Tales of the German Imagination from the Brothers Grimm to Ingeborg Bachmann (Penguin Classics)

by Unknown

  After several cheerful chats, everyone gathered round the table standing in the middle of the tent. Refreshing fruits and wine in cut-glass goblets sparkled on the blinding white surface of the tablecloth; big bushels of flowers in silver vases, amongst which pretty girls’ faces peered forth, emitted a beguiling scent; while outside, the last flicker of twilight shone golden on the lawn and the mirror-smooth stream that flowed by. Florio had almost inadvertently attached himself to the lovely badminton player. She recognized him again and sat in timid silence, but her long, nervous lashes made a bad job of hiding the glow of her dark looks.

  It was decided in the circle that everyone would sing the praises of his beloved in a little improvised ditty. The light strains of music that wafted through the tent like a spring breeze, only grazing the surface of life without plumbing its depths, moved the revellers to many a merry image round the table. Florio was beside himself with joy, his heart aflutter with pleasant thoughts, all foolish fear drained from his soul, and peered out through the lights and flowers at the lovely landscape fading in the last glimmer of twilight. And when his turn came to sing a toast, he raised his goblet in the air and sang:

  Every young swain his sweetheart gladly names,

  But I alone am left out of the game,

  For lest my beloved feel the same,

  It would not do by a stranger to be named.

  So must I let this wave of passion pass me by,

  And on spring’s beachhead dry out and die.

  At these words his lovely dining companion flashed him a gambolling grin and dropped her gaze again as soon as their eyes met. But his song had been so heartfelt and the look on his handsome face so intense that she put up no resistance when he pressed his hot lips to hers. ‘Bravo, bravo!’ cried many a merry gent, whereupon a gay, but guileless, laughter erupted round the table. Flustered and confused, Florio dropped his glass; and, blushing crimson, the lovely object of his kiss peered down at her lap, her face looking indescribably beautiful among the flowers.

  So every gay blade merrily selected his beloved. Only Fortunato seemed to belong to no one or to all and looked almost lonesome in this comely chaos. He was boisterously merry and some might have called him downright cocky, completely letting loose, as he did, with wildly alternating bursts of jesting, seriousness and tomfoolery, had the look in his crystal-clear eyes not suddenly turned almost alarmingly thoughtful. Florio had firmly resolved to tell him outright at table of the affection and respect he had long harboured for him. But he couldn’t manage it today; all of his quiet attempts slid off the singer’s unyielding merriment as off a duck’s back. He simply could not fathom him.

  Outside, meanwhile, everything had grown silent and solemn, lone stars appeared between the darkening crests of the trees, the river purled more noisily through the cooling dark. Then at last came Fortunato’s turn to hold forth. He jumped up, reached for his guitar and sang:

  How sweet the sound

  That through my bosom wafts!

  To the clouds and beyond,

  Will it lift me aloft?

  High as a mountain my spirit soars

  Watching life unfurl,

  With all my heart I do adore

  All that’s lovely in this world.

  Yes, Bacchus, I know,

  How godly you seem!

  I understand your glow,

  The lightness of your dreams.

  A wreath of roses in your hair,

  The picture of eternal youth,

  The soothing twinkle of your stare,

  Eyes flickering with sweet truth.

  Is it love or devotion

  That fills your heart with glee?

  Whatever the emotion,

  Spring laughs and you agree.

  Dame Venus, glad goddess,

  So frivolous and fair,

  Rosy dawn is your bodice,

  The world is your boudoir.

  On yon sunny height,

  Your courtiers at hand,

  Winged cherubs alight

  At your command.

  Like heralds they clamour

  And gaily invite

  In gilded dreams of amour

  To visit the queen of delight.

  The ladies turn their heads,

  The knights fall to their knees,

  And make of the field a flower bed,

  The fair blossoms all buzzing with bees.

  And every youth with soft caress

  Woos the beauty on his arm,

  And so like some Liebesfest

  The merry company moves on.

  Here he suddenly shifted manner and tone and continued:

  The music faints,

  The ladies look perplexed,

  Nature’s drawn with paler paint,

  The gentlemen grow vexed.

  With a heavenly clamour

  Serenity is wrenched,

  Gone the flush of amour,

  The gardens and fields are drenched.

  And there amidst the bacchanal

  I glimpse a lad so pale!

  Silent as a funeral pall,

  From whence, I wonder, did he hail?

  With blossoming poppies

  His head is bound,

  And braided with lilies

  He wears like a crown.

  Like a kiss he brings

  From the blue beyond

  A wink from the winged

  And a wave of the wand.

  Holding a flame

  Flickering bright,

  ‘Who, say your name,

  With me will alight?’

  And sometimes in play

  He turns the torch around,

  And the whole world fades

  Without a blessed sound.

  No sooner do the blossoms sink,

  The earth become a withered thing,

  Than the night sky begins to blink

  With its nocturnal flowering.

  Oh heaven-sent boy,

  A blessing for the eye!

  I’ll leave behind the hoi polloi

  And follow you on high.

  Why linger here when heaven calls?

  Aloft, aloft, I’ll go!

  The gates are opening to that great hall

  Oh Father, don’t leave me below!

  Fortunato went silent and so did everyone else, as the merry din died down outside and, little by little, the music faded, the crowd dispersed and all the magic of the moment gave way to the immeasurable majesty of the starry sky and the mighty murmur of the river and the woods. Then a tall, slender knight, whose lavish attire cast a greenish-golden shimmer on the forest’s flickering light, stepped into the tent. A wild, fiery look shot out of the deep hollows of his eyes, his face was handsome, but pale and expressionless. His sudden appearance made everyone think immediately with an involuntary shudder of the silent guest in Fortunato’s song. But, following a fleeting bow, he hastened to the host’s buffet and, practically panting with thirst, his pale lips trembling, in deep draughts gulped down a goblet of dark red wine.

  Florio gave a sudden start when this curious character turned to him, of all those present, and welcomed him as an old acquaintance. Flabbergasted and racking his brains, Florio studied him from head to foot, as he could not for the life of him remember ever having seen him before. But the knight was uncommonly talkative and spoke a great deal about certain occurrences from Florio’s past. He was, moreover, so familiar with the character of Florio’s native clime, with the garden and those homely haunts the young man still cherished from his childhood, that Florio soon came to terms with this dark soul.

  But for the others, Donati – that was the knight’s name – did not seem to fit in. A strangely unsettling disturbance, the source of which no one could identify, seeped into the atmosphere. And since, in the meantime, night had finally fallen, the party soon broke up.

  Then a wondrous play of shadows erupted outside, of carriages, horses, servants and high-hanging lanterns casting strange glimmers on the nearby water�
�s surface, between the trees and the tangle of fleeing figures. In this wild illumination Donati looked much more pale and ghostlike than before. The beautiful young girl with the wreath of flowers in her hair kept casting fearful, sidelong looks at him. And when he drew near and with chivalrous gallantry helped her out of the tent, she meekly recoiled, pressing back against Florio, who had stayed behind, and with a fast-beating heart lifted the lovely girl into her saddle. Now that everyone was ready to ride off, she flashed him another friendly look from her elegant perch, and soon the entire glittering gathering was gobbled up by the night.

  Florio felt strange suddenly finding himself alone on that wide empty meadow with Donati and the singer. With his guitar under his arm, the latter walked back and forth before the tent at the water’s edge, and seemed to grow once again reflective, while he plucked a few notes that hung in the air, lulling the silent meadow to sleep. Then all of a sudden he stopped. A curious malaise seemed to spread over his otherwise open, friendly expression, and he impatiently made ready to leave.

  Whereupon all three mounted their horses and rode together to the nearby city. Fortunato did not say a word along the way, while Donati gushed forth in a flood of all the more friendly, well-spoken and eloquent words; Florio rode silently like a dreaming girl between them, still taken by the lingering effects of love.

  When they came to the city gate, Donati’s horse, which had already shied away from several passers-by, suddenly reared almost upright and refused to enter. A sputtering flash of anger almost twisted the rider’s expression, and a wild, half-muttered curse passed from his fluttering lips, which made Florio start with surprise, for such ways did not accord in the least with the knight’s otherwise refined and sober respectability. But the knight soon composed himself again. ‘I wanted to accompany you to the inn,’ he said, turning to Florio with a smile and with his customary grace, ‘but my horse won’t have it, as you can see. I live in a villa just outside town, and hope to see you there very soon.’ Whereupon he bowed in the saddle, and the horse, hardly still manageable, consumed by an incomprehensible haste and fear, took off like lightning, dashing into the darkness, the wind whizzing behind it.

  ‘Thank God,’ cried Fortunato, ‘that the night gobbled him up again! He really did appear to me like one of those dun-coloured, misshapen night butterflies escaped from a frightful nightmare that swarm at dawn and with their long whiskers and ghastly big eyes look as if they had a face.’ Florio, who had already developed a feeling of friendship for Donati, expressed his surprise at such a harsh judgement. But, irritated all the more by this astounding gentleness, the singer kept on with his merry harangue, calling the knight, to Florio’s chagrin, a lunatic, a lovesick swain, a melancholy braggart.

  Engaged in such chatter, they finally reached their lodgings and each one soon went off to his rooms.

  Florio flung himself, fully dressed, in bed, but he could not fall asleep. His soul was still stirred up, still pulsing and resounding and humming with all the impressions of the day. Soon the sound of opening and closing doors subsided and only an occasional voice could still be heard, until finally, house, city and field sank into deep silence; then it seemed to him as if he were coasting with swan-white sails over a moonlit sea. The gentle ripples struck the side of his craft, sirens reared out of the deep, all of them resembling the lovely girl with the wreath of flowers. She sang such a wondrous, sad and never-ending song that he felt he was about to drown in wistfulness. The boat tipped further and further to the side, and slowly, unnoticeably, sank deeper and deeper. Then he awakened with a start.

  He leapt out of bed and opened the window. The inn was located on the outskirts of the town, and his gaze took in a wide, silent swath of hills, gardens and valleys all bathed in moonlight. Outside too, everywhere he turned, the sway of the trees and the rush of the streams still seemed to preserve lingering and echoing traces of last night’s atmosphere, as though the entire region sang out softly, like the sirens he’d heard in his slumber. He could not withstand the temptation. He grabbed the guitar that Fortunato had left behind, walked out of his room and stepped quietly through the silent house. The downstairs door was just leant shut; a servant lay asleep on the doorstep. So he managed to slip out, unnoticed, and ambled cheerfully through wine gardens, down empty alleys and past cottages, whose inhabitants were all fast asleep, ever further out into the country.

  Looking out between the neighbouring tracts of land, he saw the river running through the valley; many glimmering white castles clustered here and there sat like sleeping swans in the sea of silence. Then he sang with a merry voice:

  Come let us take a night-time stroll,

  A trusty zither in hand!

  And strumming, first the hills extol,

  Then hail the heavens and the silent land.

  The night world is a different place

  From the valley where I whiled away the day in bliss.

  And in the woods, the moon now shows its face

  Through the treetops, blowing its cool kisses.

  The vineyard’s deserted, the vintner gone.

  The river’s ripple is all we hear,

  And all the lusty goings-on

  Forgotten, but for a silver tear.

  And nightingales that nest in dreams

  Awaken, trilling, in the breeze.

  A whispering, or so it seems,

  Stirs memory in the towering trees.

  But joy can’t just evaporate.

  And of the day’s delirious fest

  All memory did not abate,

  There’s still a secret singing in my breast.

  And gladly do I strum these strings

  For you, dear girl, across the stream,

  The distant ear for whom I sing,

  Who knows the dreamer and his dream.

  He had to laugh at himself, since by the end of his song he had no idea whom he was serenading. It wasn’t the charming girl with the wreath of flowers in her hair. The music outside the tents, the dream in his room, and his heart still infused with the charmed notes – the dream and the girl’s graceful features had imperceptibly and wondrously metamorphosed her image into something far more beautiful, bigger and more resplendent, the like of which he’d never seen before.

  Lost in thought, he wandered on until he came unexpectedly on a large fish pond ringed by tall trees. The moon that just rose over the tops of the trees shed a sharp light on a marble statue of Venus set there on a stone pedestal at the shore, as though the goddess had just stepped out of the waves, and gazed back in enchantment at the reflection of her own loveliness that the drunken glimmer of the water’s surface flashed back amidst the silently blossoming light of the stars rising from the deep. Several swans quietly traced their monotonous circles round the divine image, and a soft rustling emanated from the trees round about.

  Florio stood stock still, as if riveted by his gaze, for the sight of the statue appeared to him like a sudden encounter with the beloved he’d long pined after, like a magical flower sprung from the twilight of his childhood and the dreamy silence of the first days of his youth. The longer he looked the more it seemed to him as if the statue had just then slowly shut its soulful eyes, as if her lips wished to part in a greeting, as though life wafted forth like a sweet warming song from her lovely limbs. He held his eyes shut for a long time, blinded by longing and rapture.

  When he looked up again everything all at once seemed different. The moon hung strangely from behind a cluster of clouds, a brisk wind whipped up dark waves in the pond, and the sculpture of Venus, now so terribly white and motionless, peered at him almost fearfully from the stone hollows of its eyes out of the boundless silence. The young man was overcome by a sense of horror he had never felt before. He rushed off and, walking as fast as he could, without stopping to catch his breath, hastened through gardens and vineyards back towards the silent city; for even the rustle of the trees now sounded to him like a clearly audible whisper, and the tall poplars seemed to be c
lose on his heels with their far-reaching shadows.

  So he returned, visibly shaken, to the inn. The servant still lay asleep on the threshold and jumped up with a start as Florio stepped over him. But Florio slammed the front door shut behind him and only breathed a sigh of relief once he’d reached his room, where he kept walking back and forth a long while before calming down. Then he flung himself back in bed and finally fell asleep, dreaming the strangest dreams.

  The following morning Florio and Fortunato sat at breakfast under the sun-drenched trees in front of the inn. Florio looked paler than usual in the pleasant pall of shade. ‘The morning,’ said Fortunato merrily, ‘is a dashing fellow in the flush of good health, shouting out with joy from the high mountain tops to the sleeping world below, wiping the tears from the flowers and trees, surging, raging and singing. He doesn’t give a hoot for delicate feelings, but gruffly grabs hold of your every limb and laughs in your face if you come out looking pallid, as if you’re still bathed in moonbeams.’ Though he had originally intended to tell the singer about the lovely Venus sculpture, Florio, ashamed of himself, sat there in awkward silence. His night-time stroll had, however, been noticed by the servant, and word of it was probably made public. Laughing, Fortunato continued: ‘Well, if you don’t believe me, just try it for yourself, stand up and say, for instance: oh lovely, precious soul, oh moonlight, you pollen of delicate hearts, etc., and see if that doesn’t make you a laughing stock! And yet I bet you babbled some such stuff more than once last night and no doubt with a straight face.’

  Florio, who until now had always imagined Fortunato as kind and gentle-hearted, was sorely taken aback by the beloved singer’s flippant sport at his expense. He responded abruptly, the tears welling up in his pained eyes: ‘Surely your words don’t bespeak what you feel in your heart, and I ask you never to do that again. But I won’t let you rile me, there are some gentle and lofty feelings that may well need to be veiled, but are surely not shameful, and there is a quiet contentment that must seal itself off from the brash daylight, and only opens its holy calyx to the starry firmament like the night-blossoming flower bed of an angel.’