The Bachelors

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The Bachelors Page 8

by Adalbert Stifter


  He stood still, just as he had on entering the room, and looked at his uncle. The latter, however, continued what he was doing as if no one were present. He must have neglected to do this for a very long time and had set about it at first light, for already a fair number of birds had been cleaned, while the rest still stood there behind their glass panes, quite grey with dust. The old woman, who had crossed Victor’s path earlier without saying anything to him, now brought in a tray of breakfast and set it down, again without a word, on the table. Victor concluded it was for him, since it had been brought in on his arrival. He sat down therefore and ate as much as he was used to doing in the morning, for there was far more on the tray than he needed. It was like the customary English breakfast, beginning with tea and coffee and followed by eggs, cheese, ham and cold roast beef. The dog was the one who benefited most, for Victor gave him more than he had perhaps ever received before in the morning.

  “Have you put some water in the trough?” his uncle asked.

  “No,” replied Victor. “It slipped my mind a moment, but I’ll do it now.”

  The young man, while looking at his uncle, had in reality forgotten what the latter had wanted him to do. He therefore took the large glass jar standing on the table with the same wonderful water it had had yesterday and poured some of it into a small, well-polished wooden trough that was on the floor by the wall next to the door. After Victor’s dog had drunk his fill, his uncle left his work and called his dogs over to the water, but since none of them showed any interest, probably because they had already been given water anyway, his uncle pushed down on a lever protruding from the wall by the trough, at which a metal panel opened in the bottom of the trough, allowing the liquid to run away. Victor almost had to laugh at this device, for where he lived everything was conducted in a much simpler and homelier way: the dog was free to roam outside, drank from the stream and ate his food under the apple tree.

  “I’ll show you the picture of your father sometime perhaps,” his uncle said, “so you can see how I immediately knew who you were.”

  Having said this, the old man climbed up the stepladder again and took out another bird. Victor continued to stand there in the room, waiting for his uncle to begin to talk about the reason for his coming there. But the latter failed to do so and carried on instead cleaning his birds. After a while he said: “Lunch is at exactly two o’clock. Set your watch according to the one over there and be here then.”

  Victor was taken aback and asked: “So you don’t want to speak to me any more until then?”

  “No,” replied his uncle.

  “Then I’d like to go outside, so as not to disturb you in what you’re doing, and have a look at the lake, the mountains and the island.”

  “Do anything you want,” his uncle said.

  Victor hurried out but found the door leading out to the wooden steps locked. So he went back to his uncle and asked whether he might have it opened.

  “I’ll open it for you myself,” the latter said.

  He put the bird down, went out with Victor, pulled a key out of his grey coat, opened the door to the wooden steps with it and immediately locked it again after the youth.

  Victor ran down the steps to the sandy forecourt. He was so dazzled by the delightful flood of light that met him here that he turned round a little in order to look at the house from the outside. It was a solid, dark building with just the one upper floor in which he had slept that night. He recognised his room by its open windows, for all the others were closed and also weather-worn, which lent them a variety of beautiful colours. They all had strong and solid iron bars in front of them. The main entrance door was blocked up and the covered wooden steps down to the sandy forecourt seemed to be the only way in. How different it was from home, where window after window stood open, in which soft white curtains swayed and where, from the garden, you could see the flickering of the cheerful kitchen fire!

  Victor now turned his eyes towards the open ground leading away from the gloomy house. Of all the surrounding area it was the most welcoming. Behind him and at either side of the house it had tall trees; then it was strewn with sand, had here and there little benches, several flower beds, and, going down towards the lake, opened out into a proper flower garden and then into an area of bushes. Trees and shrubs grew on both sides. Victor walked around here and the air and sunshine did him good.

  He then pressed on further to see what else there was to see. He had been struck by an ancient avenue of lime trees that led away from his uncle’s house. The trees were so high and dense that the earth beneath them was damp and the grass tinted the most beautiful, delicate green. Victor set off down the middle of this avenue. He came to another building with a high, broad door, which was locked and rusted up. Above the arch of the door carved in stone were the symbols of spiritual power, staff and mitre, alongside the other coats of arms of the place. At the foot of this arch and below the whole length of the wooden door soft, thick grass grew, a sign that no human foot had trodden there for a long while. Victor saw he couldn’t get into the building through this door and so he walked along the outside and took a close look at it. The walls of the building formed an ash-grey square and it had a tiled, almost black roof. The trees of the island had run wild and grown high over it. The windows had bars but behind most of these were not panes of glass but boards washed grey by the rain. There was indeed another small door into the building but, like the main entrance, this, too, was blocked up. Further back was a high wall, which probably enclosed the whole complex of buildings and gardens, the entrance to which was through his uncle’s iron grille gate. In a salient angle of this wall were the cloister gardens, from which vantage point Victor could see the two thick but unusually short towers of the church. The fruit trees were very neglected, many of them being broken and half fallen. In marked contrast to this mournful past was the burgeoning and eternally young present that stood everywhere round about. The high rock faces of the mountains, along with their bright morning colours, looked down on the green island, with its covering of trees and plants, and the peace these emanated was so great and overriding that the dilapidated building, this footprint of an unknown human past, amounted to only a small grey dot, unworthy of note in the budding and thrusting life all around. The dark tree tops were already overshadowing it, creepers were climbing the walls, their nodding heads peering in, below lay the flashing lake and on every height the rays of the sun cavorted in a display of glittering gold and silver.

  Victor would dearly have liked to have walked the whole length of the island, which couldn’t have been large and which he would have liked to have explored, but he was persuaded that the former cloisters along with all its side buildings and gardens really were, as he had assumed, ringed about by a wall, even though its stones were often hidden from sight by flowering shrubs. He returned to the sandy forecourt once again. Here he stood a good while in front of the grille gate, examining the bars and trying the lock. But to go up to his uncle and ask him to have it opened—this he couldn’t bring himself to do, so reluctant did he feel—apart from the two old servants, the aged Christoph and the old woman, the whole building seemed like a morgue. He therefore abandoned the gate and from the open forecourt wandered straight ahead towards the lake in order to look down at the water from the rocky bank, should there be a bank there, too. There was, and, standing on its outermost edge, he found it to be as high as a house, in fact. Below him the water gently fringed the shore; opposite stood the Grisel with its inviting foothills, whose white rocks and other gleaming objects were mirrored in the water. And on looking around him at the mountain walls, beneath which lay the dark, motionless and flat water, he had the impression of being in a prison, of being somewhere that should almost inspire fear in him. He looked to see if he could find a place from which he could climb down to the water but the rock face, whipped by rain and storm, was as smooth as iron and curved inwards towards the water like an arch. How huge the rock faces of the Grisel must be, tho
ught Victor, looking as they do from here like palaces reaching skywards, while the rocky shore of this island looked like a mere strip of sand, when we approached it.

  After standing there for a while longer, he walked the length of the rocky cliff-edge that would bring him to the cloister side of the perimeter wall. When he reached this, the wall dropped perpendicularly down to the water. Then, turning round, he returned along the edge of the cliff towards the wall on the side opposite the cloister. But before reaching this, he came across something else. The ground there sank down, forming a hollow opening which was walled about and looked like the door of a cellar, and further into this he could indeed see steps going down. Victor thought these could be steps leading down to the lake, for fetching water perhaps. He immediately set off down this, into what indeed resembled the vaulted descent to a cellar, consisting of a seemingly endless number of steps. In this way he really did reach the water, but how astonished he was to behold, not a humble watering place, such as might be needed for the watering of plants perhaps, but instead a veritable water hall. Emerging from the darkness of the flight of steps, he saw two side walls, built of large square stones, reaching out towards the lake with stone ledges on either side that you could walk along next to the surface of the water, this forming, as it were, the floor of the hall. Above was a solid roof; the walls had no windows, and all the light there was came from the lake through a grille barricade made of very strong oak beams. The fourth, that is, the back wall, was formed by the rock face of the island itself. There were many stakes driven into the ground and several boats were moored to these by means of iron padlocks. The whole space was very large and must have once housed many such boats, to judge from the greatly worn appearance of the iron mooring rings on the stakes; but now there were only four there, which were fairly new, very well-built and attached to chains with locked padlocks. There were several gates set in the barricade to enable access to the lake, but they were all locked and the vertical beams of the barricade plunged deep down into the water and out of sight.

  Victor stood still and looked out into the glittering green lights of the lake that appeared between the black oak beams. He then sat down after a while on the edge of a boat in order to test the warmth of the water with his hand. It wasn’t as cold as he had supposed from its transparent clarity. Swimming had been one of his favourite pastimes since he was a child. On hearing, therefore, that his uncle’s house was on an island, he had taken his swimming costume along with him in his knapsack, so he could pursue this sport as often as possible. He remembered this now in this boathouse and began looking for places where he might swim in future, but realised immediately that this was impossible, for where the boats were moored it was too shallow, while where it was deeper the beams of the barricade went down into the water. There was also no prospect of being able to get through the beams, for they were so close together that not even the slimmest body could have squeezed through. There was nothing for it, therefore, but to reserve this boathouse as somewhere he could just have a wash.

  This intention he partly carried out straight away. He took off as many items of clothing as was necessary in order to wash some parts of his body, namely his shoulders, his chest, arms and feet. He washed the dog as well. Then he put his clothes back on and went back up the steps he had come down. Having then resumed his walk along the cliff edge, he came across the other end of the perimeter wall. This, like the other one, dropped down sheer into the water and was built out from the rock in such a way that a rabbit could barely have managed to slip round its edge. Victor stood idly at this place for a while—then his day’s work, so to speak, was done. He went back to the sandy forecourt and sat down on a bench to rest after his wash and to dry the dog. His uncle’s house, now opposite him, was as it had been in the morning. Only the windows of the room he had slept in were open, because he himself had opened them; all the rest were closed. No one came out, no one went in. The shadows slowly shifted and the sun, which had shone behind the house in the morning, now lit up the front. As he sat there looking at the dark walls, Victor felt as if he had already been away from his home for a year. Finally the hour hand of his watch pointed to two. So he got to his feet and climbed up the steps; on knocking on the door at the top he was let in by his uncle, who went ahead of him into the dining-room where they both immediately sat down at the table.

  The midday meal was different from the previous evening’s dinner only insofar as uncle and nephew ate together. Otherwise it was the same. His uncle said little, or next to nothing, in fact; the dishes were varied and good. Again several wines stood on the table and his uncle even offered Victor some—if he drank wine, that is. Victor declined the offer though, saying that he had always drunk water up till now and wanted to continue that way. His uncle didn’t speak about the purpose of Victor’s journey that day either, but instead, when the meal was over, got up and busied himself with a number of things in the room, where he rummaged about. Victor realised immediately that he was free to go and so, following his inclination, went out into the open air.

  Later in the afternoon the heat in this valley basin, like the chill in the morning, was extreme, and as Victor was crossing the flower garden, he saw his uncle sitting on a bench in a full patch of sunlight. But the latter didn’t call him over and Victor didn’t go over to him either.

  Thus ended the first day. Dinner, which the appointed hour of nine summoned him to, concluded for him as it had the day before. His uncle led him to his rooms and locked the iron grille door after him.

  Victor hadn’t seen old Christoph all day, only the old woman, who had waited on them at table—if bringing in and taking out dishes could in fact be called ‘waiting on’. Everything else his uncle had done, including locking away the wine and cheese again.

  When breakfast was over the next morning, he said to Victor: “Come in here a moment.”

  At this he opened a concealed door, barely recognisable as such, in the dining-room wall and stepped into the next-door room, into which Victor followed him. The room was sparsely furnished and contained more than a hundred firearms displayed in glass cabinets according to type and period. Hunting horns, game bags, powder containers, shooting sticks and a thousand other suchlike things lay around. They went through this room, then through the next, which again was bare, and then came into a third, in which there were some old objects. On the wall a single picture was hanging. It was round like the shields on which coats of arms used to be painted and was encircled by a broad and glittering gold frame, which was cracked with age.

  “That’s a painting of your father, whom you closely resemble,” his uncle said.

  A fine-looking young man in the bloom of youth—more a boy still, properly said—was portrayed on the circular plaque wearing a baggy brown suit decorated with gold braid. The painting, though no great masterpiece, was nevertheless endowed with that precision and depth of treatment which we often see in family portraits of the last century. Now superficiality and crude colouring have gained the upper hand. The gold borders were particularly finely executed, still glinting with sombre lights and standing out in fine relief from the snow-white, powdered wig and the sweet face, whose shadows were particularly pure and transparent.

  “In that school for the sons of noblemen it was the foolish custom,” said his uncle, “for all pupils to have their portraits painted as mementoes, and, in such round plaques, these would then be hung up in a number of places, in the corridors, the entrance halls and even in the main rooms. The pupils themselves bought the frames for them. Your father was always vain and had himself painted. I was much more good-looking than him and I didn’t sit for one. When the school closed down, I bought the picture for here.”

  Victor had no recollection of his father, nor of his mother, for they had both died—first his mother and then very soon after his father—when he was very little. Now he stood in front of the picture of the one to whom he owed his life. A feeling gradually entered the soft heart of the youth
, the feeling that orphans may often have when, while others have their parents standing before them in the flesh, they stand in front of mere pictures of them. It is a feeling rich with deep melancholy and yet one that also gives some bitter-sweet comfort. The picture was a reminder of a time long gone when the subject had still been happy, young and full of hope, just as the boy looking at it now was still young and brimful of limitless optimism for this world. Victor couldn’t picture this same man as he may have looked later as he stood by his cradle in a dark, simple coat and with a haggard, careworn face. Even less could he imagine him then lying on his sickbed and how, when he was dead and as white as his shroud, he was put in a narrow coffin and lowered into the grave. All that had come to pass long before, when Victor was not yet aware of the impressions of the outer world, or wasn’t able to retain these beyond one hour. He now stared up at the unusually charming, open and carefree face of the boy and thought that, if he were still alive, he would now be old, too, like his uncle—but he couldn’t imagine him looking like his uncle, that he couldn’t imagine. As he continued to stand there awhile, the decision arose in him that, should he find himself on better terms with his uncle than now, he would put forward the request that his uncle make him a gift of the picture, for it surely couldn’t mean that much to him, having it here as he did in this untidy room, where it hung all alone on the wall, its frame gathering dust.

 

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