Rosshalde (6 page)

“Oh, very well. The picture is a good likeness. He looks a good deal like your wife.”

“More than Pierre?”

“Yes, much more. Pierre is neither your type nor his mother's. Ah, here he comes. Or is it Albert? No, it can't be.”

Light steps were heard outside the door, passing over the flags and the iron foot scraper; the door handle was touched and after brief hesitation turned. In stepped Pierre, darting a friendly, inquiring glance to see if he was welcome.

“Where's Albert?” his father asked.

“With Mama. They're playing the piano.”

“I see. He's playing the piano.”

“Are you angry, Papa?”

“No, Pierre. I'm glad you've come. What's new?”

The boy saw the photographs and picked them up. “Oh, that's me. And this one? Is it Albert?”

“Yes, that's Albert. That's how he looked when he was exactly your age.”

“That was before I was born. And now he's big and Robert calls him Herr Albert.”

“Would you like to be grown up?”

“Yes, I would. Grownups can have horses and travel. I'd like to do that. And nobody can call you ‘sonny' and pinch your cheeks. But I don't really want to grow up. Old people can be so disagreeable. Even Albert is entirely different now. And when old people get older and older, they die in the end. I'd rather stay the way I am, and sometimes I'd like to be able to fly, and fly around the trees way up high, and in between the clouds. Then I'd laugh at everybody.”

“At me too, Pierre?”

“Sometimes, Papa. Old people are so funny sometimes. Mama not so much. Sometimes Mama lies in the garden in a long chair, not doing anything, just looking at the grass; her arms hang down and she's perfectly still and a little sad. It's nice not having to do something all the time.”

“Don't you want to be anything? An architect or a gardener, or perhaps a painter?”

“No, I don't want to. There's a gardener here already, and I've got a house. I'd like to do entirely different things. I'd like to understand what the robins say to each other. And I'd like to see how the trees manage to drink water with their roots and get to be so big. I don't think anybody really knows that. The teacher knows a lot, but only boring things.”

He had sat down on Otto Burkhardt's lap and was playing with his belt buckle.

“There are many things we can't know,” said Burkhardt in a friendly tone. “There are many things we can only see, they're beautiful and we have to be satisfied with that. When you come to see me in India some day, you'll be in a big ship for days and days, lots and lots of little fish jump out of the water ahead of the ship, they have glassy wings and they can fly. And sometimes there are birds that have come a long long way from strange islands; they are very tired, they sit down on the deck and they're very much surprised to see so many strange people riding around on the ocean. They would like to understand us too, and ask us where we come from and what our names are, but they can't, so we just look into each other's eyes and nod our heads, and when the bird has had a good rest, he shakes himself and flies off across the ocean.”

“Doesn't anyone know what those birds are called?”

“Oh yes. But we only know the names that people have given them. We don't know what they call each other.”

“Uncle Burkhardt has such wonderful stories, Papa. I wish I had a friend too. Albert is too big. Most people don't really understand what I mean when I say something, but Uncle Burkhardt understands right away.”

A maid came to take the child away. Soon it was dinner time and the two men repaired to the manor house. Herr Veraguth was silent and out of sorts. In the dining room his son came up to him and they shook hands.

“Good evening, Papa.”

“Good evening, Albert. Did you have a good trip?”

“Yes, thank you. Good evening, Herr Burkhardt.”

The young man was very cool and correct. He escorted his mother to the table. Dinner was served. The conversation was almost entirely between Burkhardt and the lady of the house. They spoke of music.

“May I ask,” said Burkhardt, turning to Albert, “what kind of music you especially like? Though I must admit that I've lost touch, the modern composers are little more than names to me.”

The boy looked up politely and replied. “I only know the most modern composers from hearsay myself. I don't belong to any school, I like any kind of music if it's good. Especially Bach, Gluck, and Beethoven.”

“Oh, the classics. In our day the only one of those that we knew really well was Beethoven. We had scarcely heard of Gluck. You see, we were all fervent Wagnerians. Johann, do you remember when we heard
Tristan
for the first time? We were carried away!”

Veraguth smiled glumly.

“Old hat!” he cried somewhat harshly. “Wagner is finished. Isn't he, Albert?”

“Oh, not at all. His operas are performed everywhere. But I have no opinion on the subject.”

“You don't care for Wagner?”

“I don't know him well enough, Herr Burkhardt. I seldom go to the opera. I'm interested only in pure music, not in opera.”

“Well, what about the overture to
Meistersinger!
You must know that. You don't care for that either?”

Albert bit his lips and reflected a moment before answering. “I really have no opinion. It's—how shall I put it—romantic music, it just doesn't interest me.”

Veraguth scowled. “Will you have some wine?” he asked by way of a diversion.

“Yes, please.”

“And you, Albert? A glass of red wine?”

“Thank you, Papa, I'd rather not.”

“Have you become a teetotaler?”

“No, not at all. But wine doesn't agree with me; I'd rather not.”

“Very well. But you will drink with me, Otto. Prosit!”

He drained half his glass in one quick gulp.

Albert continued to act the part of a well-behaved young man who has very definite opinions but keeps them modestly to himself, leaving the talking to his elders, not out of eagerness to learn but because he wants to be left alone. The role did not become him, and soon he himself felt quite ill at ease. As usual, he ignored his father as much as possible, wishing to give him no occasion for argument.

Engaged in observing, Burkhardt was silent, so that when the conversation languished in frost, there was no one to revive it. They hurried through the meal, served one another with elaborate politeness, toyed awkwardly with the dessert spoons, and waited in pathetic desolation for the moment when they might leave the table. It was only then that Otto Burkhardt became fully aware of the loneliness and hopeless coldness that had descended on his friend's marriage and life. He glanced toward him, saw him staring in listless gloom at his food, which he scarcely touched, and meeting his eyes for an instant, surprised a look of supplication and of shame at the disclosure of his state.

It was a look of affliction; the loveless silence, the embarrassed coldness and humorless stiffness of this dinner table seemed to proclaim Veraguth's shame aloud. At that moment Otto felt that every additional day he spent at Rosshalde would merely prolong his humiliating role as spectator and the torment of his friend, who by fighting down his loathing was barely able to keep up appearances, but could no longer summon up the strength and spirit to conceal his misery from the onlooker. It was time for him to leave.

No sooner had Frau Veraguth arisen than her husband pushed back his chair. “I'm so tired I must ask you to excuse me. No, no, stay where you are.”

He went out, forgetting to close the door, and Otto heard his slow heavy steps receding in the hallway and on the creaking stairs.

Burkhardt closed the door and followed the lady of the house to the drawing room, where the evening breeze was leafing through the music on the still open piano.

“I was going to ask you to play something,” he asked in embarrassment. “But I believe your husband isn't feeling very well, he was working in the sun half the afternoon. If you don't mind, I think I shall keep him company for a while.”

Frau Veraguth nodded gravely and made no attempt to detain him. He took his leave and Albert saw him to the stairs.

Chapter Five

N
IGHT WAS FALLING
when Otto Burkhardt stepped out of the entrance hall, where the large chandelier had already been lighted, and took his leave of Albert. Under the chestnut trees he stopped, thirstily sucking in the delicately cooled, leaf-scented evening air and wiping great drops of perspiration from his forehead. If he could help his friend a little, this was the time to do it.

There was no light in the painter's quarters; he found Veraguth neither in the studio nor in any of the other rooms. He opened the door on the lake side and with short slow steps made the circuit of the house, looking for him. At length he saw him sitting in the wicker chair he himself had occupied that afternoon while Veraguth was painting him. The painter was huddled forward, his face in his hands, so still that he seemed to be asleep.

“Johann!” Burkhardt called softly, and laid his hand on the bowed head.

Submerged in weariness and suffering, Veraguth did not reply. Burkhardt stood beside him in silence, waiting and stroking his short coarse hair. Only the wind in the trees broke the evening stillness. Minutes passed. Then suddenly through the dusk a great surge of sound came from the manor house, a full, sustained chord and then another—the first measures of a piano sonata.

The painter raised his head, gently shook his friend's hand, and stood up. He looked at Burkhardt silently out of tired, dry eyes, tried to produce a smile, but gave up; his rigid features went slack.

“Let's go in,” he said with a gesture, as though to defend himself against the torrent of music.

He went ahead. At the studio door he stopped. “I imagine we won't have you with us much longer?”

How he senses everything! Burkhardt thought. In a controlled voice, he replied: “What's a day more or less? I think I'll be leaving the day after tomorrow.”

Veraguth groped for the light buttons. A thin metallic click and the studio was filled with glaring light.

“In that case, let's have a bottle of good wine together.”

He rang for Robert and gave him orders. Burkhardt's portrait, almost finished, had been placed in the middle of the studio. They stood looking at it while Robert moved the table and chairs, brought wine and ice, and set out cigars and ashtrays.

“That will do, Robert. You can have the evening off. Don't wake me tomorrow. Leave us now.”

They sat down and clinked glasses. The painter squirmed restlessly, stood up, and turned out half the lights. Then he dropped heavily into his chair.

“The picture isn't quite finished,” he began. “Take a cigar. It would have been pretty good, but it doesn't really matter. We'll be seeing each other again.”

He selected a cigar, cut it with deliberation, turned it between nervous fingers, and put it down again. “You haven't found things in very good shape this time, have you, Otto? I'm sorry.”

His voice broke, he huddled forward, reached for Burkhardt's hands, and clasped them firmly in his.

“Now you know it all,” he moaned wearily, and a tear or two fell on Otto's hand. But Veraguth was unwilling to let himself go. He straightened up and forced himself to speak calmly. “Forgive me,” he said with embarrassment. “Let's have some of the wine. You're not smoking?”

Burkhardt took a cigar.

“Poor fellow!”

They drank and smoked in appeased silence, they saw the light glitter in the crystal glasses and glow more warmly in the golden wine, saw the blue smoke float indecisively through the large room and twist itself into capricious threads. From time to time they exchanged a frank, relaxed glance that had little need of words. It was as though everything had already been said.

A moth whirred across the studio and struck the walls three or four times with a dull thud. Then it sat stupefied, a velvety gray triangle, on the ceiling.

“Will you come to India with me in the fall?” Burkhardt asked at length, hesitantly.

There was another long silence. The moth began to move about. Small and gray, it crept slowly forward, as though it had forgotten how to fly.

“Perhaps,” said Veraguth. “Perhaps. We must talk about it.”

“Look, Johann. I don't want to torture you. But you must tell me a certain amount. I never expected that things would be all right again between you and your wife, but…”

“They were never all right.”

“No. But, all the same, I'm aghast at finding them as bad as this. It can't go on. It's destroying you.”

Veraguth laughed harshly. “Nothing is destroying me, my friend. In September I shall be showing ten or twelve new paintings in Frankfort.”

“That's fine. But how long can this go on? It's absurd … Tell me, Johann, why haven't you divorced?”

“It's not so simple … I'll tell you all about it. You'd better hear the whole story in the proper order.”

He took a sip of wine and continued to lean forward as he spoke, while Otto moved back from the table.

“You know I had difficulties with my wife from the first. For a few years it was bearable, not good, not bad. At that time it might have been possible to save quite a good deal. But I was disappointed and I didn't hide it very well, I kept demanding the very thing that Adele was unable to give. She was never very lively; she was solemn and heavy, I might have noticed it sooner. When there was trouble, she was never able to look the other way or make light of it. Her only response to my demands and my moods, my passionate yearning and in the end my disappointment, was a long-suffering silence, a touching, quiet, heroic patience which often moved me but was no help either to her or to me. When I was irritable and dissatisfied, she suffered in silence, and a little later when I tried to patch things up and come to an understanding, when I begged her to forgive me, or when, in an access of good spirits, I tried to sweep her off her feet, it was no good; she kept silent and shut herself up tighter than ever in her heavy fidelity. When I was with her, she was timid, yielding, and silent, she received my outbursts of rage or of gaiety with the same equanimity, and when I was away from her, she sat by herself, playing the piano, thinking of her life as a young girl. The outcome was that I put myself more and more in the wrong, and in the end I had nothing more to give or communicate. I became more and more industrious and gradually learned to take refuge in my work.”