THE WILLOWS
Algernon Blackwood
(1907)
I
After leaving Vienna, and long before you come to Budapest, the Danube
enters a region of singular loneliness and desolation, where its waters
spread away on all sides regardless of a main channel, and the country
becomes a swamp for miles upon miles, covered by a vast sea of low
willow-bushes. On the big maps this deserted area is painted in a fluffy
blue, growing fainter in color as it leaves the banks, and across it may be
seen in large straggling letters the word Sumpfe, meaning marshes.
In high flood this great acreage of sand, shingle-beds, and willow-grown
islands is almost topped by the water, but in normal seasons the bushes
bend and rustle in the free winds, showing their silver leaves to the
sunshine in an ever-moving plain of bewildering beauty. These willows never
attain to the dignity of trees; they have no rigid trunks; they remain
humble bushes, with rounded tops and soft outline, swaying on slender stems
that answer to the least pressure of the wind; supple as grasses, and so
continually shifting that they somehow give the impression that the entire
plain is moving and alive. For the wind sends waves rising and falling over
the whole surface, waves of leaves instead of waves of water, green swells
like the sea, too, until the branches turn and lift, and then silvery white
as their underside turns to the sun.
Happy to slip beyond the control of the stern banks, the Danube here
wanders about at will among the intricate network of channels intersecting
the islands everywhere with broad avenues down which the waters pour with a
shouting sound; making whirlpools, eddies, and foaming rapids; tearing at
the sandy banks; carrying away masses of shore and willow-clumps; and
forming new islands innumerably which shift daily in size and shape and
possess at best an impermanent life, since the flood-time obliterates their
very existence.
Properly speaking, this fascinating part of the river's life begins soon
after leaving Pressburg, and we, in our Canadian canoe, with gipsy tent and
frying-pan on board, reached it on the crest of a rising flood about
mid-July. That very same morning, when the sky was reddening before
sunrise, we had slipped swiftly through still-sleeping Vienna, leaving it a
couple of hours later a mere patch of smoke against the blue hills of the
Wienerwald on the horizon; we had breakfasted below Fischeramend under a
grove of birch trees roaring in the wind; and had then swept on the tearing
current past Orth, Hainburg, Petronell (the old Roman Carnuntum of Marcus
Aurelius), and so under the frowning heights of Thelsen on a spur of the
Carpathians, where the March steals in quietly from the left and the
frontier is crossed between Austria and Hungary.
Racing along at twelve kilometers an hour soon took us well into Hungary,
and the muddy waters - sure sign of flood - sent us aground on many a
shingle-bed, and twisted us like a cork in many a sudden belching whirlpool
before the towers of Pressburg (Hungarian, Poszony) showed against the sky;
and then the canoe, leaping like a spirited horse, flew at top speed under
the grey walls, negotiated safely the sunken chain of the Fliegende Brucke
ferry, turned the corner sharply to the left, and plunged on yellow foam
into the wilderness of islands, sandbanks, and swamp-land beyond - the land
of the willows.
The change came suddenly, as when a series of bioscope pictures snaps down
on the streets of a town and shifts without warning into the scenery of
lake and forest. We entered the land of desolation on wings, and in less
than half an hour there was neither boat nor fishing-hut nor red roof, nor
any single sign of human habitation and civilization within sight. The
sense of remoteness from the world of humankind, the utter isolation, the
fascination of this singular world of willows, winds, and waters, instantly
laid its spell upon us both, so that we allowed laughingly to one another
that we ought by rights to have held some special kind of passport to admit
us, and that we had, somewhat audaciously, come without asking leave into a
separate little kingdom of wonder and magic - a kingdom that was reserved
for the use of others who had a right to it, with everywhere unwritten
warnings to trespassers for those who had the imagination to discover them.
Though still early in the afternoon, the ceaseless buffetings of a most
tempestuous wind made us feel weary, and we at once began casting about for
a suitable camping-ground for the night. But the bewildering character of
the islands made landing difficult; the swirling flood carried us in shore
and then swept us out again; the willow branches tore our hands as we
seized them to stop the canoe, and we pulled many a yard of sandy bank into
the water before at length we shot with a great sideways blow from the wind
into a backwater and managed to beach the bows in a cloud of spray. Then we
lay panting and laughing after our exertions on the hot yellow sand,
sheltered from the wind, and in the full blaze of a scorching sun, a
cloudless blue sky above, and an immense army of dancing, shouting willow
bushes, closing in from all sides, shining with spray and clapping their
thousand little hands as though to applaud the success of our efforts.
"What a river!" I said to my companion, thinking of all the way we had
traveled from the source in the Black Forest, and how he had often been
obliged to wade and push in the upper shallows at the beginning of June.
"Won't stand much nonsense now, will it?" he said, pulling the canoe a
little farther into safety up the sand, and then composing himself for a
nap.
I lay by his side, happy and peaceful in the bath of the elements - water,
wind, sand, and the great fire of the sun - thinking of the long journey
that lay behind us, and of the great stretch before us to the Black Sea,
and how lucky I was to have such a delightful and charming traveling
companion as my friend, the Swede.
We had made many similar journeys together, but the Danube, more than any
other river I knew, impressed us from the very beginning with its
aliveness. From its tiny bubbling entry into the world among the pinewood
gardens of Donaueschingen, until this moment when it began to play the
great river-game of losing itself among the deserted swamps, unobserved,
unrestrained, it had seemed to us like following the grown of some living
creature. Sleepy at first, but later developing violent desires as it
became conscious of its deep soul, it rolled, like some huge fluid being,
through all the countries we had passed, holding our little craft on its
mighty shoulders, playing roughly with us sometimes, yet always friendly
and well-meaning, till at length we had come inevitably to regard it as a
Great Personage.
How, indeed, could it be otherwise, since it told us so much of its secret
life? At night we heard it singing to the moon as we lay in our tent,
uttering that odd sibilant note peculiar to itself and said to be caused by
the rapid tearing of the pebbles along its bed, so great is its hurrying
speed. We knew, too, the voice of its gurgling whirlpools, suddenly
bubbling up on a surface previously quite calm; the roar of its shallows
and swift rapids; its constant steady thundering below all mere surface
sounds; and that ceaseless tearing of its icy waters at the banks. How it
stood up and shouted when the rains fell flat upon its face! And how its
laughter roared out when the wind blew up-stream and tried to stop its
growing speed! We knew all its sounds and voices, its tumblings and
foamings, its unnecessary splashing against the bridges; that
self-conscious chatter when there were hills to look on; the affected
dignity of its speech when it passed through the little towns, far too
important to laugh; and all these faint, sweet whisperings when the sun
caught it fairly in some slow curve and poured down upon it till the steam
rose.
It was full of tricks, too, in its early life before the great world knew
it. There were places in the upper reaches among the Swabian forests, when
yet the first whispers of its destiny had not reached it, where it elected
to disappear through holes in the ground, to appear again on the other side
of the porous limestone hills and start a new river with another name;
leaving, too, so little water in its own bed that we had to climb out and
wade and push the canoe through miles of shallows.
And a chief pleasure, in those early days of its irresponsible youth, was
to lie low, like Brer Fox, just before the little turbulent tributaries
came to join it from the Alps, and to refuse to acknowledge them when in,
but to run for miles side by side, the dividing line well marked, the very
levels different, the Danube utterly declining to recognize the newcomer.
Below Passau, however, it gave up this particular trick, for there the Inn
comes in with a thundering power impossible to ignore, and so pushes and
incommodes the parent river that there is hardly room for them in the long
twisting gorge that follows, and the Danube is shoved this way and that
against the cliffs, and forced to hurry itself with great waves and much
dashing to and fro in order to get through in time. And during the fight
our canoe slipped down from its shoulder to its breast, and had the time of
its life among the struggling waves. But the Inn taught the old river a
lesson, and after Passau it no longer pretended to ignore new arrivals.
This was many days back, of course, and since then we had come to know
other aspects of the great creature, and across the Bavarian wheat plain of
Straubing she wandered so slowly under the blazing June sun that we could
well imagine only the surface inches were water, while below there moved,
concealed as by a silken mantle, a whole army of Undines, passing silently
and unseen down to the sea, and very leisurely too, lest they be
discovered.
Much, too, we forgave her because of her friendliness to the birds and
animals that haunted the shores. Cormorants lined the banks in lonely
places in rows like short black palings; grey crows crowded the
shingle-beds; storks stood fishing in the vistas of shallower water that
opened up between the islands, and hawks, swans, and marsh birds of all
sorts filled the air with glinting wings and singing, petulant cries. It
was impossible to feel annoyed with the river's vagaries after seeing a
deer leap with a splash into the water at sunrise and swim past the bows of
the canoe; and often we saw fawns peering at us from the underbrush, or
looked straight into the brown eyes of a stag as we charged full tilt round
a corner and entered another reach of the river. Foxes, too, everywhere
haunted the banks, tripping daintily among the driftwood and disappearing
so suddenly that it was impossible to see how they managed it.
But now, after leaving Pressburg, everything changed a little, and the
Danube became more serious. It ceased trifling. It was half-way to the
Black Sea, within seeming distance almost of other, stranger countries
where no tricks would be permitted or understood. It became suddenly
grown-up, and claimed our respect and even our awe. It broke out into three
arms, for one thing, that only met again a hundred kilometers farther down,
and for a canoe there were no indications which one was intended to be
followed.
"If you take a side channel," said the Hungarian officer we met in the
Pressburg shop while buying provisions, "you may find yourselves, when the
flood subsides, forty miles from anywhere, high and dry, and you may easily
starve. There are no people, no farms, no fishermen. I warn you not to
continue. The river, too, is still rising, and this wind will increase."
The rising river did not alarm us in the least, but the matter of being
left high and dry by a sudden subsidence of the waters might be serious,
and we had consequently laid in an extra stock of provisions. For the rest,
the officer's prophecy held true, and the wind, blowing down a perfectly
clear sky, increased steadily till it reached the dignity of a westerly
gale.
It was earlier than usual when we camped, for the sun was a good hour or
two from the horizon, and leaving my friend still asleep on the hot sand, I
wandered about in desultory examination of our hotel. The island, I found,
was less than an acre in extent, a mere sandy bank standing some two or
three feet above the level of the river. The far end, pointing into the
sunset, was covered with flying spray which the tremendous wind drove off
the crests of the broken waves. It was triangular in shape, with the apex
up stream.
I stood there for several minutes, watching the impetuous crimson flood
bearing down with a shouting roar, dashing in waves against the bank as
though to sweep it bodily away, and then swirling by in two foaming streams
on either side. The ground seemed to shake with the shock and rush, while
the furious movement of the willow bushes as the wind poured over them
increased the curious illusion that the island itself actually moved.
Above, for a mile or two, I could see the great river descending upon me;
it was like looking up the slope of a sliding hill, white with foam, and
leaping up everywhere to show itself to the sun.
The rest of the island was too thickly grown with willows to make walking
pleasant, but I made the tour, nevertheless. From the lower end the light,
of course, changed, and the river looked dark and angry. Only the backs of
the flying waves were visible, streaked with foam, and pushed forcibly by
the great puffs of wind that fell upon them from behind. For a short mile
it was visible, pouring in and out among the islands, and then disappearing
with a huge sweep into the willows, which closed about it like a herd of
monstrous antediluvian creatures crowding down to drink. They made me think
of gigantic sponge-like growths that sucked the river up into themselves.
They caused it to vanish from sight. They herded there together in such
overpowering numbers.
Altogether it was an impressive scene, with its utter loneliness, its
bizarre suggestion; and as I gazed, long and curiously, a singular emotion
began to stir somewhere in the depths of me. Midway in my delight of the
wild beauty, there crept, unbidden and unexplained, a curious feeling of
disquietude, almost of alarm.
A rising river, perhaps, always suggests something of the ominous; many of
the little islands I saw before me would probably have been swept away by
the morning; this resistless, thundering flood of water touched the sense
of awe. Yet I was aware that my uneasiness lay deeper far than the emotions
of awe and wonder. It was not that I felt. Nor had it directly to do with
the power of the driving wind - this shouting hurricane that might almost
carry up a few acres of willows into the air and scatter them like so much
chaff over the landscape. The wind was simply enjoying itself, for nothing
rose out of the flat landscape to stop it, and I was conscious of sharing
its great game with a kind of pleasurable excitement. Yet this novel
emotion had nothing to do with the wind. Indeed, so vague was the sense of
distress I experienced, that it was impossible to trace it to its source
and deal with it accordingly, though I was aware somehow that it had to do
with my realization of our utter insignificance before this unrestrained
power of the elements about me. The huge-grown river had something to do
with it too - a vague, unpleasant idea that we had somehow trifled with
these great elemental forces in whose power we lay helpless every hour of
the day and night. For here, indeed, they were gigantically at play
together, and the sight appealed to the imagination.
But my emotion, so far as I could understand it, seemed to attach itself
more particularly to the willow bushes, to these acres and acres of
willows, crowding, so thickly growing there, swarming everywhere the eye
could reach, pressing upon the river as though to suffocate it, standing in
dense array mile after mile beneath the sky, watching, waiting, listening.
And, apart quite from the elements, the willows connected themselves subtly
with my malaise, attacking the mind insidiously somehow by reason of their
vast numbers, and contriving in some way or other to represent to the
imagination a new and mighty power, a power, moreover, not altogether
friendly to us.
Great revelations of nature, of course, never fail to impress in one way or
another, and I was no stranger to moods of the kind. Mountains overawe and
oceans terrify, while the mystery of great forests exercises a spell
peculiarly its own. But all these, at one point or another, somewhere link
on intimately with human life and human experience. They stir
comprehensible, even if alarming, emotions. They tend on the whole to
exalt.
With this multitude of willows, however, it was something far different, I
felt. Some essence emanated from them that besieged the heart. A sense of
awe awakened, true, but of awe touched somewhere by a vague terror. Their
serried ranks, growing everywhere darker about me as the shadows deepened,
moving furiously yet softly in the wind, woke in me the curious and
unwelcome suggestion that we had trespassed here upon the borders of an
alien world, a world where we were intruders, a world where we were not
wanted or invited to remain - where we ran grave risks perhaps!
The feeling, however, though it refused to yield its meaning entirely to
analysis, did not at the time trouble me by passing into menace. Yet it
never left me quite, even during the very practical business of putting up
the tent in a hurricane of wind and building a fire for the stew-pot. It
remained, just enough to bother and perplex, and to rob a most delightful
camping-ground of a good portion of its charm. To my companion, however, I
said nothing, for he was a man I considered devoid of imagination. In the
first place, I could never have explained to him what I meant, and in the
second, he would have laughed stupidly at me if I had.
There was a slight depression in the center of the island, and here we
pitched the tent. The surrounding willows broke the wind a bit.
"A poor camp," observed the imperturbable Swede when at last the tent stood
upright, "no stones and precious little firewood. I'm for moving on early
tomorrow - eh? This sand won't hold anything."
But the experience of a collapsing tent at midnight had taught us many
devices, and we made the cozy gipsy house as safe as possible, and then set
about collecting a store of wood to last till bed-time. Willow bushes drop
no branches, and driftwood was our only source of supply. We hunted the
shores pretty thoroughly. Everywhere the banks were crumbling as the rising
flood tore at them and carried away great portions with a splash and a
gurgle.
"The island's much smaller than when we landed," said the accurate Swede.
"It won't last long at this rate. We'd better drag the canoe close to the
tent, and be ready to start at a moment's notice. I shall sleep in my
clothes."
He was a little distance off, climbing along the bank, and I heard his
rather jolly laugh as he spoke.
"By Jove!" I heard him call, a moment later, and turned to see what had
caused his exclamation. But for the moment he was hidden by the willows,
and I could not find him.
"What in the world's this?" I heard him cry again, and this time his voice
had become serious.
I ran up quickly and joined him on the bank. He was looking over the river,
pointing at something in the water.
"Good heavens, it's a man's body!" he cried excitedly. "Look!"
A black thing, turning over and over in the foaming waves, swept rapidly
past. It kept disappearing and coming up to the surface again. It was about
twenty feet from the shore, and just as it was opposite to where we stood
it lurched round and looked straight at us. We saw its eyes reflecting the
sunset, and gleaming an odd yellow as the body turned over. Then it gave a
swift, gulping plunge, and dived out of sight in a flash.
"An otter, by gad!" we exclaimed in the same breath, laughing.
It was an otter, alive, and out on the hunt; yet it had looked exactly like
the body of a drowned man turning helplessly in the current. Far below it
came to the surface once again, and we saw its black skin, wet and shining
in the sunlight.
Then, too, just as we turned back, our arms full of driftwood, another
thing happened to recall us to the river bank. This time it really was a
man, and what was more, a man in a boat. Now a small boat on the Danube was
an unusual sight at any time, but here in this deserted region, and at
flood time, it was so unexpected as to constitute a real event. We stood
and stared.
Whether it was due to the slanting sunlight, or the refraction from the
wonderfully illumined water, I cannot say, but, whatever the cause, I found
it difficult to focus my sight properly upon the flying apparition. It
seemed, however, to be a man standing upright in a sort of flat-bottomed
boat, steering with a long oar, and being carried down the opposite shore
at a tremendous pace. He apparently was looking across in our direction,
but the distance was too great and the light too uncertain for us to make
out very plainly what he was about. It seemed to me that he was
gesticulating and making signs at us. His voice came across the water to us
shouting something furiously, but the wind drowned it so that no single
word was audible. There was something curious about the whole
appearance - man, boat, signs, voice - that made an impression on me out of
all proportion to its cause.
"He's crossing himself!" I cried. "Look, he's making the sign of the
Cross!"
"I believe you're right," the Swede said, shading his eyes with his hand
and watching the man out of sight. He seemed to be gone in a moment,
melting away down there into the sea of willows where the sun caught them
in the bend of the river and turned them into a great crimson wall of
beauty. Mist, too, had begun to ruse, so that the air was hazy.
"But what in the world is he doing at nightfall on this flooded river?" I
said, half to myself. "Where is he going at such a time, and what did he
mean by his signs and shouting? D'you think he wished to warn us about
something?"
"He saw our smoke, and thought we were spirits probably," laughed my
companion. "These Hungarians believe in all sorts of rubbish; you remember
the shopwoman at Pressburg warning us that no one ever landed here because
it belonged to some sort of beings outside man's world! I suppose they
believe in fairies and elementals, possibly demons, too. That peasant in
the boat saw people on the islands for the first time in his life," he
added, after a slight pause, "and it scared him, that's all."
The Swede's tone of voice was not convincing, and his manner lacked
something that was usually there. I noted the change instantly while he
talked, though without being able to label it precisely.
"If they had enough imagination," I laughed loudly - I remember trying to
make as much noise as I could - "they might well people a place like this
with the old gods of antiquity. The Romans must have haunted all this
region more or less with their shrines and sacred groves and elemental
deities."
The subject dropped and we returned to our stew-pot, for my friend was not
given to imaginative conversation as a rule. Moreover, just then I remember
feeling distinctly glad that he was not imaginative; his stolid, practical
nature suddenly seemed to me welcome and comforting. It was an admirable
temperament, I felt; he could steer down rapids like a red Indian, shoot
dangerous bridges and whirlpools better than any white man I ever saw in a
canoe. He was a grand fellow for an adventurous trip, a tower of strength
when untoward things happened. I looked at his strong face and light curly
hair as he staggered along under his pile of driftwood (twice the size of
mine!), and I experienced a feeling of relief. Yes, I was distinctly glad
just then that the Swede was - what he was, and that he never made remarks
that suggested more than they said.
"The river's still rising, though," he added, as if following out some
thoughts of his own, and dropping his load with a gasp. "This island will
be under water in two days if it goes on."
"I wish the wind would go down," I said. "I don't care a fig for the
river."
The flood, indeed, had no terrors for us; we could get off at ten minutes'
notice, and the more water the better we liked it. It meant an increasing
current and the obliteration of the treacherous shingle-beds that so often