Disorder and Early Sorrow
The principal dish at the midday meal had been confined to vegetables; that is, to cabbage fricandeaux; it was followed by a thin, flabby pudding, concocted from one of the pudding-powders, tasting of almonds and soap, which filled the shops. While Xavier, the youthful butler, in a striped coat which he had grown out of, in white cotton gloves and yellow sandals, served this mixture, the Big Ones gently reminded their father that they would have company today.
The Big Ones—that is to say, Ingrid, who was eighteen years old and had brown eyes and was a very charming girl, and Bert, who was fair-haired and seventeen. Ingrid was about to graduate and was pretty certain of passing, if only for the reason that she was able to twist the teachers and especially the director round her little finger and exact absolute indulgence. She intended, however, to make no use of her degree, but to force her way upon the stage, by virtue of her agreeable smile, her equally engaging voice, and her marked and amusing talent for parody. Bert, for his part, was determined not to finish school at all, but to plunge into the thick of life at once, and become either a dancer, a cabaret reciter, or a waiter; the last, however, only “in Cairo”—to which end he had once made an attempt to escape the parental home, at five in the morning, an attempt that had barely been frustrated. He revealed a decided resemblance to Xavier, the butler, who was of the same age; not because he was in any way ordinary—he even bore in feature a close resemblance to his father, Professor Cornelius—but rather through some approach from another side, or at least through a kind of alternating adjustment of types, in which an extensive compromise in the matter of clothes and in general behaviour played the chief part. Both wore their thick hair very long and carelessly parted in the middle, and in consequence both had acquired the same movement of the head, whenever they tossed back an obtruding lock from their foreheads. Whenever one of them went out through the garden gate, bareheaded no matter what the weather might be, and wearing a linen Norfolk jacket belted out of sheer sportiness with a leather strap, with body bent forward and head inclined slightly upon the shoulder, and rushed off, or mounted his bicycle—Xavier indiscriminately using the bicycles of the whole family, even the women’s, and when he was particularly happy-go-lucky, even the professor’s—then Doctor Cornelius, standing at his bedroom window, was unable, try as he might, to distinguish his son from his servant. He thought that they looked like young muzhiks, one like the other. Both were passionate cigarette-smokers, even though Bert had not the means to buy as many as Xavier, who had established a record of thirty a day, smoking a brand that bore the name of a popular film-star.
The Big Ones called their parents the “Ancients”—not behind their backs, but in all affection and as a mode of address, though Cornelius was only forty-seven and his wife eight years younger. They would address father or mother as “Beloved Ancient!” or “Faithful Ancient!” The professor’s parents, who led the lives of permanently astounded and intimidated old people, were called the “Arch-ancients.” As to the Little Ones, Lorie and Biter, who ate in the upper nursery with “Blue Anna”—so called from the colour of her cheeks—these were accustomed to address him as their mother addressed him—that is, by his Christian name, Abel. There was something indescribably droll in the rather extravagant and ingratiating manner and tone they assumed when they called or addressed him thus, especially in the sweet-chiming voice of five-year-old Eleonore, who looked exactly like Frau Cornelius in her childhood pictures, and whom the professor loved above everything.
“Ancient one,” said Ingrid pleasantly, and laid her large but beautiful hand upon her father’s—he was sitting at the head of the table, according to the not unnatural bourgeois tradition, while she sat to his left, opposite her mother—“good, dear ancestor, I am sure you have lost it in your subconscious. Well, it’s this afternoon that we’re having our little jollification, our little hop with herring salad accompaniment, and so it’s up to you to keep us in countenance and not to despair—it will be all over by nine o’clock.”
“Oh!” said Cornelius with long-drawn face. “All right,” he added, and shook his head to show himself adjusted to the inevitable. “I merely thought—is it really today? Why, yes, it is really Thursday. How time flies! When are they coming?”
“At half past four,” answered Ingrid, whose brother always permitted her to have precedence in their intercourse with the father. The guests might be expected about that time. He would hear nothing, so long as he took his nap in the second story, and from seven to eight he was sure to take his walk. He might even escape by way of the terrace if he had a mind to.
“Oh!” Cornelius remarked, as much as to say: “You exaggerate.”
Then Bert added, so as to have his say: “It’s the only
