Effi Briest (10 page)
Authors: Theodor Fontane
Eleven was long past; but Gieshübler had not yet put in an appearance. ‘I can’t wait any longer,’ Geert, whom duty called, had said. ‘If Gieshübler does still come, be as cordial as possible and everything will go swimmingly; he
mustn’t be made to feel embarrassed; if he’s bashful he either gets tongue-tied or says the oddest things; but if you can win his trust and put him in a good humour he will talk like a book. I know you’ll do it. Don’t expect me before three; there are all kinds of things to be done over there. And we must think about the room upstairs again; but it will probably turn out best to leave it as it is.’
With that Innstetten went off and left his young wife alone. She sat, leaning back slightly, in a cosy corner by the window, leaning her arm, as she looked out of the window, on a little flap pulled out of the roll-top bureau. The street was the main road to the beach which meant that in summertime it was full of life, but now in the middle of November everything was empty and silent and only a few poor children whose parents lived in some of the thatched cottages on the outermost edge of the ‘Plantation’ clattered past the Innstettens house in their clogs. Effi however did not feel lonely at all, for her imagination was still working on the wonderful things she had seen shortly before on her inspection tour of the house. This tour had begun with the kitchen whose stove proved to be of modern manufacture, while an electric cable ran across the ceiling to the maid’s room – both had been recently installed. Effi had been very pleased when Innstetten told her about them, but then they had gone from the kitchen back into the hall and from there out into the courtyard, half of which was not much more than a narrow alley between the two side wings. Everything else relating to the household and its management had been accommodated in these wings, on the right the maid’s room, the servants’ room, the laundry room, and on the left between the stable and the coach-house the coachman’s rooms that were occupied by Kruse’s family. Above this, in a loft, the hens were housed, and a flap on the roof above the stable enabled the pigeons to go in and out. All this Effi had looked at with much interest, but this interest was far exceeded when after returning from the yard to the front of the house she had, under Innstetten’s guidance, climbed the steps that led upstairs. The staircase was crooked, rickety and dark; the landing by contrast into which it opened almost seemed cheerful because it had a great deal of light and a fine view of the landscape: to one side, out over the roofs of the edge of the town and the ‘Plantation’ to a Dutch windmill standing high on a dune, to the other on to the Kessine which at this point, just before its estuary, was quite broad and made a stately impression. It was impossible not to be impressed, and Effi had not stinted in giving lively expression to her delight. ‘Yes, very beautiful, very picturesque,’ Innstetten had answered without further comment and had then opened the two halves of a slightly out-of-true double door which led to the right into the so-called gallery. This ran the whole length of the house; front and rear windows stood open and the long curtains already mentioned swept
back and forth in the strong draught. At the centre of one of the side walls a fireplace protruded with a large stone base, while on the opposite wall a few tin lamps hung, each with two openings for the light, just like the ones in the hallway; but everything was gloomy and neglected. Effi was somewhat disappointed and said so, declaring that rather than this abandoned, shabby gallery, she would like to see the rooms on the other side of the landing. ‘There’s absolutely nothing to see there,’ Innstetten had answered, opening the doors nonetheless. Here there were four rooms, each with a single window, all distempered yellow, just like the gallery and just as empty. Except for one in which there were three rush-bottomed chairs with the seats gone; on the back of one of them a little picture an inch or so high had been stuck, showing a Chinaman in a blue jacket with baggy yellow breeches and a flat hat on his head. Effi saw it and asked, ‘What’s the Chinaman doing there?’ Innstetten himself seemed surprised by the picture and assured her he didn’t know. ‘That’s something Christel must have stuck on, or Johanna. Some kind of game. You can see it’s been cut out of a child’s reading book.’ Effi agreed and was only surprised that Innstetten was taking it all so seriously, as if it really mattered. Then, taking another look at the gallery, she had expressed the view that it was a pity to have it all standing empty. ‘Downstairs we only have three rooms, and if anybody comes to visit we’ll be stuck. Don’t you think the gallery could be made into two nice guest rooms? It would be just the thing for Mamma; she could sleep at the back and would have the view of the river and the two moles, and at the front she would have the town and the Dutch windmill. All we have in Hohen-Cremmen is an old German mill. What do you think? Next May Mamma will very likely be coming.’
Innstetten had been in agreement with all this but all he had said at the end was, ‘That’s all very well, but it’s probably better in the long run to put Mamma across the road, where the Landrat’s office is; the whole first floor is empty, just as it is here, and she would be more independent there.’
So that was the result of their first tour of the house; then Effi had gone across to dress, not quite as quickly as Innstetten had expected, and now she was sitting in her husband’s room, her mind preoccupied alternately with the little Chinaman upstairs and with Gieshübler, who still hadn’t appeared. A quarter of an hour earlier to be sure, a little man with crooked shoulders, almost to the point of deformity, but wearing a short, elegant fur coat and a tall top hat, very smoothly brushed, had passed by on the other side of the street and looked over at their window. But that couldn’t have been Gieshübler! No, the man with the crooked shoulders and yet such an air of distinction must have been the president of the high court, and she did in
fact remember once having seen such a person at a reception at Aunt Therese’s, and then it occurred to her that Kessin only had a district judge.
While she was still engrossed in these thoughts, the object of them, who had apparently first taken a morning stroll round the Plantation – or was he trying to pluck up courage? – reappeared, and a minute later Friedrich came to announce the chemist Gieshübler.
‘Show him in.’
The poor young woman’s heart was beating, because she was appearing for the first time as a wife, and indeed as the first wife of the town.
Friedrich helped Gieshübler out of his fur coat and then opened the door again.
Effi held out her hand as the embarrassed Gieshübler made his entrance, and he kissed it a shade impetuously. The young woman seemed immediately to have made a powerful impression on him.
‘My husband has already told me… But this is my husband’s room I’m receiving you in… he’s over in the office and may be back any minute… May I invite you to join me in my room.’
Now Gieshübler followed Effi’s lead into the next room where she pointed to one of the armchairs, herself sitting down on the sofa. ‘I can’t tell you what pleasure your beautiful flowers and your card gave me yesterday. I stopped feeling a stranger here at once, and when I mentioned it to Innstetten, he said he thought we would be thoroughly good friends.’
‘Did he indeed? The good Herr Landrat. Yes, the Herr Landrat and you, my dearest lady, are a case, if I may make so bold, of two dear hearts finding one another. For I know your esteemed spouse for the man he is, and your disposition, my dearest lady, is plain to see.’
‘Let us hope you are not seeing with too friendly an eye. I am very young. And youth…’
‘Oh, dearest lady, say nothing against youth. Youth, even in error, is charming and beautiful, and age, even in its virtues, is of no great worth. Personally, I can’t speak authoritatively in this matter – of age perhaps, but not of youth, for I was never really young. People of my sort are never young. I may say that that is the saddest part of the matter. One has no courage, one has no faith in oneself, one scarcely dares ask a lady to dance, because one wants to spare her the embarrassment, and so the years run by, and one grows old, and one’s life was poor and empty.’
Effi gave him her hand. ‘Oh, you mustn’t talk like that. We women are not as bad as that.’
‘Oh no, certainly not…’
‘And when I recall,’ Effi went on, ‘all that I’ve experienced… which isn’t a lot, for I’ve never gone out much and I’ve lived most of my life in the country…
but when I recall it, I find that in the end we always love what deserves to be loved. And of course I see instantly that you are different from others, we women have a sharp eye for that. In your case it may be that your name contributes to the effect. That was always one of our dear Pastor Niemeyer’s favourite claims; he used to say that one’s name, particularly one’s Christian name, has a mysterious determining influence, and Alonzo Gieshübler, I mean it opens up a whole new world, yes, I might even say, if you’ll allow me, Alonzo is a romantic name – it’s in Weber’s
Preziosa
,’
Gieshübler smiled with quite uncommon contentment and found the courage to set aside his top hat, which was much too tall for his proportions and which, up to that point, he had been rotating in his hands. ‘Yes, my dearest lady, there you hit it.’
‘Oh, I understand. I’ve heard about the consuls Kessin is supposed to be so full of, and in the house of the Spanish consul your father presumably met the daughter of a seafaring
capitano
, some Andalusian beauty I imagine. Andalusian women are all beautiful.’
‘It was just as you suppose, my lady. And my mother really was beautiful, though it’s hardly for me to undertake to prove this. But when your esteemed spouse came here three years ago, she was still alive, and the fire was still in her eyes. He’ll corroborate this for me. I take more after the Gieshüblers, people outwardly unprepossessing, but otherwise tolerably sound. We’re in our fourth generation in these parts, a full century, and if there were a chemists’ aristocracy…’
‘You would be in a position to lay claim to it. I for my part take your case as proven, indeed for proven without any reservation. People like us, who come from old families, find it easiest to do this, because we, at least that’s how my father and mother brought me up, take pleasure in accepting any noble-mindedness, no matter where it comes from. I was born a Briest, and I am descended from the Briest who carried out the attack on Rathenow – you may perhaps have heard of it – on the day before the battle of Fehrbellin…’
‘Oh certainly, my dearest lady, that’s a special interest of mine.’
‘So I’m a Briest. And my father, if he’s said it to me once, he’s said it a hundred times: Effi (that’s my name you see), Effi, he says, this is the heart of it, just this – when Froben switched horses he was of the nobility, and when Luther said “Here I stand” he was certainly of the nobility. And I think, Herr Gieshübler, Innstetten was quite right when he assured me that we would be true friends.’
At this all Gieshübler wanted to do was make a declaration of love and ask to be allowed to fight and die for her like El Cid or some similar
campeador
. But since none of that was possible and his heart could take no more, he
stood up and reached for his hat, which he fortunately found instantly, and, after repeatedly kissing her hand, beat a rapid retreat without uttering another word.
That had been Effi’s first day in Kessin. Innstetten gave her half a week to settle in and write a variety of letters to Hohen-Cremmen, to Mamma, to Hulda, to the twins; then however their visits in the town had begun, which in part (it was raining so heavily just then as to make this unusual behaviour permissible) they accomplished in a closed coach. When this round was complete it was the turn of the landed aristocracy. This lasted longer, because with the mainly long distances involved only one visit could be made in a day. They called first on the Borckes at Rothenmoor, then they went to Morgnitz, Dabergotz and Kroschentin, where they made their duty calls on the Ahlemanns, the Jatzkows and the Grasenabbs. A few others followed, among whom old Baron von Güldenklee at Papenhagen was included. The impression Effi gained was the same everywhere: mediocre people of mainly dubious affability, who, while they pretended to discuss Bismarck or the Crown Princess, were actually examining Effi’s dress, which was found by some to be too pretentious for so young a lady, by others to be not quite discreet enough for a lady of her station. The Berlin style, they noted, was indeed all too evident: a concern for externals and a remarkable embarrassment and insecurity when it came to bigger issues. At the Borckes’ in Rothenmoor and then by the families in Morgnitz and Dabergotz she was pronounced to be ‘infected with rationalism’, while by the Grasenabbs in Kroschentin she was declared outright to be an ‘atheist’. Old Frau von Grasenabb, it must be conceded, a South German, née Stiefel von Stiefelstein, had made a half-hearted attempt to redeem Effi for ‘deism’; Sidonie von Grasenabb however, an old maid of forty-three, had intervened brusquely, ‘I’m telling you mother, she’s an an out-and-out atheist, not a jot less, and that’s that’, whereupon the old lady, who was afraid of her own daughter, had prudently fallen silent.
The whole round of visits had lasted something like two weeks and it was December 2nd when, at an advanced hour, they returned to Kessin from the last of them. This had been to the Güldenklees at Papenhagen, on which occasion it had been Innstetten’s unavoidable lot to discuss politics with old Güldenklee. ‘Ah, my dear Landrat, when I think how times have changed. On this day a generation ago, more or less, there was another second of
December and the good Louis Napoleon, Napoleon’s nephew –
if
that was what he was and he wasn’t descended from some other quarter entirely – was blazing away at the Paris mob. Well, one could forgive him
that
, he was the right man for that, and I swear by the motto “Everybody gets no more nor less than his just deserts.” But then when he lost his sense of proportion in 1870 and without so much as a by your leave decided to have a go at
us
, that, Baron, if I may say so, was, how shall I put it, a piece of downright insolence. But he got his comeuppance. Our old fellow up there doesn’t take insolence,
he
’s on our side.’
‘Yes indeed,’ said Innstetten, who was wise enough to pretend to take such Philistine ramblings seriously, ‘the hero and conqueror of Saarbrücken didn’t know what he was doing. But you mustn’t be too hard on him personally. Who, in the final estimate, is master in his own house? Nobody. I am already adjusting to the thought of handing over the reins of government to someone else, and Louis Napoleon, well, he was just putty in the hands of his Catholic wife, or let’s say rather his Jesuit wife.’
‘Putty in his wife’s hands, and then she thumbed her nose at him. Of course he was, Innstetten. But you’re not going to exonerate that puppet just because of that? He has been judged and the judgment stands. In a general way nobody has yet proved,’ and with these words his gaze somewhat anxiously sought the eye of his better half, ‘whether the rule of women may not actually be an advantage; the wife of course has to be up to it. And who was this wife? She wasn’t a wife at all, the best that can be said is that she was a lady, which says it all; the word “lady” almost always has an unpleasant aftertaste. This Eugénie – and I shall ignore her connection with the Jewish banker, for I loathe people preening themselves on their virtue – had a touch of the
café chantant
, and if the city she lived in was Babel, then she was the whore of Babylon. I don’t wish to be more explicit, for I know,’ and he bowed to Effi, ‘what I owe German womanhood. Pardon me, dear lady, for even touching on these things in your hearing.’
Such had been the course of the conversation after they had dealt with the election, the rapeseed crop and Nobiling, and now Effi and Innstetten were sitting at home again chatting for another half-hour. The two maids were already in bed for it was nearly midnight.
Innstetten was walking up and down in a short dressing-gown and Morocco slippers; Effi was still in her formal dress; her fan and gloves lay beside her.
‘Yes,’ said Innstetten, and he stopped pacing up and down, ‘we really ought to celebrate today, but I can’t quite think how. Should I play you a triumphal march, or set the shark out there swinging and carry you in triumph across the hall? Something has to happen, for you know, that was the last visit.’
‘Thank goodness for that,’ said Effi. ‘But the feeling that we have peace and quiet now is celebration enough, I think. Only you could give me a kiss. But you never think of that. All the long way never a touch, frosty as a snowman. And always that cigar of yours, nothing else.’
‘Don’t go on, I’ll try to be better, all I want to know at the moment is what you feel about the whole business of who to see and cultivate. Are you drawn to one or the other of them? Did the Borckes outdo the Grasenabbs, or the other way round, or are you for old Güldenklee? What he had to say about Eugénie made a very pure and noble impression, did it not?’
‘What’s this, Herr von Innstetten, do I detect mockery? I’m getting to know quite another side of you.’
‘And if our gentry don’t come up to the mark,’ Innstetten went on without batting an eyelid, ‘how do our local dignitaries stand? What did you think of the Club? That’s what it comes down to in the end. I saw you the other day talking to our district judge – he’s a lieutenant in the reserves, simpers a bit but he might perhaps be tolerable if he could only get away from the idea that his appearance on the right flank was responsible for the retaking of Le Bourget. And his wife! She’s held to be the Club’s best Boston player and she has the prettiest counters too. So Effi, again, how is it to be in Kessin? Are you going to get used to it? Will you be well-liked and secure my majority if I decide to stand for the Reichstag? Or are you for the hermit’s life, for keeping yourself from the Kessiners, both the townspeople and the landed gentry?’
‘I think it will be the hermit’s life for me, unless the Chemist under the Sign of the Moor can cajole me out of it. That will lower me even further in Sidonie’s estimation, but I must accept that; this is a battle that must be fought. I stand or fall with Gieshübler. It sounds funny, but he really is the only person you can talk to, he’s the only real person here.’
‘That he is,’ said Innstetten. ‘How well you can discriminate.’
‘Would I have
you
otherwise?’ said Effi and slipped her arm through his.