Seldwyla Folks: Three Singular Tales

by Gottfried Keller

And thus, a duel of the most cruel taunts went on from both borders of the brook, and finally, driven beyond endurance, each of the two half-crazed men ran along the steep path, trying to find a way across the deep water. Of the two Marti was the most envenomed because he believed that his foe, being a landlord and managing an inn, must at least have food enough to eat and liquor to drink, besides leading a jolly sort of life, while he was barely able to eke out a meal or two on the coarsest fare. Besides, the memory of his wasted farm stung him to violence. But Manz, too, now stepped along lively enough on his side of the water, and behind him his son, who, instead of sharing his father's grim interest in the quarrel, peeped curiously and amazedly at Vreni. She, the girl, followed closely behind her father, deeply ashamed at what she heard and looking at the ground, so that her curly brown hair fell over her flushed face. She carried in her hand a wooden fishpail, and in the other her shoes and stockings, and had shortened her skirt to avoid its dragging in the wet. But since Sali was walking on the other side and seemed to watch her, she had allowed her skirt to drop, out of modesty, and was now thrice embarrassed and annoyed, since she had not alone to carry all, pail, nets, shoes and stockings, but also to hold up her skirt and to feel humiliated because of this bitter and vulgar quarrel. If she had lifted her eyes and read Sali's face, she would have seen that he no longer looked either proud or elegant as hitherto his image had dwelt in her mind, but that, on the contrary, the young man also wore a distressed and humbled mien.

But while Vreni so entirely ashamed and disconcerted kept her eyes on the ground, and Sali stared in amazement at this dainty and graceful being that had so suddenly crossed his path, and who seemed so weighed down by the whole occurrence, they did not properly observe that their fathers by now had become silent but were both of them striving in increased rage to reach the small wooden bridge a short distance off and which led across to the other shore.

Just then the first forks of lightning were weirdly illuminating the scene. The thunder was rolling in the dun clouds, and heavy drops of rain were already falling singly, when these two men, almost driven out of their senses, simultaneously reached the tiny bridge with their hurried and determined tread, and as soon as near enough seized each other with the iron grip of the rustic, striking with all the power they could summon with clenched fists into the hateful face of the adversary. Blows rained fast and furious, and each of the combatants gnashed his teeth with rage.

It is not a becoming nor a handsome sight to see elderly men usually soberminded and slow to act in a personal encounter, no matter whether occasioned by anger, provocation or self-defense, but such a spectacle is harmless in comparison with that of two aged men who attack each other with uncontrolled fury because while knowing the other deeply and well, now out of the depths of that very knowledge and out of a fixed belief that the other has destroyed his very life, seize each other with their naked fists and try to commit murder from unrequited revenge. But thus these two men now did, both with hair gray to the roots. More than fifty years ago they had last fought with each other as lads, merely out of a youthful spirit of rivalry, but during the half century succeeding they had never laid hands on each other, except when, as good neighbors and fellow-peasants, they had grasped each other's hand in peace and concord, but even that, with their rather dry and undemonstrative ways, but rarely. After the first two or three frenzied blows, they both became silent, and now they struggled and wrestled in all the agony of senile impotence, their stiffened muscles and tendons stretched with the tension, murder in their glaring eyes, each groaning with the supreme effort to master the other. They now attempted, both of them, to end the fearsome fight by pushing the other over into the rushing flood below, the slender supports of the rails creaking under the pressure. But now at last their children had reached the spot, and Sali, with a bound, came to his father's help, to enable the latter to make an end of the hated foe, Marti being just about spent and exhausted. But Vreni also sprang, dropping all her burdens, to the rescue, and after the manner of women in such cases, embracing her father tightly and really thus rendering him unable to move and defend himself. Tears streamed from her eyes, and she looked with silent appeal at Sali, just at the moment when he was about also to grasp old Marti by the throat. Involuntarily he laid his hand upon the arm of his father, thus restraining him, and next attempted to wrest his father loose. The combat thus grew into a mutual swaying back and forth, and the whole group was impotently straining and pushing, without either party coming to a rest.

But during this confused jumbling the two young people had, interfering between their elders, more and more approached each other, and just at this juncture a break in the dark bank of clouds overhead let the piercing rays of the setting sun reach the scene and illuminate it with a blinding flash, and then it was that Sali looked full into the countenance of the girl, rosy and embellished by the excitement. It was to Sali like a glimpse of another, a brighter and more heavenly world. And Vreni at the same instant, too, quickly observed the impression she had made on her onetime playmate, and she smiled for the fraction of a second at him, right in the midst of her tears and her fright. Sali, however, recovered himself instantly, warned by the energetic struggles of his father to shake off the restraining arm of his son. By holding him firmly and by speaking with authority to his father, he managed to calm him down at last and to push him out of the reach of the other. Both old fellows breathed hard at this outcome of their desperate fight, and began again to heap insults on one another, finally turning away, however. Their children, though, were now silent in the midst of their relief. But in turning away and separating they for a moment glanced once more at each other, and their two hands, cool and moist from the water and the rain, met and each noticed a slight pressure.

When the two old men turned from the scene, the clouds once more closed, darkness fell, and the rain now poured down in torrents. Manz preceded his son upon the obscured wet paths, bent to the cold rain, and the terrific excitement still trembled in his features. His teeth were chattering, and unseen tears of defeated hatred ran into his stubbly beard. He let them run, and did not even wipe them away, because he was ashamed of them, and had no wish for his son to see them.

But his son had seen nothing. He went through rain and storm in an ecstasy of happiness. He had forgotten all, his misery and the awful scene just witnessed, his poverty and the darkness around him. In his heart there was a happy song. Light and warm and full of joy everything within him was. He felt as rich and powerful as a king's son. He saw nothing but the smile of a second. He saw the beautiful face lit up by the miracle of love. And he returned that smile only now, a half hour later, and he laughed at the beautiful face and returned its gaze, looking into the night and storm as into a paradise, the face shining through the murk of rain like a guiding star. Indeed, he believed Vreni could not help noticing his answering smile miles away, and was smiling back at him.

Next day his father was stiff and sore and would not leave the house, and to him the whole wretched meeting with his foe and the whole development of the enmity between them, and the long years of misery that had grown out of it suddenly seemed to take on a new form and to become much plainer, while its influence spread around even in his dusky tavern. So much so that both Manz and his wife were moving about like ghosts, out of one room into another, into the cheerless kitchen and the bedchambers, and thence back again into the equally bare and dark guest room, where not a person was to be seen all day. At last they both began to grumble, one blaming the other for things that had gone wrong, dropping into an uneasy slumber from time to time from which a nightmare would waken them with a start, and in which their unquiet consciences upbraided them for past misdeeds. Only Sali heard and saw nothing of all this, for his mind was entirely engrossed with Vreni. Still the illusion was strong with him of being immeasurably wealthy, but beside that he had a hallucination that he was powerful and had learned how to conduct the most complicated and important affairs in the world. He felt as if he knew all the wisdom on earth, everything great and beautiful. And forever there stood before his dreamy soul, clear and distinct, that great happening of the night before, that wonderful creature with her enticing smile, that smile which had shed a blinding flash of happiness on his path. The consciousness of this great adventure dwelt with him like an unspeakable secret, of which he was the sole possessor and which had fallen to his share direct from heaven. It afforded him constant food for thought and wonderment. And yet with all that it seemed also to him that he had always known this would happen to him, and as if what now filled him with such marvelous sweetness had always dwelt in his heart. For nothing is just like this happiness of love, this sharing of a mystery between two persons, which approaches human beings in the form of unspeakable bliss, yet in a form so clear and precise, sanctioned and sanctified by the priest, and endowed with a name so mellifluously fine that no other word sounds half so sweet as Love.

On that day Sali felt neither lonesome nor unhappy; where he went and stood Vreni's image followed him and glowed in his inner self; and this without a moment's respite, one hour after another. But while his whole being was engrossed with the lovely image of the girl at the same time its outlines constantly became blurred, so that, after all, he lost the faculty of reproducing it clearly. If he had been asked to describe her in detail he would have been unable to do it. Always he saw her standing near him, with that wizard smile; he felt her warm breath and the whole indefinable charm of her presence, but it was for all that like something which is seen but once and then vanishes forever. Like something the potency of which one cannot escape and yet which one never can know. In dreaming thus he was able to recall fully the features of her when still a tiny maiden, and to experience a most pronounced pleasure in doing so, but the one Vreni of yesterday he could not recall as plainly. If indeed he had never seen Vreni again it might be that his memory would have pieced her personality together, little by little, until not the slightest bit had been wanting. But now all the strength of his mind did not suffice to render him this service, and this was because his senses, his eyes, imperatively demanded their rights and their solace, and when in the afternoon the sun was shining brilliantly and warm, gilding the roofs of all these blackened housetops, Sali almost unconsciously found himself on the way towards his old home in the country, which now seemed to him a heavenly Jerusalem with twelve shining portals, and which set his heart to beating feverishly as he approached it.

While on his way, though, he met Vreni's father, who with hurried and disordered steps was going in the direction of the town. Marti looked wild and unkempt, his gray beard had not been shorn for many weeks, and altogether he presented indeed the picture of what he was: a wicked and lost peasant who had got rid of his land and who now was intent on doing evil to others. Nevertheless, Sali under these radically different circumstances did not regard the crazed old man with hatred but rather with fear and awe, as though his own life was in the hands of this man and as though it were better to obtain it by favor than by force. Marti, however, measured the young man with a black look, glancing at him from his feet upwards, and then he went his way silently. But this encounter came most opportunely to Sali. For seeing the old man leaving the village on an errand it for the first time became quite clear to him what his own object had been in coming. Thus he proceeded stealthily on by-paths towards the village, and when reaching it cautiously felt his way through the small lanes until he had Marti's house and outbuildings right in front of him.