Effi Briest (28 page)
Authors: Theodor Fontane
They made the trip. Over in Jutland they drove up the Limfjord as far as Aggerhuus Castle where they stayed three days with the Penzes, and then, in many stages, with stops, some long, some short, in Viborg, Flensburg and Kiel, they returned home via Hamburg, which they loved – not straight to Keithstrasse in Berlin, but first to Hohen-Cremmen where they now wanted to enjoy a well-earned rest. For Innstetten this meant a few days only, for his leave had run out, but Effi stayed a week longer and announced that she didn’t intend to return home until the third of October, her wedding anniversary.
Annie had thrived splendidly in the country air, and Roswitha had planned for her to walk to her Mamma in her little boots, which she managed to perfection. Briest was quite the doting grandfather, and warned against being too loving and even more against being too strict and was the same old Briest in every way. However, all his affection was really directed at Effi, who was still very much on his mind – and most of the time when he was alone with his wife too.
‘How do you find Effi?’
‘As sweet and good as ever. We can’t be thankful enough to God for having such a delightful daughter. And how grateful she is for everything, and always so happy to be under our roof again.’
‘Yes,’ said Briest, ‘that’s a virtue she has more of than I care for. Actually it’s as if this were still her real home. But she has a husband and child and her husband is a gem and the child is an angel, and yet she acts as if Hohen-Cremmen were still the main thing for her, and her husband and a child couldn’t compete with us. She’s a splendid daughter, but rather too splendid for me. It worries me a bit. And it’s not fair on Innstetten. What’s actually going on there?’
‘What do you mean, Briest?’
‘I mean what I mean, and you know what I mean. Is she happy? Or is there something in the way? Right from the beginning I sensed she felt more respect than love for him. And to my mind that’s a bad thing. Love may not always last, but respect certainly doesn’t. Women actually get annoyed when they have to respect someone; they start by being annoyed, then they get bored and they end up laughing at you.’
‘Is this something you’ve experienced for yourself?’
‘I wouldn’t say so. I never attracted enough respect for that. But enough of this needling, Luise. Just tell me how things stand.’
‘Yes, well Briest, you keep coming back to these things. We’ve talked about them a dozen times and more, and exchanged views on them, but you keep coming up with this wish to know everything and then the questions you ask are so terribly naive, as if I could see into the deepest depths. What sort of idea do you have about young women, and about your daughter in particular? Do you really think they spread everything out for all to see? Or that I’m that oracle (the name escapes me) or that I instantly hold the truth in my hands, all cut and dried, when Effi has poured out her heart to me? At least that’s what they call it, but what do people mean by “pouring out your heart”? The really important thing stays in. She’ll take care not to let me into her secrets. And besides, I don’t know where she gets it from, but she’s… well, she’s a very cunning little person, and this cunning of hers is the more dangerous because she’s so very delightful.’
‘So you admit that… delightful. And good as well?’
‘Good as well. Which is to say, full of good-heartedness. How things stand otherwise, I’m not quite sure; I imagine she’s inclined to think our dear Lord is a good fellow and comforts herself with the thought that he won’t be too hard on her.’
‘Do you think so?’
‘Yes I do. I also think there’s been a big change for the better in her. Her character is what it is, but the circumstances since the move suit her much better and they’re becoming much more part of each other’s lives. She told me something along those lines, and what’s more important for me, I’ve been able to see it confirmed with my own eyes.’
‘So what did she say?’
‘She said, “Mamma, things are better now. Innstetten has always been a very fine man, there aren’t many like him, but I couldn’t really get close to him, there was something remote about him. He was remote even when he was being tender. Yes, at those moments most of all; there were times when it made me feel afraid.”’
‘I know the feeling.’
‘What is that supposed to mean Briest? Am I supposed to have been afraid or are you claiming you were afraid? I find both ideas equally ludicrous…’
‘You were going to tell me about Effi.’
‘Yes, well, she told me that sense of remoteness had left her, which she was very happy about; that Kessin hadn’t been the right place for her, the haunted house and the people up there, one lot too religious, the other lot too dull, but since the move to Berlin she has felt she’s in the right place. She said he’s the best of men, a bit too old for her and too good for her, but she’s got over the hump. That was the expression she used, I was quite struck by it.’
‘Why? It’s not quite up to scratch, the expression I mean. But…’
‘There’s something behind it. And she wanted to hint as much to me.’
‘Do you think so?’
‘Yes Briest; you always think butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. But you’re wrong. She likes to be carried along, and if she’s riding a good wave, then she’s good too. Struggling and resistance are not for her.’
Roswitha came up with Annie and with that the conversation broke off.
This conversation between Briest and his wife took place on the same day as Innstetten had departed from Hohen-Cremmen for Berlin, leaving Effi behind for at least another week. He knew there was nothing quite as beautiful for her as dreaming her time away in carefree and tranquil mood, hearing only kind words and assurance of how delightful she was. Yes, more than anything else, that was what gave her a sense of well-being, and now she savoured it to the full once again, quite gratified despite the total lack of entertainment; visitors were rare, because since her marriage, at least for the young folk, a proper centre of attraction was missing, and even the pastor’s house and the school were no longer what they had been in the old days. At the school-house especially everything was half-empty. In the spring the twins had married two teachers who lived near Genthin, a big double wedding with a report on the celebrations in the
Havelland Advertiser
, and Hulda was in Friesack looking after a rich old aunt, who, as is usual in such cases,
proved to be much more long-lived than the Niemeyers had imagined. In spite of this Hulda never complained in her letters, not because she had nothing to complain about, but because she did not wish the suspicion to arise that life could treat a person as excellent as herself other than very well. Niemeyer, a weak father, displayed the letters with pride and joy, while Jahnke, who equally lived only for his daughters, had calculated that both young women would produce babies on the very same day, on Christmas Eve no less. Effi laughed heartily and to the prospective grandfather she expressed the wish that she might be invited to be godmother to both grandchildren, then she dropped family topics and told him about ‘København’ and Elsinore, Limfjord and Aggerhuus Castle, and above all about Thora von Penz, who, she could only say, had been ‘typically Scandinavian’, blue-eyed, flaxen-haired and always in a red velvet bodice, at which Jahnke’s expression was transfigured and he repeated over and over, ‘Yes, that’s what they’re like; Germanic through and through, far more German than the Germans.’
On the third of October, her wedding anniversary, Effi meant to be back in Berlin. Now it was the evening before, and on the pretext of packing and preparing everything for the return journey, she had retired to her room relatively early. In actual fact all she wanted was to be alone; much as she liked to chat, there were times too when she longed for peace.
The rooms she occupied on the upper floor looked out on to the garden; in the smaller one Annie and Roswitha were sleeping with the door ajar, in the larger one which she herself occupied, she was pacing up and down; the lower casements of the windows were open, and the little white curtains billowed in the draught and then fell slowly over the back of the chair until the next draught of air freed them again. It was so light that the titles under the pictures in narrow gold frames that hung over the sofa were clearly legible:
The Storming of Rampart 5 at Düppel
, and beside it
King Wilhelm and Count Bismarck on the Heights of Lipa
. Effi shook her head and smiled. ‘The next time I’m here, I’ll ask for different pictures; I can’t stand these battle scenes.’ And now she closed one of the windows and and sat down at the other whose casements she left open. What a good feeling all this gave her. The moon stood by the church tower and cast its light on the lawn with the sundial and the beds of heliotrope. All was shimmering silver, and beside the bands of shadow were white bands of light, as white as linen laid out to bleach. The tall clumps of rhubarb were still standing, their leaves an autumn yellow, and she had to think of the day just over two years before when she had been playing here with Hulda and the Jahnke girls. And then, when the visitor came, she had climbed the short flight of stone steps beside the bench, and an hour later she was engaged.
She stood up and went to the door and listened; Roswitha was asleep already, and Annie too.
And all at once, with the child before her, all sorts of images from the days in Kessin flooded into her memory: the Landrat’s house with its gable, and the veranda with its view of the Plantation, and she was sitting rocking in the rocking chair; and now Crampas came up to greet her, and then Roswitha came with the child, and Effi took her and held her aloft and kissed her.
‘That was the first day, that’s when it started.’ And with these thoughts going through her head, she left the room where they were both sleeping, sat down at the open window again and and looked out into the silent night.
‘I can’t get away from it,’ she said. ‘And the worst thing about it, the thing that makes me despair of myself…’
At that moment the clock in the tower opposite struck and Effi counted the chimes.
‘Ten… And tomorrow at this time I’ll be in Berlin. And we’ll be talking about our anniversary, and he’ll be saying sweet, kind, perhaps affectionate things to me. And I’ll sit and listen and I shall have this guilt on my soul.’
And she rested her head on her hand and gazed straight ahead and was silent.
‘And I shall have this guilt on my soul,’ she repeated. ‘Yes, I do have it. But is it really weighing on my soul? No. And that’s why I’m appalled at myself. What weighs on me is something quite different: fear, mortal fear, the constant fear that I’ll be found out some day after all. And besides the fear… shame. I’m ashamed. But just as I don’t have a proper sense of remorse, I don’t have a proper sense of shame either. I’m only ashamed because of the never-ending lying and deceit; I was always proud that I couldn’t lie, and also that I didn’t need to lie, lying is so mean-minded, and now I’ve had to lie all the time, to him and to the whole world, in matters great and small, and Rummschüttel noticed it and shrugged his shoulders, and who knows what he thinks of me, not the best, whatever it is. Yes, I’m plagued by fear, and shame too at my own duplicity. But not shame at my guilt, I
don’t
feel that, or not properly, or not enough, and that’s what’s crushing me, the fact that I don’t feel it. If all women are like this, then it’s terrible, and if they’re not, and I hope they aren’t, then things don’t look good for me, then there’s something wrong in my soul, I don’t have the right feelings. And that’s what old Niemeyer told me once back in his active days, when I was still half a child: the right feelings, he said, that’s what’s important, and if you have them then the worst can’t happen to you, but if you don’t, you’re in eternal peril, and what goes by the name of the Devil has us surely in his power. Merciful God, is that how it is with me?’
And she laid her head on her arms and wept bitterly.
When she sat up again, she had grown calmer and she looked out into the garden again. Everything was so still, and a quiet, gentle sound from the plane-trees, as if it was raining, struck her ear.
Some time passed. From the village street a grating voice rang out; the old night-watchman Kulicke was calling out the hours, and when at last he was silent, from the distance she heard the rattling of a train coming nearer and nearer until, two miles away, it passed Hohen-Cremmen. Then the sound faded and finally died away, and there was only the moonlight falling on the lawn, and all that was to be heard was the plane trees rustling as before, as if light rain were falling.
But it was only the movement of the night air.
The next evening Effi was back in Berlin and Innstetten met her at the station with Rollo who trotted alongside them as they drove chatting through the Tiergarten.
‘I was beginning to think you weren’t going to keep your word.’
‘But Geert, of course I’d keep my word, that comes before anything else.’
‘Don’t say that. It’s asking a great deal, always to keep your word. And sometimes it’s not possible. Just think back. I was expecting you that time in Kessin when you were renting the apartment, and who didn’t come but Effi.’
‘Ah yes, but that was different.’
She didn’t want to say ‘I was ill’, and Innstetten didn’t notice. He had too many other things on his mind, all to do with his post and his social position. ‘Actually Effi, our life in Berlin is just beginning now. When we moved here in April the season was petering out and we barely had time to pay our calls. Wüllersdorf was the only close acquaintance we had, and he’s a bachelor unfortunately. From June onwards everything goes to sleep and to all the world the shuttered windows say: “Gone to the country”; whether it’s true or not makes no difference… So what were we left with? A chat with Cousin Briest, a meal at Hiller’s, that’s not Berlin life, not really. But that’s all going to change now. I’ve made a note of everybody of the rank of Rat who still has enough go in him to entertain. And that’s what we’re going to do too. We’re going to entertain, and by winter they will all be saying at the Ministry, “Yes, there’s no doubt Frau von Innstetten is the most delightful wife in town.”’
‘Oh Geert, I don’t know you like this, you’re quite the ardent admirer.’
‘It’s our wedding anniversary, you must make allowances.’