Читать книгу The Song of Songs - Hermann Sudermann - Страница 18

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Frau Asmussen had two daughters, who had run away for the third time. All the neighbours knew it, and Lilly was given full particulars almost directly she set foot in the badly-lighted room, smelling of leather and dustiness, where torn volumes, ranged on shelves of pine, mounted to the ceiling.

Frau Asmussen was a dignified-looking and portly person, who received Lilly at the entrance of the library, and amidst kisses and tears assured her that she had loved her as her own daughter before she saw her, and now that they had met she was perfectly enchanted with her. "Who can ever say that strangers are cold and distant again?" thought Lilly, delighted with her reception.

"Did I say my own daughter? I should have said, ten times more than my own daughters. One's own daughters are vipers who turn and sting; one must pluck them from one's bosom----"

She had to pause, because the lethargic clerk who had come with Lilly in the cab was bringing in her box. When he had gone, Frau Asmussen continued:

"Do you suppose I loved my daughters, or that I did not love them? Haven't I said to them every day: 'Your father was a blackguard, a cur, and may God forgive him!' And what do you think they did? Went off one fine morning--went off on their own hook--leaving a note on the table: 'We're going to father. You bully us more than we can put up with, and we are sick of everlasting milk puddings.' You see what I am, my dear--I am kindness itself. Do I look as if I could hurt a fly, much less my own daughters? And they did it not once, but three times; this is the third time they have exposed me to the scoffs and jeers of the town--the third time they have disgraced me. Twice they came back in rags and misery, and I have taken them to my heart and forgiven them. But just let them try it on again--let them come back a third time! There's a broomstick behind the door ready for them. Directly they show their noses inside, out they shall go into the street. I'll beat them, and then sweep them out at the door like so much waste-paper." And with an air of unspeakable disgust Frau Asmussen swept an invisible something through the hall and gave it a kick over the step.

"Poor, poor woman!" thought Lilly. "How much she must have suffered!" and she vowed inwardly to do her best to make up to the mother for the loss of such unworthy daughters.

At this point a young man came in to change a book. He asked for a volume of Zola, and looked at Lilly as much as to say, "You see what a dog I am."

Frau Asmussen shook her head reproachfully, and fetched down the book required from an upper shelf. He clutched it eagerly, without heeding in the least the glance of warning with which the old lady handed it to him.

"You see, my dear," she said when he had gone, "that's how the young go to perdition, and I am condemned to help them on the way."

"Why?" asked Lilly.

"Do you know how a chemist's shop is arranged?"

Lilly said she had often been in one, but couldn't remember.

"One place is marked 'Poison,'" her employer went on, "and in it are kept the most deadly poisons known to humanity. On that account the door is kept locked, and no one may touch the contents save the chemist and his assistants. Now, just look round; half these books are poison, too. Nearly everything that's written in these days is pernicious trash, and lures the reader on to destruction. Yet I am bound to keep these books, bound to distribute them, though my heart is wrung as I hand them over the counter. My undutiful daughters are an example. They read, read--did nothing but read the whole night through; and when they were stuffed full of impudence and nonsense, they turned up their noses at the food I gave them and the cooking, and went out for walks, till at last they sneaked off to their father--that miserable worm! that swindler and scum! with his face all out in pimples! I warn you, my child, against that man. Should you ever meet him, gather up your skirts as I am doing now, to avoid contamination."

Lilly shuddered at the account of this vile monster in human shape, and was happy that she had found a protectress in his deserving wife.

An hour or so later they sat down to supper, which consisted of milk pudding and slices of bread and dripping. Lilly, unused to anything but the simplest fare, was easily persuaded that no milk puddings in the world were as delicious as Frau Asmussen's, and that the Kaiser himself could not sit down to a more daintily prepared meal than was spread on her table. She missed, it is true, the slice of ham which she had been given every night at the hospital; if this had been added, her supper would have seemed the acme of gastronomic delights.

More enjoyment awaited her when she went to bed. The library was part of a big room with three windows, which was divided into four compartments by two long bookcases running from the wall where the windows were, and by a counter opposite the door that communicated with the entrance, and thus there was only one narrow gangway to connect one compartment with another. At bed-time Frau Asmussen carried into the furthest compartment two forms, on which she laid a mattress and made up a bed. The space was so confined and filled up that Lilly had to jump over a bench at the foot of her improvised bed to get into it, and she thought this great fun. She fell asleep wedged in between two high upright bookcases, the window above her head, a chair beside her on which her things were piled, and "The Song of Songs" clasped in her arms.

The next morning she was initiated into her duties as librarian. She learnt the system by which the thousands of volumes were arranged on the shelves, and as she knew her alphabet she would have mastered it in five minutes, and been able to fetch any of the popular books from their places, if Frau Asmussen had followed her own system, instead of placing the books anyhow and so courting confusion and muddle. A worse task was to find the names of books and authors in the general catalogue, and entries of customers in the ledger, which were also supposed to be alphabetical; but the carelessness of Frau Asmussen and her daughters had reduced the whole to chaos. Lilly set to work with burning zeal to put things in order, and for several weeks the attainment of this desired goal was her sole object in life.

Frau Asmussen provided her with some surprises, even on the day after her arrival. Lilly saw nothing of her after the morning hours till supper-time; then Lilly found her nodding over a steaming teacup which exhaled an agreeable odour of rum and lemons.

"I suffer from nasal catarrh," Frau Asmussen explained, blinking at Lilly with her rather watery grey eyes, "And one of our most noted physicians has prescribed this medicine."

Lilly ate her milk pudding while Frau Asmussen continued sipping at the contents of her teacup, giving now and then a melancholy groan.

"Have I told you about my daughters?" she asked, after a pause.

"Oh yes," responded Lilly respectfully. All the morning there had been scarcely any other topic of conversation than these two scapegrace daughters and the wicked man they called father.

"But I don't think I can have given you any idea how charming they are," Frau Asmussen went on. "Though I say it that shouldn't, there isn't their match in the world for beauty and talent and lovable qualities. In such young girls, filial devotion, self-sacrificing industry, and touching modesty like theirs is not often found. They are so practical too, so thoroughly reliable in all that relates to business, besides being brimful of affection. You should take example from them, my dear, for you are very far from being anything like those models of perfect girlhood."

Lilly's spoon dropped from her fingers. She could hardly believe her ears, and the old lady maundered on:

"It was heartrending to part with them, and they cried themselves ill for days and nights beforehand. They were obliged to go to their father. Have I mentioned my husband to you? The best and noblest of men, from whom fate has parted me, but who cherishes for me an undying tenderness, and whom I shall love till death.... What a man! Pray, my child, on your knees that you may one day be the wife of such a man, and worthy of him. Alas! I was not--not worthy, no, not at all."

Two tears of unutterable remorse ran down her cheeks. She had a deal further to say about the superlative virtues of her two daughters, her husband's lofty character, and her own abject inferiority, and after several more doses of the medicine prescribed by the eminent physician she sobbed and moaned herself to sleep.

The next morning Frau Asmussen began the day's work by scolding Lilly for sweeping out the library with the broom standing behind the door.

"It's kept there for one purpose only," she said, "and that is to chastise those two hussies when they appear at my door; and if you ever dare to touch it again you will be the first to feel what it's like."

After this, Lilly began to regard her future through less rose-coloured glasses. A worse blow was to come. Frau Asmussen, who seemed deeply concerned about Lilly's spiritual welfare and the purity of her mind, strictly forbade her to read any of the books in her library.

"After what I have experienced with my daughters," she said, "I know the evil results of novel-reading, and I'll take care that you don't go the same way."

While the work of rearranging the catalogue and the ledgers lasted, the temptation to disobey orders did not occur frequently. But when autumn set in, and, in spite of the increase of subscribers, her time became less occupied and the hanging lamp was lighted early over the library table, when Frau Asmussen yielded sooner to the effects of the medicine prescribed by the eminent physician, and fell into a stupor, Lilly was driven by curiosity and boredom to do what she had been forbidden.

She was first put up to it by a girl who came to change the first volume of a novel for the second. The second volume was out, and the girl positively wept for disappointment. She declared that she couldn't wait to know how the story ended. It would kill her. Lilly good-naturedly advised her to go to one of the other circulating libraries, which were said to be larger and superior, and she went so far as to return the girl her three marks deposit. The novel devourer thanked Lilly and departed with renewed hopes.

Lilly scanned the outside of the dirty, torn volume she had left on the counter, then cautiously peeped inside. "Debit and Credit," by Gustav Freytag, was on the title-page. She had heard them raving about this book when she was in the first class at school, but there was no time for novel-reading in the life of a sweated machinist's daughter. She glanced timidly at the first page, then went to the glass door and listened for a few minutes to the peaceful snores that came from the back parlour. Soon afterwards she was launched with full-spread sails on the wide ocean of romance. At four in the morning, when she had finished the first volume, she was in desperation at the thought that she could not go on with the story, and wondered who had the missing volume, and how she was to get hold of it. Then she fell asleep.

The next day she pored over the ledger to try and trace the name and address of the subscriber who had not returned the second volume of "Debit and Credit." But, as the entries were made by the numbers and not by the titles of the books, she missed it over and over again in her excitement. So at last she was compelled to seek an outlet for her newly awakened craving in another book.

Henceforward her life became an orgy of novel-reading. She went about her daily task with heavy lids and aching limbs, burnt a huge amount of midnight oil, and only escaped the suspicions of Frau Asmussen by lies and tricks. Then one dreadful winter morning it all came out. The stove in the library burning low towards midnight, Lilly's feet became cold, and she took to reading in bed with the lamp, which she removed from its hanging socket, on the window-sill above her pillow, where there was plenty of room for it. Though this involved the bitter discomfort of having to get out of bed again in order to put back lamp and book in their places--Frau Asmussen was often now in the library earlier than Lilly--she would have rather gone out in the cold street in her nightgown than have sacrificed those dearly bought extra hours.

So it came about that one morning she awoke in a fright to behold Frau Asmussen, already dressed, dangling a black strap over her white nightgown, while the lamp, which Lilly had secretly refilled at one o'clock, still burned on the window-sill. She had never in her life before been whipped, and at first hardly grasped what was going to happen, when Frau Asmussen leapt as nimbly as her corpulence would permit on to the counterpane over the bedrail, and crouching there like some fat old plucked hen, began to belabour her over the ears with the strap.

A bad time now began for Lilly. What was the good of being sincerely repentant, and swearing to herself and to Frau Asmussen that she would not do it again? The new craze so intoxicated her, she was so absorbed with the new, beautiful imaginary world in which there were no tiresome servants sent by subscribers to change books, no wet umbrellas, no missing volumes, no back numbers of magazines that refused to be found, no insipid milk puddings, and no thrashings, that, had she had a martyr's joy in renunciation, she could not have returned to her former unbroken routine. She was now so completely governed by her imagination that her actual everyday existence, with its deadly monotony and lonely hours, seemed to her an unreal dream, and her life had no reality till she opened a book and turned over its sticky pages. She was too docile and unresisting to attempt to justify this passion even in her own eyes. It was wrong, she knew, to feed her mind on this heaven-sent food; but she could not help it.

Frau Asmussen hit on a fiendish method of humiliating Lilly still further. She regarded religion, like many orthodox Protestants, solely in the light of a penance, and, though hitherto she had not concerned herself in the least about Lilly's creed, she now took to beginning every meal with a long-winded prayer, in which, in face of the steaming soup-tureen, she commended Lilly amidst tears and sighs to the Lord, and begged Him to forgive her sinful depravity.

Woe to Lilly if there was any backsliding! That first chastisement did not by any means remain the only one. She was cuffed and beaten on the slightest provocation, and storms of abuse descended on her unprotected head. In fact, she scarcely dared breathe till the soothing medicine prescribed by the eminent physician began to do its work. Then Lilly seized the first book she came across, and suffered all the agonies of the heroines in the stories about lost wills and broken marriages, about poison, arson, and murder; with them she loved, and conquered, and died, finding in it all a never-ending source of ecstasy.