Fjallkonan #33 | 25 August 1900

I BELIEVE I NOW HAVE A CLEARER UNDERSTANDING AS TO why the Count is in so many ways extremely cautious: he must expect robberies and thefts in the house when he’s not around, and thus locks all the doors so carefully.

Next I opened the door on the left. It was a bedroom, slightly larger than my own. By the wall opposite the window stood a four-poster bed with heavy bed curtains. From the bedroom I could see into another room with bookshelves and a large desk in the center. I was quite certain I was now standing in the Count’s private rooms, which matched the other rooms in the castle where I had lodged and moved about thus far.¹⁸⁹ I hardly dared to look around, as I suspected the Count or someone else would discover me, and I was unsure what would happen to me if they did. There were two doors in the room and I walked to the largest one. At first I thought it was locked, but when I put more pressure on the handle the door opened, and I was suddenly standing in the large dining room where I usually eat. Now these rooms felt pleasant and welcoming—I felt as if I were coming home, and yet, just a while earlier, I’d felt incarcerated and could think of nothing else but to escape from this place. It seemed many months had passed since I’d been here, though it had only been a few hours. Everything looked as it had before. I went to the window and looked out over the courtyard. To my right side loomed the gate tower,¹⁹⁰ where the stairs had led down into the depths of the castle. I realized now that I’d returned here alive by a hair’s breadth.¹⁹¹

I felt a weight lying over me and I needed to wash off the dust, spiderwebs, mould and dirt I was covered in.

I noticed a sore on my throat, just above the artery—and I found bite marks! The rosary had obviously protected me, as it had pressed its shape into my flesh.

No matter how thoroughly I cleaned myself, the mark on my throat could not be erased.

I was becoming ravenously hungry so I returned to the dining room, where I had noticed a cloth on the table when I entered from the Count’s room. Now the old mute woman was there, setting the table. I don’t think I’m mistaken when I say that she startled upon seeing me, as if she was both frightened and surprised; apparently, she didn’t understand how I could have got there. She must have been in my bedroom just moments before to make sure I was not present. She looked at me with fright and glanced at the door I’d come through, and then at the door to the Count’s quarters. When everything was prepared, she invited me to sit down and I happily obliged.

I vigorously began to eat, filling my wineglass and emptying it in one stretch. But then suddenly something so shocking happened that the glass dropped from my hand and shattered on the floor.

I heard the key to the Count’s room turning from the inside. Someone had locked the door.

This incident would have been insignificant to me had circumstances been different, but in this house, everything seems to be pregnant with foreboding.

As far as I knew, this door had been locked from the inside since the day I’d arrived here.

But today it had been unlocked, which was a stroke of luck for me; now it was fastened again, which meant that someone had been behind me or had seen me when I came in from the Count’s room; or the Count had arrived to his room and bolted the door; or the old woman had realized I’d ventured this way and rushed to lock the door so that I wouldn’t enter those chambers again—where I doubtless should not be.

I’d presumed the Count didn’t want me in his chambers, as he’d never offered to show them to me and always kept them locked.

I hadn’t entered these rooms on purpose, but neither can I erase from my memory that I’d been in them all the same.

Should the topic arise, I intend to tell the Count forthrightly what had happened—that I got lost in the castle and found my way back to my room by sheer luck—but I would not let him know the things I’d chanced upon.