Regina Ullman: The Country Road

I felt that someone was waiting for me down below. I quickened my pace a bit. And truly: a woman was waiting there, in front of the house in the hollow. Bells were ringing in the farmyards all around. It was noon. The church bells in the more distant towns confirmed it. God was there somewhere. With robe and crown, as in the old church paintings. Something in me rejoiced. Something in me had triumphed. But the woman really was still waiting there. Perhaps she was waiting for a child. But the way that her eyes took me in, together with this child who even now failed to appear, there was something otherworldly about it. She knew me, stranger that I was, surely she already knew me well, even if she gave no outward sign of it. She was not a tavern-keeper, if you will, or a baker’s wife. No, as long as I was around her, she remained just what she was: a day laborer. And the first words I heard from her, and the last words I heard weeks later, could change nothing about this station in life; indeed, her destitution and mine were not the same. And whatever would bring us together again somewhere above this world, that too could change nothing, nothing at all about this seemingly insignificant order of things.

That was my arrival at the house. It was a memorable one, and as long as I lived, ate, slept, wrote, read, sang there: I did not forget it. The room that would be mine, that she had shown me after just a few questions, was quite rustic, and so it was good. It was inexpensive, too. And after all, who in this house would have wanted to charge me more than it cost. It didn’t belong to them, anyway. The house had been put on the block. A speculator corrupted by the city was just drawing out the bidding process. He had hired this day laborer woman to keep her eye on the property, along with me, a petty tenant. In other words, the fate that was a stranger to me, to which I was a stranger, had briefly carved out a small, friendly niche for me in that place.

Who came to live there after me? No one, I am sure of it: the house was auctioned off. All that I heard now was: the greatest silence, all day. True, a sewing machine ran incessantly. It seemed to speak in short and long sentences, a whole apron in a single breath. Sometimes someone approached a chest of drawers, opened it and shut it again. But that, too, was the silence of work. Not noisy, not disturbing. Over time, though, I wished that I knew this woman who so faithfully tended the hours. I sensed that an imagined, ideal being was taking her place. How it seemed to follow in her footsteps. But then I would hear a sharper step again, the sound of a heel, or a song would begin. Both seemed equally terrible to me, the two seemed to be one. But then we don’t sing with our feet, do we? We don’t go through our lives in a song, an unnatural song? And life was natural, after all. Wasn’t it? Didn’t it turn falsehood into truth? Hadn’t it always had to endure a struggle, a split, to return to itself?

But with that, the small frayed edge might have been folded down. The stalwart sewing machine began again to hem and hem. It was a joy! And outside a bird was singing, so near that no one could have missed it. (Yet those who live hard come to hate nature; first the birds, then the flowers, and last of all themselves. .) The little bird had perched on one of the small casement windows. I was barely breathing. And so the bird, too, grew stiller. It wobbled its tail, lifting its head as if there were a song stuck inside. Then finally it briskly preened its feathers, as after a bath. But beneath the bird there was only the windowpane, and its ripples were fading. . A trembling, and it was gone again. And there I was again in all my weight. How alone I was now, now that I had returned to myself! Doesn’t this make us envy other creatures? Wouldn’t it be easier to be a bird? But for me that was out of the question. I was myself, and even if I had wanted to be better, more beautiful, it was from myself that I would begin. My heart was precious to me; and not only precious, it was sacred. I would have defended it unto death by annihilation. This I would always profess.

So it was on that day. So it was on many days. The things that I lived through were always taking new paths. Sometimes I was indifferent, or even bored. But ultimately every day was a day of life, the living transcription of life itself, so to speak. My own despair and melancholy were inscribed there by my hand. I would have to inscribe my own death, too. I knew that. That sheltered me from many things. Yet despite all that, it was not very easy to live in this house. First of all, as I have said, it was on the block. In our minds it was already mortgaged. How shameful it was, how we lived like outcasts. To have one’s bags packed at any moment, day in, day out. . What’s more, the house had no bell. All the other houses rang their bells for midday and evening, when the bells of the nearby churches chimed. This house remained mute. It simply didn’t exist anymore. Nor did it have any livestock, not even small animals. And even if it had. . They would no longer have belonged to it.

Only the little garden, its beds lined with boxwood trees, continued to preach of property, of thriftiness and the persistence of life. The scent of gillyflowers and mignonettes floated over from the garden! And the earnest spinach strictly followed the rows in which it had been sown. Little birds lingered by the young heads of lettuce. They seemed extraordinarily happy in this garden. And whose garden was it, anyway? Wasn’t it just the little bouquet on a peddler’s hat? No, that would be doing it a dishonor. It was hard work. Every day a hand watered it, weeded it, raked the brittle beds. .

Sometimes I looked into the woman’s face as she worked. Her face was small and withered, but not yet aging. It had black, protruding eyes. Her hair, likewise the darkest, tumbled into this face in an incredible style. It was the Tower of Babel, translated into a most modern and fastidious form. Aside from that she was a country woman. A plain nightshirt wrapped itself loosely around her coarsely striped petticoat. Finally, her shoes, too, stood out as she walked off into the distance. They were faded patent leather shoes that reached to her ankles. When they stood beside each other, they appeared to be on a steep downward slope, or trying to reach something, the way they stood on their very tips. They were dancing shoes, I said to myself. I thought in passing about the sewing machine, about the song. So that was how it looked? Oh God, perhaps I had not yet heard its most twisted trills. Perhaps it had been sung for me as if it were nothing but an innocent school song, harmless provincial entertainment. But this elderly figure outside was something else entirely.

And already I felt: I could not spare myself from her. I did not dare return to the hermit’s existence that was always so dear to me — until I had figured out this riddle. I could not be content with a person I had dreamt up and assembled myself; even if she lived, really lived, next door to me, just as I saw. I had to stand in her life, as in an undivided room. She had to cast her shadow into my life. And these two lives had to fight with each other and win and lose. Only then was it more than just a real fantasy, only then was it life itself.

This was the closest thing to me. And it struck me hard. A heavy blow, so to speak. But at the same time it was a calling, and as poor and weak as I was, this made me tremble with eager ambition.

By now the day had given way to evening. The day laborer had cleaned up after my meal. A red hem of sky brushed my windowsill. Like a stream of blood forking in two, the light parted and sank into the corners to the right and left. Night fell. So everything was ready. Now the theater of this life could begin.

I greeted her. (For the first time, since until then I had acknowledged her only with a retreating glance.) And like everything that has been stored up for so long, her reply poured forth almost unbidden, it seemed to roll right up to my feet.