

The Willows

by Algernon Blackwood

(1907)


Contents

 I.
 II. III. IV. V.




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 _Sümpfe_,
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, Pozsóny)
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 growth
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?