The Spectator Bird by Wallace Stegner

castle was growing hares, pheasants, grouse, chukars, and deer for the King’s fall hunting parties. Another relative is Karen Blixen, who writes under the name of Isak Dinesen and who is the one person in Denmark I would like, out of sheer admiration, to meet. The countess says she will arrange it Fraternizing like mad, we plan a lot of expeditions together as soon as our Rover arrives from England. See a lot of castles.
    I gather that this leftover aristocracy has about lost its function and has been losing its lands for decades. They all marry their cousins for lack of anybody else suitable. Men mainly drunks, the countess suggests, and the women all witches. She herself has powers. Several times she has had second sight. She has a gift for quieting unruly or maddened horses, and once, while visiting relatives near Kassel, in Germany, she cured a boy of warts.
    I learn from her how to skaal the lady on my left; until she has been skaal ’ed she is not supposed to touch her wine. Look the lady deep in the eyes, hold the glass at the third vest button, raise it and drink, still holding her eyes, and then, still holding them, lower to the third vest button. It is an astonishingly intimate ritual. It taught me that I practically never look anybody that steadily in the eyes, especially a good-looking, amused, and amusing woman.
    Coincidence department: Ruth mentioned that my mother came from Denmark. Oh, from where? asked the countess. I said some village named Bregninge. Bregninge ? She said. Bregninge on Lolland? Oh, how funnyl If it is that Bregninge, it is on our estate, where I grew up. Great, I said. That’s another expedition for us when the car comes. Want to go back to Lolland?
    But a cloud has come over our dinner party. The countess does not get along with her brother, hasn’t seen him or written to him in years. It agitates her, obviously, even to talk about him. On the other hand his wife, who is Swedish and sad, is very nice. And the countess’ grandmother is still alive, nearly a hundred years old. What if she wrote to Manon, her brother Eigil’s wife, to see if she will invite us for luncheon or tea, so that the countess can see her grandmother and show us the castle, without running into her brother? We could stay at the little inn in Bregninge, on the shore.
    Fine, sure. But notice one thing. The countess has a hundred stories, but none about herself, and she mentions every relative including some like her brother Eigil whom she won’t speak to, but never her husband. And why haven’t any of these rich castle-dwellers rescued her? Why does she have to take in lodgers?
    People’s private lives strike me as none of my business, and I have never developed the habit of fishing for them. I wait for the countess to volunteer something about her personal problems, but so far she has not. Doesn’t she trust us, after we have gone out of our way to be nice against her?
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    April 10? 11?:
    This journal is already getting spasmodic, though it’s the only halfway disciplined thing I do. Continue to feel lousy. Maybe, as Ruth keeps saying, I ought to take my ekg’s down to some Danish doctor to see if the heart infection is really gone, as they assured me in New York it was. Every now and then she looks at me hard and asks me if I’m all right, and the mirror tells me I have a color like a two-week corpse.
    Nevertheless I rather enjoy the routines we are developing and the sense of being totally out of touch with everything known. Up about seven (headache, backache), pick the milk and the countess’ yoghurt off the back stairs, put the ice sign in the kitchen window, shave, and go out the front door, noisily enough so that the countess will hear me and get her clear shot at the bathroom.
    The iron courtyard gates are already open. In the street the air damp and chilly. For a wonder not raining this morning—dim dawn under the clouds. Up the quay the Bomholm boat