The Willows Read online

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  THE WILLOWS

  Algernon Blackwood(1907)

  I

  After leaving Vienna, and long before you come to Budapest, the Danubeenters a region of singular loneliness and desolation, where its watersspread away on all sides regardless of a main channel, and the countrybecomes a swamp for miles upon miles, covered by a vast sea of lowwillow-bushes. On the big maps this deserted area is painted in a fluffyblue, growing fainter in color as it leaves the banks, and across it may beseen in large straggling letters the word Sumpfe, meaning marshes.

  In high flood this great acreage of sand, shingle-beds, and willow-grownislands is almost topped by the water, but in normal seasons the bushesbend and rustle in the free winds, showing their silver leaves to thesunshine in an ever-moving plain of bewildering beauty. These willows neverattain to the dignity of trees; they have no rigid trunks; they remainhumble bushes, with rounded tops and soft outline, swaying on slender stemsthat answer to the least pressure of the wind; supple as grasses, and socontinually shifting that they somehow give the impression that the entireplain is moving and alive. For the wind sends waves rising and falling overthe whole surface, waves of leaves instead of waves of water, green swellslike the sea, too, until the branches turn and lift, and then silvery whiteas their underside turns to the sun.

  Happy to slip beyond the control of the stern banks, the Danube herewanders about at will among the intricate network of channels intersectingthe islands everywhere with broad avenues down which the waters pour with ashouting sound; making whirlpools, eddies, and foaming rapids; tearing atthe sandy banks; carrying away masses of shore and willow-clumps; andforming new islands innumerably which shift daily in size and shape andpossess at best an impermanent life, since the flood-time obliterates theirvery existence.

  Properly speaking, this fascinating part of the river's life begins soonafter leaving Pressburg, and we, in our Canadian canoe, with gipsy tent andfrying-pan on board, reached it on the crest of a rising flood aboutmid-July. That very same morning, when the sky was reddening beforesunrise, we had slipped swiftly through still-sleeping Vienna, leaving it acouple of hours later a mere patch of smoke against the blue hills of theWienerwald on the horizon; we had breakfasted below Fischeramend under agrove of birch trees roaring in the wind; and had then swept on the tearingcurrent past Orth, Hainburg, Petronell (the old Roman Carnuntum of MarcusAurelius), and so under the frowning heights of Thelsen on a spur of theCarpathians, where the March steals in quietly from the left and thefrontier 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 ashingle-bed, and twisted us like a cork in many a sudden belching whirlpoolbefore the towers of Pressburg (Hungarian, Poszony) showed against the sky;and then the canoe, leaping like a spirited horse, flew at top speed underthe grey walls, negotiated safely the sunken chain of the Fliegende Bruckeferry, turned the corner sharply to the left, and plunged on yellow foaminto the wilderness of islands, sandbanks, and swamp-land beyond--the landof the willows.

  The change came suddenly, as when a series of bioscope pictures snaps downon the streets of a town and shifts without warning into the scenery oflake and forest. We entered the land of desolation on wings, and in lessthan half an hour there was neither boat nor fishing-hut nor red roof, norany single sign of human habitation and civilization within sight. Thesense of remoteness from the world of humankind, the utter isolation, thefascination of this singular world of willows, winds, and waters, instantlylaid its spell upon us both, so that we allowed laughingly to one anotherthat we ought by rights to have held some special kind of passport to admitus, and that we had, somewhat audaciously, come without asking leave into aseparate little kingdom of wonder and magic--a kingdom that was reservedfor the use of others who had a right to it, with everywhere unwrittenwarnings to trespassers for those who had the imagination to discover them.

  Though still early in the afternoon, the ceaseless buffetings of a mosttempestuous wind made us feel weary, and we at once began casting about fora suitable camping-ground for the night. But the bewildering character ofthe islands made landing difficult; the swirling flood carried us in shoreand then swept us out again; the willow branches tore our hands as weseized them to stop the canoe, and we pulled many a yard of sandy bank intothe water before at length we shot with a great sideways blow from the windinto a backwater and managed to beach the bows in a cloud of spray. Then welay panting and laughing after our exertions on the hot yellow sand,sheltered from the wind, and in the full blaze of a scorching sun, acloudless blue sky above, and an immense army of dancing, shouting willowbushes, closing in from all sides, shining with spray and clapping theirthousand 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 hadtraveled from the source in the Black Forest, and how he had often beenobliged 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 alittle farther into safety up the sand, and then composing himself for anap.

  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 journeythat 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 travelingcompanion as my friend, the Swede.

  We had made many similar journeys together, but the Danube, more than anyother river I knew, impressed us from the very beginning with itsaliveness. From its tiny bubbling entry into the world among the pinewoodgardens of Donaueschingen, until this moment when it began to play thegreat river-game of losing itself among the deserted swamps, unobserved,unrestrained, it had seemed to us like following the grown of some livingcreature. Sleepy at first, but later developing violent desires as itbecame conscious of its deep soul, it rolled, like some huge fluid being,through all the countries we had passed, holding our little craft on itsmighty shoulders, playing roughly with us sometimes, yet always friendlyand well-meaning, till at length we had come inevitably to regard it as aGreat Personage.

  How, indeed, could it be otherwise, since it told us so much of its secretlife? 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 bythe rapid tearing of the pebbles along its bed, so great is its hurryingspeed. We knew, too, the voice of its gurgling whirlpools, suddenlybubbling up on a surface previously quite calm; the roar of its shallowsand swift rapids; its constant steady thundering below all mere surfacesounds; and that ceaseless tearing of its icy waters at the banks. How itstood up and shouted when the rains fell flat upon its face! And how itslaughter roared out when the wind blew up-stream and tried to stop itsgrowing speed! We knew all its sounds and voices, its tumblings andfoamings, its unnecessary splashing against the bridges; thatself-conscious chatter when there were hills to look on; the affecteddignity of its speech when it passed through the little towns, far tooimportant to laugh; and all these faint, sweet whisperings when the suncaught it fairly in some slow curve and poured down upon it till the steamrose.

  It was full of tricks, too, in its early life before the great world knewit. There were places in the upper reaches among the Swabian forests, whenyet the first whispers of its destiny had not reached it, where it electedto disappear through holes in the ground, to appear again on the other sideof 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 andwade and push the canoe through miles of shallows.

  And a chief pleasure
, in those early days of its irresponsible youth, wasto lie low, like Brer Fox, just before the little turbulent tributariescame 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 verylevels different, the Danube utterly declining to recognize the newcomer.Below Passau, however, it gave up this particular trick, for there the Inncomes in with a thundering power impossible to ignore, and so pushes andincommodes the parent river that there is hardly room for them in the longtwisting gorge that follows, and the Danube is shoved this way and thatagainst the cliffs, and forced to hurry itself with great waves and muchdashing to and fro in order to get through in time. And during the fightour canoe slipped down from its shoulder to its breast, and had the time ofits life among the struggling waves. But the Inn taught the old river alesson, 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 knowother aspects of the