Since it was not his own profit, when he arranged the affairs of others, but the interest he took in the work itself which was uppermost, he differed essentially from other persons who were wont to carry out similar duties, and soon the dying knew of no better man to serve as legal guardian of their children, and the courts of no better executor in bankruptcy or inheritance cases, than Carsten Carstens of the Alley, who under the name of “Curator Carsten” was now universally known as a man of impregnable honour.
In view of the many trusteeships which claimed his time, his small business, to be sure, declined into a side line and was managed almost entirely by an unmarried sister who had remained with him in their parental home.
For the rest, Carsten was a man of few words and of quick decisions, and whenever he encountered a base motive he was inexorable, even at his own expense. Once a so-called “ox-grazer”, who for years had leased a piece of marshland from him at what was then considered a low rent, solemnly declared that he could not afford that price the next year. Later, when this produced no result, he agreed to renew the lease at the old price after all, and when this offer was likewise rejected, he even raised the rent himself. Carsten however told him that he was far from wishing his land to be the cause of reckless damage, and thereupon he leased the property at the original price to another citizen who had previously approached him about the matter.
And yet there had been a period in his life when men shook their heads over him. Not that he had been remiss in any of the affairs entrusted to him; it was because it seemed that he was becoming unreliable in the regulation of his own affairs. But Death, taking advantage as he often does of a certain occasion, had again brought everything back to normal after a few years.
It was during the blockade of the continent by Napoleon, in the “blockade time”, when the little port town filled up with Danish officers and French seamen as well as with many types of foreign speculators, that one of the latter was found hanging in the attic of his warehouse. That this was suicide could not be doubted, for the affairs of the deceased, after several losses in quick succession, had suffered ruin; the only real asset of his estate was said to be his daughter, pretty Juliana. Up to this time, however, many viewers but no buyers had turned up.
The very next morning Carsten received the young girl’s request to take charge of the regulation of her affairs, but he refused the request, saying only, “I want to have no dealings with those people.” However, when the old longshoreman who had brought the message returned in the afternoon and said, “Don’t be so hard, Carstens; there’s nobody left but the girl, and she’s crying that she’ll have to lay hands on herself,” he quickly got up, took his cane, and followed the messenger into the house of the dead.
In the middle of the room into which the man led him stood the open coffin with the corpse in it; next to it, on a low stool with her knees drawn up, sat a beautiful girl, half-dressed. She held a tortoise-shell comb in her hand and was drawing it through her thick golden-blonde hair, which hung down her back unbraided. Her eyes were red and her lips trembling with violent weeping; it was hard to say whether because of perplexity or grief at her father’s death.
When Carsten advanced towards her she rose and received him with reproaches: “You won’t help me?” she cried, “and I don’t understand anything about anything. What am I to do? My father had lots of money, but probably there’s none left. There he lies now; do you want me to lie there like that too?”
She sat down on her stool again, and Carsten looked at her almost in astonishment. “You see, Mademoiselle,” he said then, “I’m here to help you. Won’t you entrust your father’s books to me?”
“Books? I know of none, but I’ll look around.” She went into an adjoining room and soon returned with a bunch of keys. “Here,” she said, laying them on the table before Carsten, “you’re said to be a good man; do whatever you like; I won’t bother about anything now.”
Carsten saw with surprise how attractive she was as she spoke these frivolous words; for a sigh of relief passed through her whole body, and a smile like sudden sunshine crossed her pretty face.
And just as she had said, so it turned out: Carsten worked, and she never bothered about anything. He could never make out how she spent her time. But her full red lips laughed again, and her black mourning outfit turned into a seductive costume. Once, on hearing her sigh, he asked whether she had some sorrow; if so, she should tell him.
She looked at him with a faint smile. “Oh, Mr Carstens,” she said, sighing again, “it is so boring not to be allowed to dance in these black clothes.” Then like a frolicsome child she asked him whether he didn’t think she might soon change her dress just once, at least for one evening; her father had always permitted her to dance, and now he’d been buried for a long time.
When Carsten nevertheless said no, she went off pouting. She had long since noticed that this was her best way of punishing him for his moral austerity. For while he had succeeded in resolving the financial confusion of the dead man’s affairs to the point at least where debit and credit seemed to balance, he had himself got into a different confusion: the laughing eyes of pretty Juliana had infatuated the forty-year-old man. What might otherwise have caused him to hesitate appeared to him at this time, when the even course of civic life was completely suppressed, much less hazardous, and on the other hand the girl, unaccustomed to work as she was, preferred a secure refuge to the hardships which otherwise awaited her. So, despite sister Brigitta’s head-shaking, a marriage ceremony soon took place between these two dissimilar people. The sister, to be sure, who was now all the more indispensable in the household, got nothing from the marriage but a double load of work, but the sudden possession of so much youth and beauty, to which he believed neither his person nor his age entitled him, filled her brother with an exuberant feeling of gratitude, which made him only too indulgent to the wishes of his young wife. So it came about that the usually quiet man was soon to be seen at all the festivities whereby the foreign officers endeavoured to reduce the excess of their leisure hours. This was a sociability not only beyond his station and his means, but also one into which he was drawn solely on his wife’s account, while he himself played an unheeded and awkward role.
However, Juliana died in her first childbirth. “How happy I’ll be when I can dance again!” she had exclaimed repeatedly during her pregnancy, but she was never to dance again, and thus Carsten was rid of that danger. Of happiness also, to be sure; for even though she had hardly belonged to him, as she perhaps could not really belong to anyone, and no matter how one might chide her, yet it had been she who had let the light of her beauty shine into his workaday life; a strange butterfly which had flown across his garden and which his eyes continued to follow long after it had disappeared from his sight. Otherwise Carsten again became, in fact to a greater degree than before, the sensible and calmly deliberating man.
The boy whom the deceased had left him, and who soon proved to be the physical, and in time also the mental heir of his beautiful mother, was brought up with a strictness which Carsten had to wrest from his own heart. The good-natured yet easily-tempted darling was spared no merited punishment; only when the child’s beautiful eyes, as invariably happened in such cases, looked up at him with a kind of helpless terror, the father had to restrain himself forcibly from immediately taking the boy with passionate tenderness back into his arms.
More than twenty years had passed since Juliana’s death. Heinrich – so he had been baptized after his paternal grandfather – had gone to school and from school into mercantile apprenticeship, but nothing in his innate character had noticeably changed. His cleverness made him adapt himself easily to any situation, but he too, like his mother before him, looked charming when he threw back his head with the light-brown curls and laughingly called to his comrades, “It must be possible! We won’t bother about a thing!” And indeed this was the only matter as to which he conscient
iously kept his word: he did not bother about anything, or at least only about things which he would have done better not to bother about. His aunt Brigitta often wept over him, and Carsten too felt something lay itself beside him on the pillow of his alcove bed, something which, he knew not how, kept sleep away; when he sat up and reflected, he would see his boy before him, and it seemed to him as if he feared to see him grow up.
But Heinrich did not remain the only child of the house. A distant relative, bound to Carsten by mutual affection, died suddenly, leaving an eight-year-old daughter. Since the child had lost its mother at birth, Carsten fulfilled the dying man’s wish by not only becoming little Anna’s guardian, but also taking her into his home and caring for her completely. He proved his loyalty to his deceased relative however in a very special act: by furnishing credit and advancing loans for the daughter, not without risk to him in those days, he acquired a small country estate for her, which later under better economic conditions could be sold at a sizable profit.
Anna had taken after a different kind of mother than Heinrich, her senior by one year. In spite of the best intentions he never succeeded in considering his own, any more than his closest kinfolks’ weal or woe in any of his doings; while Anna on the other hand – how often Aunt Brigitta reached into her pocket and gave her a small coin as indemnity, accompanying her smacking kiss with the remark, “You foolish girl, you’ve completely forgotten to think of yourself again!” But to her brother, when she could get hold of him, she would say at such times, “Cousin Martin certainly meant well by us; he left us his blessing!”
Together with her kind-heartedness the girl also had a cheerfully reliable nature, and when Carsten at times anxiously enquired of Brigitta about Heinrich’s whereabouts and received the answer, “He’s with Anna; she’s sewing sails for his boats,” or, “She just came to get him – she wants him to help her mend the cherry-tree nets,” then he would nod and sit down to his work with an easy mind.
At the time when we continue this story, on a morning in late summer, Anna had just come of age and as a full-grown blonde young girl was standing with her grey-haired guardian before the mayor in the city hall, where the necessary legal steps were to be taken.
“Uncle,” she had said before entering the courtroom, “I’m afraid.”
“You are, child? That’s not like you.”
“I know, Uncle, but this elegant vestibule!”
The scrawny old man, who felt quite at home there, had smiled at the eager girlish face which was looking up at him with flushed cheeks, and then pushed open the door to the courtroom.
But the mayor was a jovial gentleman. “My dear child,” he said, surveying her with pleasure, “you know of course that you will again become a minor, but only when you let a gold ring be slipped on your finger. May your life then be entrusted to just as faithful a hand.”
He glanced at Carsten with a warm expression. But when the girl heard the judge praise her guardian thus, although a faint flush overspread her pretty face, all her embarrassment vanished. Calmly she had the record of her property brought before her, and, as was requested of her, read everything through carefully and intelligently. Then almost uneasily she said, “Eight thousand talers! No, Uncle, that won’t do!”
“What won’t do, child?” asked Carsten.
“This paper, Uncle – about all those talers” – and she stood up before him in all her youthful dignity – “What am I to do with them? You haven’t taught me that. No, Your Honour, pardon me, but I cannot come of age today.”
The two old men laughed and said it was no use: she was of age and would have to remain so. But Carsten added, “Don’t worry, Anna; I’ll be your curator, just ask the Mayor to appoint me as such.”
“Curator, Uncle? I know that’s what people call you.”
“Yes, child, but now it’s like this: you continue to care for my old sister’s and my own body and soul, and I’ll go on helping you bear the burden of these awful talers. I think that’s the right way to do it.”
“Amen,” said the old mayor; then the acknowledgment of the proper legal management of her fortune was signed by Anna in her neat hand.
While she and Carsten were taking their leave, the mayor, as if seeking relief from official business, glanced out of the window to the street.
“Oh my!” he cried, “here comes Mr Jaspers, the broker! What does that bearer of bad news have to dish out to me now?”
Carsten smiled and involuntarily took his foster daughter by the hand. As the two of them began to descend the wide stairs to the first floor, a short, oldish man in a worn brown suit came up them. Reaching the landing, he leant panting on his light cane and stared up at Carsten and Anna out of little grey eyes, lifting his high top hat off his fox-red wig several times.
Carsten was going to pass with a brief “Good morning,” but the other extended his cane in front of the two. “Oho, my friend!” It was a truly old-womanish voice that crowed out of the little wrinkled face. “You don’t get by me like that!”
“The Mayor is waiting for you,” said Carsten, and pushed the cane aside.
“The Mayor?” Mr Jaspers laughed quite gleefully. “Let him wait. This time I was looking for you, my friend; I knew that you would be around here somewhere.”
“For me, Jaspers?” repeated Carsten, and in his voice was an uncertainty which was not usual with him. As had long been the case when something unexpected was made known to him, the thought of his Heinrich had shot through his head. The latter was at present employed by a local Senator, but the stern old man, with whom Carsten himself had served an apprenticeship under his father, had thus far shown himself to be satisfied with the young lad and had only once said a sharp word about him. Only yesterday, on Sunday, Heinrich had returned from a business trip for his employer. No, no; Mr Jaspers could not have anything to tell about Heinrich.
Mr Jaspers had meanwhile been looking up with wide-open mouth to the much taller Carsten and observed with evident pleasure his changing facial expression. “Ha, my friend,” he cried now, and his voice had a ring of inviting cheerfulness. “You know, things could always be even worse, and even if you lose your head, there’s always a stump left.”
“What do you want of me, Jaspers?” Carsten asked gloomily. “Out with it here and now, then you’ll be rid of the load.”
But Mr Jaspers tugged at his coat-tail to bring his ear down within reach. “These are no matters to be mentioned here in the city hall.” Then he added, turning to the girl, “Surely Mademoiselle Anna can find her way home alone.” And once more tipping his top hat with his nervous hand that seemed always to be clutching at something, he energetically stamped down the stairs again.
When they had stepped out of the building, he pointed with his cane to a side street, at the corner of which was his home. Anna glanced enquiringly at her guardian, but he silently motioned her away and followed as if under a paralysing spell the “civic bearer of bad news”, who now eagerly pushed up the street with him.
In the little yard behind Carsten’s house there stood not only the cherry tree for which the children had once mended net coverings, but also on the long side of the bleaching lawn an enormous pear tree, which was the joy of the neighbourhood children and at the same time a kind of family shrine. It had been planted by the grandfather of the present owner and later grafted by the father with three kinds of pear which were most popular in the city, and these, now grown into fully developed boughs, bore, each in its special season, an abundance of succulent fruits. To be sure, nothing that could be reached with the well-pole found its way into the house; otherwise the children couldn’t have been allowed such ready access to Mistress Anna. As it was, however, whenever the neighbours to the west heard hearty girlish laughter, they knew that Anna was busy at the tree and that the young fry were romping and scuffling on the grass over the pears she knocked down.
Now too, as Anna o
n her return from the city hall was about to enter the house, she had picked up such a chubby neighbourhood urchin. In the hall, a cool room paved with stone slabs at the back of the vestibule, she took off hat and scarf, and holding the child astride on her outstretched arms she stepped through the door leading to the yard and into the shade of the great tree.
“You see, darling,” she said, “up there lies the cat – she’d like to have that nice yellow pear too! But wait a minute, I’ll get the pole.”
But as she turned towards the well which lay behind the yard door, she cried out and let the child drop, almost with a thud. On the rotten wooden coping, the repair of which had only been delayed by an accident, sat her youthful comrade, her playmate, his feet hanging over the opening, his head bent forwards as if about to plunge into it.
But in the next instant she was there too, had embraced him with both arms from behind and pulled him back, so that the rotten boards collapsed under him with a crash. She had fallen to her knees, while the pale, almost girlishly pretty head of the young man still rested on her breast.
He did not move; it seemed as if he had submitted apathetically to everything that was happening to him. Even when the girl finally jumped up, he remained, without looking at her, lying among the broken boards with propped up head. She however looked at him almost in anger, and tears leapt into her blue eyes.
“What ails you, Heinrich? Why did you frighten me so? Why aren’t you at the Senator’s office?”
Immensee and Other Stories Page 8
