The Bachelors

by Adalbert Stifter

  When the woman came back from the kitchen, she sat down in front of Victor and said: “Now that you’re refreshed, listen to me. If I were indeed your mother, as you always call me, I would be really cross with you, Victor, for, look, I have to tell you that what you said a moment ago about all the enjoyment having gone out of your life is very wrong of you. How wrong, you don’t as yet understand. Even if it was something sad that was awaiting you, you still shouldn’t say such a thing. Look at me, Victor, I’ll soon be seventy years old and still haven’t said that the enjoyment has gone out of my life because everything, everything should give you pleasure, for the world is so beautiful and grows even more beautiful the longer you live. But I must confess to you—and you, too, will come to have the same experience as me when you’re older—that when I was eighteen years old, I, too, was always saying that I didn’t enjoy life any more—I said it in fact whenever a particular pleasure I had set my heart on was denied me. At that time I would wish away all the time that separated me from a future pleasure and did not consider what a precious and good thing time was. Only when you get older do you learn properly to treasure things, and treasure time, too, which becomes shorter and shorter. Everything that God sends us is beautiful, even though we may not understand it—and we only need to give it some proper thought to see that what God gives is just sheer happiness; the suffering is what we add to it. Didn’t you see, when you came in, how the lettuces by the fence that you could barely see any sign of yesterday, have all sprouted today?

  “No,” replied Victor, “I didn’t.”

  “I looked at them before sunrise and was so pleased,” said the woman. “From now on I’m going to make sure no one can ever say they saw me shed a tear in sorrow, even if I have occasion to feel it, for sorrow is after all only another kind of joy. In my youth I went through a lot of sorrow—great, burning sorrow, but it was all to my good and betterment—often leading to earthly happiness even. I am telling you all this, Victor, because you’re leaving soon. You should be very grateful to God, my child, that you have young limbs and a healthy body that enable you to go out into the world and seek out all those joys and delights that don’t just fall into our laps of themselves. See now, you have no inheritance—your father was himself to blame for much of the misfortune that befell him here in this world; in the next he will certainly be eternally blessed, for he was a good man and always had a gentle heart, like you. When, according to the instructions of your deceased father’s will, you were brought here to live with me, to learn in the village the things you’d later be required to know in the town, you had next to nothing. But you grew up and now you’ve even landed the job so many others applied for and for which they envy you. The fact that you must leave now is nothing and is in the natural order of things, for all men must leave their mothers and get down to work. You’ve experienced lots of good things and should therefore thank God in your prayers for having given you so much and should feel humbled that you have the gifts to deserve it. In a nutshell, Victor, I would be very cross with you for what you said if I were your mother, because you don’t recognise the hand of the Lord God. But because I’m not your mother, I’m not sure whether I have given you enough love and care to have the right to get angry with you and to say this: that it’s not right of you, my child, nor is it at all a good thing to have said.”

  “But I didn’t mean it the way you think, Mother,” said Victor.

  “I know, my child, and don’t trouble yourself too much over what I’ve said,” replied the mother. “I must now tell you as well, Victor, that you are not nearly as poor as you may think. I have often told you how astonished I was—joyfully astonished, that is—when I learnt that your father had laid down in his will that you were to be brought up here with me. He knew me very well and put his trust in me. I don’t believe that trust will prove to have been misplaced. Victor, my dear, precious child, I’ll tell you now what you have. Linen—the choicest of all the things we wear, since it is worn closest to our body, protecting it and keeping it healthy—of this you have so much that you can change it daily, as you have learnt to do here. We have mended everything so that there’s not a damaged thread to be found. As for the future, you will never lack for anything you need. Outside Hanna is bleaching garments, half of which are earmarked for you—and the knitting, sewing and mending we’ll take care of. You have a decent wardrobe in other respects, too: three different changes of clothing, not counting what you have on now. Everything is now of a finer order than you have been used to so far, for a man taking up his first post, Victor, is like a bridegroom needing to be properly fitted out—and, like a bridegroom, he also should be in a state of grace. The money they had to give me over the years for your keep I have saved and always added the interest. Now that’s all yours. Your guardian doesn’t know that and doesn’t need to either, for after all you must have some spending money when others are around, otherwise you’ll feel awkward. If your uncle takes what is left of the small estate, you shouldn’t let it upset you because there are so many debts attached to it that there’s barely a single roof-tile left that’s not owed. I was at the records office and had them look it up for you so as to be sure. And you’ll still get regular emergency funds from me, too. So everything is fine. You have to make the journey to your uncle before you take up your post because he wishes it. Who knows what good will come of it—that’s all new to you yet. Your guardian also recognises the necessity for you to comply with your uncle’s wish that you journey to him on foot. Did you see Rosina yesterday?”

  “No, Mother, we got back late in the evening and ate in Ferdinand’s room—and today I set off at daybreak because there’s so much to do. My guardian said I should start my journey on foot from town and in this way take my leave of them all.”

  “See now, Victor, if you work hard at your profession, you might well marry Rosina one day. She is very beautiful, and think what a powerful man her father is. He has carried out the burdensome role of guardian in a just and diligent manner and is fond of you, for he was always very pleased when you did well in your exams. But enough of that—such a marriage is a long way off yet. Your father might now have been as highly placed, or higher even, for he had a strong intellect, but this was simply not recognised. Not even your own blood mother recognised it. And he was good, so very good that even now I sometimes find myself thinking what a really good man he was. Your mother, too, was a dear and pious woman, but she died when you were so young, far too young. Don’t be sad, Victor—go up to your room now and sort everything out. Don’t rearrange the clothes—they are already laid out so just pack them into the suitcase as they are. Be careful as you put them in that nothing gets too creased … So … Before you go up, Victor, listen to one more request from your foster-mother: when you see Hanna again, today or tomorrow, speak nicely to her—it isn’t right that you haven’t always got on well together. So, Victor, go now, for one day is not at all long.”

  The young man gave no answer but stood up and left the room like someone whose heart is weighed down with melancholy. And as inner emotion often makes one clumsy with outer things, so it was with him, too, so that he knocked his shoulder against the frame of the door. The dog went upstairs with him.

  Up in his room, which had been his for so many years now, a bleak sight met him, for nothing was in the place it had used to occupy in the peaceful, unbroken times gone by. The one exception to this was the large elder bush onto which his window looked out, with the rippling water beneath that was reflected on the ceiling of his room in fine, trembling glimmerings of light; there, still, were the sunlit and silent hills ranged protectively around the valley, at the bottom of which lay the orchard, which, with its clustering abundance, enfolded the village and rested in the warm air caught between the hills, bringing blessing and fruitfulness. Everything else was different. The drawers of the chests had been pulled out and were empty, and their contents lay round about: the snow-white linen arranged according to type; then the clothes, ne
atly laid together and sorted into appropriate piles; other things, some of which were to be packed in the suitcase while others belonged in the knapsack that was already open and lay waiting on a chair. On the bed were unfamiliar objects, on the floor was the suitcase, its straps loosened, and with torn paper lying about: the pocket watch, however, hanging in its usual place, was still ticking, and the books, too, were still ranged in the bookcases, waiting to be read.

  Victor looked at all this but did nothing. Instead of packing, he sat down on a chair that stood in the corner of the room and pressed the dog to his heart. And there he remained.

  The chimes of the clocktower striking the hour came in through the open windows but Victor didn’t know what time it was—the maid, who had returned, could be heard singing down in the garden—now and again a gleam of light flashed on the distant hills as if a bright piece of silver or glass pane were lying there—the glimmering light on the ceiling had ceased because the sun had already risen too high over the house—one could just make out the horn of the shepherd driving his flock on the mountains—the clock struck once more: but the young man remained sitting there on his chair, and in front of him the dog sat motionless, looking at him.

  At last, when he heard his mother’s footsteps coming up the stairs, he leapt up suddenly and threw himself into his work. He flung open the doors of the bookcase and quickly and mechanically began to take out the books and lay them on the floor. However, the woman stuck her head round the open door for a second only and, seeing him so busy, she withdrew and went away on tiptoe. Having got started, though, the boy stuck to it and continued working with a passion.

  All the books were taken out of the two bookcases until they were empty and the bare shelves were staring blankly into the room. Then he tied the books together into bundles and put them into a box standing there for this purpose. When the books were thus stored away, he screwed down the lid and stuck a label on it. Then he turned to his papers. All the drawers of the writing desk and the two other tables were pulled out and all the documents in them examined one after the other. Some of these were quickly scanned only and set down in special places for immediate packing, others were read, many were torn up and thrown onto the floor, and many put into his coat pocket or wallet. Finally, when all the table drawers were also empty, with nothing in them except the sad dust that had slowly settled inside over the years and the cracks that had formed meanwhile in the wood, he then tied the piles of documents also into bundles and put them in the suitcase. Then he turned to the clothes and the packing of the suitcase. Many souvenirs of earlier times, such as a small silver candlestick, a box with a gold chain, a telescope, two small pistols and finally his beloved flute, were all stowed away among the soft, protective linen. When everything was done, the lid was closed, the straps secured, the padlock fastened and an address label stuck on top. The suitcase and the box had to be sent on ahead, while the knapsack, which was still sitting on the chair, needed to contain all the things he would be taking with him on his journey on foot. He quickly packed this until it was full and then fastened the straps.

  With everything now finished, he looked around him in the room and at the walls to see if there wasn’t something lying about or hanging up that remained to be packed, but there was nothing more and the room stared back at him with a ravaged look. Still standing among the jumble of unfamiliar objects and equally unfamiliar effects was the one bed, but this, too, had been soiled with dust or covered with torn pieces of paper. He stood there for a moment. The dog, who until then had watched the proceedings with deep suspicion, not allowing a single movement, whether to the right or the left, to escape its attention, and sometimes getting in the boy’s way, now stood quietly in front of him looking up, as if to say: “Now what?”

  Victor, however, wiped the sweat from his forehead with the flat of his hand and his handkerchief, picked up a brush lying there, brushed the dust from his clothes and went downstairs.

  Here meanwhile a long time had passed and things had changed. There was no one in the sitting-room. The morning sun that had shone in through the windows in such friendly fashion when he had arrived from town early that day, making the curtains glow so brilliantly white, had now turned into a midday sun and was directly above the roof, pouring down its dazzling light and warm rays onto the grey wood. The fruit trees stood there peacefully, their leaves, which in the morning had been so wet and sparkling and which were now dry and shone but more dully—these are now motionless, and in their branches the birds are pecking at their food. The curtains have been pulled back, the windows are open and the hot countryside looks in. In the kitchen a glowing, smokeless fire is burning, and standing next to it the maid, who is cooking. Everything is in that state of deep peace of which the pagans once said: “Pan is sleeping.”

  Victor went into the kitchen and asked where his mother was.

  “In the garden, or somewhere around,” the maid replied.

  And where is Hanna?” Victor enquired further.

  “She was here a moment ago,” answered the maid. “I don’t know where she went.”

  Victor went out into the garden and walked down between neat flower beds he had known so long, and where everything was budding and sprouting. The gardener was setting out plants and his little son was pumping water, as he had often seen them do. Victor asked about his mother: they hadn’t seen her in the garden. He carried on walking past blackcurrants, goose-berries, fruit-trees and hedges. Tall grass grew between the trunks and in the borders many flowers were blooming. From the area of the greenhouse, whose windows in this heat were standing open, a voice rang out: “Victor, Victor!”

  The one thus called, whose misery at his impending departure had partly lifted as a result of his feverish work in his room upstairs, brightened and turned his face towards the greenhouses. There a beautiful, slim girl was standing waving at him. Leaving the path, he walked straight across to her through the grass.

  “There you are already, Victor,” she said, when he had reached her. “I had no idea—when did you come?”

  “Very early this morning, Hanna!”

  “I went shopping with the maid, that’s why I didn’t see you arrive. And where have you been since?”

  “I’ve been packing up my things in my room.”

  “Mother said nothing about your being here already so I thought you would perhaps have slept in a bit and not set off from town until the afternoon.”

  “That was a foolish thought, Hanna. Am I one to sleep all morning? Or a weakling who needs to rest up after a walk the day before? Or do you think it’s a great distance, perhaps, or that I’d choose the heat of midday to walk in?”

  “Why didn’t you look across to our house, Victor, as you were all passing by yesterday?”

  “Because we were celebrating Ferdinand’s birthday and with the agreement of the parents the whole day belonged to us. And so no father, mother or anyone else was allowed to give us orders. That’s why our village was simply the place where we wanted to eat lunch, because it’s so beautiful, and for no other reason. Don’t you understand that?”

  “No. Because I would have looked across.”

  “That’s because you get everything mixed up, because you’re inquisitive and can’t control yourself. Now where is Mother? I’ve got something important to tell her—it just wasn’t immediately clear to me when she was talking to me, but now I know what I should say in reply.”

  “She’s doing the bleaching.”

  “Then that’s where I must go.”

  “Then go, Victor,” said the girl, turning round the corner of the greenhouse.

  Immediately and without paying her special attention, Victor went towards the place he knew well, where the bleaching was done.

  This was a place behind the garden with short, velvety grass on which the linen lay spread out everywhere in long strips. There the mother was standing looking at the bountiful snowy folds at her feet. Every so often she would try certain places to see whether
they were dry yet, every so often fasten a loop to the peg with which the linen was stretched out on the ground, and every so often hold the flat of her hand above her eyes like a little roof and look round about her.

  Victor went up to her.

  “Have you finished already,” she said, “or have you left some of it for the afternoon? It’s a lot, isn’t it, however little it appears. You’ve walked a long way today—do the rest after lunch, or tomorrow. I could have packed it all myself yesterday—I wanted to—but I thought to myself he must do it himself so he learns how.”

  “No, Mother,” he replied, “there’s nothing left to do—it’s all done.”

  “Really?” the mother said. “Here, let me see.”

  So saying, she reached out towards his forehead and he bent towards her a little. She brushed back a lock of hair that had flopped over his face while he had been working, and said: “You’re really flushed.”

  “It’s the warm weather,” he replied.

  “No, no, it’s the work you’ve been doing, too. And if it is all done, then you’ll have to stay in your travelling clothes today and tomorrow, too, and what will you do then all that time?”

  “I’ll walk up to the brook, to the beech wood and round that way. I’ll keep these clothes on. But I came out here for something else, Mother, and would like to say something but it will make you cross.”

  “Don’t scare me like that, child—let’s hear it. Is there something you want still? Is there something missing?”

  “No, nothing’s missing—rather there’s too much of something. You spoke of something today, Mother, which didn’t sink in immediately at the time but which I now can’t get out of my mind.”