the brook, and finally, driven beyond endurance, each of the two
half-crazed men ran along the steep path, trying to find a way across
the deep water. Of the two Marti was the most envenomed because he
believed that his foe, being a landlord and managing an inn, must at
least have food enough to eat and liquor to drink, besides leading a
jolly sort of life, while he was barely able to eke out a meal or two
on the coarsest fare. Besides, the memory of his wasted farm stung him
to violence. But Manz, too, now stepped along lively enough on his side
of the water, and behind him his son, who, instead of sharing his
father's grim interest in the quarrel, peeped curiously and amazedly at
Vreni. She, the girl, followed closely behind her father, deeply
ashamed at what she heard and looking at the ground, so that her curly
brown hair fell over her flushed face. She carried in her hand a wooden
fishpail, and in the other her shoes and stockings, and had shortened
her skirt to avoid its dragging in the wet. But since Sali was walking
on the other side and seemed to watch her, she had allowed her skirt to
drop, out of modesty, and was now thrice embarrassed and annoyed, since
she had not alone to carry all, pail, nets, shoes and stockings, but
also to hold up her skirt and to feel humiliated because of this bitter
and vulgar quarrel. If she had lifted her eyes and read Sali's face,
she would have seen that he no longer looked either proud or elegant as
hitherto his image had dwelt in her mind, but that, on the contrary,
the young man also wore a distressed and humbled mien.
But while Vreni so entirely ashamed and disconcerted kept her eyes on
the ground, and Sali stared in amazement at this dainty and graceful
being that had so suddenly crossed his path, and who seemed so weighed
down by the whole occurrence, they did not properly observe that their
fathers by now had become silent but were both of them striving in
increased rage to reach the small wooden bridge a short distance off
and which led across to the other shore.
Just then the first forks of lightning were weirdly illuminating the
scene. The thunder was rolling in the dun clouds, and heavy drops of
rain were already falling singly, when these two men, almost driven out
of their senses, simultaneously reached the tiny bridge with their
hurried and determined tread, and as soon as near enough seized each
other with the iron grip of the rustic, striking with all the power
they could summon with clenched fists into the hateful face of the
adversary. Blows rained fast and furious, and each of the combatants
gnashed his teeth with rage.
It is not a becoming nor a handsome sight to see elderly men usually
soberminded and slow to act in a personal encounter, no matter whether
occasioned by anger, provocation or self-defense, but such a spectacle
is harmless in comparison with that of two aged men who attack each
other with uncontrolled fury because while knowing the other deeply and
well, now out of the depths of that very knowledge and out of a fixed
belief that the other has destroyed his very life, seize each other
with their naked fists and try to commit murder from unrequited
revenge. But thus these two men now did, both with hair gray to the
roots. More than fifty years ago they had last fought with each other
as lads, merely out of a youthful spirit of rivalry, but during the
half century succeeding they had never laid hands on each other, except
when, as good neighbors and fellow-peasants, they had grasped each
other's hand in peace and concord, but even that, with their rather dry
and undemonstrative ways, but rarely. After the first two or three
frenzied blows, they both became silent, and now they struggled and
wrestled in all the agony of senile impotence, their stiffened muscles
and tendons stretched with the tension, murder in their glaring eyes,
each groaning with the supreme effort to master the other. They now
attempted, both of them, to end the fearsome fight by pushing the other
over into the rushing flood below, the slender supports of the rails
creaking under the pressure. But now at last their children had reached
the spot, and Sali, with a bound, came to his father's help, to enable
the latter to make an end of the hated foe, Marti being just about
spent and exhausted. But Vreni also sprang, dropping all her burdens,
to the rescue, and after the manner of women in such cases, embracing
her father tightly and really thus rendering him unable to move and
defend himself. Tears streamed from her eyes, and she looked with
silent appeal at Sali, just at the moment when he was about also to
grasp old Marti by the throat. Involuntarily he laid his hand upon the
arm of his father, thus restraining him, and next attempted to wrest
his father loose. The combat thus grew into a mutual swaying back and
forth, and the whole group was impotently straining and pushing,
without either party coming to a rest.
But during this confused jumbling the two young people had, interfering
between their elders, more and more approached each other, and just at
this juncture a break in the dark bank of clouds overhead let the
piercing rays of the setting sun reach the scene and illuminate it with
a blinding flash, and then it was that Sali looked full into the
countenance of the girl, rosy and embellished by the excitement. It was
to Sali like a glimpse of another, a brighter and more heavenly world.
And Vreni at the same instant, too, quickly observed the impression she
had made on her onetime playmate, and she smiled for the fraction of a
second at him, right in the midst of her tears and her fright. Sali,
however, recovered himself instantly, warned by the energetic struggles
of his father to shake off the restraining arm of his son. By holding
him firmly and by speaking with authority to his father, he managed to
calm him down at last and to push him out of the reach of the other.
Both old fellows breathed hard at this outcome of their desperate
fight, and began again to heap insults on one another, finally turning
away, however. Their children, though, were now silent in the midst of
their relief. But in turning away and separating they for a moment
glanced once more at each other, and their two hands, cool and moist
from the water and the rain, met and each noticed a slight pressure.
When the two old men turned from the scene, the clouds once more
closed, darkness fell, and the rain now poured down in torrents. Manz
preceded his son upon the obscured wet paths, bent to the cold rain,
and the terrific excitement still trembled in his features. His teeth
were chattering, and unseen tears of defeated hatred ran into his
stubbly beard. He let them run, and did not even wipe them away,
because he was ashamed of them, and had no wish for his son to see
them.
But his son had seen nothing. He went through rain and storm in an
ecstasy of happiness. He had forgotten all, his misery and the awful
scene just witnessed, his poverty and the darkness around him. In his
heart there was a happy song. Light and warm and full of joy everything
within him was. He felt as rich and powerful as a king's son. He saw
nothing but the smile of a second. He saw the beautiful face lit up by
the miracle of love. And he returned that smile only now, a half hour
later, and he laughed at the beautiful face and returned its gaze,
looking into the night and storm as into a paradise, the face shining
through the murk of rain like a guiding star. Indeed, he believed Vreni
could not help noticing his answering smile miles away, and was smiling
back at him.
Next day his father was stiff and sore and would not leave the house,
and to him the whole wretched meeting with his foe and the whole
development of the enmity between them, and the long years of misery
that had grown out of it suddenly seemed to take on a new form and to
become much plainer, while its influence spread around even in his
dusky tavern. So much so that both Manz and his wife were moving about
like ghosts, out of one room into another, into the cheerless kitchen
and the bedchambers, and thence back again into the equally bare and
dark guest room, where not a person was to be seen all day. At last
they both began to grumble, one blaming the other for things that had
gone wrong, dropping into an uneasy slumber from time to time from
which a nightmare would waken them with a start, and in which their
unquiet consciences upbraided them for past misdeeds. Only Sali heard
and saw nothing of all this, for his mind was entirely engrossed with
Vreni. Still the illusion was strong with him of being immeasurably
wealthy, but beside that he had a hallucination that he was powerful
and had learned how to conduct the most complicated and important
affairs in the world. He felt as if he knew all the wisdom on earth,
everything great and beautiful. And forever there stood before his
dreamy soul, clear and distinct, that great happening of the night
before, that wonderful creature with her enticing smile, that smile
which had shed a blinding flash of happiness on his path. The
consciousness of this great adventure dwelt with him like an
unspeakable secret, of which he was the sole possessor and which had
fallen to his share direct from heaven. It afforded him constant food
for thought and wonderment. And yet with all that it seemed also to him
that he had always known this would happen to him, and as if what now
filled him with such marvelous sweetness had always dwelt in his heart.
For nothing is just like this happiness of love, this sharing of a
mystery between two persons, which approaches human beings in the form
of unspeakable bliss, yet in a form so clear and precise, sanctioned
and sanctified by the priest, and endowed with a name so mellifluously
fine that no other word sounds half so sweet as Love.
On that day Sali felt neither lonesome nor unhappy; where he went and
stood Vreni's image followed him and glowed in his inner self; and this
without a moment's respite, one hour after another. But while his whole
being was engrossed with the lovely image of the girl at the same time
its outlines constantly became blurred, so that, after all, he lost the
faculty of reproducing it clearly. If he had been asked to describe her
in detail he would have been unable to do it. Always he saw her
standing near him, with that wizard smile; he felt her warm breath and
the whole indefinable charm of her presence, but it was for all that
like something which is seen but once and then vanishes forever. Like
something the potency of which one cannot escape and yet which one
never can know. In dreaming thus he was able to recall fully the
features of her when still a tiny maiden, and to experience a most
pronounced pleasure in doing so, but the one Vreni of yesterday he
could not recall as plainly. If indeed he had never seen Vreni again it
might be that his memory would have pieced her personality together,
little by little, until not the slightest bit had been wanting. But now
all the strength of his mind did not suffice to render him this
service, and this was because his senses, his eyes, imperatively
demanded their rights and their solace, and when in the afternoon the
sun was shining brilliantly and warm, gilding the roofs of all these
blackened housetops, Sali almost unconsciously found himself on the way
towards his old home in the country, which now seemed to him a heavenly
Jerusalem with twelve shining portals, and which set his heart to
beating feverishly as he approached it.
While on his way, though, he met Vreni's father, who with hurried and
disordered steps was going in the direction of the town. Marti looked
wild and unkempt, his gray beard had not been shorn for many weeks, and
altogether he presented indeed the picture of what he was: a wicked and
lost peasant who had got rid of his land and who now was intent on
doing evil to others. Nevertheless, Sali under these radically
different circumstances did not regard the crazed old man with hatred
but rather with fear and awe, as though his own life was in the hands
of this man and as though it were better to obtain it by favor than by
force. Marti, however, measured the young man with a black look,
glancing at him from his feet upwards, and then he went his way
silently. But this encounter came most opportunely to Sali. For seeing
the old man leaving the village on an errand it for the first time
became quite clear to him what his own object had been in coming. Thus
he proceeded stealthily on by-paths towards the village, and when
reaching it cautiously felt his way through the small lanes until he
had Marti's house and outbuildings right in front of him.
For several years past he had not seen this spot so closely. For even
while he still dwelt in the village itself he had been forbidden to
approach the Marti farm, avoiding meeting the family with whom his
father lived on terms of enmity. Therefore he was now full of wonder at
what, just the same, he had had ample opportunity to observe in the
case of his own father's property. Amazedly he stared at this once
prosperous and well-cultivated farm now turned into a waste. For Marti
had had one section after another of his property sequestrated by
orders of the court, and now all that was left was the dwelling house
itself and the space around it, with a bit of vegetable garden and a
small field up above the river, which latter Marti had for some time
been defending in a last desperate struggle with the judicial power.
There was, it is true, no longer any question of a rational cultivation
of the soil which once had borne so plentifully and where the wheat had
waved like a golden sea toward harvest time. Instead of that now there
was a mixed crop sprouting: rye, turnips, wheat and potatoes, with some
other "garden truck" intermingling, all from seed that had come from
paper packages left over or purchased in small quantities at random, so
that the whole cultivated space looked like a negligently tended
vegetable bed, in which cabbage, parsley and turnips predominated. It
was plainly to be seen that the owner of it, too lazy or indifferent to
do his farmer's work properly, had mainly had in mind to raise such
things as would enable him to live from day to day. Here a handful of
carrots had been torn out, there a mess of cabbage or potatoes, and the
rest had fared on for good or ill, and much of it lay rotting on the
ground. Everybody, too, had been in the habit of treading around and in
it all, just as he listed, and the one broad field now presented nearly
the desolate appearance of the once ownerless field whence had grown
all the mischief that had wrought havoc and brought the two neighbors
of old down so low. About the house itself there was no visible sign at
all of farm work. The stable stood vacant, its door hung loosely from
the broken staples, and innumerable spider's webs, grown thick and
large during the summer, were shimmering in the sunshine. Against the
broad door of a barn, where once were housed the fruits of the field,
hung untidy fishermen's nets and other sporting apparatus, in grim
token of abandoned farming. In the farmyard was to be seen not a single
chicken, pigeon or turkey, no dog or cat. The well only was the sole
live thing. But even its clear water no longer flowed in a regular gush
through the spout, but trickled through the broken tube, wasting itself
on the ground and forming dark pools on the soggy earth, a perfect
symbol of neglect. For while it would not have taken much time or
trouble to mend the broken tube, now Vreni was forced to use the water
she needed for her domestic tasks, for cooking and laundry work, from
the tricklings that escaped. The house itself, too, was a sad thing to
see. The window panes were all broken and pasted over with paper. Yet
the windows, after all, were the most cheerful-looking objects, for
Vreni kept them clean and shiny with soap and water, as shiny, in fact,
as her own eyes, and the latter, too, had to make up for all lack of
finery. And as the curly hair and the bright kerchiefs made amends for
much in her, so the wild growths stretching up toward windows and along
the jamb of the doorsills, and almost covering the very broken panes on
the windows, gave a charm to this tumbledown homestead. A wilderness of
scarlet bean blossoms, of portulac and sweet-scented flowers ran riot
along the house front, and these in their vivid colors clambered along
anything that would give them a hold, such as the handle of a rake, a
stake or broken rod. Vreni's grandfather had left behind a rusty
halberd or spontoon, such as were weapons much in vogue in his days,
for he had fought as a mercenary abroad. Now this rusty implement had
been stuck into the ground, and the willowy tendrils of the beanstalk
embraced it tightly. More bean plants groped their way up a shattered
ladder which had leaned against the house for ages, and thence their
blossoms hung into the windows as Vreni's curls hung into her pretty
face.
This farmyard, so much more picturesque than prosperous, lay somewhat
apart from its neighbors, and therefore was not exposed so much to
their inspection. But for the moment as Sali stared and watched nothing
human at all was visible. Sali thus was undisturbed in his reflections
as he leaned with his back against the barndoor, about thirty paces
away, and studied with attentive mien the deserted yard. He had been
doing this for some time when Vreni at last appeared under the
housedoor and gazed calmly and thoughtfully before her as if thinking
deeply of only one matter. Sali himself did not stir but contemplated
her as he would have done a fine painting. But after a brief while her
eyes traveled towards him, and she perceived him. Then she and he stood
without motion and looked, looked just as if they did not see living
beings but aerial phenomena. But at last Sali slowly stood upright, and
just as slowly went across the farmyard and towards Vreni. When he was
but a step or so from her, she stretched out her hands toward him and
pronounced only the one word: "Sali!"
He seized her hands speechlessly, and then continued gazing into her
face which had suddenly grown pale. Tears filled her eyes, and
gradually under his gaze she flushed painfully, and at last she said in
a very low voice: "What do you want here, Sali?"
"Only to see you," he replied. "Will we not become good friends again?"
"And our fathers, Sali?" asked Vreni, turning her weeping face aside,
since her hands had been imprisoned by him.
"Must we bear the burden of what they have done and have become?"
answered Sali. "It may be that we ourselves can redeem the evil they
have wrought, if we only love each other well enough and stand together
against the future."
"No, Sali, no good will ever come of it all," replied Vreni sobbingly;
"therefore better go your ways, Sali, in God's name."
"Are you alone, Vreni?" he asked. "May I come in a minute?"
"Father has gone to town for a spell, as he told me before leaving,"
remarked Vreni, "to do your father a bad turn. But I cannot let you in
here, because it may be that later on you would not be able to leave
again without attracting notice. As yet everything around here is still
and nobody about. Therefore, I beg of you, go before it is too late."
"No, I could not leave you without speaking," was his answer, and his
voice shook with emotion. "Since yesterday I have had to think of you
constantly, and I cannot go. We must speak to each other, at least for
half an hour or an hour; that will be a relief to both of us."
Vreni reflected a minute. Then she said thoughtfully: "Toward sundown I
shall walk out toward our field. You know the one I mean--we have but
the one left. I must pick some vegetables. I feel sure that nobody else
will be there, because they are mowing all of them in a different
direction. If you insist on coming, you may come there, but for the
present go and take care nobody else sees you. Even if nobody at all
bothers any longer about us, they would nevertheless gossip so much
about it that father could not fail to hear it."
They now dropped their hands, but once more seized them, and both also
asked: "How do you do?"
But instead of answering each other they repeated the same phrase over
and over again, since they, after the manner of lovers, no longer were
able to guide or control their words. Thus the only answer each
received was given with the eyes, and without saying anything more to
each other they finally separated, half sad, half joyful.
"Go there at once," she called after him; "I shall be there almost as
soon as yourself."
Sali followed this advice, and went at once up the steep path that led
to the hill where the busy world seemed so far away and where the soul
expanded, to the undulating fields that stretched out far on both
sides, where the brooding July sun shone and the drifting white clouds
sailed overhead, where the ripe corn in the gentle breeze bobbed up and
down, where the river below glinted blue, and all these scenes of past
happiness filled his soul after a long dearth with peace and gentle
joy, and his griefs and fears were left below. At full length he threw
himself down amid the half-shade of the upstanding wheat, there where
it marked the boundary of Marti's waste acres, and peered with
unblinking eyes into the gold-rimmed clouds.
Although scarcely a quarter hour elapsed until Vreni followed him, and
although he had thought of nothing but his bliss and his love, dreaming
of it and building castles in the air, he was yet surprised when Vreni
suddenly stood at his side, smiling down at him, and with a start he
rose.
"Vreni," he exclaimed in a voice that trembled with love, and she,
still and smiling, tendered both her hands to him. Hand in hand they
then paced along the whispering corn, slowly down towards the river,
and then as slowly back again, with scarcely any words. This short walk
they repeated twice or thrice, back and forth, still, blissful, and
quiet, so that this young pair now resembled likewise a pair of stars,
coming and going across the gentle curve of the hillock and adown the
declivity beyond, just as had once, years and years ago, the accurately
measuring plows of the two rustic neighbors. But as they once on this
pilgrimage lifted their eyes from the blue cornflowers along the edge
of the field where they had rested, they suddenly saw a swarthy fellow,
like a darksome star, precede them on their path, a fellow of whom they
could not tell whence he had appeared so entirely without warning.
Probably he had been lying in the corn, and Vreni shuddered, while Sali
murmured with affright: "It's the black fiddler!" And indeed, the
fellow ambling along before them carried under his arm a violin, and
truly, too, he looked swarthy enough. A black crushed felt hat, a black
blouse and hair and beard pitchdark, even his unwashed hands of that
hue, he made the impression of a man carrying along an evil omen. This
man led a wandering life. He did all sorts of jobs: mended kettles and
pans, helped charcoal burners, aided in pitching in the woods, and only
used his fiddle and earned money that way when the peasants somewhere
were celebrating a festival or holiday, a wedding or big dance, and
such like. Sali and Vreni meant to leave the fiddler by himself. Quiet
as mice they slowly walked behind him, thinking that he would probably
turn off the road soon. He seemed to pay no attention to the two, never
turning around and keeping perfect silence. With that they felt a weird
influence coming from the fellow, so that they had not the courage to
openly avoid him and turning aside unconsciously they followed in his
tracks to the very end of the field, the spot where that unjust heap of
stone and rock lay, the one that had started the two families on their
downward road. Innumerable poppies and wild roses had grown there and
were now in full bloom, wherefore this stony desert lay like an
enormous splotch of blood along the road.
All at once the black fiddler sprang with one jump on top one of the
irregular ramparts of stone, the rim of which was also scarlet with
wild blossoms, then turned himself around, and threw a glance in every
direction. The young couple stopped and looked up at him shamefaced.
For turn they would not in face of him, and to proceed along on the
same path would have taken them into the village, which they also
wished to avoid.
He looked at them keenly, and then he shouted: "I know you two. You are
the children of those who have stolen from me this soil. I am glad to
see you here, and to notice how the theft has benefited you. Surely, I
shall also live to see you two go before me the way of all flesh. Yes,
look at me, you little fools. Do you like my nose, eh?"