DIE EIGENBRÄTLERIN--HER OWN COOK.
A woman who led a solitary, reserved life,--who cooked and ate her
food alone,--was called her own cook,--Eigenbrätlerin,--and to such an
one was given all sorts of peculiarities. No one ever had more right,
or more inclination, to be her own cook, than Brown Mariann, although
she never had any thing to cook, except oat porridge and potatoes.
Potatoes and oat porridge were her only food. She lived always retired
within herself, and conversed willingly with no one. Towards harvest
only was she full of excited restlessness. At this time she was heard
talking with herself, and also speaking to all the men, especially
strangers, who went through the village. She inquired of them whether
the masons from here and there had returned home to their winter rest,
and whether they had said any thing of her John. When the linen which
she had been bleaching through the summer was finally ready to wash,
she remained up the whole night, and was heard to murmur to herself.
Nothing was understood, except when she divided the webs she was heard
to say, “That is for thee, and this is for me.” She said, daily, twelve
pater-nosters for John; but, on washing-night, they were innumerable.
When the first snow fell, she was wonderfully cheerful. “Now, when
there is no more work; now, he will certainly come home.”
At this time she told her old white hen, which she kept in a coop, that
she must die, for John was coming home.
Thus she had been for many years. The villagers represented to her that
it was foolish always to be thinking of John’s return. But she did not
change, and was only every year more ungracious to the people.
It was eighteen years, this autumn, since John left her. Every year
there was a notice written in the newspaper to “John Michael Winkler”
to return, even should it be in his fiftieth year. He was now six and
thirty.
The report went about the village, that John had joined the gypsies,
and his mother kept a young gypsy with her, who looked strikingly like
the lost John; he had the same dark face, and was not unwilling to be
regarded as her son. The mother placed a proof before him. She had yet
in her possession the hymn-book and the confirmation certificate of
her son. She tried them in this manner: one who did not know who had
been his god-father, or remember the day when Brosis’ Severin, with
the English woman, arrived; and later, when the new town-house fountain
was opened, and other remarkable things, must be false. Yet Mariann
sheltered the young gypsy, whenever he came to the village; and the
children in the street shrieked after him, “John! John!”
Every year the schoolmaster sent a letter to Mariann, written to John,
which she laid in the hymn-book, not knowing where to send it. It was
well that she knew not how to read, for this year he sent her the
letter of another, instead of the one desired. For now a strange report
was murmured through the whole village. Where two met together they
spoke of it, and whispered, “Say nothing to Mariann. It would kill her!
it would make her insane!”
It was, namely, information that the Ambassador in Paris had received
and imparted through all the higher and lower officers, till the news
reached the village, “That John Winkler, of Holdenbrunn, had fallen,
fighting at one of the outposts in Algiers.”
It was talked of in the village, and every one said how strange that
so many high officers should trouble themselves about the dead John;
and concluded that so certain a stream of information must be true. In
the sitting of the council, it was resolved to say nothing to Brown
Mariann. It was unjust to imbitter the few years she had to live, by
taking from her her last consolation.
But, instead of keeping the information secret, the Mayor hastened to
tattle it out at home, and the whole village, all but Mariann, were
soon in possession of the news. Every one observed her with strange
glances--they were afraid they should betray themselves--they scarcely
returned her greetings.
It would have been better if Amrie also had known nothing; but there
lay a peculiarly seducing charm in coming as near as possible to the
forbidden subject, and of course everybody spoke with Amrie of the
melancholy occurrence, warned her to say nothing of it to Mariann, and
asked “whether the mother had had no warning, no dream? Were there no
strange voices in the house?”
Amrie was full of secret trembling and fear. She alone was near
Mariann, and knew something that she must conceal from her. The people,
also, of whom she hired a small apartment, kept themselves out of her
neighborhood, and signified their compassion by giving her warning to
quit.
How strangely in life things are connected together. Through this
occurrence Amrie experienced both joy and sorrow; for the parental
house was again opened to them. Mariann moved into it. Amrie, although
in the beginning full of fear, accustomed herself to go in and out;
and, when she had kindled the fire, and drawn the water, she believed
her father and mother must come again. At last she felt herself wholly
at home. She spun day and night, till she earned enough to re-purchase
from Mathew the cuckoo clock which had belonged to her parents. She was
now too happy to possess a piece of her old domestic furniture. But the
cuckoo had suffered among strangers, had lost half of his voice, and
the other half remained buried in his throat. He could only say “cuck,”
and as often as he did that, Amrie at first added, unconsciously, the
other “coo,” but she complained of that half-tone, and especially that
it was not so beautiful as in her early childhood. Then said Mariann,--
“Who knows, that if in later years we should receive again what has
made us perfectly happy in childhood, I believe that, like the cuckoo
clock, it would have but half its sound. If I could only teach thee,
child, what cost me so much till I had learnt it--never to wish
for what happened yesterday. That, can no one give. We may try to
purchase it, through sweat and tears shaken together! It can be found
in no apothecary’s shop. Cling to nothing, Amrie--to no man--to no
cause--then canst thou fly alone!”
These speeches of Mariann were at the same time wild and timid. They
came out only in the twilight, like wild animals from the forest.
It was only with difficulty that Amrie accustomed herself to her
misanthropy.
Mariann could not endure the half-word repeating of the clock, and
hung the pendulum wholly outside so that the clock merely ticked, and
no longer gave out the hour. At length the ticking alone disturbed
her, so that at last the poor clock was no longer wound up. She said
she had always a clock in her head. It was wonderful, that although
time was very indifferent to her, she always knew the hour to an
exact minute. There was a singular wakefulness in her, watching and
listening as she always was for news of her son, and although she
visited no one, and spoke to no one, yet she knew every thing that took
place in the village,--even the most secret things that occurred. She
guessed every thing from the manner in which people met her, and from
scattered words; and, as this appeared miraculous, she was feared and
avoided. From one end of the year to the other, she ate daily some
juniper-berries. It was said that was the reason she was so active,
and that she would never see her sixty-sixth year, for no one would
believe that even now both sixes belonged to her age. They said she
milked her black goats, hours long, that gave her indeed much milk,
and she willingly milked these only. She detested milk drawn from the
udder of cows. It was called witchcraft that she succeeded always in
rearing fowls, for where could she find food for them, and how could
she always have eggs and chickens to sell? They saw her, indeed, in
summer, collect May-bugs, grasshoppers, and all kinds of worms; and in
moonless nights she was observed darting like a will-o’-the-wisp among
the graves with a resin torch, collecting the rain-worms, and talking
in a low voice with herself. Yes, it was said, that in the quiet winter
nights, alone by herself, she held wonderful conversations with her
goat and her hens.
Amrie often trembled, in the long quiet winter nights, when she sat
solitary, spinning by Mariann, and heard nothing but the half-sleeping
cluck of the fowls, and the convulsive starts of the goat; for it
appeared like witchcraft that Mariann spun so quickly. “Yes,” she once
said, “I think my John helps me spin”--and yet she complained that
this winter, for the first time, she could not always be thinking of
her John. She reproached herself on this account, and said, she was a
bad mother, for it seemed to her that the features of her son vanished
by degrees, and as though she forgot what he had done here and there;
how he smiled; how he sang and wept; how he had climbed the trees, and
sprung over the hedges.
“It would be frightful,” she said, “if one could thus by degrees vanish
from the mind, so that we could remember nothing rightly about them.”
To Amrie it was dreadful thus perpetually to hear of one that was dead
as though he yet lived. Again, Mariann complained, “It is sinful that I
can no longer weep for my John. I once heard that we could weep for one
that was lost as long as he lived, or till he is buried. When he is
beneath the ground, all weeping ceases.”
“No, that cannot be! That dare not be! My John cannot be dead! Thou
darest not do that to me, Thou, there above! But no! Forgive me, good
God, that I so strive against the wall! But open thou the door; open
it and let my John come in! Oh, the joy!--Come, sit thou there, John!
Tell me nothing! I will hear nothing! I will only know that thou art
there. It is good! It is enough! The long, long years have now become a
minute. What has happened to me? Where hast thou wandered? Where thou
hast been I have not been--but now thou art here, and thou shalt never
again leave this hand till it is cold. Oh, Amrie, my John must wait
till thou art grown. I say no more. Why dost thou not speak?”
Amrie felt as though deprived of breath, her throat was dry. It seemed
to her as though the dead stood there--a spectre. The secret was upon
her lips. She might betray it, and the roof fall in and all be buried.
Sometimes Mariann was talkative in another manner, although all related
to the one subject, the remembrance of her son. Heavily came upon Amrie
the dark questions of the order of Providence.
“Why does a child die for which the mother has waited, trembling--with
her whole soul has waited? I and my Dami, why are we lost children? We
might so gladly seize the hand of our mother, and that hand has become
dust.”
These were dark and misty questions into which the thoughts of the poor
solitary child were driven. She knew no other way to help herself out
of the labyrinth of doubt, than to softly repeat the Multiplication
Table.
On Saturday evening Mariann was willing to talk. From an ancient
superstition she would not spin on Saturday evening. She always knit,
and if she had any thing to relate, she wound off at first a good deal
of her yarn, so as not to be interrupted, and then she went on with the
thread of her story.
“Oh, child,” she always concluded, “remember this, in thee is concealed
the soul of an old hermit; whoever would live a good, exact life, that
person must live alone. Willingly receive of no one. Knowest thou who
is rich? He who needs nothing but that which he has! And who is poor?
He who wants to receive something from friends. There sits one and
waits for the hands that belong to another’s body, and waits for the
eyes that are in another person’s head. Remain alone by thyself; then
thou hast thy own hands; thou needest no other, and canst help thyself.
Hope for any thing to come to thee from another, and thou art a beggar.
Only to expect any thing from fortune, from a fellow-creature, yes,
even from God himself, and thou art a beggar. Thou standest with
outstretched hands for something to fall therein. Remain alone! that is
best--then thou hast all in thyself. Alone! Oh, how good it is to be
alone! Look, in the depths of the ant-hill lies a little tiny sparkling
stone; whoever finds it can make himself invisible, and no one can
know his appearance. But he who seeks it, must creep beneath others.
There is also a secret in this world. But who can understand it? Find
it. Take it to thyself. It gives thee neither fortune nor misfortune.
If a man knows himself and other men aright, he can make himself any
thing he pleases, but only on one condition,--he must remain alone!
Alone,--alone! Otherwise, nothing will help him!”
Thus she gave Amrie dark and half-expressed meanings, which the child
could not understand,--but who knows how much remains forever engraved
in an attentive open soul, through words half understood? Then, often
looking wildly around, she would say, “Oh, could I only be alone. But
one piece of me is under the ground, and another is wandering around in
the world, who knows where? Oh that I were that black goat!”
However gently she began, the conclusion of her remarks led always to
regret and melancholy; and she who would be always alone, and think
of and love no one, lived only by thinking of her son, and loving him
passionately.
At length Amrie thought of an effectual means to save Mariann from
this unhealthy desire to be alone. She proposed that Dami also should
be taken into the house; but Brown Mariann opposed this so violently,
that Amrie threatened herself to leave her alone. She also coaxed her
so lovingly, and presented the advantages so clearly, that at length
Mariann yielded, and gave in.
Dami, who had learnt wool-picking from Krappenzacher, sat now in the
evening in the parents’ apartment, and at night when he and his sister
slept in the store-room, they called to each other when they heard
Mariann flitting from room to room, or talking in her sleep. Through
the removal of Dami there came fresh vexation. He was altogether
dissatisfied that he must pursue this miserable work, which was only
fit, he said, for cripples. He wished to be a mason, and although Amrie
opposed this desire, for she feared her brother would never persevere,
Mariann encouraged him in the wish. She would have had all the young
fellows become masons, so as to send them into foreign countries to
inquire for her John.
She rarely went to church, but she loved to have her hymn-book borrowed
when others were going. It was to her a peculiar satisfaction to have
her hymn-book in church, especially when a stranger apprentice who was
working in the village borrowed it for that purpose. It seemed to her
that her John was praying in his own church, because the words were
spoken and sung out of his own hymn-book, and Dami had to go twice to
church every Sunday, to carry John’s hymn-book.
But although Mariann did not go to church, there was one solemnity at
which she never failed to be present, whether in her own village or in
the neighborhood. No funeral took place at which she was not present
as a mourner; and even at the grave of a young child, she wept as
violently as though she had been its mother, and yet on the way home
she would be especially cheerful. This weeping appeared to be a real
refreshment to her, for during the whole year she suffered so much
silent sorrow, that she seemed thankful when tears came to her relief.
Were her neighbors then to be blamed for looking upon her as something
unnatural, especially as they possessed a secret regarding her, upon
which their lips were closed? Upon Amrie also fell a part of this
avoidance, and in many houses where she offered help or sympathy, they
suffered her to remark that they did not desire her presence. She
did indeed display peculiarities, that appeared wonderful to all the
village. She went barefoot through all except the very coldest winter.
They thought she must possess some secret charm against sickness and
death.
In Farmer Rodel’s house alone, was she willingly received, as he was
her guardian. Dame Rodel, who had always taken her part, had promised
that when she was grown up, she would take her into her service. This
plan could not be carried out, because death first took her friend
away. While many are so happy, as to feel in later life only the
bitterness of existence, when one friend after another leaves us, and
their memory only remains, Amrie learnt this in her early youth, and
she wept more passionately at the funeral of the farmer’s wife, than
any of her children or relatives.
The farmer, indeed, complained that he must now give up the estate,
and yet, neither of his three children were married. But a year had
scarcely passed (it was the second that Dami had worked in the stone
quarry), when a double wedding took place in the village. Farmer Rodel
celebrated the marriage of his eldest daughter, and of his only son. On
the same day, he gave over the estate to his son. This double marriage
was the cause of a new name, and another life to Amrie.
Upon the green enclosure, before the large dancing-hall, the children
were collected, and while their elders danced and waltzed within,
they imitated their example. Strange, no boy or girl would ask Amrie
to dance. It was not known who first said it, but they heard a voice
exclaim: “Nobody will dance with you, because you are barefoot.”
“Barefoot! barefoot! barefoot!” they now shrieked from all sides. Amrie
stood there; the tears rushed to her eyes, but quickly exerting that
power by which she overcame both scorn and injury, she forced back her
tears, and catching up her apron at both sides she danced by herself so
gracefully and charmingly, that all the children stood still and held
back. Soon the grown people nodded to each other around the door, and
a circle of men and women formed themselves about Amrie, applauding
her; especially Farmer Rodel, who, feeling at this time doubly excited,
clapped his hands, and whistled the waltz, while the music within
played louder and louder, and Amrie contrived to dance, and appeared
to be insensible to weariness. At length, the music ceased, the farmer
taking her by the hand said,--
“Thou flash of lightning, who then taught thee to dance?”
“No one.”
“Why do you dance with no one?”
“It is better to dance alone. You need wait for no one, and your
partner is always with you.”
“Have you had nothing yet from the marriage-supper?” he asked simpering.
“No!”
“Come in and eat,” said the proud farmer, and he placed her at the
wedding-table, which continued the whole day to be served afresh. Amrie
ate very little; but the farmer would have continued his amusement by
making her drink wine.
“No,” she said; “if I drink, somebody must lead me home; I could no
longer go alone. Mariann says, ‘One’s own feet is the best carriage--it
is always harnessed.’”
They were all astonished at the wit of the child.
The young farmer came with his wife and asked her, jokingly, “if she
had brought them a wedding-present? All who eat,” he said, “must bring
a present.”
At this question the old farmer, with incredible generosity, secretly
thrust a sixpence into the child’s hand. Amrie, nodding to the farmer,
held the sixpence fast, and said to the young couple,--
“I have now the promise and the fee. Your departed mother promised that
I, and no other, should be nursery-maid to her first grandchild.”
“Yes, that was always her wish,” said the old man. And now, that which,
from fear of the orphan becoming a charge to them, he had denied his
wife, during her life, he consented to now, when it could no longer be
a pleasure to her; while he also gave himself the appearance of doing
it out of regard to her memory. He did not consent from generosity, but
from the well-founded expectation that the orphan would be serviceable
to himself, while the charge of her remuneration would fall upon
another.
The young people looked at each other, and the young farmer said,--
“Bring thy bundle to-morrow morning to our house; you can stay with us.”
“Good,” said Amrie; “to-morrow I will bring my bundle, but now may I
not take a bundle away? Give me that flask of wine, and I will wrap up
this fowl with it, and take it to Mariann and my Dami.”
They consented. Then the old farmer whispered to her, “Give me back my
sixpence. I meant you should give it to them.”
“I take it from you as enlisting money,” said Amrie, slyly, “and you
will soon see that I will quit scores with you.”
The old farmer smiled, although half angrily, and Amrie went gayly away
with money, wine, and food, to poor Mariann and Dami.
The house was shut up, and presented to Amrie the greatest
possible contrast between the music, noise, and feasting of the
wedding-apartment, and the deserted stillness of her home. Upon her way
home she knew where she could expect to find Mariann. She went, indeed,
almost every evening to the stone quarry, and sat alone behind the
hedge, quietly listening to the sound of the hammer and chisel. It was
to her a melody out of long past time, when John had once worked here,
and she had sat and listened to the sound of his pickaxe.
Amrie met Mariann just returning; and half an hour before the close of
work she called Dami, and there, on the rocks, by the quarry, was held
a wedding-feast merrier than that within the house at the sound of the
fiddles.
Dami, especially, shouted loudly. Mariann was also cheerful, but she
took no wine. “Not a drop of wine,” she said, “should pass her lips
till she drank it at the wedding of her John.”
As Amrie, under the influence of this cheerfulness, related that she
had taken service with the young Farmer Rodel, and would enter upon it
in the morning, Mariann rose in the wildest anger, and, picking up a
stone, she pressed it upon her breast, and cried,--
“It were a thousand times better that I had this stone within my breast
than a living heart! Why cannot I always be alone! alone! Why have I
suffered myself to be persuaded to admit another to my heart? But now
it is past, and forever. As I cast this stone away from me, so will I
cast away, henceforth, all dependence upon any human being. Thou false,
faithless child! Scarcely canst thou stretch thy wings, and thou art
gone. But it is better so. I am alone, and my John shall be alone.
When he comes he shall remain alone. What I would have had has come to
nothing.” And she ran forth to the village.
“She is a witch,” said Dami. “I will drink no more wine. Who knows
whether she has not bewitched it?”
“Drink it, nevertheless,” said Amrie. “She is a strange woman, and
has a heavy cross to bear. But I know how to comfort her.” Thus she
consoled Dami.
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