I love the steamboat landings on the Salzkammergut Lakes, the old gray-black ones and the newer yellow ones. They smell so good, as if from years of soaked-up baking in the sun. In the water round their thick pylons scores of minuscule gray-silver fish are forever scuttling here and there, suddenly swarming in one place, suddenly dispersing and disappearing. The water smells so delight ful under these landing docks, like the skin of fresh fish. When a steamboat docks, all the pylons rise and the landing gathers all its strength to endure the shock. The steamboat engine with its red paddle-wheels fights a stubborn battle with the obstinate landing holding it off. The landing will not yield, defending itself, so it seems, only insofar as it is absolutely necessary, while trembling with the force of its inner resolve. At last its quiet perseverance wins out and the boat lets loose, gives way, sails off again.
For hours and hours the landing lies in wait for steamboats, withering in the heat of the sun, lonesome, shunned.
All of a sudden agitated people in light clothing approach and amass themselves on the landing. “Don’t step too far forward,” the parents warn and look at the landing as an imminent danger. I could well observe with some justification: “Somewhere, apart from the rest, two figures silently lean body to body against the railing.” But that’s an observation of the old school and so it’s best to keep it to oneself. Still I can’t deny that an obstinate stare of extended duration down into the depths from the railing, while standing in the close proximity of a young lady, often elicits its own loud and clear, albeit unspoken, response. On the landing boards, fish too small to eat are sacrificed. You catch them, hurl them against the wood, gloating over their dance of death. It’s true that between the teeth of a little pike dying is hardly a pleasant spectacle. But who after all ever dies peacefully in bed. Sometimes the landings are also crowded with the committees and the presidiums of yacht races. Sailboat regattas. For hours on end they peer through binoculars at a mysterious spot in the lake, and nobody else has the vaguest idea what’s going on. Still, everyone’s excited. Here and there a technical remark is overheard. Suddenly the crowd cries hurrah and notes are frantically scribbled. Now the landing is like the hilltop perch of a field marshal surveying a battle. Everyone follows the outcome with his binoculars. And the landing lies right there in the thick of things. But then again, on moonlit nights it lies like a dark leviathan, reaching forth, stretching its blackness out over the silver lake.
I love the steamboat landings on the Salzkammergut Lakes, the old gray-black ones and the newer yellow ones. They are for me a sort of sign of summer freedom, summer serenity, scented as if from years of soaked-up baking in the sun.