The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Volume 08

Thus they proceeded with the unremitting energy children and animals have as they do not realize how far their strength will carry them, and when their supply of it will give out.

But as they went on they did not notice whether they were going down or up. They had turned down to the right at once, but they came again to places that led up. Often they encountered steep places which they were forced to avoid, and a trench in which they continued led them about in a curve. They climbed heights which grew ever steeper as they proceeded, and what they thought led downward was level ground, or it was a depression, or the way went on in an even stretch.

"Where are we, I wonder, Conrad?" asked the girl.

"I don't know," he answered. "If I only could see something with my eyes," he continued, "that I could take my direction from."

But there was nothing about them but the blinding white, white everywhere which drew an ever narrowing circle about them, passing, beyond it, into a luminous mist descending in bands which consumed and concealed all objects beyond, until there was nothing but the unceasingly descending snow.

"Wait, Sanna," said the boy, "let us stand still for a moment and listen, perhaps we might hear a sound from the valley, a dog, or a bell, or the mill, or a shout, something we must hear, and then we shall know which way to go."

So they remained standing, but they heard nothing. They remained standing a little longer, but nothing came, not a single sound, not the faintest noise beside their own breath, aye, in the absolute stillness they thought they could hear the snow as it fell on their eyelashes. The prediction of grandmother had still not come true; no wind had arisen, in fact, what is rare in those regions, not a breath of air was stirring.

After having waited for a long time they went on again.

"Never mind, Sanna," said the boy, "don't be afraid, just follow me and I shall lead you down yet.—If only it would stop snowing!"

The little girl was not faint-hearted, but lifted her little feet as well as she could and followed him. He led her on in the white, bright, living, opaque space.

After a time they saw rocks. Darkling and indistinct they loomed up out of the white opaque light. As the children approached they almost bumped against them. They rose up like walls and were quite perpendicular so that scarcely a flake of snow could settle on them.

"Sanna, Sanna," he said, "there are the rocks, just let us keep on, let us keep on."

They went on, had to enter in between the rocks and push on at their base. The rocks would let them escape neither to left nor right and led them on in a narrow path. After a while the children lost sight of them. They got away from the rocks as unexpectedly as they had got among them. Again, nothing surrounded them but white, no more dark forms interposed. They moved in what seemed a great brightness and yet could not see three feet ahead, everything being, as it were, enveloped in a white darkness, and as there were no shadows no opinion about the size of objects was possible. The children did not know whether they were to descend or ascend until some steep slope compelled their feet to climb.

"My eyes smart," said Sanna.

"Don't look on the snow," answered the boy, "but into the clouds. Mine have hurt a long time already; but it does not matter, because I must watch our way. But don't be afraid, I shall lead you safely down to Gschaid."

"Yes, Conrad."

They went on; but wheresoever they turned, whichever way they turned, there never showed a chance to descend. On either side steep acclivities hemmed them in, and also made them constantly ascend. Whenever they turned downward the slopes proved so precipitous that they were compelled to retreat. Frequently they met obstacles and often had to avoid steep slopes.

They began to notice that whenever their feet sank in through the new snow they no longer felt the rocky soil underneath but something else which seemed like older, frozen snow; but still they pushed onward and marched fast and perseveringly. Whenever they made a halt everything was still, unspeakably still. When they resumed their march they heard the shuffling of their feet and nothing else; for the veils of heaven descended without a sound, and so abundantly that one might have seen the snow grow. The children themselves were covered with it so that they did not contrast with the general whiteness and would have lost each other from sight had they been separated but a few feet.

A comfort it was that the snow was as dry as sand so that it did not adhere to their boots and stockings or cling and wet them.

At last they approached some other objects. They were gigantic fragments lying in wild confusion and covered with snow sifting everywhere into the chasms between them. The children almost touched them before seeing them. They went up to them to examine what they were.

It was ice—nothing but ice.

There were snow-covered slabs on whose lateral edges the smooth green ice became visible; there were hillocks that looked like heaped-up foam, but whose inward-looking crevices had a dull sheen and lustre as if bars and beams of gems had been flung pellmell. There rose rounded hummocks that were entirely enveloped in snow, slabs and other forms that stood inclined or in a perpendicular position, towering as high as houses or the church of Gschaid. In some, cavities were hollowed out through which one could insert an arm, a head, a body, a whole big wagon full of hay. All these were jumbled together and tilted so that they frequently formed roofs or eaves whose edges the snow overlaid and over which it reached down like long white paws. Nay, even a monstrous black boulder as large as a house lay stranded among the blocks of ice and stood on end so that no snow could stick to its sides. And even larger ones which one saw only later were fast in the ice and skirted the glacier like a wall of debris.

"There must have been very much water here, because there is so much ice," remarked Sanna.

"No, that did not come from any water," replied her brother, "that is the ice of the mountain which is always on it, because that is the way things are."

"Yes, Conrad," said Sanna.

"We have come to the ice now," said the boy; "we are on the mountain, you know, Sanna, that one sees so white in the sunshine from our garden. Now keep in mind what I shall tell you. Do you remember how often we used to sit in the garden, in the afternoon, how beautiful it was, how the bees hummed about us, how the linden-trees smelled sweet, and how the sun shone down on us?"

"Yes, Conrad, I remember."

"And then we also used to see the mountain. We saw how blue it was, as blue as the sky, we saw the snow that is up there even when we had summer-weather, when it was hot and the grain ripened."

"Yes, Conrad."

"And below it where the snow stopped one sees all sorts of colors if one looks close—green, blue, and whitish—that is the ice; but it only looks so small from below, because it is so very far away. Father said the ice will not go away before the end of the world. And then I also often saw that there was blue color below the ice and thought it was stones, or soil and pasture-land, and then come the woods, and they go down farther and farther, and there are some boulders in them too, and then come meadows that are already green, and then the green leafy-woods, and then our meadow-lands and fields in the valley of Gschaid. Do you see now, Sanna, as we are at the ice we shall go down over the blue color, and through the forests in which are the boulders, and then over the pasture-land, and through the green leafy-forests, and then we shall be in the valley of Gschaid and easily find our way to the village."

"Yes, Conrad," said the girl.

The children now entered upon the glacier where it was accessible. They were like wee little pricks wandering among the huge masses.

As they were peering in under the overhanging slabs, moved as it were by an instinct to seek some shelter, they arrived at a trench, broad and deeply furrowed, which came right out of the ice. It looked like the bed of some torrent now dried up and everywhere covered with fresh snow. At the spot where it emerged from the ice there yawned a vault of ice beautifully arched above it. The children continued in the trench and, entering the vault, went in farther and farther. It was quite dry and there was smooth ice under their feet. All the cavern, however, was blue, bluer than anything else in the world, more profoundly and more beautifully blue than the sky, as blue as azure glass through which a bright glow is diffused. There were more or less heavy flutings, icicles hung down pointed and tufted, and the passage led inward still farther, they knew not how far; but they did not go on. It would also have been pleasant to stay in this grotto, it was warm and no snow could come in; but it was so fearfully blue that the children took fright and ran out again. They went on a while in the trench and then clambered over its side.

They passed along the ice, as far as it was possible to edge through that chaos of fragments and boulders.

"We shall now have to pass over this, and then we shall run down away from the ice," said Conrad.

"Yes," said Sanna and clung to him.

From the ice they took a direction downward over the snow which was to lead them into the valley. But they were not to get far. Another river of ice traversed the soft snow like a gigantic wall bulging up and towering aloft and, as it were, reaching out with its arms to the right and the left. It was covered by snow on top, but at its sides there were gleams of blue and green and drab and black, aye, even of yellow and red. They could now see to larger distances, as the enormous and unceasing snowfall had abated somewhat and was only as heavy as on ordinary snowy days. With the audacity of ignorance they clambered up on the ice in order to cross the interposing tongue of the glacier and to descend farther behind it. They thrust their little bodies into every opening, they put their feet on every projection covered by a white snow-hood, whether ice or rock, they aided their progress with their hands, they crept where they could not walk, and with their light bodies worked themselves up until they had finally gained the top of the wall.

They had intended to climb down its other side.

There was no other side.

As far as the eyes of the children reached there was only ice. Hummocks, slabs, and spires of ice rose about them, all covered with snow. Instead of being a wall which one might surmount and which would be followed by an expanse of snow, as they had thought, new walls of ice lifted up out of the glacier, shattered and fissured and variegated with innumerable blue sinuous lines; and behind them were other walls of the same nature, and behind them others again, until the falling snow veiled the distance with its gray.

"Sanna, we cannot make our way here," said the boy. "No," answered his sister.

"Then we will turn back and try to get down somewhere else."

"Yes, Conrad."

The children now tried to climb down from the ice-wall where they had clambered up, but they did not succeed. There was ice all about them, as if they had mistaken the direction from which they had come. They turned hither and thither and were not able to extricate themselves from the ice. It was as if they were entangled in it. At last, when the boy followed the direction they had, as he thought, come, they reached more scattered boulders, but they were also larger and more awe-inspiring, as is usually the case at the edge of the glacier. Creeping and clambering, the children managed to issue from the ice. At the rim of the glacier there were enormous boulders, piled in huge heaps, such as the children had never yet seen. Many were covered all over with snow, others showed their slanting under-sides which were very smooth and finely polished as if they had been shoved along on them, many were inclined toward one another like huts and roofs, many lay upon one another like mighty clods. Not far from where the children stood, several boulders were inclined together, and over them lay broad slabs like a roof. The little house they thus formed was open in front, but protected in the rear and on both sides. The interior was dry, as not a single snow-flake had drifted in. The children were very glad that they were no longer in the ice, but stood on the ground again.

But meanwhile it had been growing dark.

"Sanna," said the boy, "we shall not be able to go down today, because it has become night, and because we might fall or even drop into some pit. We will go in under those stones where it is so dry and warm, and there we will wait. The sun will soon rise again, and then we shall run down from the mountain. Don't cry, please, don't cry, and I shall give you all the things to eat which grandmother has given us to take along."

The little girl did not weep. After they had entered under the stone roof where they could not only sit comfortably, but also stand and walk about she seated herself close to him and kept very quiet.

"Mother will not be angry," said Conrad, "we shall tell her of the heavy snow that has kept us, and she will say nothing; father will not, either. And if we grow cold, why then we must slap our hands to our bodies as the woodcutters did, and then we shall grow warm again."

"Yes, Conrad," said the girl.

Sanna was not at all so inconsolable because they could not run down the mountain and get home as he might have thought; for the immense exertion, of whose severity the children hardly had any conception, made the very sitting down seem sweet to them, unspeakably sweet, and they did not resist.

But now hunger asserted itself imperiously. Almost at the same time, both took their pieces of bread from their pockets and began to eat. They ate also the other things, such as little pieces of cake, almonds, raisins, and other trifles, which grandmother had put into their pockets.

"Sanna, now we must clean the snow from our clothes," said the boy, "so that we shall not become wet."

"Yes, Conrad," replied Sanna.

The children went before their little house. Conrad first brushed off his little sister. He grasped the corners of her coat and shook them, took off the hat he had put on her head, emptied it of snow and wiped off the snow that remained in it. Then he rid himself as best he could of the snow that lay on him.

At that time it had entirely stopped snowing. The children could not feel one flake descending.

They returned into their stone-hut and sat down. Getting up had showed them how tired they really were, and they were glad to sit down again. Conrad laid down the calfskin bag which he had strapped on his shoulders. He took out the cloth in which grandmother had wrapped a pasteboard-box and several paper packages and put it about his shoulders for greater warmth. He also took the two pieces of wheat-bread out of his wallet and gave Sanna both. The child ate them most eagerly. A part of them, however, she gave back to Conrad as she saw he was not eating anything. He accepted it and ate it.

From that time on, the children merely sat and looked. As far as the eye could reach in the twilight there was nothing but snow, whose minute crystals began to scintillate in a strange manner as if they had absorbed the light of day and were emitting it again now.

Night fell with the rapidity usual in high altitudes. Soon it was dark all about, only the snow continued to glimmer faintly. Not only had it stopped snowing but the clouds began to grow thin and to part, for the children saw the gleam of a star. As the snow really emitted light, as it were, and the clouds no longer hung down from the sky, they could see from their cave how the snowy hillocks round about were sharply outlined against the dark sky. The cave was warmer than it had been at any other place during the day, and so the children rested, clinging closely to each other and even forgot to be afraid of the darkness. Soon the stars multiplied, they gleamed forth now here, now there, until it seemed that there was not a single cloud left in the whole sky.

This was the moment when people in the valleys are accustomed to light their candles. At first, only one is kindled, in order to make light in the room; or, possibly, only a pine-splinter; or the fire is burning in the hearth, and all windows of human habitations grow bright and shed lustre into the snowy night; but all the more tonight, Christmas evening, when many more lights were kindled, in order to shine full upon the presents for the children which lay upon the tables or hung on the trees—innumerable candles were lit; for in nearly every house, every cot, every room, there were children for whom the Christ-child had brought presents which had to be shown by the light of candles.

The boy had thought one could very quickly come down from the mountain and yet, not a single one of the lights burning that night in the valley shone up to them. They saw nothing but the pale snow and the dark sky, all else was rendered invisible by the distance. At this hour, the children in all valleys were receiving their Christmas presents. These two alone sat up there by the edge of the glacier and the finest presents meant for them on this day lay in little sealed packages in the calfskin bag in the rear of the cave.

The snow-clouds had sunk below the mountains on all sides and a vault entirely dark-blue, almost black, full of densely clustered burning stars extended above the children; and through the midst of them was woven a shimmering broad milky band which they had, indeed, seen also below in the valley, but never so distinctly. The night was advancing. The children did not know that the stars change their position and move toward the west, else they might have recognized the hour of night by their progress. New stars came and the old ones disappeared, but they believed them to be always the same. It grew somewhat brighter about the children by the radiance of the stars; but they saw no valley, no known places, but everywhere white—only white. Only some dark peak, some dark knob became visible looming up out of the shimmering waste. The moon was nowhere to be seen in the heavens, perhaps it had set early with the sun, or it had not yet risen.

After a long time the boy said: "Sanna, you must not sleep; for do you remember what father said, that if one sleeps in the mountains one will freeze to death, as the old hunter slept and sat four months dead on that stone and no one had known where he was."

"No, I shall not sleep," said the little girl feebly. Conrad had shaken her by a corner of her coat, in order to make her listen to his words.

Then there was silence again.

After a little while, the boy felt a soft pressure against his arm which became ever heavier. Sanna had fallen asleep and had sunk over toward him.

"Sanna, don't sleep, please, don't sleep!" he said.

"No," she mumbled drowsily, "I shall not sleep."

He moved farther away from her, in order to make her move; she toppled over and would have continued sleeping on the ground. He took hold of her shoulder and shook her. As he moved a little more, he noticed that he was feeling cold himself and that his arm had grown numb. He was frightened and jumped up. He seized his sister, shook her more vigorously and said, "Sanna, get up a little, we want to stand up a little so that we shall feel better."

"I am not cold, Conrad," she answered.

"Yes indeed you are, Sanna, get up," he cried.

"My fur-jacket is warm," she said.

"I shall help you up," he said.

"No," she replied, and lay still.

Then something else occurred to the boy. Grandmother had said: "Just one little mouthful of it will warm the stomach so that one's body will not be cold on the coldest winter day."

He reached for his little calfskin knapsack, opened it, and groped around in it until he found the little flask into which grandmother had put the black coffee for mother. He took away the wrappings from the bottle and with some exertion uncorked it. Then he bent down to Sanna and said: "Here is the coffee that grandmother sends mother, taste a little of it, it will make you feel warm. Mother would give it to us if she knew what we needed it for."

The little girl, who was by nature inclined to be passive, answered, "I am not cold."

"Just take a little," urged the boy, "and then you may go to sleep again."

This expectation tempted Sanna and she mastered herself so far that she took a swallow of the liquor. Then the boy drank a little, too.

The exceedingly strong extract took effect at once and all the more powerfully as the children had never in their life tasted coffee. Instead of going to sleep, Sanna became more active and acknowledged that she was cold, but that she felt nice and warm inside, and that the warmth was already passing into her hands and feet. The children even spoke a while together.

In this fashion they drank ever more of the liquor in spite of its bitter taste as the effect of it began to die away and roused their nerves to a fever heat which was able to counteract their utter weariness.

It had become midnight, meanwhile. As they still were so young, and because on every Christmas eve in the excess of their joy they went to bed very late and only after being overcome by sleep, they never had heard the midnight tolling, and never the organ of the church when holy mass was being celebrated, although they lived close by. At this moment of the Holy Night, all bells were being rung, the bells of Millsdorf were ringing, the bells of Gschaid were ringing, and behind the mountain there was still another church whose three bells were pealing brightly. In the distant lands outside the valley there were innumerable churches and bells, and all of them were ringing at this moment, from village to village the wave of sound traveled, from one village to another one could hear the peal through the bare branches of the trees; but up to the children there came not a sound, nothing was heard here, for nothing was to be announced here. In the winding valleys, the lights of lanterns gleamed along the mountain-slopes, and from many a farm came the sound of the farm bell to rouse the hands. But far less could all this be seen and heard up here. Only the stars gleamed and calmly twinkled and shone.

Even though Conrad kept before his mind the fate of the huntsman who was frozen to death, and even though the children had almost emptied the bottle of black coffee—which necessarily would bring on a corresponding relaxation afterwards, they would not have been able to conquer their desire for sleep, whose seductive sweetness outweighs all arguments against it, had not nature itself in all its grandeur assisted them and in its own depths awakened a force which was able to cope with sleep.

In the enormous stillness that reigned about them, a silence in which no snow-crystal seemed to move, the children heard three times the bursting of the ice. That which seems the most rigid of all things and yet is most flexible and alive, the glacier, had produced these sounds. Thrice they heard behind them a crash, terrific as if the earth were rent asunder,—a sound that ramified through the ice in all directions and seemed to penetrate all its veins. The children remained sitting open-eyed and looked out upon the stars.

Their eyes also were kept busy. As the children sat there, a pale light began to blossom forth on the sky before them among the stars and extended a flat arc through them. It had a greenish tinge which gradually worked downward. But the arc became ever brighter until the stars paled in it. It sent a luminosity also into other regions of the heavens which shed greenish beams softly and actively among the stars. Then, sheaves of vari-colored light stood in burning radiance on the height of the arc like the spikes of a crown. Mildly it flowed through the neighboring regions of the heavens, it flashed and showered softly, and in gentle vibrations extended through vast spaces. Whether now the electric matter of the atmosphere had become so tense by the unexampled fall of snow that it resulted in this silent, splendid efflorescence of light, or whether some other cause of unfathomable nature may be assigned as reason for the phenomenon—however that be: gradually the light grew weaker and weaker, first the sheaves died down, until by unnoticeable degrees it grew ever less and there was nothing in the heavens but the thousands upon thousands of simple stars.

The children never exchanged a word, but remained sitting and gazed open-eyed into the heavens.

Nothing particular happened afterward. The stars gleamed and shone and twinkled, only an occasional shooting star traversed them.

At last, after the stars had shone alone for a long time, and nothing had been seen of the moon, something else happened. The sky began to grow brighter, slowly but recognizably brighter; its color became visible, the faintest stars disappeared and the others were not clustered so densely any longer. Finally, also the bigger stars faded away, and the snow on the heights became more distinct. Now, one region of the heavens grew yellow and a strip of cloud floating in it was inflamed to a glowing line. All things became clearly visible and the remote snow-hills assumed sharp outlines.

"Sanna, day is breaking," said the boy.

"Yes, Conrad," answered the girl.

"After it grows just a bit brighter we shall go out of the cave and run down from the mountain."

It grew brighter, no star was visible any longer, and all things stood out clear in the dawn.

"Well, then, let us go," said the boy.

"Yes, let us go," answered Sanna.

The children arose and tried their limbs which only now felt their tiredness. Although they had not slept, the morning had reinvigorated them. The boy slung the calfskin bag around his shoulder and fastened Sanna's fur-jacket about her. Then he led her out of the cave.

As they had believed it would be an easy matter to run down from the mountain they had not thought of eating and had not searched the bag, to see whether it contained any wheat-bread or other eatables.

The sky being clear, Conrad had wanted to look down from the mountain into the valleys in order to recognize the valley of Gschaid and descend to it. But he saw no valleys whatever. He seemed not to stand on any mountain from which one can look down, but in some strange, curious country in which there were only unknown objects. Today they saw awful rocks stand up out of the snow at some distance which they had not seen the day before; they saw the glacier, they saw hummocks and slanting snow-fields, and behind these, either the sky or the blue peak of some very distant mountain above the edge of the snowy horizon.

At this moment the sun arose.

A gigantic, bloody red disk emerged above the white horizon and immediately the snow about the children blushed as if it had been strewn with millions of roses. The knobs and pinnacles of the mountain cast very long and greenish shadows along the snow.

"Sanna, we shall go on here, until we come to the edge of the mountain and can look down," said the boy.

They went farther into the snow. In the clear night, it had become still drier and easily yielded to their steps. They waded stoutly on. Their limbs became even more elastic and strong as they proceeded, but they came to no edge and could not look down. Snowfield succeeded snowfield, and at the end of each always shone the sky.

They continued nevertheless.

Before they knew it, they were on the glacier again. They did not know how the ice had got there, but they felt the ground smooth underfoot, and although there were not such awful boulders as in the moraine where they had passed the night, yet they were aware of the glacier being underneath them, they saw the blocks growing ever larger and coming ever nearer, forcing them to clamber again.

Yet they kept on in the same direction.

Again they were clambering up some boulders; again they stood on the glacier. Only today, in the bright sunlight, could they see what it was like. It was enormously large, and beyond it, again, black rocks soared aloft. Wave heaved behind wave, as it were, the snowy ice was crushed, raised up, swollen as if it pressed onward and were flowing toward the children. In the white of it they perceived innumerable advancing wavy blue lines. Between those regions where the icy masses rose up, as if shattered against each other, there were lines like paths, and these were strips of firm ice or places where the blocks of ice had not been screwed up very much. The children followed these paths as they intended to cross part of the glacier, at least, in order to get to the edge of the mountain and at last have a glimpse down. They said not a word. The girl followed in the footsteps of the boy. The place where they had meant to cross grew ever broader, it seemed. Giving up their direction, they began, to retreat. Where they could not walk they broke with their hands through the masses of snow which often gave way before their eyes, revealing the intense blue of a crevasse where all had been pure white before. But they did not mind this and labored on until they again emerged from the ice somewhere.

"Sanna," said the boy, "we shall not go into the ice again at all, because we cannot make our way in it. And because we cannot look down into our valley, anyway, we want to go down from the mountain in a straight line. We must come into some valley, and there we shall tell people that we are from Gschaid and they will show us the way home."

"Yes, Conrad," said the girl.

So they began to descend on the snow in the direction which its slope offered them. The boy led the little girl by her hand. However, after having descended some distance, the slope no longer followed that direction and the snowfield rose again. The children, therefore, changed their direction and descended toward a shallow basin. But there they struck ice again. So they climbed up along the side of the basin in order to seek a way down in some other direction. A slope led them downward, but that gradually became so steep that they could scarcely keep a footing and feared lest they should slide down. So they retraced their steps upward to find some other way down. After having clambered up the snowfield a long time and then continuing along an even ridge, they found it to be as before: either the snow sloped so steeply that they would have fallen, or it ascended so that they feared it would lead to the very peak of the mountain. And thus it continued to be.