Short Stories From Austria- Ferdinand Von Saar

by Ferdinand Ludwig Adam

  “Oh, what, Dad!” Conimor laughed slowly. “He does it himself - if more in secret.”

  “That must be true,” interjected the architect, who was known as a good-natured mockingbird. “Conimor's father and son suffocate the women of Vienna with flowers.”

  “Only the beautiful ones, if you please,” said the baron, Elsa, gently rocking his head, swallowing his eyes. “By the way - our gardens can handle it. You know that we have again acquired some yoke terrain in order to enlarge the facilities in Nussdorf?”

  “And a garden director from England,” the painter interjected.

  “Yes - but also does not do anything special, nothing extraordinary. Roses - and again only roses. This will be boring in the end. Let's invent a whole new flower!”

  “That should be difficult, of course,” said the architect. “But bring yourself a change in the subject. Instead of roses, give other plants, for example passifloren.”

  Conimor opened his mouth a little and looked up into the air. “Passifloras?”

  “Certainly,” continued the other. “And there might be a whole new way of doing it; they can call you Passiflora Conimor.”

  “Passiflora Conimor, ” the baron repeated thoughtlessly, because he stared again at Elsa, who had meanwhile moved away from him.

  At that moment the doors of the adjoining dining-room were opened, and a servant in a black coat announced that it was served.

  Elsa gently pushed her arm under mine; Rober led Frau von Ramberg, who had begun a conversation with the director, and we all sat down at the table, which was covered with precious simplicity: heavy linen, heavy crystal glasses, solid silver. No flowers (for as Elsa whispered to me, Röber did not love her on the board); only an old, driven fruit bowl, in which, surrounded by large garden strawberries, a pineapple gilded, stood out in color from the sparkling and shimmering white. Also the menu spoke for the taste of the hosts: few courses, but selected, rare courts; Bordeaux and champagne.

  Elsa was sitting between me and the director. He had begun his report immediately after the soup, which he, interrupted on many occasions by the housewife's participating questions, concluded with an unctuous sermon on the blessing of modern humanity. The conversation was now general. Conimor gave the latest Turfanekdote the best. But they already knew her and therefore she did not find much favor. Of course, the artists spoke of all sorts of things that struck her: the painter of the Bismarck portrait of Lenbach, the architect of a dilapidated palace that Count X had bought in Tyrol and whose restoration was soon to be tackled, the musician of the performance the Parzival, which was imminent in Bayreuth. My neighbor on the left, Mrs. von Ramberg, has been. Röber watched the diners with keen eyes, exchanging some confidential words from time to time with Malinsky, who sat next to him.

  It took not too long for the table to be picked up, and one went to the salon to take the coffee, as it was unanimously declared that it was still too hot on the terrace.

  After emptying his cup and a glass of chartreuse, the director moved, one of the heavy cigars that Röber handed out to his guests, uncrossed between his thick fingers, embarrassed on his chair. At last he got up and stammered that one should forgive him for having to leave. He had made an appointment with his wife, who expected him in Schönbrunn.

  Elsa gave him a very friendly hand, which he humbly pressed to his bulging lips. How beautiful, how white was now - I had already admired her at table - this hand, on whose slender Goldfinger shone a magnificent sapphire.

  “I hope to be able to visit your children before I leave; if not, you will at any rate receive the conscious.”

  No sooner had the director, who had turned around again with a deep knit near the door, reaching for his long coat-tails in the style of the wives, disappeared, as Röber rose.

  “I must also leave,” he said, “and I can only regret that I can no longer enjoy the presence of such pleasant guests.”

  You could see Elsa fluttering pale. “How?” She asked in a strained voice, “you want to leave? You promised to spend the evening here - finally, “she added softly.

  “Yes, I promised,” he replied coldly. “But I can not keep my promise. An important matter is forcing me to drive to the city.”

  “Today? On a Sunday? “Asked Frau von Ramberg pointedly.

  “My affairs do not know a Sunday, madam.” Then he turned to Elsa. “Malinsky will confirm it to you; he comes with me.”

  “Yes,” he said, putting his furrowed forehead even more in horizontal folds. “There's no other way, honored ones.” He rose to leave.

  Elsa did not seem to have heard him.

  “Just go, go!” She said, throwing back her head, fiercely at Röber. “We can go out without you.”

  “Certainly,” he replied with a hard look; “You will drive with Conimor.”

  “Well, if you really want it” she replied, nervously shaking, and looked at him with wide-open eyes.

  “Yes, yes!” Exclaimed the baron cheerfully, “we are driving together! My Fiaker has a brand new stuff today - famos!”

  Elsa did not pay attention. “And when are you coming back?” She asked, breathing hard.

  “I do not know that. It's probably getting late, so I better stay in town right now.”

  After speaking in an icy tone, he bowed to the right and left; then, approaching me, he approached me and, with a hint of his former arrogance, shook my hand. “I hope to see you another time.”

  When he left with Malinsky, there was an awkward silence. One saw how Elsa was in the mood, and was embarrassed how to get over it. Even the jovial architect did not know what to do; He drummed on the glass door slices that led to the terrace, while Frau von Ramberg hid her obvious annoyance behind a newspaper that she picked up. But the painter approached the pictures hanging on the walls; among them also a sketchy paint sketch by Makart, which the housewife presented in a monstrous Rembrandthute. Most recently, he immersed himself in a very small Pettenkofen, which was located near a window. Only Conimor did not get out of balance. He poured himself a second glass of Chartreuse and exchanged his cigar, which he threw into the ashtray, with a delicate papyro.

  “How hot it is here!” Exclaimed Elsa suddenly, as she let her fan violently diverge.

  “Shall I open the door?” Asked the architect.

  “You're welcome!”

  He did it. The air that came in, however, was still glowing with the afternoon sun; but her spicy breath refreshed her and distributed itself soothingly in the smoky room.

  One breathed more freely, and Elsa, too, seemed to be beginning to take hold.

  “Dear H...,” said Frau von Ramberg condescendingly to the musician, who had meanwhile sat motionless, “at table you spoke of Wagner's latest creation. You certainly already know her - at least in part. Can you not play us out of it?”

  “The beginning, if you want,” the respondent replied dryly.

  “O yes! We ask for it! “Exclaimed Elsa from her thoughts. “Did not you?” She asked me questioningly; she had evidently only begun to reflect on my presence.

  The musician got up, stepped to the baby grand piano, which stood near the garden door, and opened it while everyone sat down.

  Now he started to play. In solemn, vibrating vibrations, at once reminding of the originality of its originator, the sounds welled up.

  The architect, as if listening to collected, closed his eyes; the painter, slightly distracted, turned the ends of his fine blond mustache; Conimor, his hands in his pockets, opened his mouth. Frau von Ramberg had sat down next to Elsa, listening with her head thrown back and her legs crossed. Elsa stared straight ahead; From time to time, a slight shiver seemed to go through her body.

  The game was over and there was a deep silence. The architect started up; one noticed that he had been sleeping. At last Frau von Ramberg said: “Great! Sublime!”

  “The most genuine work of the Master, a revelation,” affirmed H. harsh.

  “Hm - yes,” said Conimor, getting up and
stepping closer. “But what you played last time I liked much better. You know, the piece there - from Tristan and Isolde -”

  “Isolden's love death,” the musician replied shortly without looking at him.

  “Oh yes, Isolden's love death!” Exclaimed Elsa hastily. “He is wonderful! Play it!”

  “Will not it attack you too much, my dear?” The Ramberg asked in a subdued voice. “I'm afraid -”

  “Oh no, no! It does not do anything! Please, dearest...!”

  He laid his long, withered fingers on the keys again, while Conimor sat down on a small tabouret that happened to be very close behind the armchair Elsa's.

  And so there was an expectant silence, and soon afterward, out of glaucous shuddering waves of sound, in gradual, cruelly voluptuous, ever-increasing degrees, the most violent attack on the human nerves known to the art of music developed. The effect here was also downright physical: everyone felt in his own way, overwhelmed, tormented, delighted, dissolved. Even Frau von Ramberg could not maintain her dignity; she began to squirm like a snake on her seat. Elsa was lying back in the low armchair, oblivious to the fact that her hair touched Conimor's arm, which he had laid on his back. She was pale, and a hasty, steady twitch shook her body. Suddenly she uttered a piercing scream.

  Everything jumped up startled; only the musician remained calm, his fingers on the keys.

  “I knew it!” Exclaimed Mrs. von Ramberg, more outraged than worried, stroking Elsa's forehead with her scrawny hand.

  She looked like a dead woman, her eyes were broken. Nevertheless, she rose, struggling for breath, and took the lady's arm, and, on the other side, supported by Conimor, stumbled out of the drawing-room. You heard her break out in a convulsive crying outside.

  “Nice mess!” Said the architect after a pause. Then turning to H....: “There you have the effects of Wagnerian music.”

  “What can Wagner do to make people sick,” the other phlegmatically replied.

  “But what would happen to him if they were not?”

  “You 're healthy anyway,” said H...., getting up and giving him a light hit on the well-nourished body. Then he looked at the clock. “Six already. I have to go over to Lainz. Adieu. “He bowed carelessly and left.

  “Old music bear!” Grunted the architect, following the painter and me across the terrace into the garden, where we fairly monotonously walked around the flowery roundabout of the forecourt. Outside, hard against the bars, in the shadow of overhanging branches, stood the Fiaker Conimors; indeed a very “nice stuff” whose Handlebar, stretched out on the driver's seat, slept the sleep of the righteous man.

  Now the baron came back and joined us. We looked at him questioningly.

  “I do not know,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “She went to her room with Frau von Ramberg.”

  It was not long before she appeared on the terrace and, visibly agitated, strode forward with an important face.

  “The wife of the house is still not well,” she said.

  “But nothing dangerous?” Conimor asked carefully.

  “I hope not. In any case, she can no longer show herself today. The gentlemen do not want to be disturbed in their further plans for the evening. But you, Baron Sigi, go immediately to the city to see Dr. Breuer, that if possible he will come out today.”

  “Shall happen,” replied Conimor, approaching the grille and calling the coachman. He had to do it twice more, until he was startled, looking drowsily around him, and, finally understanding the situation, drove up to the gate of the villa.

  “And what do we do ?” The architect turned to the painter.

  He looked undecidedly to himself.

  “If the gentlemen want, I'll take you with them,” Conimor said with a welcoming gesture.

  “Yes, do we all have three seats?” Asked the voluminous architect with a glance at the delicate vehicle.

  “Oh well, we take the baron on the lap!” Explained the painter.

  The gentlemen got in.

  After the car had rolled away, Mrs. von Ramberg looked at me from the side and asked: “You have known Elsa for a long time?”

  “However - pretty long.”

  “And also, as she told me herself, her previous circumstances. You'll be able to explain a lot about what you perceived today. “She expected me to say something about it. But since this did not happen, she continued: “That is the consequence of sacrificing everything to a man. Frankly, after reading her novel, I thought Elsa was a much more important woman. She is only a limited, soft-blooded Viennese nature and did not even manage to let Röber marry her. - I think she wanted to open you up and ask for your advice, “she added after a pause, apparently annoyed at my continued silence, which she certainly seemed very simple-minded. “But there is no guessing and no help. He just does not love her anymore. Even otherwise the arms are very bad. She's had such attacks more often lately, and doctors do not understand her condition when they prescribe her exercise. I think the whole thing is the beginning of a most sad woman's disease.”

  With that categorical saying, she gave her chin a brief salute and dismissed me.

  But I stepped out into the warm, twilight evening. On Hietzinger Platz it was swarming with people and wagons of all kinds, all of whom were already making their way to the city, while at Dommayer there was amusing music and more and more crowds of visitors were leaving the Schönbrunner Park. In the middle of this motley crowd I too, stepping by my thoughts, walked away.

  * *

  *

  In the course of the next few days, when I inquired about my visit to Penzing, I inquired about the condition of Elsa, and at the villa I received the news that she had come to a well-tried sanatorium on the urgent advice of the doctors.

  IX.

  The time of my departure had come. Before leaving my native town for a long time, I wanted to dedicate a quiet hour to the picture gallery in the Belvedere. Could it be the last time that I saw these art treasures in the atmospheric place where I had been accustomed to look at and admire them since my youth?

  The execution of this project was delayed by several circumstances until just before the day I had set for the journey, and even then all sorts of disturbing things came in, so that it was already two o'clock, when I reached the well-known horseshoe hedges and the passing by stone sphinxes, approached the former summer palace of Prince Eugen. The weather was not very favorable to the company: a gloomy, overcast sky, which lightened up every now and then to darken again, threatening the rain. Thus, when I entered the wide halls, the transfiguring sunshine was missing, which, though occasionally disturbing at times, immediately brings the totality of the images nearer to the eye and heart. In addition, many visitors were unexpectedly there; the majority red Bädeker in the hands. What bothered me the most, was the myriad of copying painters. They just sat in rows one behind the other, each and every one curious onlooker in the back or to the side. I could not find the right mood and indulged in distracted sense of the magnificent masterpieces. But this empty, unsatisfied state suddenly became a grim discomfort when, in the Rubensaal, I collided with a gentleman whom I would rather have avoided for a mile, and especially today. It was a so-called “amateur", an otherwise quite unemployed, rather wealthy man, who was snooping in all the studios, was found at every auction and, as it goes without saying, each and every a few curious spectators in the back or to the side. I could not find the right mood and indulged in distracted sense of the magnificent masterpieces. But this empty, unsatisfied state suddenly became a grim discomfort when, in the Rubensaal, I collided with a gentleman whom I would rather have avoided for a mile, and especially today. It was a so-called “amateur", an otherwise quite unemployed, rather wealthy man, who was snooping in all the studios, was found at every auction and, as it goes without saying, each and every a few curious spectators in the back or to the side. I could not find the right mood and indulged in distracted sense of the magnificent masterpieces. But this empty, unsatisfied state suddenly became a grim d
iscomfort when, in the Rubensaal, I collided with a gentleman whom I would rather have avoided for a mile, and especially today. It was a so-called “amateur", an otherwise quite unemployed, rather wealthy man, who was snooping in all the studios, was found at every auction and, as it goes without saying, when I collided in the Rubensaal with a gentleman whom I would have preferred to avoid for a mile, and especially today. It was a so-called “amateur", an otherwise quite unemployed, rather wealthy man, who was snooping in all the studios, was found at every auction and, as it goes without saying, when I collided in the Rubensaal with a gentleman whom I would have preferred to avoid for a mile, and especially today. It was a so-called “amateur", an otherwise quite unemployed, rather wealthy man, who was snooping in all the studios, was found at every auction and, as it goes without saying, a small private gallery including a valuable antiquities collection possessed. His self-conscious nature, his self-conscious, often very crooked art judgments had become proverbial, and the painters claimed that he understood pictures as much or as little as a shoe-maker. That was an exaggeration; for although he made statements in every direction, which boasted of a conceited semblance, one could not deny that he, like all such men, possessed the gift of finding out the weak points in every achievement. And as in art, so in life. An intrusive companion, he knew how to get in all circles entrance; he was tolerated as a kind of necessary evil, and spit on his evil tongue more than they feared. since he often brought up the most outrageous things about very harmless personalities. Nevertheless, he knew very well where each shoe was pressed, and the most hidden and secretive circumstances were not seldom an open book in which he read with pleasure.

  At first I wanted to make an appearance not to recognize him immediately, but then silently pass him by with a binding gesture. But he was very pleased, took me under his arm, asked me how I was, how long I had been in Vienna - and so on. He had read my latest poetry, but unfortunately could not make friends with the subject; anyway, I should write more - much more. Then he came to speak of the new museums, which he on the whole declared to be completely wrong - and finally concluded that here he was Rafael's Madonna in the Green in a nutshell copy by a watercolorist who invented a whole new way in this regard. He also led me to the artist in question, a very elderly gentleman who, with a peculiarly constructed pair of glasses on his nose, sat quietly behind his board. The almost completed work was indeed very beautiful and enjoyable; the Maecen also praised her, but by no means kept back with benevolent exhibitions. But quite intolerably, he behaved to a younger painter who, as it turned out, copied Moretto's Santa Justina on behalf of the Munich Count Schack. Not enough that he stepped close behind the industrious worker and, now looking at the original, now looking at the copy, shook his head disapprovingly in front of everyone present: he also pointed out with an outstretched forefinger the errors which in his opinion were committed in the replica so that the artist at last half reluctantly rose and challenged the unnatural critic with angry eyes.