Seldwyla Folks: Three Singular Tales

by Gottfried Keller

But while both seemed busy sounding all the depths of these appeals to the muses, they secretly made a purchase. Sali bought for Vreni a small gift ring, with a stone of green glass, and Vreni a ring fashioned out of chamois horn, in which a gold forget-me-not was cleverly inlaid. Probably both were moved with the same idea, that of a farewell gift.

However, while they thus were entirely engrossed with these things they had not remarked that a wide ring was forming gradually around them made up of people who watched them closely and curiously. For as quite a number of lads and lasses from their own village had come to the kermess, they had been recognized, and these all now stood at some little distance away from them, regarding with astonishment this neatly dressed couple that in their intense preoccupation had eyes for nothing else in the world.

"Just look," the murmuring went round; "why, that is Vreni Marti and Sali from town. They surely have met and made up. And what tenderness, what friendship for one another! Only notice!"

The amazement of these onlookers was strangely mingled of pity with the ill-fortune of the young couple, of disdain for the wickedness and poverty of their parents, and of envy for the happiness and deep affection of these two. For it struck these coarse materialistic rustics that the couple were fond of each other in a manner most unusual in their own circles, excited to an uncommon degree and so taken up with one another and indifferent to all else, as to make them almost appear to belong to a more aristocratic sphere, so that altogether they seemed singular and strange to these gross villagers.

When therefore Sali and Vreni finally awoke from their dreams and threw a glance around, they saw nothing but staring faces. Nobody greeted them; and they themselves knew not whether to salute anyone of these former acquaintances, whose show of unfriendliness was, just the same, not so much design as astonishment. Vreni became afraid and blushed from sheer embarrassment, but Sali took her hand and led her away. And the poor girl followed him willingly, bearing in her hand the huge gingerbread cottage, although the trumpets and horns from inside the inn sounded so invitingly, and although she was most anxious and eager to dance.

"We cannot dance here," said Sali, when they had been going some little distance aside, "for there would not be any amusement in it under the circumstances."

"You are right," Vreni said sadly, "and I really think now we had better drop the whole idea and I will try and find a place for me to stay overnight."

"No," Sali cried, "you must have a chance to dance for once. For that, too, I brought you the shoes. Let us go where the poor folks are having a good time, since we, too, belong to them. They will not look down on us. At every kermess here there is also dancing at the Paradise Garden, since it belongs to this parish, and we are going there, and you can, if it comes to the worst, also find a bed to sleep there."

Vreni shuddered at the thought of having to sleep for the first time of her young life in a place where nobody knew her. But she followed without a murmur where Sali led her. Was he not everything in the world to her now? The so-called Paradise Garden was a house of entertainment situated in a beautiful spot, lying all by itself at the side of a mountain from which one had a view far over the whole country. But on holidays like this only the poorer classes, the children of small farmers and of day laborers, even vagrants, used to resort to it. A hundred years before a wealthy man of queer habits had built it as a summer villa for himself, and nobody had succeeded him as tenant, and since the house could not be used for anything else, the whole place after a while began to decay, and so finally it got into the hands of an innkeeper who managed it in his own peculiar way.

The name alone and the style of architecture had remained. The house itself consisted of but one story, and on top of that an open loggia had been erected, the roof of which was borne on the four corners by statues of sandstone. These were meant for the four archangels and were wholly defaced. At the edge of the roof could be seen all about small angels carved of the same material and all of them playing some musical instrument, the angels themselves showing monstrous heads and big paunches, fiddling, touching the triangle, blowing the flute, striking the cymbal or the tambourine; these instruments had originally been gilt. The ceiling inside and the low sidewalls, as well as all the rest of the house were still covered with rather dingy fresco paintings, and these represented dancing and singing saints. But all of it had suffered from the weather and the rain, and was now as indistinct and chaotic as a dream itself. And besides, all over the walls clambered grapevines, and at this time of year purplish ripening grapes peeped forth from between the foliage. All about the house itself there stood chestnut trees, and gnarled big rosebushes, growing wildly after a fashion of their own, just as lilac bushes would grow elsewhere.