Short Fiction Selma Lagerlöf (best book club books of all time .txt) 📖

“How tall and pretty you have grown, Ingrid!” he said. “And how fine you have become! What a beautiful brooch you have!”

He had been looking at her brooch for some time. He thought he knew it; it was like a brooch of enamel and pearls his mother used to wear. The young girl answered at once.

“Your mother gave it to me. You must have seen it before.”

Gunnar Hede put down the violin and went up to Ingrid. He asked her almost violently:

“How is it possible⁠—how can you wear her brooch? How is it that I don’t know anything about your knowing my mother?”

Ingrid was frightened. She grew almost gray with terror. She knew already what the next question would be.

“I know nothing, Ingrid. I don’t know why I am here. I don’t know why you are here. Why don’t I know all this?”

“Oh, don’t ask me!”

She went back a step or two, and stretched out her hands as if to protect herself.

“Won’t you tell me?”

“Don’t ask! don’t ask!”

He seized her roughly by the wrist to compel her to tell the truth.

“Tell me! I am in my full senses! Why is there so much I can’t remember?”

She saw something wild and threatening in his eyes. She knew now that she would be obliged to tell him. But she felt as if it were impossible to tell a man that he had been mad. It was much more difficult than she had thought. It was impossible⁠—impossible!

“Tell me!” he repeated.

But she could hear from his voice that he would not hear it. He was almost ready to kill her if she told him. Then she summoned up all her love, and looked straight into Gunnar Hede’s eyes, and said:

“You have not been quite right.”

“Not for a long time?”

“I don’t quite know⁠—not for three or four years.”

“Have I been out of my mind?”

“No, no! You have bought and sold and gone to the fairs.”

“In what way have I been mad?”

“You were frightened.”

“Of whom was I frightened?”

“Of animals.”

“Of goats, perhaps?”

“Yes, mostly of goats.”

He had stood clutching her by the wrist the whole time. He now flung her hand away from him⁠—simply flung it. He turned away from Ingrid in a rage, as if she had maliciously told him an infamous lie.

But this feeling gave way for something else which excited him still more. He saw before his eyes, as distinctly as if it had been a picture, a tall Dalar man, weighed down by a huge pack. He was going into a peasant’s house, but a wretched little dog came rushing at him. He stopped and curtsied and curtsied, and did not dare to go in until a man came out of the house, laughing, and drove the dog away.

When he saw this he again felt that terrible fear. In this anguish the vision disappeared, but then he heard voices. They shouted and shrieked around him. They laughed. Derision was showered upon him. Worst and loudest were the shrill voices of children. One word, one name came over and over again: it was shouted, shrieked, whispered, wheezed into his ear⁠—“The Goat! the Goat!” And that all meant him, Gunnar Hede. All that he had lived in. He felt in full consciousness the same unspeakable fear he had suffered whilst out of his mind. But now it was not fear for anything outside himself⁠—now he was afraid of himself.

“It was I! it was I!” he said, wringing his hands. The next moment he was kneeling against a low seat. He laid his head down and cried, cried: “It was I!” He moaned and sobbed. “It was I!” How could he have courage to bear this thought⁠—a madman, scorned and laughed at by all? “Ah! let me go mad again!” he said, hitting the seat with his fist. “This is more than a human being can bear.”

He held his breath a moment. The darkness came towards him as the saviour he invoked. It came gliding towards him like a mist. A smile passed over his lips. He could feel the muscles of his face relax, feel that he again had the look of a madman. But that was better. The other he could not bear. To be pointed at, jeered at, scorned, mad! No, it was better to be so again and not to know it. Why should he come back to life? Everyone must loathe him. The first light, fleeting clouds of the great darkness began to enwrap him.

Ingrid stood there, seeing and hearing all his anguish, not knowing but that all would soon be lost again. She saw clearly that madness was again about to seize him. She was so frightened, so frightened, all her courage had gone. But before he again lost his senses, and became so scared that he allowed no one to come near him, she would at least take leave of him and of all her happiness.

Gunnar Hede felt that Ingrid came and knelt down beside him, laid her arm round his neck, put her cheek to his, and kissed him. She did not think herself too good to come near him, the madman, did not think herself too good to kiss him.

There was a faint hissing in the darkness. The mist lifted, and it was as if serpents had raised their heads against him, and now wheezed with anger that they could not reach to sting him.

“Do not be so unhappy,” Ingrid said. “Do not be so unhappy. No one thinks of the past, if you will only get well.”

“I want to be mad again,” he said. “I cannot bear it. I cannot bear to think how I have been.”

“Yes, you can,” said Ingrid.

“No; that no one can forget,” he moaned. “I was so dreadful! No one can love me.”

“I love you,” she said.

He looked up doubtfully.

“You kissed me in order that I should not go out of my mind again. You pity me.”

“I will kiss you again,” she said.

“You say that now because you think I am in