Regina Ullman: The Country Road

And as the shadow fell across the hills and mountains, extinguishing the light of the air, this girl’s life, too, had changed, and she was busy at work in a little house, even if she was also timid, as was her nature. And the bench was dark and empty. It could lean on itself for all I care. Or the night could take hold of it. Maybe there was already another apprentice sleeping on it, or a pair of lovers meeting. Once such a summer night has fallen dark, and all who don’t fully belong there have gone, it grows transparent again. Then perhaps the flowers dream that they are stars. And perhaps they truly believe it, for in the morning they awaken with their hearts crusted in diamonds. And the birds’ throats are never as fresh as after a clear, balmy, starlit night.

A single night, if there were only one on earth, would have to be left at peace, and allowed to pass this way. Even the sternest townsman would surely agree. But the day, too, is just like this sky, this heaven of trembling worlds. And so we have no need for night, says this man of the town. In the morning we believe that we can see to the other end of the world. In any case, light is as valuable as gold as we go about our work. It takes us in hand as if we were a washbasin, filled early in the morning, and as if we were a fire, promptly lighted. And as if we were the first food of the day, earnestly relished. But then it is time to work, as if we have made a covenant with God. And we would have to be very weak and poor in conscience if we were to break this covenant and go on our way and sit around here and there and finally nod off in the midst of a bell-bright day. Because it’s true, this light is ringing; it rings until it sets, and our continent turns away to face the night.

It’s hard to believe how quickly everything goes when we believe in the work and in ourselves. It seems bewitched, in a positive sense. Of course, when the old man pulled on the jacket that the girl had mended for him, it wasn’t mended as a nun would have done it, or even any other woman. But it was mended all the same. And it was somehow touching that it was done at all. It was like listening to a child just learning to read. This work, likewise, was still slow and uncertain. But it was coming, and that was the main thing, after all. And over time, because some of the work was the same each day, she gained practice. The reaping went a little better. The nanny goat stood still to be milked. So the pail grew full, and as the days passed there were signs that she was doing something right. And hadn’t she taken to cooking much more naturally than anyone could have expected? And when she’d done her day’s work well, didn’t the old man treat it with respect, like a bridegroom? And she had done it well! Soon she could do all of her chores. He had judged rightly at first sight. And she was more content than anyone could be. He had chosen a good one. She had needed a place like this for a long time, an isolated little house with two goats and nine hens, with a garden on all sides and a meadow. This grandfatherly old man must have been created for her before time began, and so as often as she saw him, she always treated him like a work of providence. And that’s no bad way to treat a person. On the contrary, it’s a heavenly way. If that could last forever, people would feel eternity around them. An eternity, even if we measure it by the stars and not in God’s terms, is still a considerable stretch of time, long enough to begin and conclude many a thing.

And so it’s no surprise that in relatively few months this practice turned to skill, skill to cleanliness, order, and in short, constancy, so that the old man would have taken up his messenger routes again, had he not already begun to concern himself like a grandfather with the young lady’s approaching delivery. “You know,” he said one day, “I’ll tell the midwife. Then you’ll be taken care of.” And even as he said that, he was already standing at the door in his large curved hat, his vest, and his long coat, already reaching out with his hand and his tall walking stick toward the road that led through the forest. “Yes,” he said, already on his way, since like most old people he didn’t listen to others, but simply spoke into the shapeless world of his soul. For the soul has already begun its journey with Father Charon, even as the man lives on for months and years in his house, going his own way and doing as he pleases, as people do.

Now the woman was alone.

She was called Julia, and sometimes other things as well. It had turned out that she still had a wooden suitcase filled with clothes, and even a small sum in the bank, one day the postman had brought her the interest. But it made no impression on her. Things lay where they lay, and that one green dress seemed to have grown stuck to her body. But now, hardly had the old man disappeared when a strange eagerness overtook her. She cut up a shirt, following a paper pattern that she had trimmed to size — (she couldn’t even really quite imagine just how big a newborn child was). — Then she took a very soft bed sheet and hemmed its edges to make diapers. In between, she reaped, she milked, she weeded the garden, and she made the soup for supper. But when the old man came home, there was already an armful of children’s clothing there, finished and unfinished. And he looked on this accomplishment with satisfaction, for somehow he knew that it was an achievement for her, and he was pleased that she had taken his hint. She had now been brought into the order of the world, and the old man, if he hadn’t been so old, would have had to free her from it again. For he had enough insight to understand that such a thing was required in order for this wounded soul to be fully reconciled, even if he was not the man to do it. He understood that. For this creature still spoke no more than those few words that came naturally. And this troubled him, for she was young and must have wanted to speak. But she wasn’t sad, either. On the contrary: she gave her consent in advance to everyone and to everything that happened. But there was something that she lacked, something that is part of human life in general, even if it is not a noble quality: a certain and ungrateful joyfulness; that was what she lacked. Yes, she even said so herself. She was lacking something.

It was as if a soul only inhabited this body by chance. And each lived separately, for itself. And that was why it took so long to bring her actions into accord with her nature, and that was why it was surely no mere coincidence that she had met this ancient but hearty messenger, who became her master.

One evening the old man went out again on the country road. But he had already summoned a neighbor, a woman with ten children. She was milking now, and preparing the coffee, real coffee, and there was also a tall copper pail full of water over the fire; most likely the bath for the child that was to come. . She looked at the little clothes. Oh God, the little shirt was much too small! The girl was still so lacking in common sense, though she would soon become a mother. But fortunately the farmer’s wife didn’t know that the girl had sewn it herself. And besides, this poor farm wife, too, had been well schooled by fate, so that even if she had known the truth, it would only have caused her a bit of pain, or incomprehension. Indeed, she would simply have sacrificed some of her own children’s clothing, as hard as this would have been for her; even if (as was in fact the case) it were only a trade. Indeed, even if (as was also the case) she had failed, as always, to keep this story to herself, and had gossiped about it in the village, and even shown everyone the tiny shirt, inhumanly small: still it would have been a good deed, and still the girl would have repaid this act of kindness.

For keeping silent is too great a task for many people, it’s too much to ask of every third person. And comprehension, to begin with, is only the palate of our understanding, but the palate is connected to the tongue. And the tongue — ordinarily — (once it has understood): speaks. This is the way of the world.