In a German Pension. Katherine Mansfield
a great deal of München beer I sweat so,” said Herr Hoffmann. “When I am here, in the fields or before my baths, I sweat, but I enjoy it; but in the town it is not at all the same thing.”
Prompted by the thought, he wiped his neck and face with his dinner napkin and carefully cleaned his ears.
A glass dish of stewed apricots was placed upon the table.
“Ah, fruit!” said Fräulein Stiegelauer, “that is so necessary to health. The doctor told me this morning that the more fruit I could eat the better.”
She very obviously followed the advice.
Said the Traveller: “I suppose you are frightened of an invasion, too, eh? Oh, that’s good. I’ve been reading all about your English play in a newspaper. Did you see it?”
“Yes.” I sat upright. “I assure you we are not afraid.”
“Well, then, you ought to be,” said the Herr Rat. “You have got no army at all—a few little boys with their veins full of nicotine poisoning.”
“Don’t be afraid,” Herr Hoffmann said. “We don’t want England. If we did we would have had her long ago. We really do not want you.”
He waved his spoon airily, looking across at me as though I were a little child whom he would keep or dismiss as he pleased.
“We certainly do not want Germany,” I said.
“This morning I took a half bath. Then this afternoon I must take a knee bath and an arm bath,” volunteered the Herr Rat; “then I do my exercises for an hour, and my work is over. A glass of wine and a couple of rolls with some sardines—”
They were handed cherry cake with whipped cream.
“What is your husband’s favourite meat?” asked the Widow.
“I really do not know,” I answered.
“You really do not know? How long have you been married?”
“Three years.”
“But you cannot be in earnest! You would not have kept house as his wife for a week without knowing that fact.”
“I really never asked him; he is not at all particular about his food.”
A pause. They all looked at me, shaking their heads, their mouths full of cherry stones.
“No wonder there is a repetition in England of that dreadful state of things in Paris,” said the Widow, folding her dinner napkin. “How can a woman expect to keep her husband if she does not know his favourite food after three years?”
“Mahlzeit!”
“Mahlzeit!”
I closed the door after me.
2. THE BARON
“Who is he?” I said. “And why does he sit always alone, with his back to us, too?”
“Ah!” whispered the Frau Oberregierungsrat, “he is a Baron.”
She looked at me very solemnly, and yet with the slightest possible contempt—a “fancy-not-recognising-that-at-the-first-glance” expression.
“But, poor soul, he cannot help it,” I said. “Surely that unfortunate fact ought not to debar him from the pleasures of intellectual intercourse.”
If it had not been for her fork I think she would have crossed herself.
“Surely you cannot understand. He is one of the First Barons.”
More than a little unnerved, she turned and spoke to the Frau Doktor on her left.
“My omelette is empty—empty,” she protested, “and this is the third I have tried!”
I looked at the First of the Barons. He was eating salad—taking a whole lettuce leaf on his fork and absorbing it slowly, rabbit-wise—a fascinating process to watch.
Small and slight, with scanty black hair and beard and yellow-toned complexion, he invariably wore black serge clothes, a rough linen shirt, black sandals, and the largest black-rimmed spectacles that I had ever seen.
The Herr Oberlehrer, who sat opposite me, smiled benignantly.
“It must be very interesting for you, gnädige Frau, to be able to watch … of course this is a very fine house. There was a lady from the Spanish Court here in the summer; she had a liver. We often spoke together.”
I looked gratified and humble.
“Now, in England, in your ‘boarding ’ouse’, one does not find the First Class, as in Germany.”
“No, indeed,” I replied, still hypnotised by the Baron, who looked like a little yellow silkworm.
“The Baron comes every year,” went on the Herr Oberlehrer, “for his nerves. He has never spoken to any of the guests—yet.” A smile crossed his face. I seemed to see his visions of some splendid upheaval of that silence—a dazzling exchange of courtesies in a dim future, a splendid sacrifice of a newspaper to this Exalted One, a “danke schön” to be handed down to future generations.
At that moment the postman, looking like a German army officer, came in with the mail. He threw my letters into my milk pudding, and then turned to a waitress and whispered. She retired hastily. The manager of the pension came in with a little tray. A picture post card was deposited on it, and reverently bowing his head, the manager of the pension carried it to the Baron.
Myself, I felt disappointed that there was not a salute of twenty-five guns.
At the end of the meal we were served with coffee. I noticed the Baron took three lumps of sugar, putting two in his cup and wrapping up the third in a corner of his pocket-handkerchief. He was always the first to enter the dining-room and the last to leave; and in a vacant chair beside him he placed a little black leather bag.
In the afternoon, leaning from my window, I saw him pass down the street, walking tremulously and carrying the bag. Each time he passed a lamp-post he shrank a little, as though expecting it to strike him, or maybe the sense of plebeian contamination. …
I wondered where he was going, and why he carried the bag. Never had I seen him at the Casino or the Bath Establishment. He looked forlorn, his feet slipped in his sandals. I found myself pitying the Baron.
That evening a party of us were gathered in the salon discussing the day’s “kur” with feverish animation. The Frau Oberregierungsrat sat by me knitting a shawl for her youngest of nine daughters, who was in that very interesting, frail condition. … “But it is bound to be quite satisfactory,” she said to me. “The dear married a banker—the desire of her life.”
There must have been eight or ten of us gathered together, we who were married exchanging confidences as to the underclothing and peculiar characteristics of our husbands, the unmarried discussing the over-clothing and peculiar fascinations of Possible Ones.
“I knit them myself,” I heard the Frau Lehrer cry, “of thick grey wool. He wears one a month, with two soft collars.”
“And then,” whispered Fräulein Lisa, “he said to me, ‘Indeed you please me. I shall, perhaps, write to your mother.’ ”
Small wonder that we were a little violently excited, a little expostulatory.
Suddenly the door opened and admitted the Baron.
Followed a complete and deathlike silence.
He came in slowly, hesitated, took up a toothpick from a dish on the top of