And lo, Herr Klöterjahn appeared. He had received Dr. Müller’s short telegram and came from the shore of the Baltic. He got out of the cab, called for coffee and rolls, and looked very disconcerted.
“What is it?” he asked. “Why am I called here?”
“Since it is advisable,” Dr. Müller answered, “that you remain near your wife now.”
“Advisable … advisable. … But necessary as well? I am tending to my business, my man, and times are bad and travelling is expensive. Was this journey unavoidable? I shouldn’t have anything to say, for instance, if it was the lungs; but, thank God, it is only the trachea …”
“Herr Klöterjahn,” Dr. Müller spoke softly, “in the first place, the trachea is an important organ …” He incorrectly said “in the first place,” since no “in the second place” followed.
But at the same time as Herr Klöterjahn, a plump person dressed in red, plaid, and gold had arrived at Einfried, and she it was who carried in her arms Anton Klöterjahn, Jr., the small, sturdy Anton. Yes, he was there, and no one could deny that he really was excessively healthy. White and rosy, with clean fresh clothes, he rested fragrant and fat on the red bare arm of his servant, swallowed powerful quantities of milk and chopped meat, shouted and surrendered himself in every way to his instincts.
The author, Spinell, had observed the arrival of young Klöterjahn from the window of his room. In a peculiarly veiled manner, but sharply nevertheless, he had fixed the child in his eye while it was being carried from the cab to the house. And for some time he had remained standing there with this same expression on his face.
From now on he avoided as far as possible any meeting with Anton Klöterjahn, Jr.
X
Herr Spinell was sitting “at work” in his room. It was a room like all the rest at Einfried: old-fashioned, simple, and distinguished. The massive chest of drawers had lions’ heads of metal on it; the high wall mirror was no flat surface, but made of numerous little squares fastened together with lead; there was no carpet on the blue lacquered floor in which the stiff legs of the furniture were continued as clear shadows. A spacious writing-desk stood near the window, across which the novelist had drawn a yellow curtain, probably that he might be more by himself.
In the yellowish twilight he was sitting over the escritoire, and writing … writing at one of those frequent letters which he mailed every week, and to which, ridiculously enough, he usually received no answers. A large sheet of heavy paper was lying in front of him; in the upper left-hand corner, under a mighty queerly drawn landscape, the name, Detlev Spinell, was to be read in the most completely up-to-date letters. He was covering this paper now with a small, carefully traced, and exceptionally pure handwriting.
“Dear Sir,” it began. “I am sending you the following lines because I cannot help it, because the things I have to say to you burden me, torture me, and make me tremble, because the words pour forth with such violence that I should be stifled with them if I did not venture to relieve myself of them in this letter. …”
To give truth its dues, this “pouring forth” was certainly not the case, and God only knows what useless reasons prompted Herr Spinell to assert it. Words seemed to be doing anything but pour forth from him; for a man whose everyday occupation was writing, he seemed to get along miserably slow. If anyone had seen him, he would have come to the conclusion that an author is a person to whom writing is much more difficult than to anybody else.
He would get hold of one of those little downy hairs on his cheeks between two fingertips, and twist at it for fifteen minutes at a stretch, while he stared into space and didn’t advance a line. Then he would write a few neat words, and stop again. On the other hand, it must be admitted that whatever finally appeared gave the impression of ease and vividness, even if its contents were of an unusual, questionable, and often incomprehensible character:
“It is an inevitable necessity with me that those things which I have been seeing, which have been standing before my eyes as an inextinguishable vision for weeks, should be made plain to you as well … that you should see them through my eyes in that utter clarity in which they have stood before my inner vision. I am accustomed to yielding to such compulsions, that I may adjust my experience to that of the world in general, employing properly placed words in such a manner as to make them burning and unforgettable. I trust, then, that you will give me your attention.
“I wish to state only what actually has been, and still is. I should simply like to tell a story, a very short, unspeakably moving story; to tell it without commentary, without accusations or judgments, but in my own words. It is, Sir, the story of Gabriele Eckhof, the woman whom you now call your wife. And please note: it was you that lived through it, and yet it is I whose words will be the first truly to elevate it to the importance of an experience.
“Do you remember, Sir, the garden, the old, grown-up garden behind the grey ancestral home? Green moss jutted out of the cracks in the weathered walls enclosing this dreamy wilderness. Also, do do you remember the spring in the midst of it all? Lilac-coloured flags bent over its dank edges, and a white stream muttered its secrets down over the stones.
