Seldwyla Folks: Three Singular Tales

by Gottfried Keller

In saying which the poor girl showed him a face streaming with tears of distress, and she looked at her lover as though parting from him forever.

"Come and kiss me once more," she murmured. "But no, get along with you. Everything is over between us. We can never belong to each other." And she gave him a gentle push, and he ran with a heavy heart down the path to the village.

On his way he met a small boy, one he did not know, and him he bade to get some people and described in detail where and what assistance was required. Then he drifted off in despair, wandering at random all night about the woods near the village.

In the early morning he cautiously crept forth, in order to spy out how things had gone during the night. From several persons early astir he heard the news. Marti was alive, but out of his senses, and nobody, it seemed, knew what really had happened to him. And only after learning this his mind was so far at ease that he found the way back to town and to his father's tavern, where he buried himself in the family misery.

Vreni had kept her word. Nothing could be learned of her but that she had found her father in this condition, and as he on the next day became again quite active, breathed normally and began to move about, although still without his full senses, and since, besides, there was no one to frame a complaint, it was assumed that he had met with some accident while under the influence of drink, probably had had a bad fall on the stones, and matters were left as they were.

Vreni nursed him very carefully, never left his side, except to get medicine and remedies from the shop of the village doctor, and also to pick in the vegetable patch something wherewith to cook him and herself a simple stew or soup. Those days she lived almost on air, although she had to be about and busy day and night and nobody came to help her. Thus nearly six weeks elapsed until the old man recovered sufficiently to take care of himself, though long before that he had been sitting up in bed and had babbled about one thing or another. But he had not recovered his mind, and the things he was now saying and doing seemed to show plainly that he had become weak-minded, and this in the strangest manner. He could recall what had happened but darkly, and to him it seemed something very enjoyable and laughable. Something, too, which did not touch him in any way, and he laughed and laughed all day long, and was in the best of humor, very different from what he had been before his accident. While still abed he had a hundred foolish, senseless ideas, cut capers and made faces, pulled his black peaked woollen cap over his ears, down to his nose and his mouth, and then he would mumble something which seemed to amuse him highly. Vreni, pale and sorrowful, listened patiently to all his stories, shedding tears about his idiotic behavior, which grieved her even more than his former malicious and wicked tricks had. But it would nevertheless happen now and then, that the old man would perform some particularly ludicrous antics, and then Vreni, tortured as she was by all these scenes, would be unable to help bursting into laughter, as her joyous disposition, suppressed by all these sad events, would sometimes rend the bounds which confined her, just like a bow too tightly strung that would break.

But as soon as the old man could once more get out of bed, there was nothing more to be done. All day long he did nothing but silly things, was grinning, smirking and laughing to himself constantly, turned everything in the house topsy-turvy, sat down in the sunshine and blared at the world, put out his tongue at everybody that passed, and made long monologues while standing in the midst of the bean field.

Simultaneous with all this there came also the end of his ownership in the farm. Everything upon it had, of course, gone to wrack and ruin, and disorder reigned supreme. Not only his house, but also the last bit of land left him, pledged in court some time before, were now seized and the day of forced sale was named. For the peasant who had claims to these pieces of property, very naturally made use of the opportunities now afforded him by the illness and the failing powers of Marti to bring about a quick decision. These last proceedings in court used up the bit of cash still left to Marti, and all this was done while he in his weakness of mind had not even a notion what it was all about.

The forced sale took place, and at its close, Marti being penniless and bereft of sense, by the action of the village council, it was decided to make him an inmate of the community asylum that had been founded many years before for the precise benefit of just such poor devils as himself. This asylum was located in the cantonal capital. Before he started for his destination he was well fed for a day or two, to the eminent satisfaction of the idiot, who had developed an enormous appetite of late, and then was put on a cart drawn by a phlegmatic ox and driven by a poor peasant who besides attending to this community errand wanted to sell also a sack of potatoes at the town. Vreni sat down on the same vehicle alongside of her father in order to accompany him on this day of his being buried alive, so to speak.

It was a sad and bitter drive, but Vreni watched lovingly over her father, and let him want for nothing; neither did she grow impatient when passers-by, attracted by the ridiculous behavior of the old man, would follow the cart and make all sorts of audible remarks on its inmates. Finally they did reach the asylum, a complex of buildings connected by courts and corridors, and where a big garden was seen alive with similarly unfortunate beings as Marti himself, all dressed in a sort of uniform consisting of white coarse linen blouses and vests, with stiff caps of leather on their foolish old heads. Marti, too, was put into such a uniform, even before Vreni's departure, and her father evinced a childish joy at his new clothes, dancing about in them and singing snatches of wicked drinking songs.