Knulp Read online

  If I lie here another few days, he thought, I'll never get up again. He no longer cared much about life, in the last few years the road had lost much of its charm for him. But he didn't want to die until he had seen Gerbersau again and taken his secret leave of so many things, of the river and the bridge, the marketplace and his father's old garden, and of Franziska as well. His later loves were forgotten, just as his long years of wandering had dwindled in his memory and lost their importance for him, while the mysterious days of his boyhood took on a new radiance and magic.

  He examined the guest room closely; he had not lived so splendidly for years. With a knowing eye and sensitive fingers he studied the weave of the bed sheets, the soft, natural-wool blanket, the fine pillow slips. The hardwood floor interested him too, and on the wall the photograph of the Doges' palace, framed in glass mosaic.

  Then he lay for a long while with open unseeing eyes, too tired to concern himself with anything but what was going on in his sick body. But suddenly he started up, leaned out of bed, and with hurried fingers picked up his boots, which he examined with expert care. They were in bad shape, but it was already October, they'd last until the first snow. Then everything would be over. It occurred to him that he might ask Machold for a pair of old shoes. No, that would arouse his suspicions; you don't need shoes in the hospital. He ran his fingers over the cracks in the uppers. If he rubbed them well with fat, they'd surely last another month. No need to worry. His old shoes would outlive him and still be giving good service when he himself had vanished from the roads.

  He dropped the boots and tried to breathe deeply, but it hurt him and made him cough. Then he lay still and waited, taking short breaths, tortured by fear of giving out before he had satisfied his last wish.

  He tried to think of death as he had done now and then, but that tired him and he dozed off. When he awoke an hour later, he felt fresh and calm as though he had slept for days. He thought of Machold and felt that he would like to leave him some token of his gratitude when he went away. He decided to write down one of his poems; the doctor had asked about them only the day before. But he couldn't remember any, or he didn't care for what he remembered. Looking out the window, he saw the fog in the woods nearby and stared into it until a thought came to him. From the drawer of his bedside table he removed the clean white paper with which it was lined, and wrote with a pencil stub he had picked up around the house.

  The flowers must wither

  When the fog comes,

  And people must die

  And go down to their graves.

  People are flowers,

  They too will come back

  In the springtime.

  And then they will never be sick again,

  And all will he forgiven.

  He stopped and read what he had written. It wasn't a real song, there were no rhymes, but everything he wanted to say was in it. He moistened the pencil with his tongue and wrote under it: 'To Doctor Machold, from his grateful friend K."

  Then he put the paper into the little drawer.

  Next day the fog was still thicker, but the air was cold and brisk, it seemed likely that the sun would be out by noon. Machold came and informed him that a bed was available at the Gerbersau hospital and that he was expected. Then when Knulp had pleaded with him, the doctor let him get up.

  "I'll hike over right after lunch," said Knulp. "It will take me four hours, maybe five."

  "That's all you need!" Machold laughed. "No hiking for the present. If we don't find anything else, I'll drive you over in my carriage. I'll ask the mayor, he may be taking a load of fruit or potatoes to town. One day more or less won't matter."

  The guest gave in. The mayor sent word that his hired man would be driving two calves to Gerbersau the next day, and it was decided that Knulp would ride along with him.

  "But you could use a warmer coat," said Machold. "Could you wear one of mine, or would it be too big?"

  Knulp had no objection, the coat was tried on and found satisfactory. But since the goods were of the best and the coat was in excellent condition, Knulp with his old childlike vanity decided at once to move the buttons. The doctor looked on with amusement and gave him a shirt collar to complete the picture.

  That afternoon Knulp, in great secrecy, looked himself over in his new clothes. He cut such a fine figure that he regretted not having shaved recently. He didn't dare ask the housekeeper for the doctor's razor, but he knew the village blacksmith and went out to see what could be done in that quarter.

  He soon found the smithy and went in, proffering the old journeyman's greeting: "A blacksmith from foreign parts requests employment."

  The blacksmith studied him with a cold eye. "You're no blacksmith," he said. "You can't fool me."

  "True enough!" Knulp laughed. "You've still got your eyesight. Funny you don't recognize me. Remember? I used to be a musician. Many a time you danced to my accordion on Saturday nights in Haierbach."

  The blacksmith knitted his brows and went on filing for a few minutes. Then he led Knulp to the light and examined him.

  "I've got it," he said with a short laugh. "You're Knulp. People get older when you haven't seen them in so long. What are you doing in Bulach? I can spare a tenner and a glass of cider."

  "That's very kind of you, blacksmith, I appreciate it. But it's something else I want. Would you lend me your razor for a few minutes? I'm going dancing tonight."

  The blacksmith threatened him with his forefinger.

  "You old faker! The way you look, it seems to me, you can't be very keen on dancing."

  Knulp tittered gaily.

  "You notice everything. You should have been a magistrate. Well, yes, I'm going to the hospital tomorrow, Machold is sending me. Naturally I can't turn up with this mattress on my face. Give me your razor, you'll have it back in half an hour."

  "Hm. Where are you going with it?"

  "Over to the doctor's, I'm staying there. Can I have it?"

  Knulp's story didn't sound quite credible. The blacksmith had his suspicions.

  "You can have it. But it's no ordinary razor, you know, it's hollow-ground, genuine Solingen. I want to see it back."

  "You will."

  "Of course. -- Say, that's a nice coat you've got on. You won't need it to shave in. I'll tell you what: take it off and leave it with me. When you come back with the razor, I'll give you your coat."

  Knulp made a wry face. "All right. You're not exactly a prince. But it's a deal."

  The blacksmith produced his razor, Knulp left his coat as a pledge, but he wouldn't let the grimy blacksmith touch it. Half an hour later he returned the Solingen razor, his unkempt beard was gone, and he looked very different.

  "Now all you need is a flower behind your ear and you'll be ready to go courting," said the blacksmith admiringly.

  But Knulp was no longer in a joking mood, he put his coat on, said a curt thank you, and left the smithy.

  On the way home he met the doctor, who stopped him.

  "Where have you been?" he asked in consternation. "And the looks of you! -- Ah, you've shaved! What an overgrown baby you are!"

  But he was pleased, and that evening Knulp had red wine again. The two schoolfriends celebrated their parting, both putting on a show of good cheer and repressing any sign of dejection.

  Early in the morning the mayor's hired man drove up with the wagon. Two calves with quaking knees stood there in wooden cages, staring wide-eyed into the cold morning. The first frost lay over the meadows. Knulp was helped into the front seat beside the hired man and a blanket spread over his knees. The doctor pressed Knulp's hand and gave the hired man half a mark. As the wagon clanked away in the direction of the woods, the hired man lit his pipe and Knulp blinked sleepily into the cool, bright-blue morning.

  Later on the sun came out and by noon it was pleasantly warm. The two of them in the front seat got along splendidly. When they reached Gerbersau, the hired man was determi
ned to go out of his way and take Knulp to the hospital. But Knulp soon dissuaded him and they parted good friends on the edge of the town. Knulp stood by the roadside and looked after the wagon until it disappeared under the maple trees by the cattle market.

  Then smiling he turned into a path, known only to natives, that wound its way between garden hedges. He was free again. In the hospital they could wait.

  Once again the homecomer savored the light and air, the sounds and smells of his native town, and the exciting, appeasing feeling of being at home: the crush of peasants and townspeople at the cattle market, the sun-drenched shadows of brown chestnut trees, the dark autumn butterflies in funereal flight by the city wall, the sound of the market fountain with its four streams of water, the smell of wine and the hollow wooden hammering that issued from the cooper's vaulted doorway, the familiar street names, each one shrouded in a dense and restless swarm of memories. With his whole being the wanderer drank in the enchantment of home, of recognition, of memory, of comradeship with every street corner and every curbstone. All afternoon he roamed tirelessly from street to street, he listened to the knife grinders by the river, watched the turner through the windows of his workshop, read old familiar names on freshly painted signs. He dipped his hand into the market fountain, but to quench his thirst he waited till he had come to the little Abbot's Spring, which still gushed mysteriously, as in years gone by, from the lower story of an old old house and gurgled between the stone flags in the strangely clear half light of its springhouse. He stood for a long while by the river, leaning on the wooden rail and looking down at the dark, long-haired water weeds and the slim black fishes that hovered motionless over the floor of trembling pebbles. He stepped out on the old footbridge and when he came to the middle flexed his knees as he had done as a boy, in order to feel the gentle, elastic counterthrust of the wooden structure.

  Without haste he went on, forgetting nothing, neither the linden tree and the small grass plot by the church nor the upper millpond, which had once been his favorite bathing place. He stopped outside the little house where his father had lived long ago, and for a time leaned his back gently against the old door. He went to the garden and looked over a loveless new wire fence into a newly laid-out vegetable patch -- but the weathered stone steps and the squat round quince trees were still the same. Here, before his expulsion from Latin school, Knulp had lived the happiest days of his life; here he had known complete happiness and fulfillment, joys without bitterness, the sweetness of stolen cherries, the delight of tending his little garden and watching his flowers grow, the lovely gillyflowers, the merry bindweed, the tender velvet pansies. And the rabbit hutches and the workshop where he had built kites and made water pipes from hollow elder branches and mill wheels out of balls of string with pieces of shingle for paddles. He had known the cats on every one of these roofs, sampled the fruit in every garden roundabout, climbed every tree, and made himself green dream nests in their crowns. This bit of world belonged to him, he had known every inch of it and loved it; every bush and every slope had held meaning for him, had had its tales to tell; every rain or snowfall had spoken to him; the air and earth had lived in response to his dreams and desires. And even today, it seemed to Knulp, this world belonged to him as much as to any of the owners of these houses and gardens. Which of them could claim to prize it more highly or to find more memories in it?

  Between the nearby roofs he could see a tall, sharp gable. In that narrow house Haasis the tanner had lived, and there Knulp's first tender whisperings with girls had put an end to the games and joys of his childhood. Many an evening, as he left that house and made his way home down the darkening street, intimations of love had stirred within him; it was there that he had undone the tanner's daughter's braids, and there that he had reeled under the fair Franziska's kisses. He would take a look around over there later in the evening, or perhaps next day. But now these recollections held little attraction for him, he would gladly have exchanged them all for the memory of a single hour of the time that had gone before -- of his childhood.

  For an hour or more he stood by the garden fence, looking in, and what he saw was not the new, strange garden which already looked very bare and autumnal with its young berry bushes. He saw his father's garden and his own little flower bed, the bears'-ears he had planted on Easter Sunday and the glassy balsamines, and little mounds of pebbles where he deposited the lizards that he caught over and over again, inconsolable that none would stay and become his pet, but always eager and full of hope when he had captured a new one. Today he would have given all the houses and gardens, all the flowers and lizards and birds in the world for a single one of the summer flowers that had put forth their precious petals -- ever so slowly -- in his little garden. And the old currant bushes, each one of which he remembered exactly. They were gone, they had not been eternal and indestructible, someone had dug them up and made a fire; wood and roots and withered leaves had burned all together, and no one had mourned for them.

  Machold had often come to see him here. Now he was a doctor and a gentleman and drove around in a fly visiting sick people. Yes, he was still a good and upright man; but he too, even this sturdy, intelligent fellow: what was he compared to the candid, shy, eagerly affectionate boy he had been then? Here Knulp had shown him how to build cages for flies and towers of shingles for grasshoppers; he had been Machold's teacher and his older, cleverer, admired friend.

  The neighbor's lilac tree had grown old; it was withered and covered with moss. The latticework garden house was a ruin. And whatever they built in its place could never be as beautiful and pleasant and right as it had been.

  Night was falling and it was growing cold when Knulp left the overgrown garden path. From the new church steeple, which changed the face of the city, a new bell rang loud.

  He crept through the gate of the tannery; it was after working hours and there was no one to be seen in the yard. Soundlessly he passed over the soft tanning floor, between the gaping pits where hides were steeping in caustic, and stopped at the low wall, beyond which the darkening river flowed between mossy-green rocks. That was where he had sat with Franziska late one afternoon, their bare feet splashing in the water.

  If she hadn't made me wait in vain, thought Knulp, everything would have turned out differently. Even without Latin school and the university, I'd have had the strength and the will to make something of myself. How clear and simple life was! He had thrown himself away, he had lost interest in everything, and life, falling in with his feelings, had demanded nothing of him. He had lived as an outsider, an idler and onlooker, well liked in his young manhood, alone in his illness and advancing years.

  Seized with weariness, he sat down on the wall, and the river murmured darkly in his thoughts. The light went on in a window above him, warning him that it was late and that he must not be found here. He slipped silently out of the tanning yard and through the gate, buttoned up his coat and thought of sleep. He had money that the doctor had given him, and after brief reflection he went to a lodging house. He could have gone to the Angel or the Swan, where he was known and would have found friends. But he was not in the mood.

  There were many new sights in the town, and formerly every one of them would have interested him; now he wished to see nothing but what brought back the old times. Then when he learned that Franziska was dead, everything paled and it seemed to him that he had come here solely on her account. No, there was no point in roaming about the streets and pathways, where all those who knew him greeted him with cries of jocose commiseration. When he chanced to pass the health commissioner in one of the narrow streets, it suddenly occurred to him that the hospital people might send someone in search of him. He went to a bakery and bought two rolls, which he stuffed in his coat pockets. It was not yet noon when he left the city by a road leading into the mountains.

  High above the town, at the last bend before the forest, a dust-covered man was sitting on a pile of rocks, pounding the gray-blue shell-lime
to pieces with a long-handled hammer.

  Knulp looked at him, called out a greeting, and stopped.

  "Grüss Gott," said the man, and went on pounding without raising his head.

  "Looks like the weather's due for a change," Knulp ventured.

  "Could be," the stone-breaker grumbled, and looked up, dazzled by the bright light. "Where you heading for?"

  "Rome, to see the Pope," said Knulp. "Is it far?"

  "You won't get there today. If you stop every few steps and bother people when they're trying to work, you won't make it in a year."

  "Maybe not. Well, I'm in no hurry, thank goodness. You're a hard worker, Andres Schaible."

  The stone-breaker shaded his eyes with his hand and looked at the wayfarer.

  "Hm, you know me," he said thoughtfully, "and I think I know you too. I've only got to remember the name."

  "Suppose you ask the old landlord at the Crab. We used to hang out there back in '90. But I guess he's dead."

  "Has been for years. Ah, now I've got it. You're Knulp. Sit down a while. And, grüss Gott!"

  Knulp sat down, he had climbed rapidly and his breath came hard. Now, looking down, he saw how lovely the little city was in the valley; the sparkling blue river, the red-brown jumble of roofs, and the little green islets of trees in between.

  "You've got it good up here," he said, panting.

  "It's all right. I can't complain. But what about you? Not the climber you used to be, eh? You're wheezing something awful, Knulp. Visiting the old town again?"

  "That's right, Schaible. For the last time, I guess."

  "What do you mean?"

  "My lungs are shot. You wouldn't know a remedy?"

  "If you'd stayed home, friend, and kept your nose to the grindstone; if you'd had a wife and children and a warm bed at night, maybe you'd be all right. But you remember the way I felt about it. Now it's too late. Is it as bad as all that?"