Regina Ullman - The Country Road

Then a clock that had been ticking unnoticed, soft as velvet, began to strike its melody, three times. And as if the bird had found its song again in those strokes, or as if there were no bird at all in the room, but only an ancient clock that played a song to mark the hour, the room was singing again, a patient, maidenly folk song.

And now the scents were stirring, too. It mostly smelled like wood. The violins smelled like the wood of refined trees. Was there a birch among them, that tree that yields healing water when tapped with a pipe? I didn’t know, I almost doubted it, I know nothing about violin making. But I liked the thought that this birch was such a melodic tree. .

So here, too, in this craftsman’s pious, almost childlike world, large things were squeezed small enough to grasp, while small things were made inconceivably large, for these trees had been made into violins, and violins into trees.

A single photograph hung above the small workbench, a picture of a child. The little hunchback standing next to his mother. His mother sat there with the look of someone who does something out of pride, but almost dies of shame in the process. And the son, the child? Oh, we don’t need to describe him. He had a mother, and so he was in good hands. He rested his own hand on her shoulder, with one foot forward (he was wearing long pants). It must have been a memento of his first communion, this little picture. And on the other side of the room, above the baby Jesus in the glass dome, another, crucified Christ hung on the wall. His rib cage protruded, and his arms stood out from the cross, revealing his shoulder blades so clearly that he, too, appeared to have been a hunchback, this God incarnate. Who could have put that crucifix there so casually? And in just that spot? For it was reflected in the iridescent shimmer of the glass dome, so sharply that it seemed to shatter the dome into a thousand shards, and to destroy the tender, comely little waxen Jesus child. It was truly a cause for concern. You could even start to wonder if the nail was fixed firmly in the wall.

And even if the son was an orphan now, all this was his home, the steadfast home of this one man. The maid, who had left me alone the whole time while I waited (the violin maker would be back in half an hour), came in and talked to me. It was a surly sort of chitchat, but it told me all that mattered: it told me what might be in one of the drawers, in writing or in a picture, though I never would have looked without permission.

She asked if I was going to the circus, too. This circus, which seemed to have stretched the tent of its excitement over the whole town. Ever since, you could hear the lions roaring, and elephants walked down the street in broad daylight, almost alone.

I was convinced that these animals wouldn’t hurt the slightest creature, much less us people. But the surly maid couldn’t believe that. . If you were that big, with feet and teeth like that. She looked at me disparagingly. . Somehow I had transgressed against this servant’s point of view by belittling the mental faculties of that animal — for that’s what she thought I had done. “I’m not going to the circus,” she added at once, by way of explanation. God knows what else lay buried in that conversation. “I’m not, but my master Jakob is.” But now, all at once, she fell silent. For now everything was there on the surface, so that even her awkward silence spoke.

An entire life spent with one person is everything. She had held this hunchbacked, invalid boy in her hand on the very first day; and then he had simply grown, had learned to speak and to walk, to write and to read, had learned his craft, and in the end he had become her master. Especially now that his mother had died. Since then he spoke to her directly, giving orders (before he had always expressed them as childlike wishes): he wanted it this way or that way, at this time or that. She was the servant, but she had secretly also become a sort of mother to him. She unconsciously took on the tone and the manner of thinking of his late, real mother. And her manner of dress as well, up to a point. The photograph showed that clearly enough. And she did all this not to become the mistress of the house, but rather to remain a servant. The longer I waited there beside her, the better I liked her. I sensed the clean atmosphere of her kitchen and her chambers. God could come to her at any time. She wouldn’t even have to dust off her wooden suitcase for him. In any event, cleanliness and subservience were a part of her religion. And these two traits had also saved her from the humiliations of old age. They would keep her in good hands in this life, until the day she died. I had noticed that, and she felt that I had noticed. And since I had discovered this before she did, in just a quarter of an hour, I had become more acceptable to her, and she looked at me a bit more mildly. I stared straight ahead. I was trying to find a reason to leave. All at once I didn’t want to wait for the violin maker anymore; instead I wanted to secure a seat for myself at the circus, like Mr. Jakob.

I heard children’s shouts, calling people together. I looked out at the street. An elephant was really going by. It seemed to me as if the street were growing older as this gray mountain moved through it. And once again the world was just a small, poor theater, a tiny circus for this enormous animal. It brought a tension into the city, so that people weren’t content to stay within their own four walls. And other people must have felt the same way, because as I could see and hear, everyone was now out in the street. I caught wind of a carousel song. I was infected with carnival fever. I had to go out. I looked up again at the violins. I unconsciously gestured to one among those many, it was my own. It had made itself known to me again. I almost smiled. I wanted to take it down right away. But the maid, who seemed to know everything, said that it hadn’t been broken in yet, maybe she knew because of where it was hanging. I would leave that to him if he thought that was needed. So I left. I was down in the street before it struck me. In my mind those small living quarters now seemed to fall in on themselves like a castle built of sandstone blocks, when a child shakes it. All it would take was a single event from this outside world, the kind that had been carefully avoided until now, and that life would be extinguished; the hunchback’s life. I could really feel that, in my own flesh. Already my blood was beginning to flow along this great circuitous course. And I took things up in my small, hot hands, feeling them like those animals that we believe have no eyes. What if a dancer were to come between those peculiar fingers? She would recoil in horror, even at the thought.

For love was a matter of little interest to that man. God had kindly granted him these wonderfully clean rooms in which to make his home, and a maid and a mother, and all the violins of heaven. With all that, one could just as well do without love. I grew so agitated, and turned so strongly against that man. I even thought the birds were being too imprudent. With young girls’ souls imprisoned in their bodies. In that moment I wouldn’t have put so much as a mirror in his room. And yet things could have been quite different. He might have been superior to us, to the whole world. Something might happen that none of us had ever imagined.

“My God,” I suddenly said; I had already arrived at the open square where the circus would take place, “what if by some terrific accident I end up sitting next to him!” I calculated. It was certainly possible. The inexpensive seats were long gone, and the wealthier parties would take their sweet time, and some wouldn’t buy their tickets until evening. By now it even seemed to be a sure thing. After all, it was such a small city. When it came to important things, you were always everyone’s neighbor. A child came toward me with a carnival hat on his head. A man came out from inside, selling little flags. I bought my ticket. I would have preferred to spend the afternoon there until the performance began. It seemed unnatural to return home again. But the world is so terribly big and wide and unwelcoming when we come there as strangers, tired and bored, seeking a place to sit. There is a meadow everywhere, but this is only for the poor little spectators who are so close to the ground to begin with, who have already been there for hours, not wanting to miss a single glimpse of what they have paid their pennies for. They have been living there for months, any time they had a free hour. But I, particularly as an adult, have no right to enter there. The poor have their own kingdom, too, and their own laws.