Five Women by Robert Musil Read Free Book Online Page B

ahead, and in them wife and child turned to strangers, vanished from ken.
    But meanwhile the cavalcade had reached the foot of the cliff on which the castle stood, and the lady from Portugal, having listened to all he had to say, once more declared that she would remain with him. How fiercely the castle reared into the height! Here and there on the rock-face a few stunted trees sprouted like sparse hair. The rising and falling of the line of wooded mountains was so violent that no one could have imagined that savagery who knew only the waves of the sea. The air was full of some spicy chill, and it was all like riding into a huge cauldron that had burst, spilling everywhere this alien green that it contained. But in the forest there was the stag, the bear, the wild boar, the wolf, and perhaps the unicorn. Further beyond, there was the realm of chamois and eagle. Unfathomed gorges harboured dragons. Many days' journey wide, many days' journey deep this forest was, where the only tracks were those where wild beasts made their way; and high above, where the crags towered, the realm of spirits began. There demons lurked amid the storm and the clouds. No Christian had ever set foot there, or if ever one had the audacity to try to scale those heights, ill-luck followed—stories that the maids told in hushed voices round the fire in winter, while the serving-men smirked in silence and shrugged their shoulders, because a man's life is full of dangers, and such adventures can easily befall one. But of all the tales the lady from Portugal heard, there was one that seemed strangest. Just as no one had ever yet reached the place where the rainbow ends, so too, they recounted, no one had ever yet succeeded in looking out over these great stone walls: there were always more walls beyond, and between them there were ravines like outspread blankets full of stones, stones as big as a house, and even the finest gravel underfoot was no smaller than a man's head. It was a world that was not really a world at all. Often in her dreams of this country, whence came the man she loved, she had imagined it as being of his own nature, and she had imagined the man's nature according to all that he had told her of his native country. Weary of the peacock-blue sea, she had expected a land tense with the unexpected, like the string of a drawn bow. Then, when she came face to face with the secret, she found it unimaginably hideous and longed to escape. The castle was like an agglomeration of hen-houses: stone piled on rock .. • dizzy walls where mould and lichen grew ... here rotting beams, there unseasoned, unhewn tree-trunks ... farming tools and war-gear, stable chains and axle-trees. But now that she was here, it was here that she belonged, and perhaps what she saw was not really hideous, perhaps it had a beauty of its own, like a man's ways, to which one had to become accustomed.
    Herr von Ketten watched his wife riding up the mountainside and could not bring himself to stop her. He felt no gratitude. Her action was something that neither bested his will nor yielded to it, but eluded him, luring him on into some other realm, making him ride after her in awkward silence, helpless as a lost soul.
    Two days later he was again in the saddle. And eleven years later it was still the same. Too rashly attempted, the attack on Trent had failed, costing the nobles a third of their force at the very start, and with it more than half their boldness. Herr von Ketten, though wounded in the retreat, did not at once return home. For two days he lay hidden in a peasant's hut, and then he rode from castle to castle, trying to reawaken his allies' fighting-spirit. Having come too late to take part in their councils and preparations, after this setback he clung to the plan as a dog will cling to a bull's ear. He expounded to the other knights what lay in store for them if the Bishop's forces made a counter-attack before their own ranks were closed again; he urged on the