TIEFIS
Tiefis
A REALLY fine morning at last; glorious sunshine.
“Now for those idiots,” says Mr. R., and so do I. We have found out about them, from the inn-people.
It appears that two, a man and a woman, come from the Walserthal, which has always been famous for its crop of imbeciles; the third was born at Raggal, likewise fertile mother of idiots, because everybody marries into his own family there. These Raggalers are such passionate agriculturalists and so busy, all the year round, with their fields and cattle, that they refuse to waste time scouring the province for so trivial an object as a wife with fresh blood, when you can get a colorable substitute at home. Our particular idiots live, all three of them, on the road to St. Anne church, in that workhouse which, so far as I know, has sheltered from time immemorial the poor of the district, the aged, the infirm of mind or body. There is always a fine assortment of wrecks on view here. Sisters of Charity look after them.
Sure enough, the first thing we saw was one of the man-idiots hacking wood out of doors. He was of the deaf and dumb variety, with misshapen skull; he took no notice of us, but continued at his task with curious deliberation, as if each stroke of the ax necessitated the profoundest thought. Weak in the head, obviously; but not what I call an idiot. If he could have spoken, he would doubtless have uttered as many witticisms as one hears in an English public-house at closing time. The woman was also there, sitting on the bench beside a Sister of Charity. Under-sized, stupid-looking, with mouth agape; nothing more; I have seen society ladies not unlike her in appearance. She can sew and knit stockings and even talk, they had told us. Mediocre specimens, both of them. And how about the third one, we enquired? He was working in the fields, said the Sister.
Working in the fields....
These things call themselves idiots. Even idiots, it seems, have degenerated nowadays. Mr. R. was dreadfully disappointed; and so was I. He vowed I had led him to expect something on quite another scale; and so I had. He extracted a promise, then and there, that I should show him over Valduna, the provincial lunatic asylum near Rankweil, in the hope of unearthing a few idiots worthy of the name.
Now of course you cannot have everything in this world. You cannot ask, in a district otherwise so richly endowed by Nature as this one, for the fine fleur of imbecility—for crétins. To see these marvels you must go further afield, to places like the Valtellina or Val d’Aosta (and even there, I understand, the race is losing some of its best characteristics. These doctors!) But one might at least have kept alive a specimen or two of the old school, just for memory’s sake; idiots such as my sister and myself used to see, while rambling as children about these streets with the Alte Anna, our nurse. On that very bench, where the modish lady was reclining to-day, or its predecessor, there used to sit two skinny old madwomen side by side, with their backs to the wall. There they sat, always in the same place. They were as mad as could be, and older than the hills. A terrifying spectacle—these two blank creatures, staring into vacuity out of pale blue eyes, with white hair tumbled all about their shoulders. One of them disappeared—died, no doubt; the survivor went on sitting and staring, in her old place. There was another idiot whom we liked far better; in fact we loved him. He was of the joyful and jabbering kind, and he lived near the factory. His facial contortions used to make us shriek with laughter. Sometimes he dribbled at the mouth. When he dribbled copiously, which was not every day, it was our crowning joy.
The old Anna, of course, knew by heart every idiot within miles of our home. She specialized in such phenomena. What she liked even better was anything in the nature of an accident, operation, horrible disease, or childbirth; she knew of it, by some dark instinct, the moment it occurred: she knew! and, being forbidden to leave the children alone, dragged us with her into the remotest peasant-houses and hamlets to enjoy the sight. Above all things, she had a mania for corpses and the flair of a hyena for discovering their whereabouts. As often as there was a corpse within walking distance, she donned her seven-league boots and rushed towards it in the bee-line, carrying my sister, to save time, while I toddled painfully after. Arrived at the spot where the dead body lay, she would first cross herself and then begin to gloat. We did the same. Who knows how many maladies, how many corpses, we inspected at that tender age! A sound education. For it familiarized us with death and suffering at a life-period when one cannot yet grasp their full import; it took away, for good and all, a great part of their terrors. We were never shocked by such things; only interested—hugely interested....