A Recluse and His Guest

The tall and angular person--man or woman?--had come into town not by the road (which the winter had made nearly impassable for months) but northward through the Midnight Forest, which was still more impassable.

"I understand that you came here through the forest."

"That I did."

"You weren't afraid of being attacked by wolves?"

"No, because, you see, I had smeared my leather wrappings with an oil that is repellent to wolves. They smell this oil and go in other directions without looking back."

"You were coming from--"

"Vladnik."

"Oh, from Vladnik. That explains why you--"

"Couldn't come by the road but had to struggle through the Midnight Forest, losing my way several times. Oh, I doubt that ever in my travels I've had a worse time of it."

"Why did you leave Vladnik?"

"In Vladnik I was the guest of a tradesman who suddenly found it inconvenient for me to stay with him any longer."

(This is part of a conversation that the woman had with someone a few weeks after she arrived in the icy seaport of Staad.)

The woman had eyes the color of the ice in the harbor and her hair, close-cropped, was so fair that it seemed to be gray.

An earlier conversation that she had with a baker--he gave her a loaf of bread--should not be omitted.

"Do you know of a man in Staad, I mean a man who's unmarried, of course, who might take me in for a while?"

"Well, now, I don't know," said the baker. "No, I don't know of any, unless you'd stay with a recluse."

"I never turn back," said the woman, "and before me in Staad, what is there but the ice in the harbor?"

"This recluse is not much different from the ice in the harbor."

"Thank you for the bread. I was very hungry. Now would you please tell me how I can find the house of this recluse?"

"Let's see, where is it? I think if you go down the road and take the second turn to the left, you'll find the house of the recluse. You'll recognize it by the windows; he keeps them boarded up in winter. But as for your luck there, don't count on it much or even a little. He hasn't let anyone in since the death of his mother and he goes out only now and then to buy necessary provisions."

"Thank you. I'll try my luck there."

It takes a great deal of patience to enter the home of a recluse. The recluse did not admit the woman that morning, but she was patient. She stayed on his porch till evening, and during the time between morning and evening, she swept the snow off his porch with birch branches; and from time to time, during her wait for a meeting with the recluse and a possible acceptance, she sang loudly in a hoarse voice that could have been the voice of a man or a woman.

Evening came on, as bitterly cold as a heart that has never felt love nor even friendship. Then, surprisingly, the recluse opened his door an inch or two and the woman addressed him with a torrent of words.

This went on for an hour before the recluse admitted her into his house.

• • •

At the Black Crown tavern that night, the matter was mentioned and discussed a bit.

"I understand that the recluse has taken in somebody who crossed the Midnight Forest from Vladnik."

"A man or a woman?"

"A man."

"No, a woman."

"If it's an adult human being, it must be one or the other, unless it's an apparition."

"It's a woman who seems like an apparition because she's so tall and she moves without bending her knees."

"You mean she stalks?"

"Yes, I would say she stalks."

"This apparition that you say is a woman swept the snow off the porch of the recluse with birch branches and she waited all day for the recluse to let her in."

"Perhaps the recluse has taken sick and sent for a relative to care for him."

"Yes, well, personally, I--"

"You say she did get in?"

"Finally."

"Strange things happen sometimes, and sometimes they happen as often as things that aren't strange at all."

• • •

Now a few days had passed and the stalking woman seemed to have settled in with the recluse, at least for a while.

Changes began to take place in the house of the recluse. The windows were unboarded and the glass panes were washed.

Snow was swept off the stone walk between the porch and the side road.

A wash line was strung between two birch trees and washed garments were hung along it.

The recluse was seen moving about the yard of his house as if he had never looked at it from the outside before.

After some days, the senior councilor of the town paid an official visit to the recluse and his mysterious visitor.

At the Black Crown tavern that night, it was said that the councilor had asked the stalking woman: "What is your occupation; that is, if you have any?" And the woman had replied that she was a traveler.

"Yes, I heard about that, and I also heard that the woman gave the councilor a cup of good coffee and a piece of freshly baked bread with butter and honey on it."

"Is it true that the recluse was taken with a serious illness and sent for a relative to nurse him?"

"That I don't know."

"Who cares?"

• • •

A few days later, the recluse came out of his house in an old leather suit and old boots brightly polished. Then people remembered that (continued on page 124)A Recluse(continued from page 102) his name was Klaus. He was with his elderly dog, which he led on a piece of rope. They entered the tavern, where the recluse had two glasses of mulled cherry wine and the elderly dog sat by him, looking astonished.

"It's the woman," said the tavern-keeper, and no one disagreed with him.

How old was the woman?

She was not really so old, but years of wandering through northern countries had aged her face. This look of age in her face began to disappear, now that she had settled comfortably into a place.

Every morning she said to the recluse: "May I stay here, or must I continue my travels?"

He would say: "Stay awhile longer."

She washed his dog, which was 12 years old and had never been washed.

She persuaded the recluse to buy a lively young hen that would soon give them eggs.

Not long after, she persuaded the recluse to buy a she-goat that gave them milk.

She knew the fear that the recluse had of change; but gradually, she began to liven and brighten things up.

It was a great day for the woman when the hen laid its first egg. She brought it into the living room, where the recluse was sitting.

"Look, Klaus! The hen is laying!"

• • •

After a month or so, eight furious dogs, hardly visible through the frost of their breath, hauled into town a sledge-load of merchandise and mail from the capital, and a letter was delivered to the house of the recluse.

"I have happened to hear that the woman Nevrika is staying at your house. Tell her that I am willing to let her come back to mine."

To this invitation of limited cordiality, the woman shook her head.

"I know the man who wrote this. He was not kind as you are and certainly not so handsome. Besides, in my travels, I never return to a place I have been before."

"Well, then, under the circumstances, I would say it's better for you to stay here awhile."

She said simply: "Thank you," but her voice was very definitely the voice of a woman and she went directly into the kitchen and brought him out several thick slices of blood sausage.

The next day, she persuaded the recluse to have his stove repaired, since it smoked nearly enough to suffocate them.

A few days later, she persuaded the recluse to buy checkered curtains, red and white, for the unboarded windows.

"Appearances are important to drive a depression away."

He began to call her Nevrika, instead of woman, and when he did that first, her face turned almost young. In her throat, there was a quiet sound, almost like weeping.

A few days later, she went out onto the streets with him and she walked with her arm through his. nodding pleasantly to strangers but making it clear that she was the woman of Klaus, who was no longer a recluse.

Some days later, when she opened the back door to call the goat in for milking, a goose with its feathers glittering with ice flew into the house. Klaus killed it. She plucked and stuffed and cooked it, and the meal was delicious and they smiled at each other, shyly.

A few days later, a yearly festival to welcome the spring season was given at the city hall.

Nevrika urged Klaus to attend it.

He said to Nevrika: "You would have to go. too. and you haven't the proper clothes for it, since all the clothes you have are strips of cloth and leather that you wind about yourself."

"It doesn't matter," she said, "they will understand."

And it seemed that they did.

At the festival, he drank several glasses of fuming dark wine and when they went home, she had to hold him straight and dissuade him from shouting.

On the way back to the house, a loose tile fell from the projecting roof of a two-story building and struck Klaus on the head.

"This is my end," he shouted, but she held him upright until his terror of the injury, which wasn't at all important, had passed away and they could go on to the house.

Still, every morning, she would ask him: "May I stay here, or must I continue my travels?"

He never said, "I need you," but still said, "Stay awhile longer."

Now, by this time, it was spring, and the solid, thick ice in the harbor, great slabs of it, gray as nightfall, began to move out to sea.

Klaus said to the woman one morning: "I want to continue my life as it was before you came here."

Her face turned old again. She was silent for a while, and then she asked, in a whisper: "Have I done something wrong?"

He said: "You persuaded me to go out to the festival and on the way back, I was hit on the head by a tile from the roof of a building."

"Oh," she cried out, "how I wish the tile had struck my head, not yours. I would rather it had struck my head than yours, even if it had broken my skull like the shell of an egg."

The recluse interpreted this outcry as a trick.

"Be that as it may," he said to the woman, "it was my head that it struck."

"Klaus, don't you remember it only gave you a little cut, like a scratch, and I rubbed it with ointment that took the sting out of it?"

"When accidents start to happen," said the recluse, "there is no end to them. One comes after another, till the beams of your roof fall on you."

"Klaus, it would take me a day to tell you the accidents I have had in my travels."

"I don't want to hear about them; they're no concern of mine."

She got up from her chair with her mouth open, as if to speak.

The recluse said: "Close your mouth. There's nothing to discuss."

She didn't sit back down. She put his coffee cup back in the kitchen, and when she returned to the living room, she circled about it, wringing her large-knuckled hands, now and then stopping a moment to look at his face, which showed no alteration.

She staggered against the furniture and once fell to the floor, but the look of his face remained as it was.

"You'll think this over, won't you?"

"I have thought it over," said the recluse, "and I am determined to continue my life as it was before you came here."

"Won't you have some more coffee?"

"I want nothing that you've prepared in my kitchen; I want you to stay out of my kitchen today and I want you out of my house by this evening."

The room was dim. She leaned toward the recluse to peer at his face with her great bluish-gray eyes.

No change in the set look of his face, the face of a recluse.

She went on circling about the room, her mouth open.

"If your mouth is open to speak, I advise you to close it, and you would also oblige me if you wouldn't stalk about the room, staring at things with your unnatural eyes."

"Klaus, let me--"

"Let you what?"

"Let me bake you a mandarin-nut cake with sugar and cinnamon sprinkled on it.''

"I want you to stay out of my kitchen with your poisonous spices."

She sat down slowly in a chair near his.

"Move your chair away."

"Away where?"

"Farther from mine."

She moved her chair twice before he was satisfied with its position.

Now and then, she would turn her head a little to look at the face of the recluse.

"Will you please stop looking at me with your unnatural eyes?"

"What shall I look at?"

"Turn your chair around and look at the wall."

"Oh, I wish that--"

She didn't complete the sentence and (concluded on page 244)A Recluse(continued from page 124) he didn't ask her to complete it.

After a bit of silence between them, she said: "Klaus, did you say you wanted me out of the house by this evening?"

"I said by this evening. No later."

After another bit of silence between them, he said to her: "Aren't you tired of your wanderings here and there on the earth?"

"Oh, you know, Klaus, how tired I was of my travels long before I came here."

"Well, then, I would say it's best to put an end to them."

"Could you, do you mean that I can stay on here awhile?"

"No, that's not what I meant. I meant that this evening, after the street lamps have been turned out, we will go to the harbor and there, at the harbor, you will sit yourself on a piece of ice that is being washed to sea."

She cried out a little and started to rise from her chair, then sat back down.

"Oh, but Klaus, the people of the town, now that most of them know me, would wonder about me."

"Don't let that concern you. If I am questioned about your disappearance, I will say that you suddenly felt restless and decided to continue your travels."

"But why must I go to sea on a piece of ice?"

"A piece of ice is where your travels were always leading you."

She said: "Is it cold in the room?"

"No, the room is warm."

An exhausted silence fell between them and lasted for several minutes, counted by the clock on the mantel of the fireplace.

Then she said: "The ice in the harbor is dark as nighttime."

He said: "The color of the ice is not a relevant matter."

The clock counted off a few more silent minutes. Then she began to sing in her hoarse voice, as much like a man's as a woman's, a hymn of the Knowledgist Church, to which he had once belonged.

"You will oblige me by not singing that hymn of the Knowledgist Church that no man in his right senses doesn't despise."

"I agree with you, Klaus."

An interval of silence. Then, in a strained voice, she said: "Klaus, let's go to the fish market now, before it's crowded, and buy a good trapler for dinner. There's nothing you like better than a trapler, and you know how well I can cook one."

"Is it possible you've heard and understood nothing I've said to you?"

"You said that for dinner tonight you wanted a good trapler."

"I haven't mentioned a trapler to you this morning, and as for your cooking anything in my kitchen, if you take a single step toward it, I will strike you over the head with this shovel by my chair."

"I'll take not a step toward the kitchen if you'd rather I didn't."

"I am determined you won't."

"I won't."

There followed another interval of silence before she spoke.

"Klaus, I think you're right. All of my travels have led me, in a wandering way, to the ice in the harbor. Oh, I know I'll feel the cold for a while, but then I will fall asleep and I think that it will be soon. When you've traveled as much as I have, you reach the end of your travels, and perhaps it should be at a place that's on the sea. Soon, in a week or two, the spring sun will glitter on what's left of the ice in the harbor. Look at it, Klaus, through your unboarded windows and from the streets, and--"

She didn't say, "Think of me," for her travels had taught her, almost from the very first step, that any appeal to sentiment is met with either the resentment that is spoken out or the resentment that hides behind boarded windows.