Death was prepared in the form of a trap. But before its time finally came, the mouse would have to gnaw through the wall that led into my bed-chamber. It would have to gnaw through a long and narrow passage, and gnaw through my sleep.
Sometimes I pounded on the bed with my fist, frightening myself with the way that its thunder rolled over everything imaginable in the night. And I thought I could sense that the mouse felt this fear, too. But before this wave of fright could roll gently into peace, that same quiet gnawing could be heard again from afar. It was so quiet that it was audible only to someone alone and left to himself in a house by a moonlit field on the edge of a forest. He guards himself like his own hunting dog, and even when he is asleep he will hear any approaching danger. He is like fog, when it is dark, the fog that seems to live in its own light. He is like the rain, far and wide, high and distant, in the heavens and on earth. How could he fail to notice the gnawing of a mouse, when that activity returns again to itself. He feels it in his blood. So once again I lit my candle, the bane of all four-footed intruders. But the candle didn’t spread its angel wings as it had in other nights, arching them over the dark abyss of fear, becoming a spirit of the shadows, the better to offer its light . . . Instead it suddenly betrayed me to my enemy, becoming a sort of gnawing creature itself, there in its candlestick. It ate away at my sleep, and the mouse did not fear it.
But so far the mouse was not there with me in that nocturnal brightness. That hour was yet to come. Meanwhile I drifted off and dreamt in the glow of the candle. I dreamt of a city, of its subterranean passageways. Then I awoke again. This stolen night was taking back all the rest that it had given me. The mouse was gnawing, louder than before. The light was still burning. I thundered again with my fist, but only hurt my hand. After that it was quiet, but only as long as the terror lasted, our common terror. And before it had even dwindled down to nothing, before the softest gnawing began anew, I turned in search of help – following once more in the footsteps of infinity, I turned to a sound that obeyed its own law – the clock. It ticked as if its minutes were a game for the stars. I felt at one with it. I listened to it as to the pulsing of my own blood. But then, softer and more distant than any clock, in quiet competition, it began again: the mouse. I almost had to laugh. But no one laughs at night. It’s dangerous to laugh at night. Such laughter borders on insanity. O God of insomniacs: You who hinder no plant in its growth (but that You would kill it), You who hinder no raindrop in its fall from the cloud – why do You hinder sleep?
The mouse, if it must, may gnaw, may keep gnawing, night after night, even if the house should fall in upon it. But I, poor soul, must find rest. I covet rest—the everlasting nourishment of the soul—above all else in life. Whosoever is denied rest, to him the night is like day. He hears the winds and waters roaring endlessly in the treetops. For him all roads, even those bright, moonlit roads, lead into the heavens’ abysses. He is like a man condemned.
And during the day the sun has power over him, like a moon. He closes his eyes before the sun and feels his way like a blind man through its enchanted world. And thinks only of the evil that the sun has already wrought upon it.
And then, as if these sleepless nights had been prepared decades in advance, he remembers the stories that men once told him of those animals, the mice. Of fields undulating with living waves of field mice. Always leaping from one earthen hole to another, to gnaw at the roots of the crops. That field and all the fields for miles around were laid waste. They no longer belonged to the farmers, or to the plants: they belonged to the mice. And the stories told of this devastation were so terrible that they cannot be told again. And the women all stayed home, they were not allowed into the fields, nor did they want to go. And I thought: when I shall die, how horrible . . . will the mice gnaw me to pieces, too? And I saw a skull with mice springing out.
Then, as if this human head were nothing but a hollow gourd with a light inside that slowly burns out, an hour arrived at last when I was of no use to the moonlit night, or to the mice: when I could finally sleep. I slept without dreaming. A fleeting sleep, like weather-bleached, straw-yellow grass, a vacuous sleep. I awoke in near-amazement. I remembered only a quavering sound, a trembling that seemed to emanate in miniature from a single point near my bed: but I experienced it in its true enormity, a creature was seeking to escape from its prison! Sometimes it hung with all four legs on the wires of the closed-up trap, as if it felt freer in the air, sometimes its rodent teeth rested impotently on the iron bars. It was indigestible, this prison. It seemed light and airy like no other, but it was nonetheless the prison of all prisons. Even a mouse could feel that, and a man, who can become that mouse’s partner in suffering without even knowing how or when (and not for the sake of a morsel of fatty bacon), such a man knows full well what that creature suffers. And so I, too, was at once a part of all this. I grasped it with my eyes, which only seconds before had been asleep. And I trembled inside as well. But reflecting on my agonizing, sleepless night, I smiled with pleasure at the creature’s pain. Now its time had come. It had banged away at my night until finally its day had come, at my hand. To be sure, I didn’t intend to kill it, although my own rest could only be assured by its death. But I wanted to make the most of its terror, so that perhaps in the future it would give this house a wide berth. After all, there were so many acorns, roots, and berries in the forest. It could enjoy them with the added relish of freedom. Many a root, warmer than a house, could shelter it in the winter. In my thoughts I praised the little animal, I liked it now that it no longer hoped to share my house. I even hurried, for the mouse’s sake. I put on my clothes, if only to wash away the husk that this night, the night I had just endured, had sought to affix to me, always and forever, like a hollow mask. And now and then I glanced with concern at the little creature. It had grown still. Its grey, soft fur was bristling. It seemed to be holding something, as all sleeping animals do: itself. That reassured me. I turned to my household tasks. “You need fear no more than you deserve,” I thought. “I only want to fix my breakfast before I go into the woods.” (Imagine, I could think about food even when a living thing had fallen asleep in my house in mortal fear. My first act upon waking was not to set it free. I wanted to have my meal first.) There was no excuse for that: not the fact that it was only a mouse, a mouse that destructively eats away at our stored-up provisions, that bites our clothing to bits when we put it away for the season; not even the fact that it was just a little thing, in contrast to the great big life that I had not yet begun to live out. Nothing made my pangs of conscience seem excessive, exaggerated. It was not just a mouse, it was not just the mouse, it was a creature, a living thing. On the other hand: it was not just some love preached from afar, some game or confusion of large and small: it was my life.
I remembered a cat that had caught the scent of a mouse I had once freed. It was morning then, too. I had stood as if rooted in place, looking down at them. Pearl grey just like this mouse, it had stood on its hind legs and pleaded, in such fear that its eyes no longer seemed to see, they seemed instead like pearls set into an unreal being. It pleaded for its life. It squealed. It gesticulated with its paws. But it did not leave that spot. Its eyes were like little torturous pins, open and darkly glistening. The cat saw that and heard it too, looking past the mouse in apparent boredom, one paw raised in the air. The little creature could not escape, so the cat simply forgot it. Forgot it just as I did now. Much later I saw that mouse again, the mouse that had ventured into my trap on that visit. It had turned to dust. The starved skeleton was a terrible sight, the hind legs stretched far back, the front paws stabbing up into the air. And other things came to mind, too, for we are bound to all the suffering that occurs on our account. It is engraved into our lives. It clings to us like guilt. As if in passing, it magnifies our dealings with this vast nature a thousandfold. If we were guiltless, to be sure, it would be a beautiful, holy sight. Like a shower of stars, it would affirm our life.
At that I returned to the cage, slowly, hanging my head. I already knew: the mouse was finished.
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The Country Road by Regina Ullmann is available now through New Directions here!
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Regina Ullmann, considered one of the most important writers of the twentieth century, was known for her honest portrayals of rural peasant life. Ullmann was no stranger to these settings, spending much of her life in Swiss rural landscapes—supplementing her income by basket weaving, beekeeping, and making wax figurines. In 1902 she moved to Munich and became friends with notable avant-garde thinkers and writers such as Thomas Mann, Hans Carossa, and Rainer Maria Rilke. These friendships, and her conversion to Catholicism in 1911, had a significant impact on her writing. In 1921 she became famous when she published her collection The Country Road. Following the German occupation of Austria in 1938, Ullmann returned to Switzerland.