The Black Spider

by Jeremias Gotthelf

  Christen was very unwilling to do this; he knew what the old grandmother had said and believed that the family blessing was linked to the family house, and he was not afraid of the spider, and when he sat up here at the table, it seemed to him as if he could pray most reverently. He said how he felt, but his womenfolk told him to be quiet, and because he was their servant, he did keep quiet, but he often wept bitterly when they were not there to see him.

  Up there, beyond the tree under which we were sitting, a house was to be built, a house the like of which nobody else in the district possessed.

  In presumptuous impatience, because they knew nothing about building and could not wait to show off with their new house, they maltreated workmen and animals during the building process and did not even rest on holy feast-days and begrudged the workers their rest even at night; there was no neighbor with whom they were satisfied, however much help he might give them, no neighbor whom they did not wish ill when he went home to look after his own affairs after he had given them free assistance, as was the custom even at that time.

  When they started building and drove the first peg into the threshold, smoke rose from the hole like damp straw when it is set alight; at that the workpeople shook their heads with misgiving and said, both secretly and aloud, that the new building would not become old; but the women laughed at this and took no notice of the sign that had been given. When finally the house had been built, they moved in and furnished the house with unheard-of luxury, and for a housewarming gave a party that lasted three days, so that children and grandchildren still talked about it throughout the whole Emmental.

  But it is said that all the three days long a strange humming could be heard in the whole house like the purring of a cat that is contented to have its fur stroked. But they could not find the cat from which the purring came, for all they searched everywhere; then many a one felt ill at ease, and in spite of all the munificence he would slip off in the midst of the celebrations. It was only the two women who heard nothing or else took notice of nothing; they thought that now the new house was there they had nothing to lose.

  Yes, a blind man does not even see the sun, nor does a deaf man hear thunder. Consequently the women of the house were delighted, grew more presumptuous every day, did not think of the spider, but lived in the new house a luxurious, indolent life, dolling themselves up and overeating; there was nobody like them, they thought, and they did not think of God.

  The servants stayed on by themselves in the old house, living as they liked, and when Christen wanted to keep the old house under his surveillance, the women would not tolerate this and railed at him, the mother chiefly out of vanity, the wife mainly out of jealousy. Consequently there was no order down there in the old house and soon no fear of God either, and where there is no master in control, that is what usually happens. If there is no master sitting at the head of the table, no master listening alertly in the house, no master holding the reins both within and outside, then the fellow who behaves most wildly thinks he is the greatest and the man who talks most recklessly thinks he is the best.

  That is how things went in the house down below, and all the servants soon resembled a pack of cats when they are at their wildest. Nobody knew anything more about praying, and therefore there was respect neither for God’s will nor God’s gifts. Just as the arrogance of the two mistresses no longer knew any bounds, so the animal insolence of the servants knew no limits. They audaciously spoiled the bread, they threw porridge over the table with spoons at each other’s heads and they even defiled the food in bestial manner in order maliciously to take away the others’ enjoyment of their food. They provoked the neighbors, tormented the cattle, jeered at all divine worship, denied all higher authority and abused in all manner of ways the priest who had spoken to them admonishingly; in short, they no longer had any fear of God or man and behaved more wildly every day. The farm-hands and the maids lived most dissolutely, and yet they tormented one another wherever possible, and when the farm-hands could not think of any new way of tormenting the maids, one of them had the idea of terrifying or taming the maids with the threat of the spider in the bole. He slung spoonfuls of porridge or milk up against the peg and shouted out that the spider inside must be hungry as it had had nothing to eat for so many centuries. At that the maids shrieked aloud and promised everything that they could, and even the other farm-hands felt a shudder of horror.

  As the game was repeated without any punishment ensuing, it lost its effect; the maids no longer cried out or made any promises, and the other farm-hands also began the same game. Now this particular fellow began to go at the hole with his knife, swearing the most horrible oaths that he would loosen the peg and see what was inside, for it was time they had something new to see. This aroused new horror, and the fellow who did this was master of them all and could compel them, especially the maids, to do whatever he wanted.

  Indeed this man is said to have been a really strange fellow, and nobody knew where he came from. He could behave as gently as a lamb and as fiercely as a wolf; if he were on his own with a woman he was a gentle lamb, but in the company at large he was like a ravening wolf and behaved as if he hated everyone, as if he wanted to outdo them all in wild deeds and words; but men like that are supposed to be just the most attractive ones to women. That is why the maids were shocked at him in public, but are said to have liked him best of all when alone with him. His eyes were uneven, but it was impossible to say what color they were, and the two eyes disliked one another, for they never looked in the same direction, but he knew how to conceal this with long hair over his eyes and by humbly looking down to the ground. His hair was beautifully waved, but it was difficult to say whether it was red or blonde; in the shade it was the most beautiful flaxen hair, but when the sun shone on it, no squirrel’s coat was redder. He tormented the cattle worse than anybody else. The cattle in their turn hated him also. Each of the farm-hands thought that he was his friend, and yet he would set them up one against the other. He was the only one of them who suited the two mistresses, and was the only one who was often in the upper house; then the maids behaved wildly in the house below; as soon as he observed this, he would stick his knife into the peg and begin his threatening, until the maids ate humble pie.

  However, this game too did not continue to be effective for long. The maids became used to it and finally said: ‘Do it then, if you dare; but you daren’t!’

  The holy eve of Christmas was approaching. They had no thought for the meaning of Christmas and had planned to have a wildly merry time. In the castle over yonder only an old knight lived now; a rogue of a bailiff administered everything to his own advantage. They had procured a noble Hungarian wine from him by means of conniving at a piece of roguery (the knights were engaged in hard fighting in Hungary), and they did not know the strength and fire of the noble wine. A terrible storm arose, with thunder and lightning, such as you very rarely see at this time of year, and it was so fierce that you could not have routed out a dog from under the stove. It did not stop them going to church, because they would not have gone there even in fine weather and would have let the master go there on his own; but this fact prevented others from visiting them, so that they now were alone in the old house with the noble wine.

  They began the holy Christmas Eve with swearing and dancing and with even wilder and more wicked things; then they sat down to the meal, for which the maids had cooked meat, white sauce and any other good things they could steal. Then their coarseness became ever more repulsive, they defiled all the food and blasphemed against everything holy; the farmhand mentioned before made fun of the priest, divided out bread and drank his wine as if he were officiating at mass, baptized the dog under the stove and carried on until the others became anxious and fearful, ruthless as they might otherwise be. Then he stabbed into the hole with his knife and said with curses that he would show them very different things. When they refused to be scared by this, because he had done this sort of thing so often before and the
re was not much to be gained by driving the knife against the peg, he grasped a gimlet in his half-crazy fury, swore in the most terrible language until their hair stood on end that he would show them what he could do and make them regret laughing at him, then he screwed the gimlet with fierce turns into the peg. The rest fell upon him crying out loudly, but before anyone could prevent it, he laughed like the devil himself and gave the gimlet a violent wrench.

  Then the whole house rocked under a monstrous thunderclap, the evildoer was flung on to his back, a red stream of fire broke out from the whole and there in the middle sat the spider, huge and black, swollen with the poison of centuries, gloating in poisonous glee over the criminals who were benumbed in deadly fear and could not move a limb to escape from the terrible monster that crept slowly and malevolently over their faces and injected into them a fiery death.

  Then the house quivered with terrible howls of pain such as a hundred wolves together cannot emit even when they are gnawed by hunger. And soon a similar cry of pain sounded from the new house, and Christen, just coming up the hill from holy mass, thought that thieves must have broken in, and, trusting his strong arm, he rushed to help his family. He did not find thieves, but death: his wife and his mother were wrestling with death and already had no more voice in their heavily swollen, black faces; his children were sleeping quietly, and their carefree faces were healthy and ruddy. There arose in Christen a terrible suspicion of what had happened; he rushed into the lower house where he saw the servants all lying dead, their living room turned into a death chamber, the fearful hole in the window post opened wide, and he saw the gimlet in the terribly contorted hand of the farmhand and the dreadful peg on the point of the gimlet. Now he knew what had happened, struck his hands together above his head, and if the earth could have swallowed him up, this would have suited him well. Then something crept out from behind the stove and nestled close to him; he started in terror, but it was not the spider, it was a poor boy whom he had taken into the house out of charity and had then left among the ruthless servants, as indeed often happens even nowadays, when people take in children in the name of God and then let them go to the Devil. This boy had taken no part in the evil behaviour of the servants and had fled in terror behind the stove; the spider had spared him alone, and now he could relate what had happened.

  But even as the boy was speaking, cries of terror sounded across from other houses, in spite of the wind and the weather. The spider sped through the valley as if with the pent-up lust of centuries, picking out first the most sumptuous houses where people thought of God least and the world most and therefore least cared to know about death.

  Al ready before daybreak the news was in every house that the old spider had broken loose and was once more bringing death to the community; it was said that many already lay dead and that further down in the valley cry upon cry was being raised to heaven from those who had been branded and now had to die. You can imagine now what distress there was in the district, what fear in all hearts and what a Christmas this was in Sumiswald! Not a soul could think of the joy which Christmas usually brings; and such distress came from the criminal behavior of men. But every day the distress grew, for the spider was now quicker and more poisonous than the previous time. Now it was at one end of the parish, now at the other; it appeared at the same time on the hills and in the valley. If on the previous occasion it had for the most part given the mark of death here to one person and there to another, this time it seldom left a house before it had poisoned all who were living there; it was not until all the inmates were writhing in agony of death that the spider sat upon the threshold and gloated maliciously over the havoc of its poisoning, as if to say that here it was, and it had come back again, however long its term of imprisonment might have been.

  It was as if the spider knew that little time was to be allowed it, or as if it wanted to save itself trouble; it killed many people off at once, wherever it could. That is why it liked to lie lurking for the passing of the processions of people who wished to accompany the dead to church. Now here, now there, for preference down at the Kilchstalden, it appeared in the midst of a crowd of people or else suddenly gloated down from the coffin on to the mourners. Then a terrible cry of distress rose to heaven from the procession of mourners, man after man collapsed, until the whole line of mourners lay in the road wrestling with death, until there was no more life among them and a heap of dead lay around the coffin, as bold warriors lie round their flag when overcome by greater forces. After that no more dead were brought to the church, for nobody wanted to carry or escort them; where death seized them, there they were left lying.

  Despair lay over the whole valley. Anger was fierce in all hearts, pouring out in terrible imprecations against poor Christen, for he was held responsible for everything. Now all at once everybody was certain that Christen should not have gone from the old house and left the servants to their own devices. All at once everybody knew that a master is more or less responsible for his servants and should set himself against godless living, godless talking and godless defilement of the gifts of God. Now all at once everybody had lost their vanity and arrogance, relegating their vices to the lowest depths of hell; they would scarcely have believed God Himself, if He had told them that until a few days ago they had borne these vices within themselves. They were all pious again, wore their poorest clothes, carried their old, despised rosaries in their hands and persuaded themselves that they had always been as pious as this and that it was not their fault if they could not persuade God in the same way. Christen alone among them all was deemed to be godless, and curses fell upon him like mountains from all sides. And yet he was perhaps the best of them, except that his will lay bound by that of his womenfolk, and such dependence is certainly a heavy sin for any man, and a man cannot escape the weight of responsibility because he is different from what God intends him to be. Christen realized this too, and therefore he was not defiant or loud, but assumed more guilt than was rightly his; but he did not reconcile people by this, for indeed it was at this point that they cried to one another how great his sin must be, since he took so much upon himself and was so submissive, indeed even confessed that he was worthless.

  He, however, prayed day and night to God that He might turn the evil away; but it became more terrible from day to day. He realized that he must make good where he had fallen short, that he must sacrifice himself and that the deed which his ancestress had performed was now to fall to him. He prayed to God until the resolve grew right ardently in his heart that he must save the valley community and atone for the evil; his resolve was strengthened by steady courage that does not waver and is always ready for the same deed, in the morning as in the evening.

  So he moved with his children out of the new house into the old one, cut a new peg for the hole, had it hallowed with holy water and prayers, placed the hammer by the peg, sat down by the children’s beds and waited for the spider.

  Seated there, he prayed, watched and wrestled with firm courage against the heaviness of sleep, and did not falter; but the spider did not come, although it was everywhere else; for the plague became more and more deadly, and the rage of the survivors ever wilder.

  In the midst of these terrors a wild woman was expecting to give birth to a child. Then people were overwhelmed by the old fear that the spider might take the child unbaptized, the pledge of the old agreement. The woman behaved as if insane and had no trust in God, but had all the more hatred and revenge in her heart.

  It was known how in the old days people had protected themselves against the green huntsman, and how the priest was the shield whom they had placed between themselves and the eternal fiend. It was decided now to send for the priest, but who should be the messenger? The unburied dead, whom the spider had stricken during the funeral processions, barred the roads, and would any messenger going over the deserted heights to fetch the priest be able to escape the spider who seemed to know everything? Everyone was hesitant. Then at last the woman’s husband thou
ght that if the spider would be seizing him, it would be as likely to get hold of him in his own home as on the road; if he were doomed to die, he would not escape death here any more than there.

  He set out on the way, but hour after hour went by, and no messenger came back. Rage and distress became more and more terrible, and the hour of the birth drew closer and closer. Then in the fury of despair the woman raised herself from her bed, lurched out towards the house of Christen, who bad been the object of thou­sandfold curses and who sat in prayer by his children, awaiting the encounter with the spider. Already from afar her screaming could be heard, and her imprecations thundered on Christen’s door long before she wrenched it open to bring the storm of her revilement to him in his room. When she rushed in with so terrible an appearance, he started up, wondering at first whether this might not be Christine in her original shape. But as she stood in the doorway, pain held back her walk, and she clung to the doorpost, pouring out the flood of her curses upon poor Christen. He should be the messenger, she said, unless he wished to be cursed with his children and children’s children for all time and eternity. At that, pain smothered her swearing, and a little son was born to the wild woman on Christen’s threshold, and all who had followed her fled in all directions, expecting the worst to happen. Christen held the innocent child in his arms; the woman’s eyes stared stabbing, fierce and poisonous at him from her distorted features, and he felt more and more as if she herself were the spider. Then the power of God came upon him, and a superhuman will power became mighty within him; be threw an intense, loving glance at his children, wrapped the newborn infant in his warm cloak, strode over the fiercely staring woman down the hill and along the valley towards Sumiswald. He made up his mind to take the child to its holy baptism, in expiation of the guilt which lay upon him as head of his house; the rest he would leave to God. Dead bodies hindered his progress, and he had to be careful where he put his feet. Then light­ moving feet caught him up; it was the poor boy who felt afraid to be with the wild woman and who, impelled by a childish urge, had run after his master. Christen’s heart felt pierced as if by thorns to think that his children were left alone with the raging woman. However, his feet did not stay still, but pressed on to their holy destination.