Short Fiction by Selma Lagerlöf

Author:Selma Lagerlöf
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Tags: Short stories, Swedish fiction
Publisher: Standard Ebooks
Published: 2021-03-29T21:03:24+00:00

Santa Caterina of Siena

At San­ta Cate­ri­na’s house in Siena, on a day to­wards the end of April, in the week when her fête is be­ing cel­e­brat­ed, peo­ple come to the old house in the Street of the Dy­ers, to the house with the pret­ty log­gia and with the many small cham­bers, which have now been con­vert­ed in­to chapels and sanc­tu­ar­ies, bring­ing bou­quets of white lilies; and the rooms are fra­grant with in­cense and vi­o­lets.

Walk­ing through these rooms, one can­not help think­ing that it is just as if she were dead yes­ter­day, as if all those who go in and out of her home to­day had seen and known her.

But, on the oth­er hand, no one could re­al­ly think that she had died re­cent­ly, for then there would be more grief and tears, and not on­ly a qui­et sense of loss. It is more as if a beloved daugh­ter had been re­cent­ly mar­ried, and had left the parental home.

Look on­ly at the near­est hous­es. The old walls are still dec­o­rat­ed as if for a fête. And in her own home gar­lands of flow­ers are still hang­ing be­neath the por­ti­co and log­gia, green leaves are strewn on the stair­case and the doorstep, and large bou­quets of flow­ers fill the rooms with their scent.

She can­not pos­si­bly have been dead five hun­dred years. It looks much more as if she had cel­e­brat­ed her mar­riage, and had gone away to a coun­try from which she would not re­turn for many years, per­haps nev­er. Are not the hous­es dec­o­rat­ed with noth­ing but red table­cloths, red trap­pings, and red silken ban­ners, and are there not stuck red-pa­per ros­es in the dark gar­lands of oak-leaves? and the hang­ings over the doors and the win­dows, are they not red with gold­en fringes? Can one imag­ine any­thing more cheer­ful?

And no­tice how the old wom­en go about in the house and ex­am­ine her small be­long­ings. It is as if they had seen her wear that very veil and that very shirt of hair. They in­spect the room in which she lived, and point to the bed­stead and the pack­ets of let­ters, and they tell how at first she could not at all learn to write, but that it came to her all at once with­out her hav­ing learnt it. And on­ly look at her writ­ing—how good and dis­tinct! And then they point to the lit­tle bot­tle she used to car­ry at her belt, so as al­ways to have a lit­tle medicine at hand in case she met a sick per­son, and they ut­ter a bless­ing over the old lantern she held in her hand when she went and vis­it­ed the sick in the long weary nights. It is just as if they would say: “Dear me—dear me! that our lit­tle Cate­ri­na Ben­in­casa should be gone, that she will nev­er come any more and look af­ter us old peo­ple!” And they kiss her pic­ture, and take a flow­er from the bou­quets to keep as a re­mem­brance.

It looks as if those who were

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