The children thought so too, and set off on their journey in pairs.
“Come on, Elisabeth,” said Reinhard. “I know a strawberry bed. You won’t have to eat dry bread.”
Tying the green ribbons of her straw hat together, she hung it over her arm.
“All right,” she said. “I’ve got a basket for them.”
They walked further and further into the wood, past dark, shadowy trees where all was dank and still, the silence broken only by the cry of the hawks, out of sight in the air above them. Then came dense undergrowth, so thick that Reinhard had to go in front to clear a path, breaking down branches and bending creepers aside.
Then he heard Elisabeth calling behind him. He turned round.
“Reinhard,” she cried. “Wait!”
At first he could not see her. Then he caught sight of her some distance away, fighting to get through the bushes, her little head bobbing about just above the tall ferns around her. Going back, he led her through the tangled undergrowth to a clearing where blue butterflies fluttered among the wild flowers. Reinhard stroked her damp hair from her flushed face and wanted to put the straw hat on her head. At first she resisted, but then he asked her to let him do so, and she finally consented.
“But where are the strawberries you talked about?” she asked, stopping to recover her breath.
“They used to grow here,” he replied, “but the toads have been here before us, or perhaps it was the martens – or the elves.”
“The leaves are still here,” said Elisabeth, as she looked. “But don’t talk about elves. I’m not a bit tired, so let’s look further on.”
There was a little stream in front of them, beyond which the wood continued, and lifting her up, Reinhard carried her across. After a while they came out of the shady forest into a broad clearing.
“There must be strawberries growing here,” said Elisabeth. “There is such a sweet smell.”
They looked everywhere in the sunlit glade but found none.
“No, it’s only the scent of the heather,” said Reinhard at length.
A straggling mass of briars and raspberry bushes surrounded them, and the air was filled with the strong scent of the herbs growing among the short grass.
“How lonely it is here,” said Elisabeth. “I wonder where the others are?”
Reinhard had forgotten how to get back.
“Wait a moment,” he said. “Which direction is the wind coming from?” And he held up his hand.
But there was no wind.
“Quiet!” whispered Elisabeth. “I think I hear voices. Shout to them!”
Cupping his hands round his mouth, Reinhard cried:
“This way!”
And back came the echo: “This way!”
“They’ve heard us!” cried Elisabeth, clapping her hands in joy. “No, it was only an echo.” Clutching his hand, she stammered: “I’m frightened!”
“There’s no reason to be,” he answered. “This is a wonderful spot. Sit down on the grass over there, where it’s shady. We’ll rest a while and then look for the others.”
Elisabeth sat down beneath the spreading branches of a beech tree and strained her ears. Reinhard sat on the stump of a tree a few yards away and looked across at her in silence. The sun stood high in the sky, beating down upon them with the full force of noonday. The air was full of tiny, steel-blue insects, their glittering wings humming and buzzing in the heat, and at times the knocking of the woodpeckers or the screech of other forest birds was heard from the heart of the woods.
“Listen,” said Elisabeth suddenly. “There’s a bell ringing.”
“Where?”
“Behind us. Can’t you hear it? It must be midday.”
“Then the town is behind us. If we go straight on in this direction, we’re bound to meet the others.”
So they started back, for Elisabeth was tired, and they had given up looking for strawberries. At last they heard the sound of laughter from among the trees. As they approached, they saw a snow-white cloth spread out on the ground to make a table, and on it masses and masses of strawberries. The old gentleman had stuck a serviette in the buttonhole of his waistcoat and was continuing his moralizing discourse to the children, busily slicing up the joint as he talked.
“Ah, here come the stragglers!” cried the others, as they caught sight of Reinhard and Elisabeth through the trees.
“This way!” called the old man. “Open your bags and empty your hats! Let’s see what you’ve found!”
“Only hunger and thirst!” said Reinhard.
“Well, if that’s all you’ve got,” returned the old man, offering them the well-filled dish, “you’d better keep it. You remember the agreement: no food for the idle.”
However, they eventually succeeded in winning him over, and the meal commenced, while the thrushes sang merrily in the nearby juniper bushes.
So the day passed. But Reinhard had found something. And although it had nothing to do with strawberries, it did owe its life to the woods. When he arrived home in the evening, he took out his old parchment book and wrote:
Here at the foot of the mountain
No raucous wind will blow;
The verdant branches bow their heads
To shield the child below.
She sits upon the scented bank,
She breathes a fragrance rare;
And all the while the insects buzz
And chirrup in the air.
The wood is clothed in silence;
She sits there so serene,
While shafts of light caress her hair
And bathe it in their sheen.
I hear the cuckoo’s happy call,
And tremble at the thought
That here before me, golden-eyed,
The Forest Queen holds court.
So she was not only a creature whom he had taken under his protecting wing: she also symbolized for him all the delight and glory of his own rise to manhood.
A Child Stood by the Roadside
Christmas Eve arrived. It was still afternoon when Reinhard sat at the old oak table in the Ratskeller with a group of his fellow-students. The wall-lamps had been lit, for down here it was already dark. As yet, however, only a few guests had assembled, and the waiters were leaning casually against the pillars. In one corner of the vaulted room sat a fiddler, and at his side a girl of gypsy-like appearance who was holding a zither. They were resting their instruments on their knees and staring listlessly in front of them.
From the students’ table came the pop of a champagne cork.
“Drink up, my Bohemian sweetheart!” cried an aristocratic young dandy, holding out a glass to her.
“I don’t want to,” answered the girl, without moving.
“Then sing!” he said, throwing a silver coin into her lap.
Slowly she ran her fingers through her black hair, and the fiddler whispered something in her ear. But she tossed her head, rested her chin on her zither and said:
“I’m not going to play for him!”
Jumping up, glass in hand, Reinhard went over to her.
“And what do you want?” she asked defiantly.
“I want to see your eyes.”
“What have my eyes got to do with you?”
Looking down at her impishly, Reinhard said:
“They have a deceitful expression in them – I can see.”
She leant her cheek against her hand and looked at him suspiciously. Reinhard raised his glass to his lips and said:
“Here’s to your wicked, beautiful eyes!”
Laughingly she threw her head back.
“Give me your glass,” she said, and slowly finished the champagne, keeping her black eyes fixed on him.
Then she struck a chord on her zither and sang in a low voice throbbin
g with emotion:
“Today I am happy,
Today I am gay;
Tomorrow my laughter
Will vanish away.
Just for the moment
I call you my own;
But at my death
I shall suffer alone.”
As the fiddler quickly struck up his ritornello, a newcomer joined the group.
“I called for you, Reinhard,” he said, “but you had already left. Santa Claus had paid you a visit, though.”
“Santa Claus!” laughed Reinhard. “He doesn’t come to me any more!”
“That’s where you’re wrong! Your room was full of the smell of spice cake and pine needles.”
Putting down his glass, Reinhard reached for his cap.
“Where are you going?” asked the girl.
“I’ll be back in a while.”
She frowned. “Stay with me!” she whispered, looking at him affectionately.
“I cannot,” he faltered.
She pushed him away with her foot and sneered:
“Go, then! You’re no use – just like the rest of them!”
She turned her back on him, and he slowly climbed the stairs and left.
Outside it was getting dark, and he felt the cold winter air against his glowing cheeks. Here and there the lit candles on a Christmas tree shone through the windows, and from time to time he heard the sound of penny whistles and tin trumpets and the ring of happy voices inside. Groups of beggar children shuffled from house to house or climbed up onto the balustrade to catch a glimpse of the forbidden joys within. Sometimes a door was suddenly opened, and harsh voices drove the beggars away from the brightly lit house and out on to the dark alley, while from the porch of a house nearby came the strains of an old carol sung by a party of boys and girls.
But Reinhard did not hear them. He hurried from one street to the next until he reached his house. By this time it was almost completely dark. He stumbled up the stairs and into his room. He was greeted by a sweet scent which reminded him of Christmas with his mother.
Trembling, he lit the lamp. An enormous parcel lay on the table, and when he opened it, the familiar little brown cakes fell out. Some of them were decorated with his initials in coloured sugar dots – no one but Elisabeth could have done that. Then he found a smaller parcel with fine, embroidered shirts, kerchiefs and frills, and finally two letters – one from his mother, the other from Elisabeth. Opening the latter, he read:
The pretty sugar initials will tell you who helped to bake the cakes, and the same person embroidered the frills. Our Christmas Eve will be very quiet. Mother always puts her spinning wheel away at half-past nine, and this winter it has been very lonely without you. Last Sunday the linnet you gave me died; I cried for a long while, for I always looked after it so well. It used to sing in the afternoons when the sun shone into its cage, and mother used to hang a cloth over it to keep it quiet when it was in full cry.
So now the room is even quieter, though your old friend Erich visits us from time to time. You once said that he looked like the brown overcoat he always wears, and I cannot help thinking of that every time he enters the room – it is really too funny. But please do not say anything to mother, because it might annoy her.
Guess what I am going to give your mother for Christmas! You can’t? I’m giving her myself! Erich is drawing a portrait of me in charcoal; I have already sat for him on three occasions – a whole hour each time. I found it very embarrassing to let a stranger get to know my features so closely, and I did not want to do it, but my mother persuaded me to: she said it would give dear Frau Werner such great pleasure.
Reinhard, you have not kept your promise: you have not sent me any fairy tales. I often complained to your mother, but she always says that you have more important things to think about now – but I think there is another reason.
Then Reinhard read the letter from his mother. When he had finished them both, he folded them up and put them away. An uncontrollable feeling of homesickness came over him, and he walked up and down in his room, murmuring:
“The stranger’s path was lonely;
His steps had led astray;
A child stood by the roadside
And motioned him the way.”
He went to his desk, took out some money and went down into the street again. Things had become quieter: the candles on the Christmas trees had gone out and the children’s procession had left. As the wind swept through the deserted streets, he saw family groups sitting in their houses, old and young together. The second part of the Christmas Eve celebrations had begun.
As Reinhard approached the Ratskeller, the sound of the violin and the zither girl’s song floated up to him. Then the bell tinkled, a dark figure pushed open the door and stumbled up the broad, dimly lit steps to the pavement. Reinhard moved into the shadows and walked quickly past. A short distance further he came to a brightly lit jeweller’s shop; going in, he pawned a little crucifix made of red coral and then went back the same way that he had come.
Near his house he saw a little girl in tattered clothes trying vainly to open the door.
“Shall I help you?” he asked.
The child let go the heavy handle but said nothing. Reinhard opened the door.
“No, don’t go in,” he said, “they might send you away again. Come with me instead, and I’ll give you some Christmas titbits.”
Closing the door again, he took her by the hand, and she walked with him silently to his house.
He had left the light burning when he went out.
“Here are some cakes for you,” he said, tipping half of his precious store into her apron, except for those with the sugar-covered letters.
“Now go home and share them with your mother,” he said.
The child looked shyly up at him as though unaccustomed to such generosity and not knowing what to answer. He opened the door and raised the candle to show her the way. Clasping her treasure, she skipped down the steps and out of the house like a deer.
Reinhard stoked up his stove and put the dusty inkwell on the desk. Then he sat down and began to write, and the whole night he wrote letters to his mother and to Elisabeth. The remainder of the cakes lay untouched beside him; he had, however, buttoned on the frills that Elisabeth had sent him, and they made a strange contrast to his white robe. He was still sitting there when the winter sun rose, casting its rays on to the frozen window panes and revealing in the mirror on the opposite wall a grim, pale face.
Home
After Easter had passed Reinhard went home, and the morning after his arrival he went to see Elisabeth.
“How you’ve grown!” he exclaimed, as the slim, attractive young girl came towards him with a smile.
She blushed, but said nothing and tried gently to withdraw her hand, which he was still holding in welcome. He looked at her, puzzled: she had never acted like this before, and he felt as though something had come between them.
And although he came to see her every day, the feeling persisted. There were sometimes embarrassing silences as they sat together, despite his anxious efforts to cover them up. So in order to have some definite plan of activity during his holiday, he began to teach her botany, a subject that he had studied off and on during the early months of his university career. Elisabeth, who was accustomed to following his lead and was, in addition, possessed of a lively intelligence, participated eagerly in the work. Several times a week they made excursions into the nearby heathlands and fields, returning home at noontime with their collecting box full of plants and blossoms. When Reinhard came back to her house again a few hours later, they shared the treasures between them.
On one such occasion Reinhard arrived to find her standing by the window, draping wisps of chickweed over a gilt birdcage which he had not seen there before. In the cage sat a canary, fluttering its wings and screeching
as it pecked at Elisabeth’s fingers. It was here that Reinhard’s linnet used to be.
“Did my poor little linnet turn into a goldfinch when he died?” he asked jokingly.
“Linnets do not turn into goldfinches,” answered Elisabeth’s mother stiffly, as she sat at her spinning wheel. “Elisabeth’s friend Erich sent her the bird today from his estate.”
“Which estate?”
“Don’t you know?”
“Know what?”
“That Erich took over his father’s other estate on Immensee a month ago?”
“But you did not tell me a word about it.”
“Nor did you ask a thing about him. He has developed into a most kind and considerate young man.”
She went out of the room to attend to the coffee. Meanwhile Elisabeth had turned away and was arranging the little bower of chickweed over the cage.
“I shan’t be a moment,” she said. “I’ve almost finished.”
Contrary to his custom, Reinhard did not reply, and she looked round. There was a sad expression in his eyes such as she had never seen before.
“What is the matter, Reinhard?” she asked, coming over to him.
“The matter?”
He stared into her eyes as though in a daze.
“You look so sad.”
“It’s the canary,” he said. “I cannot bear to see it here.”
She looked at him in astonishment.
“How strange you are!” she murmured.
He took her hands and held them gently in his own. A moment later her mother came back into the room.
After coffee Elisabeth’s mother returned to her spinning wheel, while Elisabeth and Reinhard went into the next room to arrange their plants. They counted the stamens, carefully spread out the leaves and the petals, and placed two of each kind between the pages of a thick book to press them. The sun was shining in the stillness of the afternoon; the only sound was the whirr of the spinning wheel in the adjoining room, or Reinhard’s subdued tones as he enumerated the classes and species of the plants and corrected Elisabeth’s hesitant pronunciation of their Latin names.
Immensee and Other Stories Page 2