Jenny/Part 2, 9
Gunnar Heggen and Jenny Winge were to have an exhibition together in November. He came to town for that purpose. He had been in the country that summer, painting red granite, green pines, and blue sky, and had lately been to Stockholm, where he had sold a picture.
"How is Cesca?" asked Jenny, when Heggen was in her studio one morning having a drink.
"Cesca is all right." Gunnar took a gulp from his glass, smoked, and looked at Jenny, and she looked at him.
It was so nice to be together again and talk about people and things she had got so far away from. It seemed almost as if it had been in a remote country beyond all oceans that she had known him and Cesca, lived and worked with them, and been happy with them.
She looked at his open sunburnt face and crooked nose; it had been broken when he was a child. Cesca once said that the blow had saved Gunnar's face from being the most perfect fashion-plate type.
There was some truth in it. Looking at his features separately, they were exactly those of a rustic Adonis. His brown hair curled over a low, broad forehead and big steely blue eyes; the mouth was red, with full lips and beautiful white teeth. His face and his strong neck were tanned by the sun, and his broad, somewhat short body with well-knit muscles was almost brutally well shaped. But the sensual mouth and heavy eyelids had a peculiarly innocent and unaffected expression, and his smile could be most refined. The hands were regular working hands, with short fingers and strong joints, but the way he moved them was particularly graceful.
He had grown thinner, but looked very well and contented, while she herself felt tired and dissatisfied. He had been working the whole summer, reading Greek tragedies and Keats and Shelley when he was not painting.
"I should like to read the tragedies in the original," said Gunnar, "and I am going to learn Greek and Latin."
"Dear me!" exclaimed Jenny. "I am afraid there are so many things you will want to study before you get any peace in your mind that you will end by not painting at all—except in your holidays."
"I have to learn those two languages because I am going to write some articles."
"You!" cried Jenny, laughing. "Are you going to write articles too?"
"Yes; a long series of them about many different things. Amongst others, that we must introduce Latin and Greek into our schools again; we must see that we get some culture up here. We cannot go on like this any longer. Our national emblem will be a wooden porringer with painted roses on it and some carving, which is supposed to be a clumsy imitation of the poorest of all European styles, the rococo. That is how we are national up here in Norway. You know that the best praise they can give anybody in this country—artist or other decent fellow—is that he has broken away—broken away from school, tradition, customary manners, and ordinary civilized people's conception of seemly behaviour and decency.
"I should like to point out for once that, considering our circumstances, it would be much more meritorious if somebody tried to get into touch with, appropriate, exchange, and bring home to this hole of ours some of the heaped-up treasures in Europe that are called culture.
"What we do is to detach a small part from a connective whole—a single ornament of a style, literally speaking—and carve and chip such an ugly and clumsy copy of it that it becomes unrecognizable. Then we boast that it is original or nationally Norwegian. And it is the same with spiritual movements."
"Yes, but those sins were committed even when classical education was the official foundation of all education."
"Quite so. But it was only a small part of the classics—a detached piece. A little Latin grammar and so on. We have never had a complete picture among the stories of our valued ancestors of what you might call the classical spirit. As long as we cannot have that, we are outside Europe. If we do not consider Greek and Roman history as the oldest history of our own culture, we have not got European culture. It does not matter what that history was in reality, but the version of it matters. The war between Sparta and Messene, for instance, was in fact only the fights between some half-savage tribes a very long time ago, but in the delivery of it, as we know it, it is the classic expression for an impulse which makes a sound people let themselves be killed to the last man rather than lose their individuality or the right to live their own life.
"Bless you, for many a hundred years we have not fought for our honour; we have lived merely to nurse our insides. The Persian wars were really trifles, but for a vigorous people Salamis, Thermopylæ, and the Acropolis mean the bloom of all the noblest and soundest instincts, and as long as these instincts are valued, and a people believes that it has certain qualities to uphold, and a past, a present, and a future to be proud of, these names will be surrounded by a certain glamour. And a poet can write a poem on Thermopylæ and imprint it with the feelings of his own time, as Leopardi has done in his 'Ode to Italy.' Do you remember I read it to you in Rome?"
Jenny nodded.
"It is a bit rhetorical, but beautiful, is it not? Do you remember the part about Italia, the fairest of women, who sits in the dust chained and with loosened hair, her tears dropping into her lap? And how he wishes to be one of the young Greeks who go to meet death at Thermopylæ, fearless and merry as if going to dance? Their names are sacred, and Simonides in dying sings songs of praise from the top of Antelos.
"And all the old beautiful tales, symbols, and parables that will never grow old. Think of Orpheus and Eurydice—so simple; the faith of love conquers death even; a single instant of doubt and everything is lost. But in this country they know only that it is the book of an opera.
"The English and the French have used the old symbols in making new and living art. Abroad, in certain good periods, there were people born with instincts and feelings so highly cultivated that they could be developed into an ability to make the fate of the Atrides understood and moving as a reality. The Swedes, too, have living connections with the classics—but we have never had them. What kind of books do we read here—and write?—feminine novels about sexless fancy-figures in empire dress, and dirty Danish books, which do not interest any man above sixteen, unless he is obliged to wear an electric belt. Or about some green youth, prattling of the mysterious eternal feminine to a little chorus girl who is impertinent to him and deceives him, because he has not sense enough to understand that the riddle can be solved by means of a good caning."
Jenny laughed. Gunnar was walking up and down the door.
"Hjerrild, I think, is working at a book on the 'Sphinx' at present. As it happens, I also knew the lady once. It never went so far that I soiled my hands by giving her a thrashing, but I had been fond enough of her to feel it rather badly when I discovered her deceit. I have worked it off, you see. I don't think there is anything you cannot get over in time by your own effort."
Jenny sat silent for a second, then said: "Tell me about Cesca."
"Well, I don't think Cesca has touched a paint-brush since she married. When I went to see them she opened the door; they have no servant. She wore a big apron and had a broom in her hand. They have a studio and two small rooms; they cannot both work in the studio, of course, and her whole time is taken up with the house, she said. The first morning I was there she sprawled on the floor the whole time. Ahlin was out. First she swept, then she crept round and poked under the furniture with a brush for those little tufts of dust, you know, that stick in the corners. Then she scrubbed the floor and dusted the room, and you should have seen how awkwardly she did it all. We went out to buy food together; I was to lunch with them. When Ahlin came home she retired to the kitchen, and when the lunch was ready at last, all her little curls were damp—but the food was not bad. She washed up in the most unpractical way, going to the sink with every article to rinse it under the tap. Ahlin and I helped her, and I gave her some good advice, you know.
"I asked them to dine with me, and Cesca, poor thing, was very pleased at not having to cook and wash up.
"If there are going to be children—as I suppose there are—you may depend upon it that Cesca has done with painting, and it would be a great pity. I cannot help thinking it's sad."
"I don't know. Husband and children always hold the first place with a woman; sooner or later she will long to have them."
Gunnar looked at her—then sighed:
"If they are fond of one another, that is to say."
"Do you think Cesca is happy with Ahlin?"
"I don't really know. I think she is very fond of him. Anyhow it was 'Lennart thinks' and 'Will you?' and 'Shall I?' and 'Do you think the sauce is all right, Lennart?' and so on the whole time. She has taken to speaking a shocking mixture of Swedish and Norwegian. I must say that I don't quite understand their relations. He was very much in love with her, you remember, and he in not despotic or brutal—quite the contrary—but she has become so cowed and humble, our little Cesca. It cannot be housekeeping worries only, although they seemed to weigh heavily on her. She has no talent in that direction, but she is a conscientious little thing in her way, and they are rather badly off, I understand.
"Perhaps she has made some great mistake, profited by the wedding night, for instance, to tell him about Hans Hermann, Norman Douglas, and Hjerrild, and all the rest of her achievements from one end to the other. It might have been just a little overwhelming."
"Cesca has never concealed anything about her doings. I am sure he knew all her story before."
"H'm," said Gunnar, mixing himself a fresh drink. "There might have been one or two points she has kept quiet so far, and thought she ought to tell her husband."
"For shame, Gunnar," said Jenny.
"Well—you never really know what to think about Cesca. Her version of the Hans Hermann business is very peculiar, though I am sure Cesca has not done anything that I would call wrong. I cannot—on the whole—see what difference it makes to a man if his wife has had a liaison—or several—before, provided she had been true and loyal while it lasted. This claim of physical innocence is crude. If a woman has been really fond of a man and has accepted his love, it is rather mean of her to leave him without spending a gift on him.
"Naturally I should prefer my wife never to have loved anybody else before, so, perhaps, when it is your own wife you may think differently. Old prejudices and selfish vanity may count for something."
Jenny sipped at her drink, and was on the point of saying something when she checked herself. Gunnar had stopped by the window, standing with his back to her, his hands in his trouser pockets:
"Oh, I think it is sad, Jenny—I mean when once in a while you meet a woman who is really gifted in one way or another and takes a pleasure in developing her gift by energetic work—feels that she is an individual who can decide for herself what is right or wrong, and has the will to cultivate faculties and instincts that are good and valuable and eradicate others which are bad and unworthy of her; and then one fine day she throws herself away on a man, gives up everything, work, development—herself for the sake of a wretched male. Don't you think it sad, Jenny?"
"It is. But that is how we are made—all of us."
"I don't understand it. We men never do understand you, and I think it is because we cannot get it into our heads that individuals who are supposed to be reasonable beings are so completely devoid of self-esteem, for that is what you are. Woman has no soul—that is a true word. You admit more or less openly that love affairs are the only things that really interest you."
"There are men who do the same—at least in their behaviour.'"
"Yes, but a decent man has no respect for those effeminates. Officially at least we do not wish it to be considered anything but a natural diversion beside our work. Or a capable man wishes to have a family because he knows he can provide for more than himself, and wants somebody to continue his work."
"But surely woman has other missions in life."
"That is mere talk—unless she wants to be a reasonable being and work, and not content herself with being a female only. What is the good of producing a lot of children if they are not meant to grow up for any other purpose than continued production—if the raw material is not to be used?"
"It may be true to a certain extent," Jenny said, smiling.
"I know it is. I have seen enough of women to know, ever since I was a youngster and went to the workers' academy. I remember a girl at one of the English classes; she wanted to learn the language to be able to talk to the sailors on the foreign men-of-war. The only aim of the girls that counted for anything was to get a situation in England or America. We boys studied because we wanted to learn something for the sake of mental gymnastics and to complete as much as possible what we had learnt at school. The girls read novels.
"Take socialism, for instance. Do you think any woman has an idea what it really means, unless she has a husband who has taught her to see? Try to explain to a woman why the community must arrive at such a stage that every child born must have the opportunity to cultivate its faculties, if it has any, and to live its life in liberty and beauty—if it can bear liberty and has a sense of beauty. Women believe that liberty means no work and no restrictions as to their behaviour. Sense of beauty they have none; they only want to dress up in the ugliest and most expensive things, because they are the fashion. Look at the homes they arrange. The richer, the uglier. Is there any fashion, be it ever so ugly or indecent, that they don't adopt if they can afford it? You cannot deny it.
"I won't mention their morals, because they haven't any. Let alone your treatment of us men, the way you treat one another is disgusting."
Jenny smiled. She thought he was right in some things and wrong in others, but she was not inclined to discuss them. Yet she felt she ought to say something:
"Aren't you rather hard on us?" she ventured.
"You shall see it all in print one day," he said complacently.
"There is something in it, but all women are not alike; there is a difference even if it be only a difference in degree."
"Certainly, but what I have said applies to a certain extent to all of you, and do you know why? Because the principal thing to all of you is a man—one you have or one you miss. The only thing in life which is serious and worth anything—I mean work—is never a serious thing to you. To the best of you it is so for a short time, and I believe it is because you are sure when you are young and pretty that 'he' will come along. But as time goes and he does not turn up, and you get on in years, you get slack and weary and dissatisfied."
Jenny nodded.
"Look here, Jenny. I have always placed you on the same level as a first-class man. You will soon be twenty-nine, and that is about the right age to begin independent work. You don't mean to say that now, when you should begin your individual life in earnest, you wish to encumber yourself with husband, children, housekeeping, and all those things which would only be so many ties and a hindrance in your work?"
Jenny laughed softly.
"If you had all those things and were going to die, surrounded by husband and kiddies and all that, and you felt you had not attained what you knew you might have done, don't you think you would repent and regret? I am sure you would."
"Yes, but if I had reached the farthest goal of my abilities and I knew, when dying, that my life and my work would live a long time after I had gone—and I were alone, with no living soul belonging to me, don't you think I should regret and repent then too?"
Heggen was silent a moment.
"Yes. Celibacy, of course, is not the same to women as to men. It often means that they are kept outside all those things in life which people make the most fuss about—simply that whole groups of organs, mental as well as physical, are wasting away unused. Ugh! Sometimes I almost wish you would be a little frivolous for once and have done with it all, so that you could work in peace and quiet afterwards."
"Women who have been a little frivolous, as you say, are not done with it. If they were disappointed the first time, they hope for better luck the next. One does not settle down disappointed, and before you know it you have had many a try."
"Not you," he said quickly.
"Thanks. It is quite new to hear you speak like that. You have always said that when women begin such a life they invariably end by being dragged down completely."
"Most of them do. But there must be some exceptions. It applies to those who have no other instincts in life than a man—not to those who are something by themselves and not only of female sex. Why should you, for instance, not be true and loyal to a man even if you both saw that you could not give up everything to tie yourself down as his wife for the rest of your life? Love always dies sooner or later. Don't let yourself be deceived on that point."
"Yes; we know it—but still we won't believe it." She laughed. "No, my friend—either we love and believe it is the only thing worth living for, or we do not love—and are unhappy because we don't."
"Jenny, I don't like to hear you speak like that. No; to feel oneself in full vigour, with all faculties alert, ready to adopt and appropriate, to adapt and produce, make the utmost possible of oneself—work—that is the only thing worth living for, believe me."