Teta

Besedilo

Teta

You should have known Aunt! She was delightful! Well, that is to say, she was not at all delightful in the usual sense of the word, but she was sweet and kind, amusing in her own way, just the person to talk about when there was someone to be talked about and made fun of. She could have been put straight into a comedy, and all because she lived for the theatre and everything that went on inside it. She was so respectable, but the agent Fab, whom Aunt called Flab, called her theatre-mad.

"The theatre is my schooling!" she said. "My fountain of knowledge! That is where I refresh my Bible stories: 'Moses,' 'Joseph and His Brothers'—those are operas, of course! I get my world history, geography, and knowledge of human nature from the theatre! From the French plays I know all about life in Paris—indecent, but most interesting! How I have wept over 'The Riquebourg Family,' to think that the man must drink himself to death so that she can have her young lover! Oh, how many tears I have shed in the fifty years I have had a subscription!"

Aunt knew every play, every piece of scenery, every person who appeared or had ever appeared on the stage. She only truly lived during the nine months of the theatre season. Summer, without summer performances, was a time that aged her, whereas an evening at the theatre that lasted beyond midnight was an extension of life. She did not say, like other people, "Spring is coming now—the stork has arrived!" or "The first strawberries are in the newspaper." Instead, she announced the coming of autumn. "Have you seen? The theatre boxes are up for auction now! The performances are about to begin!"

She judged the value and convenience of a home by how close it was to the theatre. It grieved her to leave the little lane behind the theatre and move to the broad street a little farther away, where she lived in a house with no neighbours opposite.

"At home, my window must be my theatre box! One cannot sit there wrapped up in oneself; one must have people to look at! But now I live as though I had moved out into the country. If I want to see people, I have to go into my kitchen and sit up on the sink; that is the only place where I have neighbours opposite. Why, when I lived in my little lane, I could look straight into the linen-draper's, and I was only three hundred paces from the theatre. Now it is three thousand guardsmen's strides."

Aunt might be ill, but however poorly she felt, she never missed the theatre. One evening her doctor prescribed a poultice of sourdough under her feet. She did as he said, but drove to the theatre and sat there with sourdough under her feet. Had she died there, it would have pleased her. Thorvaldsen died in the theatre; she called that "a blessed death."

She certainly could not imagine the kingdom of heaven without a theatre in it too. It had not been promised us, of course, but surely it was reasonable to suppose that the many distinguished actors and actresses who had gone before must have some way of continuing their work.

Aunt had her own telegraph wire running from the theatre to her sitting room; the telegram arrived every Sunday for coffee. Her telegraph wire was "Mr Sivertsen of the stage machinery," the man who gave the signals for the curtains and scenery to go up and down, in and out.

From him she received a brief and pointed advance review of the plays. Shakespeare's "The Tempest" he called "damned rubbish! There is so much to set up, and then it begins with water right down to the first wing!" That meant the rolling waves came all the way to the front of the stage. But if the same drawing-room set remained throughout all five acts, he said it was sensible and well written: a restful play, which performed itself without any scene-shifting.

In earlier times, as Aunt called the days thirty-odd years before, she and the aforesaid Mr Sivertsen had been younger. Even then he worked the machinery and was, as she called him, her "benefactor." For in those days it was customary, at the evening performance in the city's one great theatre, to admit spectators to the loft as well; each stagehand had a seat or two at his disposal. It was often packed, and with very grand company. They said that generals' wives and councillors' wives had been up there. It was so interesting to look down behind the scenes and see how those people moved about and stood when the curtain was down.

Aunt had been up there several times, both for tragedies and for ballets, since the pieces with the largest casts were the most interesting when seen from the loft. It was fairly dark where they sat, and most people brought their supper. Once three apples and a layer of open sandwiches with spiced rolled pork fell straight into Ugolino's prison, where the poor man was supposed to be starving to death, and that set the audience laughing. That rolled pork was one of the weightiest reasons why the exalted management abolished the loft seating altogether.

"But I was up there thirty-seven times!" said Aunt, "and I shall never forget Mr Sivertsen for that." On the very last evening that the loft was open to the public, they were playing "The Judgment of Solomon." Aunt remembered it so well. Through her benefactor, Mr Sivertsen, she had obtained a ticket for the agent Fab, although he did not deserve it, since he was always making fun of the theatre and saying things to provoke her. Still, she had got him up there. He wanted to see the theatrical stuff turned inside out—those were his very words, and just like him, Aunt said.

And he saw "The Judgment of Solomon" from above, and fell asleep. One would really have thought he had come from a grand dinner with any number of toasts. He slept and was locked in, sitting asleep in the dark night in the theatre loft. When he woke—so he said, though Aunt did not believe him—"The Judgment of Solomon" was over, all the lamps and candles were out, and all the people had gone, upstairs and down. But only then did the real play begin, the "afterpiece," which was the most entertaining part, the agent said. The whole place came to life! It was not the Judgment of Solomon being performed, but Judgment Day at the Theatre. And the agent Fab had the impudence to try to make Aunt believe all this; that was his thanks for her having got him into the loft.

What did the agent tell her? Well, it was amusing enough to hear, but there was malice and mockery at the bottom of it. "Things looked dark up there!" said the agent. "But then the magic began—a grand performance: 'Judgment Day at the Theatre.' The ticket inspectors stood at the doors, and every spectator had to show his spiritual book of references, to see whether he might enter with his hands free or bound, with a muzzle or without one. Ladies and gentlemen who arrived late, after the performance had begun, as well as young people, who cannot possibly always be punctual, were tethered outside and given felt soles to wear when they went in at the beginning of the next act, and muzzles into the bargain. And then Judgment Day at the Theatre began!"

"Sheer malice, such as Our Lord knows nothing of!" said Aunt. If the scene-painter wanted to enter heaven, he had to climb a staircase he had painted himself, but which no human being could possibly climb. Yet that was only a sin against perspective. All the plants and buildings which the stage machinist had taken such pains to set in countries where they did not belong had to be moved to their proper places by the poor man, and before cockcrow, if he wanted to enter heaven. Mr Fab had better see whether he could get in himself! And what he related about the performers, in comedy and tragedy, in singing and dancing, was the blackest malice on the part of Mr Fab—Flab! He had not deserved to go up into the loft, and Aunt would not soil her lips by repeating his words. He had written it all down, he said, the insolent fellow! It was to be printed when he was dead and gone, not before; he had no wish to be flayed alive.

Only once had Aunt suffered fear and anguish in her temple of bliss, the theatre. It was a winter's day, one of those days with two hours of daylight, and grey at that. Such cold, and such snow! But Aunt had to go to the theatre. They were giving "Herman von Unna," together with a little opera and a grand ballet, a prologue and an epilogue; it would last well into the night. Aunt had to be there. Her lodger had lent her a pair of sleigh boots, furry inside and out, which came well up her legs.

She reached the theatre and took her place in the box. The boots were warm, and she kept them on. All at once there was a cry of fire; smoke came from one of the wings, smoke came from the ceiling, and there was a terrible panic. People rushed out. Aunt was the last one left in the box—"Second tier on the left, that is where the scenery looks best!" she said. "It is always arranged to look finest from the royal side!" Aunt tried to get out, but those ahead of her, in their fright and thoughtlessness, slammed the door shut. There sat Aunt, unable to get out, or to get in either—that is, into the neighbouring box; the railing was too high. She shouted, but no one heard. She looked down at the tier below her: it was empty, it was lower down, it was close by. In her terror Aunt felt so young and light. She would jump down! She managed to get one leg over the railing and the other off the bench, and there she sat astride, well draped in her flowered skirt, with one long leg dangling in mid-air, a leg encased in an enormous sleigh boot. What a sight she was! And when she was seen, Aunt was heard as well, and rescued from being burnt alive—for the theatre did not burn down.

It was the most memorable evening of her life, she said, and she was glad she had not been able to see herself, for then she would have died of shame.

Her benefactor among the stage machinery, Mr Sivertsen, still came to see her every Sunday, but it was a long time from one Sunday to the next. In her later years, therefore, she had a little child come in the middle of the week "for the leavings," which meant to enjoy whatever was left over from dinner that day. It was a little girl from the ballet, who was in need of food as well. The little one appeared both as a fairy and as a page; her most difficult part was the hind legs of the lion in "The Magic Flute," but she grew into the lion's forelegs. For that, admittedly, she received only three marks; the hind legs paid a rigsdaler, but there she had to go about bent double and do without fresh air. Aunt thought this was very interesting to know.

She deserved to live as long as the theatre stood, but she could not hold out that long. Nor did she die there, but decently and respectably in her own bed. Her last words, however, were quite significant. She asked, "What are they playing tomorrow?"

After her death there were, it seems, about five hundred rigsdaler; we judge by the interest, which amounts to twenty rigsdaler. Aunt had set this aside as an endowment for a worthy old maid without a family. Each year it was to pay for a subscription seat in the second tier, on the left, and on Saturdays, because that was when they gave the best plays. There was only one obligation for the woman who benefited from the endowment: every Saturday, while at the theatre, she must think of Aunt lying in her grave.

That was Aunt's religion.