That was the final letter from Hirschwalden.
The springs, summers, autumns and winters must have come and gone, but were surpassed by more sinister storms and disasters that disregarded the natural seasons, apocalyptic riders and grim reapers of a deeper, more thorough destruction. And after this came a new power from below, that here too uprooted and expelled the ancestral. It paid no heed to either bank. In the end it forced all to shoulder their bundle. And it didn’t rest until the last of them had left the valley.
They had no right to decide for themselves, but who even bothered to ask? The people of the valley could fight each other and make life miserable all they wanted. But it was henbane, pasque flower and belladonna from their own gardens. And these poisonous plants might have turned into healing ones in the long run. Who was entitled to judge? It was their own business what people grew in their gardens. No one could presume to know better and play God. Are we not, all of us, His children? And yet that’s exactly what happened.
The valley turned into a no man’s land. Someone heard from afar how the farmsteads were falling into decay, the shingles and slates were coming loose, the windows and doors breaking from their hinges, how the storm winds battered the abandoned furniture and broken implements. Someone heard that the clearings were gradually being devoured by forest again, that young spruces were growing rampant over both paths along the stream, and that deer roamed freely between the ruins. Someone heard that an arrogated authority had decided to dam up the water in the valleys where no one lived anymore, creating an artificial lake whose floodwaters would inundate everything, roads and trees, houses and gardens, all that had been inflicted and suffered. And I’m among the last who hear from afar the maniacal laughter above this sea of violence and who grasp its cautionary meaning.
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Copyright
Pushkin Press
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Original text © LangenMüller in der! F.A. Herbig Verlagsbuchhandlung GmbH, Munich
English translation © David Burnett 2017
“The Last Bell” was first published as “Letztes Läuten” in Zurich in 1968
“The Duchess of Albanera” was first published as “Die Herzogin von Albanera” in Zurich in 1966
“Siegelmann’s Journeys” was first published as “Die Reisen Siegelmanns” in Munich in
1962
“Borderland” was first published as “Grenzland” and “Where the Valley Ends” was first published as “Wo das Tal endet”. Both were first published in Munich in 1956
First published by Pushkin Press in 2017
ISBN 978 1 782272 58 8
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The Last Bell Page 15