German Fiction

by Theodor Fontane; Johann Wolfgang von Goethe; Gottfried Keller; Theodor Storm

The old doctor came again, came every day, sometimes twice, then stayed a whole night, again wrote a prescription and Iven Johns swiftly rode with it to the apothecary. But finally the doctor's face grew more cheerful, and he nodded confidentially to the dikemaster: "She'll pull through. She'll pull through, with God's help!" And one day--whether it was because his skill had conquered her illness or because in answer to Hauke's prayer God had been able after all to find a way out of his trouble--when the doctor was alone with the patient, he spoke to her, while his old eyes smiled: "Lady, now I can safely say to you: to-day the doctor has his gala-day; things looked very darkly for you, but now you belong to us again, to the living!"

Then a flood of light streamed out of her dark eyes; "Hauke, Hauke, where are you?" she cried, and when, in response to her loud cry, he rushed into the room and to her bed, she flung her arms round his neck: "Hauke, my husband--saved! I can stay with you!" Then the old doctor pulled his silk handkerchief out of his pocket, wiped his forehead and cheeks with it and nodding left the room.

On the third evening after this day a pious speaker--it was a slippermaker who had once been dismissed by the dikemaster--spoke at the conventicle held at the Dutch tailor's, where he explained to his audience the attributes of God: "But he who denies the omnipotence of God, who says: 'I know Thou canst not as Thou wouldst'--we all know the unhappy man; he weighs like a stone on the community--he has fallen off from God and seeks the enemy of God, the friend of sin, as his comforter; for the hand of man has to lean upon some staff. But you--beware of him who prays thus; his prayer is a curse!"

This too was spread from house to house. What is not spread in a small community? And it reached Hauke's ears. He said no word about it, not even to his wife; but sometimes he would embrace her violently and draw her to himself: "Stay faithful, Elke! Stay faithful to me!" Then her eyes would look up at him full of wonder. "Faithful to you? To whom else should I be faithful?" After a short while, however, she had understood his words. "Yes, Hauke, we are faithful to each other; not only because we need each other." Then each went his and her way to work.

So far all would have been well. But in spite of all the lively work, a loneliness had spread round him, and in his heart nestled a stubbornness and a reserved manner toward other people. Only toward his wife he was always the same, and every evening and every morning he knelt at the cradle of his child as if there he could find the place of his eternal salvation. Toward servants and workmen, however, he grew more severe; the clumsy and careless ones whom he used to instruct with quiet reproaches were now startled by his harsh address, and sometimes Elke had to make things right quietly where he had offended.

When spring came, work on the dike began again. The gap in the western dike line was closed by a temporary dike half-moon shaped on the inside and the same toward the outside, for the protection of the new lock about to be made. And as the lock grew, so the chief dike gradually acquired its height, which could be more and more quickly attained. The work of directing was not any easier for the dikemaster, as in place of Jewe Manners, Ole Peters had stepped in as dike overseer. Hauke had not cared to attempt preventing this, but now in place of the encouraging word and the corresponding friendly slap on the shoulder that he had earned from his wife's old godfather, he had to cope with the successor's secret hostility and unnecessary objections which had to be thwarted with equally unnecessary reasons. For Ole belonged to the important people, to be sure, but not to the clever ones in dike matters; besides, the "scribbling hired man" of former days was still in his way.

The brightest sky again spread over sea and marshes, and the enclosed land was once more gay with strong cattle, the bellowing of which from time to time interrupted the widespread calm. Larks sang continually high in the air, but one was not aware of it until for the time of a heartbeat the singing had ceased. No bad weather disturbed the work, and the lock was ready with its unpainted structure of beams before it needed the protection of the temporary dike for even one night; the Lord seemed to favor the new work. Then Elke's eyes would laugh to greet her husband when he came home from the dike on his white horse. "You did turn into a good animal!" he said, and then patted the horse's smooth neck. But when he saw the child clinging round her neck, Hauke leaped down and let the tiny thing dance in his arms. Then, when the white horse would fix its brown eyes on the child, he would say: "Come here, you shall have the honor." And he would place little Wienke--for that was her Christian name--on the saddle and lead the white horse round in a circle on the hill. The old ash tree, too, sometimes had the honor; he would set the child on a swinging bough and let it rock. The mother stood in the house door with laughing eyes. But the child did not laugh; her eyes, between which there was a delicate little nose, looked a little dully into the void, and her little hands did not try to seize the small stick that her father was holding for her to take. Hauke did not pay attention to this, especially as he knew nothing about such little children. Only Elke, when she saw the bright-eyed girl on the arm of her charwoman, who had been confined at the same time with her, sometimes said with regret: "Mine isn't as far on as yours yet, Trina." And the woman, as she shook the chubby boy she held by the hand with brusque love, would cry: "Yes, madam, children are different; this one here, he stole apples out of my room before he was more than two years old." And Elke pushed the chubby boy's curls from his eyes, and then secretly pressed her quiet child to her heart.

At the beginning of October, the new lock stood solidly at the west side in the main dike, now closed on both sides. Except for the gaps by the channel, the new dike now sloped all the way round with a gentle profile toward the water and rose above the ordinary high tide by fifteen feet. From the northwestern corner one, could look unhindered past Jevers Island out over the sea. But, to be sure, the winds blew more sharply here; one's hair fluttered, and he who wanted a view from this point had to have his cap securely on his head.

Toward the end of November, when storm and rain had set in, there remained only one gap to close, the one hard by the old dike, at the bottom of which the sea water shot through the channel into the new enclosure. At both sides stood the walls of the dike; now the cleft between them had to vanish. Dry summer weather would have made the work easier; but it had to be done anyway, for a rising storm might endanger the whole work. And Hauke staked everything on accomplishing the end. Rain poured down, the wind whistled; but his lean figure on the fiery white horse rose now here, now there out of the black masses of people who were busy by the gap, above and below, on the north side of the dike. Now he was seen below beside the dump-carts that already had to go far on the foreland to get the clay; a crowded lot of these had just reached the channel in order to cast off their loads. Through the splashing of the rain and the roaring of the wind, from time to time sounded the sharp orders of the dikemaster, who wanted to rule here alone to-day. He called the carts according to their numbers and ordered back those that were crowding up. When his "Stop" sounded, then all work ceased. "Straw!" Send down a load of straw! he called to those above, and the straw from one of their loads came tumbling down on to the wet clay. Below men jumped about in it and tore it apart and called up to the others that they did not want to be buried. Again new carts came, and Hauke was up on top once more, and looked down from his white horse into the cleft below and watched them shovel and dump their loads. Then he glanced out over the sea. The wind was sharp and he saw how the edge of the water was climbing higher up the dike and that the waves rose still higher. He saw, too, that the men were drenched and could scarcely breathe during their hard work because of the wind which cut off the air right before their mouths and because of the cold rain that was pouring down on them. "Hold out, men! Hold out!" he shouted down to them. "Only one foot higher; then it'll be enough for this flood." And through all the raging of the storm one could hear the noise of the workmen; the splashing of the masses of clay tumbling down, the rattling of the carts and the rustling of the straw let down from above went on unceasingly. In the midst of these noises, now and then, the wailing of a little yellow dog could be heard, which, shivering and forlorn, was knocked about among all the men and teams. Suddenly a scream of anguish from the little animal rose out of the cleft. Hauke looked down: he had seen the dog hurled down from above. His face suddenly flushed with rage. "Stop! Stop!" he shouted down to the carts; for the wet clay was being heaped up unceasingly.

"Why?" a rough voice bawled up from below, "not on account of the wretched brat of a dog?"