Death in Venice and Other Stories (37 page)

In the meantime we had come quite a way from the flock, and the dimwitted little girl was screaming bloody murder, bending not only her hands but sometimes her face to her knees, looking in the distance like some sort
of hunchbacked lunatic. At that point a milkmaid came running up in an apron, having either heard the screaming or been otherwise alerted to the situation. With one hand carrying a pitchfork and the other restraining an unfettered breast that flopped back and forth with every stride, she ran breathlessly up to us and set about trying to herd the sheep, which had slowed down to keep pace with Baushan, back where it belonged. Her efforts met with no success. Although the sheep did have to spring sideways to avoid her pitchfork, with a single pivot it was again on Baushan's trail, and no power in the world seemed sufficient to make it desist. Thus, seeing that only one thing would help, I reversed direction. We all went back together, I with Baushan at my side, then the sheep, followed by the milkmaid with the pitchfork, while the hunchbacked little girl in the red skirt stamped her feet and screamed at us across the way. But it wasn't enough to return to the flock—we had to see the job through to completion. We had to go back to the farm itself, to the sheep pen, whose broad door the milkmaid rolled back before us with a great display of strength. We filed in, and once we all were safely inside, the three of us had to slip nimbly back out and slam the pen door in the gullible sheep's face so that it couldn't escape. Only then could Baushan and I take leave of the grateful milkmaid and resume our walk—although Baushan continued to sulk and act humiliated the whole way home.

So much for the sheep. To the left of the agricultural buildings is an extensive
Schrebergarten
colony, reminiscent of a cemetery, with pergolas, chapel-shaped sheds and tiny private garden lots. As a whole, it's quite secluded. Only gardeners who own lots can gain entrance through the lattice gate that serves as an entrance, but every so often I get a glimpse of some fellow with his sleeves rolled up digging around in a nine-pace-square vegetable patch, looking for all the world as though he were digging his own grave. Further along there are more open fields, which extend to the edge of the middle forest region and are shot through with molehills, although they
play home not only to moles but field mice—a fact I note with an eye toward Baushan and his various hunting predilections.

On the other side—that is, to the right—brook and slope stretch out as far as the eye can see, the terrain of the latter, as mentioned, changing constantly. Initially, it tends toward gloominess, rarely getting any sun through its cover of spruce trees. A bit further on, it becomes a sandlot that reflects the sun's warm rays, then a pit of gravel, and finally an avalanche of bricks, as though somewhere higher up a house had been demolished and the worthless remains simply tossed down the hillside to form a temporary impediment to the brook's natural flow. The brook, however, won't be impeded for long; its waters collect and spill over the top, tinted red by brick dust, dyeing the grass on the surrounding banks red as well. They then flow on clearer and brighter for this interruption, sunlight glimmering here and there over their surface.

I love brooks as much as I do all bodies of water, from the ocean to the tiniest reed-overgrown puddle. If my ear happens to catch the hushed splash and babble of a brook in the distance—for example, in the mountains during summertime—I will follow the liquid sounds a long way if necessary in order to find the source, to see the sequestered yet talkative son of the hills and make his acquaintance face to face. Especially beautiful are the mountain brooks that thunder down brightly between pine trees and cliff terraces and form ice green pools, before dissolving into whiteness and plummeting straight down to the next level. I also like the sight of flatland brooks, whether they be so shallow as barely to cover their bed of slick-polished silver pebbles or as deep as small rivers, swelling to full strength under the protection of the overhanging willows on their banks, their current quicker in the middle than on the sides. What stroller wouldn't follow running water if given the choice? The attraction of water to the human animal is a kind of natural and sympathetic affinity. After all, man is a child of water: nine-tenths of our bodies consist of it,
and at a certain stage in our prenatal development we too possess gills. As far as my person is concerned, I can say that the sight of water in all its forms represents by far and away the most immediate and moving way of enjoying nature. Indeed, for me it's the only occasion of true contemplation and self-forgetting in which my own limited existence actually dissolves into the universal. The sight of it—the sight of the sea, for example, either at rest or battering the coast—transports me into a state of such profound organic dreaming, such utter remoteness from self that I lose all sense of time, and the concept of boredom ceases to have any meaning, as hours of unity in and company with it pass in what seems like minutes. I can stand for as long as you want leaning over the rail of a bridge spanning a brook, lost in the sight of the stream, the foam and the current, never letting that other stream flowing around and within me—that of rapidly elapsing time—make me anxious or impatient. In light of this aquatic affinity, it's important that the narrow area where I live is surrounded on two sides by water.

The brook at hand is one of the simple, truehearted kind, nothing special, cheerfully average in character. Naive and bright as glass it flows, incapable of falsehood or duplicity, far removed from any murky pretense toward depth. It is shallow and clear and makes no attempt in its innocence to hide the discarded tin cans or the remains of a tennis shoe imbedded in the green slime at its bottom. It is deep enough anyway to harbor cute, extraordinarily nimble silver-gray fish that flee in broad zigzags at our approach. In many places it swells out to form small pools, and lovely willow trees line its heel, one of which I especially enjoy looking at as I pass by. This particular willow is actually located on the slope, that is, at some distance from the water, but one of its branches reaches down longingly toward the brook, which it has succeeded in reaching, so that the flowing water gently encircles the silvery leaves at its very tip. There it stands enjoying the physical contact.

It's nice to walk here, gently kissed by the warm
summer breeze. On hot days Baushan usually wades into the brook to cool his belly (he never allows the water to get any higher if he can help it). He will stand there, ears flat, an expression of pure virtue on his face, letting the water flow by and around him. Then he will trot back to me to shake himself off—an activity that some obscure conviction insists must take place in my vicinity, even though the vigor of his shaking splatters me with water and mud. It does no good to shoo him away with harsh words or my walking stick. There's no dissuading him from what he considers natural, proper and necessary.

The brook flows on toward the setting sun in the direction of a small village that dominates the landscape between the forest and the northern slope, at whose entrance is an inn. There, the brook again forms a pond, in which kneeling village women wash their laundry. There's a bridge, and crossing it, you come to a road that cuts from the village to the city between the edge of the forest and the outer fields. If you veer off to the right, however, you can return in no time via a likewise well-trodden route through the trees to the river.

With that we've come to the river zone, since the river itself now lies, green and foaming white, before us. It's really nothing more than a mountain stream, but its perpetual rush—more or less audible throughout the region and here absolutely dominant—fills the ear and provides an acceptable substitute for the sublime crash of the ocean surf, which just isn't available here. It is often joined by the incessant squawking of countless gulls that circle around the drainpipes in search of food throughout the fall, winter and first part of spring, until the season allows them to resume residence on the lakes higher up. The same is true of wild and semidomesticated ducks, which also spend the colder months here in the vicinity of the city. They float on the swells, yielding to the river's drop, spinning round, rocking back and forth, taking flight only at the last second to escape the rapids by gliding back into the water further upstream . . .

The riverbank is divided into the following segments.
Along the edge of the forest, there is a wide gravel surface extending the oft-mentioned poplar lane approximately one kilometer further downstream to the ferry house, which will be discussed shortly and beyond which the riverbank is totally overgrown with brush. There's no mystery as to the story behind this desolate stretch of gravel. It's the first and foremost of the manmade boulevards, grandiosely conceived by the development corporation as a most scenically landscaped esplanade, an elegant carriage route where gentlemen on horseback were to approach the doors of spit-polished landau coaches and exchange dalliances with smiling ladies leaning back into cushions. That much is announced in dilapidated fashion by a large, crooked board of wood at the landing, the ultimate destination of such carriage processions. It makes known in thick letters that this corner lot, a prime location for a park café or better-class establishment, is up for sale . . . That it is and always will be, for instead of a park café with tables, scurrying waiters and drink-slurping patrons, a crooked wooden sign looms there—a gradually and dishearteningly sinking offer with no takers—while the promenade remains nothing but a desolate stretch of the coarsest gravel, almost as thickly overgrown with brush willow and purple sage as
Opitz
- or
Flemingstraße
.

Parallel to the promenade, closer to the river, runs a narrow gravel ridge with overgrown grassy embankments. Telegraph poles stick up everywhere out of it, but nonetheless I sometimes enjoy walking up there, first because it offers a change of pace and also because the gravel offers a relatively clean, if arduous route in rainy weather, when the clay path below looks unpassable. This path—the actual promenade—continues for hours downstream before finally terminating in numerous little unmaintained forest trails. It is planted with young trees, maple and birch, toward the water and is lined on the other side by the mighty natives of the region—willows, aspens and white poplars of colossal dimension. The river embankment is steep, dropping off considerably toward the water, and is protected with ingenious
withe fortifications, as well as concrete reinforcements below, against the floodwaters that encroach upon it once or twice a year, when the mountain snows melt or heavy rains pour down for several consecutive days. Here and there it's outfitted with wooden steps, almost ladders, so that you can climb down quite easily to the riverbed proper, that is, to the mostly dry, approximately six-meter-wide secondary gravel riverbed, for this relatively large stream changes size like many smaller examples of its kind. Sometimes, depending on the water levels further upstream, it consists of little more than a greenish trickle—barely covering the stones on which gulls stand as though on the water's surface itself—only to turn, under other conditions, almost dangerous, becoming a torrent. It then swells out to flood its entire secondary bed, raising a terrible din, sweeping away in tight spirals all sorts of foreign material—wicker baskets, shrubbery, even dead cats—and constantly threatening to break its banks and go on a rampage. Thus, even the secondary riverbed is protected against flooding by a series of diagonally positioned breakwaters of woven withe. It is covered with reeds, marram and the region's premier form of plant life, purple sage, and is always passable, thanks to a strip of flat stone that forms a quay at the river's extreme outermost edge and affords still another possibility—indeed my one of choice—for injecting variety into my walks. Its hard stone may not be all that pleasant a surface for the foot, but the immediate proximity of the water more than compensates, and occasionally beyond the quay one can even walk on sand. Yes, there's sand between the gravel and the reeds, a bit muddy perhaps, not so sublimely pure as the ocean variety, but genuine sand nonetheless. You can take a walk on the beach—down here by the edge of the river, completely hidden from view—and lack nothing, neither the rushing of the waves nor the cry of gulls nor that intoxicating uniformity that swallows both time and space and that is the very opposite of boredom. Everywhere you can hear the rush of horizontal rapids, and halfway toward the ferry house this is joined by the
splash of a waterfall from a diagonally terminating feeder canal on the opposite bank. That mass of falling water is convex, clear and glassy, like the body of a fish, and its foot is constantly boiling and bubbling.

The spot is truly lovely. When the skies are clear, the skiff that serves as a ferry will fly a decorative banner—be it to celebrate the weather or some other festive occasion. There's more than one skiff here, but only the ferry is attached to a wire cable connected by pulley to a second, thicker one stretched across the river. The current itself is what pushes the vessel, the ferryman's hand on the tiller doing the rest. The ferryman lives a short distance to the rear of the upper path with his wife and child in the ferry house, which has a vegetable garden and a chicken coop and which, no doubt, comes with the job. It's a kind of dwarf villa, a cheap and capricious construction with little oriels and balconies and what appear to be two rooms in both the up- and downstairs. I quite enjoy sitting on the bench between the upper path and the ferryman's yard, with Baushan squatting on my foot and his chickens scurrying around me, jerking their heads forward with every step. More often than not, his rooster will perch next to me on the backrest, its green
bersaglieri
tail feathers hanging down behind us, one of its red eyes mustering me from the side. I watch the activity of the ferry, which can't exactly be called feverish, or even lively, taking place only between long stretches of idleness. Therefore I enjoy it all the more when I spy a man here or a basket-carrying woman there who needs to be brought across. The poetic “Ahoy there!” remains as humanly compelling today as in olden times, even when it, as here, takes on more modern, technologically advanced forms. On both sides of the river, a pair of wooden staircases—one for arrivals, one for departures—curves around the embankments down to the landings, and there is an electric bell beside each of the entrances. Hence, when someone appears on the opposite bank and stands there peering over the water, he no longer cups his hands and calls out, as he once did, but merely approaches the bell, stretches out an arm
and presses the button. It then rings shrilly in the ferryman's villa. That's today's “Ahoy there!” but even so, there's something poetic about it. The man stands there waiting and peering; immediately after the bell commences its shrill ringing, the ferryman emerges from his official house, as though he had been doing nothing but standing or sitting in a chair by the door, poised for the signal. He emerges, and something in his walk makes it seem as though the pressing of the button itself has wound up the machinery within him, as in a shooting gallery, where a direct hit will cause the door of some little house to spring open and a figure—a shepherd girl or a sentry—to pop out. Without haste, swinging his arms in an even rhythm, the ferryman walks through his yard, over the path and down the steps to the river; he pushes the ferry off and steers while the little pulley runs along the wire and the boat is drawn cross-stream. On the other side he holds the vessel steady for the stranger who, having safely navigated the current, hands him a small coin, happily bounds up the steps and disappears to the right or left. Sometimes when the ferryman is indisposed or otherwise detained by urgent household business, his wife or even his child will come and pick up the stranger, for they can do his job as well he can. So, for that matter, could I, for the office of the ferryman is easy and requires no special skill or training. He should count himself double blessed to call this sinecure with its dwarf villa his own. Any idiot could replace him, and he knows it, always behaving with corresponding humility and gratitude. On the way back to his house, he never forgets to greet me, sitting there between my dog and his rooster, with a well-mannered provincial
Grüß Gott
, from which one can tell he has no desire to make enemies.