Читать книгу The Blue Flower - Candia McWilliam, Penelope Fitzgerald - Страница 9

IT was Erasmus who must take after his father, for the Freiherr, politely rising to his feet in the semi-darkness of his study, was unexpectedly a small stout man wearing a flannel nightcap against the draughts. Where then did Fritz – since his mother was no more than a shred – get his awkward leanness from, and his height? But the Freiherr had this in common with his eldest son, that he started talking immediately, his thoughts seizing the opportunity to become words.

‘Gracious sir, I have come to your house,’ Dietmahler began nervously, but the Freiherr interrupted, ‘This is not my house. It is true I bought it from the widow of von Pilsach to accommodate my family when I was appointed Director of the Salt Mining Administration of Saxony, which necessitated my living in Weissenfels. But the Hardenberg property, our true home and lands, are in Oberwiederstadt, in the county of Mansfeld.’ Dietmahler said politely that he wished he had been fortunate enough to go to Oberwiederstadt. ‘You would have seen nothing but ruins,’ said the Freiherr, ‘and insufficiently fed cattle. But they are ancestral lands, and it is for this reason that it is important to know, and I am now taking the opportunity of asking you, whether it is true that my eldest son, Friedrich, has entangled himself with a young woman of the middle classes.’

‘I’ve heard nothing about his entangling himself with anyone,’ said Dietmahler indignantly, ‘but in any case, I doubt if he can be judged by ordinary standards, he is a poet and a philosopher.’

‘He will earn his living as an Assistant Inspector of Salt Mines,’ said the Freiherr, ‘but I see that it is not right to interrogate you. I welcome you as a guest, therefore as another son, and you will not mind my finding out a little more about you. What is your age, and what do you intend to do in life?’

‘I am two and twenty and I am training to become a surgeon.’

‘And are you dutiful to your father?’

‘My father is dead, Freiherr. He was a plasterer.’

‘I did not ask you that. Have you known what it was to have sad losses in your family life?’

‘Yes, sir, I have lost two little brothers from scarlet fever and a sister from consumption, in the course of one year.’

The Freiherr took off his nightcap, apparently out of respect. ‘A word of advice. If, as a young man, a student, you are tormented by a desire for women, it is best to get out into the fresh air as much as possible.’ He took a turn round the room, which was lined with book-cases, some with empty shelves. ‘Meanwhile, how much would you expect to spend in a week on spirits, hey? How much on books – not books of devotion, mind you? How much on a new black coat, without any explanation as to how the old one has ceased to be wearable? How much, hey?’

‘Freiherr, you are asking me these questions as a criticism of your son. Yet you have just said that you were not going to interrogate me.’

Hardenberg was not really an old man – he was between fifty and sixty – but he stared at Jacob Dietmahler with an old man’s drooping neck and lowered head. ‘You are right, quite right. I took the opportunity. Opportunity, after all, is only another word for temptation.’

He put his hand on his guest’s shoulder. Dietmahler, alarmed, did not know whether he was being pushed down or whether the Freiherr was leaning on him, perhaps both. Certainly he must be used to entrusting his weight to someone more competent, perhaps to his strong sons, perhaps even to his daughter. Dietmahler felt his clavicle giving way. I am cutting a mean figure, he thought, but at least he was on his knees, while Hardenberg, annoyed at his own weakness, steadied himself as he sank down by grasping first at the corner of the solid oak table, then at one of its legs. The door opened and the same servant returned, but this time in carpet slippers.

‘Does the Freiherr wish the stove to be made up?’

‘Kneel with us, Gottfried.’

Down creaked the old man by the master. They looked like an old married couple nodding over their household accounts together, even more so when the Freiherr exclaimed, ‘Where are the little ones?’

‘The servants’ children, Excellency?’

‘Certainly, and the Bernhard.’