18.4.1911

I have written to Janne. I have always been a psychopath. With fear I began this life which ought never to have come into being. The fear has grown with the years. I am forever ready to be met with cruelty, hardness and mental torture. First laughed to scorn by some of my brothers and sisters, then mocked by my companions as a coward and an imaginary invalid I have seen ridicule and pity in everyone's attitude towards me. I really have heen treated hard and unjustily - and have ended up believing myself to he exactly as other people consider me to be. Someone once said: 'Pretend to believe your fellow human beings, but secretly call into question everything they say consciously; as for what they say unconsciously about you, however, that you should believe!' These words fell upon fruitful soil, and within my soul developed a poisonous tree which I have never succeeded in cutting down. I have not slept for 30 years. I have heen viewed as a parasite, my cowardice has led to malice, and I now know little about moral tact and finesse. How childish then to reproach others! I who all my life have lived off others' mercy and favour - without me Janne would still have found his way forward because of his genius. My own appearance on the stage is a pure riddle to me. Vanity of vanities! Will Janne understand and forgive?


                     3.10.1914=

On his last day in Åbo he went to the Cathedral. It was quiet under the high vaults. He sat down on one of the chairs right at the back and listened. Someone coughed, muffled voices could be heard from the crypt, but the silence lasted. He sat in grey twilight and tried to draw his wandering thoughts together, he longed for a sign, a peace, something that could give him lasting security as nourishment for the journey back. He closed his eyes. There was a fear and a joy he associated with Mozart's Requiem. An echoing door, a fumbling note on the organ - they paled before his listening for the voice, the word, the sign. He longed for purity, from the Dies Irae to the Day of Lamentation; in between there was The King, four times repeated, Rex Tremendae Majestatis, a tremendous chorus that changed into a single, heavy figure, a Prince - of darkness or light?
   He opened his eyes and looked into the heights and the daylight filtering down. Sanfte soll mein Todeskummer - where had all these fragments arisen from? Was there an invisible choir singing there, or was it inside him - sanfte, sanfte - and did not this aria resemble 'I Will Pluck The Forest Violets'?...'sanfte soll mein Todeskummer'... So gentle, this conviction that his days were numbered. An old woman wandered down along the centre aisle, looked at him for a moment, then greeted him, as though they were privy to some common experience, he greeted her back, he did not know her. He froze. What if now she were to appear, sit down beside him, give him of her warmth, Rakel, the longed-for? He drew his head inside his overcoat, like a tortoise, stuck his hands in his pockets, he was cold. In the gloom the dead lay on their catafalques, only sleeping, clad in armour or ankle-length costumes. He had walked here as a child, in the same gloom, holding his mother's hand.
   No, there was no rest. He got up and found his way to the entrance, stood for a while on the steps, listening to the town, to the autumn wind, then walked carefully towards the Cathedral Bridge and down along the river. On the opposite bank he saw his old school, it was here and yet far away, as through the wrong end of a telescope. The trees were yellow or ablaze, and the new Library gleamed like a palace. The river slid by with yellow water, a man came rowing a skiff, Axel followed him with his gaze until he disappeared. There was the bench, there were the steps and the water, there he had stooped down, laid the black case with its intimate music on the surface of the sky and pushed it out, out of his life.
   He stood up. Perhaps he had acted wrongly, what meaning did it have any more? He felt no loss. He lifted his gaze. There was a woman walking on the other side of the river, dressed in dark clothes. Something in the way she moved, in the way she inclined her head, made his heart beat violently. She stopped, looked over in his direction. He raised his arm, were his eyes playing him true or was he making himself ridiculous, should he run across the bridge, would he be able to make it, was it her? His overwrought mind - what signs did it demand, what was he looking for, what hallucinations must he suffer until he attained peace? The woman had continued her walk, and was now vanishing among the trees. Carriages rolled silently over the bridges. It was getting dusk. He shivered, turned and went back to his room. He took his travelling bag from the cupboard and hegan to pack.

From Axel (Axel 1986)
Translated by David McDuff