The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Volume 08. Коллектив авторов

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СКАЧАТЬ colony during an outpost skirmish. There was much talk in the village of the singular fact that so many in high departments should have concerned themselves so much about the dead John. But this stream of well-confirmed information was arrested before it had reached the end of its course.

      At a meeting of the Village, Council it was determined that nothing at all should be said to Black Marianne about it. It would be wrong, they said, to embitter the last few years of her life by taking her one comfort away from her.

      But instead of keeping the report secret, the first thing the members of the Council did was to talk of it in their homes, and it was not long before the whole village knew about it, excepting only Black Marianne. Every one, afraid of betraying the secret to her, looked at her with strange glances; no one addressed her, and even her greetings were scarcely returned. It was only Marianne's peculiar disposition that prevented her from noticing this. And indeed, if any one did speak to her and was drawn on to say anything about John's death, it was done in the conjectural and soothing way to which she had been accustomed for years; and Marianne did not believe it now any more than she had formerly, because nobody ever said anything definite about the report of his decease.

      It would have been better if Amrei had known nothing about it, but there was a strange, seductive charm in getting as close as possible to a subject that was forbidden. Accordingly every one spoke to Amrei of the mournful event, warned her not to tell Black Marianne anything about it, and asked if the mother had no presentiments or dreams of her son's death—if his spirit did not haunt the house. After she heard of it Amrei was always trembling and quaking in secret; for she alone was always near Black Marianne, and it was terrible to know something which she was obliged to conceal from her. Even the people in whose house Black Marianne had rented a small room could no longer bear to have her near them, and they showed their sympathy by giving her notice to quit.

      But how strangely things are associated in this life! As a result of this very thing Amrei experienced joy as well as grief—for it opened up her parents' home to her again. Black Marianne went to live there, and Amrei, who at first trembled as she went back and forth in the house, carrying water or making a fire, always thinking that now her father and mother must come, afterward began gradually to feel quite at home in it. She sat spinning day and night, until she had earned enough money to buy back her parents' cuckoo-clock from Coaly Mathew. Now she had at least one household article of her own! But the cuckoo had fared badly among strangers; it had lost half of its voice, and the other half seemed to stick in its throat—it could only cry "cook"—and as often as it did that, Amrei would involuntarily add the missing "oo."

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      Black Marianne could not bear to hear the clock cuckoo and fixed the pendulum so that it would not work, saying that she always had the time in her head. And it was indeed wonderful how true this was—at any minute she could tell what time it was, although it was of very little consequence to her. In fact, this waiting, expectant woman possessed a remarkable degree of alertness, for as she was always listening to hear her son coming, she was naturally wide-awake all the time. And, although she never visited anybody in the village, and spoke to nobody, she knew everybody, and all about the most secret things that went on in the place. She could infer a great deal from the manner in which people met one another, and from words she overheard here and there. And because this seemed very wonderful, she was feared and avoided. She often used to describe herself, according to a local expression, as an "old-experienced" woman, and yet she was exceedingly active. Every day, year in and year out, she ate a few juniper berries, and people said that was the reason why she was so vigorous and showed her sixty-six years so little. The fact that the two sixes stood together caused her, according to an old country saying3 (which, however, was not universally believed in) to be regarded as a witch. It was said that she sometimes milked her black goat for hours at a time, and that this goat gave an astonishing quantity of milk, but that in milking this goat she was in reality drawing the milk out of the udders of the cows belonging to persons she hated, and that she had an especial grudge against Farmer Rodel's cattle. Moreover, Marianne's successful poultry-keeping was also looked upon as witchcraft; for where did she get the food, and how was it that she always had chickens and eggs to sell? It is true that in the summer she was often seen collecting cock-chafers, grasshoppers, and all kinds of worms, and on moonless nights she was seen gliding like a will-o'-the-wisp among the graves in the churchyard, where she would be carrying a burning torch and collecting the large black worms that crept out, all the time muttering to herself. It was even said that in the quiet winter nights she held wonderful conversations with her goat and with her fowls, which she housed in her room during the winter. The entire wild army of tales of witchcraft and sorcery, banished by school education, came back and attached itself to Black Marianne.

      Amrei sometimes felt afraid in the long, silent winter nights, when she sat spinning by Black Marianne, and nothing was heard but an occasional sleepy clucking from the fowls, or a dreamy bleat from the goat. And it seemed truly magical how fast Marianne spun! She even said once:

      "I think my John is helping me to spin." And then again she complained that this winter, for the first time, she had not thought wholly and solely of her John. She took her self to task for it and called herself a bad mother, and complained that it seemed all the time as if the features of her John were slowly vanishing before her—as if she were forgetting what he had done at such and such a time, how he had laughed, sung, and wept, and how he had climbed the tree and jumped into the ditch.

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      But however cheerfully and brightly Marianne might begin to speak, she always ended by relapsing into gloomy complaint and mourning; and she who professed to like to be alone and to think of nothing and to love nothing, only lived to think about her son and to love him. Consequently Amrei made up her mind to release herself from this uncanny position of being alone with Black Marianne; she demanded that Damie should be taken into the house. At first Marianne opposed it vehemently, but when Amrei threatened to leave the house herself, and then coaxed her in such a childlike way and tried so hard to do whatever would best please her, the old woman at last consented.

      Damie, who had learned from Crappy Zachy to knit wool, now sat beneath the parental roof again; and at night, when the brother and sister were asleep in the garret, each one of them would wake the other when they heard Black Marianne down stairs, running to and fro and muttering to herself. But Damie's transmigration to Black Marianne's was the cause of new trouble. Damie was exceedingly discontented at having been compelled to learn a miserable trade that was fit only for a cripple. He wanted to be a mason, and although Amrei was very much opposed to it, for she predicted that he would not keep at it, Black Marianne supported him in it. She would have liked to make all the young lads masons, and then to have sent them out on their travels that they might bring back news of her John.

      Black Marianne seldom went to church, but she always liked to have anybody else borrow her hymn-book and take it to church—it seemed to give her a kind of pleasure to have it there. She was especially pleased when any strange workman, who happened to be employed in the village, borrowed the hymn-book which John had left behind him for that purpose; for it seemed to her as if John himself were praying in his native church, when the words were spoken and sung out of his book. And now Damie was obliged to go to church twice every Sunday with John's hymn-book.

      While Marianne did not go to church herself, she was always to be seen at every solemn ceremony in the village or in any of the surrounding villages. There was never a funeral which Marianne did not attend as one of the mourners; and at the funeral sermon, and the blessing spoken over the grave, even of a little child, she always wept so violently that one would have thought she was the nearest relative. On the way home, however, she was always especially cheerful, for this weeping seemed to be a kind of relief to her; all the year round she had to suppress so much secret sorrow, that she felt thankful for an opportunity to give vent to her feelings.

      Could people be blamed if they shunned her as an uncanny person, especially as they were keeping a secret from her? The habit of avoiding Black Marianne was partly extended to Amrei СКАЧАТЬ