The Woman Who Had Imagination (11 page)

He came into the kitchen and Karl went forward to meet him. The son and the father shook hands. The man smiled in the shy soft peasant-fashion, but there was no demonstration. They conveyed a feeling of gladness by a dumb unblinking look at each other.

The two boys came forward. They had the same brown wondrous-eyed peasant faces as the women, but they looked wilder and darker. Their boots and leggings were plastered with yellow mud and they brought with them a smell of earth and cows and ripened corn.

They stared at Karl and he stared at them. They were his brothers and they had been born after he had run away and he did not know them. They looked guilty and hesitant, as though they had heard and believed all the tales about him, the prodigal, who had run away and would never come back. But at last they came to him and shook hands. They tried to throw off their shyness and shake hands as brothers, but they
seemed like strangers, and there was suddenly a queer silence in the kitchen and finally the old woman began weeping and hurried away.

The man and the sons shook hands with Richardson and gradually the old air of gaiety returned. Maria hurried in with wine again and the young girl began to break fresh eggs into the blue bowl. Soon another omelette appeared and plates of
kuchen
and cheese. The man and the boys sat down and ate, too. There was a noisy confusion of eating and laughter, of popping corks and frizzling eggs and strange peasants rushing in from the courtyard to ask about the strangers, and women rushing upstairs and down again as though madly chasing each other.

Soon afterward the old woman appeared again. Her tears were dry but she looked round the room in consternation, and Richardson saw her whispering with with Elsa and Maria. A moment later Elsa and the young girl hurried off across the courtyard.

He was feeling muddled and talkative and very happy when they returned. He had a vague impression of another conversation among the women, many looks of relief and joy, and of the mother whispering hurriedly with Karl.

Finally Karl turned to him and said:

‘They were worried because they haven't a bed for you here. There is room for me but they would like it if you would sleep at the inn.'

‘All right.'

‘They want us to go down there to-night and celebrate. They'll take your things down and we needn't go until later. You'll be all right at the inn.'

‘I don't care where I sleep as long as I do sleep.'

‘You'll sleep all right.'

Karl turned to speak to his mother, and Richardson became suddenly aware of a fresh face at the doorway. His bag was standing on the steps where he had left it and he had a hasty impression of Maria and Elsa talking to someone who in turn picked up his bag and took it away.

He saw a moment later a young girl crossing the courtyard. She was dressed in a loose white blouse and black skirt and bodice. She was very fair and slender. He did not see her face and she had crossed the courtyard with his bag and had vanished before he could look at her again.

They went down to the inn as darkness was falling. Maria and Elsa and Karl's mother had dolled themselves up in white blouses and thick black skirts and had scrubbed their faces until they looked rather like prim, pink-and-white dolls in half-mourning. The men were wearing dark, ill-fitting best suits and awkward white collars, and Karl's father a green waistcoat with florets of canary-yellow and rose. It was like an English Sunday preparation for church, with a smell of camphor
and lavender and a rustling of skirts, an air of sup pressed excitement, a never-ending hunt for things in chests and drawers and a feeling that someone would never be ready. The dresses of the women were long and old-fashioned and they looked a little as if they had stepped out of a German engraving of the last century. Upstairs Richardson washed himself and the young girl cleaned his shoes and brought them up to him. When he came down into the kitchen again the womenfolk all smiled and half-bowed to him, with a sort of obsequious delight, obviously because he was young and English and Karl's friend. Just before they were ready to start for the inn he went and stood on the steps of the house and looked at the courtyard in the half-darkness. The air was quiet and warm. There was an odour of cows and straw, the scent of what he thought were some evening primroses and the smell of the summer night itself. He felt a curious sense of peace and silence come over him and all the hurry and weariness of the journey behind him seemed to slip away.

The inn was down in the centre of the village. The whole household trooped down. The green shutters were bolted over the windows, making little ladders of yellow light in the darkness. Karl and Richardson came down the street with a string of peasants trailing behind, and another group of peasants had gathered outside the inn to wait for them. People came up and shook hands with Karl and laughed and asked if he remembered them. The entrance to the inn was
through a little courtyard, where there were wooden tables set out under an old mulberry tree, making a tiny beer-garden. As Richardson went under the mulberry tree and up the steps to the inn he felt himself treading the fallen mulberries under his feet.

A long passage led down to the main room of the inn. The room was filled with extra chairs and tables for the guests. There was a smell of wine and lager and tobacco smoke and the room was brilliantly lighted.

Maria and Elsa were walking first. They were passing into the lighted room when Elsa uttered a piercing shriek and began scolding someone in a rapid patois. Everyone stopped. Richardson looked over Karl's shoulder and someone began laughing. A little brown monkey dressed in a scarlet waistcoat and a yellow bonnet sat perched on the open door. Its neck was collared and the thin chain hanging from the collar scratched against the door as the monkey quivered and waved its hands at Elsa. Suddenly the monkey began dancing and darting forward at Elsa's head. Four or five voices shouted at once:

‘Jakob!'

Everyone burst out laughing and a very excited falsetto voice giggled from behind the door. The monkey vanished and suddenly an enormous fat face peeped round the door, very jovial and beaming and excited, and after it the gigantic figure of a man. He was holding up the dried skin of the monkey on his fingers; he worked his fingers and made the monkey
dance and wave its hands. He stood in the doorway like a caricature of a man, enormous, droll, powerful, giggling with excitement like a girl. His face was glorious and round and his head went back with the shape and surface of an egg, absolutely bald and shining. His left eye was missing but the right had a wonderful blue vitality. He was wearing a kind of Norfolk jacket which would not meet across his chest and a pair of pale coffee-coloured trousers of some thin material which stretched like a tight bladder over the curve of his belly.

He towered above the guests like some huge clown. He waved the monkey and rattled the chain and giggled and joked and panted. When Karl arrived he seized his hand and half-embraced him and tried to kiss him. Karl introduced Richardson and then said:

‘This is the innkeeper himself. Herr Jakob Müller.'

Richardson shook hands and the honour of meeting a young Englishmen seemed to overwhelm the innkeeper. He half-bowed and smiled a shy, beatific, almost frightened smile. And then he spoke volubly to Karl and Karl translated:

‘He says perhaps you would like to see your room. He will take you up.'

Richardson said he would like to see the room and he followed the innkeeper upstairs. Above the first landing another set of stairs went up and beyond was his room, among the rafters. The innkeeper switched on the electric light and Richardson had an impression
of a clean white room, a big German bed draped in dark crimson and above the bed a picture of Christ wearing the crown of thorns. There was a smell of clean linen and old, dark wood that filled him with pleasure.

He answered all the innkeeper's questions with ‘Ja, ja!' and followed him downstairs again. As they were coming down the last flight of stairs Richardson looked over Müller's shoulder and saw someone standing at the foot, as though waiting to come up. It was a young girl of twenty-one or two. She was fair-skinned and slender and her hair was as pale as ripened wheat-straw and her eyes were vividly blue and candid and shining. She carried herself in a straight, alert fashion, but she looked ready to bound away up the stairs and vanish out of sheer timidity. She was dressed in a cream-coloured dress and white stockings, with a girdle of pale blue silk about her waist.

Richardson regarded her steadily and she returned his look at first furtively but a second later with a flash of something quite bold and almost wild, as though she were trying desperately to conquer her shyness. He reached the foot of the stairs and the innkeeper turned to him and made a long excited speech, patting the girl's shoulder. Richardson stood looking at her with timid solemnity, until at last she shook his outstretched hand and hurried upstairs.

As he went back with Herr Müller into the room where the guests had gathered it suddenly came to
him that she was the girl who had hurried across the courtyard with his bag. He had caught only one word of all her father had said. It was her name: Anna. He went along the passage and into the brilliantly lighted room and joined Karl and the family. He was introduced to Frau Müller and another daughter, whose name he did not catch, a girl of twenty-nine or thirty. The woman and the girl were very blonde and a little frowzy. There was a priest there also, rather muscular and heavy-faced, his dark hair cropped very close, the colour of his grey eyes faded and dissipated. There was a great deal of handshaking. The priest kept looking at Frau Müller from the corners of his eyes. He drank a glass of hock with Karl and Richardson and then shook hands again and bowed himself away.

Herr Müller began to run in and out with bottles of wine and glasses of lager, panting and giggling with delight. He saw with consternation that Richardson was still standing. He humbled himself at once and escorted Richardson to a seat by the piano and brought him a glass of hock. It was all very charming and courteous. The piano was a sacred thing. The walnut was beautifully polished and the lid was locked and it was evidently an honour to sit there. Everyone stared at Richardson until he felt odd and isolated. As soon as he had drunk half of the hock Herr Müller ran forward with the bottle and filled up his glass. Everyone stood up and drank a toast to something. He did not understand until afterwards that the toast was for himself.
The wine made him feel strange and elated and happy. A peasant came in with an accordion, a fair-haired, elegant young man in a suit of large brown checks and squeaky, tea-coloured shoes. He shook hands with excessive politeness and unrolled a great deal of music. The party seemed to grow suddenly vivacious, everyone laughing and chatting and drinking, the air thick with the smoke of cigars and the smell of wine, the young peasant playing a tune on the accordion and all the guests stamping their feet and singing to the tune.

The peasant had finished playing and Richardson was drinking a glass of cherry-brandy when he saw over the edge of his glass the figure of Anna. She had come into the room with her father and they were coming towards the piano. Beside the immense droll figure of Müller she looked extremely delicate and more than ever shy and naive and slender. She was carrying some music in her hands. Her father, like a man performing a religious ceremony, unlocked the piano and dusted the yellow keys and the pale rose fabric behind the fretted woodwork.

When he had finished dusting he turned to Richardson and made a long speech, evidently about the girl. Richardson listened, bewildered, until Karl came up.

‘What does he say?' asked Richardson.

‘He is telling you all about the girl. She went to school in Kreuznach and now she goes down there once a week to take music lessons.'

‘Tell him he may well be proud of her.'

Karl spoke to Müller and Müller said something and Karl translated.

‘He is very honoured. He wants to know if you can sing.'

‘I can't sing. But tell him I am very honoured, too.'

Karl spoke to Müller again and while he was speaking Richardson looked at the girl. She was standing with her hip against the piano and she returned his look with a quick, embarrassed flash of her eyes and then lowered her lids quickly again. He thought she had about her in that moment, with her downcast eyes and the electric light very gold on her fine thick hair, a loveliness that was inexplicably impressive and thrilling. He had an extraordinary feeling also that she was not a stranger to him, like the peasants, and that it was not strange for him to stand and gaze at her while she found some music and arranged it on the piano and sat down to play.

He sat down at last also and she began to play. He saw at once that she did not play brilliantly, but rather methodically and timidly, and he felt quite relieved. Her fingers were very long and delicate and she struck the keys very softly and the piano sounded thin and reedy. She played something that Richardson did not know, a simple, rather formal air with variations, which he thought might have been written about springtime by a ghost of Schumann. The peasants were quiet, with a kind of reverence, as though it were a great
honour to listen to Anna Müller, who had been well-educated and went every week to take music lessons in Kreuznach. When she had finished they applauded and smiled on her with the same sort of deference, plainly looking up to her as someone above them. She half-turned on the piano stool and smiled and Richardson gazed straight into her face and without thinking what he was doing shouted:

‘Bravo! Bravo!'

He let the pleasure she had given him come unmistakably into his voice. He felt that he wanted to impress her and he smiled too. She flashed him a single look half of fear, half of delight, and at once lowered her head over the piano and her music again.

After that she played several other pieces and the peasants sang. Müller kept bringing Richardson cherry brandies, which he drank straight off, and he began to feel strange and dreamy.