THE LOVER OF CACTI
Permission Franz Hanfstaengl Karl Spitzweg
The lieutenant reproached Hans bitterly for not having taken care of Fränzchen, for having let the wolf into the house and then, after the Jew had made off with Kleophea, for not having made a stand but allowing himself to be driven away, and for having shaken the dust off his feet. Hans defended himself like a man, declared that the lieutenant had thrown him into all the confusion and trouble, had expected him to play a part without telling him what it was, had never explained why he had spoken so harshly of Hans' boyhood companion. He went on to say that the lieutenant was wholly to blame and that his niece must have thought him, the tutor, as deceitful and hypocritical as Moses Freudenstein. The lieutenant had made Hans wretched and unhappy beyond measure and was not entitled to ask the latter for more justification than he himself was ready to give. In this speech Hans Unwirrsch of Kröppel Street showed that he had not spent his years of apprenticeship in vain. The three had laid aside their clay pipes and stared at the speaker as if they were looking at something perfectly new.
The lieutenant gave a deep-drawn sigh, took Hans' hand and said that he would gladly ask his forgiveness if he had unknowingly done him wrong. He asked him to tell him the next day exactly how life had gone with him in his brother's house. Deeply touched Hans clasped the trembling hand. He had still so much to say to the old man. He had to tell him that he must thank him on his knees for all the trouble, care, all the discord, grief and pain that he had laid upon his soul. He had to tell him that he, the hungry Hans Unwirrsch, had to thank him, the faithful old Eckart, Rudolf Götz, for his finest, noblest hunger, his finest, noblest longing. He had so much to tell him about himself and Fränzchen, but it could not be done then; the right moment had not yet come.
Weeks now passed in which Candidate Unwirrsch became better acquainted with the sea, the village of Grunzenow, Colonel von Bullau and Pastor Josias Tillenius, and in which he had to answer hundreds and hundreds of questions put to him by Lieutenant Rudolf Götz. Colonel von Bullau showed him the scenery of the wild region; Pastor Tillenius taught him to know the people who inhabited this arid, unfruitful soil, who lived solely on what they could wrest from the grasp of the sea, and whom the constant, hard, dangerous struggle with the grim and changeable moods of that element had made so serious, silent, harsh and enduring. It almost seemed like a dream to the candidate that he had wanted to write a "Book of Hunger" surrounded by the atmosphere and brilliance of green meadows and hopeful cornfields. Now he stood in an entirely different world, where to be a pastor would indeed be to "preach in the wilderness" and the hard ground beneath his feet gave forth an entirely different tone from that of the sacred soil of Neustadt or the hardwood floors and the pavements of the great city.
Hans came to be a daily visitor in the pastor's house. He found old Josias closely veiled in tobacco smoke, well wrapped up in his dressing gown, eagerly looking through ancient folios for ancient theology so as to keep up with the current. The old man had seen and lived through much in his youth as he had gone out as an army chaplain against the French in 1793. Bullau and Tillenius had lain together in front of many a camp fire; later they sat with each other at an indoor fireside. The owner of the castle felt just as comfortable sitting by the stove in the pastor's house as the pastor felt at the castle fireside, and the nomadic Lieutenant Götz completed the trio and the comfort, and he was very much missed when his restless blood drove him abroad. In the course of the pastor's long life and ministry he had gradually built up, without suspecting it, his own theology, his own system as regarded views of the world and of God and there were things in it which caused the candidate to look up, often with emotion, often with astonishment, very often with amazement. It was as if he were looking into a mirror when Hans Unwirrsch looked into the life of this aged man whose colleagues farther back in the rich fertile country called him the "Hunger Pastor," thus giving him in earnest the same name that Dr. Théophile Stein, in Mrs. Götz's drawing room, had once bestowed in fun on the friend of his youth.
On the nineteenth of December Lieutenant Götz read in the paper that Privy Councillor Götz had died of a shock on the tenth. His excitement and agitation on Fränzchen's account were great. At Colonel von Bullau's urgent suggestion Hans was sent to bring the child to Grunzenow after he had confessed that he loved Fränzchen and would cling to her as to nothing else in the world.
At first Lieutenant Rudolf had not known whether to laugh or to cry, to bless or to curse. But the pastor had laid his hand on his shoulder and said: "I should simply let him go and fetch his Fränzchen; he shall be my assistant in the 'Hunger parish'; their children shall keep our graves green." At parting the old man drew Hans' attention to the peculiar conditions under which one had to labor in the parish of Grunzenow; he pointed out to him that he must be patient and stout of heart who on this dreary shore, where even one's sermons had to echo the voices of the sea, would be a true shepherd for the lonely fisherfolk, and that only the holiest hunger for love could make a man strong enough for that place on earth. And Hans, who had given his heart to Fränzchen Götz, now gave his soul to the hungry shores of Grunzenow.
On the evening of the second day of his journey Hans reached the city. He went first to the house in Park Street but not a single window was lighted. Full of agitation he sought the "slayers of nine" in the "Green Tree" and from them he learnt that Franziska Götz was no longer in her aunt's house; she had left it or had had to leave it on the day of her uncle's funeral. The widow with her little boy had retired to the house of a very old and very pious relative and there was a rumor that she was much dissatisfied with the world and not in the best of humor. We cannot describe how the candidate spent the rest of this night.
Nevertheless he rang the bell in Park Street early the next morning, but the house remained dumb and dead. Only the postman came with a letter from Kleophea which he dropped back into his leather bag with a shrug of the shoulders. It was addressed to Kleophea's father and bore the postmark, Paris.