The Enchanted Yodler

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Title:     The Enchanted Yodler
Author: James Huneker [More Titles by Huneker]

A MARIENBAD ELEGY

I

The remorseless rain had washed anew the face of the dark blue sky that domed Marienbad and its curved chain of hills. Hugh Krayne threw open his window and, leaning out, exclaimed, as he eagerly inhaled the soft air of an early May morning:--

"At last! And high time!" For nine days he had waded through the wet streets, heavily leaping the raging gutters and stopping before the door of every optician to scrutinize the barometer. And there are many in this pretty Bohemian health resort, where bad weather means bad temper, with enforced confinement in dismal lodgings or stuffy restaurations, or--last resort of the bored--the promenade under the colonnade, while the band plays as human beings shuffle ponderously over the cold stones and stare at each other in sullen desperation.

But this day was a glorious one; in high spirits the Englishman left the house on the Oberkreuzbrunnenstrasse and moved slowly toward the springs. He was not thirty, but looked much older, for his weight was excessive. An easy-going temperament, a good appetite, a well-filled purse, and a conscience that never disturbed his night's slumber contributed to this making of flesh. He waddled, despite his great height, and was sufficiently sensitive to enjoy Marienbad as much for its fat visitors as for its curative virtues. Here at least he was not remarkable, while in London or Paris people looked at him sourly when he occupied a stall at the theatre or a seat in a cafe. Not only had he elbow room in Marienbad, but he felt small, positively meagre, in comparison with the prize specimens he saw painfully progressing about the shaded walks or puffing like obese engines up the sloping roads to the Ruebezahl, the Egerlaender, the Panorama, or the distant Podhorn.

The park of the Kreuzbrunnen was crowded, though the hour of six had just been signalled from a dozen clocks in the vicinity. The crowd, gathered from the four quarters of the globe, was in holiday humour, as, glass in hand, it fell into line, until each received the water doled out by uniformed officials. Occasionally a dispute as to precedence would take place when the serpentine procession filed up the steps of the old-fashioned belvedere; but quarrels were as rare as a lean man. A fat crowd is always good-tempered, irritable as may be its individual members. Hugh Krayne kept in position, while two women shoved him about as if he were a bale of hay. He heard them abusing him in Bohemian, a language of which he did not know more than a few words; their intonations told him that they heartily disliked his presence. Yet he could not give way; it would not have been Marienbad etiquette. At last he reached the spring and received his usual low bow from the man who turned the polished wheel--the fellow had an eye tuned for gratuities. With the water in his glass three-fourths cold and one-fourth warm, a small napkin in his left hand, the Englishman moved with the jaunty grace of a young elephant down the smooth terraced esplanade that has made Marienbad so celebrated. The sun was riding high, and the tender green of the trees, the flashing of the fountains, and the music of the band all caused Hugh to feel happy. He had lost nearly a pound since his arrival the week before, and he had three more weeks to stay. What might not happen!

Just where the promenade twists under the shaded alleys that lead to the Ferdinandsbrunnen, he saw four women holding hands. They were dressed in Tyrolean fashion--pleated skirts, short enough to show white, plump stockings, feet in slippers, upon the head huge caps, starched and balloony; their massive white necks, well exposed, were encircled by collars that came low on bodices elaborately embroidered. Behind them marched several burly chaps, in all the bravery of the Austrian Tyrol--the green alpine hat, with the feather at the back, the short gray jacket, the bare knees, and the homespun stockings. Krayne regarded curiously this strolling band of singers. Their faces seemed familiar to him, and he rapidly recalled souvenirs of Salzburg and an open-air concert. But this morning there was something that arrested his attention in the group. It was a girl of eighteen or twenty, with a brilliant complexion, large blue eyes, and a robust, shapely figure. As she passed she gave him such an imploring look, such an appealing look, that all his chivalric instincts rushed into the field of his consciousness. He awkwardly dropped his tumbler. He turned around, half expecting to see the big child still looking at him. Instead he gazed upon the athletic backs of her male companions and to the unpleasant accompaniment of hearty feminine laughter. Were these women laughing at him? No fool like a fat one, he merrily thought, as he bought a new glass at a bazaar, which a grinning, monkey-faced creature sold him at the regular price redoubled.

Before his meagre breakfast of one egg and a dry rusk, Krayne endeavoured to evoke the features of the pretty creature who had so strongly attracted him. He saw a tangle of black hair, a glance that touched his heart with its pathos, a pair of soft, parted red lips, and dazzling teeth. It was an impression sufficiently powerful to keep him company all the forenoon. Fat men, he reasoned on the steep pass that conducts to the Cafe Forstwarte, are always sentimental, by no means always amiable, and, as a rule, subject to sudden fancies. Ten years of his sentimental education had been sown with adventures that had begun well, caprices that had no satisfactory endings. He had fallen in love with the girl who played Chopin on the piano, the girl who played Mendelssohn on the violin, the girl who played Goltermann on the violoncello. Then followed girls who painted, poetized, botanized, and hammered metal. Once--an exception--he had succumbed to the charms of an actress who essayed characters in the dumps--Ibsen soubrettes, Strindberg servants, and Maxim Gorky tramps. Yet he had, somehow or other, emerged heart whole from his adventures among those masterpieces of the cosmos--women.

Certainly this might be another romance added to the long list of his sentimental fractures. He ate his dinner, the one satisfactory meal of the day allowed him by a cruel doctor, with the utmost deliberation. He had walked three hours during the morning, and now, under the spacious balconies of the Forstwarte, he knew that his beef and spinach would be none the worse for a small bottle of very dry, light Voeslauer. Besides, his physician had not actually forbidden him a little liquid at the midday meal. Just before bedtime he was entitled--so his dietetic schedule told him--to one glass of Pilsner beer. Not so bad, after all, this banting at Marienbad, he reflected. Anyhow, it was better than the existence of those fellows at sea-shore and mountain, who gorged and guzzled their summer away. Then he tried to remember among his London club friends any who were as heavy as he, but he could not. Idly smoking, he regarded the piazzas, with their tables and groups of obese humanity, eating, drinking, and buzzing--little fat flies, he thought, as he drew his waistcoat in, feeling quite haughty and slender.

He read on a placard that the "Praeger Bavarian Sextet" would give a "grand" concert at the Hotel Bellevue this very afternoon. "Ah ha!" said Krayne aloud, "that's the girl I saw!" Then he wasted several hours more loitering about the beautiful park on the Kaiserstrasse and looking in the shop windows at views of Marienbad on postal cards, at yellow-covered French, German, and Russian novels, at pictures of kings, queens, and actresses. He also visited the houses wherein Goethe, Chopin, and Wagner had dwelt. It was four o'clock when he entered the garden of the Bellevue establishment and secured a table. The waiter at his request removed the other chairs, so he had a nook to himself. Not a very large crowd was scattered around; visitors at Marienbad do not care to pay for their diversions. In a few minutes, after a march had been banged from a wretched piano--were pianos ever tuned on the Continent, he wondered?--the sextet appeared, looking as it did in the morning, and sang an Austrian melody, a capella. It was not very interesting.

The women stood in front and yelled with a hearty will; the men roared in the background. Krayne saw his young lady, holding her apron by the sides, her head thrown back, her mouth well opened; but he could not distinguish her individual voice. How pretty she was! He sipped his coffee. Then came a zither solo--that abominable instrument of plucked wires, with its quiver of a love-sick clock about to run down; this parody of an aeolian harp always annoyed Krayne, and he was glad when the man finished. A stout soprano in a velvet bodice, her arms bare and brawny, the arms of a lass accustomed to ploughing and digging potatoes, sang something about turtle doves. She was odious. Odious, too, was her companion, in a duo through which they screamed and rumbled--"Verlassen bin i." At last she came out and he saw by the programme that her name was Roeselein Gich. What an odd name, what an attractive girl! He finished his coffee and frantically signalled his waitress. It was against the doctor's orders to take more than one cup, and then the sugar! Hang the doctor, he cried, and drank a second cup.

She sang. Her voice was an unusually heavy, rich contralto. That she was not an accomplished artiste he knew. He did not haunt opera houses for naught, and, like all fat men who wear red ties in the forenoon, he was a trifle dogmatic in his criticism. The young woman had the making of an opera singer. What a Fricka, Brangaene, Ortrud, Sieglinde, Erda, this clever girl might become! She was musical, she was dramatic in temperament--he let his imagination run away with him. She only sang an Oberbayerische yodel, and, while her voice was not very high, she contrived a falsetto that made her English listener shiver. This yodel seemed to him as thrilling as the "Ho yo to ho!" of Brunnhilde as she rushes over the rocky road to Valhall. La la liriti! La la lirita! Hallali! chirped Roeselein, with a final flourish that positively enthralled Hugh Krayne. He applauded, beating with his stick upon the table, his face flushed by emotion. Decidedly this girl was worth the visit to Marienbad.

And he noted with delight that Fraeulein Gich had left the stage. Basket in hand, she went from table to table, selling pictures and programmes and collecting admission fees. At last he would be able to speak with the enchantress, for he prided himself on the purity of his German. Smiling until she reached his table, she suddenly became serious when she saw this big Englishman in the plaid suit and red necktie. Again he felt the imploring glance, the soft lips parted in childish supplication. It was too much for his nerves. He tossed into her basket a gold piece, grabbed at random some pictures, and as her beseeching expression deepened, her eyes moist with wonder and gratitude, he tugged at a ring on his corpulent finger, and, wrenching it free, presented it to her with a well-turned phrase, adding:--

"Thou hast the making of a great singer in thee, Fraeulein Roeselein. I wish I could help thee to fame!"

The girl gave him an incredulous stare, then reddening, the muscles on her full neck standing out, she ran like a hare back to her companions. Evidently he had made an impression. The honest folk about him who witnessed the little encounter fairly brimmed over with gossip. The stout basso moved slowly to Krayne, who braced himself for trouble. Now for it! he whispered to himself, and grasped his walking-stick firmly. But, hat in hand, his visitor, a handsome blond man, approached and thanked Hugh for his generosity. He was a lover of music, the yodler assured him, and his wife and himself felt grateful for the interest he displayed in Fraeulein Roeselein, his wife's sister. Yes, she had a remarkable voice. What a pity--but wouldn't the gentleman attend the concert to be given that evening up at the Cafe Alm? It was, to be sure, rather far, the cafe, but the moon would be up and if he could find his way there he might do the company the honour of coming back with them.

The Fraeulein would sing a lot for him--Bohemian, Tyrolean, French, and German songs. Ah, she was versatile! The man did not speak like a peasant, and seemed a shrewd, pleasant fellow. Hugh Krayne, in excellent though formal German, assured the other of his pleasure and accepted the invitation. Then he looked over at Roeselein, who stood on the stage, and as he did so she waved a crimson handkerchief at him as a friendly sign. He took off his hat, touched significantly his own tie to indicate a reciprocity of sentiment, and all aglow he ordered a third cup of coffee.

The cure could take care of itself. Man lebt nur einmal!

II

On his way to the Alm he met the fattest man in Marienbad, a former chef of the German emperor, and gave him a friendly salute. He liked to see this monster, who made the scales groan at six hundred pounds, more than double his own weight, for it put him at ease with himself. But this evening he felt uncomfortable. What if he were to reach such a climax in adiposity What if in the years to come he should be compelled, as was the unfortunate man from Berlin, to sit on a chair every five minutes, a chair carried by an impudent boy! What--here his heart sank--if the Fraeulein should mock his size! He walked so rapidly at this idea that other victims of rotundity stopped to look at his tall figure and nodded approval. Ach! Marienbad was wonderful!

After he had found a seat at the Alm next to the low wall, across which he could see a vast stretch of undulating country, lighted by a moon that seemed to swing like a silver hoop in the sky, Krayne ordered Pilsner. He was fatigued by the hilly scramble and he was thirsty. Oh, the lovely thirst of Marienbad--who that hath not been within thy hospitable gates he knoweth it not! The magic of the night was making of him a poet. He could see his Tyrolean friends behind the glass partition of the little hall. There would they sing, not in the open. It was nearly the same, for presently the windows were raised and their voices came floating out to him, the bourdon of Roeselein's organ easily distinguishable. Love had sharpened his ears. He drained his glass and sent for another. He felt that he was tumbling down an abyss of passion and that nothing in the world could save him.

The intermission! He stood up to attract the attention of Herr Johan Praeger. Roeselein saw him and at once neared him, but without the basket. This delicacy pleased Krayne very much. It showed him that he was not on the same footing as the public. He made the girl take a seat, and though he felt the eyes of the crowd upon him, he was not in the least concerned. London was far away and the season was too young for the annual rush of his compatriots. Would the Fraeulein take something? She accepted coffee, which she drank from a long glass with plenty of milk and sugar. She again gazed at him with such a resigned expression that he felt his starched cuffs grow warm from their contiguity to his leaping pulses.

"Yes, Fraeulein," he said, employing the familiar du, "thou hast overcome me. Why not accept my offer?" Was this the prudent Hugh Krayne talking? She smiled sweetly and shook her head. Her voice was delicious in colour and intonation, nor did it betray humble origin.

"I fear, dear sir, that what you offer is impossible. My sister, the soprano, would never hear of such a thing. My brother, her husband, would not allow it. And I owe them my living, my education. How could I repay them if I left them now?" she hesitated.

"Simply enough. You would be a singer at the opera some day, and take them all to live with you. Is there no other reason?" He recollected with a vivid sense of the disagreeable the lively antics of a lithe youth in the company, who, at the close of the concert, executed with diabolic dexterity what they called a Schuhplattltanz. This dance had glued Krayne's attention, for Roeselein was the young tenor singer's partner. With their wooden sabots they clattered and sang, waving wildly their arms or else making frantic passages of pretended love and coquetry. It upset the Englishman to see the impudence of this common peasant fellow grasping Roeselein by the waist, as he whirled her about in the boorish dance. Hence the clause to his question. She endured his inquiring gaze, as she simply answered:--

"No, there is no other reason." She put her hand on the arm of her companion and the lights suddenly became misty, for he was of an apoplectic tendency. They talked of music, of the opera in Vienna and Prague. She was born in Bavaria, not more than a day's ride from Marienbad. You could almost see her country from the top of the Podhornberg, in the direction of the Franconian Mountains, not far from Bayreuth. The place was called Schnabelwaid, and it was very high, very windy. Since her tenth year she had been singing--yes, even in the chorus at the Vienna opera, with her sister and brother. They were no common yodlers. They could sing all the music of the day. The yodling was part of their business, as was the costume. Later, when she had enough saved, she would study in Vienna for grand opera!

He was enraptured. How romantic it all was! A free-born maiden--he was certain she was reared in some old castle--wandering about earning money for her musical education. What a picture for a painter! What a story for a novelist! They were interrupted. The dancer, a young man with a heavy shock of hair growing low on his forehead, under which twinkled beady black eyes, had been sent to tell Fraeulein Roeselein that her colleagues were waiting for her. With a courtesy she went away. Krayne now thoroughly hated the dancer.

It was long after eleven when the concert was over and the party started on its homeward trip. Krayne and Roeselein walked behind the others, and soon the darkness and the narrowness of the road forced him to tread after the girl. The moon's rays at intervals pierced the foliage, making lacelike patches of light in the gloom. At times they skirted the edges of a circular clearing and saw the high pines fringing the southern horizon; overhead the heavens were almost black, except where great streams of stars swept in irregular bands. It was a glorious sight, Krayne told Roeselein--too sublime to be distracted by mere mortal love-making, he mentally added. Nevertheless he was glad when they were again in the woods; he could barely distinguish the girl ahead of him, but her outline made his heart beat faster. Once, as they neared the town, he helped her down a declivity into the roadway, and he could not help squeezing her hand. The pressure was returned. He boldly placed her arm within his, and they at last reached the streets, but not before, panting with mingled fright and emotion, he solemnly kissed her. She did not appear surprised.

"Call me Roesie--thou!" she murmured, and her naivete brought the ready tears to his eyes. They made a rendezvous for the next morning on the Promenade Platz. The only thing he did not like was the scowling face of the dancer when he said good night to the others under the electric lights of the Kreuzbrunnen. He was correct, then, in his premonition.

That night Hugh Krayne dreamed he was a very skeleton for thinness--not an unusual vision of fat men--and also a Tyrolean yodler, displaying himself before a huge audience of gigantic human beings, who laughed so loudly that he could not open his lips to frame the familiar words of his song. In the despair of a frantic nightmare, his face streaming with anguished tears, he forced his voice:--

La, la, liriti! La, la, larita! Hallali! Then he awoke in triumph. Was he not a yodler?

III

He told her of his dream and strange ambition. She did not discourage him. It could be settled easily enough. Why not join the company and take a few lessons? "With such a teacher?" he had exclaimed, and his gesture was so impassioned that the promenaders, with their shining morning goblets of water, were arrested by the spectacle. Wonderful, wonderful Marienbad! was the general comment! But Krayne was past ridicule. He already saw Roeselein his bride. He saw himself a yodler. The cure? Ay, there was the rub. He laid bare his heart. She aided him with her cool advice. She was very sensible. Her brother-in-law and her sister would welcome him in their household, for he was a lover of music and his intentions were honourable. Of course, he sighed, of course, and fingered his red tie. Why not, she argued, remain at Marienbad for three weeks more and complete his cure? Anyhow, he was not so stout! She looked up at him archly. Again he saw mist.

That settled it. For another three weeks he lived in a cloud of expectation, of severe training, long walks, dieting, and Turkish baths. No man worked harder. And he was rewarded by seeing his flesh melt away a pound or two daily. When the company returned after its itinerary in the neighbourhood Roesie was surprised to meet a man who did not weigh much over two hundred pounds, healthy, vigorous, and at least five years younger in appearance. She was very much touched. So was her sister. There was a family consultation, and despite the surly opposition of the dancer, Hugh Krayne was welcomed as a member of the Praeger Bavarian Sextette company. Forgetting the future he had arranged for Roesie, he began his vocal lessons immediately.

In July he sang for the first time in public at Eger. He was extremely frightened, but as it was only a duo he managed fairly well. Then he sang at Tepl, this time alone. His voice broke badly in the yodel and he was jeered by a rude audience. He had grown very much thinner. His doctor warned him against continuing the waters, and advised rice, potatoes, and ale, but he did not listen. He now paid the bills of the company while travelling. Roesie had confessed with tears that they were fearfully poor. From that time he handed her his purse. He even placated the jealous dancer with a gold watch and a box of hair pomade. Ah! how he loathed the fellow's curly locks, his greasy familiarities! Roesie told him this acrobat was necessary in the company until he could be replaced. Already Hugh--she called him "Ue"--could yodel better. Some day he might, when thinner, dance better. Perhaps--again that appealing glance, the corner of her lips faintly touched by the mysterious smile of a Monna Lisa. Krayne redoubled his arduous training, practised yodling in the forests, danced jigs on the pine-needles, and doubled his allowance of the waters.

They went to Carlsbad. He yodled. He was applauded. The dancer was in a fine rage. Although Krayne had asked Roesie to buy a first-class compartment on the railroad trip over and back, they went in a third-class car. Praeger declared that it was good enough for him, and he didn't wish to spoil his troupe! His wife now held the purse-strings, as Roesie was too engrossed with her art and Hugh too absorbed in his love to notice such mere sublunary matters. The girl had promised nothing positive for the future. She kept him on the brittle edge of nervous expectation. The opposition of the dancer had been successfully met by threats of dismissal; Hugh continued to lose flesh and gain in vocal and pedal agility.

He danced for the first time at Koenigswart, not far from the chateau of the Metternichs. It was August. So great was the applause that the younger dancer was discharged. He left with muttered threats of vengeance. The next day Krayne turned over all his business affairs to the able hand of Frau Praeger; he lived only for Roesie and his art....

September was at hand. The weather was so warm and clear, that the king of England deferred his departure for a few days. One afternoon, just before the leaves began to brown on the hills, there was a concert at the garden of the Hotel Bellevue. The royal party attended. The yodling was much praised, especially that of a good-looking young woman and her escort, a very tall man of cadaverous aspect, his shanks like the wooden stilts of the shepherds on the Bordeaux Landes. His face, preternaturally emaciated and fatigued, opened to emit an amazing yodel. When the Schuhplattltanz was reached he surprised the audience by an extraordinary exhibition. He threw his long legs about like billiard cues, while his arms flapped as do windmills in a hard gale. He was pointed out as a celebrity--once a monster Englishman, who had taken the Kur; who was in love, but so poor that he could not marry. The girl with him was certain to make a success in grand opera some day. Yes, Marienbad was proud of Krayne. He was one of her show sons, a witness to her curative powers. Proud also of the Bavarian Praeger Sextette. Herr Praeger was reputed a rich man....

The night of that concert Marienbad saw the last of the Bavarian sextette, which at midnight, joined by its old dancer with the tenor voice, left in a third-class carriage for Vienna. Hugh Krayne, not possessing enough to pay his passage, had not been invited; nor was he informed of the sudden departure until a day later....

* * * * *

On the road to the Alm, of moonlight nights, toiling visitors catch glimpses of a human, almost a skeleton, dressed in rags, his head bare as his feet, about his neck a flaming crimson handkerchief. He is known to Marienbaeders as "The Man Who Stayed Too Long." He never addresses passers-by; but as they lose sight of him they hear the woods resound with his elegiac howl:--

La la liriti! La la lirita! Hallali!

[The end]
James Huneker's short story: Enchanted Yodler

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