The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries Volume Xii Part 83

"Yes, I was, because you spoke of my still being so young. Certainly I am still young; but that makes no difference. During our happy days Innstetten used to read aloud to me in the evening. He had very good books, and in one of them there was a story about a man who had been called away from a merry table. The following morning he asked how it had been after he left. Somebody answered: 'Oh, there were all sorts of things, but you really didn't miss anything.' You see, mama, these words have impressed themselves upon my memory--It doesn't signify very much if one is called away from the table a little early."

Mrs. von Briest remained silent. Effi lifted herself up a little higher and said: "Now that I have talked to you about old times and also about Innstetten, I must tell you something else, dear mama."

"You are getting excited, Effi."

"No, no, to tell about the burden of my heart will not excite me, it will quiet me. And so I wanted to tell you that I am dying reconciled to G.o.d and men, reconciled also to _him_."

"Did you cherish in your heart such great bitterness against him?

Really--pardon me, my dear Effi, for mentioning it now--really it was you who brought down sorrow upon yourself and your husband."

Effi a.s.sented. "Yes, mama, and how sad that it should be so. But when all the terrible things happened, and finally the scene with Annie--you know what I mean--I turned the tables on him, mentally, if I may use the ridiculous comparison, and came to believe seriously that he was to blame, because he was prosaic and calculating, and toward the end cruel. Then curses upon him crossed my lips."

"Does that trouble you now?"

"Yes. And I am anxious that he shall know how, during my days of illness here, which have been almost my happiest, how it has become clear to my mind that he was right in his every act. In the affair with poor Crampas--well, after all, what else could he have done? Then the act by which he wounded me most deeply, the teaching of my own child to shun me, even in that he was right, hard and painful as it is for me to admit it. Let him know that I died in this conviction. It will comfort and console him, and may reconcile him. He has much that is good in his nature and was as n.o.ble as anybody can be who is not truly in love."

Mrs. von Briest saw that Effi was exhausted and seemed to be either sleeping or about to go to sleep. She rose quietly from her chair and went out. Hardly had she gone when Effi also got up, and sat at the open window to breathe in the cool night air once more. The stars glittered and not a leaf stirred in the park. But the longer she listened the more plainly she again heard something like soft rain falling on the plane trees. A feeling of liberation came over her.

"Rest, rest."

It was a month later and September was drawing to an end. The weather was beautiful, but the foliage in the park began to show a great deal of read and yellow and since the equinox, which had brought three stormy days, the leaves lay scattered in every direction. In the circular plot a slight change had been made. The sundial was gone and in the place where it had stood there lay since yesterday a white marble slab with nothing on it but "Effi Briest" and a cross beneath.

This had been Em's last request. "I should like to have back my old name on my stone; I brought no honor to the other." This had been promised her.

The marble slab had arrived and been placed in position yesterday, and Briest and his wife were sitting in view of it, looking at it and the heliotrope, which had been spared, and which now bordered the stone.

Rollo lay beside them with his head on his paws.

Wilke, whose spats were growing wider and wider, brought the breakfast and the mail, and old Mr. von Briest said: "Wilke, order the little carriage. I am going to drive across the country with my wife."

Mrs. von Briest had meanwhile poured the coffee and was looking at the circle and its flower bed. "See, Briest, Rollo is lying by the stone again. He is really taking it harder than we. He wont eat any more, either."

"Well, Luise, it is the brute creature. That is just what I have always said. We don't amount to as much as we think. But here we always talk about instinct. In the end I think it is the best."

"Don't speak that way. When you begin to philosophize--don't take offense--Briest, you show your incompetence. You have a good understanding, but you can't tackle such questions."

"That's true."

"And if it is absolutely necessary to discuss questions there are entirely different ones, Briest, and I can tell you that not a day pa.s.ses, since the poor child has been lying here, but such questions press themselves on me."

"What questions?"

"Whether after all we are perhaps not to blame?"

"Nonsense, Luise. What do you mean?"

"Whether we ought not to have disciplined her differently. You and I particularly, for Niemeyer is only a cipher; he leaves everything in doubt. And then, Briest, sorry as I am--your continual use of ambiguous expressions--and finally, and here I accuse myself too, for I do not desire to come off innocent in this matter, I wonder if she was not too young, perhaps?"

Rollo, who awoke at these words, shook his head gravely and Briest said calmly: "Oh, Luise, don't--that is _too_ wide a field."

EXTRACTS FROM "MY CHILDHOOD YEARS" (1894)

By THEODOR FONTANE

TRANSLATED BY WILLIAM A. COOPER, A.M.

a.s.sociate Professor of German, Leland Stanford Jr. University

On one of the last days of March, in the year 1819, a chaise drove up before the apothecary's shop at the sign of the Lion, in Neu-Ruppin, and a young couple, who a short time before had jointly purchased the shop, alighted from the carriage and were received by the servants of the house. The husband was only twenty-three years of age--for people married very young in those days, just after the war. The wife was twenty-one. They Were my parents....

I was born there on the 30th of December that same year. With my mother it was a matter of life and death, for which reason, whenever she was twitted with favoring me, she was accustomed simply to reply: "That is because I suffered most for him." In this favored position I remained a long time, some eighteen years, till the birth of a late child, my youngest sister, for whom I stood sponsor and whom I even held during the christening. This was a great honor for me, but with it went hand in hand my dethronement by this very sister. It goes without saying that as the youngest child she straightway became the darling of the family.

At Easter, 1819, my father took possession of the apothecary's shop in Neu-Ruppin, which he had acquired at a most favorable price, for a song, so to speak; at Easter, 1826, after three of my four brothers and sisters had been born there, he disposed of the property. Whenever this early sale of the business became a topic of conversation, it was always characterized as disastrous for my father and the whole family. But unjustly. The disastrous feature, which revealed itself many years later--and fortunately even then in a bearable form, for my papa was truly a lucky man--lay not in the particular act of the sale, but in the character of my father, who always spent more than his income, and would not have given up the habit, even if he had remained in Neu-Ruppin. That he confessed to me with his peculiar frankness many, many times, when he had grown old and I was no longer young. "I was still half a boy when I married," he was wont to say, "and my too early independence explains everything." Whether or not he was right, this is not the place to say. Generally speaking, his habits were anything but businesslike; he took his dreams of good fortune for realities and applied himself to the cultivation of "n.o.ble pa.s.sions,"

without ever stopping to think that at best he had but modest means at his disposal. His first extravagance was a horse and carriage; then he soon acquired a pa.s.sion for gaming, and, during the seven years from 1819 to 1826, he gambled away a small fortune. The chief winner was the lord of a neighboring manor. When, thirty years later, the son of this lord loaned me a small sum of money, my father said to me: "Don't hesitate to take the money; his father took ten thousand thalers from me at dummy whist, a little at a time." Perhaps this figure was too high, but however that may be, the sum was at all events large enough to throw his credit and debit out of balance and to make him, among other things, a very tardy payer of interest. Now in ordinary circ.u.mstances, if, for example, he could have had recourse to mortgages and the like, this would not have been, for a time at least, a wholly unbearable situation; but unfortunately it so happened that my father's chief creditor was his own father, who now took occasion to give expression to his only too justified displeasure, both in letters and in personal interviews. To make the situation even more oppressive, these reproaches were approved, and hence made doubly severe, by my mother, who stood wholly on her father-in-law's side. In short, the further matters went, the more my father was placed between two fires, and for no other reason than to extricate himself from a position which continually injured his pride he resolved to sell the property and business, the exceptional productiveness of which was as well known to him as to anybody else, in spite of the fact that he was the very opposite of a business man. After all, his whole plan proved to be, at least in the beginning and from his point of view, thoroughly proper and advantageous. He received for the apothecary's shop double the original purchase price, and saw himself thereby all at once put in a position to satisfy his creditors, who were at the same time his accusers. And he did it, too. He paid back the sum his father had advanced him, asked his wife, half jokingly, half scoffingly, whether perchance she wished to invest her money "more safely and more advantageously," and thereby achieved what for seven years he had been longing for, namely, freedom and independence.

Relieved from all irksome tutelage, he found himself suddenly at the point where it was "no longer necessary to take orders from anybody."

And with him that was a specially vital matter his whole life long.

From youth to old age he thirsted for that state; but as he did not know well how to attain it, he never enjoyed his longed-for liberty and independence for more than a few days or weeks at a time. To use one of his favorite expressions, he was always in the "lurch," was always financially embarra.s.sed, and for that reason recalled to the end of his life with special pleasure the short period, now reached, between Easter, 1826, and Midsummer day, 1827. With him this was the only time when the "lurch" was lacking....

During this time we lived near the Rheinsberg Gate, in a capacious rented apartment, which included all the rooms on the main floor. So far as home comforts are concerned, my parents were both very well satisfied with the change; so were the other children, who found here ample room for their games; but I could not become reconciled to it, and have even to this day unpleasant memories of the rented residence.

There was a butcher's shop in the building, and that did not suit my fancy. Through the long dark court ran a gutter, with blood always standing in it, while at the end of one of the side wings a beef, killed the night before, hung on a broad ladder leaning against the house. Fortunately I never had to witness the preceding scenes, except when pigs were slaughtered. Then it was sometimes unavoidable. One day is still fresh in my memory. I was standing in the hall and gazing out through the open back door into the court, where it just happened that several persons were down on the ground struggling with a pig that was squealing its last. I was paralyzed with horror. As soon as I recovered control of myself I took to my heels, running down the street, through the town gate, and out to the "Vineyard," a favorite resort of the Ruppiners. But before I had finally reached that place I sat down on the top of a hummock to rest and catch my breath. I stayed away the whole forenoon. At dinner I was called upon to give an account of myself. "For heaven's sake, boy, where have you been so long?" I made a clean breast of the matter, saying that I had been put to flight by the spectacle down in the court and that half way to the "Vineyard" I had rested on a hummock and leaned my back against a crumbling pillar. "Why, there you sat in perfect composure on Gallows Hill," said my father, laughing. Feeling as though the noose were being laid about my neck, I begged permission to leave the table.

It was also at this time that I entered the primary school, which was nothing unusual, inasmuch as I was going on seven years of age. I was quick to learn and made progress, but my mother considered it her duty to help me on, now and then, especially in reading, and so every afternoon I stood by her little sewing table and read to her all sorts of little stories out of the _Brandenburg Children's Friend_, a good book, but ill.u.s.trated, alas, with frightful pictures. My performance was probably quite tolerable, for the ability to read and write well--by the way, a very important thing in life--is a sort of inheritance in the family. But my mother was not easy to satisfy; furthermore she acted on the a.s.sumption that recognition and praise spoil character, a point of view which even now I do not consider right. At the slightest mistake she brought into play the "quick hand"

always at her service. But she displayed no temper in doing it; she was always merely proceeding in accordance with her principle, "anything but coddling." One blow too many could never do any harm and, if it turned out that I had really not deserved any particular one, it was reckoned as offsetting some of my naughty pranks that had happened to escape discovery. "Anything but coddling." That is indeed a very good principle, and I do not care to criticise it, in spite of the fact that its application did not help me, not even as a hardening process; but whatever one may think of it, my mother now and then carried her harsh treatment too far.

I had long blond hair, less to my own delight than to my mother's; for to keep it in its would-be state of beauty I was subjected to the most interminable and occasionally the most painful combing ordeals, especially those with the fine comb. If I had been called upon at the time to name the medieval instruments of torture, the "fine comb"

would have stood among those at the head of my list. Until the blood came there was no thought of stopping. The following day the scarcely healed spot was again scrutinized with suspicious eye, and thus one torture was followed by another. To be sure, if, as may be possible, I owe it to this procedure that I still have a fairly good head of hair, I did not suffer in vain, and I humbly apologize.

This careful treatment of my scalp was accompanied by an equally painstaking treatment of my complexion, and this painful care also showed a tendency to apply too drastic remedies. If my skin was chapped by the east wind or the severe heat of the sun, my mother was immediately at hand with a slice of lemon as an unfailing remedy. And it always helped. Cold cream and such things would have been more to my fancy and would doubtless have accomplished the same end. But my mother showed the same relentlessness toward herself, and one who valiantly leads the way into the battle may properly command others to follow.

During the time that we occupied the rented apartment I became seven years of age, just old enough to retain all sorts of things; and yet I remember exceedingly little from that period, in fact but two events.

These I probably recall because a vivid color impression helped me to retain them. One of the events was a great fire, in which the barns outside the Eheinsberg Gate burned down. However, I must state in advance that it was not the burning of the barns that impressed itself upon my memory, but a scene that took place immediately before my eyes, one only incidentally occasioned by the fire, which I did not see at all. On that day my parents were at a small dinner party, clear at the other end of the city. When the company was suddenly apprised of the news that all the barns were on fire, my mother, who was a very nervous person, immediately felt certain that her children could not escape death in the flames, or were at least in grave danger of losing their lives. Being completely carried away by this idea she rushed from the table, down the long Frederick William street, and without hat or cloak, and with her hair half tumbled down in her mad chase, burst into our large front room and found us, s.n.a.t.c.hed out of bed and wrapped in blankets, sitting around on cushions and footstools. On catching sight of us she screamed aloud for joy and then fell in a swoon. When, the next moment, various people, the landlord's family among others, came in with candles in their hands, the whole picture which the room presented received a dazzling light, especially the dark red brocade dress of my mother and the black hair that fell down over it, and this red and black with the flickering candles round about--all this I have retained to the present hour.

The other picture, or let me say, rather, the second little occurrence that still lives in my memory, was entirely devoid of dramatic elements, but color again came to my a.s.sistance. This time it was yellow, instead of red. During the interim year my father made frequent journeys to Berlin. Once, say, in the month of November, the sunset colors were already gleaming through the trees on the city ramparts, as I stood down in our doorway watching my father as he put on his driving gloves with a certain aplomb and then suddenly sprang upon the front seat of his small calash. My mother was there also.

"Really the boy might go along," said my father. I p.r.i.c.ked up my ears, rejoiced in my little soul, which even then longed eagerly for anything a little out of the ordinary and likely to give me the shivers. My mother consented immediately, a thing which can be explained only on the a.s.sumption that she expected her darling child with the beautiful blond locks to make a good impression upon my grandfather, whose home was the goal of the journey. "Very well," she said, "take the boy along. But first I will put a warm coat on him."

"Not necessary; I'll put him in the footbag." And, surely enough, I was hauled up into the carriage and put just as I was into the footbag lying on the front of the carriage, which was entirely open, with not even a leather ap.r.o.n stretched across it. If a stone got in our way or we received a jolt there was nothing to keep me from being thrown out.

But this notion did not for a single moment disturb my pleasure. At a quick trot we rolled along through Alt-Ruppin toward Cremmen, and long before we reached this place, which was about half way along the journey, the stars came out and grew brighter and brighter and more and more sparkling. I gazed enraptured at this splendor and no sleep came to my eyes. Never since have I traveled with such delight; it seemed as though we were journeying to heaven. Toward eight o 'clock in the morning our carriage drove up before my grandfather's house.

Let me here insert the remark that my grandfather, with the help of his three wives, whom he had married a number of years apart, had risen first from a drawing teacher to a private secretary, and then, what was still more significant, had recently advanced to the dignity of a well-to-do property owner in Berlin. To be sure, only in the Little Hamburg street. The art of living implied in this achievement was not transmitted to any of his sons or grandsons.

We climbed the stairs and entered the door. Here we were greeted by a homely idyl. Pierre Barthelemy and his third wife--an excellent woman, whom I later learned to esteem very highly--were just sitting at breakfast. Everything looked very cozy. On the table was a service of Dresden china, and among the cups and pitchers I noticed a neat blue and white figured open-work bread basket with Berlin milk rolls in it.

The rolls then were different from now, much larger and circular in shape, baked a light brown and yet crisp. Over the sofa hung a large oil portrait of my grandfather, just recently painted, by Professor Wachs. It was very good and full of life, but I should have forgotten the expressive face and perhaps the whole scene of the visit, if it had not been for the black and sulphur-yellow striped vest, which Pierre Barthelemy, as I was later informed, regularly wore, and which, in consequence, occupied a considerable portion of the picture hanging above his head.

It goes without saying that we shared in the breakfast, and the grandparents, well-bred people that they were, did not show so very plainly that, on the whole, the visit, with its to-be-expected business negotiations, was for them in reality a disturbance. True, there was all day long not a sign of tenderness toward me, so that I was heartily glad when we started back home in the evening. Not until a great deal later was I able to see that the coolness with which I was received was not meant for poor little me, but, as already indicated, for my father. I merely had to suffer with him. To such an extremely solid character as my grandfather the self-a.s.sured, man-of-the-world tone of his son, who by a clever business stroke had acquired a feeling of independence and comfortable circ.u.mstances, was so disagreeable and oppressive, that my blond locks, on whose impression my mother had counted with such certainty, failed utterly to exert their charm.