Across

Epilogue

There’s a special breeze on the bridge. It’s not only the river that creates a breeze of its own; so does the slightly raised canal as it flows across the country. On the surface, the water is so smooth that it seems to stand still, as in a bathtub or a watering trough, while the dark, whirling leaves just below give the impression of a violent current. Both impressions are deceptive; without hurrying, one can keep pace with the birds’ nests, paper boats, or chestnut blossoms floating on the surface; if anything, one might have to slow down now and then.

The bridge forms a barely perceptible hump in the plain; still, the moped riders crossing it accelerate, some cyclists stand up to pedal, and the headlights of the cars tilt skyward on the way up. Violet swallows skim the water, in which great bundles of grass drift like uprooted islands. The jagged blackish maple leaves on the bottom look something like bats’ wings. The flowing stream seems to be only another form of the stony mountain ridge in the background — its other time form, its dual-aspect picture, its freer manifestation, its lowland self; just as the two frolicking dogs in the meadow to this side of the mountain are only its transposition, its cellular division, its transformation into something infinitesimal but full of life. The two frolicking dogs are transformed into a closely intertwined couple; and the couple in turn into a child with a hood.

On the bank, a lilac bush is in bloom, and toward evening the mountains in the distance take on the color of lilac. An old man is standing on the bridge. His eyes are half closed and he says: “This canal is so quiet, so unassuming, so modest. This water must conquer.” A girl in a white coverall stops her bicycle for a moment and, resting one foot on the railing, lights a cigarette. The tall grass at the edge of the road, even the stiff thistles, rustle like reeds in the breeze. A blackbird sings in a willow tree, almost hidden by the foliage but instantly recognizable by its iridescent throat, which changes its hue from note to note. The willow moves when the water beneath it moves. And now a whole country murmurs in the solitary spruce; for a moment, indeed, the sky of all Europe shines blue over the empty bridge.

The first rain dabs circles in the water, which float a little way before losing themselves. The falling snow, however, leaves no trace in the canal; its flakes are instantly expunged by the current. A bright-bellied fish, large for so narrow a stream, leaps high into the air like a dolphin on one side of the bridge, and does it again on the other side. A duck paddles back and forth between the banks like a ferryboat; when a dog comes running, the duck lifts its head and, impassive, lets itself drift downstream. After the rain, steam rises from the bridge and there’s a smell of wood in the air.

Whenever a truck drives over the planks, the bridge sways under the feet of the man standing there, as it used to do under peasants’ carts; and, at the bottom of the canal, swarms of hitherto invisible little fish scatter. At times, though, there’s nothing but water flowing downstream, no objects, no animals — only the pure element; now clear, now cloudy; birch-white, sky-yellow, rock-gray, flesh-colored, cloud-colored, iron-blue, earth-brown, grass-green, peat-black, cistern-black, utterly soundless; only where a branch hangs down into it — or in a narrow place — there’s a gurgling as from a hidden spring. Sometimes the element is the color of memory; comparable to nothing, just remembering. Toward evening, glittering spirals drift with the otherwise darkened mass.

In the autumn, they drain the canal and keep it dry for a month; during this time, it is cleaned and the banks are reinforced; the fish are moved elsewhere. The muck stinks. In places, the bed is completely dry, like a wadi. But one fine day the water flows again, muddy, gray, full from top to bottom with odds and ends that have accumulated during the dry period. After exclaiming with surprise that the water is back again, an old woman says: “And how filthy it is!” But adds: “As it should be.”

A few of the planks on the bridge have been replaced; for a long while the new planks remain lighter-colored than those around them. Earlier than elsewhere in the vicinity, ice appears in the cracks; later on, it bulges glassy from the clefts in the willow trees. The large, lobed leaf of a plane tree has blown from far off against the trunk of a willow, and there it stays, converted into a special kind of trail marker. One winter’s night, seen from the top of one of the “city mountains,” the streetlamps along the twisting, turning canal become the most prominent constellation on the plain. Seen from a distance, the meanders twinkle like stars.

The haze that rises continually from the water makes for a distinct zone on either side of the canal; the houses in the Colony, on this side of the veil, become a separate community, with, as its emblem, the old-fashioned wooden wheel which sporadically waters the gardens along the bank. On the far side of the bridge, the pedestrians have arrived, so to speak, on their home ground; up until then, they all goose-stepped on one side of the road, whereas now they band together or scatter as in a kraal or a cattle pen. Immediately after the last plank, a youngster on a bicycle lets go the handlebars and rides home with folded arms. The next rider, whose bicycle lurches and rattles as though on the point of falling apart, alights on the bridge, takes a look at the frame, says aloud to himself: “Oh well, it ought to get me home,” and lurches on.

The “bridgeman,” also known as the “duty officer” or the “census taker,” is inconspicuous; asked what he’s doing there, he may answer: “I’m waiting.” Waiting, he walks back and forth over the planks, or leans on the railing, propping one heel on the crossbar behind him. He watches as a student driver practices turning at the edge of the bridge. The engine of a parked bus is revving up. The trees of the plain are thinned by the fog. The many black mistletoe balls in their crowns, and beside them, the resplendent full moon. The icy mountain water in the canal cools the heartbeat. At one moment, as he stands here, he is: “I am.”

This bridge, he thinks, is so small, there will never be any need to blow it up for strategic reasons. A flag will never be unfurled on it. Under the weight of a tank, it would collapse instantly. Nor is nature likely to show its violent aspect here; in case of flood, the sluice gate on the Ache — where the canal begins — would just have to be closed.

In the Sunday-morning sun, a woman in an advanced state of pregnancy and a young fellow, holding each other by the hand in the middle of the bridge, dance in the presence of the slow current at their feet — dance the pregnancy dance. One night, instead of the usual colored washing in the garden of the lockkeeper’s house, where a family of foreigners live, nearly all the washing is white. The viewer finds an unusual word for the activity of the water, the trees, the wind, the bridge: “The canal, the light, the willows, the planks of the bridge — they prevail.”

A chirping in the wires means that a bus is coming. Ordinarily, one of the alighting passengers hurries ahead of the rest and one lags behind. In the summer, when the passengers jump off the running board in their bright-colored clothes, they look like tumbling ninepins or a riotous band of red-, white-, and brown-skins; in the winter, disguised in their dark clothing and lit by the arc lamps at the turnaround, like refugees or pilgrims. (On this score, we are one with the red Indians.) In batches, they hurry across the little bridge. Not all the homecomers swing their bags like that child now. Rarely does one of the walkers stop and look down at the water (at the most, someone will set his burden down for a moment or shift it to the other hand); a few tap their sticks or umbrellas on the planks. Seldom does one of the bridge crossers curse, grumble, or laugh; but once in a while you hear a narrative note: “When my father …” A squeaky shopping cart; a springy baby carriage; a purring electric wheelchair. Then a little stage business: two schoolboys take advantage of the bridge for an exchange they have just agreed upon in the bus, while an adult, after tossing his coin in the box, takes a newspaper out of the plastic bag fastened to the railing. An old woman doubled up with gout stops on the hump of the bridge and squints up at the weather. “Smarty up there does just what he pleases.”

The laggard is a young woman; the many different-colored clips in her pinned-up hair glitter and sparkle as she crosses the bridge.

For a moment, the empty bridge is suffused with feminine perfume.

After an interval comes a horse-drawn carriage adorned with garlands and crowded with musicians on their way from one performance to another; they have put their clarinets, trumpets, and cymbals aside and look tired; only the accordion player, who is sitting on the back of the shafts with his instrument in the crook of his arm, opens the bellows on the bridge, producing a long-drawn-out tone.

Now from the medieval canal — as from the medieval figures over the doors of the Old City churches — now peace, mischief, quietness, gravity, slowness, and patience.