The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Volume 09 / Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig

by Unknown

Fritz Nettenmair accompanied the workman a part of his way. The workman wanted to walk faster, so he thanked him for his company, intending to proceed alone. When others part their last words are of what they both love; Fritz Nettenmair's and the workman's last words were of their hatred. The workman knew that Apollonius would have liked to have put him in the penitentiary, if he could. As the two now stood facing each other at parting, the workman measured the other with his eye. It was an evil, lurking glance, a grimly surreptitious glance that asked Fritz Nettenmair, without intending to be heard, whether he was ready for something which the workman did not name. Then he said, in a hoarse voice which would have struck the other but that Fritz Nettenmair was accustomed to it: "What was it I wanted to say? Oh, yes, you will soon be in mourning. I saw him the other day." He did not need to mention any name, Fritz Nettenmair knew whom he meant. "There are people who see more than others," the workman continued, "there are people who can see in a slater's face if he is doomed to fall that year, who see him being carried home, and see him lying there, only he is not there any more. An old slater told me the secret of how to see with the 'second sight.' I have it. And now farewell. Meet it with resignation when they carry him home."

The workman had left him; his steps were already growing faint in the distance. Fritz Nettenmair still stood and gazed into the white-gray fog into which the workman had disappeared. The layers of fog hung horizontally above the meadows by the street spread out like a cloth. They rose and melted together, forming strange shapes, they curled, floated apart and sank down again only to rear themselves once more. They hung on the branches of the willows by the way, now veiling them, now leaving them free, till it seemed uncertain whether the fog was dissolving into trees or the trees into fog. It was a dreamlike activity, untiring movement without aim or purpose. It was a picture of what was going on in Fritz Nettenmair's soul, such a true picture that he did not know whether he was looking at something outside or something within himself. There came a hazy bending down and wringing of hands about a pale figure on the ground, then a slowly moving funeral procession, and now it was his enemy, his brother who lay there, whom they carried. Now malicious joy flamed up sharply, died down and pity took its place, now both were mixed and one tried to hide the other. The figure lying there, whom they carried, Fritz forgave everything. He wept over him; for in the intervals of the funeral song the merry dance-tune sounded softly which the future struck up: "There he comes! Now the fun will begin!" And beside the dead lay a second corpse, invisible, his fear of what must come if his poor brother did not lie dead. And in the coffin, Fritz Nettenmair's old jovial happiness put forth new buds. Fritz Nettenmair felt himself to be an angel; he wished that his brother need not die, because—he knew that his brother must die.

He was still walking in the fog when the pavement of the town sounded again under his feet. He had forgotten a past, he forgot the present, for the future was his again. And he was one who—as he turned into his street the old words rang as jovially as they ever did.

It gave him a curious feeling to think that through the door which he had just opened a coffin was going to be carried out. Involuntarily he stood aside as if to let the procession pass him. "We must submit," he said softly, as if repeating to himself what he would have to answer some one offering him consolation when once the time had come, "We must submit to what is unalterable." And as he raised his shoulders in accompaniment to the words, he perceived a faint glimmer of light. He looked up; the light came through the crack between the lower part of the shutter and the window ledge. There was a light in there, in the living-room. "So late?" He gasped; the load lies again on his breast. His brother was still alive; and what must come if he were not to die, might still come before he died, or—it was already here! How swiftly his hands moved—and yet the door was locked again quietly in an instant! Just as softly and just as quickly he went to the back door. It was not open, but the key was only turned once in the lock, and Fritz Nettenmair could swear to it that he turned it twice before he went. He felt his way to the door of the room; he found the latch and gently pressed it; the door opened; a faint glimmer shone out into the hall. It came from a covered light on the table; beside the table a small bed stood in the shadow. It was little Annie's bed, and her mother was sitting beside it.

Christiane did not notice the opening of the door. Her head was bent low down over the bed; she was singing softly and did not know what she was singing; she was listening full of fear, but not to her song; she would cry if the tears did not dim her eyes. But now the color might come back to the child's cheek again, the strange expression about the child's eyes and mouth might disappear, and she might fail to see it and might fear in vain. It seemed to her as if the color must come and the expression change if she only tried hard enough to notice this coming and going. And at the same time she was able to think how suddenly this thing had come that had made her so afraid; how little Annie in the bed beside her own, suddenly cried out in a strange voice and then could not speak any more; how she jumped up and dressed; how she waked Valentine in her distress, and he, without her knowledge, waked Apollonius. The old fellow had tried all the keys in the house until he found that the key of the shed opened the back door; she did not know that. So much the more vividly did she picture how Apollonius came in, how she felt at his unexpected appearance, full of terror and shame and yet wonderfully tranquillized. Apollonius had fetched the doctor at once and medicines. He had stood by the bed and bent over little Annie as she did now. He had looked at her full of pain and said that little Annie's illness was owing to the discord between herself and her husband, and that she would not get well unless this ceased. He had told her of the miracles that are possible to a mother and of how men and women can and must conquer themselves. Then he had given Valentine a few more orders relating to little Annie and had left, fearing that his brother, in his error, might otherwise believe that he wanted to drive him away from the sick-bed of his children. Apollonius had said that little Annie would not get well again if the discord did not cease. He had said that people can and must conquer themselves; Christiane determined to conquer herself because he had said so. A mother could do miracles for her child; if she thought of Apollonius' face when he spoke thus, the greatest miracle must become possible to her.

Fritz Nettenmair entered. He thought of nothing but that Apollonius must have been there, even if he were not there any longer. Everything danced before his eyes he was in such a fury. He would have flown at his wife if he had not seen old Valentine sitting at the door of the bedroom. He meant to wait till the old man had left the room, and crept to the chair at the window where he had always sat formerly, when he was such a different man. His wife heard his soft tread; she could not see his face. It seemed to her that he knew of little Annie's condition and walked so softly on that account. She looked at little Annie with a glance that said, that what she was about to do now she would do for the sake of her sick child; a glance at the door by which he had gone out added: "And because he said I should."

"Here is father, Annie," she said. In reality she was talking to her husband who sat at the window, but she could not turn her face toward him, could not address her words directly to him. "You always asked for him, you know. You thought that when he came he would be as he used to be before you were sick. Mother wants him to be like that too—for your sake."

Her voice came from so deep down in her chest that the man had to force himself to control his rage. He thought: "She is speaking so sweetly so as to deceive me. They planned that when he was here." And the soft tones in which she continued only caused his anger to swell more wrathfully.

"And you won't go to Heaven yet, will you Annie? You're such a good little girl and you'll stay with father and mother. If only—you mustn't be afraid of father, you silly little Annie, because he speaks so loud. He doesn't mean to be cross."

She stopped; she expected an answer from the father, not from the child. She expected that he would come to the bed and speak to the child as she had done, and through the child with her. Whatever she might think of him, the child was his child, after all, and it was ill.