Minna/Book 1, Chapter 9
After many warnings to be careful, we set out on the following afternoon with the jubilant Hans, who both acted as our guide and carried our basket of provisions.
Our path, which followed the Elbe, soon ran on the right-hand side, by long slopes of stone, rubble, and gravel which, like a bastion, rose fifty feet or more up to the plateau of the quarries, and downwards was bordered by a wall of more than a man's height. Here and there, in front of each quarry, this gave place to wooden rails, leading from the high-lying works to the bank, where the cut stones are sent down on a species of sledge. Near one of these loading places lay a barge, already half-filled with its heavy cargo; and close by, some very muscular navvies were unloading a trolley, while the next in order stood ready to follow on the top of the rails near the winch.
I suppose we had walked more than a mile, when Hans stopped near a ladder leaning against the wall. We climbed up to the foot of the slope without difficulty. Here, however, we halted, examining, with distrustful eyes, the path which was to lead us up, and which could only be dimly perceived, like a pale zigzag line on the steep greyish surface. On closer examination we discovered steps of a sort, formed by projecting stones, or simply dug out with a single stroke of the spade, but these looked as if they might give way under one. Hans, who had already climbed a good way up, turned round in astonishment, wondering why we were not following him.
"But you must go first," Minna said, turning red.
"No, Miss Jagemann, it won't do. If you slip in such a place there is nothing for you to catch hold of. I can manage to steady myself and support you if you stumble; you need not be afraid of pulling me down, and anyhow"
"If only you would go on now," she interrupted.
"Dear me, do let us give up being so ridiculously particular. Would you, for the sake of such trifles, risk breaking your neck? Bother it all, there must be another way up. These stupid people! But in any case there is no danger if only you will do as I tell you. Please do not be so squeamish! "
In saying these words I pretended to be much more impatient and irritable than I really was, and I did it designedly. It gave me a delicious satisfaction to play the part of mentor, and to tyrannise over her for the sake of her welfare.
"I know you mean well, and so I won't be offended at your peremptory tone," she said, and looked at me earnestly. "In a way you are right. Indeed you would be quite so, if it were pretence or affectation on my part. But, unfortunately, I have this feeling, and to such an extent, that my movements would be like those of the dolls which used to be fashionable and whose boots were attached to one another by chains; and we should both, in the end, turn somersaults down the slope, which seems admirably adapted for such a performance. If, however, you go in front and allow me to help myself, and climb as ungracefully as I like, then, I promise you, the worst misfortune which can happen will be that I may scrape my knees a little, and if you find that I am an obstinate person now, then console yourself with the idea that I shall certainly not be otherwise when I reach the top."
The decided manner, mixed with pleasant humour, with which she said this, suddenly dragged me down from my pedestal, and, to tell the truth, made me feel so small, that I might have crept into a mouse-hole. In default of such, I crept up the slope, and bore the deadly fear that something might happen to my companion, as a just punishment.
Both of us, however, reached the summit in safety.
The white surface, which stretched in front of us right up to the blasted rock, suggested to me the ruins of a temple. Mill-stones were lying about in long rows, like enormous portions of fallen columns. We also saw regularly cut stone blocks and curb-stones, which together gave the idea of partial foundations. Heaps of sand, rubble, and larger broken stones had here and there formed banks intersecting the ground, some of which were covered with miniature woods, consisting of the American elder, the scarlet-coloured berries of which stood flaring against the shiny white masses of stone. On one side appeared a tiled roof with a smoking chimney; it was a smithy, a thing which each quarry possessed.
After having passed over one of the banks we found ourselves in the hindermost part of the quarry, just in front of the rock itself. Here stood the owner and two workmen. Our landlord took his wooden pipe from his mouth, and welcomed us by saying that we had just come in the nick of time; they were quite ready. A big man, in neat check trousers and a fairly clean shirt, stood with his back bent towards the stone surface, where he seemed to be examining something; he turned his red-bearded face for a moment with a familiar nod, while a smaller man of a gnome-like appearance, and covered with dirty rags, scowled furtively at us as he moved away some tools. A few yards away a couple of workmen were hammering small wedge-shaped iron poles into a big stone which was to be split. Farther away one heard the sound of pickaxes and crow-bars.
The man in the check trousers stepped back from the stone; then we noticed a thick cord, hanging like the tail of an animal which had crept into a hole. It hung hardly four feet from the ground on a projecting part of the blasting surface, some twenty feet in height. The projection had already, by a narrow rent, loosened itself from the rock wall. This ascended bare and yellow-tinted for some hundred feet or so, until dark, rough shapes of rock appeared with shrubs and fir trees on all prominent points and in every fissure, giving the mountain the appearance of an enormous moss-grown tree which had been stripped of its bark and split at the base.
The landlord recommended us to go up the nearest stone bank, which lay on the side of the blasting operations. He waved away a man, who came from the smithy with a couple of pick-axes on his shoulder, and having put his hands to his mouth, he shouted: "Beware!" After this he knocked some ashes out of his pipe, puffing vigorously as he went towards the stone, where he put the end of the slow-match into the bowl of his pipe, which he did not take out of his mouth, and then sauntered quietly towards us, still smoking, and with his hands tucked under his leather apron. The spark of the slow-match that for one moment had been visible, disappeared; a thin smoke oozed out of the stone. Minna and I looked at each other with a strange smile of nervous anxiety, expecting a terrific explosion. At last we heard a rather faint muffled report; pieces of stone were thrown out, a small cloud of dust and smoke spread; the solid mass still stood, though very much undermined. The owner swore, the man with the check trousers scraped some loosened bits out with his pick-axe. In the gash of the stone wound I could see the black trace of the mine.
"We shall have to bore again," he shouted to the owner.
While we were inspecting the spot at close quarters, and the men were looking for the best place to bore, I had taken a pick-axe and chipped one of the pieces, which had come off by blasting, and which easily broke into regular flat bits under my tool. Suddenly I found myself caught and tied up with a piece of the fibre which they used as a wad, while a roar of laughter burst upon my ears, and a red-bearded face bent over my shoulder. I also laughed, of course, but in the unnatural way which is always a clear proof that one does not altogether appreciate the joke. The gay captor, it is true, did give some sort of explanation, evidently under the impression that I understood the whole thing, but he spoke in such broad Saxonian dialect that I was none the wiser.
Minna laughed heartily at seeing me in the arms of the giant, and still more, I suppose, at the funny expression on my face, which said clearly that "I was not in it," but should like to be. At last she controlled her merriment, which, against my will, had annoyed me a good deal.
"He expects you to pay a ransom for your liberty, and he has the right to do so," she said. "It is one of our traditions that if any one trespasses on a workman's preserves, the latter has the right to handcuff him just as you have been."
She had said this in Danish, slowly and with faltering accents, sometimes using a German expression. It was the first time I had heard her speak my mother tongue, and it both surprised and flattered me, because we Danes are always pleasantly astonished when a stranger can make himself understood in a language so little known. And besides, I suspected her of having recently made a special study of it, though she had not said anything to me about it.
I willingly paid my ransom with interest, so that besides the toll exacted by the red-bearded man, there was a tip for the others, but it is not unlikely that the presence of Minna had something to do with my generosity. Then my humorous captor, having pocketed the money with a polite "Thank you," released me, and, after this encouragement, he started with the fresh boring, while the poor gnome, whose rags might, one feared, at any moment fall off completely, drove his iron pole into the stone with the help of a heavy hammer.
As it seemed to be a long business, we went round the quarry to look at the traces of former blastings, and to enjoy the sight of these brittle and gritty stones being so easily shaped by such clever workmen. After this we took to the less serious pastime of gathering some of the beautiful flowers which grew between the blocks; but when Minna came upon some coloured, almost transparent, pebbles, she turned her attention to them, and in her enthusiasm lay down on the ground, thinking she had found a mine of wealth. I lit a cigar, and took a seat on a stone close by in the scanty shade of some bushes.
"Are they not sweet?" said Minna, holding towards me a sea-green and lilac pebble, and, blinded by the white glare of the quarry, she looked at me with blinking eyes.
"Indeed, awfully pretty. But what are you going to do with them? "
"Oh, I shall give them to little Amelia. Though, to be quite honest, I should like to keep them myself.… You think me rather childish? Well, it is just because they remind me of my childhood, though there is not much worth remembering in it. And yet I like to recall it. It is strange how it is; but time softens everything, even what lies but a short distance off seems glorified. Isn't it always a comfort that the hour will come when a halo will be shed over all memories and make them beautiful?"
"Yes," I replied, "you are right. And this present time, this very day, perhaps a time will come when one will find it almost painfully beautiful, and reproach oneself for not having appreciated it enough at the moment; still, as far as I am concerned, that would be unjust."
Minna bent her head lower, and added some fresh stones to the collection in her handkerchief.
"As a child I adored these clear stones, I had plenty of them, and imagined myself to be a Princess, and that they were my jewels. I said that I would give them to little Amelia, but it is quite likely she might be offended by such a present, and her father silly enough to give her real ones instead of them."
"It cannot be an easy task for you to be a governess to such spoilt children. I daresay you have had a more sensible bringing up."
"Honour to whom honour is due," she said a little bitterly, and shook the stray hairs away from her eyes. "Sense! There was not much of that."
"Was your home very simple?"
"Had it been simple only, I should not have minded, but it lacked joy and homeliness. Certainly we were poor, but that alone was not the cause of the discomfort. Can you imagine, I was fourteen years old before I had ever been to Loschwitz? Of course we came now and then on to the terrace. It was a gala day for my brother and me when father took us to Plauen, where he sometimes had his glass of beer. In those days most of the factories had not been built; it was lovely in the small valley by Weisseritz, and we so enjoyed clambering about the rocks. It was there I found just such beautiful pebbles as these. In the evenings he also sometimes took mother with him to the beer-house; it was a reminiscence of the early days of their married life, when she used to accompany him every evening. And if you, when you go back to town, look in at 'Zur Katze' in Castle Street about eight o'clock you will see, in the inner room, an old woman, who is supposed to be like me, sitting with her glass of beer; and if she has a friend with her, she will spin a long sentimental yarn about the many cosy hours she has spent in this very room with her late dear husband. When the remembrance of home-comfort lodges in 'Zur Katze,' you can imagine what remained for my brother and myself! We attended a good school, but that was our whole education. Father never troubled about us, and that was a great pity, for he was not only a well-educated man, but also right-minded and very honourable. This, however, I only recognised as I grew older; it was quite in a fragmentary way that I got to understand anything about him, for he was most reserved. He never spoke to mother about anything but the weather, and sometimes after reading the newspaper they quarrelled a little about politics. Father was an Imperialist, but mother was on the Saxonian side and hated the Prussians; she could not understand the good of the great Union, and insisted that it only brought heavy taxation. In that respect I am my mother's daughter; I can never forgive the Prussians, because in sixty-six they cut down all the trees in Ostra Avenue; and I can never see those stiff-backed military figures strutting along our streets without feeling irritated. Otherwise they had no subject for discussion, as I have already told you. As time went on I understood better how they felt towards each other, and I am convinced that with another wife he would have been a different man, and also a better father; and that, in a way, it was just his best qualities which, during the years he lived with mother, caused him to grow more and more reserved, and which finally turned him into an oddity. Odd, he really was beyond all description, and his peculiarities especially recoiled upon us children. Most annoying was his fury if he encountered any strangers in the house. It was an impossibility for me to have a friend with me if he was at home. Once, it was my birthday—I was eleven years old—my mother had given me permission to have a small party down in the garden, at an hour when we knew that my father was giving lessons. For some reason or another the school closed that day. Mother, who saw him coming down the street, flew out to us with a terrified face, and the whole party had to take to their heels through the next garden. You will understand that in this way he became quite an ogre to us, and that we took the part of mother, who really showed more feeling for us. Unfortunately this state of affairs led to our hating everything about him, and we hid much from him, with mother's knowledge and at her instigation, which his disapprobation might have stopped us from doing; while, as it was, his disapproval only seemed to us another proof of his bad temper, from which we had to escape. But why do I tire you with these reminiscences?"
"Surely you are telling me this because you know that it does not tire me at all, and that at the present moment nothing has more interest for me. I am very grateful to you. I have had a happy childhood myself, and can possibly, for that reason, sympathise with you all the more fully in what you have missed. But you will have to make up for it by enjoying the brighter side of life, and I am sure you will not miss the opportunity."
Minna did not answer, but examined carefully a new heap of pebbles which she had scraped together.
"You spoke of a brother. I have never heard him mentioned before. Has he, perhaps, left Dresden?"
"He died two years ago."
"Poor you, to have had that sorrow also. It must have been a very bitter one."
Minna shook her head.
"No, I did not care much for him. While only a boy he was not kind to me, and made my childhood still worse; and later on, when he was grown up—well, I suppose he was eager 'to make up for what he had missed of the lighter side of life.' I am afraid he would never have given us anything but sorrow."
She looked at me with a defiant expression as much as to say, "I can quite imagine that you think me hardhearted. Well, do as you like! Should I love him only because he was my brother, when he did not otherwise deserve it?… For the rest, do not imagine that I am so good and kind."
"Were there no other relations who might have helped you?" I asked, in order to change the painful subject.
"I had a great-aunt who was my godmother, and who for that reason felt a sort of call to look after me. She even cared for me in her way, but I am sorry to say it was a very disagreeable way, which repelled me. She always grumbled and complained of everything, even to the dressing of my hair. In those days I wore heaps of curls, so she was right in that as in most other things. It was with her the same as with father, except that she really did take trouble with me. It was only much later that I understood the value of their intentions, which in her was hidden under severity, and in him under indifference. She was an oddity, as well as he, and was very fond of him; but she looked down upon my mother, and therefore regarded with suspicion everything in me which might possibly be inherited from her. When she gave me a present it was as a rule with a threat; for instance, she allowed me to subscribe to a classical periodical, and gave me, in advance, the money for binding she never did anything by halves. It is quite a small library, containing about a hundred volumes, and when she gave me the money she said: 'If you ever, even in the greatest need, part with your classics, though I am dead, my spirit will return and torment you,' and I am perfectly certain that she would keep her word. I have, however, no cause for fear, and I have not allowed the books to stand idle on the shelf; if only for this gift I have great reason to be thankful to her. I had always good literature to my hand, and as I didn't have so much recreation as other young girls, or rather none at all, to take up my time, I was enabled to read a good deal, an opportunity which most young girls do not get. Indeed, I read some things which would have been better deferred. Funnily enough, it never struck my otherwise pedagogic aunt that the good classics contain some things that are not fit for a fourteen-year-old girl to read. I was not older when the subscription started; but either her literary memory was rather faulty, or the immaculate 'German Classics' were for her something so elevated that such an idea could not enter her mind. At that age I read Oberon. Well, probably you have not read it. After all, I don't think there was much harm done. And these evenings, when I sat and read the great authors, long after mother had gone to sleep, were the first happy hours I experienced. They were more than happy, but also thereby less so, for while they opened out many beautiful visions, they at the same time brought with them the dark shadow of self-recognition. I understood that there existed quite a different world. I do not mean the world of outer circumstances, but of thoughts and feelings, quite different methods of judgment as to what has value and what has not, which had been obscured by the web mother had spun around me of doubtful and elastic rules of life, and to these were added many specious and sentimental phrases which, apparently, only served to cast a sort of veil over them.
"Perhaps you wonder that I had to gain this experience from the authors, as I had received Christian teaching. It was indeed not precepts I needed, but life itself, which in our little circle had nothing which might be called, I will not say elevated, but noble and pure. Of course we saw only mother's relations, sisters, aunts, and cousins, and of them she was the best; they were scarcely tolerated by father, and only came when he was out, or they crept into the kitchen and held a gossiping conclave. Oh, how it disgusts me to think of all this! The fact that the clergyman who confirmed me, and over whose sermons mother cried, had not the best of reputations socially, must also, I suppose, have been a bad influence. Goethe and Schiller had to preach for me, and they were not the worst of prophets. But this brought, of course, a violent revolution in me, with many struggles and doubts, which greatly affected me. As I had to get up early in order to help with the household duties, this evening-reading, which often developed into night-reading, was very exhausting. To this was added the fact that we always lived too frugally, and, still worse, unwholesomely; so that without knowing it I had, in a way, been starving all through the years of my growing up. I suffered from anæmia and nervousness, and these circumstances combined had the result that, in those days, I was never really well. I would suddenly turn giddy when walking in the street, and I used to be overcome by unreasonable fears. At times it seemed as if I was no good to anyone, and I was terrified lest my reason should go. With regard to my spiritual development, I felt that I might have had some help from my father, but reserve had then become his second nature, and, at the time, infirmity was added to this barrier. He died about a year ago, without my coming nearer to him; and some of the blame was mine, I suppose. That he never troubled about my inner life made me haughty, and I felt that I shut myself off from him. I frequently made up my mind to approach him with confidence and affection, but when it came to the point, it annoyed me to think that there should be any difficulty, and that such an effort was necessary between father and daughter, and I remained silent at the critical moment. The last time I went in to see him he kissed me and said: 'Always continue to be a brave girl.' Giving way to the feelings of the moment I nearly burst out crying, but the old voice within me whispered: 'What have you done to help me to be so? And how do you know that I am one at all?' It ended with a formal promise and a cold embrace. When a few hours later I returned from giving some lessons, my father was dead."
Minna remained quiet for a long time, with downcast eyes; the corners of her mouth twitched, and I expected every moment that she would burst into tears. Suddenly she lifted her eyes and looked at me with a tearless, but singularly earnest and piercing look, as if wondering what effect her narrative had produced on me. Surely she was saying to herself: "No doubt you now think me very nasty! I sincerely wish I was better, but anyhow I will not make myself out to be better than I am." Her face was very sorrowful, and I was convinced that it was more this thought than the painful recollections that caused her troubled expression.
I myself was strangely moved, and would willingly have pressed her hand; but we were seated a few paces apart, and the workmen were close to us. A pressure of my hand would have made her understand the whole depth of my feelings for her better than any words, which on such an occasion are enshrouded in shame at their own feebleness. I told her I had long suspected that something sad in her past lay heavily upon her, but that I had no idea it was so deeply rooted in the whole of her childhood and development.
At this remark her face assumed a peculiar, suspicious and almost ironical expression, which I well knew.
"But you have only dwelt on the dark side of your life," I said, to change the subject. "How is it you have not mentioned Mr. and Mrs. Hertz? They were already in Dresden in those days, I suppose?"
"Yes, but I only made their acquaintance at that time, just at my father's funeral.… The relationship with Aunt Thea was so distant, really none at all … so much the better, perhaps!… Their house became another home to me: no, I ought not to call it 'Home,' something much better, but that you know.… And after what I have told you, you can realise better what these excellent people have been to me.…"
She said this slowly, and as if she was distrait, perhaps tired of talking, and maybe regretting that she had been so confiding.
Our landlord now interrupted us with a request that we should go back to our former safe seats, as everything was ready for the fresh blasting.
I had almost forgotten where we were, and why. Some of her words, with their melancholy and often bitter tone, kept sounding in my ear, as they do even now. Regarding the account, it has, of course, formed itself in my memory into a more continuous whole than at the time when it came from her lips, and it is very likely that, in reality, some of the incidents were only told during the following days; but such small inaccuracies cannot affect the main impression. What especially struck me was the clear reflective way in which she spoke of and judged her life; it was evident that she had frequently thought over all the details and their connection with one another, examining both cause and effect. I saw in this the proof that she was of a more melancholy nature than I had thought. For I had lately been misled by the youthful gaiety that so often broke forth.
The fresh blasting passed off just like the first; the stone mass still stood, though now it was almost entirely undermined, and hung free like a shelf. The red-bearded workman approached carefully, and scraped out with his axe the loose bits which the explosion had not removed. At the corners in the background some half-split blocks still gave a little support. While the owner and the ragged workman kept an eye on the mass of stone in order to give the alarm at the smallest movement, the courageous man struck heavy blows on those places. In the beginning he paused between each blow, ready to jump away, but little by little he became too excited to be cautious. The pickaxe made its way, blow followed blow, and small bits flew about him; he seemed enraged at the stubborn resistance. It looked terribly dangerous; the eyes, which were tired of gazing on this blinding surface and hardly dared to blink, seemed each moment to see movement in the edge of the colossal block. Twice was the alarm given, and after each disappointing pause the attack commenced afresh, more furiously and with growing danger.
Minna was quite pale, and pressed her lips together. I, for my part, my feelings blunted by the long suspense, went a few steps nearer, the better to see the effect of these giant strokes; then she jumped after me, and with an impetuous grip on my arm dragged me back. Simultaneously a shout was heard; I saw a huge glare moving overhead and on the side, and heard a heavy thud. The whole stone mass lay some distance off, and loose blocks fell a few yards from us. My first thought was for the clever workman; he stood safe and sound on the side of the stone monster which he had overcome, and nodded to us with a smile as if to say, "It was a near shave." I supported Minna, who was trembling violently, and made her sit down on a stone.