Strange News From Another Star Page 8

  Meanwhile, I had to go on searching, hopelessly searching, and lifting the heavy lamp on to the table, on to the chair, on to the bookcase. And I had to defend myself with beseeching gestures when my sister once more looked at me sadly and considerately, wanting to comfort me, wanting to be near me and help me. The sorrow within me grew and filled me to the bursting point, and the images around me were of eloquent, engrossing quality, much clearer than any ordinary reality; a few autumn flowers in a glass, with a dark reddish-brown mat beneath it, glowed with painfully beautiful loneliness, each thing, even the shining brass base of the lamp, was of an enchanted beauty and isolated by fateful separateness, as in the paintings of the great masters.

  I saw my fate clearly. One deeper shade in this sadness, one further glance from my sister, one more look from the flowers, the beautiful soulful flowers - and the flood would come, I would sink into madness. 'Leave me! You do not understand!' On the polished side of the piano a beam of lamplight was reflected in the dark wood, so beautiful, so mysterious, so filled with melancholy!

  Now my sister rose again and went to the piano. I wanted to plead with her, I wanted to stop her by mental power but I could not, no sort of strength went out to her now from my loneliness. Oh, I knew what was certain to happen then, I knew the melody that would now inevitably find voice, saying all and destroying all. Monstrous tension compressed my heart, and while the first burning tears sprang from my eyes, I threw my head and hands across the table and listened to and absorbed with all my senses, and with newly added senses as well, the words and melody at once, Wolf's melody and the verses:

  What do you know, dark treetops, Of the beauty of olden times? The homeland beyond the mountains, How far from us now, how far!

  At this, before my eyes and within me the world slid apart, was swallowed up in tears and tones, impossible to express the fluidity, the torrent, the beneficence and pain! O tears, O sweet collapse, blissful melting away! All the books of the world full of thoughts and poems are nothing in comparison with one minute's sobbing when feeling surges in waves, soul perceives and finds itself in the depths. Tears are the melting ice of the soul, all angels are close to one who weeps.

  Forgetful of all causes and reasons, I wept my way down from the heights of unbearable tension into the gentle twilight of ordinary feelings, without thoughts, without witnesses. In between, images fluttered: a coffin in which lay a man very dear and important to me, but I knew not who. Perhaps you yourself, I thought; then another scene appeared to me from the far pale distance. Had I not years ago or in an earlier life witnessed a marvellous sight: a company of young girls living high in the air, cloudlike and weightless, beautiful and blissful, floating light as air and rich as string music?

  Years flew between, forcing me gently but irresistibly away from the picture. Alas, perhaps my whole life had had only this meaning, to see those lovely hovering maidens, to approach them, to become like them! Now they disappeared in the distance, unreachable, uncomprehended, unreleased, wearily encircled by fluttering desire and despair.

  Years drifted down like snowflakes and the world was changed. I was wandering sadly towards a small house. I felt wretched, and an alarming sensation in my mourn preoccupied me, cautiously I poked my tongue at a doubtful tooth, which at once slipped sideways and fell out. The next one - it, too! A very young doctor was there, to whom I appealed, holding out one tooth in my fingers beseechingly. He laughed merrily, dismissing me with a deadly professional glance and shaking his young head - that doesn't amount to a thing, quite harmless, happens every day. Dear God, I thought. But he went on and pointed at my left knee: that's where the trouble was, that was something quite different and no joking matter. With panic speed I reached down to my knee - there it was! There was a hole into which I could thrust my finger, and instead of skin and flesh there was nothing to feel but an insensitive, soft, spongy mass, light and fibrous as the substance of wilted plants.

  0 my God, this was destruction, this was death and disintegration! 'So there's nothing more to be done?' I asked with painstaking friendliness. 'Nothing more,' said the young doctor and disappeared.

  Exhausted, I walked towards the little house, not as desperate as I really should have been, in fact almost indifferent. Now I had to enter the little house where my mother was waiting for me - had I not already heard her voice? Seen her face? Steps led upward, crazy steps, high and smooth, without a railing, each one a mountain, each a summit, a glacier. It was certainly too late - perhaps she had already left, perhaps she was already dead? Had I not just heard her call again? Silently I struggled with the steep mountainous steps; falling and crushed, wild and sobbing, I climbed and strained, supporting myself on failing arms and knees, and was on top, was at the gate, and the steps were again small and pretty and bordered by boxwood. My every stride was sluggish and heavy as though through slime and glue, no getting on, the gate stood open, and within, wearing a grey dress, my mother walked, a little basket on her arm, silently sunk in thought. Oh, her dark, slightly greying hair in the little net! And her walk, the small figure! And the dress, the grey dress - had I completely lost her image for all those many many years, had I never properly thought of her at all? There she was, there she stood and walked, only visible from behind, exactly as she had been, very clear and beautiful, pure love, pure thoughts of love!

  Furiously I waded through the sticky air with paralysed gait, tendrils of plants curled round me like thin strong ropes tighter and tighter, malignant obstacles everywhere, no getting on! 'Mother!' I cried. - But I had no voice ... No sound came. There was glass between her and me.

  My mother walked on slowly without looking back, silently involved in beautiful loving thoughts, brushing with her familiar hand an invisible thread from her dress, bending over her little basket with her sewing materials. Oh, that little basket! In it she had once hidden an Easter egg for me. I cried out desperate and voiceless. I ran and could not leave the spot! Tenderness and rage consumed me.

  And she walked on slowly through the summerhouse, stood in the open doorway on the other side, stepped out into the open. She let her head sink a little to one side, gently listening, absorbed in thoughts, raised and lowered the little basket - I recalled a slip of paper I had found as a boy in her sewing basket, on which she had written in her flowing hand what she planned to do that day and to take care of. 'Hermann's trousers ravelled out - put away laundry - borrow book by Dickens -yesterday Hermann did not say his prayers.' Rivers of memory, cargoes of love!

  Bound and chained, I stood at the gate, and beyond it the woman in the grey dress walked slowly away, into the garden, and disappeared.

  Faldum

  I. The Fair

  The road leading to the city of Faldum wound through upland country, sometimes past forests or broad green meadows, sometimes past cornfields, and the nearer it came to the city, the more farms, dairies, gardens, and country houses it skirted. The sea was too far away to be seen, and the world seemed to consist of nothing but gentle hills, pretty little valleys, meadows and woods, farmlands and vegetable gardens. It was a country amply supplied with fruit and firewood, milk and meat, apples and nuts. The villages were charming and clean, the people on the whole were honest, diligent, and by no means inclined to dangerous or revolutionary enterprises, and everyone felt content if his neighbour prospered no better than himself. This was the nature of Faldum, and most places in the world are much the same so long as certain things do not happen to them.

  The pretty road to the city of Faldum (the city had the same name as the country) on this particular morning had seen since first cockcrow livelier traffic both afoot and on horseback than at any other time of the year, for this was the day of the great annual fair in the city and for twenty miles around there was not a farmer or farmer's wife, not a master or apprentice or schoolboy, not a manservant or maidservant, not a youth or maiden, who had not been thinking for weeks of the great fair and dreaming of going there. Not all could go, of course; someone had
to look after the cattle and little children, the sick and the old, and whoever had been chosen to stay and take care of the house and property felt as if he were losing almost a year of his life and bitterly resented the beautiful sun that since early morning had shone warm and radiant in the blue sky of late summer.

  Married women and girls hurried along with little baskets on their arms, the young men with clean-shaven cheeks had carnations or asters in their buttonholes, all were in Sunday attire, and the schoolgirls' carefully braided hair still shone wet and lustrous in the sunshine. Those driving carriages had a flower or a red ribbon tied around the handles of their whips, and whoever could afford it had decorated the harness of his horses with strings of brightly polished brass discs that reached to the horses' knees. Rack wagons came by with green roofs of beech boughs arching over them, and crowded underneath, people sat with baskets or children in their laps, most of them singing loudly in chorus. There appeared now and again a wagon especially gay, with its banners and paper flowers, red, blue, and white among the green beech leaves, and from it village music swelled and echoed and between its boughs in the half shadow glinted and sparkled golden horns and trumpets. Little children who had been dragged along since sunrise began to cry and were comforted by their perspiring mothers, and many were given lifts by good-natured drivers. An old woman was pushing twins in a baby carriage, both asleep, and on the pillow between the sleeping children lay two beautifully dressed and combed dolls with cheeks no less round and rosy.

  Anyone living along the road who was not going to the fair that day had an entertaining morning with this continuous procession of sights. However, these stay-at-homes were few in number. A ten-year-old youngster sitting on the garden stairs was weeping because he had to remain with his grandmother, but when he saw a couple of village boys trotting past he decided that he had sat and wept long enough and sprang down on to the road to join them. Not far from there lived an elderly bachelor who didn't want to hear a thing about the fair because he begrudged the money. He had planned, while everybody was away celebrating that day, to trim the high whitethorn hedge around his garden in peace and quiet, for the hedge needed it, and hardly had the morning dew begun to evaporate when he had gone cheerily to work with his long hedge shears. But he had stopped after barely an hour and angrily sought refuge in his house, for no man or boy had gone past, walking or riding, without looking in astonishment at the hedge-cutter and making some joke about his ill-timed diligence, at which the girls had giggled; and when he had threatened them furiously with his long shears, they had all waved their hats and laughed at him. Now he was sitting inside behind closed shutters, peering out enviously through the cracks, but his anger subsided in time, and as the last few fairgoers bustled and hurried by as though their lives depended on it, he pulled on his boots, put a taler in his pouch, picked up his walking stick, and was about to set out. Then it suddenly occurred to him that a taler was after all a lot of money; he removed it and instead put a half taler into his leather pouch and tied it up. He thrust the pouch into his pocket, locked the house and the garden gate, and ran so fast that he reached the city ahead of many of the pedestrians and even overtook two wagons.

  With him gone and the house and garden deserted, the dust over the road gently began to settle; the sound of hoofs and the band music had faded away in the distance and already the sparrows were coming out of the fields of stubble, bathing in the white dust and surveying what was left over from the tumult. The road lay empty and dead and hot; from the far distance from time to time, faint and lost, came a shout or the notes of a horn.

  Then a man strolled out of the forest, his broad-brimmed hat pulled low over his eyes, and he wandered unhurriedly and alone along the empty country road. He was tall and had the firm quiet stride of a hiker who has travelled great distances afoot. He was dressed inconspicuously in grey and out of the shadow of his hat his eyes peered attentive and calm, the eyes of one who desires nothing more from the world but observes everything scrupulously and overlooks nothing. He took note of the innumerable confused wagon tracks running along the road, the hoof marks of a horse that had thrown the shoe from its left hind foot; in the distance through the dusty haze he saw the roofs of the city of Faldum, small and shimmering, on the top of a hill; he saw a little old woman, full of anxiety and fear, rushing around a garden calling to someone who did not answer. On the edge of the road the sun flashed from a piece of metal and he bent to pick up a bright round brass disc that had come from a horse collar. He put this in his pocket. And then he saw standing beside the road an old whitethorn hedge which for a few paces had been freshly trimmed; at the start the work seemed neat and precise as if executed with pleasure, but with each half stride it grew less even and soon a cut had gone too deep, neglected twigs were sticking up bristly and thorny. Farther on, the stranger found a child's doll lying in the road with it head crushed by a wagon wheel, then a piece of rye bread still gleaming with melted butter; and finally he found a heavy leather pouch in which there was a half taler. He leaned the doll against a kerbstone, crumbled up the slice of bread and fed it to the sparrows, but the pouch with the half taler he thrust into his pocket.

  It was indescribably quiet on the abandoned road, the turf on either side lay grey with dust in the sun. Nearby in a farmyard the chickens ran around, with no one to mind, cackling and stuttering dreamily in the warm sun. An old woman was stooping over a bluish cabbage patch, pulling weeds out of the dry soil. The wanderer called to her to ask how far it was to the city. But she was deaf, and when he called louder she only looked at him helplessly and shook her grey head.

  As he walked on, from time to time music reached him from the city, swelling and then dying away, then it came oftener and for longer periods, and finally it sounded uninterruptedly, like a distant waterfall, music and a confusion of voices, as though a parliament of mankind were happily assembled up there. A stream now ran beside the road, broad and quiet, with ducks swimming on it and brownish-green waterweed under the blue surface. Then the road began to climb, the stream curved to one side and a stone bridge led across it. A thin man who looked like a tailor was sitting asleep with drooping head on the low wall of the bridge; his hat had fallen off into the dust and beside him sat a droll little dog keeping watch. The stranger was about to waken the sleeper lest he fall off the wall of the bridge in his sleep. But on looking down he saw that the height was moderate and the water shallow; and so he let the tailor go on sleeping undisturbed.

  Now after a short steep rise in the road the stranger came to Faldum's city gate, which stood wide open, with no one in sight. He strode through, his steps resounding suddenly and loudly on the paved street where in front of the houses on both sides stood rows of empty, unharnessed wagons and caleches. From other streets came noise and confused shouting, but here there was no one, the little street lay in shadow and only the upper windows of the houses reflected the golden day. The wanderer sat down on the pole of a rack wagon for a short rest. When he got up to leave, he placed on the driver's seat the brass harness decoration he had found in the road.

  He had gone barely a block farther along when he was engulfed in the noise and confusion of the fair. In a hundred booths dealers loudly hawked their wares, children blew on silvery trumpets, butchers fished long necklaces of fresh wet sausages out of huge boiling kettles, a quack stood on a high platform peering encouragingly through thick horn-rimmed glasses and pointing to a chart on which were inscribed all sorts of human diseases and ailments. A man with long black hair walked past, leading a camel by a rope. The animal looked down arrogantly from its long neck on the crowds of people and twisted its divided lips back and forth as it chewed.

  The man who had come out of the woods looked attentively at all this, allowed himself to be pushed and shoved along by the people, glanced now into the stand of a dealer in coloured prints, then read sayings and mottoes on sugared gingerbread, but he lingered nowhere and seemed not yet to have found what presumably he was looking fo
r. And so he proceeded slowly and came to the big central square, where a bird dealer had set up shop on one corner. He listened for a while to the voices that came from the many little cages, and he answered them, whistling softly to the linnet, the quail, the canary, the warbler.

  Suddenly he saw nearby a bright flash of light, as brilliant and blinding as though all the sunshine had been concentrated at this one point, and when he approached, it turned out to be a big mirror hanging in an exhibitor's booth, and beside it were other mirrors, tens and dozens and more, big, small, rectangular, round, oval, mirrors to be hung on the wall, mirrors on stands, hand mirrors and little narrow pocket mirrors that you could have with you so as not to forget your own face. The dealer was standing there manipulating a sparkling hand mirror so that the reflection of the sun danced around his booth; meanwhile, he shouted tirelessly: 'Mirrors, ladies and gentlemen. This is the place to buy mirrors! The best mirrors, the cheapest mirrors in Faldum! Mirrors, ladies, magnificent mirrors! Just take a look at them, all genuine, all of the best crystal!'

  The stranger stopped beside the mirror booth as if he had found what he was looking for. Among the people inspecting the mirrors were three young country girls; he took up a position close to them and saw that they were fresh, healthy peasants, neither beautiful nor ugly, in thick-soled shoes and white stockings, with blonde, rather sun-faded plaits and eager young eyes. Each of the three was holding a mirror in her hand, not one of the large or expensive ones, and while they hesitated over the purchase and enjoyed the pleasurable torment of choice, each would gaze forlornly and dreamily into the clear depths of the mirror, surveying her image, her mouth and eyes, the little ornament at her throat, the sprinkling of freckles across the bridge of her nose, the smooth hair, the rosy ear. They became silent and solemn; the stranger who was standing just behind them saw their large-eyed, serious faces peering out of the three mirrors.