The swim had done Hans some good; he felt surer of himself and had renewed confidence that he would be a success. But when he climbed up the dune he found Knospelius with Doralice. He heard their laughter from a distance. “That fellow again,” thought Hans with the exasperated feeling of a man plagued by a fly that keeps landing on his nose. The Privy Counsellor was sitting on Hans’ painter’s chair and was talking away in a lively manner. Doralice was sitting up halfway, supporting herself with her elbows, her face bright pink, listening to him with the amiable, slightly self-conscious expression that young women have when they receive guests in their drawing room for the first time.
“You see,” called the Privy Counsellor to Hans, “I am already making a start with the sociability. I just complimented your wife on your living situation. Capital! Almost perfect for a painter. The yellow sand, the yellow cambric of the dress, the golden hair, a symphony in blond, no?”
“Yes, hmm,” mumbled Hans.
“But I must be going now,” continued Knospelius, climbing down from his chair. “I still want to pay a call on the Buttlärs. I will say farewell with un mot pour rire.21 You must know Frau von Lossow, the lady with seven daughters? When Caroline, her third daughter, got engaged to the National Liberal22 Doctor Krapp, she said to me: ‘I am sorry, we Lossows have always been Conservatives, but when one has so many daughters to marry off, one can’t stick with just one party.’ What do you make of that? Nice, eh? Political coalitions in a family.” He laughed heartily at his anecdote and, to Hans’ surprise, Doralice also laughed. Could she have found that amusing?
After the Privy Counsellor had gone, Hans stretched himself silently on the sand. Doralice also remained silent for the time being. She stared at the sky, her face still wearing a kindly, sociable smile.
“Is she still smiling at the hunchback’s story?” wondered Hans. Finally she said: “Why are you so unfriendly towards that little man?”
“What exactly does he want from us?” asked Hans sullenly.
“Oh, I don’t think he wants anything,” replied Doralice, “just to amuse himself. Are you jealous of him? He is nothing more than a grotesque figurine.”
Hans’ temper flared: “I’m not at all jealous. That emotion does not exist among free men. I am simply thankful for a love that I must protect. No, but his little Excellency is for me a piece of your past, your social circle, who is trying to force his company on you again, who wants to come between you and me once more, that is all.”
“My social circle,” replied Doralice a bit tiredly, “they are certainly not pressing their attentions on me. The little Buttlär girl on the sandbank, what a strange face she made, as if she were living through a terribly daring, wholly forbidden adventure.”
“So leave them to themselves,” cried Hans, grasping Doralice by the shoulders and pressing her to himself with an angry, passionate intensity.
“Oh, yes,” replied Doralice, “I leave them be and they leave me be.”
The sun went down, the harsh light turned to red and purple veils of vapour before being entirely extinguished. And then there followed, before the moon climbed higher, a brief period of twilight that was a respite for the eyes. But the pale dusky light spread an unending loneliness over the grey-turning sea – the sea became serious and sad.
“Why don’t you say something?” Hans asked Doralice, while they walked, like every other evening, arm in arm along the shore.
“I don’t know,” answered Doralice, “the air at this time of day always seems so heavy with cares.”
“We don’t have any cares,” stated Hans emphatically.
“No, we don’t have any cares,” repeated Doralice, “I was only afraid you were going to say that free men didn’t have any cares.”
“And if I had said that?” he replied. Doralice laughed: “You see, today is not a propitious day for conversation. As soon as we start to speak, we begin to argue.”
“Oh, that doesn’t matter,” explained Hans. “Whatever is in us must come out. That creates trust.”
Doralice shook her head wearily. “Ah, but that’s much too complicated. You know, if we are to understand each other perfectly, we need to be more like those people there in front of us.” She pointed towards a silent couple. The young man and the girl were swaying their heavy bodies comfortably from side to side as they walked, swinging their dangling arms rhythmically. Doralice let go of Hans’ arm: “Just like them,” she said. And now they walked side by side, swaying their hips, swinging their arms and saying nothing. But after they had been walking this way for a while, Hans stopped in his tracks. “No, that’s not working,” he said, “when you walk next to me so quietly, I worry that you’re thinking something unkind about me or that you’re holding some grudge against me.”
“It’s a pity,” replied Doralice, “it was so nice. I was already starting to feel as if I were completely turning into that girl over there. Just now, when you were starting to talk, I wanted to stand still, open my mouth wide and yawn at the sea, ah ah ah, just like that girl a moment ago. And as for thinking, we don’t need to think at all when we walk like that, and as a result we understand each other.”
No, no, Hans would have none of that. “Let’s do something,” he suggested, “there is the moon. Should I pick you up again and hold you above the waves, or should we go far out to sea, or should we accompany Wardein tonight on his fishing trip? Activity, activity, you see, that is what we have been missing.”
But Doralice was not in the mood for anything tonight, and so they turned towards home.
When they entered their sitting room back at the house, they found that Agnes had not lit the lamp. The room was filled with moonlight, and they were met by a strong, very sweet fragrance. On the brightly-illuminated floorboards lay a dark red pool. “Look at that, roses, and more roses,” cried Doralice. She kneeled down before the roses, bending down all the way towards them, reaching for them, filling both arms with them, pushing her face into them as if she wanted to bathe in them. On one of the bunches hung a slip of paper on which “Lolo” was written.
“Oh, hold on,” said Doralice, “little Lolo tossed all these roses through the window for me, the dear child.” Then she felt Hans grasp her around her waist from behind, lifting her upwards, lifting her away from all of the roses, and she heard him say softly and grimly: “Now they are coming through all of the windows to reach us. Let them and their fancy roses be – what are we supposed to do with them anyway?”
Doralice leaned her head against his shoulder: “Very well,” she said dejectedly, “take me away from them,” and as her arms went limp the roses rained down hard on the floorboards like a dark red storm.
Notes
16 …velveteen reform dresses: In the mid and late nineteenth century a number of social reformers, including some early feminists, began to argue for “dress reform”. Members of this movement denounced corsets, bustles, and various other articles of women’s clothing that were fashionable at the time as overly restrictive and unhealthy. They advocated for simpler, more functional garments for women that would result in greater comfort, improved health, and increased freedom of movement.
17 …‘very clever indeed!’: This phrase is in English in the original German text. Miss Plummers would seem to be an Englishwoman.
18 Earlier in this chapter Hans refers to Doralice’s dress as blue, but here it is yellow. This is presumably a mistake on Keyserling’s part, likely due to the fact that by the time Waves was written he was completely blind and unable to check his manuscripts after dictating them to his sisters.
19 …les jeunes mariés: (French) the newlyweds.
20 Norderney: A small island off the North Sea coast of Germany near the Dutch border. Beginning in the 1850s, it became one of Germany’s first and most fashionable seaside resorts.
21 …un mot pour rire: (French) a little something to make you laugh.
22 …got engaged to the National Liberal: A political party that played an influen
tial role in German politics between unification in 1871 and the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. It was an upper-middle-class party with a pro-business outlook, as opposed to the more aristocratic and agrarian Conservative Party.
Chapter Six
The gentlemen had arrived at the Bull’s Inn: “Life here will finally be fit for a baron,” said Ernestine. The large supper table on the veranda assumed a more festive air. Fräulein Bork had decorated it with a bouquet of slightly sandy sweet peas and poppies.
The Generalin paced to and fro nervously and asked again and again: “Dear Malwine, will my son-in-law also want ice for his strawberry punch? And will the asparagus be tender enough? You know what my son-in-law is like.”
Fräulein Bork smiled enigmatically and absent-mindedly and replied: “Frau Generalin, the asparagus is divine.”
At the supper table Baron Buttlär sat between his mother-in-law and his wife, stroking his long blond moustache, his broad shoulders trembling slightly with pleasure, and he was quite charming, quite animated, telling stories that would be interesting to everyone in a loud, ringing voice, and Frau von Buttlär did in fact take an eager interest in his tales. With her sunken cheeks lightly flushed, she was no longer merely a worried mother who never gave a thought to herself, but now something of a society lady as well, and yes, there was today even something of the coquette about her. At the foot of the table sat the young people, and Lieutenant Hilmar was telling stories that caused Wedig and Nini to laugh so loudly that Frau von Buttlär had to call a stern “Come now, children!” down the table. Hilmar, slender and narrow-shouldered and dressed in a light-coloured summer suit, looked almost like a boy, admittedly a strikingly handsome boy. His lieutenant’s centre parting made its way through his thick black hair only with great difficulty. On his forehead hung a thick black curl, as if he were a young Neapolitan dandy. The regular features of his tanned face had that overly sharp, slightly taut appearance that one sees sometimes among offspring of the most ancient lineages. The dark eyes were very lively, something was always going on in them, they flashed from time to time so that one could clearly see golden specks travelling over the black velvet of the iris.
“No discipline in his eyes,” his uncle, General von dem Hamm, had said.
When the strawberry punch arrived Baron Buttlär assumed the air of a refined connoisseur. He lit his Havana cigar, took a swig of punch, and threw a glance at the moonlight shimmering on the sea, consciously allowing each to have an effect upon him. He became sentimental: “Moonlight and the sea, moonlight and the sea,” he said and gently shook his head, “that can make you sentimental – that has to make you sentimental. The sea always makes an impression. The endlessness is just endlessness, isn’t it?”
They were all silent for a moment and looked at the sea. But then Frau von Buttlär steered the conversation back to the subject of their estate. She liked to talk about her cows, her milk maids, her chickens and her butter. Her thoughts returned again and again to this rich opulence.
At the foot of the table the young people were becoming restless. Nini and Wedig, behaving rather mysteriously, declared that they wanted to go walking on the dunes. They had discovered a new pursuit. Every evening they would, in their own words, go hunting for the Countess. The point of the game was to encounter Doralice. The engaged couple also wanted to go down to the sea.
“I have to skim some stones on the sea,” said Hilmar, “only after I’ve thrown a dozen stones into its face will I be able to establish a connection with it.”
“He is never at rest, he must always be up to something,” said Baron Buttlär as he looked benevolently at the retreating couple. Frau von Buttlär, however, sighed and said: “That often worries me, he’s so foolhardy. In his last race, you know, he was thrown yet again.”
“He is hot-headed,” acknowledged the Baron, “he rides well and also cautiously at the start, but then he’s seized by a passion that he communicates to the horse, and the horse loses its head and an accident results.”
“I can well imagine that the Herr Lieutenant could transmit his passion to others,” the dreamy voice of Fräulein Bork was heard to say, but the Generalin reprimanded her: “Please, Malwine, we are talking about horses.”
Frau von Buttlär made her worried face once again and said: “I have forbidden Hilmar from bringing either a horse or a car, and if he goes sailing he will not take Lolo with him. As long as I am the guardian of that child, he won’t kill her.”
“Kill her,” cried the Baron cheerfully, “tell me, Mama, when you gave Bella to me, did you also have the feeling that you were, so to speak, casting her into the abyss?”
“Perhaps not into an abyss,” replied the Generalin, “but rather as if I were putting her on a balloon without knowing which way the wind would blow it.”
“Come, come,” cried the Baron, “a very steerable balloon, as Bella knows very well,” and he laughed loud and long at his joke, longer perhaps than was necessary. But the feeling of being the witty head of the family, who spreads merriment about him, did him good.
Fräulein Bork had not laughed with the others, she followed the engaged couple thoughtfully with her eyes and then gave voice to her thoughts: “I think the lieutenant is magnificent, he looks like the page boy of a Spanish queen or like the page in the song who waits at the fountain for the princess: ‘My tribe, it is the Asra, who die, when they love.’”23
“What? What?” cried the Generalin indignantly. “What is this Asra? Who dies when he loves? Not the Hamms. I know them, they certainly don’t. Dear Malwine, do not speak such nonsense in front of Lolo, the child is already prone to wild ideas.”
“Oh yes,” wailed Frau von Buttlär, “that’s another cause for grave concern. Just imagine, Buttlär,” and now she reported with a worried voice the story of Doralice, the sandbank and the kiss. “What do you say to that, Buttlär?” she concluded. “I was unable to sleep the whole night.”
The baron became serious and tugged pensively at his moustache with his fingers. “Well, hmm! The Countess Köhne is here – a splendid-looking women, by the way. That was a dirty business. The Count suffered a stroke, and his sister, Countess Benedikte, is taking care of him now. Very sad. Now although this lady can longer be considered part of society, she has rendered us a service, and so when I get a chance, I will thank her for it.”
“You?” cried Frau von Buttlär, “Why? To what end”
“One can still treat her politely despite everything that has happened,” objected the Baron. But his wife was quite agitated: “I knew it right away,” she said, “this person has been sent here as a terrible ordeal for me to endure.”
Down at the shore Hilmar was skimming stones over the water tirelessly. Lolo stood nearby and looked at him with earnest, shining eyes. When he finally grew tired, he took Lolo’s arm and they strolled slowly along the shoreline.
“Well,” said Hilmar, “now I understand the sea. Everything is, by the way, what with the moonlight and all, behaving very much according to plan tonight, and you, darling, are even more in accordance with the plan.”
“That’s a pity,” said Lolo, “a plan is never surprising.” Hilmar laughed: “Do you want to surprise me? Why? No, our brides should not be surprising, but rather beautiful necessities.”
As they walked past the fishermen’s cottages, Lolo began to talk about Doralice, recounting her adventure, telling him about the kiss and the red roses. “Ah, the little runaway Countess is here,” said Hilmar, “now it was kind of her to rescue you, but tell me, why do you speak of her with so much emotion in your voice, as though she were something holy? Runaway Countesses are surely not especially holy.”
“Because she moves me,” replied Lolo excitedly. “I myself don’t know why. Perhaps because she is so beautiful and at the same time immoral. Perhaps though, when someone is that beautiful, you have to love them, but it does hurt a bit, this love. I think whenever anyone falls in love with the Countess, it has to hurt.”
“Now, now,” Hilmar tried to calm her, “would it really be so terrible to be with such a beauty?”
“And so,” continued Lolo, “you would say, for example, there is nothing, absolutely nothing, painful about loving me?”
“No, nothing at all,” Hilmar assured her, “on the contrary, when one loves you, one feels very fine, very elegant. I notice it every time that I am with you, I am almost embarrassed by my reaction. As a child on Sundays I was dressed in a blue velvet smock with a white turned-down lace collar, and my hair was smoothed down with pomade that smelled strongly of orange blossoms. And when I was dressed like that, I felt so fine, so elegant, that out of reverence for myself I hardly dared to move.”
“And I,” cried Lolo with disappointment, “I am like that blue velvet smock and the orange blossom pomade to you?”
“And like Sunday,” added Hilmar, “yes, very similar. But who is this coming?”
“It is she,” whispered Lolo.
Hans and Doralice were coming towards them. When the two couples passed each other, Doralice nodded to Lolo with a smile, the men saluted each other formally. “Well?” asked Lolo as soon as they were past.
“Certainly, yes indeed,” said Hilmar, “a beautiful child’s face with a curiously tragic mouth.”
Lolo remained silent for a moment, then repeated thoughtfully: “A tragic mouth, you put that very well, I have long been trying to think of a word to describe that mouth. It must be strange to have a tragic mouth. I can imagine it so easily, I can feel it so clearly, so strongly, that I am convinced at this moment that I also have a tragic mouth. Kiss me now and you will see.” She stood still and held up her serious face, brightly illuminated by the moonlight, and after Hilmar had kissed her, she asked eagerly: “Well?”
Hilmar shook his head: “No trace of tragedy. More like a peaceful Pentecost Sunday in the countryside.” Lolo shrugged her shoulders and sighed. “No, wait,” continued Hilmar, “it’s different of course to kiss you here in front of the sea, it seems more like a colossal bit of effrontery. It’s as if all five continents24 were looking at us – that is a strange feeling.”
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