Doralice blushed and laughed: “It has probably slipped from your memory, your Excellency, but the last time we spoke you said almost the same thing to me, also something about me being at my post.”
“Is that so?” replied Knospelius. “It’s certainly possible, I am interested in such things. You have a good memory. May I accompany you for a few paces, Madame?”
She nodded, although she was not at ease walking next to this little monster, who looked up at her dispassionately, as if he were gazing at an engraving rather than a person. As they walked he spoke with a deep voice, his own metallic tones seemingly pleasing him. “When it comes to sleep, Madame, “it doesn’t seem as if you are really trying very hard to succeed.”
“Of course I try,” replied Doralice, “it’s just that the others are up so early, the fisher folk, the roosters, and besides, the sea never sleeps.”
Knospelius now laughed his silent laugh: “Yes, yes, there is a hustle and bustle here, one can learn something here. Because, you see,” he said, becoming serious, his face taking on a spiteful, almost hate-filled expression, “there is nothing more foolish, nothing more pointless than sleeplessness, than to lie in bed and to wait for sleep and to be unable to sleep. At such times I feel as if I have been deprived of my rights as a man. I am not performing my duty as a man.”
“Duty as a man,” repeated Doralice somewhat distractedly.
“Yes, just so,” continued the Privy Counsellor testily, as if someone had contradicted him, “my duty as a man is to sleep or to ply some trade, to work like the fishermen out there, or to love like you and your Herr Painter, or to quarrel like my housemates, it all amounts to the same thing, the simple pursuit of human activities, and if we can’t do that, then we must sleep. My Karo here also knows that, when he can’t carry out the duties of his dog’s life, then he goes to sleep. But what we think and feel during a sleepless night is completely useless, utterly futile, a wasted moment of life. You see, I have to make a lot of calculations, that is my profession, but during sleepless nights I also have to calculate, calculations that never add up, which have no meaning and no result, that is surely unworthy of a man. But when Karo lies there like that and, with his nose, reads from the book of nature, he catches the scent of real hares and real partridges, not meaningless animals, not non-existent animals. No, no, I tell you, not being able to sleep is a scandal and it should not be allowed to happen to anyone.”
Knospelius fell silent and looked peevishly out to sea.
Doralice felt sorry for the little man. He had spoken to her in great anguish, she wanted to say something kind to him in response. But her words came out sounding cold-hearted and insipid: “I hope the sea air will do you good, your Excellency.” Knospelius began to walk on and muttered: “Me? Oh, that is not what I meant, I was speaking only in general terms. When one awakes, one must be able to experience something, and when one wants to sleep, one must be able to sleep. We are allowed to demand that.” Suddenly he smiled, a sweet, almost bashful smile. “Well, whatever the cause of our misfortunes, if there are obstacles standing in the way, we must seize on the experiences of other people. I am quite interested in the experiences of others, I pay close attention here to the doings of my fellow men. Yes, indeed, when it comes to life, I am a communist, I reject private property, ha, ha!”
“Do the people here experience a great deal then?” asked Doralice.
“Oh, enough,” replied the Privy Counsellor, “look at the fishermen, those chaps have got themselves mixed up with the sea, believe you me, that will keep you on tenterhooks. And then look at their wives, how they stand up there and wait. To stand like that and wait for a husband or son, that is nerve-wracking. Have you noticed the eyes of these women? Those gazes don’t wander haphazardly from object to object, those gazes look directly at what is important to them, like the hammer in the hand of a good craftsman that always strikes its target straight and true. And you should see those eyes when a husband or son doesn’t return, and the woman then paces up and down the shore for days, picking out every dark spot on the water or on the beach and studying it with fearful attention. Those are eyes that understand their business. By the way, it greatly interested me when you came to live here. You will bring some colour to the proceedings. I would be very happy to make the acquaintance of your Herr Painter. He seems to be a high-spirited gentleman. I like to see that. Ha, ha, I like to see that in the same way a swindler is happy to see a gentleman with a thick wallet.” And he laughed steadily and silently at his own joke.
Colours now appeared in the sky, the clouds on the horizon acquired thick golden borders and a wave of red spilled into the heavens. The grey-green of the sea was now laced with shining threads, the hollows of the waves breaking on the beach were filled with rosy red, and the sea on the horizon suddenly began to burn red-gold. Knospelius stood still and made a sweeping gesture towards the sea with his long arm, as if he wished to spread out the sea in front of Doralice.
“Look,” he said, “that is the ordinary morning display of colour. A hygienic practice. Nature is quite mercilessly showered with all of this red and gold. That wakes her up, just like a morning shower or cup of coffee for us. If you are willing to walk a few steps further, we will have a lovely, yes, I tell you, a lovely sight.”
So they continued their walk. They came to a place along the shore where a tall sand dune stood quite close to the water; the waves were washing away its base, and the wall of sand had partly collapsed. During high seas great pieces of earth had crumbled off and had been swept away, hollows and fissures gaped in all directions, everything dripping now with the red light of morning. Here and there, projecting from the brightly illuminated sand, were pieces of rotten woodwork, which gleamed metallically, and white pieces, which…
“But,” cried Doralice, “there is a hand there.”
“Certainly,” explained the Privy Counsellor, “that is a hand and an arm and there is a skull illuminated in lovely pink and in that dilapidated coffin over there is a whole man. As you see, this is a cemetery, which the sea is slowly sweeping away. Normally I have little interest in the romance or horror associated with graveyards – it all seems so shabby. But this one pleases me. A graveyard from which, on every stormy night, a piece is cut as from a cake, and the silent dead look up from the sand and let the sea wind blow around their bones. See how they blush coquettishly in the morning light, they bloom like roses. And then comes a stormy night and they are carried off on their journey out to sea. From the narrowest and quietest place imaginable out into the widest and noisiest. I like that notion. They stand here as if on a landing stage, waiting for the ship that will fetch them away. This could tempt me. There is activity here. That mustiness that people love to associate with death is missing here, don’t you think?”
Knospelius looked up at Doralice. She had turned a little pale, she pressed her lips together and knit her eyebrows. It looked as if she were angry. “Well, it does not seem to please you,” remarked the Privy Counsellor. “Are you perhaps afraid? We are of course taught to fear such things.”
“No,” replied Doralice, “I am not afraid. This place is very curious. It’s just that, I don’t know why, but I think I would have preferred not to have seen it this morning.”
“Very well,” responded the Privy Counsellor, “then we can go. You are correct, by the way, it is probably not at all your business right now to be thinking about death and what comes with it.”
As they retraced their steps Doralice remained silent. Knospelius chatted contentedly with himself. Generalin von Palikow, yes, he knew her. A clever old lady, a little loud, and she loved to stick her nose into the affairs of other people. She always felt responsible for the affairs of others. As for Baron Buttlär, well… he had a wonderful blond moustache. Whenever he came to Berlin he consumed a great deal of champagne and pursued love affairs. A moustache like that made such behaviour practically obligatory, and it also made fine, upstanding fathers and husbands anxious. The da
ughters, beautiful girls by the way, slender and lithe like willow switches. That was the modern fashion. Young girls must now look like arabesques. He, Knospelius, preferred the earlier three-dimensional figure to the current style.
Doralice listened with distaste. Her escort now struck her as uncanny, and he was ruining the beautiful morning for her. The world of hunchbacks had nothing to do with her, she longed for people with straight backs. Besides he had the unpleasant habit of staring up from below right at her lips. Doralice screwed up her lips as if she tasted something bitter.
After sunrise the wind had died down. The sea became smooth and glistened from afar. Many of the fishing boats were returning home. The fishermen’s wives ran from the dunes down to the shore, lifting their skirts high and wading into the water to help the men pull the boats up onto the sand. In the middle of the foaming surf stood all of these people, shining with water and sunlight.
“Ah, our fishermen,” said the Privy Counsellor. He approached one of the boats and greeted the fishermen, whom he knew: “Good morning, Andree, good morning, Wardein, well, was it a profitable trip?”
“There is a little something there,” said Wardein, wiping the sea foam from his grey beard. Knospelius bent over the gunwale to see the fish that lay in the bottom of the boat. He pushed back the sleeves of his coat and plunged his long fingers into the midst of the cod, with their pale silver bodies, the flounder, which looked like brownish bronze disks on which strangely contorted faces were sitting, and a host of small herring, which were shiny like newly minted coins. Knospelius closed one eye and laughed like a boisterous schoolboy. “Hustle and bustle, and still more hustle and bustle,” he said.
Doralice looked at him for a moment and then turned around with a curt “good morning” and walked quickly away. She was in a hurry now to be with Hans Grill. There he was already, coming towards her in his white linen suit, with a bath towel over his shoulder, his face red and smiling all over. “How happy he is to see me,” thought Doralice, and her joy felt to her like a surge of sudden warmth. Hans wrapped his arm around her waist and drew her towards him, as if reclaiming his property. He had already bathed, he smelled of sea water. “It was cold,” he reported, “but I love it when the waves give me a cold slap. Don’t you also want to bathe?” No, Doralice would bathe later.
“I know, I know,” replied Hans, “you love it when the sea is as warm as a cup of tea. Very well. But we are hungry, and I told Agnes that she should have at least four eggs ready for each of us.”
“What did Agnes say to that?” asked Doralice. Hans laughed: “Oh dear, she got a stony look on her face and replied that she had not known that noble ladies had to eat so much.”
Chapter Four
The day was very hot. The Generalin had had the wicker beach chairs placed on a dune. She and her daughter sat there and occupied themselves with needlework. Fräulein Bork relaxed on the sand in front of them and sketched a seascape. She always drew the sea, long slightly wavy lines, a sailboat on the horizon. Wedig was sitting near his mother and reading aloud, at her request, from Fénelon’s Télémaque.13 He read in an unrelenting monotone, a sort of plaintive melody that sounded like a lullaby for this hot time of day. He felt utterly forlorn, the holiday feeling was long gone. This eternally glistening sea, this hot sand, which clung to his fingers and made them twitchy, the tediousness, all of that now seemed part of ordinary, everyday life to Wedig, and it made him world-weary. And what’s more, this mentor with his endless speeches. Wedig wished he could have tweaked his nose. Frau von Buttlär was listening to his reading with no great attention, merely inserting mechanically from time to time an absent-minded “faites les liaisons, mon enfant.”14 She reached often for her opera glasses in order to look down at the beach, where Lolo and Nini were walking back and forth to cool off before they went into the water. In their red bathing costumes, with white cloth caps on their heads, they looked like very slender boys, and they walked rigidly upright, their legs unused to such freedom and moving a bit awkwardly and stiffly.
“Tell me, Malwine,” asked the Generalin, “did we look like that in our youth when we bathed?”
Fräulein Bork closed one eye tightly and smiled sentimentally: “Oh, they’re so pretty,” she replied, “they look like little red silhouettes on a green lampshade.”
“Yes, indeed,” retorted the Generalin, “to think that what we in our youth called hips are more and more going out of style.”
The girls now went into the water, carefully wading through the breaking waves, disappearing at times entirely in the white foam and finally throwing themselves into the water to swim, two red stripes in the whitish-green, which was the colour of the sea today. They were both good swimmers, but Lolo soon far outstripped Nini, shooting forward wonderfully light and fast, straight ahead as if she had some destination in mind.
“But where is she going?” cried Frau von Buttlär. “Why are they not staying together? I told them they should stay together, I forbade them from swimming to the second sandbank. Lolo! Lolo!” Frau von Buttlär called and waved her handkerchief, but the red stripe out there travelled further and further out to sea. “I have always said,” complained Frau von Buttlär, “that Lolo has a perverse nature, she cannot obey, her husband will have a hard time with her. Lolo! Lolo!”
“Who is that going into the sea?” asked Wedig, pointing down at the beach.
“That,” said the Generalin, “must be Frau Köhne.”
“Who? What?” cried Frau von Buttlär. “Oh, don’t call her Köhne, Mama, that is not her name any more.”
“Of course it isn’t,” responded the Generalin, “but if people insist on constantly changing their names, you can’t expect my old head to be able to keep track of them, and Grill, who can remember that, it’s not much of a name.”
They all fell silent for a moment and looked eagerly down at the sea. Wedig had tossed Télémaque aside and laid himself down flat on the sand, lying there like a seal and staring at the scene in front of him. Perhaps something was finally going to happen.
“How charming,” remarked Fräulein Bork, “navy blue costume and a little yellow tricorn hat, and look how she swims!”
“Very chic,” murmured Wedig. But this upset Frau von Buttlär all over again. “Silence!” she barked at her son. She stood up, waved her handkerchief, cried again: “Lolo! Lolo! Oh no, they are swimming towards each other now, they’ll meet on the sandbank. Oh God, my poor child.”
“Come, sit down, Bella,” the Generalin tried to calm her daughter. “There is nothing to be done right now. She isn’t contagious – Lolo is in no immediate danger.”
“Why did this have to happen,” sighed Frau von Buttlär as she sat back down in her chair sorrowfully. With their eyes they all eagerly followed the progress of the red and navy blue dots out there on the expanse of glistening light.
“The lady is the first one there!” cried Wedig triumphantly.
“Lolo seems tired, she is swimming slowly,” remarked Fräulein Bork. “Ah, the Countess is going to meet her, she wants to help her.”
“Outrageous,” moaned Frau von Buttlär.
“Now she is holding out her hand to Lolo,” reported Wedig. “Ah, now Lolo is standing up, the lady has her arm around her waist and Lolo is leaning on her shoulder.”
“She has exposed herself to scandal, swimming far out to sea like that without a second thought,” lamented Frau von Buttlär. But this annoyed the Generalin: “Bella, you are exaggerating again. If the child is exhausted from swimming and someone offers her a hand, it is quite proper that she takes the hand without first asking: ‘Were you faithful to your husband?’ ”
Lolo was now standing on the sandbank, she had turned pale and was breathing rapidly. “Oh, I can support you just fine,” said Doralice. “Put your arm on my shoulder, just like at a dance when you put your arm on the shoulder of a gentleman – like so. It was probably a little bit too far, you are not used to it.”
“Thank you, Madam
e,” said Lolo, blushing with embarrassment, “I am feeling better now – even though I’m not accustomed to the sea, I always want to keep swimming forever in the sunshine and it was just a little too far.”
“We still need to catch our breath for a moment,” continued Doralice. “But, yes, I too like to swim in the sunshine, the sunbeams graze one’s skin like little warm fishes – I love that. My, how your heart is pounding. We will swim straight back, it is only a short stretch to the first sand bank.”
Lolo did not answer, she thought simply: “If only she would keep on talking.” After having exhausted herself swimming, she was now overcome by a feeling of exquisite contentment. She wanted very much to stand there longer in the balmy water, leaning in sisterly fashion on this beautiful, mysterious woman, to stay quite close to those strangely shimmering eyes, that mouth with the narrow too-red lips. Doralice now turned the conversation to trivial matters, talking about the hot days and the lack of shade at the Bull’s Inn and about swimming, and Lolo listened to her as if she were listening to something exciting and forbidden, the beauty of which she, and she alone, had just now suddenly discovered.
“Now, I think it’s time for us to swim back,” suggested Doralice, and they dived into the water, swimming side by side, turning their faces from time to time and smiling at each other. “Are you all right?” cried Doralice, “we are almost there.”
Waves Page 6