Mogens, and Other Stories

by J. P. Jacobsen

And they should have the delicate, fleeting fragrance of roses, which cannot be seized and is like that of unknown fruits of which the senses tell legends in their dreams.

Or should they have been red, the roses?

Perhaps.

They might be of the small, round, hardy roses, and they would have to hang down in slender twining branches with smooth leaves, red and fresh, and like a salutation or a kiss thrown to the wanderer, who is walking, tired and dusty, in the middle of the road, glad that he now is only half a mile from Rome.

Of what may he be thinking? What may be his life?

And now the houses hide him, they hide everything on that side. They hide one another and the road and the city, but on the other side there is still a distant view. There the road swings in an indolent, slow curve down toward the river, down toward the mournful bridge. And behind this lies the immense Campagna. The gray and the green of such large plains.... It is as if the weariness of many tedious miles rose out of them and settled with a heavy weight upon one, and made one feel lonely and forsaken, and filled one with desires and yearning. So it is much better that one should take one’s ease here in a corner between high garden-walls, where the air lies tepid and soft and still—to sit on the sunny side, where a bench curves into a niche of the wall, to sit there end gaze upon the shimmering green acanthus in the roadside ditches, upon the silver-spotted thistles, and the pale-yellow autumn flowers.

The roses should have been on the long gray wall opposite, a wall full of lizard holes and chinks with withered grass; and they should have peeped out at the very spot where the long, monotonous flatness is broken by a large, swelling basket of beautiful old wrought iron, a latticed extension, which forms a spacious balcony, reaching higher than the breast. It must have been refreshing to go up there when one was weary of the enclosed garden.

And this they often were.

They hated the magnificent old villa, which is said to be within, with its marble stair-cases and its tapestries of coarse weave; and the ancient trees with their proud large crowns, pines and laurels, ashes, cypresses, and oaks. During all the period of their growth they were hated with the hatred which restless hearts feel for that which is commonplace, trivial, uneventful, for that which stands still and therefore seems hostile.

But from the balcony one could at least range outside with one’s eyes, and that is why they stood there, one generation after the other, and all stared into the distance, each one with pro and each one with his con. Arms adorned with golden bracelets have lain on the edge of the iron railing and many a silk-covered knee has pressed against the black arabesques, the while colored ribbons waved from all its points as signals of love and rendezvous. Heavy, pregnant housewives have also stood here and sent impossible messages out into the distance. Large, opulent, deserted women, pale as hatred... could one but kill with a thought or open hell with a wish!... Women and men! It is always women and men, even these emaciated white virgin souls which press against the black latticework like a flock of lost doves and cry out, “Take us!” to imagined, noble birds of prey.