Tales of the German Imagination from the Brothers Grimm to Ingeborg Bachmann (Penguin Classics) (26 page)

Many servants rushed forward to tend to the horses. The palace itself was made of marble and strangely fashioned like a pagan temple. The beautiful symmetry of all its parts, the towering columns that soared like youthful thoughts, all the artful decorations depicting stories from a glorious bygone time, and, finally, the splendid marble statues of gods standing in all the niches – everything cheered the spirits with an indescribable joy. Now they stepped inside the wide hall that ran the length of the castle. Everywhere they looked, in the gaps between the columns, the scents and sights of the garden wafted and flickered forth.

On the wide, smooth-polished steps that led down into the garden they finally spotted below the lovely mistress of the pal
ace, who gave them a gracious welcome. She was resting, half reclining, on a chaise longue covered with costly material. She had removed her hunting attire and her lithe figure was draped in a sky-blue gown drawn in at the waist by a wondrously elegant belt. A girl kneeling beside her held up a lavishly ornamented mirror, while many others were engaged in bedecking their lovely mistress in roses. Seated at her feet a circle of young girls took turns serenading her to the sweet strains of a lute, now in a joyous rapture, now a soft lament, like nightingales responding to each other’s song on a warm summer night. The garden itself was all astir with merriment everywhere you turned. Many foreign-looking gentlemen and ladies wandered up and down amongst the rose bushes and fountains, engaged in lively conversations. Elegantly attired boys served wine and oranges and other fruits on silver platters covered with flowers. Further in the distance, bathed in the strains of lute music and the flicker of twilight that wafted over the flowery field, beautiful girls poked their heads out among the flowers, as if awakened from a midday dream, shook their dark locks from their foreheads, rinsed their eyes out in the clear water of the fountains and rejoined the joyous crowd.

As though blinded, Florio’s gaze wandered with wild abandon amongst the scattered scenes, always returning with a drunken rush to the lovely mistress of the castle, who, unperturbed, went about her charming business, now rearranging the dark, fragrant wreath of flowers in her hair, now casting another look at herself in the mirror, all the while chatting playfully with the youths, finding artful words to discuss this and that. Every now and then she suddenly turned around and cast such an indescribably sweet gaze at him that reached deep down into the depths of his soul.

In the meantime night had already begun mingling darkness amongst the last flickering glimmers of daylight, the cheerful chatter in the garden faded by and by into the intimate whisper of love, and moonlight laid its enchanted glow over the lovely spectacle. Then the lady arose from her flowery bed and took cheerful hold of Florio’s hand to lead him inside her palace, on which he kept showering words of praise. Many of the others
followed them inside. They climbed a few steps up, then down; the others scattered, meanwhile, laughing and joking, down countless rows of columns. Donati got lost in the crowd, and soon Florio found himself alone with the lady in one of the castle’s most resplendent rooms.

His comely guide now let herself sink onto several silken pillows lying on the ground, while flinging her luminous white veil in countless directions, now puffing it out in ever-lovelier, more elusive shapes, now pulling them back in. Florio looked on with burning eyes. Then, all of a sudden, outside in the garden someone started singing an exceedingly beautiful song. It was an old religious song he’d often heard in his childhood and had since then, in the sweep of passing impressions of his travels, almost forgotten. He became all flustered, as it seemed to him that the voice was Fortunato’s. ‘Do you know the singer?’ he hastily asked the lady, who seemed to be taken aback by the question and shook her head in emphatic confusion. Then she sat there a long while silently lost in thought.

Florio meanwhile availed himself of the opportunity to take a closer look at the room’s curious decorations. It was only dimly lit by a few candles held up by two massive metal arms extending from the wall. Tall, exotic flowers artfully arranged in vases scattered around the room spread a bewitching scent. Directly across from him stood a row of painted marble columns, over the charming shapes of which the dancing lights cast their enticing glimmer. The remaining walls were covered with costly silken tapestries whose life-size images recounted scenes of exceptional quality.

In all the ladies depicted here, Florio, whose eyes lit up, was convinced he recognized the unmistakable figure of the lovely lady of the house. Here she appeared, falcon in hand, as he’d seen her earlier that day, riding with a young knight out on the hunt; here she was depicted in a gorgeous rose garden with another handsome young lad kneeling at her feet.

It suddenly occurred to him, as with the strains of the song outside, that back home in early childhood he had often seen such a picture of a ravishingly lovely lady dressed in the same clothes, with a knight at her feet, a vast garden stretching
behind them with many fountains and artfully trimmed alleys, much like the garden he’d just beheld. He also remembered seeing images of Lucca and other famous cities.

Deeply moved, he told this to the lady. ‘Back then,’ he said, lost in memories, ‘when I stood around like this on muggy afternoons, peering at the paintings in our lonesome summer cottage in the garden, admiring the curious towers in those cities, the bridges and alleys, taking particular note of the carriages and the stately cavaliers riding by, greeting the ladies in their carriages – I never thought that all that would one day come alive around me. My father often came to me and told me of some merry adventure he had had on his youthful military escapades in one or another of those depicted cities, whereupon he generally liked to withdraw into a lengthy thoughtful silence, strolling up and down in the garden. But I flung myself down in the tallest grass and stared for hours at the clouds shifting in the sky over the sultry landscape. The grasses and flowers waved quietly back and forth above me, as though they wanted to weave the strangest dreams, the bees buzzed so lazily around me and then were gone – dear God, it’s all like a sea of silence in which the heart could sink in bitter-sweet sadness!’

‘Enough of that!’ the lady interrupted, as if distracted, ‘everyone thinks he’s seen me somewhere before, my face surges up and flowers in all youthful dreams.’

As she spoke she stroked the brown locks from the forehead of the handsome youth. But Florio stood up, his heart too gripped with emotion, and walked to the open window. The trees swayed outside, a nightingale flitted about, a bolt of lightning struck in the distance. The song kept wafting over the silent garden like a clear, cool current carrying the dreams of youth. The force of this music sank his spirit into deepest thought; he suddenly felt so out of place here, as though he’d stepped out of his own skin. Even the lady’s last words, of which he did not quite know what to make, left him with a strangely unsettling feeling – whereupon he muttered quietly and from the depth of his soul: ‘Dear God, let me not lose my way in this world!’ No sooner had he given vent to these words than a turbid burst of wind stirred up by the approaching storm
struck him full in the face with a bewildering force. At the same moment he noticed grass and tufts of weed sprouting out of the window cornice, as in old walls. And suddenly a hissing snake went slithering out and hurled itself with its greenish-golden tail down into the abyss.

Frightened, Florio stepped away from the window and turned back to the lady. She sat motionless and silent, as if she were listening in. Then she jumped up in a flash, went to the window and, directing her words to the night, chided him in a charming voice. But Florio could not follow, for the fierce wind whipped her words away. The thunderstorm, meanwhile, seemed to come ever closer; the wind, in the rip-roaring gusts of which solitary, heart-rending shreds of the song kept being wafted upwards, went whistling through the whole house and threatened to extinguish the wildly flickering flames of the candles. Just then a long-lasting bolt of lightning lit up the darkening room. Whereupon Florio fell back a few steps, for it seemed to him as if the lady stood there before him with eyes shut tight, her face and arms pale white. But in the wake of the fleeting flash of lightning that terrible face vanished again as quickly as it had appeared. The same dimness that had filled the room before reasserted itself, and the lady once again regarded him with a smile – but in silence and with a wistful air, as though straining to hold back tears.

Tumbling backwards in fear, Florio had in the meantime collided with one of the statues standing against the wall. At that very moment the statue began to stir, the movement quickly spread to all the others, and soon all the statues stepped from their pedestals in a terrible shroud of silence. Florio drew his dagger and cast an uncertain look at the lady. But when he noticed that with every surging note of the song wafting up from the garden she grew ever more pallid, like a fast-fading twilight in which, finally, even the evening stars seem to be engulfed in the dark, he was gripped by a dire dread. For even the tall flowers in the vases began to twist and turn like a writhing wreath of snakes, all the knights on the tapestries suddenly resembled him and seemed to laugh scornfully; the two arms that held the candles groped and grew ever longer, as if a
monstrous man sought to break free of the wall, the room filled up with eerie shadows, the lightning cast a fearful shimmer, in the glare of which Florio sensed the statues lunging at each other with such a terrible force that his hair stood on end. Gripped by terror, he staggered out of the room, through the empty echoing chambers and down the corridor of columns.

Out in the garden, beside the still pond he’d seen that first night, stood the marble statue of Venus. The singer Fortunato seemed to float in the middle of the pond, standing upright in a skiff, still strumming a few last chords on his guitar. But Florio took even the sight of his friend for another nocturnal chimera and kept running and running, until pond, garden and palace had disappeared far behind him. Bathed in moonlight, the city stood silent before him. Except for the distant horizon, illumined by the last flashes of a dying thunderstorm, it was a crystal-clear summer night.

The first bands of daylight already ringed the morning sky as he reached the gates of the city. He hastened to seek out Donati’s lodgings to discuss with him all the bewildering occurrences of the past night. The house was situated on one of the promontories with a splendid view of the city and the entire surrounding landscape, so it was easy enough to find the lovely spot again. But instead of the stately villa he’d visited the day before, all he found was a low-roofed hut overgrown with vines and surrounded by a small garden. Pigeons playing in the first rays of daylight strutted, cooing, back and forth across the roof; a profound peacefulness reigned all about. At that very moment a man with a scythe on his shoulder emerged from the house, singing:

Night has faded, day is breaking

Through night’s shroud, to work awaking.

Darkness is the devil’s way,

Up and at ’em, seize the day!

The man suddenly interrupted his singing upon spotting the stranger rushing towards him, pale-faced and with dishevelled hair. Bewildered, Florio asked after Donati. But the gardener had never heard the name and seemed to take Florio for a lunatic.
His daughter leant across the threshold, invigorated with a breath of the cool morning air, and studied the stranger with a wide-eyed look of surprise. ‘My God! Where have I been all this time!’ Florio muttered, half to himself, and flew in a great haste back through the gates and down the still-empty streets towards his inn.

Here he locked himself in his room and gave himself over completely and utterly to a contemplative reflection. The lady’s indescribable beauty, the way she slowly paled and sank her ravishing eyes, stirred up such boundless longing in his heart of hearts that he felt an irresistible yearning to die then and there.

He kept on morbidly brooding and daydreaming all that day and into the following night.

At the crack of dawn he was back in the saddle before the gates of the city. The tireless urging of his faithful servant had finally convinced him to leave this region for ever. Slowly now and lost in thought, he travelled along the lovely road that led from Lucca out into the countryside, past darkening shrubs and flowers in which the birds still slept. Just outside the city he was joined by three other riders. Not without a hidden dread he recognized one of them as the singer Fortunato. The second was Miss Bianca’s uncle, in whose country house he had danced on that fateful evening. The latter was accompanied by a lad who rode beside him in silence and without looking up. The three had resolved to visit all of Italy, and graciously invited Florio to join them. To which, however, he replied with a silent bow of the head, neither accepting nor declining the offer, and hardly took part in their conversations.

The rosy tint of dawn, meanwhile, spread its cool lustre over the splendid landscape, which prompted the merry Pietro to remark to Fortunato: ‘Look how strangely the faint rays of daybreak play up there amongst the stones of the old ruin on the mountain! How many times, as a young boy, did I climb around those stones with stunned amazement, curiosity and a secret trepidation! You know so many old legends, can you not enlighten us as to the origin and the fall of that castle, concerning which such strange rumours have spread hereabouts?’

Florio looked up at the mountain. Ringed in solitude stood an old collapsed rampart, lovely, half-sunken columns and a heap of hand-hewn stones, the whole overgrown with a lush green tangle of tendrils, hedges and tall weeds. There was a pond beside it, over which rose a partially damaged marble statue brightly lit in the rising dawn. It was clearly the same region, the same spot where he had ambled in the enchanting garden and seen the lady. Florio shuddered in secret at the sight of it. But Fortunato said: ‘I know an old song about it, if you care to hear it.’ Whereupon, without thinking twice, he sang out, filling the crisp morning air with his clear, pleasant voice: