made her sorry for him.
“You cause Donna Elisa great grief,” she burst out. – “And you too, do I not?” he said, with a slight sneer. “I cause you all sorrow. I am the lost son; I am Judas. I am the angel of justice who is driving you from that paradise where people eat grass.”
She answered: “Perhaps we think that what we have is better than being shot by the soldiers.” – “Yes, of course; it is better to starve to death. We are used to that.” – “Nor is it pleasant to be murdered by bandits.” – “But why for Heaven’s sake have any bandits, if you do not want to be murdered by them?” – “Yes, I know,” she said, more passionately, “that you want all the rich to perish.”
He did not answer immediately; he stood and bit his lips, so as not to lose his temper. “Let me talk with you, Donna Micaela!” he said at last. “Let me explain it to you!”
At the same time he put on a patient expression. He talked socialism with her, so clear and simple that a child could have understood.
But she was far from being able to follow it. Perhaps she could have, but she did not wish to. She did not wish just then to hear of socialism.
It had been so wonderful to her to see him. The ground had rocked under her; and something glorious and blessed had passed through and quite overcome her. “God, it is he whom I love!” she said to herself. “It is really he.”
Before she had seen him she had known very well what she would say to him. She would have led him back to the faith of his childhood. She would have shown him that those new teachings were detestable and dangerous. But then love came. It made her confused and stupid. She could not answer him. She only sat and wondered that he could talk.
She wondered if he was much handsomer now than formerly. Formerly she had not been confused at all when she saw him. She had never been attracted to that extent. Or was it that he had become a free, strong man? She was frightened when she felt how he subdued her.
She dared not contradict him. She dared not even speak, for fear of bursting into tears. Had she dared to speak, she would not have talked of public affairs. She would have told him what she had felt the day the bells rang. Or she would have prayed to be allowed to kiss his hand. She would have told him how she had dreamed of him. She would have said that if she had not had him to dream of she could not have borne her life. She would have begged to be allowed to kiss his hand in gratitude, because he had given her life all these years.
If there was to be no uprising, why did he talk socialism? What had socialism to do with them, sitting alone in Donna Elisa’s garden? She sat and looked along one of the paths. Luca had put up wooden arches on both sides of it, and up these climbed garlands of light rose-shoots, full of little buds and flowers. One always wondered whither one was coming when one went along that path. And one came to a little weather-beaten cupid. Old Luca understood things better than Gaetano.
While they sat there the sun set, and Etna grew rosy-red. It was as if Etna flushed with anger at what was going on in Donna Elisa’s garden. It was at sunset, when Etna glowed red, that she had always thought of Gaetano. It seemed as if they both had been waiting for it. And they had both arranged how it would be when Gaetano came. She had only feared that he would be too fiery, and too passionately wild. And he talked only of those dreadful Socialists, whom she detested and feared.
He talked a long time. She saw Etna grow pale and become bronze-brown, and then the darkness came. She knew that there would be moonlight. There she sat quite still, and hoped for help from the moonlight. She herself could do nothing. She was entirely in his power. But when the moonlight came, it did not help either. He continued to talk of capitalists and working-men.
Then it seemed to her as if there could be but one explanation for all this. He must have ceased to love her.
Suddenly she remembered something. It was a week ago. It was the same day that Gaetano had come home. She had come into Giannita’s room, but she had walked so softly that Giannita had not heard her. She had seen Giannita stand as if in ecstasy, with up-stretched arms and up-turned face. And in her hands she held a picture. First she carried it to her lips and kissed it, then she lifted it up over her head and looked up to it in rapture. And the picture had been of Gaetano.
When Donna Micaela had seen that, she had gone away as silently as she had come. She had only thought then that Giannita was to be pitied if she loved Gaetano. But now, when Gaetano only talked socialism, now she remembered it.
Now she began to think that Gaetano also loved Giannita. She remembered that they were friends from childhood. He had perhaps loved her a long time. Perhaps he had come home to marry her. Donna Micaela could say nothing; she had nothing to complain of. It was scarcely a month since she wrote to Gaetano that it was not right of him to love her.
He now leaned towards her, enchained her glance, and actually compelled her to listen to what he was saying.
“You shall understand; you shall see and understand, Donna Micaela! What we need here in the South is a regeneration, a pulling up by the roots, such as Christianity was in its time. Up with the slaves; down with the masters! A plow which turns up new social furrows! We must sow in new earth; the old earth is impoverished. The old surface furrows bear only weak, miserable growth. Let the deep earth come up to the light, and we shall see something different!
“See, Donna Micaela, why does socialism live; why has it not gone under? Because it comes with a new word. ‘Think of the earth,’ it says, just as Christianity came with the word, ‘Think of heaven.’ Look about you! Look at the earth; is it not all that we possess? Let us therefore establish ourselves here so that we shall be happy. Why, why, has no one thought of it before? Because we have been so busy with that Hereafter. Let us leave the Hereafter! The earth, the earth, Donna Micaela! Ah, we socialists, we love her! We worship the sacred earth, – the poor, despised mother, who wears mourning because her children yearn for heaven.
“Believe me, Donna Micaela,” he said, “it will be accomplished in less than seven years. In the year nineteen hundred it will be ready. Then martyrs will have bled; then apostles will have spoken; then shall crowds upon crowds have been won over! We, the rightful sons of the earth, shall have the victory! And she shall lie before us in all her loveliness; she shall bring us beauty, bring us pleasure, bring us knowledge, bring us health!”
Gaetano’s voice began to tremble, and tears quivered in his eyes. He went forward to the edge of the terrace, and he stretched out his arms as if to embrace the moonlit earth. “You are so dazzlingly beautiful,” he said, “so dazzlingly beautiful!”
And Donna Micaela for a moment thought she felt his grief over all the sorrow that lay under the surface of beauty. She saw life full of vice and suffering, like a dirty river filled with the stench of uncleanliness, wind through the glistening world of beauty.
“And no one can enjoy you,” said Gaetano; “no one can dare to enjoy you. You are untamed, and full of whims and anger. You are uncertainty and peril; you are sorrow and pain; you are want and shame; you are the force that grinds; you are everything terrible that can be named, because the people have not wished to make you better.
“But your day will come,” he said, triumphantly. “Some day they will turn to you with all their love; they will not turn to a dream, which gives nothing and is good for nothing.”
She interrupted him roughly. She began to fear him more and more.
“So it is true that you have had no success in England?”
“What do you mean?”
“People say that the great master, to whom Miss Tottenham sent you, has said that you – ”
“What has he said?”
“That you and your images suited Diamante, but nowhere else.”
“Who says such things?”
“People think so, because you are so changed.”
“Since I am a socialist.”
“Why should you be one if you had been successful?”
“Ah, why – ? You do not know,” he continued, with a laugh, “that my master in England himself was a socialist. You do not know that it was he who taught me these opinions – ”
He paused, and did not go on with the controversy. He went over to the bench where he had been sitting when she came, and brought back a statuette. He handed it to Donna Micaela. He seemed to wish to say: “See for yourself if you are right.”
She took it, and held it up in the moonlight. It was a Mater Dolorosa in black marble. She could see it quite plainly.
She could also recognize it. The image had her own features. It intoxicated her for a moment. In the next she was filled with horror. He, a socialist; he, an unbeliever; he dared to create a Madonna! And he had given the image her features! He entangled her in his sin!
“I have done it for you, Donna Micaela,” he said.
Ah, since it was hers! She threw it out over the balustrade. It struck against the steep mountain side; fell deeper and deeper; broke loose stones, and certainly shattered itself to pieces. At last a splash was heard down in Simeto.
“What right have you to carve Madonnas?” she asked Gaetano.
He stood silent. He had never seen Donna Micaela thus.
In the moment when she rose up before him she had become tall and stately. The beauty that always came and went in her, like an uneasy guest, was enthroned in her face. She looked cold and inflexible; a woman to win and conquer.
“Then you still believe in God, since you carve Madonnas?” she said.
He breathed hurriedly. Now it was he who was paralyzed. He had been a believer himself. He knew how he had wounded her. He saw that he had forfeited her love. He had made a terrible, infinite chasm between them.
He must speak, must win her over to his side.
He began again, but feebly and falteringly.
She listened quietly for a while. Then she interrupted him almost compassionately.
“How did you become so?”
“I thought of Sicily,” he said submissively.
“You thought of Sicily,” she repeated thoughtfully. “And why did you come home?”
“I came home to cause an insurrection.”
It was as if they had spoken of an illness, a chill, that he had contracted, and that could quite easily be cured.
“You came home to be our ruin,” she said, sternly.
“As you will; as you will,” he said, complying. “You can call it so. As everything is going now, you are certainly right to call it so. Ah, if they had not given me false information; if I had not come a week too late! Is it not like us Sicilians to let the government anticipate us? When I came the leaders were already arrested, the island garrisoned with forty thousand men. Everything lost!”
It sounded strangely blank when he said that “everything lost.” And for that which never could be anything, he had lost happiness. His opinions and principles seemed to him now to be dry cobwebs, which had captured him. He wished to tear himself away to come to her. She was the only reality, the only thing that was his. So he had felt before. It came back now. She was the only thing in the world.
“They are, however, fighting to-day in Paternó.”
“There has been a disagreement by the town-gate,” he said. “It is nothing. If I had been able to inflame all Etna, the whole circle of towns round about Etna! Then they would have understood us! they would have listened to us! Now they are shooting down a few hungry peasants to make a few hungry mouths the less. They do not yield an inch to us.”
He strove to break through his cobwebs. Could he venture to go up to her, to tell her that all that was of no importance? He did not need to think of politics. He was an artist; he was free! And he wanted to possess her!
Suddenly it seemed as if the air trembled. A shot echoed through the night, then another and another.
She came forward to him and grasped his wrist. “Is that the uprising?” she asked.
Shot upon shot came thundering. Then were heard the cries and din of a crowd rushing down the street.
“It is the uprising; it must be the uprising! Ah, long live socialism!”
He was filled with joy. Entire faith in his belief came back to him. He would win her too. Women have never refused to belong to the victor.
They both hurried without another word through the garden to the door. There Gaetano began to swear and call. He could not get out. There was no key in the lock. He was shut into the garden.
He looked about. There were high walls on three sides, and on the fourth an abyss. There was no way out for him. But from the town came a terrible noise. The people were rushing up and down; there were shots and cries. And they heard them yell: “Long live freedom! Long live socialism!” He threw himself against the door, and almost shrieked. He was imprisoned; he could not take part.
Donna Micaela came up to him as quickly as she could. Now, since she had heard him, she no longer thought of keeping him back.
“Wait, wait!” she said. “I took the key.”