Читать книгу The Path of Life - Stijn Streuvels - Страница 7

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First the leaves had become pale, deathly pale; later they turned yellow-brown; and then they went fluttering and flickering, so wearily, so slackly, like the wings of dying birds; and, one after the other, they began to fall, dancing gently downwards, in eddies. They whirled in the air, were carried on by the wind and at last fell dead and settled somewhere in the mud.

Not a living thing was to be seen and the cottages that sat huddled close to the ground remained fast shut; the smoke from the chimneys alone still gave a sign of life.

The green drove now stood bare and bleak: two rows of straight trunks which grew less and faded away in the blue mist.

Yonder comes something creeping up: a shapeless thing, like two little black stripes, with something else; and it approaches. …

At last and at length, out of those little stripes, appear a man and a wife; and, out of the other thing, a barrel-organ on a cart, with a dog between the wheels.

It all looked the worse for wear. The little fellow went bent between the shafts and tugged; the little old woman’s lean arms pushed against the organ-case; and the wheeled thing jolted on like that over the cart-ruts, along the drove and through the wide gate of an honest homestead.

A flight of black crows sailed across the sky. The wind soughed through the naked tree-tops; the mist rose and the world thinned away in a bluey haze; this all vanished and slowly it became dark black night.

Man, woman and dog, they crept, all three, high into the loft and deep into the hay; and they dozed away, like all else outside them and around. Warm they lay there! And dream they did, of the cold, of the dark and of the sad moaning wind!

At early morning, before it was bright day, they were on the tramp, over the fallow fields, and drowned in a huge sea of thick blue mist. They pulled for all they could: the little fellow in the shafts, the little old woman behind the cart and the dog, with his head to the ground, for the road’s sake.

A red glow broke in the east and a new day brightened. ’Twas all white, snow-white, as if the blue mist had bleached, melted and stuck fast on the black fields, on the half-withered autumn fruits and on the dark fretwork of the trees. Great drops dripped from the boughs.

From under the peak of his cap, the fellow peered into the distance with his one eye, and he saw a church and houses. They went that way.

’Twas low-roofed cottages they saw, all covered with hoar-frost; here and there stood one alone and then a whole little row, crowded close together: a street.

They were in the village.

It was lone and still, like a cloister, with here a little woman who, tucked into her hooded cloak, crept along the houses to the church; there a smith who hammered … and the little church-bell, which tinkled over the house-tops.

They stopped. The dog sat down to look. The little fellow threw off his shoulder-strap, pulled his cap down lower and felt under the red-brown organ-cloth for the handle. He gave a look at the houses that stood before him, pinched his sunken mouth, wiped the seam of his sleeve over his face and started grinding. Half-numbed sounds came trickling into the chill street from under the organ-cloth: a sad—once, perhaps, dance-provoking—tune, which now, false, dragging and twisted out of shape, was like a muddled crawling of sounds all jumbled up together; some came too soon, the others too late, as in a weariful dream; and, in between, a sighing and creaking which came from very deep down, at each third or fourth turn, and was deadened again at once in those ever-recurring rough organ-sounds or dragged on and deafened in a mad dance. ’Twas like a poor little huddled soul uttering its plaint amid the hullabaloo of rude men shouting aloud in the street.

The dog also had begun to howl when the tune started.

The little wife had settled her kerchief above her sharp-featured old-wife’s face; and, with one hand in her apron-pocket and the other holding a little tin can, she now went from door to door:

“For the poor blind man. … God reward you.”

And this through the whole street and farther, to the farmhouses, from the one to the other, all day long, till evening fell again and that same thick mist came to wrap everything in its grey, dark breath.

And again they wandered, through a drove, to a homestead and into the hay.

“The dog has pupped,” said the little old woman; and she shook her man.

“Pupped? …”

And he turned in the nest which he had made for himself, pushed his head deeper in the hay and drowsed on. He dreamt of dogs and of pups and of organs and of ear-splitting yelps and howls.

The dog lay in a fine, round little nest of his own, rolled into a ball and moaning. And he1 looked so sadly and kindly into the little old woman’s eyes; and he licked, never stopped licking his puppies. They were like three red-brown moles, each with a fat head; they wriggled their thick little bodies together and sought about and squeaked.

The West-Fleming talks of dogs of either sex invariably as “he.”

When the tramps had swallowed their slice of rye-bread and their dish of porridge, they went on, elsewhither. The little fellow tugged, the little old woman pushed and the dogs hung swinging between the wheels, in a fig-basket. So they went begging, from hamlet to hamlet, the wide world through: an old man and woman, with their organ; and a dog with his three young pups.

Much later. …

The thick mist had changed into bright, glittering dewdrops and the sun shone high in the heaven. Now four dogs lay harnessed to the cart, four red-brown dogs. And, when the handle turned and the organ played, all those four dogs lifted their noses on high and howled uglily.

Inside, deep-hidden under the organ-cloth, sat the little soul, the mysterious, shabby little organ-soul, grown quite hoarse now and almost dumb.