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Authors: Peter Carey
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melancholy whiteness distinctive of the very highest altitudes. Then we were in country which forbade all growth except of grass and shrubs. Silence reigned upon the roof and I began to fear that the landscape of our destination might be in no way like that of the journey. Now the grass was blighted. We were in a land of peat, although as far as I could see the inhabitants had found no use for it. The timber houses were bleached like bones. And in the queer white light I became my own worst enemy, my own best hope, one of those unstable Brandlings who would always be in the market for a miracle.
IT WAS ONCE SAID: “Brandling would see the glass half full even when it lay in shards around his feet.” Ha ha, indeed. But has no one bothered to observe that the optimistic view is commonly correct? That is why our fearful prayers are so often “answered.” That is why, when we descend from one of life’s barren mountain tops, we almost always enter a pleasant valley where there is an inn, very clean and white-washed, its window boxes filled with flowers in bloom.
And to that inn I surely came, and my natural “naïve” spirits were immediately restored. And from that inn’s airy stables the wall-eyed coachman would soon set off, carrying my trunk on his broad back.First, however, he joined us around a bowl of moist ham hocks and mugs of creamy beer. There were no fearful intimations, no mortal shadows; every leaf of privet was bright and green and barbered.
Not even the weight of a Harris tweed suit could distract one from the pretty harvest scene through which our little party strolled and stumbled. And who could not be affected by the mood of one’s companions, particularly the boy who ran and limped and gambolled and called to the harvesters? They knew him—Carl.
We were now on our way to the place where a powerful cure might be constructed. I was a-tingle with impatience yet also, paradoxically, much elevated by the delays. Who would not be happy to see a much-loved boy have his weight guessed? When he performed a clever tumble, he never once pitied himself his crippled leg. Yes, I felt the absence of my own son—an awful ache—but only love provides the lucky man such symptoms.
As for the German mother? Who would ever imagine that distant figure in the wheat field to have poor hard hands, red elbows, and a mouth that did not dare hope for very much at all?
In the winter (as was apparently well known to everyone but me) the Furtwangen men all worked on their cuckoo clocks, and in the summer they laboured beside their wives. They were Alemannians and Celts and they were large and strong and showed a bright and cheerful speech and temperament. I liked them even when they clearly did not give a fig for me.
Our path soon joined a brook and young Carl paused by the muddy bank to once more display his wooden trick; the leap of red and yellow produced the desired effect; the performer said goodbye; and we followed the brook as it traversed two pathless valleys and a cool ravine where the black needles of the tall silver firs massed in whole mountains or sometimes mingled with the brighter green of oak and beech. A narrow path then led us down a cliff at which point the gentle stream soon revealed its secret nature as a roaring beast, rushing, and foaming, and hurling itself into a deep cleft, where itspun the high wheel of a mill. From here we followed steps cut in the living rock.
At the top we found the mill stretching itself across the plateau, a muddle of high-pitched deep-eaved roofs. The air was unseasonably damp here, and green and mouldy. On the shadowed fascias were visible many carvings, a clear evocation of the cuckoo clock and, in this sense, encouraging to the seeker.
“Sumpy,” the boy cried.
Although it was now early summer and therefore past the season for logs to be floated to the bigger rivers, we found abandoned fir trunks stacked untidily. In the deep shadow between mill and dwelling
IT WAS ONCE SAID: “Brandling would see the glass half full even when it lay in shards around his feet.” Ha ha, indeed. But has no one bothered to observe that the optimistic view is commonly correct? That is why our fearful prayers are so often “answered.” That is why, when we descend from one of life’s barren mountain tops, we almost always enter a pleasant valley where there is an inn, very clean and white-washed, its window boxes filled with flowers in bloom.
And to that inn I surely came, and my natural “naïve” spirits were immediately restored. And from that inn’s airy stables the wall-eyed coachman would soon set off, carrying my trunk on his broad back.First, however, he joined us around a bowl of moist ham hocks and mugs of creamy beer. There were no fearful intimations, no mortal shadows; every leaf of privet was bright and green and barbered.
Not even the weight of a Harris tweed suit could distract one from the pretty harvest scene through which our little party strolled and stumbled. And who could not be affected by the mood of one’s companions, particularly the boy who ran and limped and gambolled and called to the harvesters? They knew him—Carl.
We were now on our way to the place where a powerful cure might be constructed. I was a-tingle with impatience yet also, paradoxically, much elevated by the delays. Who would not be happy to see a much-loved boy have his weight guessed? When he performed a clever tumble, he never once pitied himself his crippled leg. Yes, I felt the absence of my own son—an awful ache—but only love provides the lucky man such symptoms.
As for the German mother? Who would ever imagine that distant figure in the wheat field to have poor hard hands, red elbows, and a mouth that did not dare hope for very much at all?
In the winter (as was apparently well known to everyone but me) the Furtwangen men all worked on their cuckoo clocks, and in the summer they laboured beside their wives. They were Alemannians and Celts and they were large and strong and showed a bright and cheerful speech and temperament. I liked them even when they clearly did not give a fig for me.
Our path soon joined a brook and young Carl paused by the muddy bank to once more display his wooden trick; the leap of red and yellow produced the desired effect; the performer said goodbye; and we followed the brook as it traversed two pathless valleys and a cool ravine where the black needles of the tall silver firs massed in whole mountains or sometimes mingled with the brighter green of oak and beech. A narrow path then led us down a cliff at which point the gentle stream soon revealed its secret nature as a roaring beast, rushing, and foaming, and hurling itself into a deep cleft, where itspun the high wheel of a mill. From here we followed steps cut in the living rock.
At the top we found the mill stretching itself across the plateau, a muddle of high-pitched deep-eaved roofs. The air was unseasonably damp here, and green and mouldy. On the shadowed fascias were visible many carvings, a clear evocation of the cuckoo clock and, in this sense, encouraging to the seeker.
“Sumpy,” the boy cried.
Although it was now early summer and therefore past the season for logs to be floated to the bigger rivers, we found abandoned fir trunks stacked untidily. In the deep shadow between mill and dwelling
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