Black Forest Village Stories Part 1

Black Forest Village Stories.

by Berthold Auerbach.

THE GAWK

I see you now, my fine fellow, as large as life, with your yellow hair cropped very short, except in the neck, where a long tail remains as if you had cut yourself after the pattern of a plough-horse. You are staring straight at me with your broad visage, your great blue goggle eyes, and your mouth which is never shut. Do you remember the morning we met in the hollow where the new houses stand now, when you cut me a willow-twig to make a whistle of? We little thought then that I should come to pipe the world a song about you when we should be thousands of miles apart. I remember your costume perfectly, which is not very surprising, as there is nothing to keep in mind but a shirt, red suspenders, and a pair of linen pantaloons dyed black to guard against all contingencies. On Sunday you were more stylish: then you wore a fur cap with a gold ta.s.sel, a blue roundabout with broad b.u.t.tons, a scarlet waistcoat, yellow shorts, white stockings, and buckled shoes, like any other villager; and, besides, you very frequently had a fresh pink behind your ear. But you were never at ease in all this glory; and I like you rather better in your plainer garb, myself.

But now, friend gawk, go about your business; there's a good fellow. It makes me nervous to tell your story to your face. You need not be alarmed: I shall say nothing ill of you, though I do speak in the third person.

The gawk not only had a real name, but a whole pedigree of them; in the village he ought to have been called Bart's Bast's[1] boy, and he had been christened Aloys. To please him, we shall stick to this last designation. He will be glad of it, because, except his mother Maria and a few of us children, hardly any one used it; all had the impudence to say "Gawk." On this account he always preferred our society, even after he was seventeen years old. In out-of-the-way places he would play leap-frog with us, or let us chase him over the fields; and when the gawk--I should say, when Aloys--was with us, we were secure against the attacks of the children at the lime-pit; for the rising generation of the village was torn by incessant feuds between two hostile parties.

Yet the boys of Aloys' own age were already beginning to feel their social position. They congregated every evening, like the grown men, and marched through the village whistling and singing, or stood at the tavern-door of the Eagle, by the great wood-yard, and pa.s.sed jokes with the girls who went by. But the surest test of a big boy was the tobacco-pipe. There they would stand with their speckled bone-pipe bowls, of Ulm manufacture, tipped with silver, and hung with little silver chains. They generally had them in their mouths unlit; but occasionally one or the other would beg a live coal from the baker's maid, and then they smoked with the most joyful faces they knew how to put on, while their stomachs moaned within them.

Aloys had begun the practice too, but only in secret. One evening he mustered up courage to mingle with his fellows, with the point of his pipe peeping forth from his breast-pocket. One of the boys pulled the pipe out of his pocket with a yell; Aloys tried to seize it, but it pa.s.sed from hand to hand with shouts of laughter, and the more impatiently he demanded it the less it was forthcoming, until it disappeared altogether, and every one professed to know nothing of what had become of it. Aloys began to whimper, which made them laugh still more; so at last he s.n.a.t.c.hed the cap of the first robber from his head, and ran with it into the house of Jacob the blacksmith. Then the capless one brought the pipe, which had been hidden in the wood-yard.

Jacob Bomiller the blacksmith's house was what is called Aloys'

"go-out." He was always there when not at home, and never at home after his work was done. Aunt Applon, (Apollonia,) Jacob's wife, was his cousin; and; besides his own mother and us children, she and her eldest daughter Mary Ann always called him by his right name. In the morning he would get up early, and, after having fed and watered his two cows and his heifer, he always went to Jacob's house and knocked at the door until Mary Ann opened it. With a simple "Good-morning," he pa.s.sed through the stable into the barn. The cattle knew his step, and always welcomed him with a complacent growl and a turn of the head: he never stopped to return the compliment, but went into the barn and filled the cribs of the two oxen and the two cows. He was on particularly good terms with the roan cow. He had raised her from a calf; and, when he stood by her and watched her at her morning meal, she often licked his hands, to the improvement of his toilet. Then he would open the door of the stable and restore its neatness and good order, often chatting cosily to the dumb beasts as he made them turn to the right or left.

Not a dunghill in the village was so broad and smooth and with such clean edges as the one which Aloys built before the house of Jacob the blacksmith; for a fine dunghill is the greatest ornament to a villager's door-front in the Black Forest. The next thing he did was to wash and curry the oxen and cows until you might have seen your face in their sleek hides. This done, he ran to the pump before the house and filled the trough with water: the cattle, unchained, ran out to drink; while he spread fresh straw in their stalls. Thus, by the time that Mary Ann came to the stable to milk the cows, she found every thing neat and clean. Often, when a cow was "skittish," and kicked, Aloys stood by her and laid his hand on her back while Mary Ann milked; but generally he found something else to do. And when Mary Ann said, "Aloys, you are a good boy," he never looked up at her, but plied the stable-broom so vehemently that it threatened to sweep the boulder-stones out of the floor. In the barn he cut the feed needed for the day; and, after all the work required in the lower story of the building--which, in the Black Forest, as is well known, contains what in America is consigned to the barn and outhouses--was finished, he mounted up-stairs into the kitchen, carried water, split the kindling-wood, and at last found his way into the room. Mary Ann brought the soup-bowl, set it on the table, folded her hands, and, everybody having done the same, spoke a prayer. All now seated themselves with a "G.o.d's blessing." The bowl was the only dish upon the table, into which every one dipped his spoon, Aloys often stealing a mouthful from the place where Mary Ann's spoon usually entered. The deep silence of a solemn rite prevailed at the table: very rarely was a word spoken. After the meal and another prayer, Aloys trudged home.

Thus things went on till Aloys reached his nineteenth year, when, on New-Year's day, Mary Ann made him a present of a shirt, the hemp of which she had broken herself, and had spun, bleached, and sewed it. He was overjoyed, and only regretted that it would not do to walk the street in shirt-sleeves: though it was bitter cold, he would not have cared for that in the least; but people would have laughed at him, and Aloys was daily getting more and more sensitive to people's laughter.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The old squire's new hand.]

The main cause of this was the old squire's[2] new hand who had come into the village last harvest. He was a tall, handsome fellow, with a bold, dare-devil face appropriately set off with a reddish mustache.

George (for such was his name) was a cavalry soldier, and almost always wore the cap belonging to his uniform. When he walked up the village of a Sunday, straight as an arrow, turning out his toes and rattling his spurs, every thing about him said, as plainly as words could speak, "I know all the girls are in love with me;" and when he rode his horses down to Jacob's pump to water them, poor Aloys' heart was ready to burst as he saw Mary Ann look out of the window. He wished that there were no such things as milk and b.u.t.ter in the world, so that he too might be a horse-farmer.

Inexperienced as Aloys was, he knew all about the three cla.s.ses or "standings" into which the peasants of the Black Forest are divided.

The cow-farmers are the lowest in the scale: their draught-cattle, in addition to their labor, must yield them milk and calves. Then come the ox-farmers, whose beasts, after having served their time, may be fattened and killed. The horse-farmers are still more fortunate: their beasts of draught yield neither milk nor meat, and yet eat the best food and bring the highest prices.

Whether Aloys took the trouble to compare this arrangement with the four castes of Egypt, or the three estates of feudalism, is doubtful.

On this New-Year's day, George derived a great advantage from his horses. After morning service, he took the squire's daughter and her playmate Mary Ann sleighing to Impfingen; and, though the heart of poor Aloys trembled within him, he could not refuse George's request to help him hitch the horses and try them in the sleigh. He drove about the village, quite forgetting the poor figure he cut beside the showy soldier. When the girls were seated, Aloys led the horses a little way, running beside them until they were fairly started, and then let them go. George drove down the street, cracking his whip; the horses jingled their bells; half the commune looked out of their windows; and poor Aloys stared after them long after they were out of sight; and then went sadly home, cursing the snow which brought the water to his eyes.

The village seemed to have died out when Mary Ann was not to be in it for a whole day.

All this winter Aloys was often much cast down. At his mother's house the girls frequently a.s.sembled to hold their spinning-frolics,--a custom much resembling our quiltings. They always prefer to hold these gatherings at the house of a comrade recently married or of a good-natured widow; elder married men are rather in the way. So the girls often came to Mother Maria, and the boys dropped in later, without waiting to be invited. Hitherto Aloys had never troubled himself about them so long as they left him undisturbed: he had sat in a corner doing nothing. But now he often said to himself, "Aloys, this is too bad: you are nineteen years old now, and must begin to put yourself forward." And then again he would say, "I wish the devil would carry that George away piecemeal!" George was the object of his ill-humor, for he had soon obtained a perfect control over the minds of all the boys, and made them dance to his whistle. He could whistle and sing and warble and tell stories like a wizard. He taught the boys and girls all sorts of new songs. The first time he sang the verse,--

"Do thy cheeks with gladness tingle Where the snows and scarlet mingle?"--

Aloys suddenly rose: he seemed taller than usual; he clenched his fists and gnashed his teeth with secret joy. He seemed to draw Mary Ann toward him with his looks, and to see her for the first time as she truly was; for, just as the song ran, so she looked.

The girls sat around in a ring, each having her distaff with the gilt top before her, to which the hemp was fastened with a colored ribbon; they moistened the thread with their lips, and twirled the spindle, which tumbled merrily on the floor. Aloys was always glad to put "a little moistening," in the shape of some pears or apples, on the table, and never failed to put the plate near Mary Ann, so that she might help herself freely.

Early in the winter Aloys took his first courageous step in right of his adolescence. Mary Ann had received a fine new distaff set with pewter. The first time she brought it into the spinning-room and sat down to her work, Aloys came forward, took hold of it, and repeated the old rhyme:--

"Good la.s.sie, give me leave, Let me shake your luck out of this sleeve; Great goodhap and little goodhap Into my la.s.sie's lap.

La.s.sie, why are you so rude?

Your distaff is only of wood; If it had silver or gold on't, I'd have made a better rhyme on't."

His voice trembled a little, but he got through without stammering.

Mary Ann first cast her eyes down with shame and fear lest he should "balk;" but now she looked at him with beaming eyes. According to custom, she dropped the spindle and the whirl,[3] which Aloys picked up, and exacted for the spindle the promise of a dumpling, and for the whirl that of a doughnut. But the best came last. Aloys released the distaff and received as ransom a hearty kiss. He smacked so loud that it sounded all over the room, and the other boys envied him sorely. He sat down quietly in a corner, rubbed his hands, and was contented with himself and with the world. And so he might have remained to the end of time, if that marplot of a George had not interfered again.

Mary Ann was the first voice in the church-choir. One evening George asked her to sing the song of the "Dark-Brown Maid." She began without much hesitation, and George fell in with the second voice so finely and sonorously that all the others who had joined in also lapsed into silence one by one, and contented themselves with listening to the two who sang so well. Mary Ann, finding herself unsupported by her companions, found her voice trembling a little, and nudged her companions to go on singing; but, as they would not, she took courage, and sang with much spirit, while George seemed to uphold her as with strong arms. They sang:--

"Oh, to-morrow I must leave you, My beloved dark-brown maid: Out at the upper gate we travel, My beloved dark-brown maid.

"When I march in foreign countries, Think of me, my dearest one; With the sparkling gla.s.s before you, Often think how I adore you; Drink a health to him that's gone.

"Now I load my brace of pistols, And I fire and blaze away, For my dark-brown la.s.sie's pleasure; For she chose me for her treasure, And she sent the rest away.

"In the blue sky two stars are shining: Brighter than the moon they glow; This looks on the dark-brown maiden, And that looks where I must go.

"I've bought a ribbon for my sabre, And a nosegay for my hat, And a kerchief in my keeping, To restrain my eyes from weeping: From my love I must depart.

"Now I spur my horse's mettle, Now I rein him in and wait: So good-bye, dear dark-brown maiden; I must ride out at the gate."

When each of the girls had filled four or five spindles, the table was pushed into a corner, to clear a s.p.a.ce of three or four paces in length and breadth, on which they took turns in dancing, those who sat singing the music. When George brought out Mary Ann, he sang his own song, dancing to it like a spindle: indeed, he did not need much more s.p.a.ce than a spindle, for he used to say that no one was a good waltzer who could not turn around quickly and safely on a plate. When he stopped at last,--with a whirl which made the skirts of Mary Ann's wadded dress rise high above her feet,--she suddenly left him alone, as if afraid of him, and ran into a corner, where Aloys sat moodily watching the sport.

Taking his hand, she said,--

"Come, Aloys, you must dance."

"Let me alone: you know I can't dance. You only want to make game of me."

"You g----" said Mary Ann: she would have said, "you gawk," but suddenly checked herself on seeing that he was more ready to cry than to laugh. So she said, gently, "No, indeed, I don't want to make game of you. Come; if you can't dance you must learn it: there is none I like to dance with better than you."

They tried to waltz; but Aloys threw his feet about as if he had wooden shoes on them, so that the others could not sing for laughing.

"I will teach you when n.o.body is by, Aloys," said Mary Ann, soothingly.

The girls now lighted their lanterns and went home. Aloys insisted on going with them: he would not for all the world have let Mary Ann go home without him when George was of the company.

In the still, snowy night, the raillery and laughter of the party were heard from end to end of the village. Mary Ann alone was silent, and evidently kept out of George's way.

When the boys had left all the girls at their homes, George said to Aloys, "Gawk, you ought to have stayed with Mary Ann to-night."

"You're a rascal," said Aloys, quickly, and ran away. The others laughed. George went home alone, warbling so loud and clear that he must have gladdened the hearts of all who were not sick or asleep.

Next morning, as Mary Ann was milking the cows, Aloys said to her, "Do you see, I should just like to poison that George; and if you are a good girl you must wish him dead ten times over."

Mary Ann agreed with him, but tried to convince him that he should endeavor to become just as smart and ready as George was. A bright idea suddenly struck Aloys. He laughed aloud, threw aside the stiff old broom and took a more limber one, saying, "Yes: look sharp and you'll see something." After much reluctance, he yielded to Mary Ann's solicitations to be "good friends" with George: he could not refuse her any thing.

It was for this reason alone that Aloys had helped George to get the sleigh out, and that the snow made his eyes run over as he watched the party till they disappeared.

In the twilight Aloys drove his cows to water at Jacob's well. A knot of boys had collected there, including George and his old friend, a Jew, commonly called "Long Hartz's Jake." Mary Ann was looking out of the window. Aloys was imitating George's walk: he carried himself as straight as if he had swallowed a ramrod, and kept his arms hanging down his sides, as if they had been made of wood.

"Gawk," said Jake, "what will you allow me if I get Mary Ann to marry you?"

"A good smack on your chops," said Aloys, and drove his cows away. Mary Ann closed the sash, while the boys set up a shout of laughter, in which George's voice was heard above all the others.