“I can well imagine,” said Knospelius. “Mother Wardein is an easier subject, she sits there like a Saint Anna carved in wood.
Hans, preoccupied with his own train of thought, continued eagerly: “Anyhow, it’s a devilish business, this sea, it can’t be grasped, I can’t discover the logic of its lines and movements, its average face, so to speak, because with a portrait I must construct an average face for the subject that includes within it the possibility of all of its fleeting expressions. Well, when it comes to the sea, I haven’t managed to do this, although I have been studying it inside and out. I swim about in it for hours, I sail upon it by day and by night, I stalk it at all times of the day. Truthfully, it is becoming a sort of obsession for me.”
“Well, well,” murmured Knospelius as he looked sideways at Hans with a shrewd expression, “so that is your obsession now. Very well, it is very convenient to have an obsession. One does not have think about what one ought to do, one simply has to do something, whether one wants to or not. That is just like a government post, one has to go into the office, whether one wants to or not. I have now said farewell to my obsession.”
They had to stop and grab at their hats, which a powerful gust of wind wanted to tear from their heads. Then Knospelius pointed over at the dune and said: “Your wife, I think, is already sitting up there near the easel sewing.”
“Yes, she is sewing shirts for the fishermen’s children,” Hans replied absent-mindedly. But Knospelius’ large, pale boy’s face looked up at him searchingly and attentively: “Oh, I see, that is a new development.”
“Yes, that’s new,” Hans confirmed perfunctorily. “By the way, I also need to get back to work now; goodbye,” and he climbed up the dune.
Knospelius continued to stand there, looking over at Doralice and murmuring: “Yes, that’s new.”
Doralice sat there and sewed. She liked to spend her time this way now, because it looked relaxing, it looked as if everything were all right. But she was not able to endure it for very long, the hems of the linen made her fingers twitchy. Soon she tossed her work aside and stretched out on her blanket in order to gaze up at the clouds. From time to time she heard Hans address his painting. “What’s this then?” he cried abruptly, “something entirely new.”
“What is it?” asked Doralice.
“Very strange,” said Hans, “all of a sudden every wave has a little halo. It looks as if the crest of each wave has been gone over with a light crayon.”
“Yes, everything is possible here,” observed Doralice without getting up.
“Very strange,” continued Hans, “I’ve seen something similar to this only once before when I was watching the sheep one day as a boy, and then suddenly all of the little hills had these halos.”
Ah, thought Doralice, so now it turns out that he also tended sheep. In his conversation in recent days Hans had returned again and again to his native village and his peasant blood and working in the fields. It sounded almost like a reproach aimed at her, and when he added: “Yes, you can really learn something in a sheep run,” she could not restrain herself from answering testily: “I can’t help it that I never tended sheep.”
Hans instantly assumed the deliberately friendly face that he had been taking care to use with her in recent days and said politely: “To be sure, no one is expecting that from you. You doubtless also learned something valuable in your family circumstances that one could not learn on a sheep run.”
Doralice sighed and there ensued one of those long silences that now frequently existed between them. She had not known that two people could be together this much and say as little to each other as she and Hans were doing. Suddenly Hans threw down his brush and said he needed to observe this new phenomenon more closely, he was going to take a boat out on the sea. Then he ran down to the sea. Doralice continued to lie tranquilly on the sand, in these windy conditions he would certainly not take her with him. So this was the life of “taking quiet walks together.”
At first it had seemed like peace and security to Doralice – she had, after all, been completely abandoned in the midst of a hostile, sinister world. But now it had become an extremely irritating state of affairs. Whenever Hans stood there silently in front of his easel, Doralice knew with certainty that he was speaking to her inwardly, that he was reproaching her, that his proud and wounded love was pouring down on her with the scorching hot eloquence that was natural to him. She was so sure of this, it was as if she could see someone talking to her but he was still too far away from her to hear him. She too spoke constantly with Hans in her thoughts, justifying herself, blaming him, humbling herself. Sooner or later, however, the moment had to arrive when they were both so overflowing with what they had to say to the other, that they would blurt it out, and then would come the heart-to-heart talk, the reconciliation. That is the way it would surely turn out, that was what was written in all the books, that is what one saw in all the theatres, it had to happen. Waiting for this moment was Doralice’s main occupation during these long uneventful days. She stayed close to Hans as much as she could, lest she miss out on the crucial moment, she pricked up her ears at his every word, in case it was the beginning of their heart-to-heart talk. She knew exactly what she was going to say and already felt in advance the pain and the joy of overpowering emotion. But she was also tormented by impatience, why did the moment not arrive? How much longer would this go on? She could no longer lie calmly on the dune, she would go down and sit in front of the house, look out at the sea and imagine what Hans was saying to her in the boat.
The sun shone down fiercely on the bench. Mother Wardein nodded and moved to one side as Doralice sat down next to her. In the sand in front of them scrawny hens wandered about and clucked joylessly and resignedly. Through the open window came the clatter of spoons, the Wardein family was sitting there silently at their midday meal. Smoke was also rising from the chimneys of the other cottages and it was silent there as well. These little houses were usually dark and quiet, at the most a shrill female voice could be heard on occasion coming from the Steege cottage, whenever Steege came home drunk, and then there was also the clamour that arose up at the coastguard’s whenever the coastguard struck his wife. “They fight,” the Privy Counsellor had said, “because they are in love with each other.” Well, thought, Doralice, that might be a convenient way to bring about a heart-to-heart talk, but she and Hans didn’t understand how to do that. Doralice looked out at the sea searching for Hans’ boat. She did not love the sea with its constant drowsy glitter. It was always there, one could see it from everywhere, one could hear it everywhere, everyone spoke of it: the monosyllabic fishermen, when they spoke, spoke of the sea, her uncommunicative husband, when he spoke, spoke of the sea. For her, though, the sea seemed to exhale a boundless, oppressive loneliness. And down on the shore in his grey overcoat and his grey hat Privy Counsellor Knospelius paced back and forth like a little spectre of loneliness. It was all cheerless, sleepy, and commonplace, and yet, if Hans were to come home now, it could happen, it could suddenly all be different, and for Doralice that endowed all of the sleepiness and the commonplaceness with something like a secret fever of anticipation.
Hans returned home for the midday meal. At the table he talked about the sea again, talked about the forest warden Zibbe, who had been hit in the leg with buckshot by a poacher, and about the picture of Mother Wardein, which he intended to send to an exhibition. As soon as the meal was over, he stood up, claiming that he had much to do – the crate with the painting needed to be nailed up and then he wanted to take a payment slip to the post office.
“Have you sold some pictures?” asked Doralice. Yes, he had sold some pictures, business was good. In the doorway he turned around once more and added: “If you need anything, all you have to do is tell me, I will take care of it.” And with these words he left.
He did take care of it. Always fairly and properly, but Doralice found that this fairness and propriety were not bringing her any closer to the great
discussion that she was awaiting with such eager anticipation. The house was now resounding with the sound of loud hammer blows. Hans seemed to be wielding the hammer with real enthusiasm. Doralice thought she could hear something like anger and passion in these blows, they spoke to her, they reproached her, they seemed to reveal the inner workings of Hans’ mind, and she was disappointed when it suddenly grew quiet and Hans was gone. She fetched her English novel and a cigarette and decided to rest, really to rest, as she had once been able to do at the castle, when the rooms were silent, the warm sweet scents of the garden streamed in through the window and she would curl up in the big Voltaire armchair38 and remain there without a thought or desire in her head. She had not been happy in those days, but she had felt at home. Why did this feeling no longer come over her? Perhaps when everything between her and Hans was cleared up, when Hans had spoken, perhaps then she would feel at home once more. Impatiently she tossed the book and cigarette aside and ran down to the sea. She could go to meet Hans, and as she walked she worked through her thoughts again on the great scene of explanation, of mortification and of reconciliation. Without being aware of it, she was speaking aloud, addressing the waves, which were running white and hissing up the beach to Doralice’s feet: “I thought you were going to help me bear the responsibility, but you always wanted only to be fair and even-tempered. I was alone in my distress, and then this freedom, this freedom that sounds so terribly like loneliness.” As she spoke she arrived at the place where the sharp point of a dune closely approached the sea, behind which the path led up to the village; and there, concealed by the projection of the dune, Doralice heard a male voice, which was saying something loudly and eagerly. It was Hans’ voice. Doralice stopped to listen just as he came around the bend. “Oh, it’s you,” said Hans.
Doralice blushed.
“Yes, I wanted to come and meet you,” she replied. “Who were you talking to just now?”
Hans shrugged his shoulders: “With no one – I was just reciting Homer to myself.”
“That was certainly a lie,” thought Doralice, she believed she knew very well what he had been saying and to whom he had been saying it. “Shall we take a walk?” she asked. They rounded the point of the dune and went up the village street, walked along the fields of potatoes and of stubble and finally arrived at the straight paths of the forest reserve. Hans spoke again of colour and light, maintaining that the young pines turned violet in the reddish rays of the sun. All of this was utterly indifferent to Doralice, she desired a topic of conversation in which she would figure, she and Hans. The best solution in recent days had been their shared memories of travel. “Do you remember,” she asked, “the English lady in the Uffizi39 who had two pince-nez perched on her nose, one behind the other?”
Yes, Hans remembered her, “And, wasn’t that the day,” he said, “that we hiked up to Fiesole and sat on the brick steps that lead down into the ancient theatre?40 I think that was the hottest seat I have ever sat on.”
“No, no,” said Doralice, “we once sat on an even hotter seat – in Padua on the lawn in front of the Arena Chapel,41 we were eating cherries, the grass was as hot as a flat iron, you caught a brimstone butterfly and claimed that its wings were as warm as fresh rolls.”
Hans laughed, these reminiscences always cheered him up.
“Oh yes, and I practised making a face like Giotto’s ‘Despair’42 inside the church.”
At sunset they retraced their steps and then waited for the darkness at a sheltered little place on the dune. Hans was silent and Doralice reflected on his silence. Then in the darkness there appeared the bright red tip of a lighted cigar, not very high off the ground, and Knospelius’ deep voice said: “Good evening.” The Privy Counsellor sat down next to the couple and talked in his leisurely manner of remote, comforting things. He spoke of old government ministers, who had had absurd habits, or of a quiet café in Constantinople in which he had sat and smoked with silent Turks, while through the open door they looked thoughtfully at the white turban-bedecked tombstones of a small Turkish cemetery. Or he spoke of an entirely pink desert and of Arabs, all of whom had profound, serious faces and were nevertheless idiots. When the light from the distant lighthouse could be seen clearly they went their separate ways.
Since the northeast wind prevented anyone from going out to fish, Hans had to stay at home. He and Doralice sat by the lamp, she tried to sew, he read. “Won’t you read aloud?” asked Doralice.
“Oh, certainly, if it would give you pleasure,” replied Hans politely, “but it is Homer.”
“That doesn’t matter,” said Doralice.
Hans read the description of the garden of Alcinous:
“Pears ripen on pears, apples redden on apples,
grapes darken on grapes, figs shrivel on figs.”43
He imparted to the verses a monotonous rolling cadence, a wave-like ebb and flow that rocked Doralice into an exquisite state of tranquility. She tossed aside her work, leaned back in the chair and closed her eyes. She awoke to find Hans lightly stroking her hair. “You are tired, child, you need to sleep,” he said. His voice sounded strangely tender, and it moved her so strongly that her eyes filled with tears. Hans did not notice this, he lit the candles, extinguished the lamp and said good night.
Doralice’s nights had been restless lately. She lay awake for a long time and listened to all of the sounds that ran through the house, and when a door creaked, when she heard footsteps, then she knew that Hans had gone out to the sea. He did that frequently at night now, he wanted to study the sea, but Doralice knew well that he, too, could not sleep, that he too was suffering and therein lay something that made her feverish and restless with joy.
Notes
38 …Voltaire armchair: An armchair with a tall backrest and padded arms that first became popular in the mid-nineteenth century. Named for the Enlightenment philosopher Voltaire (1694-1778), even though such chairs did not exist in his era.
39 “the English lady in the Uffizi…”: An art museum in Florence, Italy, famous for its collection of Renaissance art. It has been open to the public since the eighteenth century.
40 “…we hiked up to Fiesole… into the ancient theatre?”: A town just outside Florence that is the site of a first-century Roman theatre. Today Fiesole is an affluent suburb of Florence.
41 “the Arena Chapel”: A small church, also known as the Scrovegni Chapel, built in the early fourteenth century in Padua near the site of an ancient Roman arena. The interior of the chapel is decorated by a series of magnificent frescos by Giotto di Bondone (c.1267-1337) that are generally regarded as some of the greatest masterworks of the early Renassiance.
42 Giotto’s ‘Despair’: One of Giotto’s frescos inside the Arena Chapel, part of a series illustrating vice.
43 “Pears ripen on pears… figs shrivel on figs”: From the seventh book of Homer’s Odyssey, taken from the German translation of Johann Heinrich Voß (1781). In Homer’s epic, Alcinous is the King of the Phaeacians, who welcomes Odysseus to the happy island of Scheria. The King’s magnificent palace and garden are described in detail. In the English prose translation of Samuel Butler (1900) this passage reads: “Pear grows on pear, apple on apple, and fig on fig, and so also with the grapes…”
Chapter Fifteen
The northeast wind slackened in the morning and had died down entirely by midday. In the afternoon a light westerly breeze sprang up, hurrying great white clouds across the sky.
Returning from their evening walk, Hans and Doralice saw giant copper-coloured mountain-shaped clouds piling up on the horizon. The sea was full of red and violet waves. Hans and Doralice sat down at their accustomed spot on the dune and gazed at the flickering and fading colours. The colourful mountains of cloud turned gradually grey, darkness spread over the land and finally the sea looked like nothing more than a stretch of dusky turbulence. In the sky hung a white and beamless slither of moon. A group of women were sitting in front of the cottage of the fisherman Stibbe, cleaning
fish and singing a slow, swaying melody:
“Little sun wants to sleep in the sea,
Dark waters are his bedclothes,
Hake, you green officer,
Run quickly to wake him up.
Raderi, raderi, raderidira.”
Privy Counsellor Knospelius, as usual, also appeared, small and grey, a fat cigar between his lips. “Good evening,” he said, “it looks as if we will have a thunderstorm.” Hans protested vigorously: “Not until tomorrow morning. Stibbe is quite certain of this, that’s why he’s going out tonight. I am going with Steege; far out at sea there is said to be a place where the flounder lie so still in this sort of weather that with a net you can gather them up from the sand like potatoes.”
“Well, well,” replied Knospelius, “once again, the thirst for action, the thirst for action.” They fell silent for a moment and listened to the plaintive song of the fishermen’s wives:
“Hake, you green officer,
Run quickly to wake him up.”
“This melody takes its time,” observed Doralice.
“What here doesn’t take its time?” responded Knospelius. He loved to speak slowly and musingly into the darkness, sounding out the words with his deep voice. “But time does, as it were, pass more slowly here, the days and the hours and the minutes are longer here. How long ago it now seems since I was awakened this morning by the verse of that hymn that my Anabaptist is in the habit of singing every morning in the next room.”
“Oh, yes,” sighed Doralice, “here everything moves slowly, very slowly.”
“But in return, dear Madame, we are becoming more profound,” said Knospelius. “Back in the city I lived off chopped-up experiences, chopped-up stories and thoughts, whereas here one tells a story up until the very end, one thinks every thought to its greatest depth.”
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