Last Tales by Isak Dinesen Read Free Book Online Page A

see it happy and at peace, as when we were working together.”
    The prison warder now turned the heavy key in the lock and came in. He informed the prisoners that the clock in the prison tower showed a quarter to six. Within a quarter ofan hour one of the two must leave the building. Allori answered that he was ready, but he hesitated a moment.
    “They arrested me,” he said to Angelo, “in my studio and in my working smock. But the air may grow colder as I get into the mountains. Will you lend me your cloak?”
    Angelo removed the violet cloak from his shoulders and handed it to his teacher. As he fumbled at his throat with the hook, with which he was unfamiliar, the master took the young hand that helped him, and held it.
    “How grand you are, Angelo,” he said. “This cloak of yours is new and costly. In my native parish a bridegroom wears a cloak like this on his wedding day.
    “Do you remember,” he added as he stood ready to go, in the cloak, “one night, when together we lost our way in the mountains? Suddenly you collapsed, exhausted and cold as ice, and whispered that it was impossible for you to go any farther. I took off my cloak then—just as you did now—and wrapped it around us both. We lay the whole night together in each other’s arms, and in my cloak you fell asleep almost immediately, like a child. You are to sleep tonight too.”
    Angelo collected his thoughts, and remembered the night of which the master was speaking. Leonidas had always been a far more experienced mountaineer than he himself, as altogether his strength had always exceeded his own. He recalled the warmth of that big body, like that of a big friendly animal in the dark, against his own numb limbs. He remembered, further, that as he woke up the sun had risen, and all mountain slopes had become luminous in its rays. He had sat up, then, and had cried out, “Father, this night you have saved my life.” From his breast came a groan, wordless.
    “We will not take leave tonight,” said Leonidas, “but tomorrow morning I shall kiss you.”
    The jailer opened the door and held it open, while the towering, straight figure stepped over the threshold. Then the door was once more shut, the key turned in the lock, and Angelo was alone.
    Within the first seconds he felt the fact that the door was locked, and that nobody could come in to him, as an incomparable favor. But immediately after, he fell to the floor, like a man struck by, and crushed beneath, a falling rock.
    In his ears echoed the voice of the master. And before his eyes stood the figure of the master, illuminated by the radiance of a higher world, of Art’s infinite universe. From this world of light, which his father had once opened to him, he was now cast down into darkness. After the one whom he had betrayed had gone from him, he was completely alone. He dared not think of the stellar heavens, nor of the earth, nor of the sea, nor of the rivers, nor of the marble statues that he had loved. If at this moment Leonidas Allori himself had wanted to save him, it would not have been possible. For to be unfaithful is to be annihilated.
    The word “unfaithful” was now flung on him from all angles, like a shower of flints on the man who is being stoned, and he met it on his knees, with hanging arms, like a man stoned. But when at last the shower slackened, and after a silence the words “the golden section” rose and echoed, subdued and significant, he raised his hands and pressed them against his ears.
    And unfaithful , he thought after a time, for the sake of a woman. What is a woman? She does not exist until we create her, and she has no life except through us. She is nothing but body, but she is not body, even, if we do not look at her. She claims to be brought to life, and requires our soul as a mirror, in which she can see that she is beautiful. Men must burn, tremble and perish, in order that she may know that she exists and is beautiful. When we weep, she weeps, too,