Effi Briest (20 page)
Authors: Theodor Fontane
Effi was displeased with herself and glad it was settled that these outings together would cease from now on for the rest of the winter. When she considered what had been said, touched upon or hinted at over all these weeks and months, she could find nothing to reproach herself with in any direct way. Crampas was a clever man, sophisticated, humorous, free, free in a good sense too, and it would have been petty and mean-spirited to be strait-laced and insist on the rules of strict propriety at every moment. No, she could not accuse herself of having responded to his manner, yet she had just a slight sense of having escaped danger and congratulated herself that it all seemed to be behind her now. For that they should meet frequently
en famille
was scarcely likely, Crampas’s domestic situation more or less precluded that, and meetings in the homes of neighbouring gentry in prospect for the winter could only be occasional and fleeting. Effi worked all this out to her growing satisfaction and came to the conclusion that she would not grieve unduly at having to do without what the major’s company offered. In addition to which Innstetten informed her that his visits to Varzin would not take place this year: Prince Bismarck was going to Friedrichsruh, which he seemed to be favouring more and more; on the one hand he regretted this, on the other he welcomed it – now, he said, he could devote himself wholly to his home life, and if she didn’t object, they would retrace their Italian journey again using the notes he had made. Such recapitulation was really essential, for it was only then that one made everything lastingly one’s own, and retrospective study could even give conscious existence to things only fleetingly glimpsed, which one scarcely knew one still harboured in one’s soul. He elaborated further on this and added that Gieshübler, who knew the whole ‘boot of Italy’ down to Palermo, had asked to be allowed to join them. Effi, who would have far, far preferred an ordinary evening just chatting together, without the ‘boot of Italy’ (they were even going to hand round photographs), was a little strained in her answer; Innstetten however, quite wrapped up in his plan, noticed nothing and went on, ‘It won’t of course just be Gieshübler, we must
have Roswitha and Annie with us too, and if I think of us sailing up the Canale Grande and hearing the gondoliers singing far off in the distance, while a few feet away Roswitha is bending over Annie, treating her to a rendition of “Buhküken von Halberstadt” or some such thing, then we may have some fine winter evenings to look forward to with you sitting at my side, knitting me a nice woollen cap. What do you say to that, Effi?’
Such evenings were not merely planned, they went ahead, and would in all probability have gone on for many weeks had not the harmless Gieshübler in his innocence, despite his horror of ambiguous dealings, been the servant of two masters. The one was Innstetten and the other was Crampas, and if he accepted Innstetten’s invitation to the Italian evenings, not least because of Effi, with genuine delight, then the delight with which he obeyed Crampas was even greater. For according to Crampas’s plan,
One False Step
was to be performed before Christmas, and when they were about to have their third Italian evening, Gieshübler used the occasion to talk to Effi, who was to play the part of Ella.
Effi was galvanized; what were Padua and Vicenza to that! Effi was not for reheated leftovers; fresh dishes were what she longed for, variety. But as if a voice within had called, ‘Take care!’ she asked in the midst of her joy and excitement, ‘Was it the major who thought up this plan?’
‘Yes. As you know, my lady, he was elected unanimously to the entertainments committee. So at long last we can look forward to an agreeable winter at the Club. He’s ideal for the job.’
‘And is he going to be in the play too?’
‘No, he turned that down. A pity, I have to say. For he is good at everything and would be an absolutely wonderful Arthur von Schmettwitz. He’s only going to produce.’
‘So much the worse.’
‘So much the worse?’ Gieshübler repeated.
‘Oh you mustn’t take me so seriously, it’s just a manner of speaking and I really mean the opposite. On the other hand of course there is something overpowering about the major, he likes to do things over your head. And then you have to act the way
he
wants, and not the way you want yourself.’
She carried on in this vein, tying herself up in one contradiction after another.
One False Step
was duly performed, and because they had only two weeks (the last week before Christmas was excluded), everybody made an effort and it went off wonderfully; the cast, above all Effi, were rewarded with generous applause. Crampas had indeed contented himself with producing, and, strict as he had been with all the others during rehearsals, he had
scarcely interfered with Effi’s acting at all. Either he had been informed by Gieshübler of his conversation with Effi, or he had himself noticed that Effi was studiously avoiding him. He was clever and knew enough about women not to disturb things that were taking their natural course, a course with which experience had made him all too familiar.
After the evening’s performance at the Club they broke up late, and it was past midnight when Innstetten and Effi arrived home. Johanna was still up to help them, and Innstetten, who preened himself in no small way about his young wife, told Johanna how charming the Mistress had looked and how well she had acted. It was a pity he hadn’t thought of it before – she and Christel and even Frau Kruse, the old bat, could easily have watched from up in the music gallery; there had been a large number of people there. Then Johanna went out and Effi, who was tired, lay down. Innstetten however, who felt like chatting, drew up a chair and sat down at his wife’s bedside, looking at her amiably and holding her hand in his.
‘Yes Effi, that was a lovely evening. A lovely play, I found it so amusing. And to think it was written by a Kammergerichtsrat, you would hardly credit it. And from Königsberg, no less. But what pleased me most was my enchanting little wife who turned every head.’
‘Oh Geert, don’t talk like that. I’m quite vain enough already.’
‘Vain enough, that may be true. But not as vain as the others by a long chalk. And that’s in addition to your seven beauties, as Hans Sachs put it…’
‘We all have seven beauties…’
‘Just a slip of the tongue; you can multiply that figure by itself.’
‘How gallant you are Geert. If I didn’t know you, I might be afraid. Or is there something behind it all?’
‘Have you a guilty conscience then? Been listening behind the door?’
‘Oh Geert, I really do get scared,’ And she sat bolt upright in bed and stared at him. ‘Shall I ring for Johanna to bring us tea? You’re so fond of it before you go to bed.’
He kissed her hand. ‘No Effi. After midnight not even the Kaiser may call for tea, and you know I don’t like to make more demands on people than is necessary. No, I just want to look at you and be glad that I’ve got you. There are times when one is more keenly aware of the treasure one has. You might after all have been like poor Frau Crampas; what an awful woman she is, friendly to no one, and she would have liked to wipe you off the face of the earth.’
‘Oh Geert, please, you’re just imagining that. The poor woman! I didn’t notice anything.’
‘That’s because you don’t have an eye for that kind of thing. But it was just as I say and very awkward for poor Crampas, who avoided you all the
time and scarcely gave you a glance. Which is very unnatural, first because he’s a ladies’ man through and through, and then, when it comes to ladies like you, why, they’re his particular passion. And I’ll wager nobody knows that better than my little wife herself. When I think of the lively chit-chat – if you’ll forgive the expression – when he used to come to the veranda in the morning or when we went riding along the beach or walking on the mole. It’s just as I say, he didn’t dare today, he was afraid of his wife. And I don’t blame him. The major’s wife is a bit like our Frau Kruse, and if I had to choose between the two of them, I don’t know which it would be.’
‘I know who I would choose; there’s a difference between the two of them. The major’s poor wife is unhappy, Frau Kruse is uncanny.’
‘And you’re more for unhappiness?’
‘Quite definitely.’
‘Well, let me tell you, it’s a matter of taste. It’s easy to see you have never been unhappy. Anyway, Crampas has a knack of conjuring the poor woman away. He always finds a way of leaving her at home.’
‘But she was there today.’
‘Today yes. There was no way round it. But I arranged an outing to Ring, the head forester’s, with him, Gieshübler and the pastor on Boxing Day, and you should have seen the skill with which he proved to his wife that she would have to stay at home.’
‘Is it going to be gentlemen only then?’
‘Heaven forbid. No, I would draw the line at that. You are to come and two or three other ladies, not counting the ones from the estates.’
‘In that case it’s truly unkind of him, Crampas I mean, and that kind of thing always comes home to roost.’
‘Sometimes it does. But I think our friend is one of those who don’t lose any sleep over things to come.’
‘Do you think he’s a bad person?’
‘No, not bad. Almost the opposite, at any rate he has his good points. But he’s half-Polish, as good as, and not entirely reliable, not in anything actually, least of all with women. He’s a gambler. Not at the gaming table, but he gambles his way through life, you have to watch him like a hawk.’
‘I’m glad you’ve told me this. I shall be on my guard with him.’
‘Yes. But don’t overdo it; that won’t help. Be natural, that’s always best, and of course better still is character and firmness, and if I may be permitted so starchy an expression, a pure soul.’
She looked at him wide-eyed. Then she said, ‘Yes, of course. But let’s not say any more, not about all these things I can take no pleasure in. You know, I seemed to hear that dancing up above just then. Strange how it keeps coming back. I thought that you were only joking about all that.’
‘I wouldn’t say that Effi. But be that as it may, one just has to keep one’s life in order and have no reason to be afraid.’
Effi nodded and suddenly recalled what Crampas had said to her about her husband being a ‘pedagogue’.
Christmas Eve came and went just as in the previous year; presents and letters arrived from Hohen-Cremmen; Gieshübler again paid homage with a poem, and Cousin Briest sent a card, a snowscape with telegraph poles and a little bird sitting huddled on the wires. There were treats for Annie too, a tree with lights, and the child reached out her little hands to it. Innstetten was relaxed and jolly and seemed to revel in the joys of domesticity, lavishing much attention on the child. Roswitha was surprised to see the Master at once so affectionate and so good-humoured. Effi too spoke and laughed a lot, but none of it came from her innermost soul. She felt depressed and didn’t know who to hold responsible for it, herself or Innstetten. There had been no Christmas greeting from Crampas; actually she was pleased, but then again not pleased, his attentions filled her with a certain apprehension and she was put out by his indifference; she could see that all was not as it should be.
‘You’re so restless,’ said Innstetten after a while.
‘Yes. Everybody has treated me so well, you most of all; it depresses me, because I feel I don’t deserve it.’
‘That’s not something to agonize about, Effi. It comes down to one thing in the end: what you get is what you deserve.’
Effi listened intently, and her bad conscience prompted her to ask herself whether he had deliberately put it in such an ambiguous way.
Later, towards evening, Pastor Lindequist called to offer congratulations and enquire about the outing to the head forester’s at Uvagla, which of course had to be a sleighride. Crampas had offered him a place in his sleigh, but since neither the major nor his groom, who was to take charge of the horses as well as everything else, knew the way, it was suggested that they might all make the trip together, with the Landrat’s sleigh in the lead and Crampas’s following on. And Gieshübler’s too, probably. For Mirambo, to whom friend Alonzo, normally so cautious, seemed inexplicably intent on entrusting himself, probably had less knowledge of the paths than even the freckled Treptow Uhlan. Innstetten, who was tickled by these embarrassing little details, was fully in agreement with Lindequist’s proposal and arranged that he would drive across the market square at two o’clock precisely and lead off the convoy without further ado.
This arrangement was duly observed and promptly at two, as Innstetten
crossed the market square, Crampas first greeted Effi from his own sleigh and then fell in behind Innstetten’s. The pastor sat beside him. Gieshübler’s sleigh with Gieshübler himself and Dr Hannemann followed, the first in an elegant buffalo coat trimmed with marten, the latter in a bearskin coat that had clearly seen thirty years’ sevice. Hannemann had been a ship’s doctor in his younger days on the Greenland run. Mirambo sat at the front, rather on edge because he was unused to handling a sleigh, just as Lindequist had predicted.
In two minutes they were past Utpatel’s mill.
Between Kessin and Uvagla (where according to legend a Wendish temple had once stood) lay a strip of woodland that was scarcely more than half a mile wide but seven miles long, with the sea along its right side, and a wide sweep of extremely fertile and well-cultivated land stretching as far as the horizon on its left. Here, on the landward side, the three sleighs now flew along, at some distance from a few old coaches in front, in which in all probability other invited guests sat, also bound for the head forester’s. One of these coaches was easily recognizable with its high, old-fashioned wheels – it was from Papenhagen. Of course. Güldenklee was rated the best speaker in the district (better than Borcke, even better than Grasenabb), a man who could not well be absent from any festive occasion.
The trip went by quickly – the gentry’s coachmen made an effort, not wishing to be overtaken – so that at three they were already drawing up at the head forester’s. Ring, an imposing gentleman in his mid-fifties with a military manner, who had been through the first campaign in Schleswig under Wrangel and Bonin and had distinguished himself at the storming of the Danewerk, stood in the doorway and welcomed his guests, who, after they had taken off their coats and greeted the lady of the house, sat down first at a long coffee-table on which there were elaborately piled pyramids of cakes. The head forester’s wife, by nature a very apprehensive or at best very timid woman, was just the same in the role of hostess, to the quite obvious annoyance of the inordinately vain head forester who favoured self-assurance and panache. Fortunately he contained his displeasure, for what his wife lacked his daughters more than made up for, two very pretty young things of thirteen and fourteen who took after their father. The elder especially, Cora, immediately started flirting with Innstetten and Crampas, both of whom fell in with the game. Effi was annoyed at this, and then ashamed at having been annoyed. She was sitting next to Sidonie von Grasenabb and said, ‘Strange, I was like that too when I was fourteen.’
Effi was expecting Sidonie to contradict this or at least express reservations. Instead she said, ‘I can imagine.’
‘And the way her father spoils her,’ Effi went on, just for something to say to cover a certain embarrassment.
Sidonie nodded. ‘That’s at the root of it. No discipline. It’s a sign of the times.’
At this point Effi made no further comment.
Coffee was quickly taken and they got up to go for a half hour’s walk in the surrounding forest, first visiting a game enclosure. Cora opened the gate and had hardly gone in before the deer came up to her. It was all quite charming, just like a fairy tale. But the young girl’s vanity as she posed for effect prevented any spontaneous response, above all from Effi. ‘No,’ she said to herself, ‘I wasn’t like that. Maybe I did lack discipline as that awful Sidonie just hinted, maybe other things too. They were too kind to me at home. They loved me too much. But one thing I can say, I never put on airs. Hulda did. That’s what I didn’t like about her when I saw her again this summer.’
On the way back from the forest to the head forester’s it began to snow. Crampas joined Effi and expressed his regret that he had not yet had a chance to greet her. At the same time he pointed to the big heavy snowflakes that were falling and said, ‘If it goes on like this we’ll be snowed up here.’
‘That wouldn’t be the worst thing that could happen. Ever since I was a child the idea of being snowed up has had pleasant associations for me, associations of help and protection.’
‘That’s new to me my dear lady.’
‘Yes.’ Effi went on, trying to laugh, ‘ideas are a funny thing, they don’t just come from one’s personal experience, but also from things one has heard somewhere or just happens to know. You’re well-read Major, but in the case of one poem – not quite Heine’s “Sea Spectre” or “Vitzliputzli” I admit – I do seem to be one up on you. The poem is called “God’s Wall”, and I learnt it by heart from our pastor at Hohen-Cremmen many, many years ago, when I was still quite small.’
‘“God’s Wall”’, Crampas repeated. ‘A nice title, and what’s it about?’
‘A little story, quite short. There was a war somewhere, a winter campaign, and an old widow who lived in great fear of the enemy prayed for God to “build a wall round her” to protect her from her country’s enemies. And God had the house buried in snow, and the enemy passed it by.’
Crampas was visibly disconcerted and changed the subject.
By the time it was getting dark they were all back in the head forester’s house.