Christine

Оглавление

Elizabeth von Arnim. Christine

Publishers' Note

Christine

Lutzowstrasse 49, Berlin, Thursday, May 28th, 1914

May 28th. Evening

Sunday, May 31st, 1914

Berlin, Tuesday, June 2nd, 1914

Berlin, Sunday, June 7th, 1914

Berlin, Sunday, June 14th, 1914

Berlin, Sunday, June 2lst, 1914

Berlin, Sunday, June 28th. Evening

Berlin, Tuesday, June 30th, 1914

Berlin, Sunday, July 5th, 1914

Berlin, Wednesday, July 8th, 1914

Oberforsterei, Schuppenfelde, July 11th, 1914

Schuppenfelde, Monday, July 13th

Schuppenfelde, Thursday, July 16, 1914

Schuppenfelde, Friday, July 17,1914

Koseritz, Saturday evening, July 18, 1914

Koseritz, Sunday evening, July 19, 1914

Koseritz, Monday, July 20

Koseritz, Thursday, July 23

Koseritz, Friday, July 25th, 1914

Koseritz, Saturday, July 25th, 1914

Koseritz, Sunday evening, July 26th

Berlin, Wednesday, July 29th

Berlin, Friday afternoon, July 31st

Before Breakfast. Berlin, Sat., Aug. 1st, 1914

Berlin, Sunday, August 2nd, 1914

Berlin, Monday, August 3rd, 1914

Berlin, Monday August 3rd, evening

Berlin, Tuesday, August 4th, 1914

At Frau Berg's, August 4th, 1914, very late

Halle, Wednesday night, August 5th, 1914

Wursburg, Thursday, August 6th, 1914, 4 p. m

Отрывок из книги

The Publishers have considered it best to alter some of the personal names in the following pages.

Here I am safe, and before I unpack or do a thing I'm writing you a little line of love. I sent a telegram at the station, so that you'll know at once that nobody has eaten me on the way, as you seemed rather to fear. It is wonderful to be here, quite on my own, as if I were a young man starting his career. I feel quite solemn, it's such a great new adventure, Kloster can't see me till Saturday, but the moment I've had a bath and tidied up I shall get out my fiddle and see if I've forgotten how to play it between London and Berlin. If only I can be sure you aren't going to be too lonely! Beloved mother, it will only be a year, or even less if I work fearfully hard and really get on, and once it is over a year is nothing. Oh, I know you'll write and tell me you don't mind a bit and rather like it, but you see your Chris hasn't lived with you all her life for nothing; she knows you very well now,—at least, as much of your dear sacred self that you will show her. Of course I know you're going to be brave and all that, but one can be very unhappy while one is being brave, and besides, one isn't brave unless one is suffering. The worst of it is that we're so poor, or you could have come with me and we'd have taken a house and set up housekeeping together for my year of study. Well, we won't be poor for ever, little mother. I'm going to be your son, and husband, and everything else that loves and is devoted, and I'm going to earn both our livings for us, and take care of you forever. You've taken care of me till now, and now it's my turn. You don't suppose I'm a great hulking person of twenty two, and five foot ten high, and with this lucky facility in fiddling, for nothing? It's a good thing it is summer now, or soon will be, and you can work away in your garden, for I know that is where you are happiest; and by the time it's winter you'll be used to my not being there, and besides there'll be the spring to look forward to, and in the spring I come home, finished. Then I'll start playing and making money, and we'll have the little house we've dreamed of in London, as well as our cottage, and we'll be happy ever after. And after all, it is really a beautiful arrangement that we only have each other in the world, because so we each get the other's concentrated love. Else it would be spread out thin over a dozen husbands and brothers and people. But for all that I do wish dear Dad were still alive and with you.

.....

You can't think how seriously they took it. They all talked at once, very loud. They were all extremely angry. I wished I had kept quiet, for I couldn't elaborate my idea in my limping German, and it was quite difficult to go on smiling and behaving as though they were all not being rude, for I don't think they mean to be rude, and I was afraid, if I showed a trace of thinking they were that they might notice they were, and then they would have felt so uncomfortable, and the situation would have become, as they say, peinlich.

It was no use even trying to explain what I had meant about Germany really being in love with England, because I hadn't got words enough; but that is exactly the impression I've received from my brief experiences of one corner of its life. In this small corner of it, anyhow, it behaves exactly like a woman who is so unlucky as to love somebody who doesn't care about her. She naturally, I imagine,—for I can only guess at these enslavements,—is very much humiliated and angry, and all the more because the loved and hated one—isn't it possible to love and hate at the same time, little mother? I can imagine it quite well—is so indifferent as to whether she loves or hates. And whichever she does, he is polite,—"Always gentleman," as the Germans say. Which is, naturally, maddening.

.....