Two Little Misogynists/Chapter 6

inging thus, they reached a quaint little village, consisting of one street.

"This is Weidenbach," explained Gesima.

At the entrance stood Hänsli, legs apart, and apparently feeling very hostile. He was eating a piece of bread and at once began making faces at them, hoping to arouse their jealousy. But the approach of the dangerous cannoneer caused him to steal prudently round the corner, leaving the coast clear, and the allies entered Weidenbach. Their noses were greeted by the appetizing fragrance of meat broth and water cress, they heard a clatter of plates and spoons from cool rooms behind drawn shades, and there was a foreign sort of aroma from a glove and hat shop which the sun never entered, a mouldy smell. At the end of dark passages they caught glimpses of nooks in sunny court-yards, reminding them of delightful corners in Sentisbrugg, only with a difference, of ​course. On the shady side of the street, a scissors grinder was turning his grindstone, and filling the quiet little village with a noise of whizzing and scratching.

From a passage near him, a maid stepped out of a house with a mouse trap in her hand. A band of eager children followed. She gazed indifferently up and down the street in search of some distraction, as if she were going about the most ordinary of household duties. An excited cat was rubbing against her leg and expressing the agitation of all its bloodthirsty instincts in gentle imploring sounds. Gerold shuddered and quickened his pace, looking sorrowfully up to the sky, to see whether such cruel, devilish play would not cause a visible blot on the great world's serenity. His heart was wrung with pity, and he was tormented by a faint sense of guilt. A vague feeling in his heart whispered that every one is to a certain extent responsible for everything of which he is a witness.

All this time the wheel of the scissors grinder continued to whizz actively and the grating of sharp knives on the stone was so loud that it sent cold shudders through Gerold's bones. He imagined human flesh under the knife, instead of the stone. But when he expressed his horror at the cruel behaviour of cats towards mice, Gesima scolded him.

"It serves the mice right," she said decidedly. "Why do they eat holes in curtains?"

In front of a pastry shop at the end of the little town, Gesima confessed that she was beginning to feel hungry.

"I have no money," said Gerold with regret.

"But I have fifty centimes," and she persuaded him to enter the shop. There was a woman inside, who asked them kindly what they wanted.

​After some hesitation, Gesima chose oranges.

"How many can I have for fifty centimes?"

"Four, and a fifth because it's you. I'm sure you must be Gesima Weissenstein of Bischoffshardt? And how does it happen, Miss, that you are travelling on foot in the heat of the day? Don't you want to rest here a while, and I'll give you some soup?"

But Gesima thanked her and declined.

On the further side of Weidenbach they looked about for a place where they might eat their oranges in comfort. Above the side of the road at the edge of a sloping meadow, two heavily laden hay carts, as high as houses, were standing all loaded, ready to start, but without any horses hitched to them. The children sat down between the two carts and had a little room to themselves, roofed over by a bright cloud. The little girl peeled off the thick fuzzy gold skin, and pulled it into the shape of a crown, which she then offered to her escort. "That's for you."

While they were thus banqueting in perfect accord, Hänsli crept nearer along the road and looked at them timidly and with greedy eyes, like a cowering dog at a strange table. He almost whined.

"You can fast today," they called to him mischievously. "It is what you deserve. It will do you good."

Every time they finished an orange they threw the peel at him. And each time he turned his head around in every direction like a dachshund tormented by a wasp, taking a close look at the useless gift, and then sadly resumed again his attitude of a humble mendicant.

A pedlar, coming slantwise up the grassy slope, appeared ​before the children's open air dining room, carrying in his pack bright handkerchiefs, needles, cosmetics, matches,—a whole village fair. As he walked, he propped up his basket with his knee, as if at each step he were about to play a barrel organ. He paid no attention to Gerold at all, but spoke most politely to the little girl, flaunting his knick-knacks before her. At first she turned away from him with as much disdain as if he had been holding out vermin in front of her. But when he picked up a skipping rope, her eyes shone with delight. He then offered to let her try it, and she jumped gayly in the whirling arch, like the man in the moon. Then suddenly she sat down and shut her eyes, turning her back on the pedlar. He held the rope up in Gerold's sight, and kept it there so long that the boy became much embarrassed.

"We have no money," he muttered dejectedly, and he too turned away.

When the pedlar, after persevering some time in his effort to sell his wares, without paying any attention to Gerold's gestures of refusal, at last walked back down the slope to the road, he addressed Hänsli, who, with his hands in his pockets, had been observing the scene with close attention. Hänsli looked hard at the skipping rope for a moment, and then, with a sly smile, pulled his five-franc piece out of his pocket and held it up for Gesima to see. The little girl at once ran down the bank to his side, and after a short conversation received from Hänsli the coveted skipping rope. The two then ran off together happily, shoulder to shoulder, whispering mysteriously to each other, and throwing glances of amusement back at the abandoned cannoneer. Gerold followed in high dudgeon, attempting to make the faithless girl feel some shame for her actions.

​But as soon as there was a safe distance between them, she called back at him rebelliously, "You are only a stork, anyway!" And Hänsli added insult to injury by shouting that Gesima was quite right to refuse to have anything to do with a boy who was ten years old and yet didn't know that people are born only once, and that it never happens twice to anybody.

Thereupon the two ran off together triumphantly and rapidly diminished in the distance. Every now and then, for a change, they hopped over the piles of stone beside the road, Hänsli jumping, his companion seeming to fly through the revolving rope. Eventually they vanished below the horizon, which seemed to rise and swallow them up little by little.

Gerold was outraged; and his feelings were mortally wounded. His travelling companion with whom, only a few moments before, he had been singing "The Daughter of the Regiment" so intimately, his ally with whom he had made a treaty concerning the Cadets' Ball, had gone over treacherously to the enemy. But more than that, she had divulged his secrets! For the first time in his life he had told somebody that he had been a stork and that he felt as if he lived through some things twice. He had confided in Gesima, taking it for granted that she would consider the confidence a proof of friendship and would be in honour bound to keep it to herself. And the first thing she did was to gossip about it and make fun of him. It was vulgar, positively vulgar. In his anger he kicked the dust about with his feet so that he walked in a cloud.

But very soon he scornfully thrust the faithless creature from his thoughts. What was Gesima to him? What did the ​whole perfidious race of girls mean to him? He had better things to think of, he had his handsome General of Cadets, who could never be false to him because he was his prisoner on parole. And once again Gerold lost himself in dreams of his splendid foe dropping on his knee before him and surrendering his sword while his blue eyes pleaded for mercy. Try as hard as he might, Gerold could never carry the story on beyond this point. He always fell back on this one particular scene, which, to tell the truth, was so sweet to his soul that his imagination hovered over it like a fly over a drop of milk.

While his thoughts dwelt on this wonderful adventure, his eyes wandered about over the country side. Neither preoccupation prevented the other; quite the contrary, the more deeply absorbed he became in the contemplation of his inward vision the sharper were his eyes for details of the outward scenery. The road led him through green meadows and fields yellow with mustard, alternating like the flower beds in a garden. In the sky above, which was full of the joy of many larks, mountains of brilliant white clouds were piling up. An army of butterflies fluttered in the fields, and the sunshine was so bright that the landscape seemed to glitter as if the atmosphere were vibrating under a roof of glass. No human being was to be seen, probably because of the noon-day heat. What a fuss the grown-ups are always making about the heat anyway! Gerold went on the principle of the hotter the better, because the more heat there is, the brighter are the colours of the earth and sky, the more fragrance in the woods, and the more animation in the fields.

On the other hand, the gadflies were thick, of sizes and ​singing in every key. They buzzed stupidly and clumsily about him like revengeful demons round an uneasy conscience. His whole uniform was covered with them. They looked grey against his dark green tunic, and black against his white breeches. He took them along with him, imperturbably, paying no attention even to the drops of blood which coursed down his cheeks. But once in a while when one of them stung his hand too impudently he aimed at it deliberately and slapped it on the head. The goggle-eyed insect fell on its back in the road, with twitching legs and waving arms, till a few jerky movements covered it with dust.

He felt contented. He had been right, after all, hadn't he? Gesima made no difference to him. He was perfectly happy all by himself.