Irretrievable (30 page)

“No, my dear Julie,” said Holk. “Let us leave Christine for a while. What she has to hear will be soon enough. I have come here sooner than I expected and I should have preferred to choose another day than this. But I am not staying long.”

Fräulein Dobschütz knew how things stood and how, over the last few weeks, Holk had increasingly humiliated and offended his wife; but what she had just heard was much more than this and went much further. What could be the meaning of these words that seemed to say so much and yet said nothing? And as he spoke them, Holk stood with a half defiant, half embarrassed, expression on his face, as if he had come to accuse someone and himself as well.

“I should prefer to go and inform Christine that you are here.”

He nodded, as if to say, very well, if you wish, it makes no difference whether it is now or later. Then he walked over to the crib, picked up one or two of the figures and looked round to see if Dobschütz had meanwhile left the room or not.

Yes, she had gone and now, for the first time, he let his gaze wander slowly round the room, looking at everything, large and small, almost with indifference and, as he did so, he could also see out over the park drive on which hens were walking because there was no one to stop them. Then he walked back again to the open grand piano, at which Elizabeth and Asta had so often sat and played duets or sung their songs, one of them on the last day—or was it the last but one?—before his departure. And all at once it seemed to him that he heard it again, but far, far away.

He stood thus, dreaming, half forgetful of what he had come to accomplish, when he thought he heard the door open. Turning, he saw that Christine had come in. She was standing, holding Fräulein Dobschütz's hand, as if for support. Holk went towards her. “Good morning, Christine. You see that I have returned earlier than I had expected.”

“Yes,” she said, “earlier.” And she gave him her hand and waited to see what he would do, some sign to show her how things stood, because she knew that in spite of all his weaknesses, he was honest and could not dissemble.

Holk held her hand in his and tried to look her in the face but he could not bear the gaze from the calm eyes that met his and in order not to lower his own, turned them away again, while she continued to remain silent. “Shall we not sit down, Christine?”

They both walked to the corner table. Julie followed but remained standing while the Countess sat down opposite Holk, who drew up a chair. The Christmas crib stood between them and across the crib their eyes questioned each other.

“Please leave us, Julie,” said the Countess after a pause. “We had better be alone. I think my husband has something to tell me.”

Julie hesitated, not because she wanted to witness the painful scene that was obviously about to follow but because of her love for Christine who, she feared, might need her help and support. But finally she left.

Holk seemed at first to be contradicting his wife's statement that he had something to say, for he remained silent, playing with the figure of the Christ child which, without thinking, he had taken from the lap of the Virgin Mary.

Christine looked at him and almost felt sympathy for him. “I shall make it easy for you, Helmut,” she said. “What you cannot bring yourself to say, I shall say for you. We were expecting you on New Year's Eve or New Year's Day and you have come for Christmas. I don't imagine that you have come to see the crib or for the sake of the Christ child that you are playing with. You have something else on your mind than Him and it can only be whether your hope of happiness is called Brigitte or Ebba. It is really one and the same thing. You have come to do what I suggested to you as a last resort, to tell me that it was I who wanted it to be so. Yes, I did want it to be so because I can't bear half-heartedness in any relationship. Among my many special kinds of selfishness, I possess that of not wishing to share with anyone. I want the whole of a man, the whole of his heart, and I don't wish to be a man's wife for the summer while others take it in turn to be his wife during the winter. So tell me openly that you have come to talk of separation.”

It was unfortunate that the Countess could not control her feelings. Had she spoken more mildly, she might have been able to turn Holk, indecisive as he was, away from his plan and made him recognize his mistake, for in spite of everything, he had not yet stifled the voices of conscience and justice, and all that he needed was the strength to listen to them. Had Christine succeeded in giving him this extra strength, he might even now have changed his mind. But her tone betrayed her and awakened in Holk all those feelings that had irritated him for so long and which, since he had known Ebba, had made him so ready to consider himself the wronged party.

And so, as soon as Christine had stopped speaking, he threw the Christ back into the crib, not caring where it fell, and said: “I think you said that you wanted to make it easy for me. Well, I'm indebted to you for being willing to keep faith with what you had promised—in your usual supercilious way. Let me confess to you that I was deeply moved when I saw you appear a moment ago and come towards me leaning on Julie. But I'm not moved any more. You don't have the power to heal or console or lighten anyone's burden or even to spread flowers in anyone's path. You have no light or sun. You lack anything feminine, you're bitter and morose …”

“And self-righteous …”

“And self-righteous. And above all, so stubborn in all your beliefs, in everything that you say and do that, for a while, one begins to be convinced oneself and goes on being convinced until one day the scales fall from one's eyes and one is angry with oneself, above all at the thought that anyone can see God's lovely world as a narrow, fenced-in enclosure covered by a shroud. Yes, Christine, such a world does exist, and it is lovely and bright and spacious and that is the world that I am going to live in, a world that may not be paradise but at least is a reflection of it, and in this bright and cheerful world, I want to hear the nightingales singing and not see golden eagles, or condors if you like, soaring solemnly heavenwards all the time.”

“All right, Helmut, let us say no more about it. I don't want to exclude you from your paradise any longer, because what you have just said about its being a mere reflection means nothing: you want a
real
paradise on earth and, as you expressed it rather peculiarly, you want to hear the nightingales singing in it. But sooner or later, they will stop singing and then you will hear the sound of only one bird, softly and more and more bitterly. It will not be bringing you joy and when it comes, you will find yourself looking back on an unhappy life. I'm not going to mention the children to you, I cannot bear to bring them into a conversation such as this; a man who will not listen to his wife, a wife who has claims on his love because her love was only for him, such a man will be just as indifferent to the feelings that the mere names of his children ought to arouse in him. I shall go now. My brother will look after my affairs from Arnewieck, not in any way to resist, or even protest against your plans, Heaven forbid, but merely to settle what has to be settled and, above all, whether the children are to be yours or mine. If I know you well enough”—she gave a bitter smile—“you will not raise any difficulties on that score; there were times, I think, when the children meant something to you but those times are past. Times change and what used to give you joy has now become a burden. I shall do my best to spare your new
ménage
any special strains, including the strain of being a stepmother. And now good-bye and I hope that you will not be too heavily punished for all that you are doing.”

While speaking, she had risen to her feet and without trying to avoid him, brushed by him to go towards the door. Her whole attitude now betrayed no sign of any of the weakness she had shown on entering the room; the indignation in her heart gave her the strength to bear everything.

Holk rose too. A world of conflicting feelings was surging inside him but the predominant feeling now, after all that he had heard, was one of bitter resentment. For a long while, he walked up and down and then went over to the balcony window and again looked out on to the park drive, strewn with leaves and pine-cones, as it sloped gently downwards and finally curved left towards Holkebye. The sky was overcast again and, suddenly, a violent flurry of snow began to fall, the flakes dancing and whirling until the wind abruptly dropped and they continued to fall, heavily and thickly, to the ground.

Holk could only see for a few yards but, densely though the flakes were falling, he recognized the figures of two women who, coming from the right of the castle, turned into the drive and started to walk towards Holkebye.

It was the Countess with Fräulein Dobschütz.

They were alone.

When he
saw Christine going down the drive and disappearing into the flurry of snow, Holk was touched, but only in his heart, not in his mind. His decision was firm: his past happiness now lay behind him, so much was certain, and he added: “perhaps through my fault but certainly through hers as well. It's she who wanted this, it's she who has vexed and tormented me, first by her overbearing pride and then through her jealousy, and now she has told me to go. And she didn't show any restraint, on the contrary, she surpassed herself and instead of her usual arrogance, she put on a pitying air and then she left. I may have wronged her in the past, during these last few weeks I certainly have, but it was she who started it, it was she who alienated me more and more and now that's the end of it all. Yes, it's the end of the story but not the end of my life. No, on the contrary, it's the beginning of something else, something better, more cheerful, and if, in my new existence, some bitterness still remains over the past, I must not let it embitter my life for ever. How I long to see a laughing face! Oh, that everlasting look of the Mother of Sorrows with her heart pierced by a sword when, in reality, it was only pin-pricks. It was unendurable and in any case, I was tired of it.”

The old retainer, who had meanwhile fetched the luggage from the landing-stage, now came to ask whether the Count wished to eat. “No, Dooren, not now. I shall ring.” And alone again, the question once more arose as to what he ought to do. “Shall I stay here and put a dozen candles on the Christmas tree that I have just prevented Julie from decorating and then light the candles tomorrow and try to bring myself luck as a Christmas box? Impossible. And I can't stay here just to play the part of the affable and generous landlord, up here in the castle and down in the village, and give all the girls of the village a silver dollar stuffed in an apple and ask Michael after his Anne-Marie or Anne-Marie after her Michael and whether the wedding is to be at Easter or Whitsun. And even if I did want to do something like that, it would take a whole day or even two, because here they don't give their Christmas presents until early in the morning. Two days, that's impossible, how would I possibly spend them? It would be an eternity and I'm not in the mood to check account books in between and talk about parsnips and turnips. And what about Petersen? He would appeal to my conscience and still all to no purpose. And then Christine will presumably be there, too; I expect she'll stay down in the village and send a message to Arnewieck and Arne will come and fetch her. I've no desire to be still here then, or even in the neighbourhood. No, I prefer to go to Flensburg, there may perhaps still be a boat for Copenhagen today. Even if there isn't, I can't stay here; I must get away.”

He pulled the bell-cord. “Tell John to harness the horses. The gig and the ponies. I'm going to Flensburg.”

It was just striking three o'clock when Holk drove into Flensburg and a moment later stopped in front of the Hillmann Hotel, where he used regularly to stay on his frequent visits to the town. The landlord was somewhat surprised to see him until he was told that the Count, of whose position at court he was aware, had only been on short leave in Holkenäs.

“When is the next boat to Copenhagen, my dear Hillmann?”

Hillmann fetched the time-table of arrivals and departures of all the steamers and ran his finger down the list: “That's right, Iversen's ship is due to go tomorrow but traditionally the 24th is a holiday and Iversen lives with his daughter and has grandchildren, so he certainly won't break with that tradition; he'd sooner be under a Christmas tree than on deck on Christmas Eve. But he's a good skipper, one of the old school who's worked his way up from cabin-boy. He'll be sailing on the 25th, the first day of Christmas, at seven o'clock in the evening.”

“And arriving?”

“And arriving in Copenhagen early on the second day of Christmas. That means about nine o'clock or perhaps an hour later.”

Holk was not much pleased by all this and it was only when he thought of Holkenäs that he was heartily glad at spending such a long period, more than two days, in Flensburg. He took a room on the second floor that looked out over the Rathaus square and after eating a late lunch, with a healthy appetite, for he had scarcely eaten anything since the previous evening, he left the hotel to go for a long walk round the bay of Flensburg. At first, it was twilight, but then the stars came out to shine in all their wintry splendour, reflected in the broad expanse of water. With every minute, Holk felt his burden grow lighter and if he still did not feel completely at ease, any uncertainty that remained now concerned the future, not the past, and was more like excited expectancy. In his mind's eye, he imagined all kinds of agreeable events that would be taking place, certainly no later than May. By then, everything would be settled: the wedding date fixed, and he saw himself in Hilleröd church thronged with people. It was Schleppegrell who would deliver the wedding sermon and his good wife would be overcome by his eloquence while Dr. Bie was overjoyed that, with the help of a beautiful Swede, a Schleswig-Holstein heart had been won over to Denmark. In the pew reserved for the court, the Princess was to be seen, with Countess Schimmelmann beside her and Pentz and Erichsen behind them both. And then they would take their leave of Hilleröd and all the guests and travel in a special train to Copenhagen and the same evening to Korsör and Kiel and spend their first night in Hamburg. And afterwards there was Dresden and Munich and Lake Garda, with an excursion to Mantua where, strange as it might seem, she was anxious to visit the ditch under the ramparts where the Tyrolean patriot Hofer had been executed, and then on and on, southwards to Naples and Sorrento. There the journey would come to an end, with Vesuvius on the right and Capri on the left; he wanted to forget the world and all its sorrows and live only for himself and his love. Yes, it would be in Sorrento, where there was a superb bay like the bay here in Flensburg but brighter and more splendid and when the sun ushered in each new day, it would be a real sun and a real day.