Page:Halek's Stories and Evensongs.pdf/328

 especially thought that it would be too much to sit there every day, that it would oppress her too heavily. Because in that ravine there was not any sound to be heard, everything was, as it were, embedded in silence, and if a step rustled it startled you. The rocky walls stood narrowly opposed to one another: if they had had hands they could have stretched them out and shaken them. And these rocky walls rose high into the air: high aloft the merest vestige of blue sky bent above them in a tiny narrow strip; all the rest of the sky was banished from the view. Moreover sometimes a large bird appeared high above it all with a strange whistling note which startled you as much as when a footstep rustled.

What was it at home in the cemetery, compared with this huge grave! If she had ever felt oppressed in a grave (but she never did feel oppressed) she had only to sit upright or stand and she saw in a moment all the surrounding world: all the other graves, the ruddy-painted cross with the white-iron figure of the Christus, the whole sky, and her cheerfulness was at once restored. But here, if you felt oppressed, standing upright was of slight service to you. You must go quite away, and yourself cause a kind of rustling with your own footsteps, a kind of crunching of the gravel, which here was the source of so much trepidation.

And then a little pebble sometimes rolled over the rocky wall, and you could hear above measure distinctly its every tap against the rocky angles of the stone. Or sometimes a lizard, sunning itself, let fall a morsel of earth, and this, crumbling and rolling down, rustled in a quite mysterious manner. Sometimes a puff of wind carried a leaflet hither from the beech-trees which grew yonder above the ravine, and this leaflet quivered and fluttered in the air as if it trembled and dreaded to take the final plunge. Here every feeble whisper became a voice.

Sometimes when they were seated here they had not the least wish to utter a word. A word here was re-echoed from the walls of the ravine, the walls themselves spoke their own language, and it was in a manner cheery enough—but you could not bear it long. Here they generally uttered their thoughts to one another only in whispers, seated side by side, in order that they might not infuriate those walls. But more than once it happened that even those walls themselves began to whisper. For the pellet of earth falling over them and fraying to pieces was also a whispering, and the leaflet falling from above and trembling was also a whispering, and such unexpected whisperings made the children