thus of course it attracted the special attention of the two children.
With great care they separated it from the trunk, and peered in
amazement at its hollow interior. Seeing this great hollow the thought
occurred to them to fill it up with the loose bran. With their tiny
baby fingers they stuffed and stuffed by turns the bran into the empty
space, and for the first time in its existence this head was filled
with something. The boy, however, evidently deemed the task incomplete;
probably it required some life, something moving, to satisfy him. So he
caught a huge blue fly, and while he held it tight he instructed the
little girl to let out the bran once more. Then he placed the fly into
the hollow head, and stopped up the exit with a small bunch of grass.
The two children held the head to their ears, and then put it solemnly
upon a great rock. Since the head was still covered with the scarlet
poppy, this receptacle of sound now closely resembled a soothsaying
oracle, and the two listened with great respect to queer noises it
emitted, in deep silence as if fairy tales were being told, holding
each other close meanwhile. But every prophet awakens not only respect
but also terror and ingratitude. The odd noises inside the hollow head
aroused the human cruelty of the children, and jointly they resolved to
bury it. They dug a shallow grave, and placed the head in it, without
first obtaining the views of the imprisoned fly on it. Then they
erected over the grave a monument of stone. But awe seized them at this
instance, since they had buried something living and conscious, and
they went away from the scene of this pagan sacrifice. In a spot wholly
overgrown with green herbs the little girl lay down on her back, being
tired, and began singing, over and over again, a few simple words in a
monotonous voice, and the little boy sat near and joined singing, and
he, too, was so tired as almost to fall asleep. The sun shone right
into the open mouth of the singing girl, illuminating her white little
teeth, and rendered her scarlet lips semi-transparent. The boy saw
these white teeth, and he held her head and curiously investigating
them he said: "Guess how many teeth you have." The little girl
reflected for a moment, and then she said at random: "A hundred!" "No,"
said the boy, "two and thirty." But he added: "Wait, I will count
them!"
And he started to count them, and counted over and over, and it was at
no time thirty-two, and so he resumed his count. The girl kept patient
for a long time, but at last she got up and said: "Now I will count
yours." And the boy lay down amongst the herbs, the little one above
him, and she embraced his head, he opened wide his mouth, and she began
to count: One, two, seven, five, two, one; for the little thing knew
not yet how to count. The boy corrected her and instructed her how to
go about it, and thus she also started again and again, and curiously
enough it was precisely this little game that pleased them best of all
that day. But at last the little girl sank down on the soft couch of
herbs, and the two children fell asleep in the full glare of the noon
sun.
Meanwhile the fathers had finished their job of plowing and had changed
the stubble field into a brown plain, strongly scenting the earth. When
at the end of the last furrow the helper of one of the two wanted to
stop, his master shouted: "Why do you stop? Turn up another furrow!"
"But we're done," said the helper. "Shut your mouth, and do what I tell
you," replied the other. And they did turn once more and tore a big
furrow right into the middle, the ownerless, field, so that weeds and
stones flew about. But the peasant took no time to remove these.
Probably he considered that there was ample time for that some other
day. He was satisfied to do the thing for the nonce only in its main
feature. Thus he went up the height softly, and when up on top and the
delicious play of the wind now turned once more the tip of his white
cap backwards, on the other side of the fallow field the second peasant
was just plowing a similar furrow, the wind having also reversed the
tip of his cap, and cut also a goodly furrow off from the same fallow
field. Each of them saw, of course, what the other did, but neither
seemed to do so, and thus they once more strode away one from the
other, each falling star finally disappearing below the curve of the
ground. Thus the woof of Fate spins its net around us, "and what he
weaves no weaver knows."
One harvest after another went by and the two children grew steadily
taller and handsomer, and the ownerless fields as steadily smaller
between the two neighbors. With every new plowing the section between
lost hither and thither one furrow, without there being a word said
about it, and without a human eye apparently noting the misdeed. The
stones and rocks became more and more compact and formed already a
perfect and continuous ridge the whole length of the field, and the
shrubs and weeds on it had already attained such an altitude that the
two children, although they, too, had grown, could no longer see each
other across them.
They no longer went to the field together, since ten-year-old Salomon,
or Sali, as he was mostly called, now kept with the bigger boys or the
men, and dusky Vreni,[1] though a fiery little thing, had already to
place herself under the supervision of those of her sex, for fear of
being laughed at as a tomboy. In spite of all that they improved the
occasion of the harvest, when everybody was out in the fields, to climb
once on top of the huge stony ridge, or breastworks, which ordinarily
divided them, and to wage a toy war, pushing each other down from it,
as the culmination of the battle. Even though they had no longer
anything more to do with each other, this annual ceremony was
maintained by them all the more carefully since the land of their
fathers did not meet anywhere else.
However, now the fallow field was to be sold, after all, and the sum
realized provisionally kept by the authorities. The day came at last,
and the public sale took place on the spot itself. But beside Manz and
Marti there were present only a few curious ones, since nobody but they
felt like buying the odd piece of ground and cultivating it between the
property of the two peasants. For although these two belonged among the
best farmers of the village, and had done nothing but what two-thirds
of the others would also have done under like circumstances, still now
they were looked at askance because of it, and nobody wanted to be
squeezed in between them in the diminished and orphaned field. For most
men are so made as to be quite ready to commit a wrong which is more or
less in vogue, especially if the circumstances of the case facilitate
the wrong. But as soon as the wrong has been perpetrated by some one
else, they are glad that it was not they who had been exposed to the
temptation, and then they regard the guilty one almost as a warning
example in regard to their own failings, and treat him with a delicate
aversion as a sort of lightning rod of evil itself, as one marked by
the gods themselves, while all the while their mouths are watering for
the advantages thus accrued to him by means of his sin.
Manz and Marti were, therefore, the only ones who seriously bid on the
ownerless land, and after a rather spirited contest, during which the
price was driven up higher than had been supposed, it was Manz to whom
it was awarded. The officials and the lookers-on soon drifted away, and
the two neighbors who had been busy on their fields after the sale, met
again, and Marti said: "I suppose you will now put your land, the old
and the new, together, halve it, and work it in that way? That, at
least, is what I should have done if I had got the land."
"That indeed is what I mean to do," answered Manz, "for as one single
field it would not be easy to manage. But there is another thing I want
to say. I noticed the other day that you drove into the lower end of
this field that has now become mine, and that you cut off quite a
good-sized triangle. It may be you thought at the time that you
yourself would soon own the whole of it and that then it would make no
difference anyway. But since now it belongs to me, you will admit that
I cannot and will not permit such a curtailment of my property rights,
and you will not take it amiss if I again straighten out the right
lines. Of course you will not. There need be no hard feelings on that
score."
Marti, however, replied just as coolly: "Neither do I look for any
trouble. For my opinion is you have purchased the field just as it is.
We both examined it before the sale, and of course it has not changed
within an hour or so."
"Nonsense," said Manz, "what was done formerly, under different
conditions, we will not go into. But too much is too much, and
everything has its limit, and must be adjusted according to reason in
the end. These three fields have from of old been lying one next to the
other just as though marked with the measuring tape. You may think it
funny to put in such an unjustifiable objection or claim. We both of us
would get a new nickname if I let you keep that crooked end of it
without rhyme or reason. It must come back where it by right belongs."
But Marti only laughed and said: "All at once so afraid of what people
may think? But then, it's easily arranged. I have no objection at all
to such a crooked-shaped bit of land. If you don't like it, all right,
we can straighten it out. But not on my side, I swear."
"Don't talk so strange," replied Manz with some heat. "Of course it
will be straightened out, and that on your side. You can bet your
bottom dollar on that."
"Well, we'll see about that," was Marti's parting remark, and the two
men separated without even looking at each other. On the contrary, they
gazed steadfastly in different directions, as if something of enormous
interest were floating in the air which it was absolutely necessary to
keep an eye on.
On the next day already Manz sent his hired boy, also a wench working
for daily wage, and his own boy Sali out to the new field, to begin
removing the weeds and wild growths, and to pile them up at certain
places, so as to make the loading up and carting away of the crop of
stones all the easier. This noted a change in his character, this
sending the little boy, scarcely eleven, whom he had never before
driven to hard work such as weeding, out to field labor, and this
against the will of the mother. It seemed indeed, since he defended his
order with solemn and high-sounding words, as if he wanted to daze his
own better conscience. At any rate, the slight wrong thus done to his
own flesh and blood in insisting on onerous and unfit labor, was but
one of the consequences growing out of the original wrong done by him
for years in regard to the field itself. One by one more wrong, more
evil unfolded itself. The three meanwhile weeded away industriously on
the long strip of ground, and hacked away at the queer plants that had
been flourishing on the soil for so many years. And to the young people
doing this hard work, albeit it taxed and tried their strength greatly,
it really was something of an amusement, since it was no carefully
graduated and scaled task, but rather a wild job of destruction. After
piling all this vegetable refuse up in heaps and letting the sun dry
it, it was set afire with great jubilation and noise, and when the
murky flames shot up and broad swaths of smoke waved irregularly, the
young people jumped and danced about like a band of wild Indians.
But this was the last festival on the ominous new field, and little
Vreni, Marti's young daughter, also crept out and joined the revels.
The unusual occasion and the spirit of rampant gaiety easily brought it
about that the two playmates of yore once more came in contact and were
happy and jolly at their bonfire. Other children, too, gathered, until
there was quite a crowd of youthful, excited merrymakers assembled. But
always it happened that, as soon as the two became separated in the
throng, Vreni would rejoin Sali, or Sali Vreni. When it was she it was
a treat to watch her face when she slipped her little hand in that of
the boy, her animated features and her glowing eyes fairly brimming
with pleasure. To both of them it seemed as though this glorious day
could never end. Old Manz, though, came out toward evening, to see what
had been accomplished, and despite the fact that their labor had been
done well and as directed, he scolded at the childish jollification and
drove the young people off his ground. Almost at the same time Marti
visited his own section adjoining, and noticing his little daughter
from afar, he whistled to her shrill and peremptory, and when she
obeyed the summons in frightened haste he struck her harshly in the
face without giving any reason. So that both little ones went home
weeping and sad; yet they were both still so much children that they
scarcely knew at this time why they were so sad or knew before why they
felt so happy. As for the rudeness of their fathers they did not
understand the underlying motive of it, and it did not touch their
hearts.
During the next days the labor became harder and more strenuous, and
some men had to be hired for it. For the task was this time to load and
clean off the huge crop of stones along the entire length of the field.
There seemed to be no end to this work, and one would have said that
all the stones in the world had been collected there. But Manz did not
have the stones carted off entirely from the field, but every load was
taken to the triangular piece of ground in dispute, where it was
dumped. It was dumped on the neatly plowed soil that Marti had toiled
over. Manz had previously drawn a straight line as boundary, and now he
loaded this spot down with all these thousands upon thousands of
pebbles, rocks and bowlders which he and Marti had for whole decades
thrown upon ownerless soil. The heap grew, and grew for days and weeks,
until there was a mighty pyramid of stone which, as Manz felt
convinced, his adversary would surely be loath to trouble with. Marti,
in fact, had expected nothing of the kind. He had rather thought that
Manz would go to work with his plow, as he used to do, and had
therefore waited to see him appear in that part. And Marti did not hear
of the rocky monument until almost completed. When he ran out in the
full blast of his anger, and saw it all, he hastened home and fetched
the village magistrate in order to protest against the accumulation of
stones on "his" ground, and to have the small bit of ground officially
declared as in litigation.
From that sinister day on the two peasants sued and countersued each
other in court, and neither desisted until both were completely ruined.
The thinking of these two ordinarily shrewd and fair men became
fundamentally wrong and fallacious. They were unable to view anything
henceforth as unrelated with their quarrel. Their arguments fell short
of the mark in everything. The most narrow sense of legality, of what
was permitted and what not, filled the head of each of them, and
neither was able to understand how the other could seize so entirely
without reason or right this bit of soil, in itself so insignificant.
In the case of Manz there was added a wonderful sense for symmetry and
parallel lines, and he felt really and truly shortened in his rights by
Martins insistence on retaining hold of a fragment of property laid out
on different geometrical lines. But both tallied in their conceptions
in this that the other must think him a veritable fool to try and get
the better of him in this particular manner, in this impudent and
unparalleled manner, since to make such an attempt at all was perhaps
thinkable in the case of a mere nobody, of a man without reputation and
substance, but surely not in the case of an upstanding, energetic and
able man, of one who was both willing and able to take care of his
interests. And it was this consideration above all that rankled and
festered in the heart of each of the two once so friendly neighbors.
Each felt himself hurt in his quaint sense of honor, and let himself go
headlong in the rush of passion and of combativeness, without even
attempting at any time to stop the resultant moral and material decay
and ruin. Their two lives henceforth resembled the torture of two lost
souls who, upon a narrow board, carried along a dark and fearsome
river, yet deal tremendous blows at the air, seize upon each other and
destroy each other finally, all in the false belief of having seized
and trying to destroy their evil fate itself.
As their whole matter in dispute was in itself and on both sides not
clean or lucid, they soon got into the hands of all sorts of swindlers
and cutthroats, of pettifoggers and evil counselors, men who filled
their imagination with glittering bubbles, containing no substance
whatever. And especially it was the speculators and dishonest agents of
Seldwyla who found this case one after their own heart, and soon each
of the two litigants had a whole train of advisers, go-betweens and
spies around him, fellows who in all sorts of crooked ways knew how to
draw cash money out of them. For the quarrel for that tiny fragment of
soil with the stone pyramid on top on which already a perfect forest of
weeds, thistles and nettles had grown anew, was only the first stage in
a labyrinth of errors that little by little changed the whole character
and method of living for the two. It was singular, too, how in the case
of two men of about fifty there could shoot up and become fixed an
entire crop of new habits and morals, principles and hopes, all of a
kind which were foreign to their former natures, how men who all
their lives had been noted for their hard common-sense could become
day-dreamers and gullible oafs.
And the more money they lost by all this the more they longed to
acquire more, and the less they possessed the more persistently they
endeavored to become rich and to shine before their fellows. Thus they
easily allowed themselves to be hoodwinked by the clumsiest tricks, and
year after year they would play in all the foreign lotteries of which
Seldwyla agents were praising to them the splendid chances. But never
so much as a dollar came their way in prizes. On the other hand, they
forever heard of the big winnings in these lotteries made by others;
they also were told that it had hung just by a hair that they would
have done as well, and thus they were constantly bled by these leeches
of their scantier and scantier means.
Now and then the rascally Seldwylians played a trick on the two deadly
enemies which for its peculiar raciness was specially relished by them,
the people of Seldwyla, that is. They would sell the two peasants
sections of the same lottery tickets, so that Manz as well as Marti
would build their hopes of a rich strike on precisely the same
fallacious foundation, and also in the end would feel the same
despondency from the same source. Half their time the two now spent in
town, and there each had his headquarters in a miserable tavern. There
they would indulge in foolish bragging and bluster, would drink too
much and play the Lord Bountiful to loafers that would flatter the
simpletons to the top of their bent, and all the while the dark doubt
would assail them that they who in order not to be reckoned dunces had
gone to law about a trifling object, had now really become just that
and furthermore, were so reckoned by general consent.
The other half of the time they spent at home, morose and incapable of
steady work or sober reflection. Habitually neglecting their farm
labor, at times they tried to make up for that by undue haste,
overworking their help and thus soon unable to retain any respectable
men in their employ.
Thus things went from bad to worse little by little, and within less
than ten years both of them were overburdened with debts, and stood
like storks with one leg upon their farms, so that the slightest change
might blow them over. But no matter how else they fared, the hatred
between them grew more intense every day, since each looked upon the
other as the cause of his misfortune, as his archenemy, as his foe
without rhyme or reason, as the one being in the world whom the devil
purposely had invented to ruin him. They spat out before each other
when they saw the adversary approaching from afar. Nobody belonging to
them was permitted to speak to wife, child or servants of the other, on
pain of instant brutal punishment. Their wives behaved differently
under these circumstances. Marti's wife, who came of good family and
was of a fine disposition, did not long survive the rapid downfall of
her house and family, sorrowed silently and died before her little
daughter was fourteen. The wife of Manz, on the other hand, altered her
whole character. Only for the worse, of course. And to do that all she
needed to do was to aggravate some of her natural defects, let them go
on, so to speak, without bridling them at all. Her passion for tidbits
and sweets became boundless; her love of gossip deteriorated into a
veritable craze, and she soon became unable to tell the truth about
anything or anybody. She habitually spoke the very contrary of what was
in her thoughts, cheated and deceived her own husband, and found keen
pleasure in getting everybody by the ears. Her original frankness and
her harmless delight in satisfying her feminine curiosity turned into
evil intrigue and the inclination to make mischief between neighbors
and friends. Instead of suffering patiently under the rudeness and
changed habits of her husband, she fooled him and laughed behind his
back in doing so. No matter if he now and then behaved with cruelty to
her and his household, she did not care. She denied herself nothing,
became more luxurious in her tastes as his money affairs grew steadily
more involved, and fattened on the very misfortunes that were rapidly
leading to complete ruin.
That with all that the two children fared any better was scarcely to be
expected. While still mere human buds and incapable of meeting the
harsh fate slowly preparing for them, they were done out of their youth
and out of the hopes and advantages incident to their tender years.
Vreni indeed was worse off in this respect than Sali, the boy, since
her mother was dead and she was exposed in a wasted home to the tyranny
of a father whose violent instincts found no check whatever. When
sixteen Vreni had developed into a slender and charming young girl. Her
hair of dark-brown naturally curled down to her flashing eyes; her
swiftly coursing blood seemed to shimmer through the delicate oval of
her dusky cheeks, and the scarlet of her dainty lips made a strikingly
vivid contrast, so that everybody looked twice when she passed. And
despite her sad bringing-up, an ardent love of life and an
inextinguishable cheerfulness were trembling in every fibre of Vreni's
being. Laughing and smiling at the least encouragement she forgot her
troubles easily, and was always ready for a frolic and a romp if
domestic weather permitted at all, that is, if her father did not
hinder and torture her too cruelly. However, with all her
lightheartedness and her buoyant temperament, the deepening shadows
over the house inevitably enshrouded her all too often. She had to bear
the brunt of her father's soured disposition, and she had hardly any
help in trying to keep house for him after a fashion. On her young
shoulders mainly rested the embarrassments of a home constantly
threatened by importunate creditors and wild boon companions of her
dissolute father. And not alone that. With the natural taste of her sex
for a neat and clean appearance her father refused her nearly every
means to gratify it. Thus she had great trouble to ornament her pretty
person the way it deserved. But somehow she managed to do it, to
possess always a becoming holiday attire, including even a couple of
vividly colored kerchiefs that set off marvelously her darksome beauty.
Full of youthful animation and gaiety she found it hard to mostly have
to renounce all the social pleasures of her years; but at least this
prevented her from falling into the opposite extreme. Besides, young as
she was, she had witnessed the declining days and the death of her
mother, and had been deeply impressed by it, so that this had acted as
another restraint on her joyous disposition. It was almost a pathetic
sight to observe how notwithstanding all these serious obstacles pretty
Vreni instantly would respond to the calls of joy if the occasion was
at all favorable, as a flower after drooping in a heavy rainstorm will
raise its head at the first rays of the reappearing sun.