“He,” or in this case let’s say “she,” it normally amounts to the same thing, need only stop to rest a bit from walking beside a country road, and already the buyers are passing. “Hm,” thinks a farmer boy, healthy, heartlessly healthy, appraising only with his eyes this ware that could be had at a modest price, marked down, so to speak: “so, she’s missed her chance, too.” And he goes on his way, whistling. Then a young lady with a gentleman, tourists, very curious: people whose house is so well-kept, so rich and impregnable, that they see a pleasing landscape as nothing more than the extension and surroundings of that house, and they react with surprise, as they would in a park, when suddenly they come upon a stranger taking a rest, wondering where he possibly could have come from. What’s more, I would even say that with their curiosity, they unconsciously seek to drive this poor person away. There is something there that cannot be resolved: “What could have happened?” they think; she’s wearing a dress much like our own, though it may be weathered and of a different cut, still from a distance it seems equally proper. “She looks legitimate, yes, she looks like one of our own class. But her child never will be.” And they’re right, they’ve judged it all with a single look. Then along comes a farmer woman, one who rarely speaks. She has her own firm rules. She has grown into the world and become its center, if only at a single spot, for we generally cannot be in several places at once. She would never sit down beside this woman. She has just sold her surplus of flax in the little market town, with its cloister tower and a street of houses peeking out over the wall. Even the richest farmer’s daughter doesn’t need more than fifty pairs of stockings for her dowry, the old farmer’s wife says to herself as she continues on her way, and flax stockings can be rough for someone who hasn’t grown up with them. She looks thoughtful, she seems to have something in the corners of her mouth. Maybe she’s thinking about more than just flax stockings. Then some children come along. They look. They stand there, and, as they consider this riddle, they become a riddle themselves. Time passes. The person there on the bench would start to see herself as a scarecrow of curiosity (but there’s nothing to be done about that) if something didn’t happen soon. Her hat is a white straw hat, an innocent shape, with no decoration to speak of. Two little leaves hang from the metal band, and a single lily of the valley. The skirt is of two colors, brown in the front and moss green in the back, decorated all around with a pattern left by lace that has long since been removed. The sun will have its little fun, just as people do. Then along comes the messenger who serves these mountains. And although he is always on his way somewhere, resting on one leg while moving forward with the other, as he says himself, nevertheless he stops there, still hunched over, but peering out to see whatever can still be seen with his old eyes. The person there is young, and actually she’s almost pretty. She would be truly pretty if fortune had been kinder to her. But “good fortune,” he knows, “is not an accident, it’s a genuine character trait.” This gives him a moment’s pause. But then, after just a short conversation, he makes the right move. He takes her on. “Come along,” he says, “you can feed yourself and your child at my house all right.” (She doesn’t have a child yet, but he could still be right.) “Can you cook?” “Not much.” “Doesn’t matter. Can you sew?” “Not really.” “Doesn’t matter. Can you milk goats?” “Not at all.” “Doesn’t matter either. And you don’t garden?” She shakes her head. “That’s all right too,” he says with understanding or sympathy. “Once you live with me, you’ll learn. When you have a child, you’ll learn. I’ll show you how to do the work, you just haven’t learned yet, mostly, so I’ll tell you what to do.” An old man from the Odyssey couldn’t have had a clearer view of life.
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.