Effi Briest (13 page)

‘True enough my dear Golchowski,’ said Innstetten, ‘but in life you can never get away from contradictions like that. And being a prince and achieving greatness doesn’t help at all.’

‘No, no, greatness doesn’t help at all.’

Probably this conversation about the Prince would have continued had not the railway signal-bell announced the imminent arrival of a train. Innstetten looked at the time.

‘What train is that, Golchowski?’

‘It’s the Danzig express; it doesn’t stop here, but I always go up and count the coaches, and sometimes there’s somebody I know standing at a window. Just beyond my yard there are some steps up the embankment to lineman 417’s hut…’

‘Oh, we’ll take advantage of that,’ said Effi. ‘I love watching trains…’

‘Well then my lady, it’s high time.’

And so all three of them went out and took up position, when they got to the top, beside the lineman’s hut in a strip of garden which at the moment was under snow, though a space had been shovelled clear. The lineman was there already with his flag in his hand. And now the train raced through the station and in the next instant was passing the strip of garden. Effi was so excited that she saw nothing and was left as if spellbound, looking after the last coach which had a brakeman sitting on top.

‘At six-fifty it gets into Berlin,’ said Innstetten, ‘and an hour later, if the wind is in the right direction, the folk at Hohen-Cremmen will hear it rattling past in the distance. Would you like to be on it, Effi?’

She said nothing. But when he looked over at her he saw that there was a tear in her eye.

Innstetten and his wife had appeared punctually, but despite their punctuality they had arrived after the other guests; Pastor Lindequist, old Frau Trippel and Miss Trippelli herself were already there. Gieshübler – in a blue tail-coat with matt gold buttons, and pince-nez sporting a broad black ribbon that lay across his brilliant white piqué waistcoat like some knightly order – Gieshübler was having difficulty mastering his excitement. ‘May I make the introductions: Baron and Baroness Innstetten, Frau Pastor Trippel, Fraulein Marietta Trippelli.’ Pastor Lindequist, whom they all knew, stood aside smiling.

Miss Trippelli, in her early thirties, very masculine in appearance and of a distinctly humorous disposition, had until the introductions occupied the place of honour on the sofa. The introductions over however, going towards a high-backed chair that stood nearby, she said, ‘If your ladyship would be so good as to assume the burdens and hazards of your office. For one might well,’ and she pointed to the sofa, ‘speak of “hazards” in this instance. I’ve been telling Gieshübler this for donkey’s years, with alas no effect; kind as he is, he is also quite, quite stubborn.’

‘But Marietta…’

‘This sofa, you see, which first saw the light of day fifty years ago, is constructed according to an obsolete trap-door principle, and if one entrusts oneself to it without previously erecting a tower of cushions beneath one, one disappears down the trap, or at least far enough to leave one’s knees towering up like a monument.’ All this Miss Trippelli delivered with an equal measure of bonhomie and assurance in a tone designed to convey: ‘You may be Baroness Innstetten, but I am Miss Trippelli.’

Gieshübler was extremely fond of his artist friend and thought highly of her talents; but all his enthusiasm could not blind him to the fact that she had been vouchsafed only a modest portion of social refinement. And such refinement was precisely what he himself cultivated. ‘Marietta dear,’ he intervened, ‘you have such a charming and amusing way of talking about these things; but on the subject of my sofa you are quite wrong, and let the experts decide between us. Even a man like Prince Kochukov –’

‘Oh please, Gieshübler, leave
him
out of it. Why always Kochukov? If you
go on, her ladyship is going to suspect that I belong to the prince – who, by the way, is only one of the lesser princes and has no more than a thousand souls, or rather used to have (in the old days when they still counted souls) – she is going to suspect that I’m soul one thousand and one. No, it’s really not like that; you know my motto Gieshübler, “Press on regardless”. Kochukov is a good chap and he’s my friend, but he doesn’t understand the first thing about art and matters of that sort, certainly not about music, though he composes masses and oratorios – when they dabble in art most Russian princes incline to the religious or the orthodox – and questions of furnishing and interior decoration certainly rank among the many things of which he has no understanding. Something only has to be colourful and cost a great deal of money and anyone can sell it to him as a thing of beauty, that’s how much class he has.’

Innstetten was enjoying himself, and Pastor Lindequist’s satisfaction was plain for all to see. But her daughter’s forthright tone caused good old Frau Trippel one embarrassing moment after another, while Gieshübler felt the conversation was taking such an awkward turn that termination was indicated. An end best served by some musical items. It could be assumed Marietta would not choose Lieder of objectionable content, and even if she did, her artistry was such that it would ennoble the content. So he intervened: ‘Dear Marietta, I have ordered our little repast for eight. That leaves three quarters of an hour, unless you perhaps prefer to sing us a jolly song as we eat, or perhaps to leave it until we have left the table…’

‘Gieshübler, I ask you. You, an aesthete. There is nothing more unaesthetic than singing on a full stomach. In addition to which – and I know you are a man of culinary discrimination, indeed a gourmet – in addition to which it all tastes better when you have the thing behind you. Art first, then walnut ice, that’s the proper order.’

‘Then I may bring you the music, Marietta?’

‘Bring the music? If I know you Gieshübler, you’ll have whole bookcases full of music, and I can’t sing you the entire collection. Music indeed! Which music, Gieshübler, that’s what matters. And make sure it’s in the right range, alto…’

‘I’ll find it.’ And he busied himself at a cabinet, pulling out drawer after drawer while Miss Trippelli moved her chair round the table to the left, so that she was sitting close to Effi.

‘I’m curious to know what he’ll bring,’ she said. At this Effi experienced a slight sense of embarrassment.

‘I rather imagine,’ she answered, taken aback, ‘something by Gluck, something quite dramatic… Indeed, my dear Fräulein, if I may make so bold as to comment, I am surprised to hear that you are only a singer. I
should have thought that your particular talents were very much for the stage. Your appearance, your presence, your voice… I haven’t seen much of that sort of thing, only on short visits to Berlin… when I was still half a child. But I should have thought Orpheus or Kriemhild or the Vestal Virgin…’

Miss Trippelli shook her head, gazing into abysses, but failed to produce a response, because just at that moment Gieshübler reappeared and presented her with half a dozen scores which his friend took and discarded in quick succession. ‘“Erl-King”… ah, bah; “Mill-stream, peace to your babbling”… But Gieshübler, I ask you, you’re a marmot, you’ve been asleep for seven years… And Löwe’s ballads; not exactly the latest thing either. “The Bells of Speyer”… Oh, all that ding, dong, ding, really it’s just cheap sensationalism, it’s tasteless and passé. Ah, but here we have “Sir Olaf”… now that’s all right.’

And she stood up, and sang ‘Olaf’ to the pastor’s accompaniment with great assurance and bravura, receiving applause all round.

Other similarly romantic pieces were then found, ‘Flying Dutchman’, ‘Zampa’, and then the ‘The Boy on the Heath’, all things that she sailed through serenely with consummate virtuosity; Effi seemed spellbound by words and music alike.

When Miss Trippelli had finished the ‘The Boy on the Heath’, she said ‘That will be enough,’ a pronouncement she uttered with such finality that neither Gieshübler nor anybody else had the temerity to make any further request of her. Least of all Effi. She merely said, after Gieshübler’s friend had sat down beside her again, ‘If only I could finds words to say, my dear Fraulein, how grateful I am to you. All so beautiful, so assured, so accomplished. But there is another thing, if you will pardon me, that I admire almost more than all that, and that is the serenity with which you are able to perform these pieces. I am so susceptible to impressions that I’m all a-quiver at the merest mention of ghosts and can scarcely recover my self-control. And you perform these things so powerfully, so shatteringly and are yourself perfectly cheerful and good-humoured.’

‘Yes, my lady, art is like that. Not to speak of the theatre from which, mercifully I may say, I have been preserved. For, proof as I quite certainly feel myself to be against its temptations – it is fatal for one’s reputation, and that is the best thing we have. In addition to which it blunts one’s sensibilities, as colleagues have assured me a hundred times. They go about poisoning and stabbing one another, and then Romeo whispers a bad joke in the dead Juliet’s ear, or a malicious bit of gossip, or presses a little billet doux into her hand.’

‘I find it incomprehensible. And to come back to what I am indebted to
you for this evening, for example the ghostly bit in “Olaf”, I can assure you that when I have an anguished dream, or when I think I can hear the faint sound of dancing or music above my head when there’s really no-one there, or when someone slips past my bed, I am beside myself and can’t forget it for days.’

‘Yes, my lady, what you are describing is something quite different, something real, or something that could be real. A ghost which stalks through a ballad doesn’t scare me, but a ghost which stalks through my room is a very unpleasant matter, to me or anyone else. Our feelings in that regard are exactly the same.’

‘So have you had that experience too?’

‘Certainly. At Kochukov’s too. And I’ve made it a condition this time that I sleep somewhere else, perhaps in the English governess’s room. She’s a Quaker, so I’m bound to be safe.’

‘You think these things are possible then?’

‘My dear lady, when you’ve reached my age and taken the knocks I have – been to Russia and even spent six months in Romania – you think anything is possible. There are so many bad people, and so you find the other thing too, you might say the one goes with the other.’

Effi listened with attention.

‘I come,’ continued Miss Tripelli, ‘of a very enlightened family – except that Mother never quite went along with it – but nevertheless Father said to me at the time of that business of the spirit-writing, “Listen Marie, there is something in this.” And he was right, there is something in it. In fact they’re lurking all round us, right and left, behind and in front of us. You’ll find out.’

At that moment Gieshübler came and offered Effi his arm, Innstetten took Marietta and Pastor Lindequist followed with the widow. In which order they sat down to eat.