Effi Briest (23 page)

‘Geert, I must go out there too, I must see this,’ Effi had declared instantly, and both had set out so as not to be too late. Their arrival was well-timed; for just as they reached the beach from the Plantation, the first shot was fired, and they could quite clearly see the rocket that carried the landline flying under the stormclouds and over the ship and falling on the far side. All hands busied themselves on deck, and with the light line they hauled out the thicker cable with the basket, and it wasn’t long before the basket was coming back, completing a kind of circuit, and one of the sailors, a slim, pretty fellow with an oilskin sou’wester, was safe on dry land being questioned avidly, while the basket went on its way again to fetch the second
man, and then the third, and so on. They were all rescued and Effi, walking home with her husband half an hour later, could have thrown herself down on the dunes and had a good cry. There was room in her heart for a noble sentiment once again, and she was infinitely cheered that it was so.

That had been on the third. On the fifth there was a new source of excitement for her, albeit of quite another sort. Coming out of the town hall, Innstetten had met Gieshübler, who as well as everything else was of course a town councillor and a magistrate, and in the course of conversation he had discovered that the War Ministry had enquired what stance the municipal authorities might take if the matter of a garrison were to be raised. If the response were positive enough, that is if they would undertake to provide barracks and stabling, they might be allocated two troops of Hussars. ‘Now Effi, what do you say to that?’ Effi was as if spellbound. All the innocent happiness of her childhood suddenly rose up before her again, and at that moment she felt as if red Hussars – for they were red too, just like the ones at home at Hohen-Cremmen – were no less than the ultimate guardians of paradise and innocence. And all the while she said nothing.

‘Aren’t you going to say anything, Effi?’

‘Yes, it’s strange Geert. But it makes me so happy, I can’t speak for joy. Will it really happen? Will they really come?’

‘There’s a long way to go, of course, before it’s settled, indeed Gieshübler was of the opinion that his colleagues the city fathers didn’t deserve it at all. Instead of being unanimously pleased at the honour, or if not the honour at least the advantages, they came up with all sorts of “ifs” and “buts” and were stingy about the new buildings; indeed Michelsen the gingerbread-baker went so far as to say it would ruin the town’s morals, and anybody with a daughter would have to take precautions and put bars on his windows.’

‘It’s unbelievable. I never saw people with better manners than our Hussars; really Geert. Well, you know that yourself. And this Michelsen wants to put up bars everywhere. Does he have any daughters?’

‘Yes indeed, three. But all of them are
hors concours
.’

Effi laughed more heartily than she had for a long time. But it didn’t last, and when Innstetten went out and left her alone she sat down at her child’s cradle and her tears fell on the pillows. It was all descending on her again, and she felt like a prisoner, as if she would never escape.

She suffered greatly and wanted to free herself from it all. But although she was capable of strong feelings, strength was not in her nature; she lacked tenacity, and all her good impulses quickly subsided. And so she drifted on, one day because there was nothing she could do about it, the next because she didn’t want to. The forbidden, the mysterious had her in its thrall.

And so it came about that she, by nature so frank and open, slipped further
and further into duplicity and play-acting. There were moments when she was appalled at how easy it was becoming. Only in one respect did she remain unchanged: she could see it all clearly and never glossed things over. Once, late in the evening she stepped in front of the mirror in her bedroom; light and shadows were flickering back and forth and Rollo barked outside, and for a moment it was as if someone were looking over her shoulder. But she quickly remembered herself. ‘I know what it is; it wasn’t
him
’, and she pointed a finger at the haunted room upstairs. ‘It was something else… my conscience… Effi, you’re a lost woman.’

But there was no stopping it, the ball was rolling, and what happened one day determined what happened the next.

About the middle of the month, invitations to the country arrived. The order that was to be observed in this had been agreed among the four families with whom the Innstettens consorted for preference; the Borckes were to lead, the Flemmings and the Grasenabbs to follow, and the Güldenklees to conclude. A week in between each visit. All four invitations came the same day, and were evidently intended to give an impression of order and mature consideration, possibly also of a special bond of friendship uniting them all.

‘I shan’t be there Geert, because of the cure I’ve been taking for weeks now, you must make my excuses in advance.’

Innstetten laughed. ‘The cure. I’m to blame it on the cure. That may be the pretext, the real reason is, you don’t want to go.’

‘No, there’s more honesty in it than you allow. It was you who wanted me to consult the doctor. I did so, and now I have to follow his advice. The good old doctor thinks I’m anaemic, strangely enough, and you know I drink water with iron every day. If you think of lunch at the Borckes’, possibly with potted head and jellied eels, you’re bound to see it would be the death of me. And surely you wouldn’t want to treat your Effi like that. Of course there are times when…’

‘Effi, please…’

‘Anyhow, and this is the only good thing about it, I’m looking forward to being able to accompany you part of the way each time you go, at least to the mill, or to the churchyard, or even to the corner of the woods, where the side road from Morgnitz comes in. And then I’ll get down and stroll back again. It’s always nicest in the dunes.’

Innstetten agreed, and when the carriage drew up three days later she got in too and kept her husband company as far as the corner of the woods. ‘Ask him to stop here Geert. You go on up to the left now, and I’m going right, down to the beach and back through the Plantation. It’s a fair distance, but not too far. Dr Hannemann tells me every day exercise is the main thing, exercise and fresh air. And I rather think he’s right. Give my regards to everybody;
except Sidonie, in her case don’t bother.’

The drives on which Effi accompanied her husband to the corner of the woods were repeated every week; but in the intervening time too Effi insisted on strictly observing what the doctor ordered. Not a day passed when she did not take her prescribed walk, mostly in the afternoon when Innstetten became engrossed in the newspapers. The weather was agreeable, the air fresh and mild, the sky clouded over. She went alone as a rule and said to Roswitha, ‘Roswitha, I’m just going down the road, then to the right to the square with the merry-go-round; I’ll wait for you there, come and meet me. And then we’ll come back along the birch avenue or the Reeperbahn. But don’t come unless Annie is asleep. And if she isn’t asleep, send Johanna. Or never mind, it’s not necessary, I’ll manage on my own.’

The first day of this arrangement they did meet. Effi was sitting on a wooden bench that ran the length of a long wooden shed, looking across at a low, half-timbered house, yellow with black-painted beams, a hostelry with a modest clientèle, townspeople who would drink their glass of beer or play solo there. It was barely getting dark, but the windows were already lit, and the light from them fell on the piles of snow and a number of trees on one side. ‘Look, Roswitha, how beautiful it looks.’

On a few days they met again in the same place. Mostly however, when Roswitha arrived at the merry-go-round and the wooden shed, there was no one there, and when she got back Effi would come out to her in the hallway and say, ‘Wherever have you been Roswitha? I’ve been home for ages.’

Thus some weeks passed by. The matter of the Hussars had been more or less dropped, because of the difficulties made by the town council; but since the negotiations had not been quite terminated and had recently been handed over to another authority, the General Staff, Crampas had been summoned to Stettin to give his views on the subject. From there he wrote to Innstetten on the second day: ‘Forgive me Innstetten, if I took French leave. It all happened so quickly. I shall incidentally try to spin the whole thing out, for it’s a relief to get away once in a while. Give my regards to your good lady, my gracious patron.’

He read the note aloud to Effi. She didn’t react. At length she said, ‘It’s just as well.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘That he’s gone away. He always says the same old thing. When he gets back he’ll at least have something new to say for a bit.’

Innstetten cast a sharp glance at her. But he noticed nothing and his suspicions were allayed once more. ‘I’m going away too,’ he said after a while, ‘to Berlin in fact; maybe, like Crampas, I’ll be able to bring back something new. My dear Effi always wants to hear something new; she’s bored in our
good old Kessin. I’ll be gone for a week, perhaps a day longer. And don’t be afraid… it really won’t come back… You know what I mean, up there… And if it does, you have Rollo and Roswitha.’

Effi smiled to herself, and there was a touch of melancholy in her smile. She involuntarily thought of the day when Crampas had first told her he was just putting on an act, manipulating her fears about the ghost. The great pedagogue! But wasn’t he right? Wasn’t the act justified? And all kinds of conflicting thoughts, good and bad, went through her mind.

On the third day Innstetten departed.

As to what he might intend in Berlin, he had said nothing.

Effi heard about it too. In days not so long before it would have amused her; but the state of her soul since the turn of the year had made her incapable of laughing freely and spontaneously at that kind of thing. Her features had taken on quite a different expression and the half-appealing, half-mischievous childlike look she had had even as a married woman was gone. The walks to the beach and the Plantation, which she had given up while Crampas was in
Stettin, she took up again after his return, not allowing even bad weather to deter her. As before it was arranged that Roswitha would come as far as the end of the Reeperbahn or the vicinity of the churchyard to meet her, but they missed one another even more frequently than before. ‘I could scold you for never finding me, Roswitha. But it doesn’t matter; I’m not afraid any more, not even at the churchyard, and I’ve never yet met a soul in the woods.’

This was said on the day before Innstetten came back from Berlin. Roswitha paid little heed, preferring to busy herself hanging garlands over the doors; even the shark was given a spruce branch and looked even more remarkable than usual. Effi said, ‘That’s right, Roswitha, he’ll be pleased with all this greenery when he gets back tomorrow. Should I go walking again today? Dr Hannemann insists and is always saying I don’t take it seriously enough, otherwise I would look better; I don’t really feel like it today, it’s drizzling and the sky is so grey.’

‘I’ll bring your raincoat, your ladyship.’

‘Yes, do that! But don’t come after me today, we never manage to meet,’ she said laughing. ‘You really are hopeless at it, Roswitha. And I don’t want you catching cold, and all for nothing.’

So Roswitha stayed at home, and since Annie was asleep, she went over to Kruse’s to have a chat with his wife. ‘Dear Frau Kruse,’ she said, ‘you were goin’ to tell me more of that story about the Chinaman. You couldn’t yesterday, what with Johanna bein’ ’ere an’ ’er always so ’igh and mighty, this isn’t for ’er. There was somethin’ between them, I think, the Chinaman and Thomsen’s niece I mean, that’s if she wasn’t ’is granddaughter.’

Frau Kruse nodded.

‘Either,’ Roswitha went on, ‘’is love wasn’t returned’ – Frau Kruse nodded again – ‘or maybe it was, and when the time came the Chinaman just couldn’t stand the thought of it suddenly bein’ over. For they’re ’uman too, even if they are Chinese, so I suppose it’s just the same for them as it is for us.’

‘Just the same,’ Frau Kruse affirmed, and she was about to tell her story to confirm this, when her husband came in and said, ‘Mother, pass me the bottle with the leather polish, would you; I’ve got to have the harness gleaming for when the Master gets back tomorrow; he don’t miss a thing, and even if he don’t say nothing, you can tell he’s noticed.’

‘I’ll get you it, Kruse,’ said Roswitha. ‘There’s somethin’ your wife’s just goin’ to tell me; but it’ll not take long, and then I’ll come and bring you it.’

Roswitha did then come out into the yard a couple of minutes later with the bottle of polish in her hand, and stopped beside the harness that Kruse had just hung over the garden fence. ‘Mercy me,’ he said as he took the bottle from her hand, ‘it’s not doin’ a lot o’ good, what with this constant drizzle. The shine just goes. But what has to be done has to be done.’

‘It ’as indeed. What’s more, Kruse, that’s proper polish, you can see that with ’alf an eye, proper polish don’t stay tacky, it dries right off. And then if it’s foggy tomorrow, or wet, it don’t matter. But that business with the Chinaman, it’s a queer tale, I must say.’

Kruse laughed. ‘Stuff and nonsense is what it is Roswitha. And my wife’s always tellin’ stories like that instead of seein’ to what she should, and then when I go to put on a clean shirt, a button’s missin’. It’s been like that as long as we’ve been here. Nothin’ in her head but these stories, and on top of that there’s the black hen. And the black hen don’t lay no eggs. Come to think of it, what’s it goin’ to lay eggs with? Never gets out and cock-a-doodle-do on its own’s not enough to do the trick. That’s more’n you can ask of any hen.’

‘Just you listen to me Kruse, I’m goin’ to tell your wife all this. I always took you for a respectable man, and now you go sayin’ a thing like that about cock-a-doodle-do. Men are always worse than you think. By rights I should take that there brush and paint a black moustache on you.’

‘Well now Roswitha, I wouldn’t have nothin’ against that, not from you,’ and Kruse, who most of the time stood on his dignity, seemed about to slip into a far more playful tone when he suddenly caught sight of the baroness, today coming from the other side of the Plantation, and just at that moment passing the garden fence.

‘Hello Roswitha, what a lively mood you’re in. What’s Annie doing then?’

‘She’s sleepin’ my lady.’

But as she said it, Roswitha went red and quickly broke off the conversation and made for the house to help her mistress change. For it was by no means certain that Johanna would be there. She spent more time over at the ‘office’ these days, because there was less to do at home, and Friedrich and Christel were too boring for her and never had anything to say.

Annie was still asleep. Effi bent over her cradle, let Roswitha take off her hat and coat and sat down on the little sofa in her bedroom. She slowly smoothed back her damp hair, put her feet on a low chair which Roswitha had slipped into place, and said, visibly enjoying this relaxation after rather a long walk, ‘I must remind you Roswitha that Kruse is a married man.’

‘I know my lady.’

‘Yes, the number of things one knows, and still one behaves as if one didn’t. Nothing can come of it.’

‘Nothin’ was ever supposed to come of it my lady…’

‘If you’re banking on her illness, you’re in for a rude awakening. That sort live longest. And then she has her black hen. Beware of that, it knows everything, and it tells all it knows. I don’t know, it gives me the shudders. And I’ll bet it’s got something to do with all that up there.’

‘Oh I don’t think so. But it’s dreadful just the same. Kruse’s always against
’is wife, but nothin’ ’e says is goin’ to make me change my mind about that.’

‘What did he say?’

‘He said it’s just mice.’

‘Well, mice are bad enough. I can’t stand mice. But I distinctly saw you and Kruse together, chatting familiarly, and I do believe you were about to paint a moustache on him. That’s getting rather familiar. And where will it leave you in the end? You’re still a presentable person, and you have a little something. But be careful, that’s all I’m saying. What really happened to you that first time? Is it something you can tell me?’

‘Oh yes, that I can. But it was dreadful. And it’s because it was so dreadful that your ladyship needn’t worry about Kruse. When you’ve been through what I ’ave you’ve ’ad enough of that kind of thing and you watch out. I still dream about it sometimes, and it leaves me like a wet rag the next day. Such terrible fear…’

Effi had sat up and was resting her head on her arm. ‘Well, tell me. What happened exactly? With you people it’s always the same story, I know that from home…’

‘Yes, it probably always starts the same, and I’m not sayin’ what ’appened to me was anythin’ special, or anythin’ like that. But when they came and accused me to my face and suddenly I ’ad to say, “Yes, I am,” that was dreadful. Mother I could bear, but Father, who ’ad the village smithy, strict ’e was, and when ’e ’eard ’e was furious. ’E came at me with an iron ’e’d just taken out of the fire and was goin’ to kill me. I screamed and ran up to the loft and ’id, and I lay there tremblin’ and only came down when they called up and told me to. And I ’ad a younger sister who kept pointin’ at me and sayin’ what a disgrace I was. And then when the child was due I crept into the barn next door, because I didn’t dare stay at ’ome. Some strangers found me lyin’ there ’alf-dead and carried me indoors and up to my bed. And on the third day they took away my baby, and when I asked where it was, they told me it was bein’ well looked after. Oh my lady, may Mary Mother of God preserve you from misery like that.’

Effi started and looked wide-eyed at Roswitha. But she was more alarmed than indignant. ‘What a thing to say! I’m a married woman, you know. You mustn’t say such things, it’s not done, it’s improper.’

‘Oh my lady…’

‘Just tell me what happened to you. They had taken your child. You had got that far…’

‘And then, after a few days, somebody came out from Erfurt and drove up to the mayor’s and asked if there was a wet-nurse to be ’ad. And the mayor, may the Lord reward him, said yes, and the strange gentleman took me away there and then, and from that time on I saw better days; even with the Registrar’s
widow it was bearable, and I ended up ’ere with you my lady. And that was best, best of all.’ And as she said this she came over to the sofa and kissed Effi’s hand.

‘Roswitha, you mustn’t keep kissing my hand, I don’t like it. And just watch out for Kruse. You’re normally such a good, sensible person… With a married man… no good ever comes of it.’

‘Oh my lady, God and ’is saints guide us in mysterious ways, and the misfortune that comes our way ’as its good side too. And those it don’t improve are beyond ’elp… I really don’t mind men so much…’

‘There you are Roswitha, you see.’

‘But if I ’ad to go through all that again with Kruse, there would be nothin’ for it, I would just go and drown myself. It was too dreadful. The ’ole thing. And what became of the poor mite? I don’t believe she’s still alive; they let ’er die, and it’s my fault.’ And she threw herself down by Annie’s cradle and rocked the child back and forth and sang her
Buhküken von Halberstadt
over and over again.

‘Don’t,’ said Effi, ‘don’t sing any more, I have a headache. But bring me the papers. Or has Gieshübler sent over any magazines?’

‘Indeed ’e ’as. The fashion magazine was on top of the pile. We ’ad a look at it, me and Johanna, before she went over. Johanna’s always so cross because she can’t ’ave anythin’ like that. Shall I bring the fashion magazine?’

‘Yes, bring it and bring the lamp too.’

Roswitha went out, and Effi, left alone, said to herself, ‘To think what we turn to, to get by. A pretty lady with a muff, and another with a half-veil; fashionable dolls. But there’s nothing better for taking my mind off other things.’