Knulp Read online

  "No," said Knulp with some embarrassment. "They deserve a tenner. The trouble is, I haven't got one."

  Eagerly she drew her little knitted purse from her pocket. "Why didn't you say anything? Here. Give it to them."

  He took the coin and gave it to the musicians, then they left. Outside, they had to wait a few minutes before they could see the way in the deep darkness. The wind was blowing harder, driving an occasional raindrop before it.

  "Should I put up the umbrella?" Knulp asked.

  "No, we'd never get ahead in this wind. It was nice in there. You dance almost like a dancing master, tanner."

  She went on chattering gaily. Her friend had fallen silent, perhaps because he was tired, perhaps because he dreaded the impending leave-taking.

  All at once she began to sing: "I graze by the Neckar, I graze by the Rhine." Her voice was warm and pure. At the second verse Knulp joined in and sang the bass part with such sureness and in such a fine deep voice that she listened happily.

  "Well," he asked at the end, "is your homesickness gone?"

  "Oh yes," she said, laughing brightly. "We must take another walk soon."

  "I'm sorry," he said more softly. "I'm afraid this is the last."

  She stopped still. She hadn't quite heard the words, but she had caught the note of dejection.

  "But what's wrong?" she asked tremulously. "Are you put out with me?"

  "Of course not, Bärbele. But I've got to be leaving tomorrow. I've given notice."

  "You don't mean it. Really? Oh, I am sorry to hear that."

  "You mustn't be sorry about me. I wouldn't have stayed very long in any case, and besides I'm only a tanner. You must find a sweetheart soon, a handsome young fellow. Then you'll never be homesick again. You'll see."

  "Don't talk like that. You know I like you very much, even if you're not my sweetheart."

  They were both silent. The wind whistled round their faces. Knulp walked more slowly. They were almost at the bridge. At length he stopped still.

  "I'll bid you goodbye now. You'd better go the rest of the way by yourself."

  With sincere affliction Bärbele looked into his face.

  "So it's true? Then let me thank you. I'll never forget this evening. And good luck."

  He clasped her hand and drew her close to him. Frightened and surprised, she looked into his eyes. Then he took her head with its rain-wet braids in both hands and whispered: "Goodbye, Bärbele. But before I go, I want a kiss from you, so you won't forget me entirely."

  She trembled and shrank back a little, but his eyes were kindly and sad, and now for the first time she noticed how fine they were. Gravely, without closing her own, she accepted his kiss. Then when he stood hesitant, a faint smile on his lips, tears welled to her eyes and she returned his kiss with warmth.

  She walked away quickly and was already on the bridge when suddenly she turned round and came back. He was still standing on the same spot.

  "What is it, Bärbele?" he asked. "You must go home."

  "Oh yes, I'm going. You mustn't think badly of me."

  "Certainly not."

  "But tell me, tanner. You said you had no money. Won't you be paid before you go?"

  "No, there's no pay coming to me. But that's nothing. I'll manage. You mustn't worry."

  "No, no! You've got to have something in your pocket. Here!"

  She pressed a large coin into his hand; he knew by the feel that it was a taler.

  "You can give it back to me or send it sometime."

  He held her hand.

  "It won't do. You mustn't throw your money around like this. Why, it's a whole taler. Take it back. I insist. If you have some small change, say fifty pfennigs, I'll take it gladly because I'm hard up. But no more."

  They argued a little longer, and Bärbele had to show him her purse, because she said she had nothing but the taler. But this wasn't true, she also had a mark and one of the little silver twenty-pfennig pieces that were still current. He wanted to take that, but she said it wasn't enough; then he said he wouldn't take anything, but finally he kept the mark piece, and she rushed off.

  On the way home she wondered why he hadn't kissed her again, now with a sense of regret, now with the feeling that in not kissing her again he had been really sweet and considerate. And this was the feeling she ended up with.

  It was more than an hour later when Knulp came home. He saw that the light was still on in the big room, which meant that the tanner's wife was sitting up waiting for him. He spat with annoyance and thought of running off into the night that very minute. But he was tired, it was going to rain, and he didn't want to be unkind to the tanner. And besides he felt like playing a harmless little joke.

  He fished the key out of its hiding place, opened the house door as stealthily as a thief, closed it behind him, locked it soundlessly with tight-pressed lips, and carefully put the key in its place. Then he took off his shoes and climbed the stairs in his stocking feet. The door to the big room was ajar. He saw light through the crack and heard the tanner's wife, who had fallen asleep from the long wait, breathing deeply on the sofa. Then he climbed silently to his room, locked himself in, and went to bed. But the next day -- his mind was made up -- he would leave.

  My Recollections of Knulp

  In those days I was young and gay, and Knulp was still alive. It was midsummer; the two of us were tramping through fertile country and had few worries. By day we sauntered through yellow grain-fields or lay in the cool shade of a walnut tree or at the edge of the forest, and at night I listened and looked on as Knulp told the peasants stories, put on shadow plays for the children, or sang his songs for the girls. I listened with pleasure and without envy; only when he was standing surrounded by girls, his tanned face flashing like summer lightning, when for all their laughing and joking the young things couldn't take their eyes off him, it occasionally struck me that he was an uncommonly lucky devil or that I myself was the opposite. And then, sick of sitting there like a bump on a log, I sometimes crept away by myself and dropped in on the village priest for a sensible talk and a night's lodging, or went to the tavern for a quiet glass of wine.

  One afternoon, I remember, as we were making our way through the fields, far from the nearest village, we came to a deserted graveyard with a little chapel beside it. Surrounded by walls overgrown with dark shrubbery, it lay friendly and peaceful in the hot countryside. There were two large chestnut trees at the entrance. The gate was closed and I wanted to go on. Not so Knulp, who started climbing over the wall.

  "Stopping again?" I asked.

  "I think so. I wouldn't want to get sore feet."

  "But does it have to be a graveyard?"

  "Never mind. Just come along. I know that peasants don't go in much for pleasure, but when it comes to their last resting place, they like their comfort. It's worth a bit of trouble to them, they grow the loveliest things on their graves and all around them."

  I joined him in climbing the low wall and saw that he was right. The graves, most of them marked by white wooden crosses, lay in straight and crooked rows, and over them grew flowers and greenery. Bindweed and geraniums sparkled with joy, late gillyflowers grew in the shadier spots, there were rose bushes weighed down with roses, and a dense copse of lilac and elder.

  We looked about for a while and then sat down in the grass, which in places was tall and in flower. We rested and cooled off and a feeling of contentment came over us.

  Knulp read the name on the nearest cross and said: "His name was Engelbert Auer, he lived to be over sixty. But now he's lying under mignonette, which is a lovely flower, and he's at peace. I'd be glad to have some mignonette myself when the time comes; in the meantime, I'll take a little of this."

  I said: "Better take something else; mignonette fades so soon."

  However, he broke off a sprig and put it in his hat, which was lying beside him on the grass.

  "How wonderfully quiet it is!" I said.

>   And he: "Yes, indeed. If it were just a little quieter, we could hear them talking down there."

  "Not them. They've finished talking."

  "How do we know? They say that death is sleep; don't we talk in our sleep now and then? Sometimes we even sing."

  "Maybe you do."

  "Why not? If I were dead, I'd wait until Sunday when the girls come out here to look about and pick flowers from the graves, and then I'd start singing, but very softly."

  "What would you sing?"

  "What I'd sing? Oh, any old song."

  He stretched out on the ground, closed his eyes, and soon began to sing in a soft, childlike voice:

  Because I've died so young,

  Come sing me, pretty maidens,

  A song of farewell.

  When I come back again,

  When I come back again,

  I'll be a pretty lad.

  I couldn't help laughing, though I liked the song. He sang beautifully, and even if the words didn't always make sense, the tune was lovely and that was enough.

  "Knulp," I said, "don't promise the pretty maidens too much, or they'll stop listening to you. It's all very well to say you'll come back, but no one really knows about these things, and how can you be sure you'll be a pretty lad?"

  "No, I can't be sure; that's a fact. But that's what I'd like to be. Remember the other day, the little boy with the cow that we asked the way of? I wish I could be like him when I come back. Don't you?"

  "No, not I. I once knew an old man, well over seventy, his eyes were so quiet and kindly; it seemed to me that everything about him was kindly and wise and quiet. Ever since then, I've thought that if I came back I'd want to be like him."

  "Well, you've got a long way to go. Altogether it's a funny thing about wishes. If all I had to do this minute was to nod and I'd be a nice little boy like that, and all you had to do was nod and you'd be a kindly old man, neither of us would nod. We'd be quite pleased to stay just as we are."

  "Yes, that's true."

  "It's true all right. But that's not all. Sometimes I say to myself that the most beautiful thing in the world is a slender young girl with blond hair. But that's nonsense, because often enough we see a brunette who seems to be almost more beautiful. And besides, there are other times when I think the most beautiful thing of all is a bird soaring free in the sky. And another time nothing seems so marvelous as a butterfly, a white one for instance with red dots on its wings, or the sun shining in the clouds at evening, when the whole world is aglow, yet the light doesn't dazzle us, and everything looks so happy and innocent."

  "Right you are, Knulp. Everything is beautiful when you look at it in a good moment."

  "Yes. But there's more to it. The most beautiful things, I think, give us something else beside pleasure; they also leave us with a feeling of sadness or fear."

  "Why?"

  "I mean that a beautiful girl wouldn't seem so beautiful if we didn't know that she has her season and that when it's over she'll grow old and die. If a beautiful thing were to remain beautiful for all eternity, I'd be glad, but all the same I'd look at it with a colder eye. I'd say to myself: You can look at it any time, it doesn't have to be today. But when I know that something is perishable and can't last forever, I look at it with a feeling not just of joy but of compassion as well."

  "I suppose so."

  "To me there's nothing more beautiful than fireworks in the night. There are blue and green fireballs, they rise up in the darkness, and at the height of their beauty they double back and they're gone. When you watch them, you're happy but at the same time afraid, because in a moment it will all be over. The happiness and the fear go together, and it's much more beautiful than if it lasted longer. Don't you feel the same way?"

  "Yes, I think I do. But that's not true of everything."

  "Why not?"

  "For instance, if a boy and girl love each other and get married, or if two people get to be friends, it's beautiful because it's meant to last and not to end right away."

  Knulp looked at me closely; then his black lashes flickered and he said thoughtfully: "Yes. But that comes to an end too, like everything else. All sorts of things can wreck a friendship, or a love for that matter."

  "True, but we don't think of that until it happens."

  "I don't know about that. -- For instance, I've had two loves in my life, real ones I mean, and each time I knew it would last forever and could end only with death, but each time it ended, and I didn't die. I had a friend too, back home, and I thought we'd never part. But we did part, long long ago."

  He fell silent and I could think of nothing to say. I still had no experience of the sorrow that is part and parcel of every human relationship, nor had I learned that no matter how close two human beings may be, there is always a gulf between them which only love can bridge, and that only from hour to hour. I pondered my friend's words; I liked best what he had said about the fireballs, because I myself had often had the same feeling. The quiet spell of the colored flame, rising into the darkness and all too soon drowning in it, struck me as a symbol of all human pleasure, for the more beautiful it is, the less it satisfies us and the more quickly it is spent. I told Knulp what I had been thinking.

  But he wouldn't go into it. He only said "Yes. . . yes." And then, after a long while, in a muffled voice: "There's no sense in all this brooding and pondering; we never do what we think. We don't stop to reflect, we do what our hearts bid us. But maybe there's something in what I said about friendship and love. In the end, we all have a life of our own that we can't share with anyone else. You can see that when a friend or loved one dies. You weep and grieve for a day, a month, or even a year, but then the dear departed is dead and gone, and the person in the coffin might just as well be some homeless unknown apprentice."

  "Don't say that, Knulp, I don't like it. We've often talked about these things. We've always said that life must have a meaning and that there is a point in being good and friendly rather than bad and unfriendly. But the way you're talking now, nothing makes any difference and we could just as well be thieves and murderers."

  "No, my friend, we couldn't. See if you can bring yourself to murder the next few people we meet. Or tell a yellow butterfly that it ought to be blue. It will laugh in your face."

  "That's not what I mean. But if nothing matters, then there's no point in trying to be good and upright. There's no goodness if blue is as good as yellow and evil is as good as good. Then a man is the same as an animal in the woods; he simply follows his nature and there's neither virtue nor guilt."

  Knulp sighed.

  "What can I say? Maybe you're right. And that's why we get these stupid fits of gloom, because we feel that our wanting and trying are meaningless and that things simply go their own way. But there's guilt even so, even when a man can't help being bad. Because he's aware of the badness in him. And that's why goodness must be the right way, because when we do good we're happy and our conscience is clear."

  I could see by his face that he was sick of this discussion. That often happened with him. He started philosophizing, stated principles, argued for and against, and then suddenly stopped. At first I thought he had had enough of my inept answers and objections. But it wasn't that; he felt that his leaning to speculation carried him into territory where his knowledge and means of expression were inadequate. For though he had read a great deal, Tolstoy for instance, he was not always able to distinguish between sound and unsound reasoning, and he himself sensed as much. He spoke of learned men as a gifted child speaks of adults; he had to admit that they were stronger and better equipped than he, but he despised them for making no proper use of their learning and for solving no riddles with all their wisdom. Now he was lying on his back again with his head cradled in his hands, peering through the black elder leaves into the hot blue sky and softly singing an old Rhenish folk song. I still recall the last stanza:

  I've worn the red coat until now,
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  And now the black coat I must wear

  Seven years to the day,

  Till my love rots away.

  Late in the afternoon we sat facing each other at the dark edge of a copse, each with a big chunk of bread and half a hard sausage, eating and watching the night fall. Only a short time before, the hills had been bright with the yellow glow of the evening sky, bathed in a fluffy luminous haze; now they were dark and sharply outlined, painting their trees, bushes, and meadows on the sky, which still had a little light blue in it but much more of the dark blue of the night. While there was light enough, we had read nonsense to each other out of Strains from the German Hurdygurdy, a little book of idiotic songs illustrated with small woodcuts. That had ended with the daylight. When we had done eating, Knulp wanted music. I pulled my harmonica from my pocket, which was full of crumbs, wiped it, and played our usual half-dozen tunes. The darkness had spread far over the rolling countryside, the sky had lost its pale glow and in growing darker had shot forth one star after another. The light, thin notes of the harmonica flew over the fields and lost themselves in the distance.

  "It's too early to sleep," I said to Knulp. "Tell me a story -- it doesn't have to be true -- or a fairy tale."

  Knulp thought back.

  "All right," he said. "A story and a fairy tale, both in one. You see, it's a dream. I had this dream last fall and twice more since then, almost the same. Here it is:

  "A narrow street in a small town like the one I come from. All the houses had gables overlooking the street, but they were higher than the ones you usually see. I was walking through the street. It was as though I were coming home after a long long time, but I wasn't really happy, because something was wrong. I had a feeling that maybe I was in the wrong place, that this wasn't my home town at all. Some parts of it were exactly as they should have been and I recognized them at once, but many houses were strange and deserted, and I couldn't find the bridge that led to the marketplace; instead, I passed an unfamiliar garden and a church that was like in Cologne or Basel, with two big steeples. Our church at home had no steeple at all, but only a low stump with a make-shift roof, because the builders had made a mistake and hadn't been able to finish the steeple.