Castle Gripsholm Read online

  The child sobbed. ‘I . . . she . . . I’ve already run away once today . . . Frau Direktor . . . Lisa Wedigen stole something, she wants to beat me, she wants to beat us all, I won’t get any supper – I want my Mummy! I want my Mummy!’

  ‘Where is your Mummy?’ asked the Princess.

  The little girl didn’t answer; she looked anxiously over at the house and made as if to run away.

  ‘Now just you stay here with us – what’s your name?’

  ‘Ada,’ said the little girl.

  ‘And what else?’

  ‘Ada Collin.’

  ‘And where is your Mummy?’

  ‘Mummy . . .’ said the child, and then something we couldn’t make out.

  ‘Does your Mummy live here usually?’

  The child shook her head.

  ‘Where then?’

  ‘In Switzerland. In Zurich . . .’

  ‘Well?’ I asked. Only a man could have asked such a stupid question. The child didn’t even look up; she hadn’t understood there was a question. We stood around, rather at a loss.

  ‘Why did you run away – now tell me the whole story properly. All of it . . .’ the Princess began again.

  ‘Frau Adriani hits us . . . she gave us no food today . . . I want to go to Mummy . . . I want to go to Mummy . . .!’

  Karlchen, as ever, thought quickly and clearly. ‘Let’s take down where her mother lives,’ he said.

  ‘Tell me,’ asked the Princess, ‘where does your mother live?’

  The child gulped. ‘In Zurich!’

  ‘Yes, I know, but where in Zurich? . . .’

  ‘In Hott . . . Hott . . . she’s coming . . . she’s coming!’ screamed the child, and tore herself away. We held her back and looked up.

  The front door of the house had opened, and a red-haired woman strode up to us. ‘What are you doing with that child?’ she asked, without any preliminaries.

  I took my hat off. ‘Good afternoon!’ I said politely.

  The woman didn’t even look at me. ‘What are you up to with that child? What is the child doing here?’

  ‘She ran out of the house, and came here crying,’ said Karlchen.

  ‘The child is good for nothing. She’s run away once already today. Give her to me and don’t concern yourself with things that are none of your business!’

  ‘Now just a minute,’ I said. ‘The child came here crying; she says you hit her.’

  The woman looked at me aggressively. ‘Me? I didn’t beat her. No children are beaten here. I have parental authority over the children, and I have it in writing. How dare you? I keep a disciplined and orderly establishment . . . I don’t want you inciting the children against me! That’s my house!’ she suddenly screamed and pointed at the building.

  ‘That may be so,’ I said, ‘but there’s something wrong here – the girl comes running up to us scared to death . . .’

  The woman made a grab for the child, tiny points of flame blazing in her green eyes.

  ‘You’re coming with me now,’ she said to the child. ‘Straight away! And you’re clearing off! Now!’

  ‘It would be nice if you would speak a little more civilly,’ said Karlchen.

  ‘I’m not talking to you anyway,’ said the woman.

  The Princess had bent down again, and was wiping the tears off the child’s pale, drained face.

  ‘What are you whispering to the child?’ screamed the woman. ‘You’re not to whisper. You aren’t responsible for her, I am. I am the headmistress here – I am! I!’ Those blazing eyes . . . She radiated heat.

  ‘I think we’ll let the lady – ’ said Karlchen. The woman grabbed at the child again, she tore at her as if she were a thing; I sensed it wasn’t the girl who was at stake, so much as her power over the girl. The child was green with fear, she was being pulled along behind her; no one said anything. They had reached the house. I gestured feebly, as if to stop them . . . the two disappeared through the big door, the door closed, a key grated in the lock. It was all over.

  There we stood.

  ‘How about that . . .’ said Karlchen. The Princess put away her handkerchief.

  ‘You’re a pair of prize idiots!’ she said forcefully.

  ‘All right,’ I said, ‘but why?’

  ‘Come with me.’

  We went a little way into the wood.

  ‘You . . .’ said the Princess. ‘We can’t just fight it out, I do see that. But we want to help the child, don’t we? Well, and so what’s the mother’s name?’

  ‘Collin. Frau Collin.’ I said very proudly.

  ‘Right – and how do you want to help?’ She was right. We didn’t have the address. Zurich . . . Zurich . . . what else had the child said?

  The Princess continued, ‘I whispered to her that we would pass the house in half an hour, and she was to try to get the address to us on a bit of paper. I’m sure it won’t work–the poor child is so petrified as it is. But we’ll see . . . What an old dragon, though! She really does spit fire!’

  ‘Magnificent woman,’ said Karlchen. ‘There’s someone I’d like to marry! I mean . . . what I mean is . . .’

  ‘Let’s go and lie down in the meadow for a while,’ said the Princess.

  ‘Did you see that, Karlchen,’ I said, ‘the woman’s hair was standing on end! I’ve never seen anything like it . . .’

  ‘You can put as much make-up as you like on your bum, but you can’t turn it into a face. That woman . . .’

  ‘Quiet!’ said the Princess. We listened. From the house, some distance away now, came the sound of a high scolding voice. We couldn’t hear what was being said, we could only hear someone shouting angrily. My blood rose. Perhaps she was beating the child.

  ‘Pah!’ muttered Karlchen. The meadow disappeared and the Princess’ deep alto reached me as through a haze.

  ‘We’ll go straight to the house afterwards . . . we have to . . .’

  An enormous oval ring, under a stone vaulting, taut red cloths; at the bottom, the arena, then a high stone wall, and over that the first rows of spectators, tier upon tier of them, thousands of heads until they blurred into the brown light at the back. Down in the middle was a man on a cross; a panther was leaping up at him, and tearing away one piece of flesh after another . . . The man didn’t scream, his head had lolled onto his left shoulder, he was probably already unconscious. Dust and the roar of the crowd . . . A small lattice door opened: a couple of men in leather aprons pushed some trembling figures, four men and a woman, ahead of them into the ring. Three of the men were in rags; the woman was half-naked, and the last man wore makeup and – a hideous mask and tinsel crown: an actor in his own death scene. The little lattice door was closed from inside. The men stayed behind it, professional spectators. A few animals had been lying in the sand off to one side, a tiger, a lion. When they saw the people being driven into the arena, they got up, lazy and evil. One of the four had a weapon – a curved sword. The panther had abandoned the man on the cross; he now lay, chewing a torn-off arm. The blood dripped.

  Suddenly the lion tensed to leap; he was enraged, because somebody from a safe place above him had dropped a burning ember on his head. The lion roared. The gladiator approached.

  His movement, intended to be heroic, merely looked pathetic. A tuba shrilled with a red sound. The lion leapt. He leapt right over the gladiator, onto the man in make-up. He seized him–the mask’s foolish expression never changing – and dragged him screaming across the sand. A couple of tigers had attacked the gladiator. He resisted strongly, with the courage of desperation; laying about himself, first according to some plan he had, and then wildly. One of the animals moved to outflank him, it stepped back on noiseless paws, and then they were both on him. The shock went through the entire circus. ‘Rragh,’ went the crowd, groaning as one. The spectators had jumped out of their seats. They gazed enraptured, their eyes darting everywhere so as not to miss a single detail, and wherever they looked there was blood, desperation, groaning and roaring –
people suffering, living flesh convulsed and writhing to death in the sand – while they were high up, in safety. It was marvellous! The whole circus was awash with cruelty and delirium. Only the lowest rows sat quietly and a little haughtily, apparently unmoved. They were the senators and their wives, vestal virgins, the court, high-ranking officers and rich patricians . . . sedately they offered one another sweetmeats in little pots, one of them straightened his toga. Shouts incited the animals, and whipped them up to still greater rage; shouts rained down on the cowardly fighter who had been incapable of defending himself . . . Shouting and sweating, the crowd was an animal rolling in an orgasm of pleasure. It gave birth to cruelty. What was happening here was one gigantic and shameless procreative act of destruction. It was a lust for negation – the sweet slide into death, for the contestants. And it was for this that they spent day after day weaving sandals, inscribing parchment, fetching mortar, paying calls on the nobility and waiting out long mornings in the atrium; weaving cloth and washing linen, painting terracotta and selling stinking fish . . . in order at last, at long last, to enjoy this great public holiday in the amphitheatre. Everything, absolutely everything that their daily routine had ground into these citizens and proles in the way of humiliation and oppression, of stifled fantasies and unsatisfied lusts, could spend itself here. It was like sexual gratification, only more violent, hotter and more explosive. The pleasure of four thousand people soared up like a dart of fire – they were one body, driving itself to exhaustion, they were both the predators and the humans being ripped apart down there. Atrocity opened their eyes – something for which every century has found a different name. They were panting, the wildest spurt was over, now what was left spilled out in noisy raucous conversation. They shouted and gestured over each other’s heads, their thumbs-down, a thousand voices were heard, shouting and speaking, and only here and there the faint sound of a cry, a signal-whistle of pain. What flowed away here was the pent-up criminal longings of these people. They would commit fewer murders now; the animals had done it for them. Afterwards, they went into the temples to pray. No, to entreat. Below, the first guards went out onto the sand and set about the bodies with hot irons – were they properly dead? Had they not cheated the crowds of some tiny ounce of pain? In one corner someone was twitching away his final seconds of agony, while the animals, replete but still excited, disappeared through the small grille doors. The sand was swept, and above, in the gods, the last swell of delight at this suffering boiled away.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ asked the Princess.

  ‘Nothing,’ I said.

  ‘You think we should really go to the house again?’ Karl asked doubtfully.

  ‘Of course we should,’ said the Princess. ‘The child needs help. We have to help her.’

  I felt a surge of emotion, such a dull fury that I had to get up and take a deep breath – the other two watched me in astonishment. Suddenly I felt the same pleasure in destruction, in the suffering of others; to make that woman suffer . . . Oh the joy of the righteous Crusade, purge of immorality! I quenched it with a jet of cold air as I breathed out. I understood all too well the workings of that pleasure: it was doubly dangerous, because it had an ethical basis; torture, for a worthwhile end . . . a wide-spread ideal.

  ‘Shall we go?’

  When we saw the house again, we fell silent as though in response to a command.

  ‘One of us go left, another round the back,’ said Karlchen.

  ‘But someone has to stay with the Princess,’ I said. ‘That woman would be perfectly capable of hitting her.’

  ‘Then you go that way,’ he said. ‘I’ll try the left.’ We crept nearer.

  The house was quiet, very quiet. Was she watching us from a window? What if she had a dog? Whatever else, it was private property; we had no business here. The woman had the law on her side. What a Prussian way of thinking! A child was suffering. Go.

  Everything was quiet. From here you could see a long way into the countryside beyond the house. There was Lake Maelar, there was Castle Gripsholm, red, with its thick domes, and the mixed wood of birch and fir.

  ‘Pst!’ hissed the Princess. Nothing. Karlchen was out of sight. I looked at her questioningly. We continued slowly, treading carefully as if on thin ice. Was that a face in a window–a circular window . . .? Wrong, it was a reflection. We passed very close to the house. The Princess looked all round her. Suddenly she moved forward. ‘Quick!’ she said. She ran up to a white patch in the grass not far from the house . . . it was a little piece of paper. At the back of the house, Karlchen was making his way slowly along the fence. The Princess bent down, looked at the paper, picked it up and walked on smartly.

  We hurried to get out of danger.

  ‘Well?’ said Karlchen. The Princess stopped and read out from the paper, ‘Collin Zurich Hottingerstrase 104’.

  The back of a leaf from a calendar, in a scrawly child’s hand. ‘Strase’ with a single ‘s’. ‘That’s that then!’ said the Princess.

  Karlchen whistled a march. We started back to Gripsholm.

  4

  We ran around in confusion like Red Indians on the warpath. All three of us spoke at once.

  ‘Now slow down,’ said clever Karlchen. ‘A telegram . . . you must be mad. What we do now is write her a sensible letter. Saying . . .’

  What happened then . . . I wouldn’t like to have to go through that again. It was a battle. Not one letter was written – but fourteen, one after another, then three at a time, with the other two covering sheet after sheet of paper, while I bashed away on my typewriter till it glowed. It was like one of those old-fashioned parlour-games (‘What does he do? What does she do? Where did they meet?’). Each of us wanted to read his own out first, and each thought his own composition by far the best and most suitable, and those of the others completely out of the question.

  ‘Out of the question!’ said the Princess.

  ‘That’s pure kids’ stuff!’ I wanted to reply.

  ‘You’re so clever,’ she said, ‘you’re tying yourself in fancy knots! Now do me a favour . . .’ and the whole thing began all over again.

  In the end, there were three versions left in the running. Karlchen had written a lawyer’s letter. I had written a subtle and refined one, and the Princess a clever one, so we chose hers.

  Simply and clearly, it told what we had seen, and that we didn’t mean to interfere in the Collin’s family affairs and that she shouldn’t write to Adriani herself, as this would only lead to more trouble. It told her that she wasn’t to be alarmed, and in the meantime we would see what steps might be taken – but if she would permit us to telephone her once.

  ‘There,’ said the Princess and sealed the letter. ‘That’s that done. Now let’s post it straight away!’ It was a weight off all our minds when the letter landed in the letter-box.

  ‘A girl like that . . .’ I said. ‘Poor little thing!’ And they both laughed at me.

  ‘Give us a cigarette!’ said Karlchen, who liked smoking other people’s and using their toothpaste. (‘Friendship should be put to use,’ he would say.) ‘You remember, don’t you,’ he said into the evening silence as we strolled through the streets of Mariefred, looking at the shop-windows, ‘that I’m leaving tomorrow night?’ Bang! We’d forgotten. Yes–the week was up.

  ‘Won’t you stay with us a little longer, Karling?’ asked the Princess.

  ‘Madam,’ replied the lanky layabout and stretching out an arm, ‘unfortunately my holiday is coming to an end – I must. Ladies and gentlemen, that was a most exhausting conference!’ He stopped. ‘Well, you’re the expert on conferences . . . you civil servant.’

  ‘I don’t call you a writer either, chum. Old Eugen Ernst always used to say, whenever someone’s got nothing to do, he gets hold of some other people and they hold a conference. And at the end, when they’ve all spoken, there is a statement. Then it’s finished. Now, back to the typing grindstone and let’s have another telegram-postcard for Jakopp!’ I obe
yed.

  ‘I think,’ I said to Karlchen, ‘it had better be a one-word telegram. It’ll be too expensive otherwise. There:

  WIREIMMEDIATELYIFINTENDPURCHASINGLOCALLAKEMAELAR-FORWATERINGWATERGUARANTEEDGENUINETHOUGHFOR-SWIMMINGPURPOSESONLYALMOSTRESPECTFULLY-FRITZCHENANDKARLCHENHEADWATERCOMMISSIONERS.’

  ‘Well, and now shall we concoct a farewell drink?’ asked Lydia. We ran around and pestered the good lady of the castle for something to drink; we went shopping, but none of it seemed quite good enough; we unwrapped what we’d got and laid it out.

  ‘What is there to eat?’ enquired Karlchen.

  ‘What would you like?’ asked the Princess.

  ‘What I really feel like is some marmot’s tail soup.’

  ‘Some what?’

  ‘Don’t you know it? Young folks nowadays! In my day . . . Well, marmot’s tail soup is procured in the Far North by Eskimos. They pursue the marmot until it drops its tail in fright, and in this way . . .’

  We flung a couple of cushions at him, and went downstairs to eat.

  ‘I’d really like to travel via Ulm,’ said Karlchen. ‘There is a young lady I have to see – I’d like to check up on her.’

  ‘You should be ashamed of yourself!’ said the Princess.

  ‘Is she good-looking?’ I asked. ‘Well, hardly, I suppose . . . your women . . .’

  He grinned – and in the circumstances, was unable to say: What about yours . . .

  ‘How do you plan to go via Ulm?’ I asked. ‘It’s right out of your way!’

  ‘I’m not going there,’ said Karlchen. ‘I’d just like to . . .’

  ‘A proper Casanova,’ said the Princess. ‘Careful, woman,’ I said, ‘sometimes he suits the action to the words, and then things get pretty lively.’

  Karlchen smiled, as though it was some entirely unrelated wild man who was being spoken of, and we uncorked a bottle of whisky with an extremely audible ‘Pop!’, whereupon Karlchen was nicknamed ‘Herr Popper’. We sat and drank in great moderation. We talked ourselves drunk. Our four candles flickered in the breeze.