The Old House: A Novel

It was evening. Winter hung white over the earth. Great snowflakes crept over the snow towards the coach. They moved ghostlike over the silent, treeless plain. Mountains rose behind them in the snow. Small church towers and roofs crowded over each other. Here and there little squares flared up in the darkness. Night fell as the coach reached the excise barrier. Beyond, two sentry boxes buried in the snow faced each other. The coachman shouted between his hands. A drowsy voice answered and white cockades began to move in the dark recesses of the boxes. The light of a lamp emerged from the guard’s cottage. Behind the gleam a man with a rifle over his arm strolled towards the vehicle. The high-wheeled travelling coach was painted in two colours: the upper part dark green, the lower, including the wheels, bright yellow. From near the driver’s seat small oil lamps shed their light over the horses’ backs. The animals steamed in the cold. The guard lifted his lantern. At the touch of the crude light, the coach window rattled and descended. In its empty frame appeared a powerful grey head. Two steady cold eyes looked into the guard’s face. The man stepped back. He bowed respectfully. “The Ulwing coach!” He drew the barrier aside. The civil guards in the sentry boxes presented arms. “You may pass!” The light of the coach’s lamps wandered over crooked palings, over waste ground—a large deserted market—the wall of a church. Along the winding lanes lightless houses, squatting above the ditches, sulked with closed eyes in the dark. Further on the houses became higher. Not a living thing was to be seen until near the palace of Prince Grassalkovich a night-watchman waded through the snow. From the end of a stick he held in his hand dangled a lantern. The shadow of his halberd moved on the wall like some black beast rearing over his head. From the tower of the town hall a hoarse voice shouted into the quiet night: “Praised be the Lord Jesus!” and higher up the watchman announced that he was awake. Then the township relapsed into silence. Snow fell leisurely between old gabled roofs. Under jutting eaves streets crept forth from all sides, crooked, suspicious, like conspirators. Where they met they formed a ramshackle square. In the middle of the square the Servites’ Fountain played in front of the church; water murmured frigidly from its spout like a voice from the dark that prayed slowly, haltingly. A solitary lamp at a corner house thrust out from an iron bracket into the street. Whenever it rocked at the wind’s pleasure, the chain creaked gently and the beam of its light shrunk on the wall till it was no bigger than a child’s fist. Another lone lamp in the middle of New Market Place. Its smoky light was absorbed by the falling snow and never reached the ground. Christopher Ulwing drew his head into his fur-collared coat. The almanac proclaimed full moon for to-night. Whenever this happened, the civic authorities saved lamp-oil; could they accept responsibility if the heavens failed to comply with the calendar and left the town in darkness? In any case, at this time of night the only place for peaceful citizens was by their own fireside.