## CHAPTER 25

### Spring

What a spring day, this Saturday in March of the year 1887! What sweetness, at ten in the morning!

Eugenie stood beside her maid, who was packing. The next day they were to set off for the Riviera, for Nice, the Hotel Barblan.

Down the Tiergartenstraße the horses raced. Beautiful women, veils fluttering round their top hats, the men bareheaded or in round hats. Down the Tiergartenstraße went the officers in undress tunics, broad red stripes down their trousers, to the great General Staff. It was quiet. Now and then children's laughter rang out from the gardens.

"It's really a shame to go away," said Eugenie. "How lovely Berlin is in March. I've told Kniep already to plant more crocus next year. Of snowdrops and spring snowflakes we have rather too many. And here comes Fräulein Winkel. Well, Fräulein, and how are you? Yes, let's try it on once more."

Eugenie stood in the dinner gown. Fräulein Winkel knelt, her mouth full of pins, setting something right at the hem.

"I don't like it a bit, girl, the way you always take the pins in your mouth. Frieda, bring Fräulein Winkel a pincushion. Fräulein Winkel, you look so wretched! What is it? Come, you can speak to me. A little higher here, up top, yes? And this gathering a bit fuller. Affairs of the heart, now in spring? Or some worry? Perhaps I can help you."

"Yes, if I'm really to speak. But please stand still, ma'am, or I'll go and prick you. I had a gentleman — ma'am will understand — a handsome gentleman, and I could tell myself straight off it would come to nothing. But the way one is, one never believes it. And then he married. Well, that's how it is, and I always fancied he loved me, and one knows how the rich gentlemen marry — money and the same standing, and there it's settled."

"Tell me, Fräulein Winkel — I don't mean to wound you — but does a woman not give something away when she… well, how shall I put it, when she grants a man his rights before the marriage? I mean, she sinks in men's esteem."

"Perhaps that's so. You're probably right."

"Don't cry, Fräulein Winkel, dear child — go on, speak."

"So I fancied he must surely be unhappy, and the wife very plain, and he'd be sure to deceive her."

"And now?"

"And now I've met him. And she's so beautiful, there's no describing how beautiful she is, and there was a Spreewald nurse along too, with a pram. And as they passed I just caught him saying, 'Ah, Annettchen, what lucky people we are — the whole of nature laughs to greet us!'"

"Annettchen, he said? Well, well. Yes, that's bitter. Is there no one, then, who loves you? We always want to do the loving ourselves, and we're never thankful enough when someone loves us."

"Yes, I suppose that's so. Now one more stitch at the shoulder, ma'am, and the clasp like this?"

"No. Better like this, don't you think?"

"Yes, like that. We've a new young man at the shop now, Lehmann, keeps the books, and he's after me, always goggling so, and my friend Lischen and I, we can't help laughing the way he twists his hat into a sausage when he talks to me."

"One should only ever marry men who goggle. I'll take the dress off, and you can sew it right here. You know the Councilor — you know how clever and good he is, but handsome he has never been, and I know you think me very beautiful. You may sometimes have thought I married my husband for money. But I had no need of that whatever. I had suffered a very great disappointment before. We in Russia aren't so strict as here, where it's frowned on for a young girl so much as to take a walk. At a great carnival ball I had met a strikingly handsome Guards officer. And we had occasion to meet alone, and he was in love and reckless, and, in short, he kissed me, and naturally I thought the earth must stand still. He took me in his arms and said, 'What is the world to me — and tomorrow' — ah, I hear it as if it were yesterday — 'tomorrow we'll meet.' I went there, and — in vain. Around me snow and ice, and I kept thinking he must come into the woods. But he did not come. I suffered every hell in that hour, and then I got a little note — he did not know, and whether he might dare, and responsibility — it was a very honest, decent letter — and would I see him once more. I wrote 'Yes,' and we went walking. I saw that he loved me, felt it, but he said, 'I think we'll part now,' or, 'Please, dear young lady, it's clouding over, it might snow.' He hadn't the courage for his love. So I ran home, and at home sat the man who is now my husband. I couldn't make up my mind at once; it was with me as with you. I loved the other one. But then I let myself be loved, and grew very happy in it. When you do the loving yourself, you are always trembling and afraid and lonely, and you need women friends to pour your heart out to. But when you are loved, then you know that, whatever may happen, you have someone you can rely on — and now think it over, about Lehmann."

"Yes, ma'am, let's try the dress on once more. But it's like this, too: when you've nothing, it's hard. I'd dearly like to set up on my own, and my former gentleman said I could turn to him any time, but one doesn't want that, it's mortifying, to end by owing him something after all."

"How much would you need to begin?"

"I've reckoned it up, some two thousand marks or so, but that's a great deal of money, and if I'm to pay such high interest straight off, it won't do at all, even if someone lends it me."

Eugenie took two thousand-mark notes from her dressing table.

"But that's — what am I to say!" cried Käte Winkel.

"Take it and make money with it."

"Oh, such kindness, such kindness."

"My husband says the childless woman has the most children, and one must provide for them, so I'll always give you a bundle of thousands we won't speak of and won't reckon up."

Eugenie looked once more in the glass. "This fashion really is too silly. How much padding are we to strap on back there? And what does Frau Koller say — long yellow gloves?"

"Yes, I have them here."

"Very good. Frieda, put them straight into the glove box."

"Will madam recommend me custom when I set up on my own — or even come to me herself?"

"But my dear, I know what you can do. Of course — that goes without saying."

Käte Winkel took a few winter things from the maid besides, and went off, the boxes over her arm.

What a spring day, this Saturday in March of the year 1887! What sweetness, at eleven in the morning!

Sofie sat in her room at the little rickety writing table, took up an agate penholder, and wrote:

"I love you. I dream of you. Why did you tell me I was sweet. I sat at the piano and played Schumann's *A Woman's Love and Life*; 'Since I beheld you, I think myself blind; ever, as in a dream, I see you alone.' When will you come to us again? I dare not ask Theodor for it."

And then she wrote out an envelope and asked Anna — the white-armed, red-cheeked one — to see the letter delivered. The letter was for Arnold Kramer.

"You look so flushed, Sofie, aren't you well?"

"Nothing, Papa, nothing at all. Perhaps I've played the piano a little too much."

"Don't overdo it, my daughter, don't overdo it — keep a noble measure. Fräulein Kelchner, you'll go later with the girl into the Tiergarten."

What a spring day, this Saturday in March of the year 1887! What sweetness, at one in the afternoon!

The guard was changing! At a window of the university stood the Privatdozent Waldemar Goldschmidt, looking out on the Opera House, the Linden, the curved baroque façade of the library, looking at the guard, the lockstep, white summer trousers, blue tunics, bright buttons, red collars, white plumes, and the drum major in front — "fifers and drummers, warlike sound." An immense crowd. At his window stood the old Kaiser, as every day at the noon hour when the guard changed.

The people's rapture, thought Waldemar — here for the right man now, tomorrow for the wrong one. Justice? The whole of it would have to be made anew. Roman law, cut to fit slaves and property, had many flaws. How far could one do without it in the new Civil Code?

The door opened.

"My dear colleague — what an honor!"

"I heard at the library that you have the volume of the Monumenta I happen to need."

"It is yours, of course."

"You were watching the people's rapture just now?"

"The very same word crossed my mind. Our universally revered, aged sovereign may deserve it. But as for Bismarck, you know where I stand. The greater the man, the greater the shadow."

"Young friend," said the old historian, "I was lately in my home country, looking into Hessian folk-expressions. It does one good to freshen up the memories of one's boyhood in the narrower homeland, before they are wholly swallowed in the finely articulated Empire."

"I never knew you were a federalist!"

"I always have been. Centralism is utterly un-German. We are doing our utmost to forfeit a part of the freedom Germany possessed before the war. It is a historical principle that the victors always become the cultural imitators of the vanquished."

"We have won ourselves our bondage. This legacy of the defeated Caesar is, to my mind, the greatest crime he committed against mankind. I could forget Napoleon the Second of December; the German reaction after the victory I cannot!"

Waldemar stood with his back to the Linden, where the military marches still sounded. In the high room, full of the black leather spines of the books, there sat facing him, in the sheen of his long snow-white hair, the world-famous scholar.

"It surprises me, young friend, that you see France so. I know you are related to all manner of people over there."

"That has never kept me from seeing France more clearly than people who spend only a few blissful weeks in Paris."

"In France, where centralization was driven to such a pitch, no one was promoted who would not swear *in verba magistri*. Our political dividedness has fortunately preserved us until now from the general working of such pernicious influences, which there reached down into the smallest circumstances. With us in Germany it is just the reverse. Have we some eminent man, then we seek above all to show ourselves independent of his influence, and each of us, however insignificant he may otherwise be, piques himself on choosing his own — admittedly worse — direction, merely to make that independence good in fact. I speak," he said, suddenly more animated, "in the present tense, but I ought to speak in the past. I tell you, here on the 16th of March 1887, that if things go on so in the new German Empire, clinics and libraries will be turned back into barracks. The spirit is in danger; it is being devoured by the state and by the machines. And what about you? When are you to be made full professor?"

Waldemar shrugged.

"The faculty wishes it, so I have heard."

"Ah no," said Waldemar. "If I let myself be baptized, they would admit me to the hallowed circle. But I am suspect on other counts too. The man who would blow off the dust, abolish privileges — the great are not well disposed to him. For the rest, one may have oneself baptized because one holds Christianity to be a development of the old prophetic religion — a milder, gentler ethic, later by some centuries. But all such considerations must give way the moment baptism brings advantages. It is repugnant when an act of the finest stirrings of conscience, of the most personal reflection, leads to a post. A premium on want of character."

"You are right."

The great man left the room. Goldschmidt took up hat, coat, and stick. Let the commentary stew, and § 1378 of the draft of a new Civil Code wait a while longer for its finished wording.

He had gone a few steps down the Linden when, close beside him, a carriage drew up.

"Waldemar."

"Oh, Susanna — life is beautiful after all."

"Will you get in?"

"No — on the contrary, get out. I have a mind to introduce a beautiful woman to the spring. We'll take luncheon together at Hiller's. Agreed?"

"Agreed. What do you say to my success?"

"The Count? He won't last."

"Why?"

"Because you are an artist, and no kept woman."

"But a faithful lover."

"Perhaps."

Ah, what sweetness there was on that March day! Soft was the red carpet, soft the sofa that received Susanna Widerklee, soft the chair in which Waldemar sat.

There was scarcely a place to be had. Officers sat there, beautiful women, a few landowners, Junkers up from the provinces.

"Back there sits the ancient Count Perponcher, and over there Count Waldersee — a coming man, a court general," said Waldemar. "Lobster, then rump steak, I think, or what else, Susanna?"

"I'm hungry as a bear, but that suits me."

"And what shall we drink? Moselle?"

"No, a Rhine wine, rather."

"It's heavy, Susanna," and he looked into her eyes.

"And if that's what I want?"

"It suits me."

An hour later.

"Shall we take coffee here, or at your place?"

"At mine, I think."

"Good, Susanna, good."

Susanna had the curtains drawn, the lamp lit. Waldemar sat down at the grand piano and played the "Magic Fire."

"The Count," she said, "is very charming."

"And I, Susanna?"

He rose, caught the woman to him, kissed her mouth. They knew each other. Susanna longed for him. He led her the few steps to the bedroom. Ah, how she loved him — this swift storm, this deep indifference to all struggling and warding-off, this contempt for every untruth!

"Ah, no — please, no," said Susanna.

"Why do you say no, when you feel like yes?" She felt he did not like it. "Be ashamed that you are ashamed!"

What a blessing, thought Susanna as she lay beside him, to be allowed to be honestly sensual!

"Waldemar, are you angry if I kiss you so?"

"But Susanna! Are there men who would be angry?"

"Not angry, but disappointed — they want the pure woman."

"Oxen, in the true sense. Hence this silly idolizing of the young girl."

In the hearth the fire burned.

"Our coffee's getting cold," said Susanna.

They fetched the coffee from the next room, crouched before the embers, drank the mocha. Susanna pulled on a dressing gown, went to the piano, and sang, "The lotus flower is afraid…"

Waldemar dressed. What sang there was love, was passion. Susanna loved him. But he had once before had bad experiences with her. Not to go through all that again. There was no holding her. He always believed it would come right one day after all, but it did not.

What a spring day, this Saturday in March of the year 1887! What sweetness, at five in the afternoon!

Knocking-off time in the Chausseestraße. Children hopped along chalk lines or played marbles in the hole between four cobblestones. Father strung twine on the balcony for the wild vine, or tinkered at the pigeon loft. Mother sewed.

"I'll just step round to the Frischer Hammel for a beer — just the one beer."

"Paule, must that be?"

"Ah, leave off, I'll soon be back."

"He'll go and drink up a week's wages again!"

"If I had a little wife like that, something steady, I wouldn't be off to the pub," said the lodger.

"Here, you — what's got into you! You didn't rent me along with the bed, let go!"

"I only mean, seeing your husband keeps you so short. You could do better with me."

"Don't you say a word against my husband — it's only because we've just the one room. That's the only reason."

The freckled apprentice announced the insurance agent Mayer to Paul.

"Ah, good day, Herr Mayer."

"Good day, Herr Effinger. I've come myself for once. It's easier to talk things over when one knows the other in person. In writing, misunderstandings mostly creep in."

"Well now, here's the insurance contract. There were several things I wanted to query."

"You have built up a fine works here, Herr Effinger. I am a wreck, you know."

"But Herr Mayer, how can you say such a thing! You look splendid!"

"Ah, I am an old man, Herr Effinger. No one sang over my cradle, either, that I would end as an insurance agent."

"Such is life!" said Paul.

"How right you are. If I still had the sarcasm of my youth, I'd say it is mainly because the office of insurance agent was still quite unknown in the year I was born. I was born in 1822. I have known the world. I have known the Paris of the Second Empire. Whoever did not know that does not know what living means. The sixties in Paris — one long cancan, of the spirit too. You are still young, Herr Effinger, but I feel you have an understanding for a man who has failed. I had the banking house of Mayer, Lamprecht & Co."

"Oh!" said Paul, full of admiring surprise.

"Yes, you know what that meant. We held the issue of the Sardinian war loan in '59. I financed the Luxembourg railway."

"Well, well — a great firm, a rich house."

"All gone. The house of Emmanuel Oppner — my father built it. I will say nothing against Oppner & Goldschmidt, but they were small people in those days. It breaks my heart when I pass by now and then. During the rebuilding I looked it over in secret, old fool that I am. It is not my house any longer. They have painted it all wrong. And over the bright paintings, of an enchanting lightness, these barbarians have pasted up dark leather wall-hangings. Unbelievable, really."

"I don't understand much of that, Herr Mayer."

"No, no, I don't mean to bore you. I am an aesthete — yes, I understand something of art."

Paul thought: and he did go bankrupt, after all.

"The Gotthard tunnel — that has me on its conscience."

"A great deal of money was lost on that."

"I could sing you a song about it, but I have no debts left now but ten percent. I am still paying it off. That I owe to my name and to my daughter. She is just coming to fetch me — the poor girl gives piano lessons. Won't you walk a little way with us?"

What a spring day, this Saturday in March 1887, at six in the evening! What a throng in the Chausseestraße!

"You haven't an easy time of it, Fräulein Mayer," said Paul.

"No, no, but at least I earn."

"That's hard for a young girl. The other day a young girl applied to me for letter-copying. But young girls in the office — it won't do. A woman is best off at home."

"But if she has no one to give her a home?"

"Then, to be sure, it is dreadful. But mostly the female creatures are needed in the family. There's a child to be raised, a sick woman to be nursed."

"But if a girl doesn't want that?"

"Then she is overwrought."

"You think so?"

"In my opinion, yes."

"Papa, you're falling right behind. One loses sight of you. And in this neighborhood, of all places."

The broad Friedrichstraße at the Weidendammer Brücke. Railway over the river, a little omnibus with its pony, a one-legged man calling, "Wax matches, wax matches," and whores hitching up their skirts, the many ruffles rustling. A gentleman with a monocle, and carriages driving to the theater.

"We turn off here now — perhaps we'll see you at our place sometime."

"Gladly, Herr Mayer, though I always have a great deal to do."

"Adieu." "Adieu." "Adieu."

"A nice fellow, Amalie, isn't he?"

"A bit dry."

"You mustn't always find fault with the young men."

"I'm only saying. Mother's had her piecework rate cut again. Twenty pfennigs to sew the skirt. Comes to maybe ten marks a week. And that's not counting the lamp oil and the thread."

"Amalie, you tear my heart."

"But Papa, I'm only telling it as it is. The middleman, a nasty piece of work, says the firm squeezes him too. I'd like to know who he supplies for. He won't say. Which is proof he gets a lot more for the skirt than he lets on."

Wool market in the Klosterstraße. The Königstraße between the Alexanderplatz and the Schloss is choked with covered wagons. In the ancient castle of the Brandenburg margraves the wool lies stored. Beside it stands the Graues Kloster, Bismarck's school.

"No getting through again."

"You daft goose, somebody ought to box your ears so you'd see there's a horse standing here."

"My good man, don't carry on so!"

"Don't you talk to me with that done-up mug of yours!"

"Amalie, come, leave the rabble."

"Heavens, Papa, if I could talk to the middleman like that, maybe he'd give fifteen pfennigs more for the skirt."

"My child, don't forget who you are."

Good, unsuspecting Papa! thought Amalie.

How it stank in the hallway! How ugly the flat smelled, of all the wool stuff, of the lodgers! If only one could at least have had it repapered before moving in!

What a spring day, this Saturday in March of the year 1887, at eight in the evening!

The Widerklee was singing the page in *Figaro*. Theodor waited outside the Opera House. For a year and a half he had gone almost daily to the Charlottenstraße, where, near the Opera, she had a charming three-room flat. Here she received her friends in an elegant dressing gown and elegant little slippers.

One evening Waldemar had found Theodor there. Theodor was perched on a stool at her side, ceaselessly kissing her dangling hand.

Theodor waited. With him, at the stage door, several admirers waited. But with him there waited also a carriage lined with white silk, on which manservant and coachman sat motionless. What he feared came to pass. Theodor saw the Widerklee, in her evening cloak, climb quickly into the carriage. Theodor was almost out of his senses with jealousy. He had never thought about this affair, never considered the end of it. He loved — not platonically, like most of his friends, but as a man.

Now he stood, cast out, abandoned, without explanation, on the Linden, in the rain, in the dark. What now? Wait outside the Widerklee's house? But surely she had driven to the other man. Who was it? And if he knew, what then? Shoot the man down? Challenge him? Kill himself?

He walked on, on and on, back and forth, this way and that.

A bold girl spoke to him, drew him into a little shop, before whose curtained windows a red lantern burned. Erna Schmidt's wine room. The girl was very young, barely seventeen. She took Theodor into a back room, lay down without further ado on the red woolen chaise longue, drew a curtain across. The girl, who proved very beautiful, delighted him. She comforted him. Her boldness, her corruption fell away for a little while. Her name was Wanda, and she was without parents. Knocked about among foster parents, she had been seduced, scarcely fourteen, by a lodger. She had worked, too. But this way was easier. Only the madam took advantage of her. On the grimy sofa a gentle compassion blossomed in Theodor for this child, who was dainty and velvet-skinned as a fawn.

"Shall I see you again?"

"I don't know," said Theodor, and began to weep.

The girl crouched down beside him. "Why are you crying?" she asked. She stroked him.

Here, with this strange streetwalker, he poured himself out; here he could say how forsaken he was, that he loved a clever, beautiful, remarkable woman, a great artist, that he was being betrayed.

The girl said, "Nah, don't go killing anybody — you'd likely get life for it. You mustn't take it so hard."

"But I can't live without her."

"Well, maybe you'll get her back."

So, in a shop with a red lantern in the Berlin east — Erna Schmidt's wine room.

The girl dressed.

"Will you go out again?" asked Theodor. The girl nodded. Theodor gave her a gold piece. "But don't go out again today," he said. "Rest yourself." He gave her a kiss.

The chump! she thought, and waited until he was out of sight. Twenty marks was a lot of money — but how long was one young?

What a spring day, this Saturday in March of the year 1887! What sweetness, at three in the morning!