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

beaming smile on his face. It was the violin that spoke and spoke; he only listened. Was it not strange that one heard all these beautiful things as soon as one let the bow glide over the strings? The violin did that. It knew how it ought to be, and the Dalar man only sat and listened. Melodies grew out of that violin as grass grows out of the earth. No one could understand how it happened. Our Lord had ordered it so.

The Dalar man intended to remain sitting there the whole day, and let the dear tunes grow out of the violin like small white and many-coloured flowers. He would play a whole meadowful of flowers, play a whole long valleyful, a whole wide plain.

But she who lay in the coffin distinctly heard the violin, and upon her it had a strange effect. The tones had made her dream, and what she had seen in her dreams caused her such emotion that her heart began to beat, her blood to flow, and she awoke.

But all she had lived through while she lay there, apparently dead, the thoughts she had had, and also her last dream⁠—everything vanished in the same moment she awoke to consciousness. She did not even know that she was lying in her coffin, but thought she was still lying ill at home in her bed. She only thought it strange that she was still alive. A little while ago, before she fell asleep, she had been in the pangs of death. Surely, all must have been over with her long ago. She had taken leave of her adopted parents, and of her brothers and sisters, and of the servants. The Dean had been there himself to administer the last Communion, for her adopted father did not think he could bear to give it to her himself. For several days she had put away all earthly thoughts from her mind. It was incomprehensible that she was not dead.

She wondered why it was so dark in the room where she lay. There had been a light all the other nights during her illness. And then they had let the blankets fall off the bed. She was lying there getting as cold as ice. She raised herself a little to pull the blankets over her. In doing so she knocked her head against the lid of the coffin, and fell back with a little scream of pain. She had knocked herself rather severely, and immediately became unconscious again. She lay as motionless as before, and it seemed as if life had again left her.

The Dalar man, who had heard both the knock and the cry, immediately laid down his violin and sat listening; but there was nothing more to be heard⁠—nothing whatever. He began again to look at the coffin as attentively as before. He sat nodding his head, as if he would say “Yes” to what he was himself thinking about, namely, that nothing in this world was to be depended upon. Here he had had the best and most silent of comrades, but had he not also been disappointed in him?

He sat and looked at the coffin, as if trying to see right through it. At last, when it continued quite still, he took his violin again and began to play. But the violin would not play any longer. However gently and tenderly he drew his bow, there came forth no melody. This was so sad that he was nearly crying. He had intended to sit still and listen to his violin the whole day, and now it would not play any more.

He could quite understand the reason. The violin was uneasy and afraid of what had moved in the coffin. It had forgotten all its melodies, and thought only of what it could be that had knocked at the coffin-lid. That is how it is one forgets everything when one is afraid. He saw that he would have to quiet the violin if he wanted to hear more.

He had felt so happy, more so than for many years. If there was really anything bad in the coffin, would it not be better to let it out? Then the violin would be glad, and beautiful flowers would again grow out of it.

He quickly opened his big pack, and began to rummage amongst his knives and saws and hammers until he found a screwdriver. In another moment he was down in the grave on his knees and unscrewing the coffin-lid. He took out one screw after the other, until at last he could raise the lid against the side of the grave; at the same moment the handkerchief fell from off the face of the apparently dead girl. As soon as the fresh air reached Ingrid, she opened her eyes. Now she saw that it was light. They must have removed her. Now she was lying in a yellow chamber with a green ceiling, and a large chandelier was hanging from the ceiling. The chamber was small, but the bed was still smaller. Why had she the sensation of her arms and legs being tied? Was it because she should lie still in the little narrow bed? It was strange that they had placed a hymnbook under her chin; they only did that with corpses. Between her fingers she had a little bouquet. Her adopted mother had cut a few sprigs from her flowering myrtle, and laid them in her hands. Ingrid was very much surprised. What had come to her adopted mother? She saw that they had given her a pillow with broad lace, and a fine hemstitched sheet. She was very glad of that; she liked to have things nice. Still, she would rather have had a warm blanket over her. It could surely not be good for a sick person to lie without a blanket. Ingrid was nearly putting her hands to her eyes and beginning to cry, she was so bitterly cold. At the