Book Two
Now the tapestries of the Lady with the Unicorn are also no longer in the old castle of Boussac. The time has come when everything is coming out of the houses, they can no longer retain anything. Danger has become more safe than safety. No one from the race of the Delle Vistes walks beside one and has the race in his blood. They are all gone. No one speaks your name, Pierre dâAubisson, great grandmaster from an ancient house, who perhaps willed these images to be woven that praise everything and expose nothing. (Alas, that poets have ever written differently of women, more literally, as they thought. It is certain that this is all we were allowed to know.) Now one accidentally emerges among accidental things and almost takes fright at not being invited. But other people are there and walk past, even if they are never many. The young people hardly pause, unless it happens somehow to belong to their specialty to have seen these things once, looking for this or that particular quality.
But at times one finds young girls in front of them. For there is a host of young girls in museums who have left the houses somewhere that retain nothing any more. They find themselves in front of these tapestries and forget themselves a little. They have always felt that this existed, such a gentle life of slower, never completely explained gestures, and they dimly remember that they even thought for a while that this life would be theirs. But then they quickly take out a sketchbook and begin to draw, it doesnât matter what, one of the flowers or a small, cheerful animal. It did not matter, they had been instructed; whatever it happened to be. And it really does not matter: only that drawing takes place, that is the main thing; for the reason they left home one day, rather abruptly, was to draw. They are of good family. But if now they raise their arms while they are drawing it appears that their dress is not buttoned up in back, or not completely. There are a few buttons one cannot reach. For when this dress was made there was not yet any talk of their suddenly leaving by themselves. Within the family there is always someone for such buttons. But here, my God, who should waste time on such a thing in such a big city. One would have to have a girl friend, but such friends are in the same situation, and it would still amount to having to button up each otherâs dresses. That is absurd, and reminds one of the family one does not want to be reminded of.
There is no avoiding that sometimes, while one is drawing, one considers whether it would not have been possible to stay. If one could have been pious, heartily pious in the same tempo as the others. But it seemed so silly to attempt that together. The path has somehow become narrower: families can no longer attain God. So there remained only various other things that, if need be, one could share. But then, if one shared honestly, the individual mattered so little that it was a disgrace. And if one cheated in sharing, quarrels arose. No, it is really better to draw, it doesnât matter what. Given time, the likeness will emerge. And art, if one gradually learns to do it this way, is something really enviable.
But in the strain of the task they have undertaken, these young girls, they no longer get around to looking up. They do not notice how with all their drawing they are doing nothing but suppressing in themselves the unalterable life that radiantly, in its infinite unutterability, opens up before them in these woven images. They do not want to believe it. Now, when so much else is changing, they want to change themselves. They are on the point of giving up on themselves and thinking about themselves the way that men might perhaps talk about them when they are not there. That seems to these girls their path to progress. They are already almost convinced that one seeks a gratification, and then another, and a gratification that is still stronger; that that is what life consists of, if one does not want to lose it in some absurd way. They have already begun to look around, to seek; they, whose strength has always consisted in being found.
That comes about, I believe, because they are tired. For centuries women have accomplished the totality of love, they have always played the whole dialog, both roles. For the man has only repeated after them, and badly. And made their learning difficult with his distractedness, his negligence, his jealousy that was also a kind of negligence. But women nevertheless persevered day and night, and grew in love and misery. And from among them, under the pressure of endless needs, there arose the powerful lovers who, while they summoned him, survived the man; who grew beyond him when he did not return, like Gaspara Stampa or the Portuguese nun, who did not let up until their torment veered around to an astringent, icy gloriousness that could be held back no longer. We know about this person and that because there are letters that through some miracle survive, or books with accusing or plaintive poems, or portraits in a gallery that look at us through tears, portraits in which the painters succeeded because they did not know what it was. But there are countless more of them: those who burned their letters and others who no longer had the strength to write them. Old women who had become hard, with a precious kernel inside that they concealed. Shapeless women who had become stout, who, grown stout from exhaustion, let themselves become like their husbands and yet were quite different inside, there where their love had been working, in the darkness. Giving birth who never wanted to give birth, and when they finally died from the eighth birth they had the gestures and lightness of girls looking forward to love. And those who remained beside ragers and drinkers because they had found the means to be as far from them inwardly as never elsewhere; and when they came among people they could not restrain it and shone as if they always associated with saints. Who can say how many there were, and which. It is as if they had destroyed in advance the words by which one could grasp them.
But now, when so much is changing, is it not up to us to change ourselves? Could we not try to develop ourselves a little, and slowly, gradually, take upon ourselves our share of the work in love? We have been spared all its hardship, and so it has slipped among our distractions, as a piece of genuine lace falls into a childâs box of toys, and delights and no longer delights and finally lies there among the broken and disassembled things in worse state than everything else. Like all dilettantes we have been spoiled by easy enjoyment, and are reputed to be masters. But what if we despised our successes, what if we were to begin from the very beginning to learn the work of love that has always been done for us? What if we went off and became beginners, now that so much is changing.
Now I also know how it was when Mama unrolled the small pieces of lace. She had taken for her own use just one of the drawers in Ingeborgâs desk.
âDo you want to see them, Malte?â she said and was happy, as if she were about to receive as a present everything that was in the small, yellow-lacquered drawer. And then from sheer anticipation she could not unwrap the silk paper. I had to do it every time. But I too became quite excited when the lace appeared. The pieces were wound around a wooden rod, which was quite invisible under all the lace. And now we slowly unwound them and looked at the patterns and how they played out, and were startled a little when one came to an end. They stopped so suddenly.
First there were selvages of Italian work, knotty pieces with drawn-out threads in which everything constantly repeated, distinct as in a peasantâs garden. Then suddenly a whole series of our glances was fenced in by Venetian needlepoint, as if we were convents, or prisons. But we were freed again and peered far into gardens that became ever more artificial, until oneâs eyes became heavy and moist, as in a greenhouse: magnificent plants we did not know put out gigantic leaves, vines were reaching for one another as though they were dizzy, and the big open flowers of the Points dâAlençon misted everything with their pollen. Suddenly, quite tired and confused, one stepped out into the long path of the Valenciennes, and it was winter and early in the day, and there was hoarfrost. And one pushed through the snowy bushes of the Binche and came to places where no one had walked; the twigs hung down so peculiarly that there might well have been a grave beneath them, but we concealed that from each other. The cold pressed in on us more and more, and finally, when we got to the small, extremely delicate Klöppel laces, Mama said: âOh, now weâll get frost-flowers on our eyes,â and so we did, for inwardly it was very warm in us.
We both sighed over the rolling up, it was a lengthy task, but we did not want to leave it to anyone else.
âJust think if we had to make them,â Mama said and looked positively frightened. That was something I could not imagine. I caught myself thinking of small animals constantly spinning, whom one left in peace for that purpose. No, of course it had been women.
âThose who made it surely got to heaven,â I said admiringly. I remember it occurred to me that it had been a long time since I asked about heaven. Mama breathed in relief, the laces were again rolled up together.
After a while, when I had already forgotten it, she said quite slowly: âGot to heaven? I believe they are definitely there. If one looks at it that way, it might well be an eternal blessedness. One knows so little about it.â
Often, when they had visitors, it was said that the Schulins were cutting back. The big old castle had burned down several years before, and now they lived in the two narrow side-wings and were cutting back. But hospitality was in their blood. They could not give it up. If someone came to us unexpectedly he probably came from the Schulins; and if someone suddenly looked at his watch and, startled, had to rush off, he was surely expected at Lystager.
Mama already never went anywhere any more, but that was something the Schulins could not comprehend; there was nothing for it but to drive over there. It was in December, after a few early snowfalls; the sleigh had been ordered for three oâclock, I was to go along. But at our house we never left on time. Mama, who didnât like having the coach announced, usually came down much too early, and when she found no one always thought of something she should have attended to long before, and began to search for or arrange things somewhere upstairs, so that it was hardly possible to get hold of her again. At last everyone was standing around waiting. And when she was finally settled in the coach and packed in, it turned out that something had been forgotten, and Sieversen had to be fetched; for only Sieversen knew where it was. But then we suddenly set off before Sieversen came back.
On that day it had never really got brighter. The trees stood as if they didnât know what to do in the fog, and there was something opinionated about driving among them. Now and then it silently began to snow again, and it seemed as if the last bit had been erased and as if one were driving into a white page. There was nothing but the ringing of the bells, and one could not really say where it came from. There was a moment when it stopped, as if the last sleighbell had been expended; but then it gathered again and became coherent and strewed itself again from out of its fullness. One might have imagined the church steeple on the left. But suddenly there was the outline of the grounds, high, almost above one, and one found oneself in the long drive. The sound no longer fell away entirely; it was as if it were hanging in clusters on the trees left and right. Then one swung around and drove around something and past something on the right and stopped in the middle.
Georg had completely forgotten that the big house was not there, and for all of us at that moment it was there. We walked up the stairs leading to the old terrace, and were only surprised that it was completely dark. Suddenly a door opened, down below on the left, and someone called out: âThis way!â and raised and swung a misty lantern. My father laughed: âWeâre wandering around here like ghosts,â and helped us back down the steps.
âBut there was a house there just now,â Mama said, and could not get used quite so quickly to Vera Shulin, who had run out warm and laughing. Then of course one had to hasten inside, and there was no time to think of the great house any longer. We took off our coats in a narrow vestibule, and then were in the midst of things across the hall, in the warmth and under the lamps.
These Schulins were a powerful race of independent women. I donât know if there were any sons. I only remember three sisters; the oldest, who had been married to a Marchese in Naples from whom she parted slowly and through many court trials. Then came ZoĂ«, of whom it was said that there was nothing she did not know. And above all there was Vera, this warm Vera; God knows what has happened to her. The Countess, a Narischkin, was really the fourth sister, and in certain respects the youngest. She knew nothing and had to be continually instructed by her children. And the good Count Schulin felt as if he were married to all these women, and went around and kissed them as the occasion offered.
At first he laughed aloud, and greeted us at length. I was handed on to the ladies and poked and questioned. But I had firmly determined that when that was over I would somehow slip out and look for the great house. I was convinced that it was there that day. Getting away was not so difficult; one crawled under all the coats like a dog, and the door to the vestibule was still open a crack. But the outside door refused to yield. It had several devices, chains and bolts, that in my haste I did not manipulate properly. Suddenly they opened, but with a loud noise, and before I got outside I was grabbed and pulled back.
âStop, no running away here!â Vera Schulin was amused. She bent down to me, but I was determined to betray nothing to this warm person. But she, when I said nothing, promptly assumed that a call of nature had driven me to the door: she seized my hand and started off, trying half familiarly, half arrogantly to pull me somewhere. This intimate misunderstanding offended me exceedingly. I tore myself loose and looked at her angrily. âI want to see the house.â She did not understand.
âThe great house outside by the steps.â
âSilly,â she said, reaching out for me. âThere is no house there any more.â I insisted that there was.
âWeâll go there in the daylight,â she proposed, compromising. âOne canât go crawling around there now. There are holes, and right in back are Papaâs fish ponds that arenât allowed to freeze. Youâll fall in and turn into a fish.â
With this she pushed me before her back into the bright rooms. Everyone was sitting and talking, and I looked at them all in turn: of course they would only go if itâs not there, I thought contemptuously; if Mama and I lived here, it would always be there. Mama looked distracted while everyone was talking at once. She was surely thinking of the house.
Zoë sat down beside me and asked me questions. She had smooth features in which comprehension renewed itself from time to time, as if she were constantly understanding something. My father was sitting somewhat inclined to the right and listening to the Marchioness, who was laughing. Count Schulin stood between Mama and his wife and was relating something. But I saw the Countess interrupt him in the middle of a sentence.
âNo, child, youâre just imagining it,â the Count said good-naturedly, but suddenly he had the same anxious face, which he extended over both ladies. The Countess was not to be dissuaded from her so-called imagining. She was concentrating like someone who does not want to be disturbed. She made small, dismissive motions with her soft beringed hands, someone said âssh,â and suddenly it became ver...