An Unexpected Reunion by Johann Peter Hebel
“What the earth has returned to me, it will not withhold a second time.”
A good fifty years ago and more in Falun in Sweden, a young miner kissed his pretty young bride-to-be and said to her, “On Saint Lucia’s Day, the pastor will bless our love. Then we shall be man and wife and build a little nest for ourselves.” “And peace and love shall dwell there,” said the bride-to-be with a gentle smile, “because you are my one and only, and without you I would rather be in the grave than any other place.” But prior to Saint Lucia’s Day, when the minister called out their names for a second time and said, “if any of you know just cause or impediment as to why these two persons should not be joined together in holy matrimony,” Death answered. For when the young miner passed by her house the next day, dressed in his black miner’s suit — a miner is always dressed in his funeral clothes — he tapped twice on her window and wished her a good morning but not a good evening. He never returned from the mine, and in vain did she sew, that very same morning, a red border on a black handkerchief for him to wear on their wedding day. But when he did not come back, she laid it aside and wept and never forgot him.
Meanwhile, the city of Lisbon in Portugal was destroyed by an earthquake, the Seven Years’ War drew to a close, Emperor Francis I died, the Jesuit order was dissolved, and Poland was partitioned, and Empress Maria Teresa died, Struensee was executed, America was liberated, and the combined French and Spanish forces could not take Gibraltar. The Turks imprisoned General Stein in the Veterani Cave in Hungary, and Emperor Joseph died too. Karl Gustav of Sweden conquered Russian Finland, the French Revolution and the long war began, and Emperor Leopold went to his grave also. Napoleon conquered Prussia, the English bombarded Copenhagen, the farmers sowed and the farmers reaped. The millers milled, the blacksmiths hammered, and the miners dug for seams of metal in their workshops underground.
But in the year 1809, a little before or after Saint John’s Eve, when the miners of Falun were opening a passageway between shafts, a good three hundred feet below ground, they dug from the rubble and vitriolic water the body of a young man, permeated with ferrous sulphate but otherwise undecayed and unchanged, so that his features were still perfectly recognizable, as if he had died an hour before or simply fell asleep at work. Yet when they brought him into the daylight, his mother and father, his friends and acquaintances, all were long dead, and there was no one who knew the sleeping youth or could remember his misfortune, until the woman arrived who had once been engaged to him, he who had gone underground and never returned. Gray and bent, she hobbled on a crutch to where he lay and recognized her bridegroom; more from rapture than from grief, she sank onto the corpse of her beloved, and it took her some time to recover from the violent emotions stirring within her. “He is my betrothed,” she said at last, “who I have mourned these fifty years and who God has allowed me to see once more before I die. Eight days before our wedding, he went into the mine and never came back.” All those around her were moved to sadness and tears, when they saw the former bride in her withered old age and the bridegroom still in the flower of his youth, and saw how the flame of young love was rekindled in her breast after those fifty years; but never again did he open his lips to smile, or open his eyes to gaze upon her in recognition; and they saw how she, his sole relation, the only one who had any claim on him, had the miners carry his body into her parlor, until a grave was prepared for him in the churchyard. The following day, when the grave was prepared and the miners had come to bare him away, she opened a small chest, tied the black handkerchief with the red border around his neck, and went out in her Sunday dress, as if it were their wedding day and not his funeral. Then, as he was laid to rest in the churchyard, she said, “Sleep well, for a week or a day longer, in your cold wedding bed, and don’t let time weigh too heavily. I only have a little more left to do. I’ll be coming soon. Our day will be coming soon.
“What the earth has returned to me, it will not withhold a second time,” she said as she left, looking back once more.
Johann Peter Hebel (10 May 1760 – 22 September 1826) was a writer, educator, theologian, and publisher. He lived in what is now the state of Baden-Württemberg, in Southern Germany, close to the border with Switzerland. He first achieved prominence with his collection Alemannic Poems, written in the dialect of the region. He is also known for the short stories tales that appeared in calendars and almanacs, a popular and accessible writing medium at the time. It is from one these collections, A Rhineland Family Treasury, that “Unexpected Reunion” story is taken. Hebel was widely admired during his lifetime and by following generations. In particular, this story was favorite of Franz Kafka, Walter Benjamin, and Elias Canetti.
