Tales of the German Imagination from the Brothers Grimm to Ingeborg Bachmann (Penguin Classics) (10 page)

Scurrying along in this way without stopping, long after midnight he reached a narrow ledge hard on the edge of an abyss. He ignored the dizzying depths that yawned beneath him and threatened at any moment to swallow him up, so much was he consumed by his mad imaginings and incomprehensible desires.
Now the perilous path pulled him up against a high wall of rock that seemed to dissolve in the clouds; his foothold grew narrower with every step, and the young man had to hold fast to protruding rocks to keep from falling. Finally he couldn’t go any further. The path ended under a window; he had to stop dead in his tracks and didn’t know whether to turn around or stay where he was.

Suddenly he saw a light that seemed to move behind the old rampart. He followed the glimmer with his gaze and found that he could see into a spacious old hall wondrously adorned with all kinds of stones and crystals that cast multicoloured flickering reflections, which were strangely scattered all about by the moving light carried by a large female figure walking back and forth lost in thought. She did not appear to be a mortal, so big and strong were her limbs, so stern was her expression; and yet the enchanted young man thought that he had never seen or imagined such loveliness. He trembled and secretly wished that she would come to the window and notice him. She finally stopped moving, set the light down on a crystal table, looked upwards and sang with a piercing voice:

Where do the old ones bide,

Why do they not reply?

When sparkling crystals cry,

And from diamond-studded columns high

Tears a secret sadness belie?

And murmurings do secrets tickle

From the water’s crystalline trickle,

Swelling, so it seems,

Into the stuff of dreams.

Come then, you spirits all

Into the golden hall,

And raise from dark dell

Heads that sparkle,

Rise up and stand tall!

We have languished so long

With our tear-filled song,

Spirits, take us in your thrall!

Upon finishing the song she started to undress and laid her clothes in a costly chest. First she took a golden veil from her head, whereupon her thick black curly hair spilt down to her hips; then she removed the garment covering her bosom, and the young man forgot himself and the world at the sight of her heavenly beauty. He hardly dared breathe as she removed layer upon layer; and naked at last, she strode up and down the hall and her thick mane of curls formed a dark wavy sea, out of which the various curving shapes of her pure white body, glimmering like marble, emanated in turn.

After a while she approached another golden chest, took out a tablet that glimmered with many inlaid stones, rubies, diamonds and all sort of jewels, and peered at it long and hard. The tablet made an unimaginable magical impression with its various colours and lines; at times the young man was painfully blinded by the shimmer that shot in his direction, then again green and blue shimmers soothed the ache in his eyes; but he just stood there, taking everything in with his gaze and at the same time completely turned in upon himself. In his mind’s eye he saw and sensed a gaping abyss of figures and harmonious sounds, of longing and desire, hordes of winged notes of melancholy and merry melodies flooded his consciousness, moved him to the core; he saw a world of hope and pain open before him, soaring magic cliffs of confidence and defiant trust, great waterfalls gushing with woefulness.

He no longer recognized himself and was startled when the beauty opened the window, handed him the magic stone tablet and uttered these few words: ‘Take this to remember me by!’ He took hold of the tablet and felt its form, which immediately passed unnoticed into his innermost self, and the light and the powerful beauty and the strange hall vanished. All these impressions he took into himself like a dark night with cloud curtains, and, trying to retrieve his fleeting feelings, his sense of enchantment and incomprehensible love, he looked over the precious tablet in which the setting moon left a faint and bluish reflection.

He still held the tablet pressed tightly in his hands as day broke and, exhausted, dizzy and half asleep, he tumbled down the steep incline.

The sun shone full in the face of the dazed sleeper, who, waking, found himself lying on a lovely hill. He looked around and saw far behind him the ruins on Rune Mountain, hardly still recognizable on the far horizon: he searched for that tablet but couldn’t find it anywhere. Stunned and confused, he tried to pull himself together and retrieve his recent recollections, but his memory was all muddled, like a dense fog in which formless figures moved wildly and imperceptibly about.

His entire former life lay as though in the far distance behind him; the strange and the ordinary were so jumbled together that he found it impossible to tell them apart. Hesitating, following a long dispute with himself, he finally came to the conclusion that it was a dream or a sudden madness that took hold of him that night, but he still could not fathom how he could have strayed such a distance in this unknown region. Still half punch-drunk with sleep, he climbed down the hill and happened on a beaten path that led down the mountain and back into the plain.

Everything seemed strange to him. At first he thought he’d end up in his native clime, but the region looked completely different and he finally suspected that he must have arrived beyond the southern rim of the mountain chain, the north face of which he had climbed the previous spring. Come noon he stood outside a village from whose huts smoke rose peacefully overhead. Children in festive attire were playing on the village green, and from a little church he heard an organ’s chime and the voices of the congregation singing. It all struck him with an indescribable sweet wistfulness, everything moved him so profoundly he wanted to cry. The narrow gardens, the little huts with their smoking chimneys, the evenly divided fields of grain reminded him of the neediness of the poor human species, of its dependence on the friendly soil, in whose indulgence it must trust; all the while the singing and the sound of the organ filled his heart with a piety he had never felt before.

His sensations and desires of the night before now seemed dissolute and sacrilegious to him; he felt a childlike, humble and burning need to be in contact with people again, brother to brother, and to disassociate himself from all his godless feelings
and intentions. The flat plain with its little river that, in its twists and turns, lapped up against meadows and gardens, looked delightful and alluring; thinking back with dread to the time he’d spent in the lonely mountains and among the bare rocks, he longed to be allowed to live in this peaceful village and, so inclined, entered the crowded church.

The singing had just come to an end and the priest had begun his sermon about God’s beneficence in the harvest: how His goodness fed and satiated every living thing, how wonderfully well the fertile fields of grain were conceived to preserve mankind, how God’s love was ever manifest in our daily bread, and so the devout Christian could gratefully celebrate an everlasting supper.

The congregation was moved. The hunter’s gaze fell on the pious speaker and noticed a young girl seated close by the pulpit who seemed to be more devout and attentive than everyone else. She was slender and blonde, her blue eyes glimmered with the most penetrating softness, her face was as though translucent and flushed with the most delicate colours. The young stranger had never felt such feelings in his heart, to be at once so full of love and so calm, so receptive to the slightest and most exhilarating emotions. He bowed in tears as the priest finally said the blessing; hearing the holy words he felt himself as though infused with an invisible force, and shadowy memories of the night were swept from his mind and pressed into the far distant corners of consciousness. He walked out of the church, lingered a while under a great linden tree and in a fervent prayer, undeserving though he was, thanked God for having freed him again from the snares of the evil spirit.

The village celebrated the harvest festival that day and everybody was in a cheerful mood. The children in their Sunday best couldn’t wait for the dances and the cakes, the young bucks decorated the saplings that ringed the village square in preparation for the autumnal festivity, the musicians were already seated, tuning their instruments. Christian retreated again to the field to compose himself and gather his observations, whereupon he returned to the village to find everything ready for the festival and the merriment under way. Lovely blonde Elisabeth was
there too with her parents, and the stranger mingled with the merry crowd. Elisabeth danced, and in the meantime he had already struck up a conversation with her father, a farmer and one of the richest men in the town. The stranger’s youth and his words seemed to please the older man, and so it didn’t take them long to agree that Christian would move into his house to work as his gardener. The young man dared try his hand at it, for he hoped the very skills and tasks he had so scorned back home would come back to him now.

He began a new life. He moved in with the farmer and became part of the family; with his new standing he also changed his bearing. He was so able, so obliging and always friendly, and he worked so diligently, that he soon won over everyone in the house, especially the daughter. Every time he saw her setting off for church on Sundays he had a lovely bouquet of flowers ready, for which she thanked him with a broad smile, blushing red; he missed her when a day went by and he hadn’t seen her, and evenings she soothed his heart with fairy tales and funny stories. They grew more and more attached to each other, and the old folk, who noticed it, didn’t seem to mind, for Christian was the most diligent and handsome young man in the village; they themselves had felt an immediate fondness and bond of friendship for him from the start. Within six months Elisabeth was his betrothed. It was spring again and the swallows and songbirds had returned, the garden was resplendent and the wedding was celebrated with great merriment. Bride and groom seemed drunk with happiness. Late that evening, when they retired to their room, the young husband said to his beloved: ‘No, you are not that image that once enthralled me in a dream and which I can never completely forget, but I am happy when I’m near you and blissful in your arms.’

How glad the family was when the following year a little daughter named Leanore was added to their number. At times, it’s true, Christian grew a bit more serious at the sight of the child, but he always regained his youthful high spirits. He hardly ever gave a thought to his former way of life, as he felt himself completely at home and content here. But after several
months he thought of his parents, how happy his father, in particular, would be to see him a gardener and farmer; it troubled him to think that he could have forgotten his father and mother for so long. His only child reminded him what a joy children bring their parents, and so he finally decided to set out to visit his native village again.

Reluctantly he took leave of his wife; everyone wished him good fortune, and one bright sunny spring day he set out on foot. Within a few hours he already felt how much parting pained him, and for the first time in his life he suffered pangs of separation; all the strange surroundings seemed almost wild, it felt as if he had lost his way in a hostile solitude. Then it occurred to him that his youth was over, that he had found a homeland to which he belonged and in which his heart had put down roots; he was beginning to lament the lost foolishness of the previous year, and stopping at a village inn for the night depressed him no end. He could not fathom what in heaven’s name had driven him to leave his kind-hearted wife and the dear in-laws he had inherited, and, sulky and grumbling, the next morning he set out again to continue his journey.

The closer he got to the mountains the more fearful he grew. The distant ruins came into view and their outline became clearer and clearer, many a rounded peak rearing up out of the blue fog. His pace grew halting; many times he stopped dead in his tracks, taken aback by his fear, by the mounting terror that closed in upon him with every step. ‘How well do I know you, madness,’ he cried out, ‘you and your perilous allure, but I’m a man and I will resist you! Elisabeth is no pipe dream; I know that she’s thinking of me now, that she’s waiting for me and lovingly counting the hours of my absence. Don’t I already see forests waving like black hair before me? Don’t the flashing eyes of the stream peer after me? Are the mighty limbs of the mountain not marching towards me?’

Having uttered these words aloud, he was about to fling himself down beneath a tree to rest when he spotted an old man seated in its shade, studying a flower with the greatest attentiveness, now holding it up to the sun, now shading it with his hand, counting its petals, taking great pains to engrave a
vivid picture of it in his memory. As Christian came closer, the face seemed so very familiar, and soon there was no doubt in his mind that the old man with the flower was his father. He fell into his arms with a look of profound joy; his father was pleased but not surprised suddenly to see him again. ‘Did you set out to see me, my son?’ the old man said. ‘I knew that I would soon find you again, but I didn’t think that I would have that satisfaction on this very day.’

‘But, father, how did you know that you would run into me?’

‘The flower told me,’ the old gardener said, ‘my whole life I’ve wanted to see it just once, but I never had the good luck, because it’s very rare and only grows in the mountains. I set out to search for you, because your mother died and the loneliness at home became too sad and suffocating. I had no idea which direction to take, but finally I wandered through the mountains, as depressing as the journey was; and all the while I looked for the flower, but I couldn’t find it anywhere, and now I stumbled on it unexpectedly where the highlands level off into the lovely plain; that’s how I knew that I was bound to find you again soon – and see, it happened, just as the dear flower predicted it would!’ They hugged again, and Christian wept over his mother; but the old man took his hand and said: ‘Let’s be off, so that we soon shed the awful shadow of the mountains, my heart still aches on account of the steep, wild shapes that rear up suddenly, the terrible abysses, the desperate lament of the streams; it’s high time we returned to the good, pious plain.’