Waves

by Eduard von Keyserling

  “Grand rond, s’il vous plait,”34 gasped Hilmar. They all held hands, the setting sun made it appear as if all of the faces were flushed; then came the promenade, led by Hilmar, a wild promenade weaving through the birch trunks and then across the heather.

  “Our lieutenant is in top form,” said Knospelius, “but we cannot allow the festive mood to subside. We must have singing right away, a folk song, something quite heart-breaking of course.”

  By the time the quadrille had come to an end and everyone was sitting again on the cushions, the sun had set, under the trees the light rapidly began to fail, from the sea came a breeze, which moved among the birches, causing them to whisper excitedly. Down below, though, the sea now thundered more loudly. Knospelius stood up, stretched out his long arm, beat time with his hand and began to sing in a strong, soulful voice:

  “My mother liked me not

  And sweetheart have I not

  Ah, why perish do I not

  Why am I still here?”

  Everyone sang along, even the Generalin, the girls folding their hands in their laps, staring straight ahead with their bright eyes and letting their high soprano voices ring out mournfully into the dusk. Doralice also found it pleasant to be lulled by her own voice into a mellow, unthinking state of contentment. Yes, unthinking, because she sensed very well that there were many little unpleasant thoughts lurking in her mind, just waiting to creep out. For example, the memory of the embarrassed and condescending manner that Baroness Buttlär had adopted when speaking to her, the same manner that respectable matrons used when addressing foreign actresses at charity balls, or the memory of how Baron Buttlär had rolled his eyes while dancing, rolling his eyes in a way that no gentleman would otherwise have dared when dancing with a stranger. No, she did not want to think about that, she wanted to sing. She looked over at Hans. He was sitting there calmly, his mouth open wide, completely absorbed in the song, his beautiful tenor ringing out quite strongly. When the song came to an end, they all remained silent for a moment, daydreaming in the twilight as if they were afraid of awakening something that they had just sung to sleep. Finally the Privy Counsellor, watch in hand, announced: “And now, it is time for the fireworks. I do not have man-made fireworks – my fireworks are the moon, which is just now rising. Please climb up the hill with me.”

  “You can leave me and my daughter here,” replied the Generalin, “I am old and have thus seen the moon rise many times.”

  “As you wish,” answered the Privy Counsellor, “although I believe that my moon is something special. And so, if you please, ladies and gentlemen.” He took the lead with Fräulein Bork at his side. The path climbed up a hill. Baron Buttlär walked beside Doralice, speaking with a soft, lilting voice about the peacefulness of nature in the evening, about the troubles and cares of farming. To be sure, agriculture was an industry now and there was little room left for poetry. But when he, Buttlär, went walking in his fields now and then in the evening, when he was alone with his crops, then he felt once again something of the poetry of nature. Unfortunately amidst the daily battles of life there were seldom moments in which one could allow the heart to speak freely. At the summit of the hill they all took up position and gazed over at the dark rim of the forest, above which the moon was rising, large and red. “My skyrocket,” said the Privy Counsellor, and Fräulein Bork replied that of course nature was more beautiful than anything man-made. After they had stood there a while, with no one able to think of anything special to say about the moon, they started back down the path. Hilmar determinedly monopolised Doralice’s company. The path led past a damp meadow of clover, which smelled sweet. Streaks of mist hung over the field, horses were grazing there, great, dark shapes in the twilight, and from all sides partridges sounded their call.

  Doralice and Hilmar talked about trivial matters, they talked about horses, about riding, but their voices took on a quiet, intimate tone, as voices on summer evenings like to do. “And is it true that at the last race you had a fall?” asked Doralice. “Baron Buttlär said something about it.”

  “Oh yes,” answered Hilmar, “riders who know what they are doing never fall, they know the capabilities of their horse, approach the obstacles cautiously, cross the finish line safely. Of course it was my fault. But I must confess that the greatest enjoyment, the true moment of exaltation in the whole business, comes at precisely that instant when I notice that everything reasonable has dropped away from me, when the blood sings in my ears, when every fibre of my being is boiling hot and quivering, when something inside of me that is usually locked up in a cage is released. You see, in such moments I’m completely indifferent to my safety, I’ll attempt any obstacle, I’ll risk both the horse’s neck and my own. I see only one thing, I want only one thing, the finish line. I want it so badly, I want it so single-mindedly, my body, right down to the very last nerve ending, is so consumed by it that I am surprised when the finish line doesn’t come to meet me halfway. To want only one thing, to see only one thing and to chase after it, that is really the only way to really live.”

  They had come to a stop, Doralice looked down and thought: “What is he talking about in this warm, gentle voice, oh yes, he is talking about horses,” and suddenly she was reminded of Hans Grill, how one time back there at the castle he had spoken quite enthusiastically about his art, and she had said to herself: “Now he is no longer talking about his art, he is talking about me.” Behind them someone laughed, it was Nini and Wedig, coming down the hill. Doralice eagerly turned to greet them. “Come on,” she said, “we will run down the slope together.”

  She placed one arm around Wedig’s shoulders and the other around Nini’s, and in this fashion the three of them ran down the hill. Hilmar watched them go, then looked up at the moon and made a strange face. When the others came down the path, he walked a little to one side so they could pass, so he wouldn’t have to join them. Lolo was walking between her father and Hans Grill; they seemed to be talking about painting, because Baron Buttlär was saying: “No, modern painting leaves me cold. It may be old-fashioned of me, but I prefer Raphael.”

  They were followed by the Privy Counsellor and Fräulein Bork. Her voice rang out excitedly in the gloom. “What I most admire about you, your Excellency, is your sense of humour, your ever-present sense of humour.”

  “My dear Madame,” replied Knospelius, “from time to time we all like to trumpet our trials and tribulations, but to offer concerts of such material would be inadvisable.”

  Hilmar remained behind, Lolo had turned to look back at him but had said nothing. He waited for a while, then he followed them slowly and thoughtfully. Below in the little wood he found the birches full of paper lanterns – a multitude of colourful, gently swaying lights. Klaus handed sandwiches around, served up a bowl of punch and filled the glasses. Hilmar looked around the circle, made straight for Doralice and sat down beside her. His face had taken on a gloomy, stubborn expression. Knospelius called for his Columbines, and then sat between the two girls, tossing his shoulders contentedly like a man who, upon feeling a chill, has pulled a warm blanket over his knees. “My dear guests,” he cried as he raised a glass, “to your good health! I thank you for coming, and now I invite you to drink – then we will sing the Lorelei35 and finish with a quadrille under the moonlight.”

  “How scientifically he manipulates us,” said Hilmar to Doralice. “He is crystalising us in sugar according to a set formula.”

  Doralice was going to say something in reply, but the tense, almost angry expression on his face surprised her and she remained silent. “Ah, he had it easy with me,” Hilmar went on, “I am defenceless against the influence of a summer night. Now soldiers are invariably sentimental, but I have always been this way. I remember as a child that when I was brought inside on summer evenings to be put to bed I would bawl like crazy. When my mother asked me why I was crying, I didn’t know the answer; I could only say, I’m crying because Müller was so horrible today. Müller was my nanny, whom I other
wise loved.”

  “I can understand that,” answered Doralice, “it is like that for me even now. When we come home from our walk in the evening and Agnes is standing there with the lamp, there are times when I feel as if I could cry. Hilmar laughed grimly: “I can see how you might feel like throttling this Agnes at such a moment.”

  “Oh, no,” denied Doralice, “Agnes is a nice old lady, but in such moments you can read clearly on her face: what are you so happy about? Everything will soon be unpleasant and repulsive once again.” Hilmar leaned forward to look into Doralice’s face; in the pitch-black backgrounds of his eyes a tiny red lantern was reflected, a blood-red speck.

  “And these Agneses are right,” he said softly, “everything will soon be unpleasant and repulsive once again, and hence it is an act of stupidity if we know that a brief moment of happiness can be found somewhere and we do something else rather than chase after it.”

  Doralice leaned back into the shadows in order to be out of range of the black eyes, which were hurting her, and asked, in order to say something: “Were you lonely as a child?”

  “Yes, replied Hilmar, “I am the only child of my parents. It could have been melancholy. Past the front of our castle flowed a river, which was always very full of murky green water, and down there in the twilight the fish snapped and the mole crickets chirped. But on summer evenings I ran down into the village street, and then my comrades came running in their bare feet, with their grey linen trousers and flying blond hair, jolly little devils of the summer twilight, and then it was delightful.”

  “That must have been delightful,” repeated Doralice thoughtfully. “I was always alone in our garden on summer evenings.”

  “It’s a pity,” cried Hilmar, “that back in those days I could not come to you, like one of those little twilight devils.”

  “That would have been fun,” replied Doralice, “At that time, I think, I was always waiting for something like that.”

  Now Knospelius began to sing the Lorelei. He slowed down the song’s tempo, as if he wanted the souls of his guests to melt away in the mournful tones. The song had barely come to an end when he ordered the quadrille to commence; the harmonica and the fiddle began to play; Hilmar offered his arm to Doralice, as if it were understood as a matter of course; the dance began in the open space beneath the trees. The bright forms of the women floated from the dim light of the coloured lanterns into a strip of bright moonlight and then suddenly disappeared into deep shadows, only to emerge again. Knospelius had put on his pince-nez and watched the spectacle attentively, as if he were in his box at the theatre.

  “Please observe,” he said to the Generalin, “a moonlight quadrille is danced differently from a sunset quadrille. The movements of the ladies are smoother; they have a sort of pleasant languor, quite like muslin dresses, which also take on a pleasant limpness in the evening.”

  “Oh, how you go on,” answered the Generalin irritably, “You are looking at our girls as if they were a collection of beetles. Or are you particularly interested in the one rare beetle?”

  “No, no, all of them,” replied Knospelius, “I have to study the moods of my guests carefully. At a party there must never be a moment in which the guests think, ‘all of this, everything that is happening here, none of this really has any meaning.’”

  “Why should it mean anything?” cried the Generalin. “I don’t like it at all when everything is assumed to have some hidden significance. What’s the use of that? I had an aunt who was mad. When you sat with her companionably, she was in the habit of saying: ‘There is, by the way, another person in this room whom you know nothing about.’ It was quite sinister.”

  “No, it doesn’t mean anything,” said the Privy Counsellor reassuringly, “I only meant that it’s not very diverting even to think about the question. But what is this? A pause in the dancing.”

  He jumped up and hurried to the dancing place; everyone there was crowded around one spot where, brightly illuminated by the moonlight, Lolo was lying on the ground, her face pale and her eyes closed. They called for water, and Fräulein Bork produced smelling salts. What had happened? Lolo had been dancing with Hans Grill and had collapsed without a sound. When she was able to stand again, swaying slightly, very white in the face, supported by her father and Hilmar, the Generalin hurriedly organised the retreat: Lolo, led by the two gentlemen, went first, the others followed, barely taking time to address a word of farewell to the Privy Counsellor, and Baroness Buttlär could not refrain from uttering rebukes to herself in a low voice: “I knew right away that no good would come of this. If an old gentleman wants to amuse himself, let him go elsewhere; why does he need to involve my children?”

  “Most unfortunate,” said the Privy Counsellor once he was alone with Hans and Doralice, “well, it won’t mean a thing in the long run. It was very pretty, by the way, how the little one lay there so white in the moonlight. Nerves. There is always an element of coercion in an arranged marriage. A carefully sheltered girl, who has never been allowed to read a novel, is one fine day handed over to a lieutenant. Make a study of love, she is told. Yes, that sometimes causes extraordinary confusion in the soul of such a proper young Columbine. Well, no matter, c’est la vie. I thank you, Herr and Frau Grill, for coming, you, Madame, were of course the queen of the ball.” He kissed Doralice’s hand and they parted.

  On the way home Hans spoke cheerfully and eagerly to the silent Doralice. He was happy that she had enjoyed herself; because she had enjoyed herself, he had seen that quite clearly. “Wonderful, just wonderful,” he said. “My God, the gentlemen around you were making eyes at you in the moonlight, all of them, from the father of the family to the schoolboy. Oh, please, you can’t deny it.” They stopped for a moment to look out at the moonlit sea. Hans opened his mouth, breathed deeply. “Breathing in the vastness,” he said, “back there under the trees it was a bit crowded, and the people were also a bit confined, don’t you think?”

  At home Hans went to his room. Doralice heard him walking back and forth, opening the wardrobe, tossing boots. She sat in her chair and stared into the light, mechanically turning over in her mind what she had just experienced, her limbs a bit weary from the physical activity, the fresh air and all of the male eyes that had gazed at her longingly. Finally Hans came out, wrapped in his coat, a felt hat on his head, heavy boots on his feet.

  “I’m going out again with Wardein on the night-fishing expedition,” he said, “you don’t need to come along, you are too tired.” He kissed Doralice on her forehead. “Good night.”

  “Good night, Hans.” But when he was still at the door, Doralice said: “Hans, dear!” He turned around: “What is it?”

  “Darling Hans, are you actually angry?”

  “No, why do you ask?” he answered. Then he came back to the table. In the glow of the lamp Doralice could see that he was blushing. “No, I’m not angry. Why should I be angry? You mean because those men over there are possibly falling in love with you? That is their right. That is understandable. But of course that cannot affect us.” And he rapped his knuckles on the tabletop. “No, you will never witness me circling you and growling. I would despise myself. If you are mine because I bare my teeth to every man who comes close to you, or because another man does not show me his teeth quickly enough, then you are not mine at all – I want a woman who loves me, not captured prey… and… I think we obey a higher law… and… also nothing at all has happened, so why should I be angry?”

  Doralice raised her eyebrows, she made what Hans called her “society lady’s face” and said lightly: “Oh, then all is well, I just wanted to know, good night then, Hans.”

  “Good night,” he replied and went out, treading heavily in his great boots.

  Doralice was still looking into the light. “So, he was angry after all,” she thought, otherwise he would not have been so eloquent. And it was good that he was angry, it reassured her. When one is loved, one wants to be held tightly, one wants to be guarded. This highe
r law, what was that? Probably another reference to the perpetual freedom that Hans loved to talk about. Now she wanted to go to sleep, wanted to dream a little more in the darkness about all of those things that tonight’s events had aroused in her. This was perhaps close to a betrayal of Hans, but why then had he left her alone with her dreams?

  Notes

  28 …London marriages: The marriage laws of Great Britain were considerably more liberal than those of Germany at this time, making both divorce and remarriage easier there.

  29 …piqué: A woven cotton fabric with raised ribs or cords, similar to twill.

  30 …my very own Columbines: A stock character in the Commedia dell’arte.

  31 …Bois de Boulogne: A large public park on the western edge of Paris, constructed in the 1850s by Napoleon III. Popular with people of all classes.

  32 …fête champêtre: (French) garden party.

  33 …quadrille: A dance for four couples performed in a rectangular formation, somewhat similar to American square dancing.

  34 “Grand rond, s’il vous plait”: (French) “Make a big circle, please!”

  35 …sing the Lorelei: A poem by Heinrich Heine (1799-1856) that was set to music in 1837 by Friedrich Silcher (1789-1860). The much-loved song tells the story of a golden-haired siren who sits on a cliff above the Rhine River and distracts sailors with her beauty and her singing, and thus unwittingly lures them to their death on the rocks.

  Chapter Ten

  Knospelius stood at the window of the coastguard’s cottage, holding opera glasses to his eyes and looking out at the beach. He loved to observe how the colourful little figures on the sand walked to and fro, sought each other out, met up with each other, stood together, then parted company. “Where the scorpions creep and the satyrs gather,”36 he murmured, quoting the prophet. The sky was filled with clouds that dimmed the morning light and turned it silver. The grey sea shimmered like the breast of a cock pigeon. In the midst of the brilliant water stood Nini’s slender red form, bathing under the watchful eye of Baroness Buttlär, who was pacing up and down the shore. “Oh my,” thought Knospelius, “here comes the Generalin in a white piqué dress like a ship under full sail, along with dear Fräulein Bork, a modest, insignificant sloop. Wedig, the rascal, is of course loitering near the front door of the Wardein house, waiting for the Countess. But the Baron is also standing there by himself and poking at the sand – can he also be waiting for her? Ah, the young betrothed couple, arm in arm. Little Lolo still a little pale, the bridegroom very lively, overly attentive, perhaps suffering from a guilty conscience on account of yesterday’s events. And now they meet up with the Generalin. They stop, they converse. At last, there is our Doralice, very elegant in a blue and white sailor suit, an English novel in her hand. Of course the Baron is already by her side. How coolly she nods. How straight and well-bred she stands there, every line of her body indicating polite dismissal. Look how she moves slowly away and leaves him standing there. Dear Lord, that is a bit much! The lieutenant lets go of his fiancée’s arm and shoots towards Doralice, like a pike on a line. That young man doesn’t suffer from inhibitions. But where is the painter? There he is standing by the boats and talking to Stibbe. Why isn’t he at his post? That foolish fellow wants to pose as a man of the world in matters of love.”