Furthermore, Dr. Leander took over the case himself, without consulting Dr. Müller.
III
The new patient created an unusual stir in Einfried, and Herr Klöterjahn, who was accustomed to such successes, accepted with satisfaction every respect that was paid her. The diabetic general stopped grumbling for a moment the first time he saw her; the gentlemen with the fleshless faces smiled, and attempted desperately to control their legs when they were near her; and the Magistratsrätin Spatz immediately attached herself as an elder friend. Indeed, she made quite an impression, this woman who bore Herr Klöterjahn’s name! An author who had been spending his time in Einfried for some weeks now, a distant sort—his name sounded like the name of some jewel—coloured noticeably as she passed him in the corridor; he stood still as though rooted there, even after she had disappeared.
Within two days everyone in the sanatorium knew her history. She was born in Bremen, a fact, moreover, which was plainly noticeable in certain winning quirks to her pronunciation. Two years before, she had given the wholesale merchant Klöterjahn her consent for life. She went with him to his home town, along the Baltic, and about ten months ago, under the most unusually difficult and dangerous circumstances, she had presented him with a child, a marvellously vigorous and well setup son and heir. But since those dreadful days she had never regained her strength, if it could be said that she ever did have much strength. Exceptionally exhausted and exceptionally impoverished of all physical resistance, she had scarcely left her bed when she developed a cough which brought up a little blood. Oh, not much—an insignificant little speck of blood; but it would have been much preferable if it had not happened at all, while the disquieting thing was that after a short time the same slight but troublesome incident was repeated. Now, there were remedies for all this, and Dr. Hinzpeter, the family physician, made use of them. A complete rest was prescribed, there was cracked ice to be swallowed, morphine was brought to bear against the tickling sensation which made her cough, and the heart was steadied as far as possible. But recovery refused to set in, and the young mother seemed to be consuming in a mild and silent glow while Anton Klöterjahn, Jr., a masterpiece of a baby, asserted and maintained his station in life with a frightful emphasis and lack of consideration. … As has been said before, it was the trachea, a word which, in Dr. Hinzpeter’s mouth, exercised an astonishingly consoling, reassuring, and almost hilarious effect on everyone. But although it was not the lungs, the doctor had eventually thought it highly advisable, in accelerating her convalescence, to try the influence of a milder climate and of a few months in some regular institute. The reputation of Einfried and its director had done the rest.
That was the way things stood; and Herr Klöterjahn in person told it to everyone who manifested the least interest. He spoke in a loud boisterous manner, and with the good humour of a man whose digestion is in as perfect order as his purse—with vastly explosive movements of his lips, in the broad, yet rapid fashion of people along the north coast. Many of his words were hurled out, so that each sound came like a discharge; and he would laugh about it as an excellent joke.
He was of medium height, broad, strong, and short-legged, and possessed a full red face with water-blue eyes shaded by light blond lashes, large nostrils and moist lips. He had English side-whiskers, wore English clothing, and was enchanted to find at Einfried an English family, father, mother, and three pretty children with their nurse, who were stopping here for the simple reason that they did not know where else to stop; he ate an English breakfast with them every morning. He was especially fond of his food and drink, displayed himself as a true connoisseur of both the cuisine and the wine cellar, and entertained the company most rousingly with accounts of the dinners which were given back home among his own circle, and with descriptions of certain choice dishes which were unknown here. At such times his eyes would squint with a kindly expression and his speech contained some palatal and nasal element, to an accompaniment of soft smacking noises deep in his gullet. As evidence that he was not fundamentally inimical to other earthly enjoyments, there was the evening when a patient at Einfried, an author by profession, came upon him in one of the corridors joking with a chambermaid in a somewhat inappropriate manner—a trifling bit of sport which caused the author concerned to show a most ridiculous expression of disgust.
As to Herr Klöterjahn’s wife, it was more than plain that she was attached to him with all her heart. She followed his words and motions with a smile; not with the complacent forbearance which most sufferers display towards the healthy, but with that lovable pleasure and sympathy which in rare instances good-natured invalids feel towards the confident manifestations of vitality by people who are perfectly at home in their skins.
Herr Klöterjahn did not stay long at Einfried. He had brought his wife here; but now that a week had passed, and he knew her to be comfortable and in good hands, he could stay no longer. Duties of equal importance, his thriving child, and his equally thriving business, called him back home. They compelled him to leave, with his wife entrusted to the best of care.
IV
Spinell was the name of the author who had been staying in Einfried for some weeks; Detlev Spinell was his name, and his exterior was remarkable.
Imagine a dark-haired man in his early thirties, quite tall, his hair already noticeably grey about the temples, and with a round, pale, somewhat puffy face which showed not the
