Peter Camenzind (12 page)

It was ironic that the milk of human kindness, which I despised so thoroughly, finally helped me in this endeavor. As soon as I thought of the scholar's house, a picture of Elizabeth came to my mind, as beautiful as she had looked standing before the Segantini cloud. I realized what a large role she had played in my longing and melancholy. For the first time in my life I gave serious thought to marriage. Until now I had been so convinced of my complete unsuitability for married life that I had capitulated to this fact with feelings of caustic self-derision. I was a poet, wanderer, drunkard, lone wolf! Now I felt that my destiny was taking shape as a love match linking me to humanity. It all seemed so tempting and certain! Elizabeth, I had noticed, was receptive to me, and she was a noble person. I remembered how vivid her beauty was when I had told her about San Clemente and when she had stood in front of the Segantini. Over the years I had gathered a great treasure from nature and art which would enable me to reveal to her what was beautiful in all things; I would surround her with everything true and beautiful. Her face and her soul would shed all their sadness and unfold all their potentialities.

Oddly enough, I was completely unaware of the comic aspect of my sudden transformation. I, a recluse who went wholly his own way, overnight had turned into an infatuated fool who dreamed of married bliss and setting up house.

At the first opportunity I called at the house that had always treated me so hospitably, and I was now received with the friendliest of reproaches. I went several times in rapid succession and eventually saw Elizabeth again. Truly, she was beautiful! She looked just as I imagined she would look as my mistress: beautiful and happy. And for a while I just basked in the beauty of her presence. She greeted me in a kindly manner, even affectionately, and with a certain air of intimate friendliness that delighted me.

Do you remember the evening on the lake in the boat, the evening decked out with Japanese lanterns and music, when my declaration of love was nipped in the bud? That had been the pathetic story of a boy in love.

Even more pathetic and sad is the story of Peter Camenzind as a man in love.

Someone mentioned in passing that Elizabeth had just become engaged. I congratulated her, and made the acquaintance of her fiancé when he came to take her home. I congratulated him too. Throughout the evening I wore a smile of benign good will, as irksome to me as a mask. Afterward I did not dash off to the woods or a tavern but sat down on my bed and watched the lamp until it began to smoke and went out. I sat stunned and crushed until finally I came to again. Then grief and despair spread their black wings over me once more and I lay there small and weak and sobbed like a boy.

Whereupon I packed my rucksack, went to the station, and took the morning train home. I felt like climbing mountains again. I wanted to revisit my childhood and find out whether my father was still alive.

We had grown apart. Father's hair had turned completely gray; he no longer carried himself upright and no longer looked very imposing. He treated me shyly, asked no questions, wanted me to take his bed, and seemed embarrassed as well as surprised at my visit. He still owned the little house but had sold the meadows and cattle. He received a small annuity and did a few odd jobs here and there.

After he left the room, I went to the spot where my mother's bed had stood and the past flowed by me like a broad calm stream. No longer an adolescent, I thought how swiftly the years would follow each other from now on and how soon I too would be a bent, gray man, ready to lie down and die a bitter death. In the old, shabby room, almost unchanged since I had lived there as a boy and learned my Latin and witnessed my mother's death, these thoughts seemed so natural they actually calmed me. Gratefully I remembered the abundance of my youth. A stanza of Lorenzo de Medici's that I had learned in Florence came to mind:

Quant' è bella giovenezza,

Ma si fugge tuttavia.

Chi vuol esser lieto, sia:

Di doman non c'è certezza.

Simultaneously I was surprised to find myself bringing memories from Italy, from history, and from the realm of learning into this old and familiar room.

I gave my father some money and in the evening we went to the inn. Everything appeared to be just as it was the last evening we had spent there, except that I paid for the wine. When my father boasted about champagne and described the wine that produced a star-shaped foam, he cited me as his authority and acknowledged that my capacity for drink was now greater than his. I inquired about the wizened peasant over whose bald pate I had poured wine the last time I'd been in the inn, he who had been so full of tricks. I learned he had died long ago and even his jokes had been forgotten. I drank Vaud wine, listened in on the conversations, and told a few stories myself. When I walked home with my father in the moonlight and he continued rambling and gesticulating in his intoxication, I felt a peculiar enchantment I had never felt before. Images from the past pressed upon me—Uncle Konrad, Rösi Girtanner, my mother, Richard, and Erminia. They seemed to me like a picture book whose content surprises you because everything is so beautiful and well made, whereas in reality it was not half so lovely. How fast everything had rushed past me into forgetfulness! Yet it was now engraved clearly and distinctly within me: —half a lifetime that my memory had stored without conscious effort on my part.

Only after we were home and my father finally quieted down and fell asleep did I think of Elizabeth. It had been yesterday that she greeted me and I admired her and congratulated her fiancé. So much seemed to have happened since then—my grief awoke and mingled with the flood of memories to beat against my selfish and ill-protected heart like the Föhn against a trembling and fragile Alpine hut. I could not bear to stay in the house. I climbed out the window, walked to the lake, unfastened the boat, which had been badly neglected, and rowed quietly out into the pale night. The mountains, veiled in silvery mist, kept solemn watch; the moon, which was almost full, seemed to be suspended just above the peak of the Schwarzenstock. It was so quiet I could hear the Sennalpstock waterfall rushing in the distance. The ghosts of my homeland and of my youth touched me with their pale wings, crowded upon me in my small boat, and pointed entreatingly with outstretched hands. They made painful and incomprehensible gestures.

What was the meaning of my life? Why had so many joys and sorrows passed over me? Why had I thirsted for the true and the beautiful and why was my thirst still unquenched? Why had I been in love and suffered so much for these women—I whose head was bowed again in shame for an unfulfilled love. And why had God placed the burning need to be loved in my heart when in fact he had destined me to live the life of a recluse whom no one loved?

The water gurgled dully against the bow and trickled like silver from the oars; the mountains stood close and silent; the cool moonlight shifted from one mist-filled ravine to the other. The ghosts of my youth stood silently about me and gazed at me from deep eyes, silent and searching. It seemed to me I could make out the beautiful Elizabeth among them. She would have loved me and become mine if I had only come at the right time.

I felt it would be best if I were to sink quietly into the pale lake and if no one would ever ask what had become of me. Yet I rowed more swiftly when I noticed the rotten old boat drawing water. Suddenly I felt a chill and hastened to get home.

When I got there, I lay in bed exhausted yet wide awake. I reflected upon my life, seeking to find out what I lacked that would lead me to a happier and more genuine existence. I was well aware that the heart of love is goodness and gladness. I would have to begin to love mankind despite my fresh grief. But how and whom?

Then I thought of my old father and I realized for the first time that I had never loved him as I should have. I had made life difficult for him when I was young; I had gone away and left him alone after my mother's death. I had often been angry with him and finally almost forgotten him completely. The image of him lying on his deathbed began to haunt me: I stood beside it watching his soul slowly ebb away—this soul I had never known and whose love I had never sought to win.

And so I embarked on the difficult yet sweet task of learning from a cantankerous old drunkard instead of from a beautiful and beloved woman. My replies to him became more considerate, I spent as much time with him as I could, read him stories from the almanac, told him about French and Italian wines. I let him continue the little work he had to do, as he would have lost all hold on himself without it. But I never succeeded in getting him to take his measure of wine at home instead of at the inn. We tried it a few times. I fetched wine and cigars and went to some lengths to amuse him at home. The fourth or fifth evening of the experiment, he was silent and stubborn. When I asked what bothered him, he finally complained: “I'm afraid you're never going to let your father set foot in the tavern again.”

“Nonsense,” I said. “You're my father and it's for you to decide what we'll do.”

He looked at me quizzically. Then he picked up his cap and we marched off to the tavern.

It was obvious that my father disliked being alone with me for any length of time, though he did not say so. Besides, I felt the urge to let my wounds heal in a foreign land. “What would you think if I left you again one of these days?” I asked him. He scratched his head, shrugged his shoulders, and laughed slyly and expectantly: “As you like.” Before leaving, I called on a few neighbors and on the monks and asked them to keep an eye on him.

I also reserved one day to climb the Sennalpstock. From its broad, half-round summit I could look across mountain ranges and valleys, glistening lakes, and the haze of distant cities. These sights had filled me with such powerful longings as a boy. I had gone out to conquer the beautiful wide world for myself; now it lay spread out before me as beautiful and enigmatic as ever. I was ready to go forth and seek my luck once more.

I had long ago decided that it would benefit my studies if I were to spend some time in Assisi. First I returned briefly to Basel, where I took care of a few pressing matters, packed my few belongings, and sent them ahead to Perugia. I myself took the train only as far as Florence and from there hiked south in a leisurely fashion. In this region you do not need to resort to artifice to get along well with people. The life they lead is so naïve, open, and free that on your way from one town to the next you can make as many friends as you want. I felt safe again and at home. Later on, in Basel, I knew I would not seek the comfort of human company in “society” but among the ordinary people.

The mere fact of being alive was a joy in Perugia and Assisi. My interest in historical studies revived, my wounded soul began to heal, and I threw out new bridges to life. My concierge in Assisi, a voluble and devout grocer, entered into a deep friendship with me on the basis of several conversations we had about St. Francis—that was how I acquired the reputation of being a “good Catholic.” As undeserved as this honor was, it made it possible for me to become more intimately acquainted with the people; I was no longer suspected of being a heathen, a taint attached to most foreigners in this region. Annunziata Nardini, my concierge, was thirty-four years old, a widow of colossal girth and exquisite manners. On Sundays, attired in cheerful flowery dresses, earrings, a golden chain that dangled on her bosom a collection of hammered-gold medallions tinkling and glistening, she looked the very embodiment of the holiday spirit. She carried about a heavy breviary embossed with silver (whose use, no doubt, would have given her some difficulty) and a beautiful black-and-white rosary with slender silver links (which she could handle much more dexterously). Between church services she would return to her loggetta to hold forth to her awed neighbors on the sins of absent friends. Her round pious face would acquire the poignant expression of a soul at peace with God.

Since my name was too difficult to pronounce correctly, I was simply called Signor Pietro. On golden evenings Signora Nardini and I would sit together in the tiny loggetta, surrounded by neighbors, children, cats, and dogs. In the store itself, amid fruit, baskets of vegetables, seed boxes, and the smoked sausages dangling from the ceiling, we recounted our experiences to each other, discussed harvest prospects; I smoked a cigar, or we both sucked melon slices. I told them about St. Francis, the story of Portiuncula and the saint's church, about St. Clare and the first Franciscan friars. Everyone listened intently, put a thousand questions to me, praised the saint, and gradually entered into a discussion of more recent and more sensational events, with particular preference for stories about robberies and political feuds. Cats, children, and dogs caterwauled around our feet. From personal inclination and to maintain my reputation, I ransacked the saintly legends for edifying and touching anecdotes, and was pleased to have brought along Arnold's
Lives of the Patriarchs and Other Saintly Persons,
among several other books. These frank and simple stories I translated, with little variations, into idiomatic Italian. Passers-by would stop and listen and then join in our talk; in this way, the audience changed three or four times an evening. Signora Nardini and I were the only permanent fixtures and were never absent. I would always have a bottle of red wine beside me, and the frugal people were impressed by my lordly consumption Gradually, even the bashful neighborhood girls began to trust me and take part in the conversations from the doorstep. They allowed me to make them presents of small pictures and began to take me for a saint because I did not tease them with suggestive jokes or seem to make an effort to gain their confidence. Among them there were several big-eyed, dreamy beauties who could have been models for Perugino. I was fond of them all and enjoyed their playful, good-natured company. Yet I did not fall in love with any of them, for their beauty was so much the same that it seemed a racial rather than a personal quality. Someone else who joined us was Matteo Spinelli, a young fellow, son of a baker, a witty and wily joker who could imitate any number of animals, knew all the latest scandal, and was fairly bursting with impudent and clever ruses. He would listen with exemplary piety and humility as I recounted my legends; then, by naïvely asking a serious or a malicious question, or by comparing or speculating, he would ridicule the holy friars, to the dismay of the grocer's widow and the undisguised delight of most of the audience.