Fairy Tales

4. BABETTE

Who’s the best shot in Valais canton? Well, the goat-antelopes knew that. “Watch out for Rudy!” they would say. “Who’s the best looking shot?” “Well, that’s Rudy,” said the girls, but they didn’t say, “Watch out for Rudy!” Even their serious mothers didn’t say that because he nodded just as cordially to them as to the young girls. He was so bright and happy. His cheeks were brown, his teeth fresh and white, and his eyes shone coal-black. He was a handsome fellow and only twenty years old. The icy water didn’t bother him when he swam, and he could turn in the water like a fish. He could climb like no other and cling tight to the cliff walls like a snail. He had good muscles and sinews, and this was evident too in his jumps and leaps which he had first learned from the cat and later from the goat-antelopes. You couldn’t entrust your life to a better guide, and Rudy could have amassed a fortune from that. He wasn’t interested at all in barrel-making, which his uncle had also taught him. All his delight and longing was for shooting antelope, and that also brought in money. Rudy was a good match, as they said, as long as he didn’t set his sights too high. At dances he was a dancer that the girls dreamed about, and one and another of them thought about him when they were awake too.

“He kissed me while we were dancing,” Annette, the school teacher’s daughter, told her dearest friend. But she shouldn’t have said that, even to her best friend. It’s not easy to keep quiet about such things. It’s like sand that runs out of a bag with a hole in it. Soon everyone knew that Rudy, no matter how proper and good he was, kissed girls while dancing. And yet he had not kissed the one that he most wanted to.

“Watch him!” said an old hunter. “He kissed Annette. He’s started with A and will most likely kiss through the whole alphabet.”

A kiss while dancing was yet all that could be gossiped about Rudy, but he had kissed Annette, and she was not at all the flower of his heart.

Down by Bex, between the big walnut trees and right next to a little rushing mountain stream, there lived a rich miller. His house was a big one with three stories. It had small towers, covered with wooden shingles and fitted with pieces of tin that shone in the sun and moonlight. The tallest tower had a weather vane in the shape of an apple with a shiny arrow through it. It was supposed to represent Wilhelm Tell’s arrow. The mill looked prosperous and neat, and could be both drawn and described, but the miller’s daughter could neither be drawn nor described. At least that’s what Rudy would say, and yet he had her picture in his heart. Her two shining eyes were burning there like a fire. It had flared up at once, like fire does, and the strangest thing about it was that the miller’s daughter, the lovely Babette, had no idea about this. She and Rudy had never spoken so much as two words to each other.

The miller was rich, and that wealth meant that Babette occupied a high position, difficult to reach. But nothing sits so high that you can’t reach it, Rudy said to himself. You have to climb, and you won’t fall down if you believe you won’t. He had learned that lesson at home.

And so it happened that Rudy had an errand in Bex. It was a long trip because at that time the railroad hadn’t been built there yet. From the Rhone glacier, at the foothill of the Simplon mountain, and between many mountains of various heights, stretches the wide Valais valley with its great river, the Rhone. It often waxes and washes over fields and roads, destroying everything. Between the towns of Sion and St. Maurice there is a curve in the valley. It bends like an elbow, and below St. Maurice becomes so narrow that there is only room for the river bed and a narrow road. There is an old tower on the mountainside that stands like a sentry for the canton of Valais, which ends here. It overlooks the brick bridge that leads to the toll house on the other side. The canton of Vaud begins here, and not far away is Bex, the closest town. On this side, with every step you take, everything swells with abundance and fertility. It’s like a garden of chestnut and walnut trees, and here and there cypress and pomegranate flowers peek out. It’s as southerly warm as if you had come to Italy.

Rudy reached Bex, carried out his errand, and looked around. But he did not see a fellow from the mill, much less Babette. It wasn’t supposed to be like this!

It was evening. The air was filled with the fragrance from the wild thyme and the flowering linden. A bright, airy blue veil seemed to lie on the forest-covered mountains. There was a pervasive silence, not of sleep nor of death, but it was as if all of nature were holding its breath, as if it felt silenced because it was going to be photographed against the backdrop of the blue sky. Here and there among the trees, and across the green fields, stood poles that carried the telegraph wires through the quiet valley. An object was leaning up against one of these, so still that you would think it must be a dead tree limb. But it was Rudy who stood as still as his surroundings, not sleeping and certainly not dead. But just as great world events or situations with great meaning for certain individuals often fly through the telegraph wires without a tremble or tone of indication in the wire, just in this way powerful, overwhelming thoughts—his happiness in life and from now on his idee fixe- flew through Rudy’s mind. His eyes were fastened on a point between the foliage, a light in the miller’s house, where Babette lived. So still was Rudy standing that you might think he was taking aim to shoot an antelope, but at this moment he was like the antelope himself, who can stand as if chiseled from stone for minutes, and then suddenly, when a rock rolls, leap up and run away. And that’s exactly what Rudy did as a thought, like a rolling rock, came to him.

“Never give up!” he said. “Go to the mill. Say ‘good evening’ to the miller, ‘good evening’ to Babette. You can’t fall if you think you can’t. Babette has to see me some time, after all, if I’m to be her husband.”

And Rudy laughed, and in good spirits he went to the mill. He knew what he wanted. He wanted Babette.

The river with its whitish yellow water was rushing along. Weeping willows and lindens overhung the swiftly flowing water. Rudy walked on the path, and as it says in the old children’s ditty:“... and on to the mill,

Where no one was home

But a cat on the sill. ”

But the housecat was standing on the steps. He arched his back and said, “Miaow!” but Rudy didn’t pay attention to this. He knocked on the door. But no one heard, and no one opened the door. “Miaow!” said the cat. If Rudy had been little, he would have understood animal language and would have heard the cat say, “No one’s home here.” But he had to go over to the mill to hear this. There he got the news that the master was on a trip, far away in the city of Interlaken. “Inter Lacus, between the lakes,” as the school master, Annette’s father, had explained in his teaching. The miller had taken that long trip, and Babette was with him. There was a big marksmanship competition, which would start the following day and last for a week. People from all the German-speaking cantons would be there.

Poor Rudy, you could say. It wasn’t the best time for him to come to Bex. He could just as well turn back, and that’s what he did. He took the road via St. Maurice and Sion, to his own valley and his own mountains, but he wasn’t dispirited. His spirits, which had risen before the sun rose the next morning, had never been down.

“Babette is in Interlaken, many days’ journey from here,” he said to himself. “It’s a long way if you take the road, but it’s not so far if you go over the mountains, and that’s the road for a hunter to take. I’ve gone that way before. That’s my native soil, where I lived with grandfather when I was little. And they’re having a shooting competition in Interlaken! I will take first place there and will also be first with Babette, when first I meet her in person!”

Rudy packed his Sunday clothes in his light backpack, took his rifle and hunting bag, and went up the mountain,