Effi Briest Page 13

  Yours ever,

  Effi

  13

  The New Year’s Eve Ball had lasted into the early morning and Effi had been widely admired – although not as unrestrainedly as her bouquet of camellias which everybody knew to have come from Gieshübler’s hothouse. After the New Year’s Eve Ball everything stayed as it had been before, with scarcely any attempt at social contact, and the winter was felt to be long indeed. Visits from neighbouring gentry occurred only seldom, and the return visits duty required were always preceded by the remark, in a semi-mournful tone, ‘Well Geert, if it really has to be, but I shall die of boredom.’ Words with which Innstetten could only ever agree. What was said on these afternoon visits about family, children and even farming was not so bad, but when it came to church matters, and the pastors who were in attendance were treated like little popes, or so esteemed themselves, then Effi’s patience snapped and she thought sorrowfully of Niemeyer who was always restrained and modest, in spite of the fact that on all the bigger ceremonial occasions people said he had what it took to be appointed to the ‘cathedral’. With the Borckes, the Flemmings, the Grasenabbs, friendly as the general attitudes of these families – apart from Sidonie Grasenabb – were, no real rapport with anyone was established, and as far as pleasure, amusement or even a feeling of passable well-being was concerned, things would have been pretty bad had it not been for Gieshübler. He looked after Effi like her own small Providence, and she was grateful to him for it. He was naturally, as well as everything else, a keen and attentive newspaper-reader, not to mention the leading light in the magazine circle, so hardly a day went by without Mirambo bringing a large white envelope with a variety of papers and journals in which the appropriate parts had been underlined, mostly with a fine light pencil line, or occasionally a thick blue line with an exclamation or question mark beside it. And he did not stop there; he sent figs and dates too, bars of chocolate in shiny paper tied with red ribbons, and when something particularly beautiful came into bloom in his hothouse he would bring it round himself and spend a happy hour chatting with the young woman he found so congenial and for whom he had all the finer feelings of love rolled into one, a father’s love, an uncle’s, a teacher’s and an admirer’s. Effi was moved by all this and mentioned it in her letters to Hohen-Cremmen so often that her mother began to tease her about being ‘in love with an alchemist’; but this well-meant teasing was wide of the mark, indeed its effect was almost painful, because it brought home to her, if only dimly, what was actually lacking in her marriage: marks of devotion or encouragement, little attentions. Innstetten was kind and good, but he was no lover. He felt he loved Effi, and knowing in good conscience that this was so absolved him from making any special effort. It had almost become the rule that when Friedrich brought in the lamp he would withdraw from his wife’s room to his own. ‘I still have some tricky business I must deal with.’ And then he would go. The door-curtain was of course drawn back so that Effi could hear the rustling of his files or the scraping of his pen, but that was all. Rollo would then come and lie in front of her on the hearthrug, as if to say, ‘I’ll have to look after you again, nobody else will.’ Then she would bend down and quietly say, ‘Yes, Rollo, we’re alone.’ At nine Innstetten would appear again for a cup of tea, usually with the newspaper in his hand, and talk of the Prince, who again had many irritations, especially with that Eugen Richter whose attitude and language were quite intolerable, and go through the list of honours and appointments, taking exception to most of them. Then he would talk about the elections and how lucky he was to have a constituency where there was still some respect. When he was done with that, he would ask Effi to play something, a bit of Lohengrin or The Valkyrie, for he was a Wagner enthusiast. Why he had been drawn to this composer was uncertain; some said it was his nerves, for down to earth as he might seem, he was actually of a nervous disposition, others put it down to Wagner’s stand on the Jewish question. Probably both were right. By ten fatigue would be setting in and Innstetten would essay one or two tired if well-intended caresses, which Effi permitted, without in any real sense reciprocating.

  In this way winter passed, April came and the garden beyond the yard began to turn green, which pleased Effi; she just couldn’t wait for the summer, with the walks on the beach and the visitors who came for the sea bathing. When she looked back, the Trippelli evening at Gieshübler’s and then the New Year’s Eve Ball, yes, all that had been passable, quite pleasant; but the months after that, well, they had left a lot to be desired, above all they had been so monotonous that she had once even written to Mamma:

  Can you imagine Mamma, I’m almost reconciled to our ghost? Of course I wouldn’t like to go through that dreadful night again, when Geert was over at Prince Bismarck’s, certainly not that; but being constantly alone, and absolutely nothing happening, well, it’s not easy, and occasionally when I wake up in the night I listen for a moment, just to see if I can hear the shoes gliding over the boards up there, and if it’s all quiet I’m almost disappointed and I tell myself, I wish it would come back, but not too awful and not too close.

  It was in February that Effi had written this, and now it was almost May. Over in the Plantation things were coming to life again and the finches could be heard singing. In the same week too the storks came, and one glided slowly over the house and settled on a barn next to Utpatel’s mill. That was its perch of old. This event too Effi reported, writing now as she did much more often to Hohen-Cremmen, and in the same letter she said at the end:

  Something, my dear Mamma, which I almost forgot: the new district commandant of the Landwehr – whom we’ve had for about four weeks now – or do we really have him? That is the question, and an important question too, though you may laugh, indeed you are bound to laugh, since you don’t know the desperate state our social life here is still in. Or at least mine, since I have not been able to get on any terms with the families here. Perhaps my fault, not that it makes any difference. The fact remains, it’s a desperate state of affairs, and that’s why all these winter months I’ve been looking forward to the new district commandant as a saviour and bringer of solace. His predecessor was a monster, with bad manners and worse morals, and as if that wasn’t enough, he was always hard up too. We all suffered the whole time under him, Innstetten even more than me, and when at the beginning of April we heard that Major Crampas, that’s the new man’s name, was here, we fell into one another’s arms as if nothing bad could ever happen again in dear old Kessin. But as I’ve already said, even though he’s here, it seems nothing is going to come of it. Crampas is married and has two children often and eight, his wife is a year older than him, say forty-five. That in itself wouldn’t matter, there’s no reason why having a maternal friend shouldn’t be wonderfully entertaining for me. Miss Trippelli was almost thirty and we got on very well. But this can’t happen with Crampas’s wife, a commoner incidentally. She is always out of sorts, almost melancholy (just like Frau Kruse, of whom she greatly reminds me), and all because of jealousy. Crampas is apparently a man who has had many affairs, a ladies’ man, which I always find ridiculous, and I would find it ridiculous on this occasion too, if he hadn’t had a duel with one of his comrades for just that sort of reason. His left arm was shattered just below the shoulder and you can’t miss it, though the operation, Innstetten tells me (I think they call it a resection and it was done by Wilms), was hailed as a masterpiece of the art. Both of them, Herr and Frau Crampas, paid their call on us a fortnight ago; it was a very awkward situation, for Frau Crampas watched her husband so closely that he was considerably embarrassed and I totally. On his own he can be very different, animated and high-spirited – which I had the chance to see for myself when he was with Innstetten three days ago, and I followed their conversation from my room. Afterwards I spoke to him too. The complete cavalier, very suave. Innstetten was in the same brigade with him during the war, and they often saw one another north of Paris at Count Gröben’s. Yes, my dear Mamma, that could have b
een a chance to start a new life in Kessin; and the Major doesn’t have the Pomeranian prejudices either, though I’ve heard he comes from Swedish Pomerania. But that wife of his! It’s impossible to see the Major without her, but with her it’s equally impossible.

  Effi had been quite right, and in fact no closer contact with the Crampases developed. They met out at the Borckes’ family place, then briefly at the station and a few days later on the boat on an outing to a large beech and oak forest near the Breitling known as ‘the Schnatermann’; but there was no more than a brief exchange of greetings, and Effi was delighted at the signs of the season starting at the beginning of June. There was of course still a shortage of holidaymakers – bathers usually only appeared in ones and twos before Midsummer’s Day – but the preparations themselves helped pass the time. In the Plantation the roundabout and the shooting stalls were erected, the boatmen caulked and painted their boats, each little apartment got new curtains, and the rooms that were situated in damp spots and had dry rot under the floorboards were treated with sulphur and aired.

  In Effi’s house too, on account of an awaited new arrival quite other than the summer visitors, there was a certain agitation all round; even Frau Kruse wanted to be involved as far as she could. But Effi took lively exception to this, saying: ‘Geert, don’t let Frau Kruse touch anything; no good can come of it and I’m worried enough already.’ Innstetten granted her all she asked, saying that Christel and Johanna had plenty of time to see to everything, and to divert his young wife’s thoughts in a different direction he dropped the whole subject of preparations and asked instead whether she had noticed that a holidaymaker had moved in opposite, not the first but nevertheless one of the first.

  ‘A gentleman?’

  ‘No, a lady who has been here before, in the same apartment each time. She always comes early because she can’t stand it when everywhere is so full.’

  ‘I won’t say I can’t see her point. So who is it then?’

  ‘It’s Registrar Rode’s widow.’

  ‘That’s strange. I always thought registrars’ widows were poor.’

  ‘Yes,’ laughed Innstetten, ‘they are as a rule. But here you have an exception. At any rate she has more than her widow’s pension. She always arrives with a great deal of luggage, infinitely more than she needs, and she seems to be a quite peculiar woman, eccentric and ailing, and very shaky on her feet. She is unsure of herself because of this, and always has an elderly servant with her, strong enough to look after her, or carry her if anything happens. She has a new one this year. Another very stocky person once again, a bit like Miss Trippelli, but stouter.’

  ‘Oh, I’ve seen her. Nice brown eyes, trusty and faithful when they look at you. But just a bit dim.’

  ‘That’s right, that’s her.’

  It was the middle of June when Innstetten and Effi had this conversation. From then on every day brought a further influx of holidaymakers, and as always about this time of year, walking out to the Bulwark to wait for the steamer’s arrival became a sort of daily routine for the Kessin folk. Effi of course, Innstetten being unable to accompany her, had to forego this, but at least she had the pleasure of seeing some animation in the street leading to the beach and the Strand Hotel, hitherto so empty of people, and in order to keep it under constant review she was much more than usual in her bedroom, from whose windows she could best see everything. Johanna stood at her side and had an answer to more or less everything she wanted to know; since most of the visitors came back every year, the maid could not only supply their names but sometimes a little story about them too.

  This was all amusing and entertaining for Effi. However, on Midsummer’s Day itself, just before eleven in the morning, when usually the traffic from the steamer was flooding by at its most colourful, instead of married couples, children and hackney carriages piled with suitcases, it happened that a carriage draped in black and followed by two mourners’ coaches came from the centre of the town down the street leading to the Plantation, and stopped at the house opposite the Landrat’s residence. For Registrar Rode’s widow had died three days earlier, and her relatives from Berlin, who had been informed with the greatest promptitude, had decided on arrival that they would not have the deceased transported to Berlin, but would bury her in Kessin in the churchyard in the dunes. Effi stood at her window and looked with curiosity upon the oddly solemn scene that unfolded opposite. The arrivals from Berlin were two nephews and their wives, all about forty, give or take a year, and of enviably healthy complexion. The nephews in well-fitting frock-coats could pass muster, and the sober, businesslike attitude revealed in their whole bearing was becoming rather than off-putting. But the two wives! They were visibly intent on showing Kessin what real mourning was, and were wearing long crêpe veils that reached to the ground and at the same time hid their faces. And now the coffin, on which lay a few wreaths and even a palm frond, was placed on the carriage and the two married couples took their seats in the coaches. Into the first – along with one of the mourning couples – Lindequist climbed too; behind the second coach walked the landlady and beside her the stout woman whom the deceased had brought to Kessin to minister to her. The latter was extremely and it seemed genuinely upset, even if the emotion in question was not exactly grief; but in the case of the landlady, a widow who was sobbing with the utmost violence, it was almost excessively clear that the possibility of an extra gratuity was what she had in mind all the time, in spite of being in the happy position, much envied by other landladies, of being able to relet the apartment, for which she had already drawn rent for the whole summer.