The Son of His Mother

by Clara Viebig

When the fishing boats glided into the harbour with slack sails like weary birds, he got up and sauntered along to meet them at the landing-place. Then he would stand there with his hands in his trouser pockets, to see what fish they brought ashore. The catches were not large. Then he took his hands out of his pockets and gave the fishermen what money he had with him.

If his mother had known what her son was thinking of! If she had guessed that his soul flew away with weary wings like a gull drifting over a boundless sea!

Wolfgang was suffering from home-sickness. He did not like being there. Everything was much too soft, much too beautiful there; he felt bored. The stone pines with their pungent smell were the only things he liked; they were even better than the pines in the Grunewald. But he was not really longing for the Grunewald either. It was always the same, whether he was here or there he was always racked with longing. For what? For what place? That was what he pondered over. But he would not have liked to say it to his mother, for he saw now that she did all she could for him. And he found an affectionate word to say to her more frequently than he had ever done before in his life.

So at last, at last I Käte often gave him a covert side-glance: was this the same boy who had resisted her so defiantly as a child, had refused her love, all her great love? This boy whose face had moved her so strangely in Milan Cathedral, was he the same who had lain on the doorstep drunk?--ugh, so drunk! The same who had sunk, sunk so low, that he--oh, she would not think of it any more.

Käte wanted to forget; she honestly tried to do so. When she found him in the cathedral sitting near the pillar, his hands folded, his eyelids closed dreamily, he had seemed to her so young, still touchingly young; his forehead had been smooth, as though all the lines on it had been wiped away. And she had to think: had they not expected too much of him? Had they always been just to him? Had they understood him as they ought to have understood him? Doubts arose in her mind. She had always deemed herself a good mother; since that day in the cathedral she felt as though she had failed in something. She herself could not say in what. But sadness and a large amount of self-torturing pain were mingled with the satisfaction that her son had now come to her. Ah, now he was good, now he was at least something like what she had wished him to be--softer, more tractable--but now--what pleasure had she from it now?

"Wolfgang still causes me uneasiness," she wrote to her husband. "It's beautiful here, but he does not see it. I am often frightened."

When her husband had offered to go with them he had done so because he wished to save her in many ways--Käte had opposed it almost anxiously: no, no, it was not at all necessary. She would much prefer to be alone with Wolfgang, she considered it so much more beneficial both for him and for herself. But now she often thought of her husband, and wrote to him almost every day. And even if it were only a few lines on a postcard, she felt the need of sending him a word. He, yes he would find it just as beautiful there as she found it. As they had both found it in the old days. They had once climbed that path over the rocks together, he had given her his hand, had led her so that she should not feel dizzy, and she had eyed the blue glassy sea far below her and far above her the grey rocky promontory with the deep green stone pines that kissed the blue of the sky with a blissful shudder. Had she grown so old in those eighteen years that she dared not go along that path any more? She had tried but it was of no use, she had been seized with a sudden dizziness. That was because the hand was not there that had supported her so firmly, so securely. Oh yes, those had been better days, happier.

Käte entirely forgot that she had coveted something so ardently in those days, that she had saddened many an hour for herself and him, embittered every enjoyment. Now she looked past the son who was strolling along by her side, looked into the distance with tender eyes in which a gleam of her lost youth still shone--her good husband, he was so alone. Did he think of her as she of him?

That evening when Wolfgang had retired to his room--what he did there, whether he still sat up reading or writing or had already gone to bed she did not know--she wrote to her husband.

It was not the length and the full particulars she gave in the letter that pleased Paul Schlieben so much--she had also written long detailed letters to him from Franzensbad at the time--but he read something between the lines. It was an unexpressed wish, a longing, a craving for him. And he resolved to go to the south. After all, they had lived so many years together, that it was quite comprehensible that the one felt lonely without the other.