Short Fiction

settled in our town with her children⁠—Johnny and a little girl who was quite as pretty, even though a bit tricky. The mother always went dressed exclusively in black, in constant mourning for her husband, and no doubt she honoured his last wishes in letting the children grow up in Germany. She was evidently in good circumstances. She owned a spacious house just outside the city, and a villa at the seaside; and from time to time she would make trips to distant health resorts with Johnny and Sissie. She did not belong to society, though all doors would have been open to her. She lived in the utmost retirement, either because of her mourning, or because the horizon of our leading families was too narrow for her. But by means of invitations, and by arranging games in common, by Johnny’s and Sissie’s participation in dancing and deportment classes and suchlike, she provided company for her children, and though she did not herself choose this company, she nevertheless supervised it with quiet solicitude, and in such a way that Johnny and Sissie came into touch only with children of well-to-do houses. This, to be sure, was not the result of a fixed principle, and yet it was a simple fact. Frau Bishop also contributed to my own education, even at a distance, in that she taught me that in order to be respected by others it is only necessary to respect oneself. Though deprived of its masculine head, the little family showed none of the stigmata of neglect and decline which so often arouse middle-class suspicion in similar cases. Without any train of relatives, without a title, or tradition, influence, or public position, her life was at once aloof and self-assured, and firmly and deliberately self-assured to such a degree that every concession was made to her silently and unhesitatingly, and the friendship of her children was held in high esteem by both boys and girls.

As to Jürgen Brattström, his father had only recently risen to a position of wealth and public offices and had built the red sandstone house for himself and his family in the Burgfeld, which made him a neighbour of Frau Bishop’s. Thus, with Frau Bishop’s quiet sanction, Jürgen had become Johnny’s garden playmate and companion on the way to school⁠—a phlegmatic, officious, short-limbed lad without any dominant characteristics. He was already carrying on a little surreptitious trade in licorice.

As I have said, I was exceedingly startled by Johnny’s communication about the impending battle between Jappe and Do Escobar, which was to be fought that day in deadly earnest on the Leuchtenfeld at twelve o’clock. This might prove most terrible, for Jappe and Escobar were strong, daring fellows with a knightly code of honour, and a hostile encounter between them might well arouse anxiety. In memory they still appear to me as big and manly as at that time, although they could not have been older than fifteen. Jappe came from a middle-class family of the town; he was taken very little care of and he was really almost what we called a “butcher” at that time, a daredevil, although with a touch of the man about town. Do Escobar was very free by nature, an exotic alien, who did not even attend school regularly, but merely came as a kind of outsider to listen (a disorderly but paradisal life!)⁠—one who boarded with some burgher’s family and who rejoiced in absolute independence. Both were individuals who went to bed late, visited taverns, went loafing along the Breitenstrasse in the evening, followed girls, did reckless things on the crossbars⁠—in short, they were “sports.” Although they did not stay at the Kurhotel at Travemünde⁠—where they would scarcely have belonged⁠—but lodged somewhere in the town, in the Kurgarten itself they acted the part of men of the world. And I knew that in the evening⁠—that is, Sundays⁠—long after I was lying in my bed in one of the Swiss cottages and had peacefully dropped off to slumber amid the strains of the Kurhaus concert, they as well as other members of the gay young world went strolling adventurously to and fro in the tide of summer visitors and excursionists, past the long tent of the confectioner, seeking adult acquaintance and finding it. In doing this they had crossed each other’s path⁠—God knows why or how. It is possible that they may only have bumped into each other as they slouched past and, being quick in the matter of injured honour, had made a casus belli of the incident. Johnny, who of course had also been asleep long before and who had heard of the quarrel only through hearsay, declared in his agreeable, somewhat veiled, and childish voice that the trouble had very likely arisen over a “wench,” and this was not at all difficult to suppose of such audacious up-to-dateness as characterized Jappe and Do Escobar. In short, they had not made any scene in public, but in curt and sardonic words had agreed on the place and hour for settling this point of honour. Tomorrow at twelve o’clock they would meet at such and such a place upon the Leuchtenfeld. Good evening! Herr Knaak of Hamburg, ballet-master, maître de plaisir, and manager of the “reunions” in the Kurhaus had been present and had agreed to come to the duelling-ground.

Johnny was wholly delighted at the prospect of the fight, and neither he nor Brattström shared the nervousness I felt. He repeatedly assured us, forming his R’s, according to his charming habit, by means of his gums, that the two would fight each other in deadly seriousness and as real enemies, and then with an amused and rather sarcastic matter-of-factness he debated the chances of victory. Jappe and Do Escobar were both dreadfully strong⁠—huh! Both of them powerful bullies. It was amusing that they would now for once solemnly settle which of the two was the more powerful bully. Jappe, Johnny declared, had a broad chest and