The Sibyl by Pär Lagerkvist

Author:Pär Lagerkvist [Lagerkvist, Pär]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, pdf
Tags: Mythology, Legends, Fiction, Religion, Nobel Prize, Classics
ISBN: 9780307807113
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 1956-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Here the old woman broke off her story. She straightened herself, then bent forward and fiercely poked the fire, which she had been feeding from time to time with a bit of knotty wood.

“And what was it I had brought forth?” she went on fiercely. “That creature sitting over there! That was the fruit of all my love—of the highest human happiness—of all our love for each other, which began by a holy spring; such was its end! Our summer love in the flowering field of corn, witnessed by eagles.

“That was his and my child.

“I could not make it out. It was past understanding. As the child grew and revealed itself I pondered more and more but always in vain upon this baf fling question: how could our love have borne such fruit? It is true that when the child was begotten our love was no longer as happy as it had been. Yes, at that time the begetter no longer loved. Was this the reason? Was it this that drew such punishment with it? So dire a punishment?

“But he had loved; why was the child not conceived then? If we were destined to have a child, why did we not have it then, in the high noon of our love? Why did I not conceive until the very last, when my beloved no longer really loved me, when he embraced me without real desire, so that his life sap could not have its proper force? Why was it so? Why did my poor womb not become fruitful until then?

“Was it not strange that I had not conceived long before?

“Perhaps it hadn’t happened until the last time we were together—that last, heavy-hearted time which brought joy to neither of us.

“The last time … It must have been then, for otherwise far too long a time would have passed before the birth. Even as it was, the period was too long.…

“No, I wouldn’t think of that! Not of that!

“Often the birth came late. Or at least sometimes And one never knows quite how to reckon—so many people say that—no, there was no sense at all in trying to explain it. I didn’t want to think about it. Not at all. And anyway there was nothing to be gained by it. So one might as well leave it alone.… Let one’s thoughts work on something else, no matter what. But not on anything so pointless and unrewarding …

“I talked like this to myself, persuading myself …

“What I did not want to think of was that by women’s reckoning the time tallied perfectly with the day my beloved was found dead in the river—the day I was raped by god. And it was soon after that, for the first time in my life, that my monthly flow failed to appear. And at the time of his death it had been long since my beloved lay with me.

“But, I thought, what am I saying? This is madness. And it’s impossible—even more impossible …

“Begotten by god? God’s son—an idiot who is not even a man.

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