Innstetten, stepping back a few paces, turned away from the scene. Wüllersdorf had gone over to Buddenbrook and both awaited word from the doctor, who shrugged his shoulders. At that moment Crampas indicated with a gesture that he wanted to say something. Wüllersdorf bent down to him, nodded at the few words that came scarcely audibly from the dying man’s lips and then went up to Innstetten.
‘Crampas would like to say something to you Innstetten. You must grant him this wish. He has barely three minutes to live.’
Innstetten walked over to Crampas.
‘Would you…’ These were his last words.
One more agonized but almost friendly flicker in his features and it was all over.
29
On the evening of the same day Innstetten arrived back in Berlin. He had gone straight to the railway station in the carriage he had left on the road across the dunes, without going near Kessin again, leaving it to the two seconds to make the report to the authorities. On the way (he was alone in the compartment) he went over what had happened, reflecting on it all once more; his thoughts were the same as two days earlier, but in reverse order, starting with the conviction that he was in the right and had done his duty, and ending up doubting it all. ‘Guilt, if there is such a thing, isn’t bound to time or place and can’t just lapse from one day to the next. Guilt requires expiation; that makes sense. But a time limit is a half-measure, it’s weak, or at least prosaic.’ And he clung to this idea for support, repeating to himself that what had happened had to happen. But at the very moment when he was certain of this, he rejected it again. ‘There must be some time limit, a time limit is the only sensible approach; and whether it’s prosaic into the bargain or not is neither here nor there, what’s sensible is usually prosaic. I’m forty-five now. If I had found the letters twenty-five years later, I would have been seventy. Then Wüllersdorf would have said, “Innstetten, don’t be a fool.” And if Wüllersdorf hadn’t said it, Buddenbrook would have, and if he hadn’t said it I would have said it myself. That much is clear. If you take something to extremes, then you go too far and end up looking ridiculous. No doubt about it. But where does it start? Where is the dividing line? After ten years a duel is still necessary, and they call it honour, and after eleven years, or perhaps after only ten and a half, they call it folly. The dividing line, the dividing line. Where is it? Has it come? Has it already been crossed? When I think of that last look, the resignation, with a smile in spite of his agony, what that look was saying was, “Innstetten, always the stickler for principles… You could have spared me this, and yourself too.” And maybe he was right. My soul seems to be saying something like that. Yes, if I’d been filled with mortal hate, if I’d had a burning lust for revenge… Revenge isn’t admirable, but it’s human, and has a natural human right. As it was, it was all for the sake of an idea, a concept, it was an artificial affair, half play-acting. And now I have to carry on with the act, and send Effi away, and be the ruin of her, and myself too… I should have burnt the letters and the world should never have found out about them. And then when she came back, without any inkling, I should have said, ‘Your place is there,’ and should have inwardly divorced myself from her. Not in the eyes of the world. There are so many lives that aren’t real lives, so many marriages that aren’t real marriages… happiness would have gone, but I wouldn’t have had to live with that eye with its questioning look and its silent, gentle reproof.’
Shortly before ten Innstetten drew up outside his house. He climbed the stairs and pulled the bell; Johanna came and opened the door.
‘How is Annie?’
‘Well sir. She’s not asleep yet… If you would care to…’
‘No, no, don’t excite her. I’d rather see her tomorrow morning. Bring me a glass of tea Johanna. Has anybody called?’
‘Only the doctor.’
And now Innstetten was alone again. He paced up and down, as was his wont. ‘They know everything already. Roswitha is stupid, but Johanna is a smart one. And if they don’t know for certain, they’ve put two and two together and have a shrewd idea. It’s curious how many things can become pointers and tell-tales, as if everybody had been there.’
Johanna brought the tea. Innstetten drank it. After all the strain he was dead tired and fell asleep.
Innstetten was up early. He saw Annie, exchanged a few words with her, praised her for being a good patient and then went to the Ministry to report what had happened to his chief. The Minister was most gracious. ‘Yes Innstetten, happy the man who comes through what life brings us unscathed; you haven’t had your troubles to seek.’ He found all that had happened in order and left the consequences to Innstetten.
It was late afternoon before Innstetten got back to the apartment, where he found a few lines from Wüllersdorf.
Arrived back this morning. Experienced a world of things; painful, touching, Gieshübler above all. The most delightful hunchback I’ve ever met.He didn’t say much about you, but your wife, your wife! He couldn’t get over it and ended up in tears, the little man. The things that happen. One can only wish there were more Gieshüblers. But there are more of the others. And then the scene at the Major’s house – terrible. But not a word about that. One more lesson in the importance of being careful. I shall see you tomorrow.
Yours,
W.
Innstetten was badly shaken after he had read this. He sat down and wrote a few letters himself. When he was finished he rang: ‘Johanna, letters for the post-box.’ Johanna took the letters and made to go.
‘…And then, Johanna, there’s another thing: my wife will not be coming back. Others will tell you why not. Annie must know nothing, at least not yet. Poor child. You must break it to her gently that she no longer has a mother. I can’t. But do it sensibly. And don’t let Roswitha ruin things.’
Johanna stood there, as if quite dazed for a moment. Then she went up to Innstetten and kissed his hand.
When she got back to the kitchen she was quite filled with pride and superiority, almost happiness. The Master had not only told her everything, but at the end he had said, ‘Don’t let Roswitha ruin things.’ That was the main thing, it wasn’t that she lacked goodness of heart and even sympathy for the Mistress, but what preoccupied her above all else was the triumph of having a position of a certain intimacy with the Master.
Under normal circumstances flaunting and exploiting this triumph would have been an easy matter, but today it turned out that things were not at all in her favour, so that her rival, without having been taken into the Master’s confidence, proved to be the better informed. The concierge below, at just about the same time as this was happening, had called Roswitha into his little room and as soon as she entered had thrust a newspaper before her eyes. ‘There Roswitha, there’s something for you; you can bring me it back down later. It’s only the Fremdenblatt: but Lene has gone out to get the Kleine Journal. There will be more in that; they always know everything. Imagine Roswitha, who would have thought it?’
Roswitha, not usually at all curious, had made her way as quickly as possible up the back stairs after this exchange and had just finished reading when Johanna joined her.
The latter put the letters Innstetten had just given her down on the table, ran her eye over the addresses, or at least pretended to (for she had long since established to whom they were written), and said with studied nonchalance, ‘One is to Hohen-Cremmen.’
‘I can imagine,’ said Roswitha.
This remark caused Johanna no little astonishment. ‘The Master never writes to Hohen-Cremmen ordinarily.’
‘Yes, ordinarily. But now – imagine, I just got this from the concierge downstairs.’
Johanna took the paper and read half-aloud a passage marked heavily in ink: ‘Just before going to press we heard from a well-informed source that yesterday morning in the seaside resort of Kessin in Eastern Pomerania, a duel took place between Ministerialrat v.I. (Keithstrasse) and Major von Crampas. Major von Crampas was killed. There is alleged to have been a li
aison between him and and the Ministerialrat’s wife, a beautiful and still very young woman.’
‘The things these papers print,’ said Johanna, who was displeased that her news had been overtaken by events. ‘Yes,’ said Roswitha. ‘And now people are goin’ to read that and call my poor, dear mistress all sorts of things. An’ that poor Major. Now ’e’s dead.’
‘Roswitha, what can you be thinking of? Should he not be dead? Or should our dear Master be dead instead?’
‘No Johanna, the Master ought to be alive too, everybody ought to be alive. I’m not for shootin’ people, I can’t even stand ’earin’ the bangs. But just think Johanna, it was ages ago, and them letters, as soon as I saw them, I thought there was something funny about them with that red string wound round three or four times and then knotted without a bow – they looked all yellow with age, it was that long ago. We’ve been ’ere more’n six years now, ‘ow can people let such old stories –’
‘Oh Roswitha, what do you know about it? And when you get down to it, you’re to blame. It all came from the letters. Why did you fetch that chisel and force the sewing-table open? You should never do that; you must never break open a lock that somebody else has locked.’
‘You’ve gone too far now Johanna, accusin’ me of somethin’ like that straight out, and anyway if it comes to that you’re to blame, you’re the one who came dashin’ into the kitchen like a mad thing and told me to break open the sewin’-table because the bandage was in it, that’s when I brought the chisel, and now I’m to get the blame. Well I must say…’
‘All right, I take it back Roswitha. But don’t try your “Poor Major” on me. Poor Major indeed! The sum total of your poor major was worth nothing; people like that with golden red moustaches they’re always twirling are never worth a thing and all they do is damage. And when one has always been in service in fine houses – which you haven’t Roswitha, that’s something you lack – then one knows what is proper and fitting and what honour means, and one knows that when that kind of thing happens, there’s no other way, and so there’s what they call a challenge issued, and somebody ends up shot dead.’
‘Oh, I know all that; I’m not so stupid as you would like to ’ave me. But when it was so long ago –’
‘Roswitha, that “so long ago” of yours, that’s what shows you don’t understand a thing about it. You’re always telling the same old story about your father and the red-hot iron bar, and how he came at you, and each time I put a red-hot slug in the iron I think of your father, and I see him wanting to kill you because of the child, which is dead now. Yes Roswitha, you’re always talking about it, and next thing you’ll be telling Annie the story too, and when Annie is confirmed, she’ll certainly hear it, perhaps the very same day. And it annoys me that you’ve been through all that, when your father was just a village blacksmith who shoed horses or put rims on cart-wheels, and now you come and expect the Master to turn a blind eye to it all, just because it was so long ago. And what does long ago mean? Six years isn’t long ago. And our mistress – who isn’t coming back, the Master has just told me that – our mistress isn’t twenty-six yet, her birthday’s in August, and you talk to me about “long ago”. And even if she was thirty-six, I can tell you thirty-six is an age when you really have to be careful, and if the Master had done nothing, the best people would have cut him. But you don’t know anything about that Roswitha, you don’t even know the word.’
‘No, I don’t know anythin’ about that and don’t want to neither; but one thing I do know Johanna, you’re in love with the Master.’
Johanna gave a forced laugh.
‘Yes, go on, laugh. I saw it a long time ago. There’s somethin’ in your manner. It’s a good thing the Master don’t notice that kind of thing… The poor lady, the poor lady.’
Johanna was now intent on peace. ‘Let it be Roswitha. You’re in one of your funny moods; but I know you all have them, you country folk.’
‘Maybe we do.’
‘I’m going to post the letters now and see downstairs if the concierge has the other paper yet. I did understand you to say he sent Lene for it? There’s bound to be more in that. There’s next to nothing in this one.’
30
Effi and Geheimrätin Zwicker had been in Ems for almost three weeks, living on the ground floor of a charming little villa. In the shared drawing-room which lay between their two living-rooms and had a view of the garden was a jacarandawood grand piano on which Effi would occasionally play a sonata, and the Geheimrätin occasionally a waltz; she was quite unmusical, restricting herself in the main to rhapsodizing about Niemann’s Tannhäuser.
It was a magnificent morning; in the little garden the birds were twittering, and from the house next door in which there was a ‘bar’, the click of billiard-balls could already be heard, despite the early hour. The two ladies had taken breakfast not in the drawing-room itself, but on a little gravelled front terrace, raised a couple of feet, with a brick retaining wall, from which three steps led down to the garden; the awning above them was wound back so that their enjoyment of the fresh air would be in no way impeded, and both Effi and the Geheimrätin were absorbed in their needlework. Only occasionally did they exchange a few words.
‘I don’t understand,’ said Effi, ‘why I haven’t had a letter for four days; he usually writes every day. Can Annie be ill? Or is he himself ill?’
The Geheimrätin smiled, ‘He’s fit as a fiddle, you’ll see.’
Effi felt there was something unpleasant about the tone in which this was said, and was on the point of responding when the housemaid, who came from somewhere near Bonn and from her youth had formed the habit of assessing the most diverse phenomena by reference to Bonn students and Bonn hussars, came out of the drawing-room on to the terrace to clear away the breakfast things. She was called Afra.
‘Afra,’ said Effi, ‘it must be nine by now. Hasn’t the postman been yet?’
‘No, my lady, not yet.’
‘What can be the reason for that?’
‘The postman, of course; he’s from Siegen way, no gumption. I’ve already told him he’s downright slack. And the way he has his hair, I don’t think he’s ever heard of a parting.’
‘Afra, you’re being a bit hard on him again. Just think what it’s like to be a postman day in day out in this eternal heat…’
‘Yes, my lady, you’re right. But others manage; if you’ve got it in you, it can be done.’ And as she said this, she balanced the tray skilfully on her finger-tips and went down the steps to take the shorter route to the kitchen through the garden.
‘A pretty girl,’ said Frau Zwicker. ‘And so brisk and bright, one might say she has natural grace. Do you know, my dear Baroness, that this Afra – wonderful name by the way, isn’t it, they tell me there was even a Saint Afra, not that I think ours is any relation –’
‘There you go again, my dear Geheimrätin, off at a tangent, this time it’s Afra, and quite forgetting what you really meant to say –’
‘Not quite, my dear friend, I’m coming back to it. What I was about to say was that our Afra, for me, bears an uncommon resemblance to that impressive girl I’ve seen in your house…’
‘Yes, you’re right. There is a similarity. Except that our maid in Berlin is definitely prettier, her hair is much fuller and more beautiful. I’ve never seen hair as beautiful and flaxen as our Johanna’s, absolutely never. You do see it of course, but never in such abundance.’
Frau Zwicker smiled, ‘It’s not often you hear a young wife lavishing praise on her housemaid’s flaxen locks. And on their abundance too! You know I find that touching. For really, choosing maids is always a delicate matter. They have to be pretty, because every caller, or at least the men, are put off if a long beanpole with a pasty complexion and a grimy collar and cuffs comes to the door, truly it’s a blessing that most lobbies are so dark. But pay too much attention to maintaining outward appearances and creating so-called first impressions, and maybe even give the pretty
little thing one frilly apron after another, and you’ll never have a moment’s peace again, you’ll constantly be asking yourself, unless you’re too vain and too self-confident, whether you ought not to remedy the matter. “Remedy” was one of Zwicker’s favourite expressions, he frequently used to bore me stiff with it; but of course every Geheimrat has his favourite expressions.’
Effi listened with very mixed feelings. If the Geheimrätin had been just a little different, it would all have been charming, but as it was, Effi felt there was something unpleasant here that in other circumstances would perhaps simply have amused her.
‘You’re right about Geheimrat’s tick, my dear, Innstetten has it too, but he always laughs when I draw attention to it, and apologizes afterwards for using official jargon. Of course your husband had been in the service longer and was probably rather older…’
‘Not very much,’ was Frau Zwicker’s tart rejoinder.
‘But anyway, I can’t really share the fears you express. The moral code, as it’s called, still counts for something –’
‘You think so?’
‘ – and least of all can I imagine that you of all people, my dear friend, could ever be exposed to these fears and anxieties. Forgive me for being so outspoken, but you have what men call “charm”, you’re good-humoured, fascinating, stimulating company, and if it’s not indiscreet I would like to ask, with all these qualities of yours, whether what you have been saying is based on certain painful experiences in your own life?’
‘Painful?’ said Frau Zwicker. ‘Oh my dear, dear lady, painful is putting it too strongly, even if one does chance to have been through a good deal. Pain is too strong a word, far too strong. In addition to which one has one’s ways of coping, one’s counter-strategies. You mustn’t be too tragic about these things.’
‘I can’t really quite imagine what you’re referring to. It’s not as if I don’t know what sin is. I do. But there’s a difference between finding yourself inadvertently entertaining bad thoughts of whatever kind and actually letting that sort of thing become a part, or indeed a habitual part of your life. Not to speak of allowing it in your own home…’
Effi Briest Page 28