An Old Heart Goes A-Journeying (4 page)

The old man’s gaiety became infectious; a tall, raw-boned countrywoman and a sturdy boy dashed into the house.

“Hi! Fritzi, Gerhard, Elli, you, too, come along and hold my end steady for a bit, it’s wobbling. I had jellied eel and roast potatoes for dinner, and, damn it, I feel as if the creature had come to life again inside me. . . .” He laughed. “Ah, that’s better, boys. . . . Drat that eel!” he roared suddenly. “Stop wriggling, will you, what’s your trouble now?”

“Excuse me,” whispered Professor Kittguss to his neighbor, “what is all this?”

“Have you never heard of jolly Farmer Tamm of Unsadel?” asked the other in astonishment.

“No,” said the Professor politely.

“Then you must be quite a stranger,” observed the man. “Everybody hereabouts has heard of fat Tamm.”

“I have not,” said the Professor gently.

“This is one of his little games. Every autumn, before the first pig is killed, he gives away his weight in pork to the poor of the village. It clears out his curing room, and he enjoys the fun. There—that’ll do it!”

The woman and the lad came out of the house staggering
under an enormous ham; and they laid it on the opposite scale. The great beam creaked, and Fritzi, Gerhard and Elli let go of the farmer’s end, which gradually tilted upward. “Drat that eel!” yelled the farmer once more, as he swung into the leaves, while the other scale tipped slowly to the ground.

And all the onlookers shouted: “That’s done it.”

“It’s more than’s needed,” cried the farmer’s wife, trying to rescue a sausage or two.

“Never you mind, Lowising. What’s in the scale, stays there. Right?” he shouted toward the stable doors, where the older folk were standing.

“Right, Tamm! Right you be!” they shouted back.

“Then get out of this yard!” roared the farmer; and as they hurried out and Maxe shut the gates behind them, the farmer was helped out of his perch, puffing and blowing. “Now, then, boys and girls, make it as hard as you can. And hurry!”

In an instant the whole farmyard was thronged with hurrying figures, carrying hams and sausages and sides of bacon, hanging them on trees and pushing them into all manner of hiding-places. Amid all this tumult the fat farmer stood immovable, shouting his orders while Professor Kittguss watched the scene from the gate.

“Barthel, what in hell do you think you’re doing? Don’t bury a ham in the dunghill! Hoist it up on to that woodpile, as high as you can. Maxe, give him a hand!”

By this time the farmer had noticed the Professor, and shook him by the hand. “Now you’ll get a good laugh! Are you a stranger here?”

“Yes.” And Professor Kittguss was about to disobey
orders and ask after Rosemarie Thürke, when the yard gate gradually swung open.

“All clear!” shouted the farmer; and in they came. Poor and old and halt and maimed, stumbling, groaning, panting; for a moment they stopped and peered about, until they saw what they were after, a sausage or a side of bacon; and they hobbled toward it, mumbling and lamenting.

“Oh dear, oh dear, there’ll be nothing left for me.”

“Now then! That’s my sausage!”

“It’s mine! I saw it first!”

“No, you didn’t.”

“It’s mine, I tell you!”

“Let go of it, will you!”

And while two women tugged furiously at the sausage, a gaunt old man with a sly grin produced a plump ham from the very same hiding-place.

One nimble old gentleman had clambered up the lime tree after a side of bacon, and was gingerly edging along the branch from which it dangled. But from below the enemy appeared in the shape of a determined old lady with a wheelbarrow. She tipped up the barrow, climbed on to it, and just as the old man reached the bacon the woman grabbed it from below.

“Oh dear, I shan’t get anything!” wailed the old man on the branch. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Gesche, you’re ten years younger than I am. . . .”

He stopped abruptly; from his point of vantage he had sighted the vast ham on the woodpile. Something of the boyish spirit of sixty years ago possessed him in that moment; he slipped off his branch, hung for a moment swaying between heaven and earth, and then, with a
clutch at Gesche, dropped. Both fell; the side of bacon slipped from the woman’s hands, and three others rushed up to grab the prize.

The farmyard rocked and roared with laughter.

“Now, then, go to it, Wilhelm!” shouted the spectators. But the old man, preferring the dove to the sparrow, made for the woodpile.

“Oh, God!” gasped Farmer Tamm. “I can’t bear it! Slap me on the back, will you, my dear sir? . . . Harder, please . . . !”

Here on a farm in Unsadel stood that respectable gentleman, Professor Kittguss, author of a commentary on the Revelation of St. John the Divine, clapping a choking farmer on the back.

Close beside them crouched a little old woman, with five sausages and a side of bacon in her lap. “I’ve got my little lot; thank you very much, Tamm. Bacon enough and to spare for the whole winter. . . . That’s right, Tamm, cough as hearty as you can. A man that coughs well, lives to be old.” And she chuckled with glee.

Meanwhile, the old man had made two vain attempts on the woodpile; he got halfway up, then nearly reached the top, but slipped down again. No use, he must go and get the barrow. But by the time he came back with it three others were already storming the ham citadel. One of them, who was also trying to scramble up it, was not a dangerous rival; but the two others, an aged married couple, who were working in combination, seemed near to success.

“I shan’t get anything,” wailed the old man, clambering on to the barrow. “I never have any luck. I never did have. My pears were always rotten.”

The ancient husband now bent down, and the woman climbed on to his shoulders. From the other side, the old man on the barrow also made a grab. But alas! the forty-pound ham was more than their withered hands could hold. They dislodged it, but it slipped down like an avalanche in a snow dust of chips and splinters, knocked one aged adversary flat, and rolled into the yard.

The old husband forgot that his wife was on his back. He scuttled toward the ham on all fours like a farm dog. The little old woman screeched and fell. Five petticoats fluttered up like rose petals round a green calyx of drawers.

But her husband had flung himself on the ham; he exerted all his puny strength against the frantic assaults of old Wilhelm.

“Now, then, Wilhelm,” cried the farmer’s wife, “that’ll do. I’ve got something put aside for you. You shan’t go away empty. No, it’s Goldner’s ham, and you must let him have it. We’re all good friends here.”

“What a charming village!” exclaimed Professor Kittguss with enthusiasm.

“Eh?” said Tamm, obviously rather taken aback. “Well, I wouldn’t go quite so far as that. If
I
wasn’t here!—And I do this, just because the others don’t.” He turned to the Professor, and eyed him with sudden gravity. “Well, if you’re making a stay, you’ll see the place for yourself. Have you come for a holiday? If you aren’t fixed up, I can let you a room. Stop!” he roared, swinging round toward the yard. “Now, then, line up, folks, and let’s see what you’ve all got. We’ll meet later on, sir; I must just make sure they’re all satisfied.”

And he walked down the line of old people, with a joke and a laugh and a word of comfort for each and all; and Professor Kittguss watched him.

Something touched his hand. He looked down, and saw a small girl, with two long plaits of fair hair. “Well, my child?” he said kindly. “What is it?”

“You must turn to the right by the fire-engineshed,” she whispered tensely. “It’s the last farm, with five fir trees in front of it. Don’t ask for Rosemarie; remember—you don’t know her.” And she ran off.

“But my child—”

She had already vanished in the throng. Another messenger—and so very much in earnest!

“The children all seem to know me, and the grownup people don’t,” he reflected with some surprise. “Dear me, I had almost forgotten Rosemarie.”

He looked round. Some were already filing out of the farmyard. The merriment was over, the early October twilight had begun to fall. There was no time to speak to the farmer now. The Professor, therefore passed out through the farmyard gate into the village street.

He suddenly felt tired as he trudged wearily along the darkening village street. His bag weighed like lead, and he constantly changed it from one hand to the other. He was troubled by his coming interview with Rosemarie, and depressed by the thought that he had no idea where he was going to sleep that night. The unwonted gaiety of Farmer Tamm’s farmyard had left him vaguely sad.

After a while he came to a long low hut. Here the road divided. This must be the engineshed; here he had to turn off to the right, and after he had passed six or
eight cottages he found himself on a narrowing path that led up a hill. From the top of the hill he saw a group of pines outlined against the fading sky, and below him a long, low, unlighted building: the house of Schlieker.

For a while he stood, surveying the scene in silence: the quiet countryside sinking into rest, the lake and woods and fields. A cow lowed in the village, he sighed. “Now for it!” he said, and walked down to the gloomy house.

Beside the path ran a stake fence, and in the garden a line of shrubs edged the shimmering waters of the lake.

He was very near his destination; his heart began to beat a little faster—then he stopped and listened; what was that? He walked on a few steps farther, stopped again, and said softly into the darkness: “Is someone crying?”

All quiet until a dog barking broke the stillness.

“Come, my dear Rosemarie,” said the Professor softly. “Your Godfather Kittguss is here—your father’s old friend.”

There was a rustle among the bushes, a slim form appeared at the fence, he could barely see the white glimmer of the face in the darkness. He felt for her hand; it was cold.

“Why are you crying, Rosemarie?”

And a shrill, imperious little voice answered angrily: “Why have you been so long? I had a message from Hütefritz three hours ago that he had seen you. Are you one of these people who get their courage out of a bottle?”

“My dear child!” exclaimed the horrorstruck Professor. “What are you saying! I am not in the habit of getting drunk. I stopped a little while with a pleasant old gentleman called Farmer Tamm. Perhaps I was wrong to have done so—pray forgive me.”

She fell silent.

“And you’ve been standing all these hours in the cold waiting for me?”

“Yes,” she cried wrathfully. “And I’ll be late for work; the Schliekers have been looking for me, they’ve called out several times. And when I get back, he’ll curse me, and she’ll pinch me and pull my hair. She always does that when she’s angry with me, and she’s always, always angry with me.”

“No one will curse you, and no one will pull your hair,” said the Professor in a soothing tone. “I shall go with you and speak to them.”

“No, no,” she whispered hurriedly. “You mustn’t come until later, in about a quarter or half an hour. Then you must ask for a room and pretend you don’t know me. Otherwise all is lost.”

“But, Rosemarie, my child,” said the Professor very gravely, “that would be a lie. And you know quite well from your dear father that we are not to tell lies—Surely you don’t tell lies?”

“They are liars and cheats!” she cried. “We can’t do anything unless we deceive them.”

“It is wicked to deceive,” said the Professor solemnly, “we must always tell the truth.”

“Oh!” she cried in despair. “Why did I send for you? If you won’t listen to me and do what I ask you’ll only make things worse. The children do what I tell them,
and don’t make a fuss. Perhaps I can manage without you after all. Look—that is
my
house,” she cried passionately. “And it’s my farm and my cattle and my land, and the Schliekers mean to rob me of it all. But I won’t let them. Philip said that if the worst came to the worst, we’d better set the whole place on fire and destroy it rather than. . . .”

“Rosemarie!” exclaimed the Professor in consternation, “you don’t know what you’re saying, you poor unhappy child! What you must have suffered!”

She was silent after her outburst, and not a sound could be heard but her faint agonized sobbing.

“Rosemarie,” he said gently, “there is a bright way and a dark way through this world. I am sure you want to see your dear mother and your good father again, don’t you?”

Her sobbing grew less violent.

“I dare say,” he said, “I am not a man with much experience of the world. But I am a very old man, and one thing I know—that for those who love God all things turn out for the best. Do you love God, Rosemarie?”

She was silent.

“My dear,” he said, “the Schliekers and the pinching and the house and farm matter little: what matters is your own self, Rosemarie. And now show me the way to the house, and before we go into the yard, please chain up the dog. I am afraid of dogs.”

Melted by his kindliness, she whispered: “Come along, then.” They followed the fence, and at the gate she said: “Don’t be afraid, I won’t let Bello do you any harm.”