The Salzburg Tales (54 page)

I lived in Avallon, a waterside village in a seaport. A woman in the district was divorced for adultery. Her husband was a cabinet minister, a rich man, coarse, luxurious and tyrannical. Public opinion was bitter against his wife because she had left his house and gone to live with her lover, and it was proved that because they were poor,
she had slept with her two children nightly in her lover's bed. The children had to appear in court and give this evidence. The father renounced these children, who he declared were not of his blood, and he left all three in great poverty: this was not condemned, for a woman who forsakes wealth for poverty is obviously poor-spirited, and beneath commiseration: even the poor despise her.

The son was ten years old, the daughter fourteen. I knew her, her name was Viola. She was pretty, but thin, with long black hair, and rather smart with her tongue. Certainly she suffered in such an honest city, where the “Decameron” is forbidden, and England's colonial history is expurgated for the school books.

I saw her mother once, a pretty, dark, sweet woman, who ventured timidly into the ladies' cabin on the ferry, and looked quickly but without expectation of greeting at the female faces decorating the walls. When I raised my hat to her she smiled with pleasure, but with indulgence also: she knew I pitied her, but she regarded us all very calmly from another world. The ladies were indignant that she continued to live in our district. “She should have at least the delicacy to go where she is not known,” said my maiden aunt. Society, great beast of tender skin, blind, with elephant ears, felt indignant, lashed its little tail and got hot round the rump. It required a sacrifice, and when Jumbo wants something the gods themselves obey.

One Wednesday afternoon, the four o'clock ferry, which carried the schoolchildren home from town, was struck amidships by an ocean liner and sank immediately, carrying down more than fifty souls. Thirty children were drowned, and all those who died were from our village of Avallon. I went down to catch the four-thirty ferry and saw the stretchers with bodies brought in already by the rescuers. All the way home, with my books on the seat, I watched the lustrous tide flow in, bearing planks, seats, lifebuoys and splintered wood up into the bays and rivers. Eddies of soot and oil floated past. In a few minutes we reached the spot where the ferry lay with her passengers, and I felt paralysed with a strange and almost voluptuous cramp, and my spirit being wound out of me like a djinn out of a
pot. We went dead slow, with our flag at half-mast, and there was a silence on the boat. I thought of those people sitting below, almost living, with a glow on their cheeks still through the green gloom of the deep-water channel: they seemed a company that had gone apart for some conclave. I believed my two young sisters were there, waiting for me with open eyes, and wanted to dive in, but I could not move. When we neared home I saw my little brother running and jumping on our lawn, so I was reassured.

After a few days, when the last rumours and hopes had died out, and the whole village was in mourning, in the lovely weather, only one piece of fantasy remained: Viola alone had not been found. She must have been carried away, or been lost in the deeper mud of the bottom; the ferry itself had moved several hundred feet. It seemed to my mother and aunt that this was the “judgment of God”; though for what mortal sins the other bereaved women had been punished, no one thought to conjecture.

At the end of a week Viola was found on one end of the wreck, standing upright, uninjured, her right foot simply entangled in a rope. The founts of pity at this word broke their seals and jetted in each breast, and everyone that night had before his eye the image of Viola standing in the green gloom for a week, upright, looking for the rescuers, astonished that they did not come for her, perhaps with a lively word on her lips at their slowness, and then, prisoned by her poor weak foot, decaying, but with her arms still floating up; a watermaiden tangled in a lily-root, and not able to reach the surface. I cried and thought how she died in that attitude to ask pity.

In fact, it turned out that way; or at least, if the church and justice were not moved, for they should be above the frailties of flesh and blood, the women began to lament on her mother's account, to say she was well punished and one could even pity her. The beast was appeased, as in ancient days, by the sacrifice of a virgin.

W
HEN
the Schoolboy's naïve accents had ceased, some of the ladies looked vacant, some looked a little petulant and some smiled
indulgently. The Old German Woman, a Frau Hofrat Privatdozent, included all the ladies in a pleasant glance, and wiping her glasses began to say: It is very foolish of me, no doubt, but somehow our young friend's heroine reminds me of my sister Anna. Poor Anna!

 

M
Y
sister was five years older than I, very handsome and lively, she pleased the young men, and was so audacious in her manners, although innocent, that she had mother and grandmother anxious and she greatly shocked and mortified me. We lived in Riga, in the second storey of a house in Elizabeth Street, which was fashionable in those days; now I don't believe you will even find it, it has vanished, I think: that was long ago!

Our windows matched and faced the large windows of a handsome white house which belonged to a military family. There were old gardens at the side and back of that house, and we would have liked to have gone there to visit, but my father was a liberal and freethinker, and would not cultivate the acquaintance of the military.

My sister Anna was fifteen, and absolutely enchanted with the idea of being in love, of having a fine trousseau and of making a marriage that Riga would talk about. She would lie on the couch for hours while I played with her beautiful hair, building it up into old-fashioned court styles and ringlets, talking about love and lovers, wishing for a plum-coloured silk dress, gesticulating, her brilliant eyes rolling and laughing, sometimes filling with tears, describing the lovers she would like to have, the way she would choose a husband. She sighed to have a great dowry so that she could absolutely choose her husband as a princess: then she would show her free and independent choice by picking a prince! I told her Papa would choose for her.

The eldest son of the house opposite was in Berlin, in the diplomatic service, but the second son, a lieutenant, had his two rooms on the second storey opposite our sitting-rooms; and there he spent hours in the morning and afternoon and evening, dressing and undressing, polishing, blowing, brushing, trimming, burnishing. The mirror of his dressing-table was fixed near one of the windows, so we could see him standing there, examining his chin, smoothing his moustache and brushing his eyebrows with a small stiff brush.

Anna had been away at a young ladies' seminary all the winter of her fifteenth year, and she was so full of the novelties and tattle of the school year and news of the town, that she did not leave off talking for two weeks. Then one evening, coming into the salon, I found her standing perfectly still at the window looking at the house opposite, where the red sunlight blazed on the buttons and nose of the lieutenant, who was once more examining himself with science in the glass.

“Gretl,” she said in a whisper, “how beautiful he is, really!”

I told her primly that one could not say that a young man was beautiful, but she said: “He is beautiful, Gretl, look, there, there is my ideal!”

She talked so much about the young man that I was offended: I was really a severe little thing, and besides, not half so pretty as Anna.

From that hour on, nothing but night and the admonitions of parents drew her from the window. The next day she opened the window when Mama was out and leaned out as if to admire our garden: then she began to read, sew, recline, pose and gaze sentimentally in all directions out of the window. Imagine her disagreeable surprise when she saw the lieutenant walking up the street one evening with a young lady, whose parasol he carried. “It is only his cousin,” she cried out, and began to bang things about the room, and presently sat down and wet her handkerchief and blouse through with tears. Perhaps it was the lieutenant's cousin: at any rate, we did not see the girl any more, and poor Anna took heart again.

Her attentions were not lost on the young man, who at first looked amicably at her, but grew more and more bored by her admiration, as the days went on. He actually gesticulated angrily at her once or twice, and once shut the window with such a bang that splinters of glass flew out of the top panes. At that he was furious, and my sister, somewhat ashamed, but laughing until she got red in the face, hid herself in the curtains. The next morning the glazier fixed up the window and the soldier drew his curtains, pointedly, when he began to tittivate.

Nothing deterred poor Anna: she hung out of the window to see him come out and go down the street: she even waved her handkerchief boldly at him. I was terribly ashamed of Anna. One morning she kept me in the window by force, and looking at the lieutenant began to describe very expressively the passion she felt for him; he must have known almost the words she used, she rolled her eyes and acted so. He came to the window and stared at her fixedly. She turned a little pale and stared back at him. The soldier began with great gravity to remove his clothing; he let his breeches fall to the floor, and at the same time started to undo his underpants. Poor Anna, after a horrified moment, turned her pale face to me, saying, “Oh! Oh!” rushed from the seat and began weeping hysterically on the sofa.

She never looked at the lieutenant again, and he lived at his ease, but she could never hear the family mentioned without blushing for years after. I used to peep cautiously from behind the brocade curtains, at times, at him examining his face and profile eternally in the mirror, and had the impression that if one went into his room alone, one would find his face painted on the mirror by force of its having been reflected there so many times. He gave me the impression of one of these wooden soldiers, so stiff and high-coloured, who stand at the gates of toy castles. My first husband was a colonel, to think of that! And poor Anna, at twenty, ran away; dear me, that was a sad story, for she died that year and her husband came back to us a broken man, absolutely a broken man, and my father and mother out of pity made him their friend, and so he stayed in our house for years. He was my
husband's friend for years and visited us every Sunday. Poor Anna! Well, to think of it all now, so many years ago!

“T
HAT
reminds me of another thing, too,” said the Frau Hofrat Privatdozent. “Ten years ago I could not remember these things, but now all the things that happened in my childhood are coming back to me. Dear me, how we laughed and how excited we were: it was a wonder of God,
ein wunder Gottes
, but I talk too much: another time.”

“No, no, now,” said the Musician. “Why, you recall to me all the old Europe of our town families: I could sit here and listen to you all the evening, Frau Hofrat Privatdozent Ernenberg: it is more music to me than “Don Juan”.

W
HY
, it is nothing at all, said the Old Lady, but with us, you know, at our age (I mean mine), one thing brings another. We sit and some slight odour or sound brings back days and months of our youth, and hey-presto, the day has flown and the lamps are lighted and someone is bringing us our evening soup before we know it. It is a pleasant dispensation of providence to make the slowfooted aged days pass quickly and gaily. Well, recall me, for I wander, but it is no story. I was just thinking of the time so long ago when that happened. Oh, it was a marvel, no-one could believe it, and everyone talked about it, as about a miracle, or the last day, for a year ahead: yes, a
wunder Gottes
it was. I was a little thing then, and poor Anna's friend Frieda was the daughter of the man who was to be the new stationmaster.

For we were in Eydtkuhnen on the frontier and they were opening the railway from Koenigsberg to Kovno. Nobody had seen a train. In the newspapers only pictures had appeared, and we stared at the engine, that great iron creature that took you across the country for a ride, and we were so agitated that when the time drew near we
could hardly sleep at night. There were lots of people in the town who said it would never go, or else there would be terrible accidents, and then there were others more cautious who said it would do if you had to go to see some relative who was dying, but that otherwise, the donkey-cart and trap were the best. But the whole town was
en féte
. And presently the engine came in. Ach, that was wonderful! Frieda's father, the stationmaster, brought us to the engine-driver and he took us for a drive up and down the track, for father was town councillor then, and my brothers were all well-known in the town. That was a wonderful time then: they went mad with excitement, and everyone said, ‘See the progress we are making: science is wonderful.' My brother Julius went down to see the wonder, but Theodor stayed at home because the train came in at three o'clock and that was the time for his nap.

My brothers were all doctors, but Theodor was such a comic as you never saw. For twenty-five years he played cards at night from eight o'clock to one: he took two hours over his lunch and no-one could disturb him, and after lunch he went and napped for three hours, then he had his
sprechstunden
from five to seven. Every afternoon at two o'clock when he went into the back room to take his nap he put felt covers over his two cages of canaries, so that they could nap with him. It was such fun! Twenty-five years he had canaries, and they took a nap with him after lunch.

He worked besides, getting up for his first consultations at eight in the morning. My brother Julius was a good doctor too, ach,
ohne spass
, a good man, a wonderful doctor. When I think how good he was—if he were here now to see how I eat! But he did women's diseases and Theodor used to laugh at him for it! “How can you go poking into women's chamber-pots,” he said to Julius: “and washing babies' bibs,” and he called him “the diaper-king”: always, he called him “the diaper-king”. But never mind: Julius was a good man; and imagine, after he died we found in his desk two gold medals from the University of Kiel—he had won them, and nobody ever knew. He was so modest: a good man. His wife never knew he had the
gold medals. That is nice, isn't it? That is modest. They were all clever, my brothers: but Theodor did not like to work too hard; if anyone was really sick he was angry, and if any of his patients died, he used to send quick, quick to another doctor to come and make the certificate: he would never in his life look at the dead. He did not like trouble: in summer when the babies had convulsions, or diarrhoea, he did not like to go; even to my babies, he would not come. He only liked quiet disorders, not dangerous, and so he specialised in stomach complaints. For they are usually not serious, a laxative, a little exercise, and so on.