Читать книгу The Forest Farm: Tales of the Austrian Tyrol - Peter Rosegger - Страница 6

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On the whole I had not a bad bringing up, rather I had none at all. When I was a good, devout, obedient, apt child, my parents praised me; when I was the reverse they gave me a downright scolding. Praise almost always did me good and made me feel inches taller; for some children like plants shoot up only in sunshine.

But my father was of opinion that I ought not to grow in height only, but also in breadth, and that to this end reserve and austerity were good.

My mother was love itself. My father may have been the same by nature, but he did not know how to express his warm and loving heart. With all his gentleness this care and labour-laden man had a taciturn, serious bearing: only later, when he judged me man enough to appreciate it, did he ever give his rich humour free play before me.

During those years when I was tearing my first dozen pairs of breeches, he concerned himself with me but little except when I had done something naughty; then he allowed his severity full play. His harshness and my punishment generally consisted in his standing over me, and in loud angry tones, holding up my sin before me and pointing out the punishment I deserved.

When such an outburst occurred, it was my habit to plant myself in front of my father and remain standing before him as if petrified, with my arms hanging down, and looking steadily in his angry face throughout the vehement rebuke. In my inmost heart I always repented my wrongdoing and had the clearest sense of guilt; but I also remember another feeling that used to come over me during those homilies: a strange trembling, a sense of charm and ecstasy when the storm burst over my head. Tears came to my eyes and trickled down my cheeks; but I stood rooted there like a little tree, gazing up at my father, and was filled with an inexplicable sense of wellbeing, that increased mightily the longer and louder he thundered.

When after such a scene weeks went by without my concocting mischief, and my father, kind and silent as ever, went about his business without taking notice of me, the longing to devise something to put him in a rage gradually began and ripened in me again. This was not for the sake of vexing him, for I loved him passionately; nor yet from malice; but from another cause which I did not understand at the time.

Thus it once happened on the sacred eve of Christmas. In the previous summer in Maria Zell[2] my father had bought a little black cross on which hung a Christus in cast lead, and all the instruments of the Passion in the same material. This treasure had been put safely away until Christmas Eve, when my father brought it out of his press and set it on the little house-altar. I profited by the time when my parents and the rest of our people were still busy on the farm outside and in the kitchen making ready for the great festival, and, not without endangering my sound limbs, I reached the crucifix down from the wall, and crouched down behind the stove with it, and began taking it to pieces. It was a rare joy to me when with the aid of my little pocket-knife I loosened first the ladder, then the pincers and hammer, then Peter's cock, and at last the dear Christ Himself from the cross. The separated parts seemed to me much more interesting now than before as a whole; but when I had finished and wanted to put the things together again and could not, I began to grow hot inside and thought I was choking. Would it stop at a mere scolding this time? To be sure, I told myself: the black cross is now much finer than before; there is a black cross with nothing on it in the chapel in Hohenwang too, and people go there to pray. Besides, who wants a crucified Lord at Christmas time? At that time He ought to be lying in the manger—the Priest said so; and I must see about that now.

I bent the legs of the leaden Christus back and the arms over the breast, then laid Him reverently in my mother's work-basket, and so set my crib upon the house-altar; while I hid the cross in the straw of my parents' bed—forgetting that the basket would betray the taking down from the cross.

Fate swiftly overtook me. My mother was first to observe how absurdly the work-basket had got up among the Saints to-day!

"Who can have found the crucifix in his way up there?" asked my father at the very same moment.

I was standing a little apart, and I felt like a creature thirsting for strong wine to drink. But at the same time a strange fear warned me to get still farther into the background if possible.

My father approached me, asking almost humbly if I did not know where the crucifix had got to? I stood bolt upright before him and looked him in the face. He repeated his question. I pointed towards the bed-straw; tears came, but I believe there was no quiver of my lips.

My father searched for and found it, and was not angry, only surprised when he saw the mishandling of the sacred relic. My craving for the strong bitter wine grew apace. My father put the bare cross on the table.

"I can see," he said, speaking with perfect calmness, and he took his hat down from the nail, "I can see he'll have to be thoroughly punished at last. When even the Lord Christ Himself is not safe——! Mind you stay in the room, boy!" he bade me darkly, and then went out to the door.

"Run after him and beg for pardon!" cried my mother to me. "He's gone to cut a birch-rod."

I was as if welded to the floor. With horrible clearness I saw what would befall me, but was quite incapable of taking a single step in self-defence. My mother went about her work; I stood alone in the darkening room, the mutilated crucifix on the table before me. The least sound scared me. Inside the old case of the Black Forest clock standing there on the floor against the wall, the weights rattled as the clock struck five. At last I heard someone outside knocking the snow off his shoes; that was my father's step. When he entered the room with the birch-rod I had vanished.

He went into the kitchen and demanded in abrupt and angry tones where the rascal was? Then began a search throughout the whole house; in the living-room the bed and the corner by the stove and the great coffer were rummaged through. I heard them moving about in the next room, in the loft overhead. I heard orders given to search through the very mangers in the byres and the hay and straw in the barns; they were to go out to the shed, too, and bring the fellow straight to his father—he should remember this Christmas Eve all the rest of his life! But they came back empty-handed. Two farm-hands were to be sent about among the neighbours; but my mother called out that if I had gone over the open and through the forest to a neighbour I should certainly be frozen to death, for my little coat and hat were still in the room. What grief and vexation children were!

They went away, the house was nearly empty and in the dark room there was nothing visible but the grey squares of the windows. I was hidden in the clock-case and could peep through the chinks. I had squeezed in through the little door meant for winding up the works and let myself down inside the panelling, so that I was now standing upright in the clock-case.

What anguish I suffered in my hiding-place! That no good could come of it all, and that the hourly increasing commotion was certainly working towards an hourly more dangerous conclusion, I clearly perceived. I bitterly blamed the work-basket which had betrayed me from the very beginning, and I blamed the little crucifix; but I quite forgot to blame my own folly. Hours passed, I was still in my up-on-end coffin, already the icicles of the clock-weights touched the crown of my head, and I had to duck myself down as well as I could lest the stopping of the clock should lead to its winding up and thereby the discovery of myself. For my parents had at last come back into the room again and kindled a light and were beginning to quarrel about me.

"I don't know anywhere else to look for him," said my father, and he sank exhausted on a chair.

"Just think, if he's gone astray in the forest, or if he's lying under the snow!" cried my mother, and broke into audible weeping.

"Don't say such things!" said my father, "I can't bear to hear it."

"You can't bear to hear it, and yet you yourself have driven him away with your harshness!"

"I shouldn't have broken any bones with these twigs," he replied, and brought the birch-rod swishing down upon the table: "but if I catch him now, I'll break a hedge-pole across his back!"

"Do it, do it!—perhaps it will never hurt him any more!" said my mother, and wept again. "Do you think that children were given you only to vent your anger on? In that case our dear Lord is quite right when He takes them again betimes to Himself. One must love little children if they're to come to any good!"

Thereupon he said, "Who says that I don't love the boy? I love him with my whole heart, God knows, but I don't care to tell him so: I don't care to, and what's more I can't. It doesn't hurt him half as much as me when I have to punish him, that I know!"

"Well, I'm going out for another look!" sighed my mother.

"I can't rest here, neither!" he said.

"You must just swallow a spoonful of warm soup, to please me—it's supper-time," she said.

"I couldn't eat now, I'm fairly at my wits' end," said my father, and knelt down by the table and began to pray silently.

My mother went into the kitchen to get together my warm clothes for the fresh search in case they should find me anywhere, half frozen. The room was silent again, and I, in the clock-case, felt as if my heart must burst for sorrow and anguish. Suddenly, in the midst of his prayer, my father began to sob convulsively. His head fell on his arm and his whole body shook.

I gave a piercing cry.

A few seconds later I was lifted out of my shell by my parents, and I fell at my father's feet and clung whimpering to his knee.

"Father, father!" were the only words I could stammer out. He reached down to me with both his arms, lifted me up to his breast, and my hair was wet with his tears.

In that moment the eyes of my understanding were opened.

I saw how dreadful it was to anger and offend such a father. But I saw, too, why I had done so—from sheer longing to see my father's face before me, to be able to look into his eyes and hear his voice speaking to me. If he could not be cheery as others were with me, and as he, at that time so care-laden, seldom was, then I would at least look into his angry eyes, hear his harsh words. They went tingling deliciously all through me, and drew me to him with irresistible might. At least they were my father's eyes and words.

No further jar unhallowed our Christmas Eve, and from that day on things were very different. My father had become deeply aware of his love for me and my devotion to him; and, in many an hour of play, work, and rest, bestowed upon me his dear face and kindly conversation, so that I never again needed to get them by guile.

Footnote:

[2] A place of pilgrimage in Styria.