Death in Venice and Other Stories (36 page)

Nor does the ground, for its part, bear much resemblance to that of a forest. It consists of gravel, clay, even sand, and hardly seems arable. Within certain limits, however, it is arable to the point of lavishness. A lush carpet of tall grass thrives there, which sometimes takes on the dry, sharp-edged form of beach grass, lying flat against the ground in winter like hay. Sometimes it gives way to reeds, though elsewhere—interspersed with hemlock, nettles, coltsfoot, all manner of creeping flora, overgrown thistles and tender young shoots where pheasants and other wild fowl take cover—it swells in soft, thick, abundant waves to touch the knotted roots of the trees. Wild grape and vine-hop twist their way up from these swells of ground cover like broad-leafed spiral garlands, and even in winter their stems remain firmly wound round the tree trunks like tough, uncuttable wire.

The place is neither forest nor park—it's a magic garden, no more, no less. I will defend the appellation, even though what we're talking about is little more than a barren, constricted bit of nature conducive only to stunted growth, which could be summed up botanically with a few simple technical terms. The ground is rolling, constantly on the rise and fall, and as a result every vista it presents is pleasantly self-contained and sheltered on all sides. Were the woods miles wide—as wide as they are long—instead of only a hundred or so paces from middle to edge, you could hardly feel more hidden, enveloped and secluded. The ear alone is reminded, by the sound of running water from the west, of the proximity of the trusty river, which remains concealed from view . . . The ravines in that direction brim with elderberry, privet, jasmine and buckthorn underbrush, so that on humid June days one's lungs can hardly contain the
scent. There are also hollows, mere gravel pits along whose sides and bottom nothing grows but a couple of willow saplings and a bit of dried-out sage.

The entire forest zone never ceases to have a peculiar effect on me, though I've visited it every day for a number of years. For some reason my fantasy is excited by the great number of ash trees that so remind me of giant ferns, by the twisting creepers and bedded reeds, by the dampness and aridity, by the scrawny jungle of underbrush. The ultimate impression is a bit like being transported to a landscape from another period of the earth's history or walking on the bottom of the sea—a comparison with a grain of truth to it, since many places around here were once covered by water, especially those hollows, now rectangular grass basins with naturally sown nurseries of wild ash, that serve as pastures for sheep. One such basin is located directly behind my house.

The wilderness is crisscrossed by paths, some mere stretches of trampled grass, others dirt trails clearly never planned but rather born of use, without any clear indication of who the people might have been who walked so often this way, for it is an unsettling rarity when Baushan and I do encounter anyone else. Whenever this happens, my companion will stop dead in his tracks and let out a single muffled yelp that quite accurately expresses my feelings about the intrusion as well. Even on beautiful Sunday afternoons in summer, when hordes of people come streaming from the city for a stroll (it's always a couple of degrees cooler in these parts than elsewhere), we can normally wander along these inner paths in complete solitude. The others don't know about the paths, and what's more, the water, the river, has its usual allure. Pressing as close as it can up to water's edge, up to the very edge if possible (i.e., if the river isn't flooded), the great mass of humanity hurries out into the landscape and returns again at nightfall. At most we'll stumble across a pair of lovers camped out in the bushes, their defiant yet timid animal eyes staring out from their nest, as though challenging us to raise some objection to their going about their business in
this out-of-the-way spot. This we silently decline to do by turning off to one side, Baushan with his characteristic indifference toward everything that doesn't bring with it the scent of game—I with an utterly blank expression that withholds judgment and never betrays the slightest indication of either approval or reproach.

The paths are not my only means for conveying myself through my little park. Said location also has
streets
, or to be more precise, provisions for streets, which either previously were streets or were to have been streets and which—God willing—may yet still become streets. The explanation is this. Traces of a groundbreaking shovel and an idealistic entrepreneurial spirit make themselves felt far beyond the developed portion of our area, the little villa colony. The ambition was broad, the planning bold. The corporation that acquired the property ten or fifteen years ago intended something different—namely, bigger—for both the land and themselves than the handful of villas to which the settlement would eventually be restricted. Scores of building lots were made available, and one kilometer further downstream everything stood ready—as indeed it still does—to accommodate purchasers, enthusiasts of the sedentary life. Extravagance obviously ruled those initial board meetings. Not content with shoring up the riverbanks, constructing an adjacent boardwalk and planting a few trees, the planners extended their cultivating hand deep into the forest, clearing land, laying down gravel and partitioning the wilderness with streets—a few running lengthwise, more laterally—grandly envisioned streets of splendor, or at least the outlines of such streets in coarse gravel with indications of curbs and broad public sidewalks. Upon them, however, no public ever treads save Baushan and me, he on the sturdy leather of his four paws, I in my hobnailed boots to combat the gravel. The villas that according to the development corporation's calculations and hopes were to be crowding these streets have refused to materialize, despite my setting good example and building my house here early on. The additional villas have refused, I say, to materialize at any
time during the ten or fifteen intervening years, and thus it's no wonder that a certain malaise has settled over the region and that steadfast resistance toward further expenditures or even the completion of the original grand designs now holds sway in the company bosom.

Nonetheless, enough progress
was
made for these uninhabited streets to have been given proper names, just like any within the city limits or suburbs, and I would love to know who the dreamer and historically minded literary connoisseur was among the developers who thought them up. There's a
Gellert
-, an
Opitz
-, a
Fleming
-, a
Bürger
- and even an
Adalbert
-
Stifter
-
Straße
, upon which it seems especially fitting for me to walk in my hobnailed boots. Signposts, similar to those one might find in suburbs, have been stuck in the ground at every intersection, and attached to them are the signs themselves, blue enamel signs with white letters, as is customary in these parts. Alas, they aren't in very good condition. Too long they've designated mere sketches of streets where no one actually wants to live, so that they, as much as anything, now embody the local atmosphere of malaise, fiasco and arrested development. Neglected, with no one bearing responsibility for their maintenance or replacement, they stand in disrepair, and the rain and the sun have taken a heavy toll. Much of their enamel is cracked, and rust has eaten away the white letters, often leaving nothing but brown flecks or yawning gaps with unpleasantly jagged edges, so that the street names are difficult to read. One of them in particular presented a puzzle when I first came here and began to explore the area. It was an exceptionally long sign on which the word
Straße
was undamaged. In the name itself, however, which (as I said) was, or rather had been, quite long, most of the letters were illegible. The number of rust spots revealed how many of them there were supposed to be, but nothing could be made out beside half of an
S
at the beginning, an
e
somewhere in the middle and another
e
at the end. That was too little for my wits to go on; the equation had too many variables. For quite a while I stood, hands behind my back, staring up,
studying this long sign. Then I continued with Baushan along the sidewalk. Yet even as I imagined I was thinking about something else entirely, my subconscious was working, searching for the mystery name, and suddenly it hit me—I stopped dead in my tracks, then hurried back and repositioned myself before the sign, testing my hypothesis. Yes, indeed, it fit. That was the solution. I was walking down
Shakespearestraße
.

These are the perfect signs for such streets and the perfect streets for such signs—dreamlike and fantastically dilapidated. The streets run in every direction through the forest they've invaded, but the forest doesn't stand idly by for decades, allowing them to remain untouched until the settlers finally arrive. Instead it prepares to
close
, since anything hardy enough to grow here isn't afraid of a little gravel. Accustomed to such soil, purple-headed thistles, blue sage, white willow bushes and young ash seedlings have sprouted up undaunted over every surface, even the sidewalks. There's no doubt about it. The park streets with the poetic names are being overrun by weeds and reclaimed by the brush so that, lamentably or not, in another ten years an
Opitz
- or
Flemingstraße
will have become impassable and will have for all practical purposes ceased to exist. For the time being, though, there's no reason to complain, since, in the eyes of a painter, or at least a romantic, no streets in the world could be more beautiful than these in their current state. There's nothing so delightful—so long as you have a sturdy pair of shoes against the gravel—as to amble through the solitude of this unfinished place or to let your eye wander from the wild brush at its bottom to the small-leafed, damp-loving trees that frame its horizons. These are trees as painted by a certain master from Alsace three hundred years ago . . . What am I saying?
As
painted? They are the very trees. He was here, he knew this area, no doubt he made studies of it, and if the romantic developer who named my park streets hadn't restricted himself exclusively to literature, one of the rusty signs might well have been deciphered with the name Claude Lorraine.

With that my description of the middle forest realm is complete. The eastern slope realm, too, possesses considerable appeal, not only for me, but Baushan as well, for reasons that will follow shortly. You might call it the brook zone, since that body of water lends the area a pastoral charm and, with its picturesque beds of forget-me-nots, makes a nice contrast to the opposite zone of the river, whose rush is also faintly audible here whenever there's a west wind. At the end of the first of the manmade streets, which run from the poplar lane to the slope like breakwaters between grassy hollows and parcels of forest, there's a steep path, used by the children in winter for sledding, down into the lower-lying areas. The brook begins where it levels off, and both man and dog enjoy walking along the surrounding slope with its varied terrain, either on the right or left bank, depending on our mood. To the left there is an expanse of pasture dotted with trees. A subsistence farm as in the country is located there, the backs of its agricultural buildings looking out at us. Sheep graze and tear at the clay ground, tended by a none-too-clever young girl in a red skirt who screams harsh commands at the top of her lungs, hands braced against her knees, enraged at her charges' disobedience yet scared to death of the large, majestically thick-seeming ram with his great wool coat. He does as he pleases, taking orders from no one. The child saves her most blood-curdling shrieks, however, for those occasions when Baushan's appearance panics the flock. This happens regularly, despite Baushan's innocent intentions, sheep being a matter of profound indifference to him. Indeed, he takes no more notice of them than of the air. Sometimes he even tries to forestall new outbreaks of foolishness by exaggerating his disdain and contemptuously skirting their territory, for although to my nose their smell is strong enough (though not unpleasant), theirs is not the scent of game. As a result Baushan has no interest whatsoever in chasing them. Nonetheless, all he has to do is make a sudden movement or simply appear on the scene, and in a flash the entire flock—whose individual members were
theretofore spread out grazing and bleating peacefully in voices of various pitch—dashes off
en masse
in one direction, back to back, leaving the dimwitted girl to cry out after them, alone, bent over at the knees, until her voice cracks and her eyes bulge. At this, Baushan will only look up at me as though to say: “You tell me whether I'm at fault or in any way responsible.”

Once, however, something different happened, something far more disconcerting and far stranger than panic. One of the sheep—an ordinary specimen of medium size and average appearance for a sheep, with thin upturned lips, reminiscent of a smile, which gave it a look of malicious stupidity—apparently fell head over heels in love with Baushan and refused to budge from his side. It simply followed him: it broke from the flock, left the pasture and, with its silent idiotic smile, stuck to Baushan no matter which way he turned. Whenever he left the path, it followed; whenever he started to run, it took off too; whenever he stopped short, it did the same, directly behind him, always with that same inscrutable smile. Dismay and embarrassed confusion spread across Baushan's face: his position was not at all enviable, for there was no rhyme or reason, no better or worse, to it. It was just absurd, and neither he nor I had ever experienced the like of it. The sheep strayed further and further from the fold, seemingly without concern. It kept following the exasperated Baushan, visibly determined not to leave his vicinity no matter how far he went or where. Not making a sound, Baushan clung to my leg, less afraid—there was no reason to be—than ashamed of the indignity of his position. Finally, as though he had had enough, he stopped, looked back and growled menacingly. The sheep then let out a bleat that sounded like malicious human laughter, and this so terrified poor Baushan that he ran away with his tail between his legs, the sheep bounding comically behind.