Babette's Feast and Other Stories Read online

  “Madam, I would not wish a better father.

  Some sins do bear their privilege on earth,

  And so doth yours …”

  Malli as a child had been tall for her age, but she was late in developing into womanhood. Even when at the age of sixteen she was confirmed she looked like a lanky boy. When she grew up she grew beautiful. No human being has a richer experience than the unlovely, awkward girl who in the course of a few months turns into a beautiful young maiden. It is both a glorious surprise and a fulfilled expectation, both a favor and a well-deserved promotion. The ship has been becalmed, or has tossed in stormy currents; now the white sails fill and she stands out for open sea. The speed itself gives an even keel.

  Malli sailed her high and mighty course, as daringly and surely as if Captain Ross in person had stood at the helm. The young men turned round to look at her in the street, and there were those who imagined that her exceptional position would make her an easy prey. But in this they were mistaken. The maiden might well consent to be a corsair’s daughter, but by no means would she consent to be a corsair’s prize. As a child she had been soft-hearted; as a young girl she was without mercy. “No,” she told herself. “It is they that shall be my victims.” All the same the unaccustomed admiration, the new defensive and offensive brought unrest to the first years of her youth. And as now here Malli’s story is being written and read, one is free to imagine that had it drawn out longer she would have become what the French call une lionne, a lioness. In the story itself she is but a lion cub, somewhat whelp-like in movement and, up to the last chapter, uncertain in her estimation of her own strength.

  IV. Madam Ross

  It so happened that one evening in the town’s small theatre. Malli saw Herr Soerensen’s company give a performance. All the vigor and longing in her, which for years had been forcibly mastered, were released into perfect clarity and bliss, just as if she had been struck right in the heart by a divine arrow. Before the performance came to an end she had reached her irrevocable decision: she would become an actress.

  As she was walking home from the theatre the street heaved and swung beneath her and round her. In her little room she took down her books, and the room became a starry night above Verona and a crypt there. It grew verdant and filled with the sweet song and music of the forest of Arden, and deep Mediterranean waves here rolled blue round Cyprus. Secretly, with trembling heart as if she were facing doomsday, she shortly afterwards made her way to the little hotel where Herr Soerensen had settled in, was admitted into his presence and recited to him some of the parts she had taught herself.

  Herr Soerensen listened to her, looked at her, looked again and said to himself: “There is something there!” So much was there that he would not let the girl go away, but took her on at a small consideration for three months. “Let her,” he thought, “ripen awhile unnoticed in the atmosphere of the stage. And then let’s see.” Malli could now reveal her decision to her mother, and the neighbors too soon got news of it.

  To the townsfolk the life and calling of an actress was something utterly foreign and in itself dubious. Also Malli’s special position caused her to be harshly judged or ridiculed. But so sure of herself was the girl that while till now she had at all times been accurately aware of what the town was thinking and opining, and had kept her account of it, she now completely overlooked it or bothered about it not at all. She was genuinely surprised at her own mother’s dismay the day she laid her plan before her.

  Madam Ross had never needed to constrain her daughter’s nature and had none of an ordinary mother’s authority. In her present conflict with her daughter she became as if deranged with horror and grief, while on her side Malli was completely unbending. It came to a couple of great wild scenes between the two, and it might have ended with one or the other of them walking into the fjord.

  In this hour Malli received support where she could least have expected it. Her dead or disappeared father himself became her ally.

  Madam Ross had loved her man and had believed in him without ever having understood him. Now, whether in punishment or reward, through all eternity she must love and believe in what she did not understand. Had Malli’s purpose lain within the scope of her own conceptions, she might have found a means to combat it. But confronted with this wild, carefree madness she was carried off her feet, dizzy with sweet and strange memories and associations. During the time in which she strove against her daughter’s obsession she inexplicably lived her short marriage over again. It was from day to day the same surprises and emotions: a foreign, rich and enrapturing power, that had once taken her by storm, again surrounded her on all sides. Malli’s manner grew as insinuating and enticing as that of her lover of twenty years ago. Madam Ross remembered that Alexander, the strong, handsome seafarer, had knelt down before her and had whispered up to her: “Nay, let me lie here. This is the most fitting place of all.” She fell in love with her daughter as she had once fallen in love with the father, so that she forgot that years had passed and that her own hair had grown gray in their passing. She blushed and blanched in Malli’s presence and trembled when the girl left her; she felt her own will impotent before her child’s gaze and voice, and there was in this impotence a dreamlike, resurrected bliss.

  When finally in a stormy and tearful interview she gave the girl her blessing, it was to her as if she were being wed again. From now on she was incapable of grieving or fearing as the town expected her to do. The day Malli went away with Herr Soerensen’s company, mother and daughter took leave of each other in full, loving understanding.

  V. Master and Pupil

  Now Malli learned Ariel’s part by heart, and Herr Soerensen took upon himself to perfect her in it. He did not leave her in peace either by day or night. He scolded and swore, with inspired cruelty sneered at her facial expression and her intonation, pinched her slim arms black and blue and even one day soundly boxed her ears.

  The other members of the troupe, who had been astonished witnesses of the bashful girl’s sudden advancement and might well have been jealous of her for it, instead took pity on her. The company’s leading lady, Mamzell Ihlen, a beauty with long black hair, who was to play Miranda, once or twice ventured to protest to the director on Malli’s account. The jeune premier, a fair-haired young man with fine legs, more meekly waited in the wings to comfort the novice when she came reeling off the stage from a rehearsal. If none the less they did not, either on or off the stage, attempt to come nearer to Herr Soerensen’s victim, and did not even talk much about her among themselves, it was not due to lack of sympathy; they were as uncertain in face of what went on before their eyes as are the people who follow the growth of a young tree under the fakir’s spell. Such a relationship may awaken admiration or uneasiness; it baffles discussion or condemnation.

  But Herr Soerensen himself grew happier from lesson to lesson, and Malli understood that he was fuming for her own good and that it was all love. It also came about that at one of her lines the old actor abruptly halted his berserk rage and looked hard and searchingly at his pupil. “Say that once more,” he begged her gently and humbly. When Malli repeated:

  “I have made you mad,

  And even with such like valor, men hang and drown their proper selves.”

  Herr Soerensen remained stock-still for a moment, like a person who finds it hard to believe his eyes and ears, until he at last drew a deep breath and found release in one of Prospero’s own lines:

  “Bravely the figure of this harpy hast thou

  Performed, my Ariel.”

  He nodded to her and went on with the lesson.

  He would also, in exuberant pride and joy, give her a few fatherly taps on her behind and then, more to himself than to her, develop his theories upon female beauty.

  “How many women,” he said, “have got their tails where they ought to be? In some of them—God help them—they are coming down to their heels! You, ducky,” he added cheerfully, with his cigar in his mouth, “are long i
n the leg! Your trotters don’t pull you downwards.—Nay, your two legs are straight and noble columns—which proudly carry, where you walk or stand, your whole nice little person heavenwards!”

  One day he clapped his hands to his head and burst out: “And I meant to have a girl like that trip about in a pair of French silk slippers! Fool, fool that I was! Who did not know that it was a pair of seven-league boots that fitted those legs!”

  VI. A Tempest

  So day by day Malli grew more Ariel, just as, day by day, Herr Soerensen grew more Prospero, and the date of The Tempest’s first performance in Christianssand was already fixed for March 15th, when an unexpected and fateful event overwhelmed both Herr Soerensen and Malli, and the whole theatrical company. This event was so sensational that it did not only become far and wide the one topic of conversation, but it also got into print on the first page of the Christianssand Daily News as follows:

  A Heroine

  During the hard weather which in the past week has supervened along the coast, there occurred in our neighborhood a calamity, which by all human reckoning must have led to a deplorable loss of life as well as of a good seaworthy coasting-steamer, had not at the very last moment, next to the mercy of providence, a brave girl’s pluck brought about a happier solution. We present to our readers a short account of the drama.

  On Wednesday, March 12th, the passenger boat Sofie Hosewinckel left Arendal for Christianssand. The visibility was poor, with snow and a stiff breeze from the southeast. Late in the afternoon the wind rose to gale force, and as all know, we experienced some of the worst weather which within the memory of man has ravaged our coast. Sofie Hosewinckel had aboard sixteen passengers, among whom was the well-known and respected theatre manager, Herr Valdemar Soerensen, with his company, on their way to give a performance in Christianssand.

  Our steamer with difficulty had worked her way to Kvasefjord when the storm broke in all earnest. She was compelled to heave to, but was none the less driven in toward the skerries outside Randsund, without it being possible for those on board to make a landfall, owing to the snow-mist, and because the hull was ceaselessly awash from bow to stern from the heavy seas.

  At eight o’clock in the evening sunken rocks were visible on both quarters, the roaring sea breaking over them house-high. Sofie Hosewinckel was lucky enough to slip over the outermost skerry into somewhat smoother water in the lee of a narrow islet, but here the ship ran head-on onto a sunken rock and immediately shipped a quantity of water. During the storm the captain himself, with two of his crew, had been injured, and it was now difficult for the mate to maintain order aboard. One of the steamer’s lifeboats was found to be smashed by the seas, but our gallant seamen succeeded in launching the other boat, which could hold twenty. The passengers, with as many of the crew as were required to maneuver the boat, took their seats in it in order to row to the island. Only a nineteen-year-old girl, Mamzell Ross, of Herr Soerensen’s theatrical company, made known her decision to remain on board, giving up with noble woman’s courage her place in the boat to one of the injured sailors.

  The intention was that the mate should return to the ship with the boat to take ashore those remaining on board. But during the landing on the island the fragile craft was completely shattered. The people who were in it came safe ashore, but it was now impossible to renew contact with the steamer, which those ashore could only glimpse through flying snow and spray. Soon after it became apparent to those on the island that a sea lifted her off her rocky bed, and one could only surmise that her last hour had come.

  Also on board they were clear about the imminent danger that the vessel would fill with water and quickly go to the bottom. The ten men of the crew left on her became almost panic-stricken and came within an ace of giving up the struggle with the elements. As a last possibility of saving life they thought of running the Sofie Hosewinckel into the wind as close to shore as they could. This in all probability in the dense darkness would have brought about total loss.

  It was at this moment that Mamzell Ross, as if at the summons of higher powers, lone woman on the ship in distress, by her very dauntlessness struck courage into the breasts of the crew. This quite young girl first of all went down into the stokehold and persuaded the chief engineer and the stokers to get up full steam again. She herself helped in the dangerous work of setting the pumps going, and after this achievement, right through the night while the ship lay hove-to under the breakers and with each hour sank deeper, she stood indefatigable by the side of the helmsmen of the changing watches.

  It is understandable that a maiden’s unconquerable spirit in the hour of need might prevail upon and strengthen our struggling seamen. But it is as good as inconceivable that a young female, unproved in seafaring life, should be found in possession of so great a strength. A young ordinary seaman, Ferdinand Skaeret by name, at this point deserves marked recognition. From the very first moment he stood shoulder to shoulder with Mamzell Ross, and through the stormy night carried out each of her orders. Above the weather’s roaring din the girl could often be heard calling him aloud by name.

  Toward the early hours of Thursday, March 13th, the storm abated somewhat. At daybreak it became possible to bring Sofie Hosewinckel in through Christianssand Fjord and run her aground in sinking condition by Odder Island, from where the steamer can be salvaged from shore without difficulty. And at the moment when this paper is going to press, the owner of the steamer, our honored townsman Jochum Hosewinckel, no less than the wives and mothers of our good seamen, from the bottom of their hearts will be thanking, after God, the heroic maiden for the rescue of the ship.

  VII. For Bravery

  During the night of storm described in the Christianssand Daily News lights were lit in all rooms on the first floor of the fine yellow wooden house in the market-square where lived the shipowner Jochum Hosewinckel.

  The shipowner himself walked up and down the rooms, halted, listened to the storm, and walked again. His thoughts were with the ships he had at sea that night, most of all with Sofie Hosewinckel which was on her way from Arendal. This ship was named after his favorite sister, who a lifetime ago had died at the age of nineteen. Toward morning he fell asleep in the grandfather’s chair by the table, and when he woke up he felt convinced that the ship had gone to the bottom and was lost.

  At that moment his son Arndt, whose rooms were in a side wing of the house, came in, his hair and cloak all white with snow, straight from the harbor, and told his father that the Sofie Hosewinckel was saved and was off Odder Island. A fisherman had brought in the news at daybreak. Jochum Hosewinckel laid his head upon his folded hands on the table and wept.

  Arndt next recounted how the ship’s rescue had been brought about. Then was the old shipowner’s joy so great that he had to talk over the event with his brethren of the shipping world. He took his son’s arm and walked with him to the harbor, and from the harbor around the town. Everywhere the news was greeted with wonder and joy, all details were gone through time after time, and more than one glass was drunk to the rescue of the ship and to the health of Mamzell Ross. Jochum Hosewinckel after the terrible, endless night became as light of heart and head as he had not been for many a year. He sent word home to his wife that when the noble girl arrived in town they would take her into their own house and would have ready for her the room which had once been Sofie’s.

  When late in the afternoon the fishing boat from Odder Island, bringing the shipwrecked folk to the town, stood into the harbor, half Christianssand was there. People greeted the shipowner with happy faces; a particular circumstance, a tradition or legend in Jochum Hosewinckel’s family, added something almost devotional to the salutations.

  It was a wild, turbulent evening. It had ceased to snow, the sky was dark, only along the horizon ran a faint light. As the sun went down, a strange copper-colored gleam fell over the deeply disturbed waters, and the many faces on the quay became aglow with it.

  The boat was received with an acclaim such as a
seafaring nation accords to its sea heroes. All eyes searched for the maiden who had saved Sofie Hosewinckel and who to the imagination took the form of an angel. They did not find her at once, for she had changed her wet clothing for a fisherman’s jersey, trousers and seaboots, and in this equipment, which was too big for her, looked like a ship’s boy. For a few seconds disappointment and anxiety ran through the crowd. But a thick-set man in the boat lifted the girl up and shouted to those on shore: “Here is a treasure for you!” At the instant when the angel was revealed in the likeness of a young seaman, one of their very own, a hundred hearts melted as one. A tremendous cheering burst forth, caps were waved in the air, and the whole assembly laughed toward the boat. Yet there were many who wept at the same time.

  The girl’s sou’wester had fallen off as she was lifted up, her hair, tumbled and curly from salt water and snow, was turned by the evening sun into a halo behind her head. She was unsteady on her feet, a young man took her in his arms and carried her. It was Arndt Hosewinckel. Malli stared into his face, and thought that she had never seen so beautiful a human face. He looked into hers; it was very pale with black rings round the eyes and a trembling mouth. He felt her body in its coarse clothes against his own, a lock of her hair strayed into his mouth and tasted salt; it was as if she had been flung into his embrace by the sea itself.

  One moment she was unaware of what the black mass in front of her meant; her light, wide-open eyes sought Arndt’s. In the next instant she heard her own name shouted, so that the air vibrated with it. At that she surrendered herself—in the deep wave of blood which rose to her face, in a wide, dizzy glance and in one single movement—completely to the crowd about her, as delighted and wild with joy as the crowd itself. Arndt had her radiant face close to his; he gave her a kiss.