Five Women Page 5

  Herr von Ketten was well aware of all this. He had trouble in preventing the weakened, sullen forces of the knights from squandering the last of their strength in a sudden, hasty attack. He was always on the outlook for the exposed position, the turn of events, the unlikely constellation that only chance could bring about. So too his father had bided his time, and his father before him. And if one in his castle in the guise of a beautiful outlandish woman that he visited there in secret.

  The first time he heard this Herr von Ketten neither frowned nor laughed: but his face became dark golden with joy. Often, when he sat by the camp-fire or at some peasant's hearth and the hard day behind him would seem to soften in the warmth, as rain-stiffened leather will grow soft again, he would think. He would think, at such times, of the Bishop of Trent, who slept on fresh linen, was surrounded by learned clerks, and had painters in his service, while he himself roamed like a wolf, circling round the enemy. He too could have that. He had installed a chaplain in his castle so that the needs of the spirit might be provided for, and a scrivener to read aloud, and a merry maid-in-waiting; a cook had been brought from a great distance, so that the castle's mistress need not hanker for the dishes she had known at home; wandering scholars and students would be given hospitality so that their conversation might afford some days of distraction; costly stuffs and tapestries came, so that the walls might be covered. Only he stayed away.

  For a whole year, in that far country and on the journey, he had practised pretty speeches and flattery. For just as every well-made thing, be it steel or strong wine, horse or fountain, has a spirit of its own, so too the lords delle Catene had, and were not lacking in wit. But during that time he was far from his homeland and his essential being was something that he might ride towards for many weeks without reaching it. And even now he would sometimes unthinkingly make gallant speeches, but only so long as the horses were being rested in the stables. He would arrive late at night and ride away the next morning; or else he would be there from when the bell rang for Matins till the Angelus. He was as familiar to her as a thing long worn on one's person. When you laugh, that familiar thing also laughs—is shaken to and fro; when you walk, it goes with you; when your hand touches your own body, you feel the presence of that thing: but if you raise it up and contemplate it, it remains silent, it avoids your eyes. If he had ever remained longer, he would have had to be truly as he was. But he recalled that he had never said: I am this; or: I wish to be that. He had talked to her of hunting, of adventures and of things that he did. Nor had she ever done what young people so often do and asked him what he thought about this and about that, or said anything about what she would wish to be like when she was older; lively as she had been before, she had simply bloomed, silently, like a rose, and she had stood on the church steps ready to depart, as though on a mounting-block from which she would step into the saddle and ride into that other life.

  He scarcely knew the two children she had borne him, but these two sons of his also loved him passionately—that remote father with whose fame their childish ears had rung since they could remember. It was a strange memory, that of the evening to which the second son owed his being. There she was, when he came home, in a soft light-grey robe patterned with dark grey flowers; her black hair was already plaited for the night, and her finely chiselled nose cast a sharp shadow into the smooth yellow of a book on which the lamplight shone, illumining the mysterious pictures it contained. It was like magic. Tranquilly the woman sat there, in her rich gown, the skirt flowing down in countless rippling folds—a figure rising out of itself and falling back into itself, like the water of a fountain. And is the water of a fountain anything that can be ransomed and redeemed, can it be set free by anything but magic or some miracle, and thus issue forth wholly out of its self-borne, swaying existence? Embracing the woman, might he not suddenly be brought up short by the force of some magical resistance? This was not so—but is tenderness not even more uncanny?

  She looked at him, as he entered, like someone recognising an old cloak that one has not worn for a long time, has not even seen for a long time, and which remains a little strange, and yet one wraps it round oneself.

  What intimate, familiar things, by contrast, did the strategies of war, and political cunning and anger and killing seem to him! An act is performed because some other act has preceded it. The Bishop relies on his gold pieces, and the captain on the nobility's powers of endurance. To command is a thing of clarity; such a life is day-bright, solid to the touch, and the thrust of a spear under an iron collar that has slipped is as simple as pointing one's finger at something and being able to say: This is. this. But the other thing is as alien as the moon.

  Secretly Herr von Ketten loved this other thing. He took no delight in ordering his household or increasing his wealth. And although he had for years been fighting about possessions not his own, his desire was not a reaching out for the satisfaction of gain; it was a yearning from his very soul. It was in their brows that the Catene's power lay; but all that their power produced was voiceless actions. Every morning that he climbed into the saddle he again felt the happiness of not yielding, and this was the very soul of his soul. But when he dismounted at evening, often a sullen weariness of all the violence he had been living with would sink upon him, as though that day he had been straining all his resources lest, through no doing of his own, he should suddenly be radiant with some inner beauty for which he had no name. The Bishop, that slippered priest, could pray to God when Ketten pressed him hard. Ketten could only ride through standing corn, feel the horse's stubborn, billowing movement under him, and conjure up good will with blows of his iron gauntlet. But he was thankful that it should be so. He was glad that a man could live and cause others to die without that other thing. Thus one could deny and drive off something that crept towards the fire when one stared into the flames, something that was gone the moment one straightened up, stiff from dreaming, and turned round. Herr von Ketten sometimes became entangled in the long, intertwining threads of his thoughts when he remembered the Bishop to whom he was doing all this, and it seemed to him that only a miracle could straighten it all out.

  His wife would summon the old steward and roam through the forest with him when she was not sitting gazing at the pictures in her books. Forest opens up before one, but its soul withdraws. She would press through the undergrowth, clamber over boulders, come upon tracks and spoors, and catch glimpses of animals, but she never came home having had more than such small adventures, difficulties overcome, curiosities satisfied, things from which all the life vanished as soon as one emerged from the forest. And that green fata morgana of which she had heard tell before she came to this country—as soon as one was no longer entering into it, it closed again behind one's back.

  Rather indolently, meanwhile, she kept some order in the castle. As for her sons, neither of whom had ever seen the sea—were they really her children? At times it seemed to her they were young wolves. Once she was brought a wolf-cub that had been taken in the forest. And she looked after him too. He and the great hounds treated each other with uneasy tolerance, letting each other be without exchanging any sign. When the wolf-cub crossed the castle yard, they would stand up and watch him pass, but they neither barked nor growled. And even if he cast a sidelong glance at them, he would keep straight on, scarcely slackening his pace, only a little more stiff-legged, lest he should show any fear. He followed his mistress everywhere. He gave no sign of affection or of familiarity, merely turning his intense gaze to her often —but his gaze said nothing. She loved this wolf for his sinewiness, his brown coat, and the silent ferocity and intensity of his gaze, which reminded her of Herr von Ketten.

  At last the moment came for which a man must wait. The Bishop fell ill and died, and the cathedral chapter was without leadership. Ketten sold his goods and chattels, mortgaged his land, and employed all his means to equip a small army entirely his own. Then he negotiated. Faced with the choice between having to continue the old stru
ggle against newly armed forces and coming to terms, the chapter decided for the latter; and it was inevitable that Ketten, the last captain remaining, strong and menacing, in the field, should make advantageous terms for himself, while the cathedral chapter extorted what compensation it could from weaker and more hesitant foes.

  So there was an end to what, by the fourth generation, had become like the wall of a room, a wall one sees facing one every morning at breakfast and does not really see at all. All at once this wall was not there. Hitherto everything had been as in the lives of all foregoing Kettens, and all that remained to be done in this Ketten's life was to round things out and set them in order, an artisan's aim in life, no goal for a great lord.

  And then, as he was riding home, a fly stung him.

  His hand at once began to swell, and he became very tired. He dismounted at the tavern in a small, poverty-stricken village, and, sitting at the greasy wooden table, he laid his head down on it, overcome by drowsiness. When he woke, at evening, he was in a fever. He would nevertheless have ridden on if he had been in haste; but he was not in haste now. In the morning, when he tried to mount, he was so dizzy that he slipped and fell. The swelling had already spread up his arm to his shoulder. Having forced his armour on, he had to be unbuckled again, and while he was standing there, letting it be done, he was shaken by such a fit of shivering as he had never known. His muscles twitched and jerked so that his hands would not obey him, and the half-unbuckled pieces of armour clattered like a loose roof-gutter in a gale. He felt this was unworthy of him, and laughed, with grimly set face, at his clattering; but his legs were weak as a child's. He sent a messenger to his wife, another to a surgeon, and yet another to a famous physician.

  The surgeon, who was the first to arrive, prescribed hot compresses of healing herbs and asked for permission to use the knife. Ketten, who was now much more impatient to reach home, bade him cut—until he had half as many fresh wounds again as he had old ones. How strange it was to let pain be inflicted on one and not defend oneself! For two days he lay wrapped from head to toe in the healing herbal compresses, and then had himself carried home. The journey took three days, but this kill-or-cure treatment, which might indeed have caused his death by exhausting his remaining strength, seemed to have halted the malady : when they arrived, he lay in a high fever from the poison in his blood, but the infection had not spread further.

  This fever was like a plain of burning grass, smouldering on day after day, week after week. Daily the sick man dwindled, being consumed in his own fire, but the evil humours also seemed to be gradually consumed by it. More than this even the famous physician could not say, and only the lady from Portugal knew secret signs that she chalked on his door and the bedposts. When, one day, there was almost nothing left of Herr von Ketten, only something like a shape filled with soft, hot ash, suddenly the fever diminished—remaining a mere faint glimmer under the ashes.

  If it was strange to suffer pain against which one did not fight, what followed now was something that the sick man did not experience like someone who was himself in the midst of it. He slept a great deal, and was absent even when his eyes were open. But when his consciousness returned, this body without any will of its own, this body as warm and helpless as an infant's, was not his at all, and neither was this weak soul that the faintest breath of air could agitate. Surely he had already died and was all this time merely waiting somewhere, as though he might have to come back again. He had never known that dying was so peaceful. Part of his being had gone ahead into death, separating and scattering like a cavalcade of travellers. While the bones were still lying in bed, and the bed was there, his wife bending over him, and he, out of curiosity, for the sake of some diversion, was watching the changing expressions in her attentive face, everything he loved had already gone a long way ahead. Herr von Ketten and his moon-lady, his nocturnal enchantress, had issued forth from him and softly withdrawn to a distance : he could still see them, he knew that by taking a few great leaps he could still catch up with them, only he no longer knew whether he was already there with them or still here. Yet all this lay in some immense and kindly hand that was as benign as a cradle and which nevertheless weighed all things as in scales, imperturbable, unconcerned as to the outcome. Doubtless that was God. But even though he did not doubt it, it did not stir him either. He was waiting for whatever was to come, not even responding to the smile that hovered above him, and those caressing words.

  Then the day came when all at once he knew this would be his last if he did not gather up all his will-power in order to remain alive. And it was on the evening of this day that the fever ceased.

  When he felt this first stage of returning health like solid ground beneath him, he began to have himself carried out every day to the little green patch of ground on the rocky bluff that jutted, unwalled, above the precipice. Wrapped in blankets, he would lie there in the sun—now dozing, now waking, never sure whether he was asleep or awake.

  Once, when he woke, the wolf was there. Gazing into thosebevelled eyes, he could not stir. He did not know how much time passed—and then his wife was there beside him, the wolf at her knee. He closed his eyes again, pretending he had not been awake at all. But when he was carried back to his bed, he asked for his crossbow. He was so weak that he could not draw it, and this amazed him. Beckoning to the servant, he bade him take the crossbow. "The wolf," he said. The man hesitated. But Herr von Ketten raged like a child, and that evening the wolf's pelt hung in the castle yard. When the Portuguese lady saw it and learnt only then, from the serving-men, what had happened, her blood froze. She went to his bedside. There he lay, pale as the wall behind him, and for the first time he looked her straight in the eyes again. She laughed and said: "I shall have a hood made of the pelt, and come by night and suck the blood from your veins."

  Then he wanted to send away the chaplain, who once had said: "The Bishop can pray to God, and that is a threat to you"—and who had later, time after time, given him Extreme Unction. But this he could not do at once, for the Portuguese lady exerted herself on his behalf, begging him to have patience with the chaplain a short while longer, until he found another place. Herr von Ketten yielded. He was still weak and still spent much time drowsing in the sun, on the patch of grass.

  Once—another time when he woke—there was the friend of her youth. He was standing beside the lady from Portugal, having come from her native country, and here in the North he seemed to resemble her. He saluted Herr von Ketten with a nobleman's courtesy, uttering words that, judging by his look and gestures, must have been all grace and cordiality. And the lord of Ketten lay in the grass like a dog, filled with shame.

  Unless, indeed, that was not until the second time—for his mind sometimes wandered even now. It was a long time too before he noticed that his cap had become too big for him. The soft fur cap that had always sat so firmly on his head now, at a light touch, slipped down to where his ears stopped it from going further. The three of them were together, and his wife said: "Dear heaven! Your head has shrunk!"

  His first thought was that he must have let his hair be cropped too short, though at the moment he could not remember when. Furtively he passed his hand over his head. But his hair was longer than it should have been, and matted since he had been ill. Then the cap must have stretched, he told himself. But it was still almost new—and how should it have stretched, lying unused in a chest? So he made a jest of the matter, remarking that in all the years when he had been living among men-at-arms, instead of with courtly cavaliers, his head might well have shrunk. He felt how awkwardly the jest came from his lips, and it did not even remove the question—can a skull become smaller? The strength in the veins may grow less, the fat beneath the scalp may melt away in fever : but what does that amount to? Now at times he would make a gesture as of smoothing his hair, or pretend to be wiping away sweat, or he would try to lean back into the shade unobtrusively and then, swiftly, using two fingertips as if they were a mason's compass, would measure
his skull, placing his fingers now this way, now that. But no doubt remained: his head had become smaller, and if he fingered it from within, with his thoughts, it was even smaller, like two small thin shells fitted together.

  There are, of course, many things that one cannot account for, but one does not carry them on one's own shoulders, feeling them every time one turns one's neck towards two people who are talking while one seems to be asleep. Although he had long forgotten all but a few words of that foreign language, once he caught the sentence: "You do not do what you would, and you do what you would not."

  The tone seemed to be urgent rather than jesting—what could it mean?

  Another time he leaned far out of the window, right into the rushing sound of the torrent; he now did this often, as a sort of game: the noise, as confused as wildly whirling hay, closed the ears, and when he returned out of that deafness, his wife's conversation with the other man suddenly stood out clearly, very small and far away. And it was an eager conversation. Their souls seemed to be in harmony with each other.

  The third time it was simply that he followed the other two when they went out into the courtyard again in the evening. When they passed the torch at the top of the outside steps, their shadows must fall across the tops of the trees. He bent forward swiftly when this happened, but among the leaves the shadows all blurred into one.