So rare and unearthly the light is, from
the mountains, full of strange radiance. Then every now and again recurs
the crucifix, at the turning of an open, grassy road, holding a shadow
and a mystery under its pointed hood.
I was startled into consciousness one evening, going alone over a marshy
place at the foot of the mountains, when the sky was pale and unearthly,
invisible, and the hills were nearly black. At a meeting of the tracks
was a crucifix, and between the feet of the Christ a handful of withered
poppies. It was the poppies I saw, then the Christ.
It was an old shrine, the wood-sculpture of a Bavarian peasant. The
Christ was a peasant of the foot of the Alps. He had broad cheekbones
and sturdy limbs. His plain, rudimentary face stared fixedly at the
hills, his neck was stiffened, as if in resistance to the fact of the
nails and the cross, which he could not escape. It was a man nailed down
in spirit, but set stubbornly against the bondage and the disgrace. He
was a man of middle age, plain, crude, with some of the meanness of the
peasant, but also with a kind of dogged nobility that does not yield its
soul to the circumstance.
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