She tried to imagine him without the house and the family, not talking or joking or pretending … alone and sad … despising his family … needing her. He loved forests and music. He had a great strong solid voice and was strong and sure about everything and she need never worry any more.
“Seit ich ihn gesehen
Glaub’ ich blind zu sein.”
There would be a garden and German springs and summers and sunsets and strong kind arms and a shoulder. She would grow so happy. No one would recognise her as the same person. She would wear a band of turquoise-blue velvet ribbon round her hair and look at the mountains. … No good. She could never get out to that. Never. She could not pretend long enough. Everything would be at an end long before there was any chance of her turning into a happy German woman.
Certainly with a German man she would be angry at once. She thought of the men she had seen—in the streets, in cafés and gardens, the masters in the school, photographs in the girls’ albums. They had all offended her at once. Something in their bearing and manner. … Blind and impudent. … She thought of the interview she had witnessed between Ulrica and her cousin—the cousin coming up from the estate in Erfurth, arriving in a carriage, Fräulein’s manner, her smiles and hints; Ulrica standing in the Saal in her sprigged saffron muslin dress curtseying … with bent head, the cousin’s condescending laughing voice. It would never do for her to go into a German home. She must not say anything about the chance of going to the Bergmanns’—even to Eve.
She imagined Eve sitting listening in the window space in the bow that was carpeted with linoleum to look like parquet flooring. Beyond them lay the length of the Turkey carpet darkening away under the long table. She could see each object on the shining sideboard. The silver biscuit box and the large épergne made her feel guilty and shifting, guilty from the beginning of things.
“You see, Eve, I thought counting it all up that if I came home it would cost less than going to Norderney and that all the expense of my going to Germany and coming back is less than what it would have cost to keep me at home for the five months I’ve been there—I wish you’d tell everybody that.”
She turned about in bed; her head was growing fevered.
She conjured up a vision of the backs of the books in the bookcase in the dining room at home. … Iliad and Odyssey … people going over the sea in boats and someone doing embroidery … that little picture of Hector and Andromache in the corner of a page … he in armour … she, in a trailing dress, holding up her baby. Both, silly. … She wished she had read more carefully. She could not remember anything in Lecky or Darwin that would tell her what to do … Hudibras … The Atomic Theory … Ballads and Poems, D. G. Rossetti … Kinglake’s Crimea … Palgrave’s Arabia … Crimea. … The Crimea. … Florence Nightingale; a picture somewhere; a refined face, with cap and strings. … She must have smiled. … Motley’s Rise of … Rise of … Motley’s Rise of the Dutch Republic. … Motley’s Rise of the Dutch Republic and the Chronicles of the Schönberg-Cotta Family. She held to the memory of these two books. Something was coming from them to her. She handled the shiny brown gold-tooled back of Motley’s Rise and felt the hard graining of the red-bound Chronicles. … There were green trees outside in the moonlight … in Luther’s Germany … trees and fields and German towns and then Holland. She breathed more easily. Her eyes opened serenely. Tranquil moonlight lay across the room. It surprised her like a sudden hand stroking her brow. It seemed to feel for her heart. If she gave way to it her thoughts would go. Perhaps she ought to watch it and let her thoughts go. It passed over her trouble like her mother did when she said, “Don’t go so deeply into everything, chickie. You must learn to take life as it comes. Ah‑eh if I were strong I could show you how to enjoy life. …” Delicate little mother, running quickly downstairs clearing her throat to sing. But mother did not know. She had no reasoning power. She could not help because she did not know. The moonlight was sad and hesitating. Miriam closed her eyes again. Luther … pinning up that notice on a church door. … (Why is Luther like a dyspeptic blackbird? Because the Diet of Worms did not agree with him) … and then leaving the notice on the church door and going home to tea … coffee … some evening meal … Käthe … Käthe … happy Käthe. … They pinned up that notice on a Roman Catholic church … and all the priests looked at them … and behind the priests were torture and dark places … Luther looking up
