Last Tales (43 page)

“But finally,” he finished very slowly, “finally and most powerfully man desires life everlasting.”

“Go on,” said Orosmane, “I know all about life everlasting. My tutor, old Court-chaplain Nielsen, got much credit because I did so well in my catechism.” He rattled on quickly: “The forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting. Is that what you want?”

“More or less,” said Yorick. “Although my body is not exactly the part of me on which I pride myself most. Light it is, and yet often heavy and painful to carry about. Let it remain where it is. Still, my spirit yearns for that everlasting life, and will not be dismissed.

“You yourself, the Lord’s Anointed,” he continued, “are on the safe side, and will take your seat,
hochselig
amidst
your
hochselig
ancestors. But my own dear soul roams in uncertainty, now striving toward light, now shrinking from the dark and thus, in all this matter, bound to suffer both the pangs of hunger and the infinite longing for the embrace. And indeed I should much like to help it on!”

Orosmane, his happy memory of former triumphs once awakened, recited a stanza from an old Danish hymn:

“How sweet it is to taste the flavor
Of what the house may call its own,
And of one’s due inhale the savor
Mid those who stand before the throne.
                   Oh, there to see
                  The Persons Three
Is risen humans’ greatest favor.”

He lost the thread of the stanza, broke off, and gazed fixedly first at his own hand and then at Lise and Yorick. Yorick too became thoughtful, waited and sipped a little gin from his glass.

“Yes,” he said and smacked his lips a little, “it will certainly be very sweet to taste, and the house, without doubt, will call a great deal its own. But I will confide to you, Orosmane, what I have not dared to confide to anyone else, because you understand all that one says to you! I shall never entirely turn away from this earth. I have, you see, continuously kept it alive in my thought, just as, when I was a child, I kept alive a bird in its cage or a plant in my window, by giving them water when they were thirsty, by shifting them toward the sun and by covering them up at night. This earth of ours has been most dear and precious to me. Even up above there, I certainly could not help peering out from time to time to find out whether it were able to go on without me. Aye, I should, even up there, cry to it to preserve me! I should long to see my state of heavenly bliss reflected, far away down on earth, as in a mirror. Do you know, Sire, what such a reflection is called?”

“No, I do not,” said Orosmane.

“It is called
mythos!”
Yorick cried out, transported. “My
mythos!
It is the earthly reflection of my heavenly existence. Mythos, in Greek, means speech, or, since I was never good at Greek,” he added as in parentheses, “and since great scholars may consider me mistaken—you and I, at any rate, for tonight will agree to take it in such a sense. Highly pleasant and delightful is speech, Orosmane; we have experienced it tonight. Yet, previous to speech, and higher than speech, we acknowledge another idea:
logos
. Logos, in the Greek, means
Word
, and by the Word all things were created.”

A rhythm in their common, happy intoxication, like to a noble, precise law, throughout their talk had led on and borne up the talkers. The same law now appeared gently and formally to force them apart, as when two dancers in a ballet separate, and the one, although still close at hand and indispensable to the figure, remains inactive, observing his partner’s great solo. The host in a mighty movement swung away from his guest and figured alone.

“Verily, verily,” he cried, “all my life I have loved the Word. Few men have loved it as deeply as I. Its innermost secrets are laid open to me. Therefore, also, a knowledge has been communicated to me. At the moment when my Almighty Father first created me by His word, He demanded and expected from me that I should one day return to Him and bring Him back His word, as speech. That is the one task allotted to me, to fulfill during my time and my course on earth. From His divine Logos—the creative force, the beginning—I shall work out my human mythos—the abiding substance, remembrance. And in time to come, when by His infinite grace I shall once more have become one with Him, then will we look down together from heaven—I myself with tears, but my God with a smile—demanding and expecting that this mythos of mine shall remain after me on earth.

“Terrible,” he continued, in a changed, slower rhythm, “terrible is the comprehension of this our obligation toward
the Lord. Terrible in its weight and incessancy is the obligation of the acorn to yield Him the oak tree—and yet it is exquisite, too, and sweet and pleasant is the young verdure after a summer rain. Crushing in its weight is my own covenant with the Lord, yet it is, at the same time, highly gay and glorious! For if I do only hold onto it myself, no adversity and no distress shall compel me, but it is I who shall compel adversity and distress, poverty and sickness, and the harshness even of my enemies, and force those to labor with me for my benefit. And all things shall work together for good to me!”

He came back to his partner in the dance, and in front of the latter’s figure, which had remained immovable on the spot, he made ready for their
pas de deux
.

“What good luck,” he cried, “that I have tonight got you here to talk to, Orosmane. All other people might think that I am drunk and am talking wildly. But you are a king, and I once more bless you for your kingly understanding. Your sympathy convinces me that this mythos of mine will indeed some day be found on earth. In two hundred years’ time the people of Copenhagen will know nothing at all about me; yet when they meet me they will recognize me. Terrifying and joyous is my covenant with the King of Heaven—
dignum et justum est
, that the hand of an earthly king shall seal it.”

Orosmane received him gracefully and harmoniously as a dancer, and fell in with his rhythm.

“Ainsi soit-il!”
he said. “My hand shall seal your covenant.”

For a moment, as in confirmation of what had been spoken, both speakers were at rest and expectant.

“But what of me?” Orosmane exclaimed in a new movement. “What of me? Will I myself, some day, obtain that reflection on earth of my heavenly glorification, which you tell me is called mythos? Do you think so?”

“Yes, I think so,” said Yorick.

“O la la,” cried Orosmane. “You think so, because all your
life you have associated with decent people and have never met tutors, teachers of religion or advisers of kings, and so have no knowledge of genuine
canaillerie
. For all that you have said tonight, Poet, is but what I myself have long known, and what all my life I have wanted. What other thing have I ever longed for but that which you have named, and which you call—what did you call it?”

“Mythos,” said Yorick.

“—but mythos! I have wished to harden myself—and surely a mythos is hard, and surely an oak tree is hard—and I have wanted to be all in one piece, like them. But I shall tell you something, you! At Court, and in council meetings, people fear! Everybody fears, although none of them will ever let out what it is they fear. They may tell you that they fear God—but they fear not God!—or that they fear the King—but they fear not the King! Nay, they run about, they tattle, they bow and scrape and rig themselves out in uniforms and robes, they chop up a king’s mind and life into kindling wood, all for fear of one thing, which is named …”

“Mythos,” said Yorick.

“Mythos,” said Orosmane. “Womenfolk they will get for me in plenty, both of the blood royal and out of the Danish stud-book—in order to have me henpecked. They wish a king’s mythos to be danced on by silk slippers, but not one of them will bring a cothurnus for it to march in. They would consent to honor me with a pompous enough monument—and the sooner the better too—they will be all at one in setting up an equestrian statue for me. But they are all at one, take my word for it, in grudging me the—say it again!”

“The mythos,” said Yorick.

“The mythos,” said Orosmane.
“Tu l’as dit!
My seat amidst my
hochselig
ancestors I cannot fail to get. But the clear and deep reflection of my
Hochseligkeit
here, here in Copenhagen, they are smashing up before it has come into existence—into a thousand pieces, so that even now, while still alive, I hear the splinters of glass clatter round my ears!”

Yorick looked at his guest for a long time. At last he spoke.

“No,” he said with great authority. “You are wrong, Sire. You will have your mythos.

“For your mythos will be this, that you have got none. Your people of Denmark, of Copenhagen, in two hundred years will know but little about you—and maybe nothing at all. Yet within the long row of kings of Denmark, of Christians and Fredericks, the one whom they will first of all recognize will be you.”

Orosmane was now silent for a while, with all his powers of observation turned inwards, onto something in himself.

“Fill my glass,” he said.

The gin, which might be said to have been the music to the scene, lifted up his being into high earnestness and energy. Now was the time for his own solo. Strangely free and erect and light as a bird, he rose, spiritually, on tiptoe. No movement of his was over-hasty or disconnected, in his most daring airiness there was abundance and equilibrium. He glided across the pause as across a stage, straight towards Yorick.

“You praised your luck, Yorick, my poet and my friend,” he said, “in having me to speak to tonight. Now hear! Your luck is greater than you know of. I will share my wisdom with you. I will tell you who I am, and who you are!

“For there are,” he went on, “upon this earth a few people—and to my belief we are only seven in all—who see into the true and essential nature of the world. The others incessantly distort it to us because they want nobody to understand its proportions and harmony. And those others will be working tirelessly to separate us and to keep us apart—since they are aware that if we are united, we should overcome our foes. All my life I have looked out for the six others of my own kind, but my jailers have not allowed me to find them. Ha, they do not know that tonight, I have all by myself found my way up here, to you! And alas—soon, very
soon, they will be on my track to tear us asunder. At this very moment they are out after me, scurrying through backyards, up alleys and steep stairs. Well may you now think, and cry out:

 … o nuit, nuit effroyable,
peux-tu prêter ton voile à de pareils forfaits!

“But in that hour of which you spoke, and which you toasted, we can still be together and speak the truth to each other. Let me then, as I speak truly to you, have your true answers.”

“Aye,” said Yorick. “Speak, Sire, your Poet and Fool listens.”

“Listen, my Poet and my Fool,” said Orosmane. “The world, I tell you, is far nobler and more beautiful than our enemies will ever allow us to see.”

“It is so,” said Yorick.

“Human beings,” Orosmane continued, “are all created greater, finer and more lovable than they look.”

“They are so,” said Yorick.

“And are not our pleasures,” Orosmane cried, “much greater fun than they allow us to perceive?”

“Why, yes,” said Yorick.

“Are not our actors of the stage,” Orosmane cried again, “far less wretched than they appear to us?”

“Certainly they are,” said Yorick.

“And is it not,” said Orosmane, “a great deal more pleasant to go to bed with a woman than we can know by now?”

“Of that I can assure you,
mon Soudane,”
said Yorick.

“We three then do know!” said Orosmane. “We do know, you and I and Lise—even if, the night over, we must keep our knowledge to ourselves. We know, tonight, how sweet and of what excellent quality is our gin. Aye, we know,” he exclaimed, slipping over into a graceful repetition of an earlier passage of the conversation:

“How sweet it is to taste the flavor
Of what the house may call its own,
And of one’s due inhale the savor
Mid those who stand before the throne.
                    Oh, there to see
                   The Persons Three
Is risen human’s greatest favor.”

He gracefully stretched out a hand, slim, pointed fingers collected—to each side, toward the two others. The hand was not meant to be touched, nor did either of them stir to touch it. Yet this gesture of high kingly favor made the three people in the room one.

“And,” he said very slowly, “
Il y a dans ce monde un bonheur parfait
.”

Yorick rose and fell into step with his partner.

“Yes, Sire,” he agreed, speaking as slowly and weightily as he. “There are, upon this earth and in this our existence, three kinds of perfect happiness. And there are human beings so highly favored as to come to taste all three.”

“Even three!” Orosmane cried out joyfully. “There you see how, when we three are together, good things double and treble themselves. Now set words to my thoughts, you who tell me that you love the word. Nothing further shall I demand of you. Name the three.”

“The first
bonheur parfait,”
said Yorick, “is this: to feel in oneself an excess of strength.”

“As we do now!” said Orosmane and laughed. “As now, blissfully united, we are able to soar into the air, like to three kites made fast with slim strings only to wet Copenhagen beneath us. You are a real poet, you! Your words turn my thoughts into pictures. At this moment I see before me a glass filled to the brim with wine from Bouzy or Epernay, foaming down its stem, and in its abundance frothing even in the dust! When, at the time of my accession to the throne, I informed the wig-blocks that I would now rage for a year,
then did I foam and froth like that. An access of strength—ha, those are sweet-sounding words, like a song. And verily, during that one year the entire Court-ceremonial was turned into a drinking song, which rang in the halls of our palace and resounded in our streets of Copenhagen! But you tell me,” he went on after a short pause, “that there is a second happiness as perfect as the first. Name it! ”