Seldwyla Folks: Three Singular Tales

by Gottfried Keller

"God be with you, my lords and honored fellow-inmates," he harangued a knot of them, "you surely have a palace-like home here. Go away, Vreni, and tell mother that I won't come home any more. I like it here splendidly. Goodness me, what a palace! There runs a spider across the road, and I have heard him barking! Oh, maiden mine, oh, maiden mine, don't kiss the old, kiss but the young! All the waters in the world are running into the Rhine! She with the darkest eye, she is not mine. Already going, little Vreni? Why, thou lookest as though death were in thy pot. And yet things are looking up with me. I am doing fine. Am getting wealthy in my old days. The she-fox cries with him: Halloo! Halloo! Her heart pains her. Why--oh, why? Halloo! Halloo!"

An official of the institution bade him hold his infernal noise, and then he led him away to do some easy work. Vreni took her leave sadly and then began to look up her ox cart with the peasant. When she had found it she climbed in and sat down and ate a slice of bread she had brought with her. Then she lay down and fell asleep, and a couple of hours later the peasant came and woke her, and then they drove home to the village. They arrived there in the middle of the night. Vreni went to her father's house, the one where she had been born and had spent all her days. For the first time she was all alone in it. Two days' grace she had to get out and find some other shelter. She made a fire and prepared a cup of coffee for herself, using the last remnants she still had. Then she sat down on the edge of the hearth, and wept bitterly. She was longing with all her soul to see and talk once more to Sali, and she was thinking and thinking of him. But mingling with these desires of hers were her anxieties and her fears of the future. Thus sat the poor thing, holding her head in her hand, when somebody entered at the door.

"Sali!" cried Vreni, when she looked up and saw the face dearest to her in the world. And she fell on his neck, but then they both looked at one another, and they shouted: "How poorly you look!" For Sali was as pale and sorrowful as the girl herself. Forgetting everything she drew him to her on the hearth, and questioned him: "Have you been ill, or have you also fared badly?"

"No, not ill," said Sali, "but longing for you. At home things are going fine. My father now has rare guests, and as I believe, he has become a receiver of stolen goods. And that is why there are big doings at our place, both day and night, until, I suppose, there will come a bad end to it all. Mother is helping along, eager to have guests of any kind at all, guests that fetch money into the house, and she tries to bring some order out of all this disorder, and also to make it profitable. I am not questioned about the matter at all, neither do I care. For I have only been thinking of you all along. Since all sorts of vagrants come and go in our place, we have heard of everything concerning you, and my father is beside himself with joy, and that your father has been taken to-day to the asylum has delighted him immensely. Since he has now left you I have come, thinking you might be lonesome, and maybe in trouble."

Then Vreni told him all her sorrows in detail, but she did this with such fluency and described the intimate details in such an almost happy tone of voice as if what she was saying did not disturb her in the least. All this because the presence of her lover and his solicitude about her really rendered her happy and minimized her anxieties. She had Sali at her side. And what more did she want? Soon she had a vessel with the steaming coffee which she forced Sali to share with her.

"Day after to-morrow, then, you must leave here?" said Sali. "What is to become of you now?"

"I don't know," answered Vreni. "I suppose I shall have to seek some service and go away from here, somewhere in the wide world. But I know I won't be able to endure that without you, Sali, and yet we cannot come together. If there were no other reason it would not do because you hurt my father and made him lose his mind. That would always be a bad foundation for our wedded state, would it not? And neither of us would ever be able to forget that, never!"

Sali sighed deeply, and rejoined: "I myself wanted a hundred times to become a soldier or else go far away and hire out on a farm, but I cannot do it, I cannot leave you here, and after we are separated it will kill me, I feel sure of it, for longing for you will not let me rest day or night. I really believe, Vreni, that all this misery makes my love for you only the stronger and the more painful, so that it becomes a matter of life or death. Never did I dream that this should ever be my end."

But Vreni, while he was thus pouring out his burdened mind, gazed at him smilingly and with a face that shone with joy. They were leaning against the chimney corner, and silently they felt to the full the intense ecstasy of communion of spirits. Over and above all their troubles, high above them all, there was hovering the genius of their love, that each felt loving and beloved. And in this beatitude they both fell asleep on this cold hearth with its feathery ashes, without cover or pillow, and slept just as peacefully and softly as two little children in their cradle.

Dawn was breaking in the eastern sky when Sali awoke the first. Gently he woke Vreni, but she again and again snuggled near to him and would not rouse herself. At last he kissed her with vehemence on her mouth, and then Vreni did awaken, opened her eyes wide, and when she saw Sali she exclaimed: "Zounds, I've just been dreaming of you. I was dreaming I danced on our wedding-day, many, many hours, and we were both so happy, both so finely dressed, and nothing was lacking to our joy. And then we wanted to kiss each other, and we both longed for it, oh, so much, but always something was dragging us apart, and now it appears that it was you yourself that was interfering, that it was you who disturbed and hindered us. But how nice, how nice, that you are at least close by now."