The Bachelors

by Adalbert Stifter

  “You speak from your understanding of things,” his uncle replied, looking long at the youth. “There are many things that may appear harsh to you because you fail to grasp their purpose and objective. There’s nothing strange about what I did—in fact it is clear and evident. I wanted to see you because you will inherit my money one day and that’s why I wanted to see you for a long while. No one gave me a child because parents always want to keep them for themselves; whenever one of my acquaintances died, I moved away somewhere else until I finally came to this island, where I acquired the land along with the house, which was once the monks’ courthouse. I wanted to let the grass and trees here grow as they have done, so that I could wander about among them. I wanted to see you. I wanted to see your eyes, your hair, your limbs and how else you were fashioned, just as one might a son. I therefore had to have and keep you alone. If they had written to you all the time, then they’d have kept you in that mawkish dependence you’ve enjoyed till now. I had to pull you out into the sun and the air, lest you become a soft thing like your father and, like him, so ineffectual that you betray that which you think you love. You have indeed grown stronger than him, you lunge forward with your claws like a young hawk—that’s good and I applaud you for it but you should test your mettle not with soft-hearted women but at the hard rock face—and I’m closer to being a rock face than anything else. Keeping you here was necessary: whoever cannot now and then apply brute force to the block of stone will also never be capable of working the virgin soil and being of use in the world. You sometimes show your teeth but you have a good heart. That’s as it should be. In the end you would have become a son—you would have been moved to respect and love me—and if you had done that, then the others, who have also never been able to get to the core of me, would have appeared tame and small fry to you. But I have come to see that it would take a hundred years for you to get that far, so you should go wherever you want now—it’s all over. How many times I asked them to send you, before they finally did! Your father should have given you to me—but he said I was a beast of prey that would rip you apart; I would instead have turned you into an eagle that held the world in its talons, one that, if need be, would have thrown it into the abyss, too. But first he loved the woman, then he left her but wasn’t strong enough to keep her away permanently, and so thought about her constantly and, when he died, put you under her wing where you would have become little better than a hen, fit only for clucking for its chicks and for squawking if one were trampled under a horse’s hoof. Just in these few weeks with me here you have become more than that, because you’ve had to struggle against force and oppression, and so you would have continued. I demanded that you made your way here on foot so that you would come to know a little about the open air, bodily fatigue, self-mastery. I did what I could after the death of your father, Hippolite—you’ll hear about that soon. I had you come to me so that, along with other things you need to learn, I could give you the kind of good advice that neither that pen-pusher, your guardian, nor the woman can give you, and which you can either follow or not, as you please. Since you want to leave today already perhaps, but certainly tomorrow, I want to give you that advice. Listen, then. Is it then your plan to take up a post which they have arranged for you and which will earn you your daily bread and provide for your needs?”

  “Yes, uncle.”

  “Look, I’ve already procured one period of leave for you. How much must they need you and how important must the post be that can remain waiting for you unfilled? I have here a grant of leave for an unspecified period. At any time I can obtain your resignation as soon as I want. The post, therefore, doesn’t require your own particular abilities—in fact there’s already someone in the wings, waiting for the position once you’ve stepped down. You also don’t yet in fact have any of the skills that would really be of use when taking up a position, since you’re barely out of childhood and have so far had only the tiniest corner of this earth to learn something from—and still don’t know that even. So if you were to take up the post now, you would, at the most, be able to do something which would profit no one but which would slowly grind the life out of you. But there’s another way for you I have in mind. The greatest and most important thing you have to to do now is this: you must marry.”

  Victor turned his clear gaze to him and asked: “What?!”

  “You must marry—not immediately of course but while you’re young. I’ll tell you why. Everyone is out for himself. Not everyone will say so but everyone behaves so. And those that don’t say so often behave in an even more grossly selfish way. And those who devote themselves to an employment know this only too well, for their job is for them the field that is meant to yield them fruit. Everyone is out for what they can get for themselves but not everyone can get what they want and there is many a man who ekes out his life for less than a pittance. The man put in charge of your protection thought he was looking after you well by cooping up your young life with the sole aim of your always being able to eat and drink your fill; the woman, out of the goodness of her heart, scraped together a small sum—I even know precisely how much—a small sum that will enable you to keep yourself in hose for a while. She meant well by it, the best of intentions, for she has the best will in the world. But what’s the point of it all? Every man is out for himself but he only makes something of this life when all the strengths granted him are set to work and activated—for that is what living and what pleasure are—and when he thus drinks this cup of life dry. And as soon as he is strong enough to give full rein to his powers—all of them, mind, both great and small—it is then that he is best placed to be of service to others, too, as indeed he always was. For we cannot avoid affecting those around us, since compassion, sympathy, readiness to help, these, too, are powers requiring to be called into action. I’d even say that devoting oneself to others—even unto death—is nothing less than the flower of a man’s life, bursting open in its finest form. But the man who in his poverty harnesses only one strength in order to satisfy just one single demand, that of hunger, perhaps, that is a one-sided and wretched madness, damaging both for the man himself, and for those who come within his circle. Oh, Victor, what do you know of life? What do you know of what they call old age?”

  “How should I, uncle, being still so young?”

  “Yes, it’s true—you don’t, nor can you either. Life is immeasurably long while you are still young. You always think there’s so much ahead of you and that you’ve only gone a short way. And so you postpone things, put this and that to one side to be taken up later. But when you do want to take it up it’s too late and you realise you’re old. That’s why life seems a vast expanse when viewed from the beginning but scarcely a stone’s throw when at the end you look back over your shoulder. And so many a fruit ripens there that you didn’t know you’d planted. It’s a dazzling sight at first, so beautiful you want to plunge into it, believing it must last for ever—and old age is a moth at dusk fluttering about one’s ears, chilling the heart. And so you want to reach out your hands so as to cling on because there’s so much you have missed. When an ancient old man stands on top of a hill made up of a whole welter of his life’s deeds, what good is that to him? I have done many and various things and have nothing to show for them. Everything falls apart in a moment if you haven’t created a life that lasts beyond the grave. That man around whom, in his old age, sons, grandsons and great-grandsons stand will often live to be a thousand. There is a diversity of life there but of the same stamp and when he is gone, then that same life continues—indeed you don’t even notice that a small part of that life has stepped to one side and is no longer there. At my death everything that I have been, that I am, will perish … which is why you must marry, Victor, marry very young. And that is why you must also have enough breathing space for you to be able to stretch all your limbs, and I have taken care of this because I knew that none of those to whom you were entrusted were capable of it. After your father’s death any authority I had
was taken from me and yet I have taken better care of things than the others. I set about rescuing the property that you otherwise would have lost. Don’t look so amazed, just listen. What good to you are your mother’s little savings or the lifetime of labour your guardian arranged? Good for nothing more than to break and stunt you. I have been miserly but more sensibly so than many another is generous, who throws away his money and then can help neither himself nor others. While he was alive I lent your father small sums, as brothers otherwise make over as gifts; he gave me receipts for these, which I had registered as charges on his estate. When he then died and the other creditors who had inveigled him came to plunder the wretched nest, I was there before them and, exercising my rights, snatched it from them and from your guardian, who also wanted to claim a small remnant on your behalf. How short-sighted they were! I slowly repaid the creditors what they had advanced along with the interest, but not what they had been hoping to scavenge. The estate is now free of debt and fifteen years’ worth of proceeds is sitting in the bank for you. Tomorrow before you go I’ll give you the papers, for now that I have said everything it’s best you go. I have sent Christoph over to Hul to get the fisherman who brought you to fetch you again tomorrow from the landing place, for Christoph doesn’t have time to take you over himself. Should you not want to travel tomorrow but later, then we can give the fisherman his fare and have him go back again empty. I think you should go into farming, as the ancient Romans were happy to do; they well knew how to set about things so that all one’s abilities are properly and uniformly employed. But in any event you can do what you want. Enjoy what you have in your own fashion. If you are wise, that’s good; if you are a fool, then in your old age you can rue your life, as I have rued mine. I have done much that was good, I have had much pleasure from life and from what it rightly gives us to enjoy—that was good, but there is much I have neglected to do and that has led me to regret and mull over these things, both of which are futile. For life flew by before I could seize hold of it. You are probably my heir, too, and so I want you to do better than I have done. Hence my advice—and I say ‘advice’ not condition, since no one should be bound to anything. Go travelling now for two to three years, then come back and marry; to begin with, keep the manager of your estate I appointed, for he will give you sound guidance. That is my opinion but do what you will.”

  The old man said nothing after this. He folded his napkin together as usual, rolled it up and pushed it thus through the silver ring he had for this purpose. He then put the various bottles together in a certain order, placed the cheese and confectionery on their plates, covering these with their appropriate glass lids. But he didn’t carry any of these things from the table, as he always did normally, but left them standing there and remained seated. The storm meanwhile had moved on, the flashes of lightning growing fainter, the rolls of thunder weaker, as it passed down to the other side of the eastern peaks; the sun emerged again after a struggle, filling the room slowly with a loving glow. Victor was sitting opposite his uncle, shocked and unable to speak.

  After a considerable while, the old man, who had been sitting there in front of his things all the time, began to speak again, and said: “If you already have a preference for a young woman, that doesn’t matter as regards marrying—it’s not an obstacle and often no help either, so take her; but if you don’t have such a preference, then that is of no consequence either, for such things are not constant, they come and they pass, whether you seek them out or repel them. I experienced such a feeling once—as you’ll have probably heard—and while on the subject I’ll show you the picture I had painted of her, how she looked then—wait, perhaps I can find it.”

  At this the old man stood up and looked around in his chests of drawers, first in this room, then in another, but he couldn’t find the picture. Finally he pulled it out of a drawer by its dusty gold chain. He wiped the glass with the sleeve of his grey coat, handed it to Victor and said: “There, you see!”

  Victor, however, blushed crimson and cried: “That’s Hanna, my sister.”

  “No,” said his uncle, “it’s Ludmilla, her mother. How can you think it’s Hanna? The picture was painted long before she was born. Did your foster-mother tell you nothing about me, then?”

  “Yes, she did. She told me you were my uncle and that you lived in great seclusion on the island of a distant mountain lake.”

  “She thinks I’m the most terrible villain.”

  “No, uncle, she doesn’t. She has never spoken ill of anyone and when she spoke of you she always gave us to understand that you travelled the world a lot, that you’d grown old and now lived very much alone and cut off from the world, every corner of which you had earlier enjoyed visiting.”

  “And she said nothing else about me?”

  “No, uncle, nothing.”

  “Hm—that is good of her. I might have realised. If only she had been but a little stronger and the clear understanding she possessed had been able to encompass a wider world—then everything would have been different. And she said nothing, too, about my wanting to rob you of your little property?”

  “Never anything about robbing, just that you have the rights to it.”

  “That’s true, but already in my youth I was very active, started off in commerce, extended my business activities and made more money than I’ll ever need, and so have no need at all of that little property.”

  “My foster-mother also always insisted in the past that I should come to you as you wished, but my guardian prevented it.”

  “There, you see!—Your guardian means well in all respects but the table at which he sits blinds him to the world, to the sea, to everything. He thought perhaps that with me you’d forget some of the things which you’ve learnt and which, as far as the rest of your life is concerned, are of no value. I once wanted to make your foster-mother my wife, as you see; she won’t have told you that either?”

  “No, she didn’t and neither did my guardian.”

  “We were very young, she was vain and I said I wanted to have her portrait painted. She agreed and the artist, who came with me from the town, painted her on this oval ivory plaque. I kept the portrait and later had the gold circular edging added and the gold chain made for it. I was very attached to her then and showed her many tokens of my affection. At that time I used to go on my travels in order get to know my business partners and to set up new business ventures and connections, and whenever I returned home from these I would be very attentive and also bring her back many a very beautiful present. She didn’t return my attentions, however; she was friendly but didn’t show any affection and didn’t say why; she wouldn’t accept my gifts, giving me no reason for this either. When I finally came straight out with it and declared that I would be happy to make her my wife without further ado, if she was willing, now or perhaps later, she replied that she was indeed honoured but was unable to feel the kind of affection that seemed to her necessary for a lifelong union. When after some time I went up to the beech-forest spring in Hirschkar, I saw her sitting on the large stone slab near the spring. Her shawl, which she liked to wear about her shoulders on cooler days, was hanging on the level branch of a beech tree that was set back a bit; the branch was not high off the ground and reached out from the tree, just like a rod for hanging things on. Her hat was likewise next to the shawl. Sitting with her on the stone, however, was my brother, Hippolit, and they were holding each other in a close embrace. This had long been the spot where they had their rendezvous, something I only found out much later. At first I wanted to murder him, but then I tore down the shawl that concealed me like a curtain and cried: ‘It would be better in the end if you did everything openly and married each other.’ From that day on I began to put his property in order and to further his career so that they might have each other. But when later your father had to leave to go elsewhere for a time in order to promote his career even further, he felt duty-bound, once there, to denounce a fatherly friend who, temporarily embarrassed, was
making use of office funds. This was already being whispered about in town, and the old man was on the verge of killing himself; your father went to him hurriedly at night, settled the money and, to scotch the rumours, asked for the hand of the man’s daughter in marriage, the woman who was later your mother. When the union in fact took place, I then went to Ludmilla and scornfully pointed out to her how incapable she was of using her intelligence and her heart. She moved out to the small holding where she now lives with the man she later married. But these are all old stories, Victor, they all took place a long, long time ago and have faded away from people’s memories.”

  He had been sitting in his armchair again while thus speaking and now he picked the picture up from the table where he had set it down, stood up, wound it in the chain and put it in a little drawer next to his pipe collection.

  The storm meanwhile had blown itself out completely, apart from the odd bits of mist and cloud, which, as happens in such cases, were still gathering in the valley; these alternately either veiled or were pierced through by the sun, which had been raying down warmly for some while now.

  Whenever the old man had once got up from eating, it wasn’t easy for him to sit down again. This was the case now, too. He took his bottles from the table, put them in the wall cupboards and locked them away. He dealt similarly with the cheese and confectionery and took the precaution of pouring the dogs some water into their trough.

  When he had done all this he went to the window and looked down into the garden.

  “Do you see,” he said to Victor, “it’s just like I told you recently. The sand is almost dry and in an hour’s time you’ll be able to walk around on it very easily. That’s the quartz soil here: it lightly covers the rocky ground and has this quality of absorbing downpours like a sieve. That’s why I always have to add so much humus for the flowers and why so many of the monks’ fruit trees tend to die, whereas the elms, oaks, beech and the other mountain trees here flourish, because they seek out the rock, force open cracks in it and burrow their way in.”