The Blue Flower

by Penelope Fitzgerald

  ‘It would be a pity if we were to miss the fireworks for the Elector’s birthday,’ said Sophie. This was her only objection.

  ‘My stepfather and my mother leave all the details to me,’ the Mandelsloh told young Dietmahler, one of whose more awkward duties was to deal with the patients’ relatives. ‘I shall have to send for my sister’s betrothed. He has gone back to Tennstedt. But you, of course, know him well.’

  ‘No, not well, but I have known him for what seems a long time,’ said Dietmahler. ‘I think his brother Erasmus is in Jena.’

  ‘No, he left yesterday, I advised it. Staying here was helping neither him nor us. But Hardenberg, of course - Now, tell me the day and the hour when the Professor intends to operate. Write them down. Naturally I shan’t forget them, but write them down here in my Daybook.’

  But Professor Stark did not manage things in that way. It was his practice to give as little notice as possible, an hour at most, of an operation. This was to spare the patient’s nerves. Prevented, too, was the arrival of relatives long before they were wanted. Dietmahler, of course, had known this, but was not at liberty to say so. Now he had to go round once again to the Schaufelgasse with an explanation.

  ‘The room reserved for the purpose must be kept ready at all times,’ he went on doggedly. ‘And there must be a good supply of old, clean sheets and old, clean undergarments of the finest linen.’

  ‘Ready at all times, when we don’t know when it will be wanted!’ said the Mandelsloh. ‘We have two rooms here, and only two. This is the sitting room, and my sister is asleep at the moment in the bedroom. You may leave the inspection to me.’

  Dietmahler hesitated. ‘And the other things?’

  ‘Do you think we travelled here with piles of old, clean, cast-off undergarments of the finest linen? Wouldn’t we do better to go back to Gruningen to fetch them?’

  ‘No, the patient must not travel.’

  ‘You mean that your Professor doesn’t want to.’

  ‘That is not what I said. How large is the bedroom?’

  ‘The same size as this. One can scarcely move. Tell him he must bring no-one with him, except yourself.’

  ‘Certainly, I can promise that. And your landlady. Would she be ready to be of use?’

  ‘Only too ready.’

  ‘Frau Leutnant, I don’t wish us to be antagonists. Could we not look at things another way? I can assure you of the Professor’s deepest sympathy and interest. Indeed, he has told me he intends to do the bandaging himself.’

  She shook his hand, but it was no more than a truce.

  Frau Winkler had discussed the expected visit of Professor Stark with all her neighbours within a certain radius, ‘in order that there should be no misunderstanding, when screams and cries are heard. They might imagine some dispute …’

  ‘A lodger, perhaps, strangling a landlady,’ agreed the Mandelsloh. Frau Winkler, who by now obeyed her slavishly, had been able (since the Great Wash for the year was over) to borrow a quantity of clean old sheets. Strictly speaking, there was no such thing as worn-out sheets in Saxony, but some were thirty or forty years older than others. Holding the material against the broad summer sunshine, she demonstrated how delicately threadbare they were.

  ‘Put them away, speak no more about them, bring me the weekly bill and some coffee,’ said the Mandelsloh.

  Sophie was out - out for a drive through the cornfields with the wife of the pastor whose sermons they attended on Sundays. They had started early, to avoid the sun, and had driven through roads shadowed with poplars.

  ‘Thank you, Frau Pastor, you have been so very kind, you are so kind, you will be so kind I am sure as to excuse me for being tired so quickly.’

  ‘I may perhaps be allowed to call for Fraulein Sophie next week?’ said the pastor’s wife, but the Mandelsloh intervened politely, saying that unfortunately they could not be sure of their arrangements.

  ‘I wish George was here,’ said Sophie.

  ‘George!’

  ‘I don’t know why, we were not speaking of him, but I wish he was here.’

  Hardenberg so far knew nothing about the operation. Possibly he did not even know that they were still in Jena. He himself, the Mandelsloh believed, was inspecting the Salines at Durrenberg. But the Professor’s instructions, which, in spite of her critical attitude, she took in a spirit of military obedience, were still, ‘I will give you an hour’s notice. That is best. Afterwards you may summon anyone you wish.’

  It was Dietmahler, again, who brought this last message, and Dietmahler who appeared, bringing with him a hospital servant, on the morning of the 11th of July. ‘The operation will take place at eleven o’clock. I will explain what has to be done.’ The double bed was dragged to the middle of the room and made up with the ancient sheets, the front room sofa was piled with bandages, lint and sponges which the hospital servant had brought with him. Sophie seemed not to be disturbed.

  Frau Winkler announced that a man was at the door. He was a messenger, with a note to say that the Professor found that he must postpone the operation until two in the afternoon.

  ‘Just to remind us that he is a great man,’ said the Mandelsloh.

  ‘Frau Leutnant, that is unjust,’ said Dietmahler.

  He sent the hospital servant to an eating house, and walked the streets of Jena until a quarter to two. When he returned, Sophie was wearing an old wrapper, frail and yellowish, almost the same tone as her skin. She appeared smaller, perhaps shrunken. The Mandelsloh thought, ‘What am I doing with what was entrusted to me?’

  Two carriages, closed in spite of the high summer’s day, turned into the Schaufelgasse. They drew up, the doors opened. ‘There are four of you,’ said the Mandelsloh, turning in bitter reproach on Dietmahler. ‘You gave me your word …’

  ‘Three of them are pupils,’ said Dietmahler miserably. ‘They are learning how these things are done.’

  ‘I, too, am learning how these things are done,’ said the Mandelsloh.

  From the bottom of the stairs someone could be heard dismissing, or at least restraining, Frau Winkler. The Professor and his students made their appearance, correctly dressed in black. The students’ frock-coats were absurdly too large. Doubtless they had been borrowed. The Professor bowed to the ladies. Sophie smiled faintly.

  ‘We will administer the cordial.’

  It was a mixture of wine and laudanum, to Dr Brown’s prescription, which Sophie drank down without protest. Then to the bedroom, where all must skirt awkwardly round the bed in its unaccustomed place. The students, to be out of the way, stood with their backs to the wall, darting sharp looks, like young crows, each taking out the pen and inkwell from behind his lapel.

  Sophie was helped onto the pile of borrowed mattresses. Then the Professor asked her, in tones of grave politeness - suitable, in fact, to a child on its dignity - whether she would like to cover her face with a piece of fine muslin. ‘In that way you will be able to see something of what I do, but not too clearly … There now, you cannot see me now, can you?’

  ‘I can see something glittering,’ she said. Perhaps it was a game, after all. The students wrote a line in their notebooks.

  Following the medical etiquette of Jena, the Professor motioned Dietmahler to his side, and asked him,

  ‘Esteemed colleague, am I to make the incision? Is that what you advise?’

  ‘Yes, Herr Professor, I advise it.’

  ‘You would make two incisions, or one only?’

  ‘Two, Herr Professor.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So.’

  Frau Winkler, waiting below on the bottom stair, had been able to hear nothing, but now her patience was rewarded.

  48

  To Schloben

  BETWEEN Artern and Jena, Langensalza and Jena, Durrenberg and Jena, Fritz traversed the dusty summer roads, crowded now with migrants and soldiers. In his notebook he wrote -

  I am like a gambler who has risked everything on one stake.

&nb
sp; The wound I must not see.

  Sophie underwent another operation to drain the abscess on the 8th of August, 1796. A third, towards the end of August, was necessary because the other two had been completely unsuccessful. Professor Stark spoke of things going as well as could be expected. The patient’s forces were not declining, the pus was only moderate. The autumn, however, was always a dangerous time, particularly for young people.

  Sophie to Fritz: ‘Hardly, dear Hardenberg, can I write you a line but do me the kindness not to distress yourself - This asks heartily your Sophie.’

  On each of the two fathers the third operation had profound effects. Rockenthien’s noisiness, his persistent looking on the bright side, his dirty jokes, all vanished, not gradually but overnight, as though a giant hand had closed over him, squeezing him clear of hope. The Freiherr, on the other hand, for the first time in his life, wavered - not in his religious faith, but on the question of what to do next. Until the end of August, he put off visiting Jena. Then he made up his mind to go, taking as many as possible of his family with him, and staying the night at Schloben-bei-Jena. Even this was partly an attempt to get rid of the Uncle Wilhelm, who was still a guest at Weissenfels. ‘I shall remain here, brother, until I can see that my advice is no longer needed.’

  ‘Very good,’ said the Freiherr, ‘then you will not be coming to Schloben.’ He gave orders for only six or seven bedrooms to be prepared.

  For themselves and a week’s provisions they would need both the carriages, and four of the long-suffering horses. Fritz was already in Jena, Anton was at military school in Schulpforta, but Karl was at home - half the officers in his regiment had been on leave since Saxony had withdrawn from the coalition against the French - and Sidonie, and Erasmus. The Bernhard had not much wanted to come, but neither did he want to be left at Weissenfels with the baby, the servants and his Uncle.

  The Freifrau, jolting along beside Erasmus, knew that it could not be right, in the middle of the distress she felt for Sophie, to recognise even a moment’s happiness, and yet her heart beat faster when they turned into the familiar valley and for the first time in three years it was time to look out for the four great chimney-stacks of Schloben, and the tops of the poplars. She had always loved the place. Perhaps because the house was thickly surrounded with trees, it gave her an unfamiliar feeling of safety. Anton had been born here, and a little girl, Benigna, who had not survived. Her husband, she knew, even though they came here nowadays so rarely, said on no account would he ever part from Schloben.

  ‘The chimneys!’ cried Sidonie, who was sitting up by the driver.

  They passed the oak tree with the ropes of their old swings still hanging from a high branch and a lower one. To the right was the humpbacked bridge which crossed both the stream and the footpath and led to the farm buildings and the chapel.

  The property was dark and damp, and in such bad repair that the top flight of the main staircase was no longer safe and the servants had to reach their bedrooms by way of ladders. The Gutsverwalter, too, had moved into the great house, simply for the sake of shelter, since his own place was in ruins. But there was none of the dignified wretchedness of Oberwiederstadt, rather a diffused sense, in that misty valley, of relaxation, of perpetual forgiveness, of coming home after having done one’s best.

  Karl, sentimental like all military men, had tears in his eyes as they passed the remains of the swings, the old sledge-run down from the top of the valley, the pond, dry now until the autumn. He thought too of the months he had spent here not long ago, after his plans to marry money had ended in confusion, and he had had to take refuge from a furious and insulted woman.

  ‘We used to put straw in our boots in winter,’ said Sidonie.

  ‘And take them off before we went indoors,’ said Karl. ‘How white your feet used to look, Sido, just like a fish, not like ours at all. Should you like to be a child again?’

  ‘I should prefer us all to be children,’ said Erasmus, ‘then we should have a kingdom of our own.’

  ‘That is not at all my experience,’ said the Bernhard.

  When he was very young the Bernhard had believed that the six-year gap between himself and Sidonie would gradually disappear and that just as he would come to be as tall as she was, or taller, so he would grow to be the same age as she was, or older. He had been disillusioned.

  The warm twilight smelled of linden trees and chicken dung. ‘Listen to the stream,’ said Sidonie. ‘We shall be able to hear it muttering away all night.’

  The Bernhard replied that he preferred to live by a river.

  While the luggage was being slowly unshipped, the house doors opened and the Gutsverwalter, Billerbeck, came out, followed by some flustered poultry, who evidently also considered the house as home. Everyone lived at the back. The front entrance was scarcely used. Through the pearly dusk which filled the main hall you could see the distant lighted kitchen at the end of a cavernous passageway.

  Between the Freiherr and his Gutsverwalter there was scarcely any formality. Almost the same height as each other, they embraced warmly.

  ‘We have suffered, we are suffering, Billerbeck. God is testing us.’

  ‘I know it, Excellency.’

  Four years ago, when he was last in Schloben, Bernhard had been quite a small boy, sharing a four-poster with one of his brothers - he was almost sure it had been Erasmus - in a large room on the first floor. This room like most of the others on the north side had been seriously damaged since then by rain driving in through the broken windows. Any day now, Billerbeck repeated again and again, the repairs will be put in hand. Meanwhile, the Bernhard was lodged in a slip of a room on the second floor in a bed not much larger than a cot.

  ‘My father and mother are already in bed and asleep,’ said the Bernhard to himself. ‘There is no wind, but from time to time the moon shines in and the room becomes bright. Somewhere, too, a clock is ticking.’ And so it was, even though he could not see it. High up on the outer south side of Schloben was an enormous and ancient gilded clock-face which set the time, even if not quite accurately, for the whole household; its works were in the thickness of the wall of the room where the Bernhard lay. ‘I am lying restlessly in my bed,’ he went on. ‘Everyone else has heard what I did, and yet none of them give it serious attention.’

  For some time now it had come to him that the opening chapter of Fritz’s story was not difficult to understand. It had never been shown to him, or read to him. But there was nothing of any interest to him at Weissenfels that he had not had a good look at.

  He had been struck - before he crammed the story back into Fritz’s book-bag - by one thing in particular: the stranger who had spoken at the dinner table about the Blue Flower had been understood by one person and one only. This person must have been singled out as distinct from all the rest of his family. It was a matter of recognising your own fate and greeting it as familiar when it came.

  49

  At the Rose

  THEY started for Jena next morning at five o’clock. The barely drinkable first coffee was served to them in the morning room. Outside, at the head of the valley, the sky was barred with long streaks of cloud which seemed to be waiting for the dawn to burn them into transparency. Schloben itself, except for the glitter of the stream, was in shadow. ‘You can hardly imagine the strange mood I’m in,’ said Karl. ‘I should like to sit at this window until the whole place grows bright.’ ‘We are enchanted here,’ said Sidonie. ‘Until we get started, we shan’t be able to realise the depth of our unhappiness. We have come to see poor Fritz, and yet we’re farther away from him than ever. I’m ashamed to feel such peace.’

  ‘Satt!’ cried Erasmus, banging down his coffee cup.

  With an early start, they could return to Schloben that evening, giving the horses eight hours’ rest. At Jena, the Freiherr had reserved a large private room for them at the Rose. In spite of the family’s difficulties he always went to the best inns, for he knew of no others.

 
‘There is Fritz!’ shouted Karl, who was driving the first carriage and turned well in front of the others into the yard of the Rose.

  ‘No, that is not my brother!’ cried Sidonie. First out, jumping down without waiting for the step to be fixed, she ran towards him. ‘Fritzchen, I hardly knew your face.’

  Such a large party, of course, could not arrive all at once at Frau Winkler’s. The Freiherr would call there first, the others later.

  ‘Should I not accompany you, Heinrich?’ asked the Freifrau, summoning up all her reserve of courage. No, he would walk there with Fritz. They would start at once. The rest went into the Rose and upstairs to the handsome front room overlooking the square.

  ‘There they go,’ said Karl, lifting one of the white linen blinds. ‘When did we last see the two of them walking together like that?’

  After Fritz and the father were out of sight a group of prisoners, fettered by the leg, came to clean the street. Whenever the guard lost interest in them they laid down their brushes and held out their hands for charity. Sidonie threw out her purse.

  ‘They will cut each others’ throats for it,’ said Karl.

  ‘No, I am sure they have a system of distribution,’ said Erasmus.

  ‘Very probably the youngest will get least,’ said the Bernhard.

  ‘Coffee, coffee, for the respected ladies and gentlemen!’ called the landlord, who had followed them up. A waiter in a striped apron asked if they desired wine.

  ‘Not yet,’ Erasmus told him.

  ‘I want you to lie down,’ said Sidonie to her mother. ‘These sofas seem expressly designed not to be lain upon, but all the same, I want you to try.’