II

He turned into Long Western Street. On snowy days such as this he nearly always took that street, because in the narrow winding rift between the tall old houses one was as if half indoors, in the lee of the worst wind gusts.

“Winter, cold.⁠ ⁠… Strange there are people who assert that they like this weather. Heringslake, who has a heart in his breast and loves his native land, regards cold as preferable to heat. But when it’s cold, he always puts on furs. The conception of hell as a very warm place clearly originated in the torrid zone. If a northerner had invented it, it would have been contrariwise a fearful place for draughts, the breeding ground of influenza and chronic snuffles. But such as the climate is, I have got used to it, and it has possibly done me excellent service of which I myself am not aware. Provisions are laid on ice in order to keep; everything is preserved longer in cold. Why not human beings as well? I once longed to be consumed in the flame of a great passion. It never came, whether because I was not deserving of so great an honor, or whatever the reason may have been. But now, afterwards, I have begun to misdoubt that such a conflagration may rather be a bonfire to amuse the spectators than any real enjoyment for the chief actor. Fire is, in any case, distinctly not my element. If a real spring sun were ever to come into my life, I should go rotten at once from being unused to the climate.”

He stopped a moment in front of a jeweler’s window. Most of the pieces were distinguished by a commonplaceness which left him no regret that he could not purchase any. Once, indeed, it was just a year ago to the day, he had bought a little ring with a green emerald. She to whom it had been given still wore it and never wanted to wear any other ring. She said she shouldn’t ever want to wear a plain gold ring. Well, in any case he couldn’t offer her such a specimen.⁠ ⁠…

“I’m ungrateful,” he said to himself, “now that at last a little sunlight has come into my life, more maybe than comes into most. But I have been frozen too long; I haven’t been able to thaw out yet.”

He had come out on Mint Square, the northerly gale blew his eyes shut with the snow, and he felt his way along, half blind, toward North Bridge. He had to stop again to get breath at Looström’s bookstore, where the celebrities of the day were exhibited in the window: Crispi, King Milan, and Taine, while between an Excellency and a forger he discovered a face that looked familiar. It was a Swedish poet, the decadent who had expounded his ideas of life at the “Anglais” over the green chartreuse. He was not there because he was a great man but because he was dead.

Martin went on toward home.

“At last a man who has reached his goal! His goal was a bit unusual, and he did not reach it quite as he imagined; he never got the general paralysis of his dream, for he died simply and modestly of consumption. But I don’t suppose he was so particular as to details; as a matter of fact he only wanted to succumb, no matter how. Perhaps he was right; that’s the sort of goal one ought to set for oneself if he hopes to reach it in his lifetime. It is true one might also propose to oneself to be a millionaire or a bishop or a member of the legislature, and that goal too one can usually reach if he really wants to. Those who know how to concentrate their will with sufficient intensity on a single object are so extremely few that the competition is by no means prohibitive. Everybody wants to be rich, but most men wish at the same time to live as if they were rich already; they want to take things easy, to have a nap after dinner, drink champagne with the girlies and so on, and so they never get rich, never even become bishops or members of the legislature. He who wants to stop on the road every now and then and enjoy life a bit before he reaches his objective will never reach it; and the others, the indefatigable pilgrims, the men of will who arrive⁠—what have they left afterwards when they get there?

“On the other hand it is possibly superfluous to expend any particular effort on the objective: to succumb. That is a goal which can certainly be attained at a cheaper price; it even comes near of itself, slowly and surely. The best thing is perhaps that which the other dead man over there in the bookshop window loved so much while he lived: a big tree and tranquil thoughts. For it is not quite true, what Messer Guido Cavalcanti said when he felt death approaching, that it is as vain to think as to act. In one way it is no doubt true: namely, that the final result will always be the same black pit, and as a meditation on death Messer Guido’s words have their value. But looked at from another point of view, it is clear that he who enjoys thinking is always in this world of incalculables in a slightly better position than a man of action. Because for him the minute has its worth in and for itself, independent of the uncertainties of the future. He who wishes to become a Knight of the Order of the Seraphim or a pope and gives up everything, the pleasures both of thought and of love, to attain that object⁠—and the first sacrifice at least is inevitable⁠—and then gets a fishbone in his throat and dies before he has reached it, his life is a nullity, an intention without performance. But he whose standard lies in thought may have his life cut off at any point and it will be like the snake of popular superstition, it will still live, it will have its value even as a fragment; nay, it has never, properly speaking, assumed that it wished to be anything but a fragment. For he who is measured by the standard of thought can never set himself any human goal, or if he does, this will be arbitrary and inessential, and it is a matter of no significance whether he reaches it or not.”

Martin had got up to Östermalm and was almost home; he was hungry and was eager for his dinner, yet he stopped at a street corner and looked up toward a window high up in a fourth story.

Yes, there was a light there; she was home then. He knew that already, anyhow, and he knew besides that she expected him after dinner. In the evening they were to go to a theater together; they were to sit in a stage box behind a screen where nobody could see them.

He had taken a mistress. Chance had brought them together. She worked in a life insurance office in the morning counting money. She worked for her living. She had, to be sure, an old father somewhere off in the country, a pensioned forester who wrote her letters three times a year; but she was self-supporting and depended upon no one. Like other young girls she had dreamed of a happiness which should be correct, and had guarded her jewel in the hope of being married. She had had her fancies and been in love with men who had not even noticed it. But these small flames had gone out when they had no fuel, and if a man not too ridiculous or repulsive had wished to offer her his hand, she could easily have persuaded herself that she loved him. But she had seen the years run away; she had danced in the winter and bicycled in the summer, and many men had let her divine by their looks and veiled words that they would gladly possess her; but no one had wanted to marry her, for she had no dowry and did not belong to a family with influence. The more economical and diffident of the men, moreover, were frightened by her elegance, for she had a sure and delicate taste and two industrious hands, and many a night she sat up by her lamp and sewed cheap remnants and old shreds into dresses, which later gave to inexperienced eyes the impression of having cost a great deal, or to the more skeptical-minded even suggested a doubt of her virtue. She was not, however, beautiful enough for the men whose feelings were governed by their vanity, nor did her nature have anything of the sweet and docile quality fitted to attract men who wished to be lords in their own home, men who had simply tired of bachelor life and therefore looked about for a nice and charming and modest and obedient wife.

Both her own character and her outer circumstances were such that she had no great prospect of being loved for any other reason than love, and she had gradually begun to suspect that this feeling, of which so much was said and written, was really scorned and put to one side so that it was extremely rare. She had thought over all this, she had felt the minutes running through her fingers like sand, and had decided that the years to come would be still more wretched and worthless than those before and that the jewel she guarded was losing its value every day. Most of all she had been frightened at how quickly women age who live without men, except those who are so fortunate as not to feel any strong desire or lack. But she was not of these; no, she was a real woman and she knew she was. The desire which in her first youth had only been a sweet and indefinite longing, a dream of happiness of a strange and unknown sort, now burned in her veins like poison; and her first timid girlish fancy, which had hardly dared to look beyond a kiss in the twilight between bushes of roses, had developed with years into a hobgoblin much worse than those used in children’s picture-books to frighten naughty boys. Her glance became wistful and yearning, and she tried to bring herself to a decision.

She had almost given up hope of a husband; it was a lover she was seeking, and even him she sought for long in vain. It was not that there was a lack of men who would take her out to dance; there were on the contrary many, and she could make a choice. She looked around in her circle; she flirted right and left. She grew less afraid about her reputation than before and went to secret rendezvous with men who had been attentive to her some evening at a ball. But they remained strange to her, and every time an understanding was in the air, she was overcome with shame and became suddenly icy with fear and repugnance. For every time when the critical moment came, she read in the man’s eyes the ineradicable crudity of his heart. She read it as plainly as if it had stood written on white paper that what was for her a wholly new experience in life⁠—perhaps ruin, perhaps salvation⁠—was for him an amorous adventure. She read that what she was about to do was in his eyes merely a faux pas, which he could overlook only in so far as it gave him pleasure; and she read that not only did he intend to give her up very soon, but that he also meant to salve his conduct beforehand by showing her his contempt. She saw all this and tired of the game before it had begun, asking herself if she might not just as well follow the path of virtue, which in any case was clearly the most convenient, and wither into old age without will and without hope.

But when she met Martin all this became different, and when she gave herself to him she felt no more fear, because she saw that he had understood her, that his thoughts were not like those of the others, and she felt that he loved her. With him she felt no shame, nor did she feign any, for she had already sinned so much in her thoughts that the reality seemed to her innocent and pure. She was no longer young; she was getting on toward thirty, just as he was. Her complexion had already been marked by the early frost, and vanished illusions had made her bitter at heart and crude of speech. But the bitter heart beat warm and fast when it rested on his, and the ugly words did not make her mouth less sweet to kiss.