And so, after many generations had come and gone, vainglory and pride took root in the valley, brought and fomented by women from other lands. Their clothing took on a vainglorious cast, gleaming jewels appeared, even the very emblems of holiness were affected, and while their hearts should have been ardently bent toward God during prayers, their eyes clung instead to a rosary’s golden beads. And so worship was replaced with vainglorious grandeur, and hearts were hardened against God and man. God’s commandments mattered less and less, and worship and worshippers became objects of mockery; for where much vainglory is found, or much wealth, one also finds delusions that mistake appetite for wisdom and value wisdom of this sort above the wisdom of God. Just as the knights had once tormented them, they now grew hard and tormented their own servants, and the less they themselves worked, the more work they demanded of these others; and the more they expected of their farmhands and maids, the more they treated them like insensible beasts of burden, not stopping to consider that their servants too possessed souls that need protection. Where much wealth or much vainglory is found, construction soon commences, each house finer than the next; and now they began to build just as the knights had built before them, and just as the knights had once caused them to suffer, they themselves now spared neither servants nor beasts once they were visited by the demon of construction. These changes had made their mark on this household as well, while its old prosperity remained.
Almost two hundred years had passed since the spider was imprisoned in its hole, and now a clever, strong woman was the master of this house. She did not hail from Lindau and yet she resembled Christine in many ways. She too had come from foreign lands and was devoted to vainglory and pride, and she had a single son; her husband had died in her service. This son was a handsome lad, he had a good disposition and was friendly to man and beast. She loved him dearly, but she did not show this to him. She dominated him at every turn, and nothing he did pleased her unless it was done according to her instructions. He had long since grown to maturity yet was still not allowed to join the Kameradschaft—the Society of Comrades—or attend any sort of celebration without his mother at his side. When finally she deemed him of suitable age, she chose a wife for him from among her relations, one after her own heart. Now he had two masters instead of one, and both of them were equally vainglorious and proud, and since they were, they wanted Christen to be like this too, and when, true to his nature, he behaved in an amiable, humble manner, they taught him who was master of the house.
For a long time the old house had been a thorn in their side: They were ashamed of it, since their neighbors had new houses yet were scarcely as prosperous as they. Everyone still remembered the legend of the spider and the old grandmother’s words, otherwise the old house would have been torn down long before, but all were against its destruction. But more and more they came to see this as mere envy designed to deny them the pleasure of a new home. What’s more, they found themselves feeling less and less at ease in the old house. When they sat at table, it seemed to them that either the cat was sitting behind them, softly purring, or else as if the peg was quietly slipping from its hole, and the spider poised to leap upon their necks. They lacked the temperament that had stopped the hole up, which made them ever more afraid that it might open again. And so they found a pretext to build a new house in which they would no longer have anything to fear from the spider, or so they imagined. They would leave the old house to their servants, whom they often found an encumbrance in their vainglorious lifestyle, and thus it was decided.
Seeing this, Christen was unhappy; he knew what the old grandmother had said, and he believed that the family’s good fortune—for their lives were blessed—was bound to this house, and he had no fear of the spider: It even seemed to him that when he sat here, at the head of the table, he was able to pray more fervently than anywhere else. He spoke his mind, but his women bade him be silent, and since he was their vassal, he held his tongue, but often he wept bitterly when they did not see him.
There, above the tree where we sat today, a house was to be built such as no one in the region possessed.
In vainglorious impatience, since they knew nothing of building and were eager to begin showing off with their new house, the women tormented both workers and beasts mercilessly during its construction; they had no respect for the sacred holidays, and begrudged their workers even nights of rest, and there was not a neighbor who came to their assistance but that he became the object of their displeasure and ill-wishes when—after helping them without recompense, as was customary at that time—he went home to see to his own affairs.
When the house was raised and the first peg driven into the threshold, smoke rose from the hole the way damp straw smokes when you try to set it alight; the workmen shook their heads dubiously, prognosticating both in secret and aloud that this new construction would not remain standing long, but the women only laughed and paid no heed. When at last the house was finished, they moved into it, furnishing their new residence with unheard-of splendor, and as a housewarming they arranged a celebration that lasted a full three days, one that children and grandchildren still spoke of throughout the Emmental for many years.
But during all three days of celebration, it is said that a strange purring could be heard throughout the house, like the purring of a cat when its fur is being stroked. But the purring cat could not be found, search as they would; the celebrants began to feel uneasy, and despite the excellence of the celebration many took to their heels. Only the women heard nothing or else paid no heed, for they believed that with their new house they had triumphed once and for all.
Yes, a person who is blind cannot even see the sun, and one who is deaf does not hear the thunder. And so the women rejoiced in their new house, growing more vainglorious with every day, and they gave no thought to the spider but instead went on leading a sumptuous life free of labor in the new house, occupied with adorning themselves and eating, satisfied with nothing anyone could do for them, and of God they thought not at all.
The servants remained behind in the old house, living however they saw fit, and whenever Christen expressed a wish to take charge of them, the women would not hear of it and scolded him, his mother out of pride, and his wife out of jealousy. Soon disorder reigned in the old house, and the fear of God did not survive there for long; where no master is present, this is what must ensue. When no master sits at the head of the table, no master attends to the goings-on in a household, no master holds the reins either outdoors or in, it will soon come to pass that whoever behaves the most savagely will fancy himself the greatest among his peers, and whoever’s speech is the most blasphemous will think himself the best.
So it went in the old house down the hill, and soon the servants were like a pack of cats run wild. Prayer was unknown among them, and they had respect neither for God’s will nor for His gifts. Just as the vainglory of the lordly women knew no limits, so did the servants’ bestiality and wantonness overstep all bounds. They defiled the bread without hesitation, sent spoonfuls of porridge catapulting across the table at each other’s heads, indeed they even maliciously soiled the food in the most bestial manner in order to spoil the others’ appetites. They taunted their neighbors, tortured the animals, scorned every sort of worship, denied all higher power, and used every means at their disposal to vex the priest who had spoken to them severely; in short, they no longer had any fear left of either God or man, and their conduct grew coarser every day. Farmhand and maid lived a life of utter savagery; and yet they tormented one another whenever they could, and when the farmhands could no longer think of novel ways to bait the maids, one of them hit on the idea of using the spider in its hole to frighten them and bend them to his will. He hurled spoonfuls of porridge or milk at the peg, shouting that the one inside was no doubt hungry, having had nothing to eat for so many hundreds of years. The maids shrieked in terror and promised whatever it might be, and even the other farmhands were seized with dread.
As the g
ame was repeated without consequence, it soon lost its effect: The maids stopped shrieking, they made no more promises, and the other farmhands began to play at it too. One of them began holding his knife to the plug, boasting with the vilest imprecations that he would pry it out, for he wanted to see what was inside; after all, wasn’t it time they had something new to look at? This threat filled everyone with fresh horror, and the fellow who made it became their master and could compel any of the others to do as he wished, the maids in particular.
He was a strange one, they say, and no one knew where he came from. He could be as gentle as a lamb or rapacious as a wolf; alone with a woman, he was a gentle lamb, but in company he was a wolf, rapacious, one who despised the others and sought to outdo them with ferocious words and deeds; such men are said to be favorites with women. And so in public the maids shrieked in horror at his deeds, but privately they loved him more than any other. His eyes did not match, you couldn’t tell their color, and the two of them hated each other, never gazing in the same direction at once, but he managed to conceal this with long eyelashes and meek downcast eyes. His hair was beautifully curly, but you couldn’t tell if it was red or fair; in the shade it was the prettiest flaxen hue, but when the sun struck it, there was no squirrel with a brighter russet pelt. He was crueler to his beasts than anyone else, and so the animals hated him. Each of the farmhands fancied him his friend, and he stirred up each against the others. Among all of them, he alone was to the liking of the lordly women up in the new house on the hill, he alone was often a guest there, and in his absence the maids would degenerate into savages; whenever he saw this, he would hold his knife to the plug in the window post and start in with his threats until the maids groveled before him.
And yet even this game did not retain its power for long. With time, the maids grew used to it, and in the end they would say, “Go ahead if you dare, but you don’t!”
Christmas was approaching, the holy night, but why we hold that night sacred was far from their minds, the frivolity of their lives had distracted them. Down in the castle, only a single elderly knight remained, and he was no longer much concerned with earthly affairs; instead a villainous steward governed there to his own advantage. They had tricked this steward into giving them some excellent wine from Hungary, a land with which the knights were enmeshed in bitter dispute; they did not know the strength and fire of this noble drink. A dreadful storm arose with thunderbolts and howling winds, something rarely seen so late in the year; there’d have been no driving a dog out from behind the stove. But it was not this that kept them away from church: Even in the fairest weather they would have stayed home, leaving their master to go alone. But the storm prevented others from visiting them, and so they remained alone in the old house with the excellent wine.
Their Christmas Eve began with dancing and oaths, rough business and rude; then they sat down to their meal, for which the maids had cooked meat, bread pudding, and whatever else they could steal. Their coarse behavior grew ever more abominable, they defiled all the food, blasphemed against everything holy; the aforesaid farmhand mocked the priest, passing around bread and drinking his wine as at a mass, he baptized the dog hiding under the stove and made ever more dreadful havoc until the others were terrified, their own penchant for sacrilege notwithstanding. Then he thrust his knife into the hole, railing that he would give them something to look at. And when he did not succeed in arousing their terror—he had done the same thing so many times before, besides which the knife was of little use against the peg in its hole—he took up a drill, half mad with malice, uttering the most dreadful curses; he said they would soon learn what he was capable of and would repent their laughter with their hair standing on end. Then, with a savage thrust, he twisted the drill into the peg. Shrieking, they threw themselves upon him, but before he could be stopped, he laughed like the devil himself and gave the drill a mighty tug.
At once the whole house shook beneath a monstrous thunderclap, the wicked servant was thrown to the ground, a red stream of fire shot from the hole, and right in the middle sat the spider, huge and black, swollen with the venom of centuries and glowering in baleful delight at the blasphemers who, petrified in mortal terror, found themselves unable to stir, powerless to escape this dreadful creature that now with malicious pleasure crept slowly across their faces, inoculating them with fiery death.
The house resounded with the most dreadful cries of anguish such as a hundred hunger-racked wolves could not utter. And soon similar anguished cries were heard from the new house, and Christen, who was just coming up the hill after attending holy mass, thought robbers must have broken in. Trusting in his strong arm, he raced to his family’s aid. He found no robbers, only death; his wife and mother lay struggling in their death throes, the voices gone from their swollen, blackened faces; his children slumbered peacefully, their gay little faces healthy and pink. Christen was filled with a terrible inkling of what must have occurred; he dashed down the hill to the old house, where he found all the servants lying dead, the room transformed into a death chamber, the terrible hole in the window post wide open, the drill clutched in the horribly twisted hand of the boastful servant, and on the tip of the drill the dreadful peg. Now he knew what had happened; in despair he struck his hands together above his head, and if the earth had swallowed him at that moment, he would not have minded. Then something crept out from behind the stove and sidled up to him; he started in horror, but it was not the spider, it was a poor little boy that he had taken in as an act of charity but then left to this godless pack of servants to raise, as is often done even today: People take in children in the name of God but then let them fall into the devil’s hands. The child had not taken part in the servants’ atrocities but instead had hidden behind the stove in terror; he alone had been spared by the spider, and now he was able to say what had occurred.
But while the boy was still telling his story, cries of fear rang out from other houses amid the wind and weather. As if filled with a century’s swollen desire, the spider flew through the valley, selecting first the most opulent houses where the people thought of God the least, but instead of worldly matters, and so were the least resigned to death.
Day had not yet dawned before word had reached every household in the valley that the ancient spider had broken free and was once more bringing death throughout the community; many already lay dead, and all up and down the valley cry after cry rose up to heaven from those marked for death. Imagine what a lamentation now filled the countryside, what fear was in every heart, and what a Christmas this was in Sumiswald! The joy Christmas usually brings was not to be thought of, as human deeds had brought this misery on all. And the misery increased with every day, for the spider was now quicker and more venomous. It was now at one end of the village, now at the other; it appeared in mountain and valley at one and the same time. Whereas before it had chosen individual victims for death, one here and another there, now it rarely left a household until its venom had touched every inhabitant; only when all of them writhed in their death throes did it take up its post on the threshold, maliciously surveying the effects of its venom as if to announce its presence and return after such long incarceration.
It seemed to know it had little time to work, and wished to spare itself such effort as it might; and so it dispatched as many victims as possible at once. For this reason it often lay in wait for the processions accompanying the dead to the church. Now here, now there, but most of all at the bottom of Kilchstalden it would appear unexpectedly in the middle of the throng or else glowering down from the coffin at the mourners. And then from the procession a dreadful cry of anguish would rise up to heaven, man after man falling to the ground until the entire train of mourners lay scattered about the road grappling with death until no life remained among them, and a battalion of the dead lay surrounding the coffin, like valiant warriors felled about their flag, vanquished by a superior force. They stopped bringing the dead to the church, for none was willing to be a pallbearer, no
ne to follow the coffin; wherever death struck them down, they were left to lie.
Despair lay upon the entire valley. Every heart seethed with rage, and this rage poured in dreadful imprecations upon the head of hapless Christen; he was blamed for all that had occurred. Now everyone saw quite clearly that Christen should never have left the old house, should never have left the servants to their own devices. Everyone saw that a master was more or less responsible for his men, that it was his duty to oversee their prayers and meals and shield them from impious ways and godless speech, prevent their desecrating the gifts of God. All had suddenly lost their taste for vainglory and pride, they consigned these vices to the lowest circle of hell and would scarcely have believed even God had He assured them that just days before they themselves had ignominiously flaunted them; they were pious once more, wearing their meanest clothes and holding their old, despised rosaries in their hands, altogether convinced that they had always been like this, and if God Himself was not convinced, it was not for their want of trying. Christen alone stood accused of godless ways, and entire mountains of curses were heaped upon him from all sides. And yet he was perhaps the best among them, it was only that his volition had been bound up in the volition of his women, and servitude of this sort is, to be sure, a significant failing for any man, whose solemn responsibilities remain the same even if he is not as God would have him. Christen understood this, and for this reason he accepted the judgments passed on him and did not protest his innocence; indeed, he accepted more blame than was his to bear: Yet this did not satisfy the people, who began to shout to one another how great his guilt must be if he willingly accepted so much blame and was so submissive to their demands, even going so far as to proclaim his own worthlessness.
The Black Spider (New York Review Books Classics) Page 9