Читать книгу The Sublime Jester - Ezra S. Brudno - Страница 10

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Sex, however, had not yet played a definite part in his existence. Once when declaiming “Der Taucher” at a school celebration his roving eye caught sight of the pretty daughter of a well known official in the audience and he was so affected by her beauty that speech left him. The teacher, back on the speaker’s platform, endeavored to prompt him, thinking he had forgotten the lines, but to no purpose. Albert’s eyes were riveted upon that beautiful vision and he could not proceed. Now and then he had received other jolts of passion—the convulsive jolts of adolescence—but he had brooded over them for short periods, cherished them for a while, and finally dismissed them from his mind.

Thus several years had passed full of intermittent flitting fancies, emotions that were meaningless to him.

One day a sudden change took place in him. Something had happened that was fixed in his mind. He was conscious of sentiments and feelings that were of the same nature that he had experienced before and yet were different. Prior to this he could not define the strange longings of his being, now they spoke to him in unmistakable terms; the voice was tumultuous; he could not shut it out.

He was passing the Witch’s hut, which stood at the end of the town, close by the Rhine. No one called her by her real name, Graettel, but only by the name of the Witch. She gave potions to lovelorn maidens and exorcised evil spirits from unclean bodies.

He suddenly stopped. For a bare second he imagined a mermaid had leaped to the shore. Surely no mermaid had finer golden hair shimmering with iridescent colors!

Filled with a sense of mystery, strangely mingled with slumbering memories of the past, he took a step nearer the straw-thatched hovel but at the sound of his footsteps the skein of golden hair was lifted as if by an invisible hand and presently he beheld a pair of great dark eyes peering at him. Again he thought it an optic illusion, but the sweet murmurs of the Rhine were in his ears, a thousand legends of the ruins of castles in his brain, the mermaids of folklore in his memory; a forest singer was balancing himself on a bough of the large elm in front of the hut, singing a melody of his own. Then a peal of laughter—the musical laughter of a sweet girlish voice—and the apparition vanished.

Albert was breathing fast, his whole frame aquiver. The next moment he took a step forward and remained standing at the open door. A glance within revealed no change since he had visited here with his nurse in his childhood, and there was but little change without.

He stood at the threshold and peered inside with increased curiosity, seeing no one. It seemed empty save for an unpainted table and a few backless chairs—the same as of old.

A warbling song—a folksong he used to hear in his childhood—reached his ears. It was sung in a minor key, and that in suppressed tones. Soon the melody ceased and the great dark eyes peeped out of the opening of a partition, the body hidden from view.

“Hedwiga!” he cried and stepped inside.

A barefooted girl emerged, her head bent sideways, running a comb through her long reddish golden tresses. She continued combing her hair unconcernedly, a bewitching smile in her eyes.

“Hedwiga, how you have grown!” Albert cried gleefully, staring at her tall, slender form, her thin skirt clinging to her legs “like the wet drapery of a statue.”

Gathering her golden mane in her left hand she tossed it back and, pulling a hair pin from between her lips, fastened it close to the roots, the ends hanging loosely down over her shoulders.

“You have grown, too,” she presently said, looking at him with her large candid eyes. Then she added, “I am already sixteen, going on seventeen.”

“So am I sixteen,” he caught his breath, thrilled at the thought of being the same age as she. “Do you remember me?”

“You are Zippel’s boy (Zippel had been his nurse)—of course, I remember you. Don’t you remember how we used to play in the yard while Aunt Graettel and Zippel talked and talked and talked—”

“And do you remember how we used to play ‘Lost in the woods’?” he reminded her, “and Zippel and your Aunt couldn’t find us, and we lay hidden under the old broken boat, laughing and watching your Aunt and Zippel through the cracks as they ran around and wrung their hands?”

They both laughed merrily. At every stage of life the preceding stage is childhood, reminiscent of things to laugh at.

“Where have you been?” he soon asked her, settling down astride a backless chair.

“With my grandfather near Freiburg—we lived near the Schwarzwald—but he died and then grandma died and then I had nobody but Aunt Graettel—she is my great-aunt—and she brought me here.”

She heaved a sigh, sadness coming over her face.

“Why didn’t you go to your mother?” he asked naively.

“I have no mother—I have no father either—they had died before I was two—my father was killed by the thieves.—”

She was finishing her toilet as she spoke, having donned a flaming red blouse, and halted for a moment absently, staring blankly in front of her.

“Was your father a headman, too?”

She nodded, the sadness of her face deepening, and catching her breath she said, “My father was a headman and his father and my grandfather’s father, also my mother’s father. Aunt Graettel is my grandfather’s sister.”

Albert gave an involuntary shudder. Zippel had told him so many gruesome tales about headmen. They were all cursed and must cut off men’s heads whether they wanted to or not. Nobody associated with headmen or their children and, like a race apart, lived isolated and intermarried only among themselves.

“Are you going to be here long?” he asked.

She was hooking her blouse, which fastened on the side, and her eyes were downcast, following her nimble fingers.

“I have no other place to go to,” she presently replied. “And I am glad my grandma died so I could come here.”

Albert again shuddered. He was not glad his grandmother had died.

“Did she beat you?”

“No, she didn’t beat me—I wouldn’t let anyone beat me—.” She turned her eyes fiercely upon him as if he had threatened her. “But it was with, those three old hags at their distaffs, drinking and quarreling all the time—from morning till night—oh, I am glad they are all dead!”

“Your Aunt Graettel is good to you, isn’t she?” Albert’s voice was sympathetic. He was glad Hedwiga was no more with those drinking witches.

“She is very good to me. She is usually in town all day, and when she gets back she always brings me something nice. And I sit on the bank, down the slope, and watch the skiffs go by, and when nobody is around I go swimming on the edge of the river—.”

Albert held his breath. In his imagination he followed her down the slope and watched the skiffs go by and went swimming with her. He raised his eyes to her and blushed scarlet. A flitting thought had sent a quiver through his frame. She was now seated on a stool close to him. He had become conscious of her bare feet and of her white throat and slender shoulders. He wished to say something but his mouth was dry and his throat was parched. He was swallowing lumps.

Hedwiga glanced at him and, as if divining his thoughts, also blushed. To hide her passing thought she emitted a little laugh.

They were both silent for a moment and self-conscious. Then he raised his eyes and stared at her boldly. She gave him a quick glance and began to laugh again. Rising from his chair he wished to stretch out his hand and touch her face—the tip of her slightly upturned nose and the curving red of her lips.

He was soon standing at the door, going yet wishing he could stay. She, too, was standing, her head a trifle inclined to one side.

“How tall you are!” he stammered.

This was not what he wished to say, but he mentally scanned her from head to foot and the words leaped to his lips uninvited.

“I am not much taller than you,” she said.

And stepping up close to him she placed her shoulder against his.

What was it he felt at the contact with her shoulder? He recalled the sensation again and again on his way home. It was as if the smooth little hand of a babe were passing and repassing that spot; he experienced a sensation of yielding to caresses; and yet this very sensuousness had made him speechless. It occurred to him later that he had not bidden her goodbye as they parted.