The Blue Flower

by Penelope Fitzgerald

  ‘In that case it might as well be nonsense,’ objected Karoline.

  ‘Why not? Nonsense is only another language.’

  21

  Snow

  BUT Fritz, after all, was obliged to spend Christmas at Weissenfels. Sidonie wrote to him that not only would the Bernhard be much disappointed if he did not come, but that he must see his new brother. In the warmth of the great curtained patriarchal goose-featherbed at Weissenfels Nature’s provisions continued, so that last year Amelie had been conceived and born, and this year, Christoph. The Bernhard had received the news without enthusiasm. ‘There are now two more younger than myself, it will be hard for me to attract sufficient attention.’

  ‘But you love little Christoph,’ said Sidonie patiently. ‘You are only a child yourself, Bernhard, you are still in your days of grace.’

  ‘On the whole, I hate little Christoph. When does Fritz come? Will he be here for Christmas Eve?’

  At Tennstedt, Karoline and Rahel together saw to the cabbages buried in sand in the cellar, and the potatoes buried in earth in the yard. The surplus provisions were arranged in a deep cupboard just inside the kitchen for distribution to the poor, together with double rations of schnaps which harboured in every coarse, consoling mouthful the memory of the heat of summer.

  About Hardenberg they only remarked to each other that it was a pity, after all, that he could not spend Christmas with them.

  On his way to Weissenfels, Fritz was somewhat delayed. He had arranged to call in for a few hours at Schloss Gruningen. But that evening, all over the administrative district of Thuringia and Saxony, it began to snow. The north-east wind outlined every twig, every cart-shaft, every cabbage-stump, with a rim of crystalline white. Then that disappeared and there was nothing but a white blindness that seemed at the same time to be rising from the ground and falling from the heavy sky.

  While Karoline was helping to clear a path to the outside pump, a letter arrived from Hardenberg, from Gruningen. ‘So he has got no further!’ In it he told her, perhaps not very tactfully, that being marooned, he was sleeping and eating ‘in the most hospitable house in the world’. The snow was so deep, he alleged, that he couldn’t go out without danger, and to take pointless risks was unworthy of a responsible man. ‘I shall, I will, I must, I ought, I can stay here, who can do anything against Fate? I have decided that I am a Determinist. Fate might not be so kind another time.’

  ‘In that great house there must be someone who can clear the carriageway,’ Karoline told herself. ‘But he has always talked a great deal of nonsense. When he first came here, he said my hands were beautiful, also the tablecloth and the tea-tray.’

  He had enclosed some verses, which ended,

  Allow me a glimpse of the future, when our hearts

  Are no longer full of anxiety and resignation, and Love

  and Fortune

  Reward us at last for our sacrifices, and far behind us

  Roars youth’s wild ocean.

  Some day, in the noon-tide of life, we shall both sit at

  table,

  Each of us will be married, with the one we love

  beside us,

  Then we shall look back to how it was in the

  morning.

  Who would have dreamed of this? Never does the

  heart sigh in vain!

  Karoline knew that ‘Never does the heart sigh in vain!’ was the sort of thing that they printed on sweet papers. But the last verse caused her anguish. There he was, her non-existent admirer, the unloved Verliebte, conjured out of her own unhappiness, sitting at table with her, indeed, all four of them were there. But the poem, at least, was for her and her alone. The title was ‘Reply to Karoline’. She put it in the drawer where she kept such things, and turned the key. Then she clasped her arms round her body as if to ward off the cold.

  22

  Now Let Me Get To Know Her

  DURING his two days with the Rockenthiens, Fritz marvelled at the difference between daily life in the Kloster Gasse at Weissenfels and at Schloss Gruningen. At Gruningen there were no interrogations, no prayer-meetings, no anxiety, no catechisms, no fear. Anger, if any, evaporated within a few moments, and there was a good deal of what, at Weissenfels, would be called time-wasting. At breakfast time, no-one at Gruningen slammed down their coffee-cups, and cried out ‘Satt!’ The constant coming and going round the tranquil Frau Rockenthien (who, like the Freifrau von Hardenberg, had a new baby to nurse) seemed an image of perpetual return, so that time scarcely declared itself an enemy.

  At Gruningen, mention of the goings-on of the French caused no distress. When George appeared in a tricolour waistcoat there was not even a murmur of surprise. With pain Fritz compared the Demon George, easy-going and noisy, with the strangeness of the Bernhard. Then again, Uncle Wilhelm’s visits at Weissenfels were an occasion of dread, one prayed for him to leave, while at Gruningen relations and friends poured in indiscriminately, all of them greeted, even if they had been there only yesterday, as if they had not been seen for many months.

  ‘When summer comes we have the Nachtisch outside, under the lilacs,’ Frau Rockenthien told him. ‘Then you must read aloud to us.’ At Weissenfels, after meals, everyone dispersed as soon as grace was said. Fritz was not sure whether there were any lilacs in the garden or not. He was inclined to think not.

  Snowed-up for probably not more than a day or two, Fritz knew he must use his time wisely. ‘You have your wish now, Fraulein Sophie,’ he said, watching her stand by the same window in the Saal. Her child’s pink mouth was just open, as without knowing it she put out her tongue a very little, longing to taste the crystal flakes on the far side of the glass. Herr Rockenthien, thundering past with George and Hans at his heels, paused to ask Fritz about his studies. He asked everyone he met, with genuine interest, about their occupations, a habit he had picked up during his service with the Prince of Schwarzburg-Sondeshausen as a commissioning officer. Fritz talked eagerly about chemistry, geology and philosophy. He mentioned Fichte. ‘Fichte explained to us that there is only one absolute self, one identity for all humanity.’

  ‘Well, this Fichte is lucky,’ cried Rockenthien. ‘In this household I have thirty-two identities to consider.’

  ‘Papa hasn’t a care in the world,’ said George. ‘Today, when he was desperately needed by the head gardener to give instructions about the blocked ditches, he was out shooting in the snow.’

  ‘My career has been in the army, not in the vegetable patch,’ said Rockenthien good-humouredly. ‘As to shooting, it is not a passion with me. I was out with my gun early this morning in order to feed my family.’ With the air of a conjuror, he drew out of his pocket what he had evidently forgotten until now, a string of small dead birds connected head to tail with a length of thread. It seemed as though the procession - one or two of them stuck, and he had to tug and heave - would go on forever.

  ‘Linnets! They won’t go far!’ shouted George. ‘Three at a time I could crunch them.’

  ‘All feel that I have nothing to do,’ said Herr Rockenthien, ‘although in truth this is one of our busiest times, and it will be one of my responsibilities to see that order is kept during the Advent Fair.’

  ‘Where is this fair?’ asked Fritz - it’s not in order to fichtisieren here, he told himself - better to say no more about it.

  ‘Oh, at Greussen, two miles away,’ cried Sophie. ‘It is the only thing that ever happens here, except the summer and the autumn fairs, and they also are at Greussen.’

  ‘But you haven’t yet been to the Leipzig fair?’ Fritz asked her.

  No, Sophie had never even so much as been to Leipzig. At the very thought of it her eyes shone, her lips parted.

  What or whom does she look like? he thought, with this rich hair, and her long, pretty nose, not at all like her mother’s. Nor were her arched eyebrows. In the third volume of Lavater’s Physiognomische Fragmente there was an illustration, after a copperplate by Johann Heinrich Lips, of Raphael’s s
elf-portrait at the age of twenty-five. This picture had exactly the air of Sophie. From the copperplate, of course, you couldn’t tell the colour, or the tonality of the flesh, only that the expression was unworldly and humane and that the large eyes were dark as night.

  In his first quarter of an hour, at the window of the great Saal, Fritz had already opened his heart to Sophie. Now let me get to know her, he thought. How difficult will that be?

  ‘If we are going to spend our lives together,’ he said, ‘I should like to learn everything about you.’

  ‘Yes, but you must not call me du.’

  ‘Very well, I will not, until you give me permission.’

  He thought, let’s make the attempt, even though it’s possible that she would rather play with the little brother and sister. They were on the long, broad terrace between the house and the garden, which had been swept almost clear of snow. Mimi and Rudi, young and obstreperous, ran beside them with their iron-bound hoops. ‘Lass das, Freiherr, you don’t know how to hit it,’ Rudi had cried sharply, but Fritz did know, having been brought up in a house of many hoops, and he whacked first one and then the other hard and true so that they spun away and had to be pursued almost out of sight.

  ‘Now, tell me what you think about poetry.’

  ‘I don’t think about it at all,’ said Sophie.

  ‘But you would not want to hurt a poet’s feelings.’

  ‘I would not want to hurt anyone’s feelings.’

  ‘Let us speak of something else. What do you like best to eat?’

  Cabbage soup, Sophie told him, and a nice smoked eel.

  ‘What is your opinion of wine and tobacco?’

  ‘Those, too, I like.’

  ‘Do you smoke, then?’

  ‘Yes, my stepfather gave me a pipe.’

  ‘And music?’

  ‘Ah, that I love. A few months ago there were some students in the town and they played a serenade.’

  ‘What did they play?’

  ‘They played “Wenn die Liebe in deinen blauen Augen”. That of course could not be for me, my eyes are dark, but it was very beautiful.’

  Singing, yes. Dancing, yes, most certainly, but she was not permitted to attend the public balls until she was fourteen.

  ‘Do you remember the question I asked you when I first met you, by the window?’

  ‘No, I don’t remember it.’

  ‘I asked you whether you had thought at all about marriage.’

  ‘Oh, I am afraid of that.’

  ‘You did not say that when we spoke of it by the window.’

  She repeated, ‘I am afraid of that.’ After Rudi, with Mimi whimpering after him, had returned and been dismissed again (‘Poor souls! They are getting out of breath!’ said Sophie.) he asked her about her faith. She answered readily. They kept the days of penitence, of course, and on Sundays they went to the church, but she did not believe everything that was said there. She did not believe in life after death.

  ‘But Sophie, Jesus Christ returned to earth!’

  ‘That was all very well for him,’ said Sophie. ‘I respect the Christus, but if I was to walk and talk again after I was dead, that would be ridiculous.’

  ‘What does your stepfather say when you tell him you don’t believe?’

  ‘He laughs.’

  ‘But when you were younger, what did your teacher tell you? Surely you must have had a teacher?’

  ‘Yes, until I was eleven.’

  ‘Who was he?’

  ‘The Magister Kegel from the seminary here in Gruningen.’

  ‘Did you pay him attention?’

  ‘Once he was angry with me.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He could not believe that I could understand so little.’

  ‘What could you not understand?’

  ‘Figures, and numbers.’

  ‘Numbers are not more difficult to understand than music.’

  ‘Ach, well, Kegel beat me.’

  ‘Surely not, Sophie.’

  ‘Yes, he struck me.’

  ‘But what did your stepfather say to that?’

  ‘Ach, well, it was difficult for him. A teacher must be obeyed.’

  ‘What did the Magister Kegel do?’

  ‘He collected the money that was owing to him, and left the house.’

  ‘But what did he say?’

  ’”On reviendra, mam’zell.”’

  ‘But he did not come back?’

  ‘No, now I am too old to learn anything.’

  She looked at him a little anxiously and added, ‘Perhaps if I saw a miracle, as they did in the old days, I should believe more.’

  ‘Miracles don’t make people believe!’ Fritz cried. ‘It’s the belief that is the miracle.’

  He saw that, having done her best, she looked disappointed, and went on: ‘Sophie, listen to me. I am going to tell you what I felt, when I first saw you standing by the window. When we catch sight of certain human figures and faces … especially certain eyes, expressions, movements - when we hear certain words, when we read certain passages, thoughts take on the meaning of laws … a view of life true to itself, without any self-estrangement. And the self is set free, for the moment, from the constant pressure of change … Do you understand me?’

  Sophie nodded. ‘Yes, I do. I have heard of that before. Some people are born again and again into this world.’

  Fritz persevered. ‘I did not quite mean that. But Schlegel, too, is interested in transmigration. Should you like to be born again?’

  Sophie considered a little. ‘Yes, if I could have fair hair.’

  Herr von Rockenthien pressed young Hardenberg to stay longer. If he noticed that this son of an ancient house was courting his stepdaughter, he was not at all against it, although it might be said that his temperament led him to encourage almost everything. Frau von Rockenthien, serene and apparently in radiant health, but supported by cushions numberless, also nodded kindly. She mentioned, however, that Sophie’s elder sister, Friederike von Mandelsloh, would soon be coming back home to Gruningen on a long visit, and would be a companion for Sophgen.

  ‘Let them all come back to us, I say,’ Rockenthien declared. ‘Partings are painful! Isn’t that what they sing at Jena at the end of the year, when the students leave?’

  ‘They do,’ said Fritz, and Rockenthien, in a voice as deep as the third level of a copper-mine, but with inappropriate cheerfulness, broke into the plaintive song: ‘Scheiden und meiden tut weh …’

  ‘Now that I am leaving your hospitable roof, I should like your permission to write a letter to your stepdaughter Sophie,’ said Fritz. Rockenthien broke off his song, and gathering the tattered remnants of his responsibilities around him, said that there would be no objection, as long as her mother opened it and read through it first.

  ‘Of course. And I should like her, if you see fit, to be permitted to write an answer.’

  ‘Permission! If that is all that is needed, I permit!’

  23

  I Can’t Comprehend Her

  FRITZ wrote in his journal, ‘I can’t comprehend her, I can’t get the measure of her. I love something that I do not understand. She has got me, but she is not at all sure she wants me. Her stepfather is an influence upon her, and I see now that jollity is as relentless as piety. Indeed she has told me that she would always like to see me cheerful. He also, of course, gave her a tobacco pipe.

  ‘August Schlegel wrote that “form is mechanical when, through external force, it is imparted merely as an accidental addition without reference to its quality: as, for example, when we give a particular shape to a soft mass so that it may retain the same when it hardens. Organic form is innate: it unfolds itself from within, and acquires its determination at the same time as the perfect development of the germ.”

  ‘That, surely, is what is happening with Sophie. I do not want to change her, but I admit that I should like to feel that I could do so if necessary. But, in twelve years, during which she did not know that
I existed on this earth, she has “acquired her determination”. I should be happier if I could see one opening, the shadow of an opening, where I could make myself felt a little.

  ‘To decide that she does not believe in the life to come. What insolence, what enormity.

  ‘She said, “Truly, I like you.”

  ‘She wants to please everyone, but will not adapt herself. Her face, her body, her enjoyment of life, her health, that which she likes to speak of. Her little dogs. Has her temperament woken up yet? Her fear of ghosts, her wine-drinking. Her hand on her cheek.’

  At the house in the Kloster Gasse his mother was still lying in after the birth of Christoph, who was thriving only moderately, in spite of a capacious wet-nurse brought in from one of the villages. Uncomplaining as always on her own account, she was distressed now only for her infant, and for the Bernhard. Someone might be disillusioning him - (she feared this every Christmas) - and, without intending to do so, destroy his belief in Knecht Rupert.

  ‘I don’t remember the Bernhard ever believing in Knecht Rupert,’ said Fritz to Sidonie. ‘He always knew it was old Dumpfin, from the bakery, in a false beard.’

  He had confided his secret only to Karoline Just, to Erasmus, and to Sidonie, who agreed that it would not do at the moment, or indeed at any moment, to agitate their mother. Fritz dragged Sidonie to his own room, where he took down the third volume from his own set of Lavater’s Physiognomie. ‘That is my Sophgen to the life. It is Raphael’s self-portrait, of course … But how can a girl of twelve look like a genius of twenty-five?’

  ‘That is easy,’ said Sidonie. ‘She cannot.’

  ‘But you have never so much as seen her.’

  ‘That’s true. But I shall see her, I suppose, and when I do I shall tell you exactly the same thing.’

  He shut the book. ‘My pockets are full of things I’ve bought.’ He took out handfuls of gingerbread, needle-cases, eau de Cologne, a bird-charmer and a catapult. ‘Where can I put them, Sidonie? You don’t know how uncomfortable they are. Torment!’