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The Path of Life

S >> Stijn Streuvels >> The Path of Life




After one last look and one more ... he went on.

He caught up his barrow and pushed it, over the wide road, straight to
the station.

There he had to wait.

He loitered round the dreary, deserted yard. The noon sun bit the naked
stones; and everything, hiding and shrinking from that glowing sun-fire,
seemed dead. The drivers sat slumbering on the boxes of their cabs; the
horses stood on three legs, their heads down, crookedwise between the
shafts, and now and then they gave a short stamp, to keep off the flies,
which were terribly active. A group of loafers lay sleeping on their
stomachs in the shade. A slow-moving vehicle drove past and disappeared
round the corner. A dog came stepping up lazily and went and lay under
the sunflowers near the signal-box, blinking his eyes.

There was nothing more that moved.

At last the train came gliding in very gently, without noise, and it sent
a gulp or two of white smoke into the quivering blue sky.

Now the boy stood stretching his neck through the railings, on the
look-out for his mother, whom he already saw in his thoughts, coming
bent, with a heavily-laden bag of weaving-stuff; and the pipe was in his
pocket ... or else nothing, nothing at all!

'Twas a fat gentleman that got out first; then a tall, thin one; then a
woman; then another woman; always others; and now, now it was mother. She
stuck out her thin leg, groping from the high foot-board to find the
ground, and ... she had an empty blue-and-white canvas bag on her
shoulder. His lower lip dropped sadly and he turned slowly to his barrow:

"No work yet. God better it!"

The mother threw her bag on the wheel-barrow and they went on, without
speaking.

Straight opposite the tobacco-shop, the boy gave a sidelong glance at the
great window, with all those rich things displayed behind it, and he
whistled a little tune.

They had still far, very far to go, before they two were at home, in
their village. And the sun was burning.

* * * * *

ON SUNDAYS

* * * * *

VIII

ON SUNDAYS

In his Sunday best! A red-and-yellow flowered scarf was tied round his
sun-burnt neck and the two ends blew over his shoulders; a small
brown-felt hat with a curly brim was drawn down upon his head and, from
under it, came here and there a wisp of flaxen hair. He wore a small,
open jacket, with a short waistcoat, from under which a clean blue shirt
bulged out; and his long, much too long trousers fell in wide folds over
his big cossack shoes.[9] Under his arm he carried a bundle knotted into
a red handkerchief, while with the other hand he twirled a switch.

[9] Hob-nailed shoes fastened with straps.

He was a growing youngster, a well-set-up cowherd, with a brown, freckled
face, small, pale-grey eyes, under milk-white eyebrows, and bony knees
and elbows: a sturdy fellow in the making.

'Twas heavenly, grand Sunday weather: it shone with light and life and it
was all green, pale, splendid green, against a clear blue sky in the
middle of the afternoon.

He stepped on bravely, along the wide drove of elms, twisting his switch,
and looked into the free sky with his young, grey-blue eyes. He
thought ... of what? Of nothing! Truly, of nothing: what does a cowherd
think of? Wait a bit, though; he was thinking: 'twas Sunday! It was
Sunday once more, the glad Sunday! And there were so few Sundays in those
long, long weeks. And he was going home for a few hours: yes, home; and
from there to Stafke's and to Stafke's pigeons.

He was hard-worked at the farm: twenty-nine cow-beasts, which were always
hungry and always wanted fattening; furthermore, a whole herd of calves
and hogs: 'twas a drudging without end or bottom, from early morning to
late at night, until his limbs hung lame.

The farmer was good but strict and could not abide sluggards; he looked
for work, hard work; and this the lad was glad to give, but only while
looking forward to the everlasting Sunday, in which lay all his happiness
and cheer.

He quickened his steps; and the elms pushed by, one by one, and at last,
ahead, very far down that dark hedge of stems and leafage, came a tiny
opening where the trees seemed to touch one another.

Look! There, beside the little village church, stood Farmer Willems'
homestead, with its little slate turret and the great poplars and, beside
it, close together and quite hidden in the green, two little cottages.
'Twas there that he was brought up and had grown up; there, in one of
those cottages. In the other lived Stafke's father and mother. The
children had led the half-wild life of the country there: two little boys
together. They had clambered up those mighty trees, weltered in the sand
of the drove and coursed like foals in the meadow. The farm was a free
domain to them; they were at home in it; they went daily to the little
door of the wash-house to fetch their slice of rye-bread-and-butter and,
in the morning, an apple or a pear. They had lain and rolled in the
hay-loft, like fish in the water; but all that had passed so quickly, so
very quickly. The parish-priest came; and, for six months, six long
months, they had had to go to school and church. Then, on a certain
Monday morning, father said:

"Lad, you're coming along to the farm to-day, to bind corn."

Play was over, the free play of the country! They were pressed into
labour, were saddled with the labourer's heavy burden. Since then, it had
been an endless roving after work, from one farm to another, with his
bundle under his arm.

Stafke had remained serving at Willems', with father, and he, on Sunday
afternoons, had not so far to go, under the burning sun, in order to get
home.

The way was long for an unthinking lad; and they seemed endless, those
never-changing rows of tree-trunks, those uncounted yellow, blinking
cornfields ... and never a creature on the road. It was something very
much out of the way when a pigeon flew through the azure sky; the lad
stood still and, turning round, followed the great ring which it made
until it dropped far away, yonder among the houses of the village. Then
he went on, pondering, as he went, that there was nothing, absolutely
nothing lovelier than a milk-white pigeon in a pale-blue sky; and he
whispered:

"Perhaps it's Stafke's pigeon."

On reaching home, he laid down his bundle; his baby sister came running
up to him, with her little arms wide open, and held him by his legs; and
he lifted her twice, three times above his head. He handed mother his
earnings; and then, out of the door, to Stafke's!

"Roz'lie, is he in?"

"Oh, yes, he's up in the loft, with the pigeons."

He climbed up the ladder, in three steps and as carefully as he could, to
the dovecote. Behind a swarm of half-stretched and loose-hanging clouts
and canvas things, a lad sat on an overturned tub, his fair-haired curly
head in his hands, his elbows on his knees, peering through a sort of
lattice-work. Jaak sat down at the other side, on a bundle of maize, in
just the same attitude, and looked too....

There were white, snow-white, mottled, blue, slate-blue, russet,
speckled, grey, black-flecked, striped and spotted pigeons, doves,
pouters--some cocks, the rest hens--a motley crowd all mixed up together.
There were some that sat murmuring one to the other, softly--oh, so
softly--and nodding their heads for sheer kindliness. Others cooed
loudly, angrily or indifferently and tripped round one another. Others
sat huddled, meditating, lonely and forlorn, blinking their bright little
glittering eyes.

Through the holes, from the resting-board, new ones came walking in with
shy feet and sought a little place for themselves; others passed out
through the narrow opening and, flapping their wings, rose into the sky.
'Twas a humming and muttering without end, a murmuring and whispering
loud and soft and a restless stir and movement: a little world full of
neatly-dressed damsels, who were all so lightly, so prettily decked out
and who knew how to manage their trains and their fine clothes so
demurely and so comically. They carefully combed and cleaned their black
velvet ruffs, smoothed their sharp-striped feathers one by one, fondled
and rubbed their downy breasts till they shone like new-blown roses....

And Jaak and Stafke sat watching this, sat watching this, like two steel
statues, sweating in that warm loft. They did not stir nor speak a single
word.

And that lasted and went on....

It grew dusk. From every side the pigeons came flying in, whole troops of
them, and sought their well-known roosts. They stood two and two, closely
crowded together on the perches or huddled in the holes. They drew their
heads into their feathered throats and slept. The rumour diminished to
just a soft mumbling; and then nothing more. The pigeon that sat over
there, squatting low on her eggs, faded from sight in her dark corner;
and the whole upper row vanished in the dusk of the rafters.

The boys still sat on.

The dovecote became a pale-grey twilight thing, with drab and black
patches here and there. The soft humming passed into a faint buzz that
died away quite; and all was silence.

They both together stood up straight, gave a long-drawn sigh and went
below.

"It's getting dark," said Jaak, wiping the sweat from his face. "The cows
will be waiting."

"Yes," said Stafke. "It gets evening all at once. Well, Jaak, till
Sunday."

And Jaak went away, through the now moonlit drove, with a new bundle
under his arm and thinking of the farm, of his twenty-nine cow-beasts and
of Sunday and of Stafke's pigeons....

* * * * *

_Il y a des malheurs qui arrivent
d'un pas si lent et si sûr qu'ils
paraissent faire partie de la vie
journalière._

MONTALEMBERT.



AN ACCIDENT

* * * * *

IX

AN ACCIDENT

He had been half awake several times already, but each time he had
slipped back into an uneasy doze, a restless, wearisome sojourn in a
strange, drowsy world, in which he struggled with stupid, silly
dream-spectres, all jumbled together in a huddled mass of incoherent,
impossible thoughts and actions; a blank world in which all his workaday
doings were forgotten; an after-life of tiring sleep following on the
carouse of yesterday. He lay half-suffocated in the stifling heat of that
tiled garret, lay tossing on a straw mattress. And suddenly, with a jolt
that jerked him sleeping like a beast of burden. And now why couldn't he
take life as it came, like his mates, who just went through it anyhow,
without any calculating, callously and cheerfully, something like a
machine which, when the sun comes out and it is daylight, begins to move
arms and legs, to twist and turn the whole day long and, when it is
evening again and dark, falls down and remains lying dead, for a few
hours, with all the other things?

He drew himself up, thrust his thin legs into his trousers, his arms into
a dirty jacket and let his weary limbs carry him below. His mother had
buttoned up the linen satchel with his two slices of bread-and-butter and
had ladled out his porridge. He went out followed by a "God guard you,
lad!" and the little woman looked after her boy till he had vanished out
of the alley. She was so fond of him, he knew it; yes, he knew all about
that tender love, which he so often rejected in a moment of churlish
impatience; but still he was sorry afterwards, even though he never
showed it. That prim, old-fashioned little woman, with her cramped ways,
was his mother; his father had been a drunkard and had been killed at his
work: that was his parentage; it was their fault that he led this
poverty-stricken existence.

He walked on, without looking up at all the swarming life around him,
went step by step over the slippery cobbles, straight to his work. His
work: why must he work, always that everlasting toiling, while others
lived and enjoyed their lives without doing anything? He too had once
thought--but it was only a dream--of becoming something; he had felt
something stirring just there, inside him, and that seed would have
sprouted and blossomed if they had only tended it; but they had
ruthlessly repelled him, had refused to take him up with them on the
heights; and he had remained in the mud, alone, all alone.

There it rose before him: a mighty edifice in building, with behind it a
radiant summer sun that blazed forth high above the framework of the roof
in the morning sky and made that giant structure stand black in its own
shadow.

That was his work. All that mass of bricks he had seen grow into the
mighty whole; and there it stood now, a huge block, with heavy, massive
outlines, contained--held upright, it seemed--by a jumble of dirty-white
stakes and posts, crossed and criss-crossed with planks. Out of a dirty
hodge-podge of crazy houses, walls black with smoke, little inner rooms
which for the first time saw the white light of day, with ragged strips
of wall-paper and whitewash among rotten beams and rafters straight and
askew, all of which his stubborn labour had made to fall and disappear,
and out of those deep-dug foundations, out of that drudging in the dirty
ground, those stout walls had grown stone by stone, had risen high into
the sky--oh, the hard work of it!--and, tapering by degrees, had shot up
to form that mighty building. Wall by wall, wrought at and toiled at,
held together by pillars running beside narrow pointed windows to those
peaked gable-steps, running into a forest of masts, of slanting beams
that had to bear the roof, the whole of that sprawling monster had
gradually acquired a sense and a meaning and become the splendid
masterpiece that now stood there, solidly fixed against the blue sky like
a magic crystallized phrase.

That beginning all over again, day after day, at the same work; all that
busy stir of men and stones, now high in the air, now deep below; that
incessant climbing up and down those swaying ladders: all this had made
such a deep impression on him, had implanted itself into him so firmly
that at the first sight of it he felt smitten with impotence, with a
mechanical discouragement that gripped his whole being and made him work
throughout the day as though urged by an all-ruling deity set there in
the symbolic shape of that giant colossus at which he toiled. It seemed
to him that he was an indispensable little part of that great building, a
small moving thing with but a tiny atom of intelligence--sometimes--and
fatally dragged along in that whirling circle, under the behest of the
masters, who knew their way through every stroke and line of the great
plan, who had all that great work in their heads and on paper and who
possessed the power to bring all that complicated machine into operation.
And he just went to work like a dog, set going by the mournful knocking
of the stone-chopper, the shrill screech of the toothless iron marble-saw
and all the banging and knocking and hewing up yonder at the top of
things. He took his wooden hod, filled it with bricks and slowly climbed
the ladder. He was once more the dismal noodle of last week, the
hypnotized bag-o'-nerves that let himself be swept along in the whirlwind
of habit and vexation, dazed by that awful hugeness which he was helping
to complete and driven on by the ever-pursuing pair of eyes of his strict
foreman. And his head ached so; and he felt so sick; and his legs bent
under the load.

On he had to go and on. His head no longer took part in the work; his
legs kept on going up and down the rungs with those bricks, those
everlasting bricks: he did not know how many, just hauled them up,
without stopping.

It seemed to him sometimes that the whole mass of walls and scaffolding,
labourers and foremen made but a single being: a sort of fearsome deity,
something like an unwieldy monster with inhuman, cruel feelings,
something which had to be fed with all that workmen's sweat; and all this
feverish activity seemed to him the whirling along of a crowd of
unfortunates who had stepped into the fatal circle marked out for them,
never to leave it again. Everything seemed so unsteady to-day: those
walls on which he had to walk tottered; and he took such a pleasure in
looking, in looking for a long time down below, yonder where the men and
women were like ants and the great blocks of freestone became little
bricks. It gave him such a delicious wriggling in the bowels, a tickling
in his blood; and he felt his hair tingling on his head. Was not this the
way to obtain release from that hard labour, to get out of that
brain-racking circle?

Then he held on to a post until he recovered his senses; and he went down
again for more bricks. It came from all that beer.

Yesterday had been a holiday. The wooden framework of the roof was
finished; and they had nailed the May-bough to the top, the joyous emblem
of difficulties vanquished. It showed up grandly there, with its bright
green leaves so high in the air. The masters had granted the men a day
off and given them plenty of beer. All that warm day they had made merry,
drinking and singing and loafing about the streets like happy savages. He
too had revelled with the rest, had been overcome by the drink and joined
in everything, from the horseplay in the open air to the bestial
amusements in those dark holes where the populace seeks its pleasure,
that stimulant for the work of the morrow. Then that brutal drunkenness
had come, with the loss of all his senses, till he found himself,
dog-tired, sick and feverish, up in his garret under the tiles.

To-day the work was twice as irksome. That rising warmth which, in the
morning, while it is still cool, forebodes the stifling, paralysing heat
of the scorching noon-day, tortured his throat and his bowels; he
couldn't go on.

"Slacker!" was the first word flung at his head. He stood on the high
gable-steps and set down his load of bricks. That "Slacker!" played about
in his head like the smarting pain of a lash. He stood looking aimlessly
into space, indifferent to all that moved and lived around him. A shudder
ran through his body. The wall tottered ... and he was so high up, all
alone, seen by nobody: such a small creature in that blue sky, in that
endless space. In a clear vision he saw his own figure in all its lean
wretchedness, cut out like a paper silhouette, standing out sharply
against the sky, such a miserable little object: two thin legs, like
laths, a little stomach, two little sticks of arms and that small,
everyday, vulgar head. Was that he, that tiny atom of this mighty,
colossal building, that ant on the back of this behemoth ... which had
only to move to shake him off, ever so low down!

Ah, here's that delicious wriggling in the bowels again! He has looked
down. Once more. That's capital: something like a feeling of wanting to
jump down, such an airy, irresponsible joy, like flying in a dense, blue
sky, falling very gently and slowly--oh, what fun!--and then being rid of
all one's troubles!... And yet there was a certain fear about it. He
mustn't look any more. Or just this once ... that was grand! Once more
that awful depth, with all those tiny figures, yawned below him; and it
was the little wall that kept him up there so high, only that little
wall.... One movement, the least little yielding, the least bending over:
oh, what bliss ... and how frightful!... He became drunk with delight,
filled with the pleasure of it; he gasped, his eyes became unseeing; it
was like being wafted along, a gentle flight through the air and ... he
fell.

Bumping against a scaffold, clutching with hands and feet; a breaking
plank, a ghastly yell ... and then a body with arms and legs outspread in
space, a thunderbolt ... a thud as of a bag of earth ... and there he
lay, stretched at full length, like a man asleep. That scream of
distress, that terrible shriek, that farewell cry of one who is going
away for good had sent something like an electric shock through all
around; work ceased and they scrambled down and stood in a great circle
around that body ... looking. And a great silence followed, that silence
which is so heavy and oppressive after the sudden stop of so much
activity. People came rushing up, pushing to get closer ... and to see.
They tore the poor devil's clothes open to find out where he was hurt,
others ran for help, while fresh swarms of folk came crowding up and the
silence died in an uproar of questions and tramping and the wailing of
women. He lay there, with his peaceful face turned to one side, lay on
his back, seemingly uninjured; a few drops of blood trickled from his
mouth. His eyes were closed like those of a man asleep.

"Such a height to fall!... So young, only a boy!"

Others stood chattering loudly, indifferently, as though about an
everyday occurrence, or looked up at the wall and showed one another from
where he had tumbled down.

There was a sudden movement in the crowd; people jostled one another.

"His mother's coming!" somebody whispered.

They pressed closer and closer to watch the effect upon her, the women
with an anguished consciousness of what she must be suffering, that
mother-pain which they understood so well. The men pushed to see what
happened, because everybody was looking. All eyes were fixed on the
little woman who came running along, with those elderly little hurried
steps, those two anxious eyes which showed all the dread of the tragedy
they suspected. The people made way respectfully, as before one who is
privileged to approach and look upon what is hers. Those who could not
move back she dragged away mercilessly, gripping them with her hooked
fingers, which she thrust out at every side in order to see closer. It
was her ... her ... her son lying there, her own son; and she must get to
him.

She saw him. He lay there and he was dead, the son, the child whom she
had seen leaving that morning alive and well. She stood aghast, out of
breath after the great effort of hurrying, her throat pinched with
distress and sorrow and shock, her soul filled with all the pent-up
tempest that was seeking an outlet. Her flat chest heaved and all her
thin, frail little body quivered; her legs shook beneath her. Slowly and
painfully the sobs came welling up.

The people waited in silence, more or less disappointed, saddened by all
that silent grief. Her eyes, the eyes of a mother, stared at the dead
body; and he did not look at her and he slept on and ... and he was
asleep for ever, gone for ever: he would never see her again! This last
cut into her soul; a shrill scream came from her throat, she flung her
lean brown hands together high above her head, wrung the crooked, gnarled
fingers convulsively and then, with her fists clenched in her lap, sank
impotently to her knees, with her head against his.

"Oh, it's such a pity, oh, it's such a pity!" she moaned; and the words
contained all the awful depth of her woe, all the concentrated sorrow.
"Oh, it's such a pity, such a pity!" she kept on repeating, finding no
other words to express her grief and lending them power by force of
repetition.

He remained lying there ... and she remained kneeling; and all that crowd
of people stood silently looking on, startled and impressed by that
sacred, solemn mourning. And the impressive hush, the silence of all
those people, the desperate helplessness of those folk, she alone
suffering and crying and unable to help her child and the people
unwilling to help him: that impotence pierced her soul; and the patient
suffering changed into a frenzied madness, a raging fury. With a terrible
scream, like that of a goaded beast, a hoarse yell that came grating out
of her parched throat, she thrust her arms, stiff with pain, like two
steel rods, under the arms of that limp corpse and, with a superhuman
effort, with Herculean strength exalted by suffering, she lifted the
corpse, pressed it to her body, raised it with her outstretched arms and
dragged it, with its legs trailing behind it, hurrying along at a mad
pace, with the one idea of getting home with her child, her only child,
away, far away from that callous crowd which desecrated her sorrow: there
she would weep, sob out all her grief and find words, sweet words which
must throb through her child and wake him and bring him back to life!

All that packed crowd had first followed her with their eyes, struck
by the sudden outburst of that mad rage; and then they had gone
after her, inquisitively. And it did not last long before the
police-constables--those phlegmatic posts with which any outbreak of
undue human emotion must always in the end collide--stopped them; they
pulled those bony arms from round the corpse and took the little mother,
now hanging slack and limp, one on either side by the arm and led her
away. The body was carried to the mortuary.

With a resounding oath the foreman drove his folk back to work and set
all that rolling activity going once more.

The passers-by hastened away; and the saw screeched, the chisel tapped,
the hammer banged, the bricks were hauled up on high and the gorgeous
building, the pride of a metropolis, stood resplendent in the glaring
white mid-day sun, as if nothing had happened.

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