THE HUNTING-GROUNDS
In the gardens of our small but spaciously arranged colony of
villas there are huge trees—ancient giants which tower above the
roofs. They offer a marked contrast to the tender saplings but
recently planted. There can be no mistaking the fact that these
trees are the original growth—the aboriginal inhabitants of this
region. They are the pride and beauty of this still youthful
settlement. They have been carefully preserved and tended—as far
as this was possible. At those points where they happened to come
into conflict with the surveyor’s lines or with the fences dividing
the various lots or tracts of land, that is to say, where some
mossy, silvery, venerable trunk happened to be standing precisely
on the lines of demarcation, you will find that the fence has made
a little loop around the tree-trunk or that a gap has been left in
the concrete of the garden wall. In these openings the Old Ones
now tower, half privately, half publicly, their naked branches
loaded with snow or bedizened with their small-leafed, late-sprouting
foliage.
These trees are of the species of the ash—a tree which loves
dampness as few others do. This quality at the same time offers a
very significant commentary upon the essential peculiarity of our
strip of country. It is not yet so very long ago that human
ingenuity succeeded in turning it into something capable of
cultivation and occupation—possibly a decade and a half ago—no
longer. Before that it was a wilderness of swamps—a veritable
brooding-place for gnats and mosquitoes—a waste in which willows,
crippled poplars, and such-like gnarled and twisted arboreal stuff
mirrored itself in stagnant pools. This region, you must know, is
subject to inundation. A few metres under the surface there is a
strata of water-tight soil. The ground has therefore always been
swampy and water stood in every hollow. The draining of this fen
was accomplished by lowering the surface of the river—I have no
head for engineering, but some such expedient was made use of, with
the result that the water which could not seep downward was induced
to flow off laterally. Hence there are many subterranean brooks
which pour themselves into the river at different spots. Solidity
has thus been given to the soil, at least the greater part of it,
for if you happen to know the district as Bashan and I know it,
you would be able to discover in the thickets down-stream many, a
reedy sinkage which reminds you of pristine conditions. These are
places of silence and secrecy, the damp coolth of which defies the
hottest summer day, spots in which one is glad to rest and draw
breath for a space.
The region really possesses its own peculiar character and is to
be distinguished at first glance from the banks of the usual
mountain river with their pine woods and mossy meadows. It has
succeeded in retaining this original peculiarity even since it has
come into the possession of the real estate company. Even outside
the gardens, the aboriginal and original vegetation maintains the
upper hand over the imported and the transplanted. It is true that
in the avenues and parks the horse-chestnut seems to thrive as well
as the swift-growing maple. Even beeches and all kinds of decorative
shrubbery—but all these, including the alien poplar which towers
and ranges in rows of sterile masculinity—are not native to the
soil. I said that the ash was an indigenous tree here—it is to be
found everywhere, and it is of all ages—from giants hundreds of
years old to the soft shoots which, like so many weeds, sprout in
masses from the gravel. It is the ash and its companions, the
silver poplar and the aspen, the birch and the willow, both as a
tree and a bush, which give distinctive character to this landscape.
But these are all trees with small leaves, and this smallness and
trimness of the foliage in conjunction with the frequently gigantic
masses of the trees themselves, at once attract attention in this
neighbourhood. The elm, however, is an exception, and we find it
spreading its spacious leaves, fretted as by a jig-saw and shiny
and sticky on their upper surface, to the sun. And everywhere there
are great masses of creeping plants which weave themselves around
the younger trunks in the woods and in a bewildering way entangle
their leaves with these.
The slender alders form themselves into small groves in the hollows.
The lime is scarcely to be met with at all, the oak never appears
nor does the fir. Yet there are firs upon the eastern declivities
which form the frontiers of our territory, for here the soil
changes and with it the vegetation. There they rear black against
the heavens and peer, sentinel-like, upon us in our lower levels.
From this bluff to the river is not more than a hundred metres—I
have paced the distance. It may be that the strip of riverbank
widens, fan-like, a little farther down-stream, but this divergence
is in no way important. It is, however, remarkable what a diversity
of landscape this limited region affords—even, though one explore
only the playground which lies along the river, explore it with
restraint and moderation, like Bashan and myself. Our forays seldom
exceed two hours, counting the advance and the retreat. The manifold
nature of the views, however, and the fact that one is constantly
able to change one’s walks and to arrange combinations that are
eternally new, without ever becoming bored with the landscape, is
due to the circumstance that it is divided into three very different
regions or zones. One may devote oneself separately to any of these
or one may combine them by means of slanting cross-paths. These
three regions are the region of the river and its immediate bank
on one side, the region of the bluff on the other, and the region
of the forest in the middle.
The greater part of the breadth is occupied by the zone of the
forest, the willow brakes, and the shrubbery of the bank—I find
myself hunting for a word which will more perfectly fix and define
this wonderful _terrain_ than the word wood, and yet I am unable
to find one. There can be no talk of a wood in the usual sense of
the term—a kind of great pillared grove with moss and strewn
leafage and tree-trunks of fairly uniform girth. The trees in our
hunting-grounds are of different ages and circumference. Huge
patriarchs of the willow and poplar families are to be found among
them, especially along the river, though they are also to be
encountered in the inner woods. Then there are others already
full-grown which might be ten or fifteen years old, and finally a
legion of thin stems—wild nurseries of nature’s own crop of young
ashes, birches, and elders. These do not, however, call forth any
impression of meagreness, because, as I have already indicated,
they are all thickly wrapped about with creepers. These give an
air of almost tropical luxuriance to the whole. Yet I suspect that
these creepers hinder the growth of their hosts, for during the
years I have lived here, I do not remember having observed that
any of these little stems had grown perceptibly thicker.
All trees belong to a closely-related species. The alder is a
member of the birch family; in the last analysis the poplar is
nothing else than a willow. And one might even say that all of them
approach the fundamental type of the latter. All foresters and
woodmen know that trees are quite ready to accept a certain
adaptation to the character of the circumjacent vicinity—a certain
imitation or mimicry of the dominant taste in lines and forms. It
is the fantastic, witch-like, distorted line of the willow which
prevails here—this faithful companion and attendant of still and
of flowing waters, with the crooked finger, projecting, broom-like,
branching boughs, and it is these features which the others
obviously seek to imitate. The silver poplar crooks herself wholly
in the style of the willow, and it is often difficult to tell her
from the birch which, seduced by the _genius loci_, also frequently
affects the most extravagant crookednesses—though I would not go
so far as to say that this dear and friendly tree was not to be
found, and numerously found, in exceedingly shapely specimens.
These, when the afternoon light is fervent and favourable, are even
most enchanting to the eye.
The region knows it as a small silvery trunk with sparse single
leaves in the crown, as a sweet grown-up limber virgin with the
prettiest of chalky stems and a trim and languishing way of letting
the locks of her foliage hang. But it also makes its appearance as
a creature of absolutely elephantine proportions with a waist which
no man could span with his arms and a rind which has preserved
traces of its erstwhile whiteness only high up towards the top,
whilst near the ground it has become a coarse, calcined and fissured
bark.
As to the soil—this has little resemblance to that of a forest. It
is pebbly, full of clay and even sand, and no one would dream of
calling it fertile. And yet within limits it _is_ fertile—even to
luxuriance. A tall grass flourishes upon it, though this often
assumes a dry, sharply angular and meagre character. In winter it
covers the ground like trampled hay. Sometimes it degenerates into
reeds, whilst in other parts it is soft, thick, and lush, mixed
with hemlock, nettles, colt’s foot, all manner of creeping, leafy
stuff, high, rocket-like thistles, and young and tender tree-shoots.
It is a favourite hiding-place for pheasants and quail, and the
vegetation runs in billows against the gnarled boles of the
tree-roots. Out of this chaos of undergrowth and ground thicket
the wild vine and the wild hop-plant go gyrating up in spirals,
draping broad-leaved garlands upon the trees and even in winter
clinging to the trunks with tendrils which resemble hard and
unbreakable wire.
This domain is neither forest nor park—it is an enchanted
garden—nothing less. I will stoutly defend this term—even though
it refers to a poor, limited, and even crippled bit of nature, the
glories of which may be exhausted with a few simple botanical
names. The ground is undulant; it rises and falls in regular waves.
This feature gives a fine completeness to the views—the eye is led
into the illimitable even at the sides. Yes, even if this wood were
to stretch for miles to the right and left, even if it were to be
as broad as it is long, instead of merely measuring a hundred and
some odd paces from the centre to the extreme edge on either side,
one could not feel more secluded, more lost, or isolated. Alone
the ear is reminded by the regular and rushing sound of waters to
the west that the river hovers within a friendly distance, near
yet invisible. There are little gulches filled to the brim with
bushes of elder, common privet, jasmine, and black elderberry, so
that one’s lungs on steamy June days are almost overcome by perfume.
And then again there are sinkages in the ground—mere gravel-pits
along the slopes and bottoms of which only a few willow shoots and
a little dry sage manage to flourish.
All this has not ceased to exert a magic influence upon me, even
though the place, for many a year, has been as a daily haunt to
me. In some way I am fantastically moved and touched by all this,
for example, by the massed foliage of the ash-trees, which reminds
me somehow of the contours of huge bulls. These creeping vines and
reedy thickets, this dampness and this drouth, this meagre jungle—to
sum up my impressions as a whole—affect me a little like being
transported to the landscape of another period of the Earth’s
growth, even to a submarine landscape—as though one were wandering
at the bottom of the sea. This vision has a certain contact with
reality, for water once stood or ran everywhere hereabout,
especially in those seepages which have now assumed the shape of
square meadow-basins surrounded by nurseries of ash-trees and serve
sheep for drink and pasture. One of these ponds lies directly
behind my house.
My delectable wilderness is criss-crossed by paths, by strips of
trampled grass and also by pebbly trails. Obviously none of these
were made, they simply grew through the agency of use. Yet no man
could say by whom these paths have been trodden into the soil. It
is only now and then, and usually as an unpleasant exception, that
Bashan and I meet any one here. When such meetings do occur, my
companion comes to a sudden halt in startled surprise and gives
vent to a single muffled bark which gives a pretty clear expression
to my own feelings in connection with the encounter. Even on fine
sunny afternoons in the summer, when great numbers of pedestrians
from the city come pouring into the neighbourhood (it is always a
few degrees cooler here than elsewhere), we two are able to wander
quite undisturbed on the inner ways. The public is apparently
unaware of these, besides, the river is a great attraction and
draws them mightily. Hugging its banks as closely as possible, that
is, when there is no flooding, the human river wanders out into
the countryside and then comes rolling back in the evening. At most
we chance to stumble upon a pair of lovers kissing in the bushes.
With wide, shy, yet insolent eyes, they regard us from their bower,
as though stubbornly bent on challenging us, daring us to say
anything against their being here, defying us to give any open
disapproval of their remote and guerilla love-making—intimations
which we silently answer in the negative by beating a flank retreat,
Bashan with that air of indifference with which all things that do
not bear the scent of the wild about them affect him, and I with
a perfectly inscrutable and expressionless face which allows no
trace either of approval or disapproval to be seen.
But these paths are not the only means of traffic and communication
in my domain. You will find _streets_ there, or—to be more
precise—preparations that may once have been streets, or were once
destined to be such. It is like this: traces of the path-finding
and path-clearing axe and of a sanguine spirit of enterprise in
the realm of real estate reveal themselves for quite a distance
beyond the built-up part of the country and the little villa
colony. Some speculative soul had peered deeply into the untold
possibilities of the future, and had proceeded upon a bold and
audacious plan. The society which had taken this tract of territory
in hand some ten or fifteen years before had cherished plans far
more magnificent than those which came to pass, for originally the
colony was not to have been confined to the handful of villas which
now stand there. Building lots were plentiful, for more than a mile
down-stream everything had been prepared, and is no doubt still
prepared for possible buyers and for lovers of a settled suburban
manner of life.
The councils of this syndicate had been dominated by large and
lofty ideals. They had not contented themselves with building
proper jetties along the banks, with the creation of riverside
walks and quays and with the planting of parks and gardens. They
had gone far beyond all this, the hand of cultivation had invaded
the woods themselves, had made clearings, piled up gravel, united
the wilderness by means of streets, a few lengthwise and still more
crosswise. They are well-planned and handsome streets, or sketches
of streets, in coarse macadam, with the hint of a curb and roomy
sidewalks. On these, however, no one goes walking but Bashan and
myself—he upon the good and durable leather of his four paws—I upon
hob-nailed boots, because of the macadam.
The villas which should long ago have risen hospitably along these
streets, according to the calculations and intentions of the
society, have, for the present, refused to materialise, even though
I have set so excellent an example as to build my own house in
these parts. They have remained absent, I say, for ten, for fifteen
years, and so it is small wonder that a certain discouragement has
settled down upon the neighbourhood, and that a disinclination for
further expenditures and for the completion of that which was so
magnificently begun, should make itself felt in the bosom of the
society.
Everything had progressed admirably up to a certain point. Things
had even gone so far as the christening of the new streets. For
these thoroughfares without inhabitants have right and regular
names, just like ordinary or orthodox streets in the city or in
the civilised suburbs. But I would give much to know what dreamy
soul or retrospective “highbrow” of a speculator had assigned them.
There is a Goethe and a Schiller, a Lessing and a Heine Street—there
is even an Adalbert Stifter Street upon which I stroll with
particular sympathy and reverence in my hob-nailed boots. Square
stakes are visible, such as may be seen in at the corners of the
raw and uncompleted streets in the suburbs where there are no
corner houses. Little blue enamelled shields with white letters
are fastened to these stakes. These shields, alas, are not in the
best condition. They have stood here far too long, giving a name
to adumbrations of streets in which no one cares to live, and they
have been singled out to bear the stigmata of disappointment,
fiasco, and arrested development to which they give public
expression. They are wrapped in an air of forlorn disquietude and
neglect. Nothing has been done for their upkeep nor for their
renewal, and the weather and the sun have played havoc with them.
The enamel, to a great extent, has split and cracked off, the white
letters have been eaten away by rust, so that in place of their
smooth and glittering whiteness there are only brown spots and gaps
with hideous, jagged edges—disfigurements which tear the image of
the name asunder and often render it illegible.
One of these blue enamelled signboards imposed a tremendous strain
upon my intellect when I first came hither and penetrated this
region on my tours of exploration. It was a signboard particularly
long in shape and the word street _(strasse)_ had been preserved
without a break. But of the actual name which, as I have indicated,
was very long, or rather had been very long, the letters were
nearly all completely “blinded” or devoured by rust. The
reddish-brownish gaps gave one some idea of their number, but
nothing was decipherable except the half of a capital S and an e
in the middle, and another e at the end. This riddle was a little
too much for my astuteness—I was face to face with too many unknown
quantities. So I stood there for a long time, my hands upon my
back, staring at the long signboard and studying it closely. And
then I gave it up and went strolling along the rudimentary pavement
with Bashan. But whilst I thought that I was occupying myself with
other things, this particular thing kept working within the mnemonic
depths of me. My sub-intelligence kept scenting out the destroyed
name, and suddenly it shot into my consciousness. I stood still—as
in a fright. I rushed back and once more planted myself in front
of the signboard. I counted and compared and tested the elements
of my guess. Yes, it fitted, it “worked out!” We were wandering in
the street which had been called “Shakespeare.”
These signboards befit the streets which justify their metallic
existence, and these streets the signboards which give them a local
habitation and a name. Both of them are dreamily and wonderfully
lapped in forgetfulness and decay. They pursue their way through
the wood which they have invaded—but the wood refuses to rest. It
refuses to leave these streets inviolate for a decade or more until
settlers choose to pitch their tents or villas here. So the wood
calmly goes to work and makes preparations to close the streets,
for the green things that grow here have no fear of gravel or
macadam—they are used to it and thrive in it and on it. So
everywhere upon the streets and upon the pavements the purple-headed
thistles, the blue sage, silvery willow shrubs, and the green of
young ash-tree sprouts begin to take root and shoot forth.
There can be no doubt—these park-like streets with the poetic names
are running wild—the jungle is once more devouring them. Whether
one be disposed to lament the fact or rejoice over it—it is certain
that in another ten years the Goethe, Schiller, and Heine Streets
will no longer be passable, and will very likely have vanished
utterly. At present, to be sure, there is no cause for complaint.
Surely, from a pictorial and romantic point of view, there are no
lovelier streets in all the world than precisely these in precisely
their present condition. Nothing could be more grateful to the soul
than to ramble through this negligence, this incompleteness—that
is, when one is well and sturdily shod and need not fear the coarse
gravel. It is edification to the spirit to survey the manifold wild
vegetation of the tract and the groves of tiny-leafed trees fettered
by their soft dampness—sweet glimpses which frame and shut in these
perspectives. Just such a group of trees was painted three hundred
years ago by that great master of landscapes—he who came out of
Lorraine. But what am I saying?—_such_ as he painted? It was this
one—and none other—which he painted. He was here; he knew the
region, and if that rhapsodical member of the real estate company
who christened the streets in my park had not so rigidly restricted
himself to literature, then one or the other of these rust-corroded
signs might well cause me to guess at the name of Claude Lorraine.
I have now described the region of the central wood. But the
sloping land towards the east also possesses charms which are not
to be despised, at least so far as Bashan and myself are concerned,
and for reasons which will be revealed later. One might also call
it the zone of the brook, for it is a brook which gives it an
idyllic landscape quality. With the charm of its banks of
forget-me-nots it forms a counterpart on the hitherside to the zone
of the puissant river yonder—the roar and rushing turbulence of
which one is still able to hear in this spot—but only very faintly
and softly and only when the west wind is blowing. There where the
first cross street, running from the avenue of poplars between the
meadow ponds and the clumps of trees towards the slope, debouches
at the foot of this slope, there is a path that leads towards the
left. This is used in winter-time as a bob-sled run by the youth
of the region, and slants towards the lower-lying levels.
Where the run becomes level the brook begins its course, and it is
here that master and dog love to amble beside it on the right bank
or the left—which again affords variety—and also to make excursions
along the slope with its variegated configuration. To the left
extend meadows studded with trees. A country nursery lies not far
away and reveals the back of its farm buildings. Sheep are usually
at pasture here, cropping the clover. They are under the
chairmanship—so to speak—of a not very clever little girl in a red
frock. This little girl seems to suffer from a veritable passion
to rule and command. She is constantly crouching low, propping her
hands upon her knees and shouting with all her might in a
cacophonous voice. And yet she is horribly afraid of the ram, who
takes on huge and majestic proportions on account of the thickness
of his wool and who refuses to be bullied and does whatever he
pleases.
Whenever Bashan’s appearance causes a panic among the sheep, the
child invariably raises its hideous outcry, and these panics occur
quite regularly and quite contrary to Bashan’s intentions—for, if
you could peer into his inmost soul, you would discover that sheep
are a matter of absolute indifference to him. He treats them like
so much empty air, and by his indifference and his scrupulous and
even contemptuous carefulness he even seeks to prevent the outbreak
of the dunderheaded hysteria which dominates their ranks. Though
their scent is certainly strong enough for my own nostrils (yet
not unpleasantly so), it is not the scent of the wild that emanates
from them, and so Bashan, of course, has not the slightest interest
in hounding them. Nevertheless, a simple sudden motion on his part,
or even his mere shaggy appearance, is sufficient to cause the
whole herd, which but a moment ago was peacefully grazing, widely
separated and bleating in the quavering treble of the lambs and in
the deeper contralto and bass of the ewes and the ram, to go
storming off in a solid mass neck and neck, whilst the stupid
child, crouching low, shouts after them until her voice cracks and
her eyes pop out of her head. Bashan, however, looks up at me as
much as to say: Judge for yourself whether _I_ am to blame. Have
_I_ given them any cause for this?
On one occasion, however, something quite contrary happened,
something perverse and incomprehensible—something still more
extraordinary and unpleasant than the panic. One of the sheep,
quite an ordinary specimen of its kind, of average size and average
sheepish visage, with a small upward curving mouth which appeared
to smile and gave an expression of almost mocking stupidity to its
face, seemed to be spellbound and fascinated by Bashan and came to
join him. It simply followed him—detached itself from the herd,
left the pasture and clung to Bashan’s heels, quietly smiling in
exaggerated foolishness, and following him whithersoever he turned.
He left the path—the sheep did likewise; he ran and it followed at
a gallop; he stood still, and it stood still—immediately behind
him and smiling its mysterious Mona Lisa smile.
Displeasure and embarrassment became visible in Bashan’s face. The
situation into which he had been plunged was really ridiculous.
There was neither sense nor significance in it—neither in a good
or a bad sense. The whole thing, confound it—was simply
preposterous—nothing of the kind had ever happened to him—or to
me. The sheep went farther and farther from its basis, but this
did not seem to trouble it in the least. It followed the discomfited
and irritated Bashan farther and farther, visibly determined not
to separate from him ever again, but to follow him whithersoever
he might go. He remained close beside me, not so much out of fear,
since there was no occasion for this, as out of shame at the
dishonour of the situation in which he found himself. Finally, as
though his patience were at an end, he stood still, turned his
head, and growled ominously. This caused the sheep to bleat, and
its bleating sounded like the wicked laughter of a human being,
which so terrified poor Bashan that he ran away with his tail
between his legs—and the sheep straight after him, with comic jumps
and curvetings.
We were already at a considerable distance from the herd. In the
meantime the half-witted little girl was screaming as though she
would burst, still crouching and bending upon her knees and even
drawing these up as high as her face, so that from a distance she
looked like a raving and malformed gnome. And then a farm-maid,
with an apron over her skirts came running up, either in answer to
the cries of the obsessed little one or because she had noticed
the happenings from afar. She came running, I say, with a pitchfork
in one hand. With the other she supported her bodice, which, I
surmise, was unsupported and which was visibly disposed to shake
a trifle too violently as she ran. She came up panting and at once
proceeded to shy the sheep, which was slowly pacing along, like
Bashan himself, into the proper direction with the fork, though
without success. The sheep, it is true, sprang aside with a swift
flank movement, but in an instant it was once more on Bashan’s
trail. Nothing seemed to be able to induce it to give up.
I then realised that the only thing to do was to turn tail myself,
and so I turned round. We all retraced our steps, Bashan at my
side, behind him the sheep, and behind the sheep the maid with the
pitchfork, whilst the child in the red frock kept on yelling and
stamping. It was not enough, however, that we should go back as
far as the herd—it was necessary to finish the job and to proceed
to the final destination. We were obliged to enter the farmyard
and then the sheep-stable with the broad sliding-door which the
maid with muscular arm rolled to one side before us. We thereupon
marched in, and after we were all inside, we three were forced to
make a swift and adroit escape so as to be able to shove the stable
door to before the very nose of the beguiled sheep, making it a
prisoner. It was only after this operation had been gone through
that Bashan and I were able to resume our interrupted promenade
amidst the fervent thanks of the maid. During the entire walk,
however, Bashan persisted in maintaining a humble and disconsolate
air.
So much for the sheep. Closely adjacent to the farm buildings on
the left there is an extensive colony of small market-gardens.
These are owned and tended by the clerks and working men of the
city, and are the source of much joy, exercise, and considerable
supplies of cheap flowers and vegetables. The gardens have a
cemetery-like effect with their many arbours and summer houses,
built in imitation of tiny chapels and with their countless small,
fenced-in plots. The whole is enclosed by a wooden fence with an
ornamental gateway. No one, however, except the small amateur
gardeners, is permitted to have admittance through this wooden
grille. At times I see some bare-armed man there digging up his
little vegetable garden, a square rod or so in size, and always it
seems to me as though he were digging his own grave. Beyond these
gardens lie open meadows which are covered with mole-hills and
which extend to the edge of the central wooded region. Here, in
addition to the mole-hills, there are also great numbers of
field-mice—a fact which must be solemnly remarked in view of Bashan
and his multiform joy in the chase.
On the other side, that is to say, to the right, the brook and the
slope continue—the latter, as I have already indicated, in diverse
configuration. At first, covered with fir-trees, it displays a
dusky and sunless visage. Later it transforms itself to a sand-pit
which warmly refracts the beams of the sun; still later it converts
itself into a gravel-pit, and then to a cataract of bricks—just as
though a house had been demolished higher up and the débris hurled
down the slope. This has imposed temporary difficulties upon the
course of the brook. But the brook rises equal to the occasion;
its waters mount a trifle and spread themselves out, stained red
by the dust of the broken brick and also discolouring the grass
along the bank. After this they flow the dearer and the more gaily
on their way with glistenings here and there upon the surface.
I have a great love for brooks, as I have for all bodies of
water—from the ocean to the smallest, scum-covered puddle. When I
happen to be in the mountains during the summer and chance to hear
the secret splashing and gossip of such a streamlet, then I must
follow the liquid call, even though it be distant, and I cannot
rest until I have found its hiding-place. Then, face to face, I
make acquaintance with the talkative child of the crags and the
heights. Beautiful are the proud torrential brooks which come down
in crystalline thunder between pines and steep terraces of stone,
form green, ice-cold pools in rocky baths and basins, and then go
plunging to the next step in a dissolution of snowy foam. But I am
also fond of looking upon the brooks of the flatland, whether they
be shallow, so as scarcely to cover the polished, silvery, and
slippery pebbles of their beds, or as deep as little rivers
which—protected on both banks by low, overhanging willows—go
shouldering themselves forward with a vigorous thrust, flowing more
swiftly in the middle than at the sides.
Who, being free to make his choice, would not follow the course of
the waters on his wanderings? The attraction which water exercises
upon the normal man is natural and mystically sympathetic. Man is
a child of water. Our bodies are nine-tenths water, and during a
stage of our pre-natal development, we even have gills. As for
myself, I gladly confess that the contemplation of water in every
shape and form is for me the most immediate and poignant joy in
nature—yes, I will even go so far as to say that true abstractedness,
true self-forgetfulness, the real merging of my own circumscribed
existence in the universal, is granted to me only when my eyes lose
themselves in some great liquid mirror. Thus, in the face of the
sleeping or the charging and crashing of the on-rushing sea, I am
like to be transported into a condition of such profound and
organic dreams, of such a remote absence from myself, that all
sense of time is lost and tedium becomes a thing without meaning,
since hour upon hour spent in such identification and communion
melt away as though they were but minutes. But I also love to lean
upon the rail of a bridge that crosses a brook, and remain fixed
to it as with thongs, losing myself in the vision of the flowing,
streaming and whirling element—quite immune to the fear or
impatience with which I ought to be filled in view of that other
streaming and flowing that goes on about me—the swift, fluid flight
of time. Such love of the water, and all that water means, renders
the tight little territory which I inhabit the more important and
precious to me in that it is surrounded on both sides by water.
The local brook is of the simple and faithful species. There is
nothing very remarkable about it—its character is based upon
friendly averages. It is of a naiveté as clear as glass, without
subtlety or deception, without an attempt to simulate depth by
means of murkiness. It is shallow and dear and quite innocently
reveals the fact that its bottom harbours castaway tin pots and
the carcass of a lace-boot in a coat of green slime. It is, however,
deep enough to serve as a habitation to pretty, silvery-gray and
extremely nimble little fish, which, I presume, are minnows and
which dart away in wide zigzag lines at our approach. My brook
widens here and there into ponds with fine willows along the edges.
One of these willows I always regard lovingly as I pass by. It
grows—I had almost said she grows—close to the bluff, and thus at
some distance from the water. But it stretches one of its boughs
longingly towards the brook and has really succeeded in reaching
the flowing water with the silvery foliage that plumes the tip of
this bough. There it stands, with fay-like fingers wet in the
stream and draws pleasure from the contact.
It is good to walk here, lightly assailed by the warm summer wind.
The weather is warm, so it is probable that Bashan will go wading
into the brook to cool his belly—only his belly, for he has a
distinct aversion to bringing the more elevated parts of his
anatomy in contact with the water. There he stands, with his ears
laid back and an expression of piety and alertness upon his face,
and lets the water swirl around him and past him. After this he
comes sidling up to me in order to shake himself—an operation
which, according to his own conviction, must occur in my immediate
vicinity. The vigour with which he shakes himself causes a thin
spray of water and mud to fly my way. It is no use warding him off
with flourished stick and intense objurgations. Under no conditions
will he tolerate any interference with anything that appears to
him natural, inevitable, and according to the fitness of things.
Farther on the brook, in pursuing its course towards the setting
sun, reaches a small hamlet which commands a view towards the
north—between the woods and the slope—and at the entrance to this
hamlet lies the tavern. Here the brook once more broadens into a
pond. The women of the village kneel at the edge of this and wash
their linen. A little foot-bridge crosses the stream. Should you
venture over you will set foot upon a road which leads from the
village towards the city, running between the edge of the wood and
the edge of the meadow. Should you leave this road on the right
you would be able to reach the river in a few steps by means of a
wagon-road that cuts through the wood.
We are now within the zone of the river. The river itself lies
before us green and streaked with white and full of liquid roarings.
It is actually only a great mountain torrent. Its everlasting
rushing sound can be heard with a more or less muffled reverberation
everywhere throughout the region. Here it swells and crashes
overwhelmingly upon the ears. It might, in fact, serve as a
substitute for the sacred and sounding onset of the sea—if no sea
is to be had. The ceaseless cry of innumerable land-gulls
intermingles with the voice of the stream. In autumn and in winter,
and even during the spring, these gulls go circling round and round
the mouths of the overflow-pipes, filling the air with their
screams. Here they find their food until the season grows milder
and permits them to make their way to the lakes in the hills—like
the wild and half-wild ducks which also spend the cool and the cold
months in the vicinity of the city, balance themselves on the
waves, permit themselves to be carried by the current which turns
them round and rocks them at will, and then just at the moment when
some rapid or whirlpool threatens to engulf them, fly up with light
and vibrant wing and settle down once more upon the water—a little
farther up-stream.
The region of the river is arranged and classified as follows:—close
to the edge of the wood there stretches a broad level of gravel.
This is a continuation of the poplar avenue which I have mentioned
so frequently, and runs, say, for about a kilometre down-stream,
that is to say, to the little ferryman’s house—of which more anon.
Behind this the thicket comes closer to the river channel. The
purpose of this desert of gravel is clear; it is the first and most
prominent of the longitudinal streets, and was lavishly planned by
the real estate company as a charming and picturesque esplanade
for elegant turnouts—with visions of gentlemen on horseback
approaching spick-and-span landaus and victorias glistening in
their enamel and engaging in delicate badinage with smiling and
“beauteous” ladies reclining at ease under dainty parasols.
Close to the ferryman’s house there is a huge signboard in a state
of advanced decreptitude. This proclaims what was to have been the
immediate goal, the temporary termination of the carriage _corso_.
For there in broad and blatant letters you may read that this
corner site is for sale for the erection of a park café and a
fashionable refreshment “establishment.” Well, the purpose remains
unfulfilled, and the building site is empty.
For in place of the park café, with its little tables, its hurrying
waiters, and glass-and-cup sipping and straw-sucking guests, there
is only the big wooden signboard—aslant—a resigned, collapsing bid
without a bidder, and the corso itself only a waste of coarsest
gravel, covered with willow bushes and with blue sage almost as
thickly as the Goethe or Lessing Streets.
Alongside the esplanade, nearer to the river, there runs a smaller
gravel way which is also overgrown with insurgent shrubbery. It is
characterised by grass mounds which arise at intervals and from
which telegraph-poles mount into the air. Yet I am fond of
frequenting this road on my walks, first because of the change,
and second because the gravel permits of clean though somewhat
difficult locomotion, when the clayey footpath yonder does not
appear passable during days of heavy rain. This footpath, actually
the real promenade, runs for miles along the river and then finally
degenerates into wild, haphazard trails along the bank. It is lined
along the riverside with saplings, maple and birch, and on the land
side it is flanked by the mighty primitive inhabitants of the
region—willows, aspens, and silver poplars—all of them colossal in
their dimensions. The escarpment plunges steeply and sheerly
towards the river-bed. It is protected by ingenious works of woven
willow-withes and by a concrete armour along its lower parts
against the mounting flood water which once or twice a year comes
rolling hither—when the snows melt in the mountains or the rain
overdoes itself. Here and there the slope hospitably offers one
the use of wooden steps, half ladders and half stairs, by means of
which one may, with a fair degree of comfort, descend into the
actual river-bed, which is usually quite dry. It is the reserve
gravel bed of the big wild brook, and is about six metres wide.
The stream behaves like all other members of its family, the small
as well as the smallest, that is to say, according to the weather
and the water conditions in the upper mountain regions. Sometimes
its course will be a mere green flowing tunnel with the rocks
scarcely covered and with the gulls appearing to stand stilt-legged
on the very surface itself. And then, again, it will assume a most
formidable character, swelling into a wide stream, filling its bed
with gray watery fury and tumult, and bearing along in its headlong
course all kinds of unseemly objects such as old baskets, pieces
of wooden crates, bushes, and dead cats in its circling wrath, and
showing a great disposition to flooding and to deeds of violence.
The reserve or overflow channel is also armoured against high water
by the same parallel, slanting, and hurdle-like arrangements of
willow branches. It is covered with beach-grass and wild oats as
well as with the show-plant of the neighbourhood, the dry,
omnipresent blue sage. It offers good walking, thanks to the strip
of quay formed of tooled and even stone, which runs along the
extreme limit of the water. This gives me a further, and in fact
favourite, possibility of adding variety to my promenades.
It is true that the unyielding stone is not particularly good
going, but one is fully recompensed by the intimate proximity of
the water. Then one is also able now and then to walk in the _sand_
beside the quay. Yes, there is real sand there between the gravel
and the beach-grass, sand that is a trifle mixed with clay and not
so sacredly pure as that of the sea, but nevertheless real sand
that has been washed up. I am thus able to fancy myself strolling
upon a real strand down there, inscrutably drawing my foot along
the perilous edge of the salt flood. There is no lack of surgings,
even if there is of surges, nor of the clamour of gulls, nor of
that kind of space-annihilating monotony which lulls one into a
sort of narcotic absentmindedness. The level cataracts are rushing
and roaring all around, and halfway to the ferryman’s house—the
voice of a waterfall joins the chorus—from over yonder where the
canal, debouching at a slant, pours itself into a river. The body
of this fall is arched, smooth, glassy like that of a fish, and an
everlasting boiling tumult goes on at its base.
It is beautiful here when the sky is blue and the flat ferry
decorated with a pennant in honour of the weather or some other
festival occasion. There are other boats in this spot, but the
ferry is fastened to a wire rope which in turn is fastened to
another and thicker wire cable. This is stretched across the river
in such a way as to let a pulley run along it. The current itself
furnishes the motive power for the ferryboat and a pressure from
the ferryman’s hand upon the rudder does the rest. The ferryman
lives in the ferry-house with his wife and child, and this house
lies a short distance from the upper footpath. It has a little
garden and a hen-house, and is evidently an official dwelling and
therefore rent-free. It is a kind of villa of liliputian proportions,
lightly and whimsically built with little bays and gables, and
appears to boast of two rooms below and two above. I love to sit
on the bench in front of the garden close to the upper footpath.
Bashan then squats upon my foot; the hens of the ferryman amble
about me and give their heads a forward jerk with every step. And
usually the cock comes to perch upon the back of the bench and lets
the green Bersaglieri feathers of his tail hang down behind,
sitting beside me thus and measuring me luridly from the side with
his red eye.
I watch the traffic on the ferry. It could scarcely be called
strenuous, nor even lively, for it consummates itself, at large
and liberal intervals. So I find all the more pleasure in the scene
when a man or a woman with a market-basket appears on the farther
bank and demands to be carried across the river. For the poetic
element in that fine call, “Ferry ahoy!” remains full of human
captivation as in ancient days, even though the action fulfils
itself, as here, in new and progressive forms. Double steps of wood
for the coming and the departing traveller lead down the escarpment
on both sides into the bed of the river and to the landing-places.
And on both sides there is an electric button affixed to the rail.
A man appears on the other bank, stands still and peers across the
water. No longer, however, as in former times, does he hollow his
hands into a trumpet and shout through them. He walks towards the
push-button, stretches out his arms and performs a slight pressure
with his thumb. There is a clear, thin tinkle in the house of the
ferryman. This is the modern “Ferry ahoy!” and it is poetic even
thus. There stands the prospective passenger and watches and waits.
And almost at the very moment at which the bell tinkles, the
ferryman comes out of his little house, just as though he had stood
or sat behind the door, merely waiting for the signal. The ferryman,
I repeat, comes out—and in his walk there is something which
suggests that he has been set in motion directly by the pressure
upon the push button—just as one may shoot at a door in a tiny hut
among the targets in the shooting-galleries. If you chance to make
a bull’s-eye, it flies open and a tiny figure comes out—say a
milkmaid or a soldier.
Without showing the slightest sign of undue haste the ferryman
walks with swinging arms through his little garden, crosses the
footpath, descends the wooden steps to the river, pushes off the
ferry, and holds the rudder whilst the pulley runs along the taut
wire, and the boat is driven across by the current. The boat bumps
against the other bank; the stranger jumps in; upon reaching the
hither bank he hands the ferryman a nickel coin and leaps up the
wooden steps with alacrity. He has conquered the river, and turns
either to the right or to the left. Sometimes when the ferryman is
prevented from being at his post, either through illness or more
urgent household affairs, then his wife or even his child will come
out of the house and fetch the stranger across. They are able to
perform this office as well as he—even I could attend to it. The
job of the ferryman is an easy one and requires no special capacity
or training. Surely he is a lucky man, this ferrymaster, in having
such a job and being able to live in the neat dwarf villa. Any fool
would at once be able to step into his place, and the knowledge of
this keeps him modest and grateful. On the way back to his house
he greets me very politely (with _Grüss Gott_) as I sit there on
the wooden bench between the dog and the rooster. It is clear that
he wishes to remain on a good footing with every one.
A smell of tar, a wind brushing across the waters, and a plashing
sound against the wooden sides of the boats. What more could I
desire? Sometimes I am seized by another memory of home. It comes
upon me when the water is deep and still and there is a somewhat
musty odour in the air, and then these things take me back to the
Laguna, back to Venice, where I spent so many years of my youth.
And then again there is storm and there is flood, and the
everlasting rain comes pouring down. Wrapped in a rubber coat, with
wet and streaming face, I brace myself against the stiff west wind
along the upper way, a wind that tears the young poplars from their
poles and makes it clear why the trees here incline away from the
west and have crowns which grow only from one side of the branches.
When we go walking in rains such as these, Bashan frequently stands
still and shakes himself so that he is the dark centre of a dull,
gray flurry of water. The river at such times is a different river.
Swollen, murky-yellow, it comes rolling on, wearing upon its face
an ominous catastrophic look. This storm-flood is full of a
lurching, crowding, tremendous haste, an insensate hurry. It usurps
the entire reserve channel up to the very edge of the escarpment,
and leaps up against the concrete walls, the protective works of
willow boughs, so that one involuntarily utters thanks to the wise
forethought which established these defences. The eerie thing about
these flood-waters is that the river grows quiet, much quieter than
usual, in fact it becomes almost silent. The customary surface
rapids are no longer visible; the stream rolls too high for these.
But the spots where these rapids were, are to be recognised by the
deeper hollows and the higher waves, and by the fact that the
crests of these waves curl over backwards and not forwards—like
the waves of the current. The waterfall no longer plays a part,
its glistening curved body is now flat and meagre, and the pother
at its base has vanished through the height of the water level.
So far as Bashan is concerned, his astonishment at such a change
in the aspect of things is beyond expression. He remains in a state
of constant amazement. He is unable to realise that the places in
which he has been accustomed to trot and run should have vanished,
should have utterly vanished—think of it!—and that there should be
nothing there but water—water! In his fright he scampers up the
escarpment in a kind of panic—away from the plunging, spattering
flood and looks around at me with waggings of his tail, after which
he casts further dubious glances at the water. A kind of
embarrassment comes upon him—and he gives way to a trick of
his—opening his mouth obliquely and thrusting his tongue into the
corners—a play of feature which affects one as being as much human
as it is animal. As a means of expression it is somewhat unrefined
and subservient, but thoroughly comprehensible. The whole effect
is about the same as would be conveyed by a rather simple-minded
yokel in the face of an awkward situation, provided he went so far
as to scratch his head as Bashan scratches his neck.
Having occupied myself in some detail with the zone of the river,
and described the whole region, I believe that I have succeeded in
giving my readers a picture of it. I rather like my own description
of the place, or rather the place as presented in my description,
but I like it still better as a piece of nature. For there is no
doubt that as a piece of living nature, it is still more diversified
and vivid, just as Bashan himself is in reality warmer, more lively
and lovable than in this counterfeit presentment. I am attached to
this stretch of landscape and grateful to it, and so I have
described it with something of the meticulosity with which the old
Dutch masters painted. It is my park and my solitude, and it is
for this reason that I have sought to conjure it up before the
reader’s eye. My thoughts and my dreams are mingled and intergrown
with its scenes, like the leaves of its creepers with the stems of
its trees.
I have looked upon it at all hours and at all seasons; in autumn
when the chemical smell of the fading leaves fills the air, when
the white legions of the thistle-down have all been blown to the
winds, when the great beeches of the _Kurgarten_ spread a
rust-coloured carpet of leaves about them on the meadows, and when
afternoons dripping with gold merge into theatrically romantic
twilights with the crescent moon swimming in the skies, with a
milky brew of mist hovering over the levels and the afterglow of
the sunset smouldering through the black silhouettes of the trees.
And also in winter when all the gravel is covered with snow and
soft and smooth, so that one may walk upon it in one’s rubber
overshoes, and when the river goes shooting black between the pale
frost-bound shores and the cry of hundreds of fresh-water gulls
fills the air from morning to evening. Nevertheless the easiest
and most familiar intercourse with this landscape is during the
mild months, when no special equipment in the way of defensive
clothing is necessary, and one may go for a quick stroll for a
quarter of an hour, betwixt and between two showers of rain, and,
in passing, bend aside the branch of a black alder tree and cast
a look into the wandering waves. It is possible that visitors have
been to call upon me, and I have been left behind, stranded, as it
were, within my own four walls, crushed by conversation, and with
the breath of the strangers apparently still hanging in the air.
It is good then to go at once and loaf for a little along the Heine
or Schiller Street, to draw a breath of fresh air and to anoint
myself with Nature. I look up to the heavens, peer into the green
depths of the world of tender and delicate leaves, my nerves
recover themselves and grow quiet—peace and serenity return to my
spirit.
Bashan is always with me on such forays. He had not been able to
prevent an invasion of the house by the outer world in the shape
of the visitors, even though he had lifted up his voice in loud
and terrible protest. But that had done no good, and so he had
stepped aside. And now he is jubilant that he and I are once more
together in the hunting-grounds. With one ear turned carelessly
inside out, and loping obliquely, as is the common habit of
dogs—that is, with his hind legs moving not directly behind his
front legs, but somewhat to the side, he goes trotting on the
gravel in front of me. And suddenly I see that some tremendous
emotion has seized him, body and soul. His short bobbed tail begins
to wave furiously. His head lunges forward and to one side, his
body stretches and extends itself. He jumps hither and thither,
and the next moment, with his nose still glued to the ground, he
goes darting off. He has struck a scent. He is on the spoor of a
rabbit.
THE CHASE