emaciated swarthy face like a beak, or rather more like a good-sized
club. As if it had been pasted on to his bony face it looked and below
that the tiny mouth, in the shape of a small round hole, singularly
contracted and expanded, and out of this hole his words constantly
tumbled, whistling or buzzing or hissing. His small twisted felt hat,
shapeless and shabby, pushed over his left ear, heightened the uncanny
effect. This piece of his apparel seemed to change its form with every
motion of the queer-looking head, although in reality it sat immovable
on his pate. And of the eyes of this strange fellow nothing was to be
noticed but their whites, since the pupils were flashing around all the
time, just as though they were two hares jumping about to escape being
seized.
"Look at me well," he then continued. "Your two fathers know all about
me, and everybody in the village can identify me by my nose. Years ago
they were spreading the rumor that a good piece of money was awaiting
the heir to these fields here. I have called at court twenty times. But
since I had no baptismal certificate and since my friends, the
vagrants, who witnessed my birth, have no voice that the law will
recognize, the time set has elapsed, and they have cheated me out of
the little sum, large enough all the same to permit my emigrating to a
better country. I have implored your fathers at that time, again and
again, to testify for me to the effect that they at least believed me,
according to their conscience, to be the rightful heir. But they drove
me from their farms, and now, ha! ha! ha! they themselves have gone to
the devil. Well and good, that is the way things turn out in this
world, and I don't care a rap. And now I will just the same fiddle if
you want to dance."
With that he was down again on the ground beside them, at a mighty
bound, and seeing they did not want to dance he quickly disappeared in
the direction of the village; there the crop was to be brought in
towards nightfall, and there would be gay doings.
When he was gone the young couple sat down, discouraged and out of
spirits, among the wilderness of stone. They let their hands drop and
hung their poor heads too. For the sudden appearance of the vagrant
fiddler had wiped out the happy memories of their childhood, and their
joyous mood in which they, like they used in their younger days, had
wandered about in the green and among the corn, had gone with him. They
sat once more on the hard soil of their misery, and the happy gleam of
childhood had vanished, and their minds were oppressed and darkened.
But all at once Vreni remembered the fiddler's nose, and his whole odd
figure, and she burst out laughing loud and merry. She exclaimed: "The
poor fellow surely looks too queer. What a nose he had!" And with that
a charmingly careless merriment flashed out of her brown eyes, just as
though she had only been waiting for the fiddler's nose to chase away
all the sad clouds from her mind. Sali, too, regarded the girl, and
noticed this sunny gaiety. But by that time Vreni had already forgotten
the immediate cause of her gleefulness, and now she laughed on her own
account into Sali's face. Sali, dazed and astonished, involuntarily
gazed at the girl with laughing mouth, like a hungry man who suddenly
is offered sweetened wheat bread, and he said: "Heavens, Vreni, how
pretty you are!"
And Vreni, for sole answer, laughed but the more, and out of the mere
enjoyment of her sweet temper she gurgled a few melodious notes that
sounded to the boy like the warblings of a nightingale.
"Oh, you little witch," he exclaimed enraptured, "where have you
learned such tricks? What sorcery are you applying to me?"
"Sorcery?" she murmured astonished, in a voice of sweet enchantment,
and she seized Sali's hand anew. "There's no sorcery about this. How
gladly I should have laughed now and then, with reason or without. Now
and then, indeed, all by myself, I have laughed a bit, because I
couldn't help it, but my heart was not in it. But now it's different.
Now I should like to laugh all the time, holding your hand and feeling
happy. I should like to hold your hand forever, and look into your
eyes. Do you too love me a little bit?"
"Ah, Vreni," he answered, and looked full and affectionately into her
eyes, "I never cared for any girl before. And I have never until now
taken a good look at another girl. It always seemed to me as though
some time or other I should have to love you, and without knowing it, I
think, you have always been in my thoughts."
"And so it was in my case," said Vreni, "only more so. For you never
would look at me and did not know what had become of me and what I had
grown into. But as for me, I have from time to time, secretly, of
course, and from afar, cast a glance at you, and knew well enough what
you were like. Do you still remember how often as children we used to
come here? You know in the little baby cart? What small folk we were
those days, and how long, long ago that all is! One would think we were
old, real old now. Eh?"
Sali became thoughtful.
"How old are you, Vreni?" he asked. "I should think you must be about
seventeen?"
"I am seventeen and a half," answered she. "And you?"
"Guess!"
"Oh, I know, you are going on twenty."
"How do you know?" he asked.
"I won't tell you," she laughed.
"Won't tell me?"
"No, no," and she giggled merrily.
"But I want to know."
"Will you compel me?"
"We'll see about that."
These silly remarks Sali made because he wanted to keep his hands busy
and to have a pretext for the awkward caresses he attempted and which
his love for the beautiful girl hungered for. But she continued the
childish dialogue willingly enough for some time longer, showing plenty
of patience the while, feeling instinctively her lover's mood. And the
simple sallies on both sides seemed to them the height of wisdom, so
soft and sweet and full of their mutual feelings they were. At last,
however, Sali waxed bold and aggressive, and seized Vreni and pressed
her down into the scarlet bed of poppies by main strength. There she
lay panting, blinking at the sun with eyes half-closed. Her softly
rounded cheeks glowed like ripe apples and her mouth was breathing hard
so that the snow-white rows of teeth became visible. Daintily as if
penciled her eyebrows were defined above those flashing eyes, and her
young bosom rose and fell under the working four hands which mutually
caressed and fought each other. Sali was beyond himself with delight,
seeing this wonderful young creature before him, knowing her to be his
own, and he deemed himself wealthier than a monarch.
"I see you still have all your teeth," he said. "Do you recall how
often we tried to count them? Do you now know how to count?"
"Oh, you silly," smilingly rejoined Vreni, "these are not the same.
Those I lost long ago."
So Sali in the simplicity of his soul wanted to renew the game, and
prepared to count them over once more. But Vreni abruptly rose and
closed her mouth. Then she began to form a wreath of poppies and to
place it on her head. The wreath was broad and long, and on the brow of
the nut-brown maid it was an ornament so bewitching as to lend her an
enchanting air. Sali held in his arms what rich people would have
dearly paid for if merely they had had it painted on their walls.
But at last she sprang up. "Goodness, how hot it is here! Here we
remain like ninnies and allow ourselves to be roasted alive. Come,
dear, and let us sit among the corn!"
And they got up and looked for a suitable hiding-place among the tall
wheat. When they had found it, they slipped into the furrows of the
field so that nobody would have discovered them without regular search,
leaving no trace behind, and they built for themselves a narrow nest
among the golden ears that topped their heads when they were seated, so
that they only saw the deep azure of the sky above and nothing else in
the world. They clung to each other tightly, and showered kisses on
cheeks and hair and mouth, until at last they desisted from sheer
exhaustion, or whatever one wishes to call it when the caresses of two
lovers for one or two minutes cease and thus, right in the ecstasy of
the blossom tide of life, there is the hint of the perishableness of
everything mundane. They heard the larks singing high overhead, and
sought them with their sharp young eyes, and when they thought they saw
one flashing along in the sunlight like shooting stars along the
firmament, they kissed again, in token of reward, and tried to cheat
and to overreach each other at this game just as much as they could.
"Do you see, there is one flitting now," whispered Sali, and Vreni
replied just as low: "I can hear it, but I do not see it."
"Oh, but watch now," breathed Sali, "right there, where the small white
cloud is floating, a hand's breadth to the right."
And then both stared with all their might, and meanwhile opened their
lips, thirsty and hungry for more nourishment, like young birds in
their nest, in order to fasten these same lips upon the other if
perchance they both felt convinced of the existence of that lark.
But now Vreni made a stop, in order to say, very seriously and
importantly: "Let us not forget; this, then, is agreed, that each of us
loves the other. Now, I wish to know, what do you have to say about
your sweetheart?"
"This," said Sali, as though in a dream, "that it is a thing of beauty,
with two brown eyes, a scarlet mouth, and with two swift feet. But how
it really is thinking and believing I have no more idea than the Pope
in Rome. And what can you tell me about your lover? What is he like?"
"That he has two blue eyes, a bold mouth and two stout arms which he is
swift to use. But what his thoughts are I know no more than the Turkish
sultan."
"True," said Sali, "it is singular, but we really do not know what
either is thinking. We are less acquainted than if we had never seen
each other before. So strange towards each other the long time between
has made us. What really has happened during the long interval since we
grew up in your dear little head, Vreni?"
"Not much," whispered Vreni, "a thousand foolish things, but my life
has been so hard that none of them could stay there long."
"You poor little dear," said Sali in a very low voice, "but
nevertheless, Vreni, I believe you are a sly little thing, are you
not?"
"That you may learn, by and by, if you really are fond of me, as you
say," the young girl murmured.
"You mean when you are my wife," whispered Sali.
At these last words Vreni trembled slightly, and pressed herself more
tightly into his arms, kissing him anew long and tenderly. Tears
gathered in her eyes, and both of them all at once became sad, since
their future, so devoid of hope, came into their minds, and the enmity
of their fathers.
Vreni now sighed deeply and murmured: "Come, Sali, I must be going
now."
And both rose and left the cornfield hand in hand, but at the same
instant they spied Vreni's father. With the idle curiosity of the
person without useful employment he had been speculating, from the
moment he had met Sali hours before, what the young man might be
wanting all alone in the village. Remembering the occurrence of the
previous day, he finally, strolling slowly towards the town, had hit
upon the right cause, merely as the result of venom and suspicion. And
no sooner had his suspicion taken on a definite shape, when he, in the
middle of a Seldwyla street, turned back and reached the village. There
he had vainly searched for Vreni everywhere, at home and in the meadow
and all around in the hedges. With increasing restlessness he had now
sought her right near by in the cornfield, and when picking up there
Vreni's small vegetable basket, he had felt sure of being on the right
track, spying about, when suddenly he perceived the two children
issuing from the corn itself.
They stood there as if turned to stone. Marti himself also for a moment
did not move, and stared at them with evil looks, pale as lead. But
then he started to curse them like a fiend, and used the vilest
language toward the young man. He made a vicious grab at him,
attempting to throttle him. Sali instantly wrested himself loose, and
sprang back a few paces, so as to be out of the reach of the old man,
who acted like one demented. But when he perceived that Marti instead
of himself now took hold of the trembling girl, dealing her a violent
blow in the face, then seizing her by the back of her hair, trying to
drag her along and mistreat her further, he stepped up once more.
Without reflecting at all he picked up a rock and struck the old man
with it against the side of the head, half in fear of what the maniac
meant to do to Vreni, and half in self-defense. Marti after the blow
stumbled a step or two, and then fell in a heap on a pile of stones,
pulling his daughter down with him in so doing. Sali freed her hair
from the rough grasp of the unconscious man, and helped the girl to her
feet. But then he stood lifeless, not knowing what to say or do.
The girl seeing her father lying prone on the ground like dead, put her
hands to her face, shuddered and whispered: "Have you killed him?"
Sali silently nodded his head, and Vreni shrieked: "Oh, God, oh, God!
It is my father! The poor man!"
And quite out of her senses she knelt down alongside of him, lifted up
his head and began to examine his hurt. But there was no flow of blood,
nor any other trace of injury. She let the limp body drop to the ground
again. Sali put himself on the other side of the unconscious old man,
and both of them stared helplessly at the pale and motionless face of
Marti. They were silent and their hands dropped.
At last Sali remarked: "Perhaps he is not dead at all. I don't think he
is dead. That blow can never have killed him."
Vreni tore a leaf off one of the wild roses near her, and held it
before the mouth of her father. The leaf fluttered a little.
"He is still alive," she cried, "Run to the village, Sali, and get
assistance."
When Sali sprang up and was about to run off, she stretched out her
hand towards him, and cried: "Don't come back with the others and say
nothing as to how he came by his injury. I shall keep silent and betray
nothing."
In saying which the poor girl showed him a face streaming with tears of
distress, and she looked at her lover as though parting from him
forever.
"Come and kiss me once more," she murmured. "But no, get along with
you. Everything is over between us. We can never belong to each other."
And she gave him a gentle push, and he ran with a heavy heart down the
path to the village.
On his way he met a small boy, one he did not know, and him he bade to
get some people and described in detail where and what assistance was
required. Then he drifted off in despair, wandering at random all night
about the woods near the village.
In the early morning he cautiously crept forth, in order to spy out how
things had gone during the night. From several persons early astir he
heard the news. Marti was alive, but out of his senses, and nobody, it
seemed, knew what really had happened to him. And only after learning
this his mind was so far at ease that he found the way back to town and
to his father's tavern, where he buried himself in the family misery.
Vreni had kept her word. Nothing could be learned of her but that she
had found her father in this condition, and as he on the next day
became again quite active, breathed normally and began to move about,
although still without his full senses, and since, besides, there was
no one to frame a complaint, it was assumed that he had met with some
accident while under the influence of drink, probably had had a bad
fall on the stones, and matters were left as they were.
Vreni nursed him very carefully, never left his side, except to get
medicine and remedies from the shop of the village doctor, and also to
pick in the vegetable patch something wherewith to cook him and herself
a simple stew or soup. Those days she lived almost on air, although she
had to be about and busy day and night and nobody came to help her.
Thus nearly six weeks elapsed until the old man recovered sufficiently
to take care of himself, though long before that he had been sitting up
in bed and had babbled about one thing or another. But he had not
recovered his mind, and the things he was now saying and doing seemed
to show plainly that he had become weak-minded, and this in the
strangest manner. He could recall what had happened but darkly, and to
him it seemed something very enjoyable and laughable. Something, too,
which did not touch him in any way, and he laughed and laughed all day
long, and was in the best of humor, very different from what he had
been before his accident. While still abed he had a hundred foolish,
senseless ideas, cut capers and made faces, pulled his black peaked
woollen cap over his ears, down to his nose and his mouth, and then he
would mumble something which seemed to amuse him highly. Vreni, pale
and sorrowful, listened patiently to all his stories, shedding tears
about his idiotic behavior, which grieved her even more than his former
malicious and wicked tricks had. But it would nevertheless happen now
and then, that the old man would perform some particularly ludicrous
antics, and then Vreni, tortured as she was by all these scenes, would
be unable to help bursting into laughter, as her joyous disposition,
suppressed by all these sad events, would sometimes rend the bounds
which confined her, just like a bow too tightly strung that would
break.
But as soon as the old man could once more get out of bed, there was
nothing more to be done. All day long he did nothing but silly things,
was grinning, smirking and laughing to himself constantly, turned
everything in the house topsy-turvy, sat down in the sunshine and
blared at the world, put out his tongue at everybody that passed, and
made long monologues while standing in the midst of the bean field.
Simultaneous with all this there came also the end of his ownership in
the farm. Everything upon it had, of course, gone to wrack and ruin,
and disorder reigned supreme. Not only his house, but also the last bit
of land left him, pledged in court some time before, were now seized
and the day of forced sale was named. For the peasant who had claims to
these pieces of property, very naturally made use of the opportunities
now afforded him by the illness and the failing powers of Marti to
bring about a quick decision. These last proceedings in court used up
the bit of cash still left to Marti, and all this was done while he in
his weakness of mind had not even a notion what it was all about.
The forced sale took place, and at its close, Marti being penniless and
bereft of sense, by the action of the village council, it was decided
to make him an inmate of the community asylum that had been founded
many years before for the precise benefit of just such poor devils as
himself. This asylum was located in the cantonal capital. Before he
started for his destination he was well fed for a day or two, to the
eminent satisfaction of the idiot, who had developed an enormous
appetite of late, and then was put on a cart drawn by a phlegmatic ox
and driven by a poor peasant who besides attending to this community
errand wanted to sell also a sack of potatoes at the town. Vreni sat
down on the same vehicle alongside of her father in order to accompany
him on this day of his being buried alive, so to speak.
It was a sad and bitter drive, but Vreni watched lovingly over her
father, and let him want for nothing; neither did she grow impatient
when passers-by, attracted by the ridiculous behavior of the old man,
would follow the cart and make all sorts of audible remarks on its
inmates. Finally they did reach the asylum, a complex of buildings
connected by courts and corridors, and where a big garden was seen
alive with similarly unfortunate beings as Marti himself, all dressed
in a sort of uniform consisting of white coarse linen blouses and
vests, with stiff caps of leather on their foolish old heads. Marti,
too, was put into such a uniform, even before Vreni's departure, and
her father evinced a childish joy at his new clothes, dancing about in
them and singing snatches of wicked drinking songs.
"God be with you, my lords and honored fellow-inmates," he harangued a
knot of them, "you surely have a palace-like home here. Go away, Vreni,
and tell mother that I won't come home any more. I like it here
splendidly. Goodness me, what a palace! There runs a spider across the
road, and I have heard him barking! Oh, maiden mine, oh, maiden mine,
don't kiss the old, kiss but the young! All the waters in the world are
running into the Rhine! She with the darkest eye, she is not mine.
Already going, little Vreni? Why, thou lookest as though death were in
thy pot. And yet things are looking up with me. I am doing fine. Am
getting wealthy in my old days. The she-fox cries with him: Halloo!
Halloo! Her heart pains her. Why--oh, why? Halloo! Halloo!"
An official of the institution bade him hold his infernal noise, and
then he led him away to do some easy work. Vreni took her leave sadly
and then began to look up her ox cart with the peasant. When she had
found it she climbed in and sat down and ate a slice of bread she had
brought with her. Then she lay down and fell asleep, and a couple of
hours later the peasant came and woke her, and then they drove home to
the village. They arrived there in the middle of the night. Vreni went
to her father's house, the one where she had been born and had spent
all her days. For the first time she was all alone in it. Two days'
grace she had to get out and find some other shelter. She made a fire
and prepared a cup of coffee for herself, using the last remnants she
still had. Then she sat down on the edge of the hearth, and wept
bitterly. She was longing with all her soul to see and talk once more
to Sali, and she was thinking and thinking of him. But mingling with
these desires of hers were her anxieties and her fears of the future.
Thus sat the poor thing, holding her head in her hand, when somebody
entered at the door.
"Sali!" cried Vreni, when she looked up and saw the face dearest to her
in the world. And she fell on his neck, but then they both looked at
one another, and they shouted: "How poorly you look!" For Sali was as
pale and sorrowful as the girl herself. Forgetting everything she drew
him to her on the hearth, and questioned him: "Have you been ill, or
have you also fared badly?"
"No, not ill," said Sali, "but longing for you. At home things are
going fine. My father now has rare guests, and as I believe, he has
become a receiver of stolen goods. And that is why there are big doings
at our place, both day and night, until, I suppose, there will come a
bad end to it all. Mother is helping along, eager to have guests of any
kind at all, guests that fetch money into the house, and she tries to
bring some order out of all this disorder, and also to make it
profitable. I am not questioned about the matter at all, neither do I
care. For I have only been thinking of you all along. Since all sorts
of vagrants come and go in our place, we have heard of everything
concerning you, and my father is beside himself with joy, and that your
father has been taken to-day to the asylum has delighted him immensely.
Since he has now left you I have come, thinking you might be lonesome,
and maybe in trouble."
Then Vreni told him all her sorrows in detail, but she did this with
such fluency and described the intimate details in such an almost happy
tone of voice as if what she was saying did not disturb her in the
least. All this because the presence of her lover and his solicitude
about her really rendered her happy and minimized her anxieties. She
had Sali at her side. And what more did she want? Soon she had a vessel
with the steaming coffee which she forced Sali to share with her.
"Day after to-morrow, then, you must leave here?" said Sali. "What is
to become of you now?"
"I don't know," answered Vreni. "I suppose I shall have to seek some
service and go away from here, somewhere in the wide world. But I know
I won't be able to endure that without you, Sali, and yet we cannot
come together. If there were no other reason it would not do because
you hurt my father and made him lose his mind. That would always be a
bad foundation for our wedded state, would it not? And neither of us
would ever be able to forget that, never!"
Sali sighed deeply, and rejoined: "I myself wanted a hundred times to
become a soldier or else go far away and hire out on a farm, but I
cannot do it, I cannot leave you here, and after we are separated it
will kill me, I feel sure of it, for longing for you will not let me
rest day or night. I really believe, Vreni, that all this misery makes
my love for you only the stronger and the more painful, so that it
becomes a matter of life or death. Never did I dream that this should
ever be my end."