Regina Ullman: The Country Road

I approached the most massive trunk on the wagon. “Go ahead,” they said, “you can have a seat there if you’re not afraid, there’s a snake sleeping inside.”

They even opened the lid for me without hesitating. There it lay amid rags, oblivious to itself. Yellow, green, a little red (devilishly, I thought), snake stripe after snake stripe ran along the creature’s body. And it was wound together in twists and turns, the symbol of its pathless paths. Dust, desert dust, homeless dust, and yet it seemed a royal dust compared to what I had been faced with here. For what did it matter if I feared the snake or not, it already lay spellbound by its own nature, which men had transformed into an invisible prison. I shuddered. But not on account of the snake. I stared at it for a long time, until the colors grew dull and my fantasy faded.

The trunk was covered up again. The lid was carefully closed. I took my seat.

The wagon rattled. Behind me the dust was stirred up. It surrounded me. I lay down on the trunk, surrendered to the shaking and to the dust and to the snake.

I was almost asleep, just resting on my arm. Hunched over, another bicyclist raced by us. Everything stood still: the country road, the poplars, our wagon and the hill. Only that one man was moving forward. Already he was disappearing into the infinite distance, still hunched over beneath the sky. Wherever could the devil be headed?——

Part Two

When I think of the expulsion from paradise, it seems to me that it was really not so long ago. It is a good story, a comforting one. It is more comforting in the telling than in reality. There is much in it that has been passed over in silence. For it is no longer the affair of only two, or of many, or of a whole people, and the tribes descended from them. .

The way that it begins now, every day, with each new human life, it is the affair of a single person. (Not a chosen one. You mustn’t misunderstand me.) It can be a woman going about her own small business somewhere, it can be a poodle, a tree. Something must fight its way through to that childlike state of “solitude.” A certain humility must be learned, a lowliness that ends in nothing. And paradise? Paradise is uncertain. We had it in the beginning — at least we brought it with us. Each of us must take care not to use it up to exhaustion. He must retain at death the happiness of having lived. He must shut his eyes on this thought. That is the palm tree visible even from this world, that is the Gloria exhaled into the heavens.

The wagon drew to a halt. We disembarked. The people had to go to the mayor’s house. They had to negotiate with him, so that he would allow them to ply their trade here in this place, to earn their money.

And perhaps he wasn’t happy about it, since many such travelers passed through. I could continue on my way. I went to a tavern. Where else could I have gone? Here there were only houses, each with its own small fate. The tavern was the only place on the road for someone like me.

The garden was dusty, and also dark. Even on this sunniest of days, it was like night here. And it was empty here, too. I looked for a place to sit. That is to say, I took refuge at one of the tables where no one was sitting. This is my way.

But now there was nothing more to do here. A long, unfillable stretch of time seemed to await me. Then I looked up, further back into the garden. A figure — I’ve thoroughly forgotten what sort — was carrying a meal to one of the seats in the shadows. Someone was sitting there. I hadn’t noticed. Even now I didn’t notice right away. That figure was blocking my view. There was only a quiet cough, a sort of apologetic announcement that a guest was present.

In the meantime I had grown thirsty, and was truly in need of a meal. The dust hadn’t fully sated my hunger and thirst. And now we could see each other. The guest and I: it was death! Yes, it was death! As much skin and flesh still clung to him as to a dying man. Only his hours were numbered. But perhaps they had been numbered for years and months. Consumptives die slowly. The way that he sat there in the dark, though wrapped in a raincoat, he was death himself, to put it kindly. I was close to crying. I think I let out a few sobs. Then I pushed my food away. This man had cut me to the core, so to speak, or to what my core was back then. Because sometimes the core is a person’s head, or even his magnetic, fire-feeling hair; at other times it can be the hands or the chest (for working men) or for women, when nothing oppresses them yet, their all-embracing arms. But that was not my core. And all of this had only been a reminder of death and his appearance. I had just wanted to seek my pleasure as others do, to have a meal as usual. Then death had come. And he didn’t go away again, as he does in the legends. He stayed. That is to say, each time this meal came round again, the only meal I would have really wanted, there he was again as well. But that is always the way. Everything here proved itself with deadly certainty. (Back then I also learned the word for that.) When life deprived me of all those carefree joys, it gave me in return the weightiness of every loss. With time, I learned to value this loss more dearly than the richness of life itself, which nature, I thought, had provided so generously for me.

And yet you shouldn’t screech at me, like those birds whose words one suddenly understands: screech into my life that this knowledge of suffering was payment in advance of my wages for this lifetime. I had to pay it all back, again and again, with each daily recurrence. The same realization that had lifted me up on the first day pushed me to the floor when it returned again in the days that followed. I hardly even heard or saw it anymore, it was simply there. It, I say: meaning myself — and death — and the many other things existing all around me, even if their existence was a doomed one. Then again, perhaps it was not wholly doomed, for we do not by far live long enough to judge of that.

There was a screeching outside, a senseless noise that probably always began here around midday on a holiday’s eve. The circus horse trotted by. It wore a caparison that could move you to tears.

Then all at once a frightful din arose: pigs. It must have been feeding time. Across the way was a low wooden farmstead, built in a square, where their pen must have stood. And in the midst of all that came the plaintive sound of a child’s toy, likewise square in shape: a small pig bladder that dies again and again, its four enfeebled feet giving way. It was a real carnival. Only there was something ominous behind it. Only there was a bit too much dust. And actually no people, no spectators, respectable patrons of these pleasures. Just peasant people, eating dust.

I stood up, repulsed by my meal. Suddenly I had forgotten the guest. The whining of this little pig bladder made me so weary, with that large, real ruckus behind it. And the midday hour that breaks your strength. . But what should I do now? Maybe I should sleep? We will try anything when we have nothing left. True, it was a glaringly bright day. And only when I entered my little room did I see how bright it was. The day seemed to have come into my room to stay. And while perhaps outside, as dusk approached, each thing that had senselessly called its own name throughout the day would gradually forget, and the moon would rise again over rooftops and hilltops and play with the poplars as if with fountains, up here in my room everything would remain the same, undisturbed. It had to stay that way. The bed here, the table, the candlestick (which served no purpose), the walls themselves, they had all stored up so much sober reality that nothing could overcome them. This reality was the lord of the place. And so I, too, did not stir. I even opened the window.