The Bachelors

by Adalbert Stifter

  As regards the milk, Victor was true to his word. What’s more, from now on the dog was given as much to eat as it could get down; however, although in this way it managed to consume more in one day than it could barely do in three at home, the effects of the unaccustomed exertion, how dreadful God alone knew, were so great that it trotted along next to the boy, hanging, as it were, inside its own skin.

  “He’ll recover, I’m sure—he’ll recover,” the latter thought to himself, and they walked on.

  Victor brooded long and hard over why the animal had on this occasion come after him, when before, on a simple command, it had stayed at home and waited for him, even when he had been away for days on end. But he then concluded rightly that the dog, whose whole life’s object was to study every move its higher-ranking friend, the boy, made, had known only too well that he was leaving for ever and had therefore taken the extreme step of following him.

  And so they journeyed on together now, from one hill to the next, from one meadow to the next—and often the boy might have been seen washing the dog in a meadow stream and drying its coat with grass and foliage; often, too, both might have been seen either walking quietly along next to each other, or at times when the boy stopped on some high ground and looked far and wide over the meadows, over the long strips of field, over the dark patches of copse and over at the white church-towers of the villages, while the dog stood at his master’s side, looking up at him.

  Often waves of corn, which must have belonged to someone, lapped against the path taken by the wayfarers, cornfields bounded by hedges that someone must have planted, while birds flew in this or that direction as if heading for their various homes. For days Victor had not spoken to a soul, apart from when greeted by some wagoner or traveller or when the inn-keeper waved his cap on his departure and said: “Have a good journey—goodbye!”

  On the eighth day after he had left his foster-mother and his valley, he entered a region, which, unlike much of the inhospitable area he had walked through up to now, lay neatly and benignly alongside gentle hills, showing once again the succession of orchards characteristic of his home valley; it was an area graced with well-to-do houses and where there was not the tiniest patch of ground that was not put to use and on which there wasn’t something growing. In the green countryside beyond was the silver glint of a river and further off the oh, so gentle, almost achingly enticing blue of the mountains. For some time now he had had these mountains spreading out to his left, but now they swung in a curve nearer towards his road, with the pale-coloured lights and fissures in their walls visible.

  “How far is it to Attmaning?” he asked a man, sitting in the arbour of a village inn, sipping a cool drink.

  “If you carry on today for a good distance, then you should be able to get there in good time tomorrow,” the man replied, “but you’d have to take the footpath and then head for the mountains along the river Afel.”

  “I want to go Hul, actually.”

  “To Hul? You won’t get a warm reception there. But if you’re prepared to climb over the Grisel, to the right of the lake, you’ll come to a jolly blacksmith I can recommend, where you’ll meet a very different fate.”

  “I’ve got to go to Hul, though.”

  “From Attmaning it’s three hours at the most.”

  Victor had sat down during this conversation and taken some refreshment, both for himself and the dog. After he had talked further with his neighbour about this and that, he stood up again and, following the advice of his new benefactor, travelled on a good stretch that selfsame day until he came to the Afel, a clear blue, flowing stream. At barely first light the next day he could already be seen heading towards the mountains along the footpath forking off the road that the man had recommended and which he had enquired about more closely. The massive and lofty stone bulks edged ever closer to him and in the course of the morning looked like so many welcoming and colourful paintings. He met with the noise of rushing waters, with farmers on loaded wagons; sometimes the odd man on foot, sporting a pointed hat and goatee beard—and before it struck eleven, Victor was already sitting under the roof of the inn at Attmaning, having joined the road again, and was looking out towards the mountain pass, in which everything was glimmering with blue light and where a narrow strip of water was flashing like the glint of a scythe.

  Attmaning is the last place in the hill region and butts up against the high mountain chain. The bright green of its trees, the nearby mountains, its pointed church spire and sunny position make it the loveliest place that there could ever be on this earth of ours.

  Victor remained sitting at his little table outside on the street—something he always greatly enjoyed—until nearly four o’clock, drinking in the sight of those great mountains, their beautiful blue colour and hazy, ever-changing lights. He had never in his life seen their like. What was the highest and most imposing hill at home in comparison to these? When it struck four and the blue shadows inched slowly down the length of the entire rock-faces, with their distance from him, which he had earlier been able to roughly judge, becoming strangely blurred, he finally enquired in which direction Hul lay.

  “Up there by the lake,” said the innkeeper, pointing to the mountain pass towards which Victor had looked so often during the afternoon.

  “Do you want to get to Hul today, then?” he asked after a while, pointing to the pass Victor had gazed at so often in the course of the afternoon.

  “Yes,” said Victor, “and I want to make use of the cool of this evening to get there.”

  “Then you’d best not hang about,” replied the the innkeeper, “and if you don’t have anyone else, I’ll give you my lad—he can take you up through the wood and then point out your way from there.”

  Victor thought in fact there was no need for a guide, for the opening between the mountains lay over there, welcoming and near, but he went along with this nevertheless and meanwhile sorted out his travel things, which he had set down.

  He found it strange, though, how people speaking about Hul always said ‘up there’ when to his eyes the mountains there merged together with such hazy beauty that he judged the glittering lake water to be lying deep down below these, although, on the other hand, he could also see it was just from this region that the Afel came plunging and frothing down towards Attmaning.

  “Here, Rudi—take the gentleman here up to the col and show him the way down into Hul,” the innkeeper called into the house.

  “Yes,” a child’s voice sounded from within.

  And indeed straight away a blond-haired, red-cheeked lad appeared, and, taking in Victor with his large and friendly blue eyes, said: “So, let’s go, sir.”

  Victor had settled his bill and was ready to set out. The boy left the inn road immediately and led him off along a stone path between densely-growing and enormous oak and sycamore trees. Soon the path began to climb and sometimes Victor could look out through the tops of the trees below onto the huge mountains, which drew ever more solemnly together and grew darker, too, the lower the sun declined. They also took on a more beautiful blue, the brighter and more shimmering the evening light painted the greenery of the trees onto their sides. Finally the woods became very dense, the deciduous trees fell away and the two travellers came into a rough area of evergreen trees, whose impenetrability was relieved only occasionally by petrified streams of cascading stone. Victor hadn’t been able to see the woods from Attmaning and would never have believed such a wilderness could have lain between him and the beautiful glint of water that had beckoned behind it, from so near, it had seemed. On and on they walked. All the time Victor was thinking that now they would start the descent but the path wound continually along a slope that grew in size, making it seem as if the woods were stretching out and pushing the lake further away in front of them. The boy walked barefoot next to him on the sharp stone scree. Finally, when nearly two hours had elapsed, the little guide stopped and said: “This is the col. If you now go down that way there—not the other on
e—that is, past the picture of the martyred Gilbert, and round the edge of the lake where there are lots of stones that have fallen down, you’ll see some houses—that’s Hul. Just keep looking through the branches to be sure you can see the water because there’s also a path that leads to the Afel and a clearing—that would take you in the wrong direction.”

  So said the lad and, after receiving his reward from Victor, he ran back the same way he had brought him.

  However, the place the lad had run off from, and to which he had paid so little heed it might have been nothing, had the most unexpected effect on Victor. What mountain folk often call a ‘col’ is a sizeable mountain ridge that runs across between two higher peaks, joining them. As it always divides two valleys as well, it not infrequently happens that, when you are slowly climbing up from the one, without the least expecting it, you suddenly get the most surprising view down into the other. So it was here. The woods had opened out, the lake lay at the young man’s feet and all the mountains he had seen from the plain and Attmaning were now ranged so peacefully, clearly and closely around the water that he imagined he could reach out and touch them—their rock faces, though, their ravines and crevices, were not grey but wreathed in a delightful blue, and the trees on them were like little sticks, or not to be seen at all on others, these latter ones stretching up heavenwards with perfectly smoothed sides.

  Victor couldn’t see a single house, a single person or animal. The lake that he had seen as a silvery streak from Attmaning was here broad and dark with not a single glint of light but mirroring rather the dusk of the screening walls that encircled it; and on the far shores were light objects reflected in the still waters which he could not identify.

  Victor stood there for a while gazing out. He could smell the resin in the air but the air moved noiselessly through the pine forest. Nothing could be seen moving, if, that is, you discounted the further fading of the evening light, which was passing over the vaulting rock-faces, taking the colour-drained shadows with it.

  There was in his heart almost a fear of this immensity that surrounded him here, and this drove him on to resume his journey. He walked down the path the lad had shown him. The mountains sank slowly into the forest, the trees took him into their embrace once more and, just as it had been on the col, when the flat lake had seemed, as it were, to push away the mountains it bordered, enabling the eye to take in the delicate gauze picture that projected itself from the green of the pine needles, so here, too, to his left, mountain and water now wove together a twilit picture up through the branches of the trees. And just as he had thought the climb up to the col would never end, so now the path dropped gently down seemingly forever. The lake was constantly to his left, and so near it seemed he might have been able to dip his hand into it, yet always just out of reach. Finally the last tree fell back behind him and he was standing down by the Afel again at the point where it left the lake and hurried away through sheer cliff faces, not leaving even a hand’s breadth at its edge that might have made it possible to lay a path for travellers. Victor felt himself to be a hundred miles from Attmaning, it was so isolated here. There was nothing here but himself and the flat lake water, thundering ceaselessly into the Afel. Behind him stood the green silent forest, in front of him was the rippling expanse shut in by a blue mountain wall, which seemed to drop far down into the depths of the waters. The only work of man that he could see was the little footbridge that spanned the Afel and the specially constructed channel through which the water was forced to pass. He walked slowly over the footbridge followed by the dog, which was trembling and silent. Once across they were walking on ground that was grass-covered and next to high rocks. The place the boy had spoken of was soon recognisable: a whole lot of stones were lying around haphazardly and reaching out into the lake, so that it was easy to see a landslide had probably taken place. Victor turned a sharp corner of overhanging rock and immediately Hul lay in front of him: five or six grey cottages that stood on the shore of the lake not far off and were surrounded by tall green trees. The lake, too, which the overhang at the corner had earlier obscured, here lay spread out, and many mountains and rock faces which had hidden themselves from him came into view once again.

  When Victor came to the houses he saw that they all had wooden extensions that projected out into the lake and beneath which lay moored-up boats. He couldn’t see a church but on one of the cottages there was a little tower made of four posts painted red, between which a bell was hanging.

  “Is there a place here called the Hermitage?” he asked an old man he found immediately sitting under the door lintel of the first cottage.

  “Yes,” replied the old man. “The Hermitage is on the island.”

  “Could you tell me who might take me across there?”

  “Anyone in Hul could take you across.”

  “So, could you, then?”

  “Yes—but they won’t receive you there.”

  “I have an appointment at the Hermitage and I’m expected.”

  “That’s different if you have business there and are expected. Are you coming straight back?”

  “No.”

  “Wait here a moment, then.”

  At this the old man went into the cottage, returning soon, however, with a strong, rosy-cheeked young girl, who with bare arms set about pushing a boat further out into the water, while the old man put on his coat and fetched two oars. For Victor there was a wooden seat that had been fixed on the boat, and this he let himself down onto, setting his knapsack down next to him and holding the dog’s head, who nestled up against his lap. The old man had taken up his position at the prow of the boat and facing the shore while the girl stood at the stern with the oar in her hand. The first stroke of the oars in the water came simultaneously from both, the boat thrust forward, slipped out into the smooth lake water and at every oar stroke sliced rhythmically through the darkening, trickling surface. Victor had never been on such a large stretch of water. The village retreated and the rock faces around the lake began moving very slowly. After a while a bush-covered spit of land came into view and grew in size in the water. Eventually this broke away completely from the land and was revealed to be an island. It was towards this island that the two rowers bent their oars. The nearer they came, the more clearly it rose up and the wider the space became that separated it from the land. Earlier a mountain had obscured it. At last very large trees could be made out on it, looking at first as if they were growing up out of the water, but then seen to be crowning a rocky shore of some height, whose sharp cliffs fell perpendicularly into the deep. Behind the greenery of these trees there drifted the gentle shape of a mountain, to which the evening light had given a charming blush.

  “That’s the Grisel on the far side of the lake,” the old man said in answer to Victor’s enquiry, “a mountain of some note but not that hard a climb. There’s a path going over it to Blumau and Gescheid where the blacksmiths are.”

  Victor looked at the beautiful mountain, which drifted and sank into the foliage of the trees as they came nearer.

  At last they reached the green water, where the mass of trees on the island plunged their reflection into the lake water, penetrating its depths. Then across from Hul the little bell hanging between the four posts rang out for evening prayers. The two rowers immediately shipped their oars and quietly said their evening prayers while the boat thrust forward as if of itself alongside the grey rocks that descended from the island into the lake. Here and there on the surrounding foothills the light played deceptively. The lake had even acquired stripes, some of which shone and even threw up flashes, even though the sun had set some while earlier. Across all this came the continuing and diligent ringing of the bell, rung by invisible hands as it were, since Hul could no longer be seen, and around the lake there was not one spot that even from a distance might have seemed like a human habitation.

  “There must be a bell at the Hermitage cloister, too. A beautiful Angelus, I think,” said the old man, after he had put
his cap back on and picked up the oar, “but it’s never rung; at least I’ve never heard its sound. You don’t even hear the clock striking there. My grandfather said it was very beautiful in the past when all the pealing of the bells rang across the lake—for the monks were there then; it would ring across from there in the light morning mist without your knowing where it was coming from, for you’ll have seen that we’ve come round the mountain now and that you can’t see the island from Hul. That mountain is the high Orla and two monks once climbed over it when the snow was fathoms deep because the lake was frozen over but wouldn’t have borne their weight and because they’d run out of provisions. With the servants they had in the boat they cut a pathway through the ice so that the boat could move, and when they came to the mountain they climbed over its summit down into Hul, for there’s no footpath possible between the mountain and the lake. Well over a hundred years have gone by since then and it seldom happens that the lake is completely covered over with an ice sheet.”

  “So there were monks on the island once?” asked Victor.

  “Yes,” answered the old man. “Foreign monks came here in very ancient times when there wasn’t a single house anywhere on the lake and nothing floated on it but a tree that had fallen down into it from the rocks. They went across to the island on rafts and pine trunks and built the hermitage first, from which the cloister slowly arose, and in later years Hul was built, too, where Christian folk fished the waters and went across to the Hermitage for mass; for in those days the lords of the land were out and out heathens and, with their cruel and savage squires, would slaughter those priests coming with the Cross as missionaries from Scotland. On finding the island, the brothers found safety, for you can easily see that those rocks descending there together form something like a fortress. It takes only a little wind to whip up such a foam here it’s enough to swallow up any boat. There’s only one spot where you can land, and that’s where the rocks pull back, leaving a gap, and there the water flows inshore onto good sand. In this way the brothers were protected—just like the old man is, too, who chose to make the island his home. For this reason, also, people fish here only on very fine, calm days like today.”