Effi Briest (30 page)
Authors: Theodor Fontane
Innstetten and Annie sat facing one another silently for a while; in the end, when he found the silence awkward he asked her a few questions about the headmistress and who her favourite teacher was. Annie answered without much enthusiasm because she sensed that Innstetten’s mind was elsewhere. Things only improved after the second course when Johanna whispered to her little Annie that there was something still to come. And good, kind Roswitha, who felt she owed her little treasure something on that unfortunate day, had indeed made something extra, an omelette with apple slices, no less.
The sight of this made Annie a little more talkative and Innstetten’s frame of mind too appeared improved when immediately afterwards the doorbell rang and Geheimrat Rummschüttel came in. Quite by chance. He had just dropped in without any inkling of their having sent to ask him to call. The compresses they had applied met with his approval. ‘Just send for some lead-water and keep Annie at home tomorrow. The main thing is rest.’ Then he asked after Frau von Instetten and what news there was from Ems; he said he would call again next day to see how things were.
When they had risen from table and gone into the next room – where they had been at such pains, in vain as it turned out, to find the bandage – Annie was laid on the sofa again. Johanna came and sat with the child while Innstetten began to clear the countless things that lay in a jumble on the window-sill back into the sewing-table. From time to time he did not know where things belonged and had to ask for help.
‘Where were the letters Johanna?’
‘Right at the bottom,’ she said, ‘here in this bit.’
And as his question was answered Innstetten looked more closely than before at the little bundle tied with red thread, which seemed to be composed more of numerous folded-up notes than of letters. He flicked through the edges of the package with thumb and forefinger as if it were a pack of cards, and some lines, actually only odd words, flashed before his eyes. It wouldn’t be true to say he recognized it, but he did seem to have seen that handwriting somewhere before. Should he take a look?
‘Johanna, could you bring the coffee? Annie will take half a cup too. The doctor didn’t say she wasn’t to, and what isn’t forbidden is allowed.’
As he said this he unwound the red thread and while Johanna left the room, he let the entire contents of the bundle run quickly through his fingers. Only two or three letters were addressed, ‘To Frau Landrat von Innstetten.’ Now he recognized the writing; it was the Major’s. Innstetten knew nothing of any correspondence between Crampas and Effi and everything began to spin in his head. He stuck the bundle in his pocket and went into his room. Several minutes later Johanna tapped lightly on the door to indicate that the coffee was served and Innstetten answered, but that was all; other than that, total silence. Only after a quarter of an hour was he heard again pacing up and down on the carpet. ‘What can be wrong with Papa?’ said Johanna to Annie. ‘The doctor told him it was nothing, didn’t he?’
The pacing up and down in the next room seemed never-ending. Finally Innstetten appeared in the other room and said, ‘Johanna, look after Annie and see that she stays resting on the sofa. I shall be gone for an hour, or perhaps two.’
Then he looked attentively at the child and left.
‘Did you see the look on Papa’s face, Johanna?’
‘Yes Annie. Something must have annoyed him greatly. He was quite pale. I’ve never seen him like that.’
Hours went by. The sun was already down and there was only a red glow above the roofs opposite when Innstetten came back. He took Annie’s hand, asked her how she felt and instructed Johanna to bring the lamp into his room. The lamp was brought. In the green shade were translucent ovals with numerous different photographs of his wife, pictures which had been taken for the cast at the performance of Wichert’s
One False Step
in Kessin. Innstetten turned the shade slowly from left to right and examined each picture in turn. Then he stopped; finding it sultry he opened the balcony door, and finally picked up the bundle of letters again. It seemed that on his preliminary examination he had already picked out a few and placed them on top. These he now read once more under his breath.
Be in the dunes again this afternoon, behind the mill. We can talk at old Frau Adermann’s, the house is isolated enough. You mustn’t be so afraid of everything. We
too
have rights. And if you say that to yourself firmly enough, I think all your fears will melt away. Life wouldn’t be worth living if conventions were always observed just because they happened to be conventions. The best things are all beyond that. Learn to enjoy them.
…away, you write, escape. Impossible. I can’t leave my wife in the lurch, in poverty on top of everything else. It can’t be done, and we must take these things lightly, otherwise we are poor lost souls. Frivolity is the best thing we have. It’s all fate. It was meant to be like this. And would you wish it otherwise, wish that we had never met?
Then came the third letter.
… Be at the old place again today. What are my days going to be like here without you? In this desolate backwater. I’m beside myself, but you’re right in one thing: it’s our salvation, and when all’s said and done we should bless the hand that has forced this parting on us.
Innstetten had barely pushed the letters aside again when the bell rang outside. Soon afterwards Johanna announced, ‘Geheimrat Wüllersdorf.’
Wüllersdorf entered and saw at a glance that something must have happened.
‘Sorry Wüllersdorf,’ Innstetten greeted him, ‘sorry to have asked you to come over right away today. I don’t like disturbing the quiet of anybody’s evening, least of all an overworked Ministerialrat. But there was no alternative. Please, make yourself comfortable. Here, have a cigar.’
Wüllersdorf sat down. Innstetten paced up and down again and, in the agitation that consumed him, would have preferred to keep moving, but he could see that that was not possible. So he too took a cigar, sat down opposite Wüllersdorf and tried to be calm.
‘There are,’ he began, ‘two reasons why I’ve called you: first to deliver a challenge, and secondly, afterwards, to act as my second in the affair; the first is not a pleasant task and the second even less so. What do you say?’
‘You know Innstetten, I’m at your disposal. But before we go into the affair, forgive me if I ask the naive question: is this necessary? Haven’t we passed the age for you to be holding a pistol in your hand, and me to be aiding and abetting you? But don’t misunderstand me, I’m not saying “no”. How could I refuse you anything? And now, let’s hear what it’s all about.’
‘It’s about a lover of my wife’s, a man who was my friend, more or less.’
Wüllersdorf looked at Innstetten. ‘Innstetten, that isn’t possible.’
‘It’s more than possible, it’s certain. Read these.’
Wüllersdorf ran his eye over the letters. ‘These are addressed to your wife?’
‘Yes, I found them in her sewing-table today.’
‘And who wrote them?’
‘Major Crampas.’
‘So we’re talking about things that happened when you were still in Kessin?’
Innstetten nodded.
‘So six years ago, or six and a half years.’
‘Yes.’
Wüllersdorf was silent. After a while Innstetten said, ‘Those six or seven years seem to have made an impression on you. There is the theory of the time limit of course, but I don’t know if this is a case in point.’
‘I don’t know either,’ said Wüllersdorf. ‘And I must confess, that seems to me to be the nub of the matter.’
Innstetten looked at him wide-eyed. ‘Can you say that in all seriousness?’
‘In all seriousness. This isn’t a case for indulging in
jeux d’esprit
or dialectical niceties.’
‘I’m curious to know what you mean exactly. Tell me frankly where you stand.’
‘Innstetten, your situation is terrible, and your life’s happiness is gone. But shoot the lover, and your life’s happiness is doubly gone, so to speak, and to the pain you already have from the injury you’ve suffered you will add the pain from the injury you have inflicted. At the heart of the matter is the question, do you absolutely have to do it? Do you feel so offended, wounded, outraged that one of you has to go, him or you? Is that how matters stand?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You must know.’
Innstetten had jumped to his feet, he walked over to the window and, filled with nervous agitation, tapped on the panes. Then he turned back quickly, went over to Wüllersdorf and said, ‘No, that’s not how matters stand.’
‘Well, how do they stand?’
‘The fact of the matter is that I’m infinitely miserable; I’ve been insulted, scandalously deceived, but in spite of that, I feel no hate at all, much less any thirst for revenge. And when I ask myself why not, the only explanation I find is the years that have passed. People always talk about inexpiable guilt; it’s certainly not true, not in the eyes of God, and not in the eyes of men either. I would never have believed that
time
, pure time, could have such an effect. And then there’s something else: I love my wife, strange to say, I still love her, and terrible as I find everything that has happened, I’m still so much under the spell of her delightful nature, of that vivacious charm which is all her own that in spite of myself I feel inclined, in my heart of hearts, to forgive her.’
Wüllersdorf nodded. ‘Quite with you, Innstetten, would perhaps feel just
the same myself. But if you take that attitude to the matter and tell me, “I love this woman so much that I can forgive her anything,” and if we also take into consideration that it all happened so long, long ago, like something on another planet, well, Innstetten, if that’s the position, why bother with this whole business?’
‘Because there’s no way round it. I’ve turned it all over in my mind. We’re not just individuals, we’re part of a larger whole and we must constantly have regard for that larger whole, we’re dependent on it, beyond a doubt. If it were a matter of living in isolation I could let it go; then it would be for me to bear the burden that had been put on me, it would be the end of real happiness, but plenty of people have to live without “real happiness” and I would have to too – and would manage it. You don’t have to be happy, that’s the last thing you have a right to, and you don’t necessarily have to do away with the one who robbed you of your happiness. You can, if you’re going to turn your back on society, let him get away with it. But wherever men live together, something has been established that’s just there, and it’s a code we’ve become accustomed to judging everything by, ourselves as well as others. And going against it is unacceptable; society despises you for it, and in the end you despise yourself, you can’t bear it any longer and put a gun to your head. For give me for lecturing you like this, when all I’m saying is what we’ve all told ourselves a hundred times. But – well, who can actually say anything new! So there it is, it’s not a question of hate or anything like that, I don’t want blood on my hands for the sake of the happiness that’s been taken from me; but that, let’s call it that social something which tyrannizes us, takes no account of charm, or love, or time limits. I’ve no choice. I must.’
‘Well, I don’t know, Innstetten…’
Innstetten smiled. ‘Make up your own mind, Wüllersdorf. It’s ten now. Six hours ago, I grant you, the game was still in my hands to play one way or the other, there was still a way out. Now there isn’t, now I’m up a blind alley. You could say I’ve only myself to blame; I should have kept a closer eye on myself, controlled myself, contained it all inside me, battled it out in my own heart. But it came too suddenly, it was too strong, so I can hardly reproach myself for not having been cooler and kept my nerve. I went to your house and left you a note, and at that point the game was out of my hands. From that moment on somebody else had some knowledge of my misfortune and, what’s more serious, of the stain on my honour, and after our first words just now somebody else knew it all. And now that somebody else knows, there’s no way back for me.’
‘Well, I don’t know,’ Wüllersdorf repeated. ‘I don’t really like to use such an old cliché, but there’s no better way of putting it: Innstetten, I shall be as silent as the grave.’
‘Yes Wüllersdorf, that’s what people always say. But there’s no such thing as confidentiality. And even if you do make the cliché come true and are confidentiality itself towards others,
you
will still know, so what you’ve just said about agreeing with me and understanding everything I say doesn’t save me from you. I am from this moment on, and there’s no going back on it, the object of your sympathy – not in itself a pleasant thought – and you will weigh every word you hear me exchange with my wife, whether you intend to or not, and if my wife were to talk about fidelity, or sit in judgment, as wives do, on what other women get up to, I wouldn’t know where to look. And supposing I were to take a conciliatory line in some quite ordinary matter of honour because it’s “without malice aforethought” or something along those lines, the shadow of a smile will cross your face, or it will at least register a twitch, and you’ll be thinking deep down, “Good old Innstetten, it’s getting to be a real obsession, this chemical analysis of every offence to determine its insult content, and he
never
finds one with enough irritants in it to be harmful. He’s never choked on anything yet,” – am I right or wrong Wüllersdorf?’
Wüllersdorf had stood up. ‘I find it terrible that you’re right, but you
are
right. I won’t plague you any further by asking if it has to be. The world is as it is, and things don’t take the course
we
want, they take the course
other people
want. All that pompous stuff you hear from some people about “divine justice” is nonsense of course, there’s no such thing, quite the reverse: this cult of honour of ours is a form of idolatry, but as long as we have idols we have to worship them.’
Innstetten nodded.
They were together for another quarter of an hour and it was decided that Wüllersdorf should leave the same evening. There was a night train at twelve.