Andreas Read online

  At this point Andreas stopped him, saying that he thanked him for his obliging offer, but did not mean to hire a servant then. Later, perhaps, in Venice, a paid lackey—and here he made as if to shut the door, but the last sentence was already too much; that little flourish—for he had never thought of hiring a footman in Venice—took its revenge. For now the other, feeling in the uncertainty of his tone who was the real master in the dispute, blocked the door with his foot, and Andreas could never make out later how it was that the ruffian forthwith, as if the matter were already settled between them, spoke of his mount—there would be a bargain that day the like of which would never come again. That very night a horse-dealer was passing that way: he knew him from his time with the canon—not a Turk, for once. The man had a little Hungarian horse to sell which might have been made for him. Once he got that between his legs, he would make a high-stepper of it inside of a week. The bay was priced, he thought, at ninety gulden for any one else, but at seventy for him. That was because of the big horse-deal he had put through for the canon, but he would have to clinch the bargain that very day before midnight, for the dealer got up early. So please would his honour give him the money at once, out of his waist-belt, or should he go down and bring up his portmanteau or his saddle, for he would have his capital sewn up there—a gentleman like him would only carry the bare necessary on him?

  When the wretch spoke of money, his face took on a loathsome look; under the impudent, dirty blue eyes little wrinkles twitched like ripples on water. He came close up to Andreas, and over the protruding, moist, thick lips floated a smell of brandy. Then Andreas pushed him out over the threshold, and the fellow, feeling the young man’s strength, said no more. But again Andreas said a word too much, for he felt too rough handling the intruder thus ungently. Count Lodron would never have been so rough, he thought, or laid his hands on him. So he added, partly by way of dismissal, that he was too tired today, they could think about it next morning. In any case, nothing had been settled between them for the moment.

  He meant to leave without further discussion next morning as early as possible. But in that way he merely twisted the rope for his own neck, for in the morning, before it was even light and Andreas was awake, there was the fellow already standing at the door, saying that he had already saved five gulden cash for his honour, had bought the horse—a beauty—it was standing down in the courtyard, and every gulden Herr von Ferschengelder should lose when he got rid of the horse in Venice was to be struck off his own wages.

  Andreas, looking out of the window, drunk with sleep, saw a lean but spirited little horse standing down in the courtyard. Then the conceit seized him that it would be, after all, a very different matter to ride into towns and inns with a servant riding behind him. He could lose nothing on the horse—it was certainly a bargain. The bull-necked, freckled fellow looked burly and sharp-witted, nothing worse, and if Freiherr von Petzenstein and Count Lodron had had him in their service, there must be something in him. For in his parents’ house in the Spiegelgasse, Andreas had breathed in with the air of Vienna a boundless awe of persons for rank, and what happened in that higher world was gospel.

  So there was Andreas with his servant riding behind him, carrying his portmanteau, before he even knew or wanted it. The first day everything went well, and yet it seemed ugly and dreary to Andreas as it passed, and he would have preferred not to live through it again. But it was no use wishing.

  Andreas had intended to ride to Spittal, and then through the Tyrol, but the servant talked him into turning left and staying in the province of Carinthia. The roads, he declared, were much better there, and the inns without their like, and life far merrier than among those blockheads in the Tyrol. The Carinthian maids and millers’ daughters had a way with them, and the roundest, firmest bosoms in all Germany—there was a saying about them, and many a song. Didn’t Herr von Ferschengelder know that?

  Andreas made no answer; he shuddered hot and cold beside the fellow, who was not so much older than he—five years at most. If he had known that Andreas had never seen, let alone touched, a woman without her clothes, some shameless jeer would have been forthcoming, or talk such as Andreas could not even imagine, but then he would have torn him from his horse and set upon him in a fury—he felt it, and the blood throbbed in his eyes.

  They rode in silence through a wide valley; it was a rainy day, grassy hill-slopes rose right and left, here and there a farm, a hayrick, and woods high above on which the clouds lay sluggishly. After dinner Gotthilff grew talkative—had the young master taken a look at the landlady? She was nothing much now, but in ’69—that was nine years ago, when he was sixteen years old—he had had that woman every night for a month. Then it had been well worthwhile. She had had black hair down to below the hollows of her knees. And he urged on his little horse and rode quite close to Andreas, till Andreas had to warn him not to ride him foul—his chestnut could not stand it. In the end she got something to remember him by, it had served her right. At the time he had been with a countess’s waiting-woman, as pretty as a picture, and the landlady had smelt a rat and gone quite thin with jealousy, and as hollow-eyed as a sick dog. At that time he had been courier to Count Porzia—it was his first place, and a fine surprise it had been for all Carinthia that the Count had made him his huntsman at sixteen, and confidential servant into the bargain.

  But the Count knew very well what he was doing, and whom he could trust, and he had good need of somebody who could keep his mouth shut, for the Count had more love-affairs than teeth in his head, and many a married man had sworn to kill him, gentlemen and farmers too, and millers and huntsmen. Just then the Count was carrying on with the young Pomberg Countess—she was like a vixen in love, but she was no more in love with the Count than her maid was in love with him, Gotthilff. And when her husband had had the shoot in Pomberg the Countess had stolen to Count Porzia’s stand—crawling along on all fours, and meanwhile the Count had given him his piece and told him to shoot for him, so that nobody should notice, and nobody had noticed, for he was just as good a shot as the Count. And once, he had brought down a fine deer at somewhere about forty paces, through undergrowth: he had caught a glimpse of its shoulder in the dusk. Then the animal had collapsed under his fire, but at the same time a woeful cry had come out of the thicket—it sounded like a woman, but directly afterwards all was still again, as though the wounded woman had held her mouth shut with her own hand. Of course, he could not leave his stand then, but the next day he had paid a visit to the landlady and had found her in bed with wound-fever. And he had been smart enough to find out that she had been driven into the wood by jealousy, because she thought the waiting-woman was out with him and that she would find them in the undergrowth together. He had split his sides with laughing, to think she had got something to remember him by, and from his own hand, and all the same couldn’t upbraid him with it, but had to listen to his jeers, and sharp ones too, and hold her tongue to everybody, and lie herself out of it by saying that she had fallen on the scythe and cut herself over the knee.

  Andreas pressed on, the other too; his face, close behind Andreas’s, was red with wild, shameless lust, like a fox in rut. Andreas asked whether the Countess was still alive. Oh, she? She had made many a man happy, and still looked no more than twenty-five, and for that matter the ladies in the big houses here, if you only knew how to take them, where a countrywoman would only give her finger, would give their whole hand, and all the rest with it. Now he was riding close behind Andreas, but Andreas paid no heed. The wretch was as loathsome to him as a spider, yet he was but twenty-two, and his young blood was afire with the talk, and his thoughts were wandering elsewhere. He might, he thought, be arriving himself at Pomberg Castle that evening, an expected guest along with other guests. It is evening—the shoot is over, he was the best shot: wherever he fired something fell. The lovely Countess was at his side as he fired, her eyes playing with him as he with the life of the wild creatures. Now they are alone—an utterly soli
tary room, he alone with the Countess, walls a fathom thick, in deathly silence. He is appalled to find her a woman, no longer a Countess and young cavalier—nothing gallant nor fine about it all, nor beautiful either, but a frenzy, a murdering in the dark. The ruffian is beside him, emptying his gun on a woman who has crept to him in her nightdress. He has started back to the dining-room with the Countess, his thoughts dragging him back to the lighthearted decency there—then he felt that he had pulled up, and at the same moment his servant’s nag stumbled. The man cursed and swore, as if the rider ahead were not his master, but someone he had fed swine with all his life. Andreas let it pass. He felt a great lassitude, the broad valley looked endless under the sagging clouds. He wished it were all over, that he were older and had children of his own, and that it was his son who was riding to Venice, but a different man from him, a fine fellow, and that the world was clean and kindly, like Sunday morning with the bells ringing.

  The next day the road mounted. The valley narrowed, steeper slopes, from time to time a church on a height, far below them rushing water. The clouds were on the move, now and then a shaft of sunlight shot down to the river, where, among willows and hazels, the stones gleamed livid, the water green. Then gloom again, and gentle rain. A hundred paces further the new-bought horse fell lame, its eyes were glazed, its head looked aged, the whole beast changed. Gotthilff broke out that it was small wonder, when the horses were tired in the legs and a man pulled up his beast on the road in the twilight, without a by your leave, so that the man behind could not help stumbling. He had never seen such manners; in the cavalry he would have been put in irons for it.

  Again Andreas let it pass; the fellow knows something about horses, he said to himself, he thinks he’s responsible for the horse, that’s what maddens him. But he wouldn’t have taken that tone with the Freiherr von Petzenstein. It serves me right. There’s something about a great gentleman that a lackey respects. There’s nothing of the kind about me: if I tried to put it on it wouldn’t suit me. I’ll take him along with me till Saturday, then I shall sell the horse, though I lose half the money, and pay him off; a man like that will find ten places for one he loses, but he needs a firmer hand than mine.

  Soon they were riding at a foot-pace; the horse’s head looked thin and jaded, and Gotthilff’s face bloated and furious. He pointed to a big farm in front of them, to the side of the road—there they would stop: “I’m not going to ride a dead-lame beast a step further.”

  THE HOMESTEAD was more than substantial. A square of stone wall ran round the whole, with a stout turret at each corner; the gate was framed in stone, with a coat of arms above. Andreas thought it must be a gentleman’s house. They dismounted, Gotthilff took the two horses—he had to pull rather than lead the bay through the gate. The courtyard was empty save for a fine big cock on a dunghill, surrounded by hens; on the other side a little stream of water flowed from the fountain, and made its way out under the wall, among nettles and briars: ducklings were swimming on it. There was a tiny chapel, with flowers against it growing on trellises, and all this was within the wall. The path leading across the farmyard was flagged, the horses’ hoofs clattered on it. The path led straight through the house under a huge vaulted archway. The stables must be behind the house.

  Then farm-hands appeared, with a young maid, followed by the farmer himself, a tall man, not much over forty, and slim and handsome. A stable was allotted to the strangers, Andreas was shown to a pleasant room in the upper storey. Everything gave the impression of a well-to-do house where nobody is put out by the arrival of even unexpected guests. The farmer glanced at the little bay, went up and looked at the horse between its forelegs, but said nothing. The two strangers were bidden to table at once.

  The room was massively arched, on the wall a huge crucifix, in one corner the table, with the meal already standing on it. The men and maids sat spoon in hand, at the head of the table the farmer’s wife, a big woman with an open face, but not so handsome and cheerful as her husband; beside her the daughter, as tall as her mother, yet still a child, with her mother’s regular features, though all lighting up with pleasure at every breath, like her father’s.

  With the memory of the meal that followed Andreas struggled as with some mouthful of horror that he must get down his throat, whether he would or no. The farmer and his family so kind, so trustful, everybody so frank and mannerly, so unsuspicious, the grace pleasantly spoken by the farmer, the wife attentive to her guest, as if he had been her son, the men and maids neither bold nor bashful, and between master and man the same frank kindliness. But there sat Gotthilff, like a bull in the young corn, insolent and patronizing with his master, lewd and overbearing with the servants, guzzling, showing off, bragging. It gripped Andreas’s throat to see the lengths to which the ruffian could go, and still laugh: it pierced him tenfold to see how unabashed he was in his shameless silliness. He felt as though his soul enfolded every one of the servants, and the farmer and his wife as well. The farmer’s brow seemed to grow so still, and his wife’s face stern and hard—he longed to get up and give Gotthilff what he deserved, beating his face with his fists till he should collapse, bleeding, and have to be carried out feet foremost.

  At last the meal came to an end, grace was said—at any rate he ordered the ruffian at once to the stable to see to the sick horse, and in so peremptory a tone that the man looked at him amazed, and, although with a grimace and a scowl, immediately betook himself out of the room. Andreas went upstairs—thought he would go and have a look at the horse—thought better of it, to avoid seeing Gotthilff—was standing in the archway—a door was ajar in it—the girl Romana appeared and asked him where he was going. He: he didn’t know how to kill the time; besides, he ought to have a look at the horse so as to find out whether they would be able to leave the next day. She: do you have to kill it? It passes quickly enough for me. It often frightens me. Had he been in the village? The church was really beautiful; she would show it to him. Then, when they came back, he could have a look at the horse; his man had been poulticing it with fresh cow-dung.

  Then they went out at the back of the farmyard; between the byre and the wall was a path, and beside one of the corner turrets a little gate led into the open. On the narrow footpath up through the fields they talked freely; she asked whether his parents were still alive—whether he had brothers and sisters. She was sorry for him there, being so much alone. She had two brothers; there would have been nine of them if six had not died. They were all little innocents in Paradise. Her brothers were woodcutting up in the convent wood. It was a merry life in the woodcutters’ hut; they had a maid with them too. She was to go herself next year—her parents had promised.

  Meanwhile they had reached the village. The church stood off the road, they entered, whispered. Romana showed him everything: a shrine with a knuckle of St. Radegunda in a gold casket, the pulpit with chubby-cheeked angels blowing silver trumpets, her seat, and her parents’ and brothers’, in the front pew, and, at the side of the pew, a metal shield, which bore the inscription Prerogative of the Finazzers. Then he knew her name.

  They left the church on the other side and went into the churchyard. Romana moved about the graves as if she were at home. She led Andreas to a grave with a number of crosses on it, one behind the other. “Here lie my little sisters and brothers, God keep their souls,” she said, and bent to pull up a weed or two from among the lovely flowers. Then she took a little holy-water stoup from the foremost cross. “I must fill it again, the birds are always perching here and upsetting it.” Meanwhile Andreas was reading the names; there were the innocent boys Egidius, Achaz, and Romuald Finazzer, the innocent girl Sabina, and the innocent twins Mansuet and Bibiana. Andreas was moved with inward awe to think they had had to depart so young—not one had been on earth for even so much as a year, and one had lived only one summer and one autumn. He thought of the warm-blooded, jovial face of the father, and realized why the mother’s regular features were harder and paler. Then Romana came
back from the church with the holy water in her hand, reverently careful not to spill a drop. Thus gravely intent she was indeed a child; but unconsciously, and in her beauty, grace, and stature, already a woman. “There’s none but my kin hereabout,” she said, and looked with shining eyes over the graves. She felt happy here, as she felt happy sitting between her father and mother at table, and lifting her spoon to her shapely mouth. She followed Andreas’s eyes: her look could be as steady as an animal’s, and, as it were, carry the look of another as it wandered.

  Built into the church wall behind the Finazzer graves there was a big, reddish tombstone, with the figure of a knight on it, armed cap-à-pie, helm in arm, a little dog at his feet, with its paws touching a scutcheon. She showed him the little dog, the squirrel with the crown between its paws, and crowned itself, as a crest.

  “That is our ancestor,” said Romana. “He was a knight, and came over from the Italian Tyrol.”

  “So you are gentry, and the arms painted on the sundial are yours?” said Andreas.

  “Why, yes,” said Romana with a nod. “It is all painted in the book at home that is called The Roll of Carinthian Nobles. It goes back to the time of Emperor Maximilian I. I can show it to you if you like.”

  At home she showed him the book, and took a real child’s delight in all the handsome crests. The wings, leaping bucks, eagles, cocks, and a green man—nothing escaped her, but her own crest was the finest, the little squirrel with the crown in its paws—it was not the most beautiful, but she loved it best. She turned over the pages for him, leaving him time to look. “Look! Look!” she cried at each page. “That fish looks as fierce as a fresh-caught trout—what a hideous buck!”