The Tongue Set Free, page 24
But we were friends and I liked her, for we could talk about anything together. Actually, we were pace-setters, she with her eternal practicing and her six years’ experience in the house, I as the newest member and the only male. She was the eldest of the boarders, I the youngest. She knew the ladies of the house from all sides, I only from the best. She despised hypocrisy and always shot straight from the shoulder when anything bothered her in any of the ladies. But she was neither cunning nor nasty nor hateful, she was a good-natured, though somewhat obtrusive person, as though born to be set back or ignored, evidently accustomed to this fate very early on by her parents, and, of course—what offended me very deeply when I found out—unhappily in love. Peter Speiser—whom she knew from the conservatorium—a far better pianist than she, in his outward behavior the accomplished and self-assured concert virtuoso, also attended the canton school; he was in a parallel class and he was the first person whom Trudi and I talked about together. I was too naive to notice why she enjoyed bringing him up, and it was only six months later, when I chanced upon a draft of a letter from her to him, that the scales fell from my eyes. I confronted her, and she confessed that she was unhappily in love with him.
Throughout this period, I had taken Trudi for granted as a kind of property that I didn’t have to make much of an effort for, that was always there and simply belonged to me, whereby “belong” still had a fully harmless meaning. It was only after her confession that I realized she didn’t belong to me. Now, I felt as if I had lost her, and she became important to me as something lost. I told myself that I despised her. For her account of trying to get Peter interested in her sounded woeful. She thought only of submissiveness, her instincts were those of a slave girl. She wanted to be stepped on by him, she threw herself—in her letter—at his feet. But it was easy for him, who was proud and haughty, to ignore her. He didn’t see her at his feet, and if he stepped on her, it was an accident that he didn’t even notice. She herself was not without her own kind of pride; she guarded her feelings, just as she generally took feelings seriously and respected them. She championed the independence of feelings, that was her patriotism; she did not share my patriotism for Switzerland, for the school, for the house we both lived in. She regarded that patriotism as immature; Peter was more important to her than the whole of Switzerland. Of all their musical colleagues (they had the same teacher), he was the best, his career was deemed certain, his parents provided for him in every way, he was spoiled and always beautifully dressed, he had an artistic mane of hair and a big mouth which he used loudly without seeming unnatural; but he was also friendly to everyone, already affable for his age, never overlooked anyone, for anyone is capable of offering applause, yet he could not endure Trudi’s passion-colored applause. When he perceived how she felt about him (after many love letters to him, which she never sent but, in her negligent way, forgot to destroy, she sent him one that she had made a clean copy of), he stopped talking to her and greeted her only coolly from a distance. It was around this time (Trudi lamented her woe to me, it was summer, and she had her eternal merida dress on) that she bent forward to proclaim the measure of her submissiveness to Peter’s will and I spotted the gigantic furuncle on her breast, and my pity for her was kindled.
* * *
Fräulein Mina wrote her name with one “n,” she had nothing to do, as she said, with Minna von Barnhelm, her full name was Hermine Herder. She was the head of the four-leaf clover that ran the boarding house, and she was the only one of the four who had a primary profession, on which she plumed herself to no small degree: she was a painter. Her somewhat overly round head was wedged deep within her shoulders on a short body; it sat right upon it, as though there had never been such a thing as a neck, what a superfluous contraption. The head was very big, too big for the body, the face was filled with countless tiny red arteries, which accumulated on the cheeks. She was sixty-five, but looked unworn; if complimented on her freshness of mind, she replied that painting had kept her young. She spoke slowly and clearly, just as she walked; she always wore dark colors, her skirt reached down to the ground, and you noticed her steps underneath only when she climbed the stairs to the third floor, the “sparrow’s nest,” her studio, where she retreated to paint. There, she painted nothing but flowers and called them her children. She had started by illustrating botanical books; she knew about the peculiarities of flowers and enjoyed the confidence of botanists, who would ask her to illustrate their books. She spoke of them as of good friends; two names that she often mentioned were Professor Schröter and Professor Schellenberg. Schröter’s Alpine Flora was the best-known of her works. Professor Schellenberg still visited the house in my day, bringing along an interesting lichen or a special moss, which he explained to Fräulein Herder in great detail, as though lecturing, and in standard (rather than Swiss) German.
Her leisurely manner must have been linked to her painting. As soon as she got to like me a bit, she invited me to the “sparrow’s nest,” permitting me to watch as she painted. I was greatly astonished at how slow, how solemn and dignified her work was. The very smell of the studio made it into a special place, unlike any other, I sniffed to catch the smell the instant I entered, but like everything else that occurred here, the sniffing also proceeded deliberately. As soon as she picked up her brush, she started reporting on what she was doing. “And now I’m taking a little white, just a wee bit of white. Yes, I’m taking white, because nothing else will do here, I simply have to take white.” She would repeat the name of the color as often as she could, and that was really all she said. In between, she kept mentioning the names of the flowers she was painting, and it was always their botanical names. Since she painted each species by itself very meticulously, not caring to mix it with others (for that was what she had always done with the botanical illustrations), one learned those Latin names from her, together with the colors. She said nothing else, whether about the habitat, or about the structure and functions of the plant; everything that we learned from our science teacher, everything that was new and fascinating and that had to be drawn in our notebooks, she left out, and so the visits to the sparrow’s nest had something ritualistic about them, made up of the turpentine smell, the pure colors on the palette, and the Latin names of the flowers. Fräulein Mina saw something venerable and sacred in this institution, and once, in a solemn moment, she confided to me that she was a vestal virgin and that was why she had never married; a person who has devoted his life to art, she said, must forgo the happiness of normal mortals.
Fräulein Mina had a peaceful nature and never hurt anybody; this was due to the flowers. She had no bad opinion of herself; for her gravestone she wanted one sentence: “She was good.”
We lived close to the lake and went rowing; Kilchberg lay right on the other side. We once rowed over to visit the grave of Conrad Ferdinand Meyer, who became my poet at this time. I was struck by the simplicity of the inscription on the headstone. It said nothing about a “poet,” no one mourned, he was unforgettable to nobody; all it said was: “Here lies Conrad Ferdinand Meyer. 1825-1898.” I understood that any word would merely have diminished the name, and I realized here for the first time that the name alone mattered, that the name alone held, and everything else paled next to it. On the way back, it wasn’t my turn to row; I couldn’t speak a word, the hush of the inscription had carried over to me, but it suddenly turned out that I was not the only one thinking about the grave, for Fräulein Mina said: “I would like only one line on my grave: ‘She was good.’” At that moment, I didn’t like Fräulein Mina at all, for I sensed that the poet whose grave we had just visited meant nothing to her.
She often spoke of Italy, a country she knew well. In earlier years, she had been a governess for Count Rasponi’s family, and the younger countess, her ex-pupil, invited her to her home once every two years, in Rocca di Sant’Arcangelo, near Rimini. The Rasponis were cultured people, frequented by interesting guests, whom Fräulein Mina had met over the years. But Fräulein Mina always had something to carp about in truly famous people. She preferred quiet artists who blossomed in secrecy, perhaps she was thinking about herself. It was striking that not only she, but also Fräulein Rosy and the other women in the house accepted any poet who had published at all. If there was a series of readings by the middle or younger generation of Swiss poets, then at least Fräulein Rosy went regularly, being more responsible for literature than painting, and the next day, in the hall, she would give us a detailed report on the peculiarities of the man. The women were deadly serious, and even if they didn’t understand his poems, they liked this or that in the poet’s manner, his shyness when bowing, or his confusion when making a mistake. They had the opposite attitude towards people who were the talk of the town. They viewed them with very different, with critical eyes, and particularly resented every characteristic that was unlike their own.
When the house had been a girls’ boarding school, not that many years ago, the ladies would occasionally invite a poet to read some of his works to the girls. Carl Spitteler came all the way from Lucerne and felt comfortable among the girls. He liked chess and sought out the best player, Lalka, a Bulgarian, as his partner. Thus he sat in the hall, a man of over seventy, propping his head on his hand, gazing at the girl, and saying slowly, not after each of her moves, but still more often than proper: “She is beautiful and she is intelligent.” They never forgave him for that, it was repeated often with an indignation that grew every time.
Among the four ladies, there was one who was good, but who never said it about herself. She didn’t paint and never went to lectures, and most of all she liked working in the garden. That’s where one normally found her, the season permitting; she always had a friendly word, but only one word and not whole lessons, I don’t recall ever hearing the Latin name of a flower from her, although she was busy with plants all day long. Frau Sigrist was Fräulein Mina’s elder sister, and at sixty-eight she really looked old. She had a very weathered, a totally wrinkled face; she was a widow and had a daughter, the daughter was Fräulein Rosy, who had always been a teacher and, in contrast to her mother, never stopped talking.
You never thought about one being the daughter and one the mother; you knew it, but it didn’t enter your daily conception of them. The four ladies formed a unity that you didn’t associate with any man. It never occurred to you that they had had fathers, it was as if they had come into the world without fathers. Frau Sigrist was the most maternal of the four, also the most tolerant, I never heard any prejudice or any condemnation from her, but she never uttered a mother’s claim. I never heard her say “my daughter”; if I hadn’t found it out from Trudi, I would never have noticed anything. Thus, the maternal quality had been highly restricted among the four ladies, almost as if it were rather a bit indecent. Frau Sigrist was the calmest of the four; she never put herself in the limelight, she never gave instructions, she never issued an order; perhaps one heard a sound of agreement from her, but only when one met her alone in the garden. In the living room, where the four of them sat together every evening, she was usually wordless. She sat a bit on the edge; her round head, which wasn’t quite as large as Fräulein Mina’s, leaning slightly, always at the same angle; with her deep wrinkles, she looked like a grandmother, but no one said that, nor did anyone ever mention that she and Fräulein Mina were sisters.
The third was Fräulein Lotti, a cousin, perhaps a poor cousin, for she had the least authority. She was the thinnest and plainest, as small as the two sisters, almost as old, with sharp features, both her conduct and expression fearlessly those of an old maid. She was a bit neglected, for she had no intellectual demands. She never spoke about paintings or books, she left that to the others. One always saw her sewing, that was something she was good at; whenever I stood next to her, waiting for a button she was sewing on for me, she emitted a few resolute sentences; in her small chores, she displayed more energy than others in the greatest. She was the least-traveled and had connections in the closer surroundings of the town. A younger cousin of hers lived in a farmhouse in Itschnach; we sometimes visited her when taking a long walk. Fräulein Lotti, who had plenty to do in the house (she also helped in the kitchen), would not come along, she had no time, which she said sternly and without complaining, for her most pronounced feature was her sense of duty. It was her pride to go without things that she particularly cared for. If another excursion to Itschnach was being discussed, rumor had it that she might, just might, come along this time, we just shouldn’t nag her, when the time came and she saw us gathered in the garden, she would suddenly join us. It is true that she always did come over then, but only to send very detailed greetings to the cousin. Wasn’t she coming too, she was asked. Goodness, what had gotten into us! There was enough work in the house for three days, and it had to be done by tomorrow! But she did take the visit, to which she never let herself be enticed, very seriously. She highly valued the greetings we brought back from the cousin and a detailed account of the events, each of us taking a turn. If anything didn’t suit her, she asked questions or shook her head. Those were important moments in the life of Fräulein Lotti, they were actually the only demands she made; if she was left too long without reports from her cousin, her caustic remarks increased, and she became unendurable. But that seldom happened; it was part of the house routine to think about it without ever openly discussing it.
There remains the youngest and tallest of the four, whom I have already mentioned, Fräulein Rosy. She was in her prime, not yet forty, hale, hearty, and strong, a gymnast; she oversaw our games in the tennis court. She was a teacher to the core and liked talking. She talked a lot, at too regular a tempo, and her explanations always became too detailed. She had plenty of interests, especially the young Swiss poets, for she had also taught German. But it didn’t matter what she talked about, it always sounded the same. She viewed it as her bounden duty to examine everything, and there was hardly anything she wouldn’t respond to. But one seldom managed to ask her anything, for she was always in the middle of holding forth on her own, her initiatives were inexhaustible. You found out from her what had happened in the Yalta since the beginning of time, you got to know all the boarders from all the countries in the world and, if possible, their parents too, who had sometimes, alas not always, come along on the first visit; you found out about their merits and deficiencies, and what eventually happened to them, their ingratitude, their loyalty. It could happen that you weren’t even listening after an hour, but Fräulein Rosy didn’t realize it, for if she had to break off for any reason, she noted precisely where, steadfastly resuming at the right place later on. Once a month, she withdrew for two days. She remained in her room and didn’t come down for meals, she had a “buzzing skull,” that was her somewhat jaunty label for a headache. One might have thought that those would be days of relief; but far from it, we all missed her, and we also felt sorry for her, for if we missed the monotony of her talking, how greatly must she miss it herself, spending two whole days alone and mute in her room!
She did not regard herself as an artist like Fräulein Mina, who was owed supreme deference, and it was taken for granted that Fräulein Mina should withdraw into the sparrow’s nest for the major part of the day, while the other three were continually occupied with some practical work. Fräulein Mina also wrote out the bills for the boarders, sending them to the parents at regular intervals. She would always add a long letter, stressing how reluctantly she wrote bills, for her area was the flowers that she painted and not money. The letters also dealt with the behavior and progress of the pupils, clearly showing her deeper interest in them. It was all very emotional, selfless, and noble.
As a unit, the four ladies were called the Fräuleins Herder, although two of them now had other names. But it was correct according to the distaff side. They appeared together as a unit for black coffee in the parlor, when the weather was nice, then on the veranda in front of it, and for a glass of beer in the evening. At such times, they were alone with each other, away from work, and you were not allowed to disturb them for any reason whatsoever. It was considered a special privilege that I was permitted to enter the parlor. It smelled of cushions and of old clothes, the ones that the ladies had on, it smelled of half-dried apples and, according to the season, of flowers too. These changed, like the young girls who boarded in the house; the basic smell, that of the four ladies, remained the same and always dominated. I didn’t find it unpleasant, for I was treated benevolently. I did tell myself that there was something ridiculous about this household, nothing but women, and, with the pure exception of Frau Sigrist, nothing but old maids; but that was sheer hypocrisy. I, as the sole male among them all, old and young, couldn’t have been better off, I was something special for them, merely because I, as it was put in Swiss German, was a “lad,” and I didn’t consider that any other “lad” would have been just as special in my place. I basically did what I wanted to, I read and learned what I desired. That was why I entered the parlor of the ladies in the evening: it contained a bookcase in which I could browse to my heart’s content. I looked at illustrated books on the spot, others I took to read in the hall. There was Mörike, whose poems and tales I read with delight, there were the dark-green volumes of Storm and the red volumes of Conrad Ferdinand Meyer. For a while, Meyer became my favorite writer; the lake tied me to him, at all times of the day and evening, the frequent tolling of bells, the rich harvests of fruit, but also the historical subjects, especially Italy, whose art I finally learned about, and which I also heard a great deal about orally. In this bookcase, I first stumbled upon Jacob Burckhardt and I plunged into his Civilization of the Renaissance, without being able to get much out of it at that time. For a fourteen-year-old, the book had too many facets, it presumed experience and reflection in areas of which some were still fully closed to me. But even then this book was a kind of spur for me, a stimulus for breadth and variety, and a strengthening of my distrust of power. I was amazed to see how modest, indeed how meager my thirst for knowledge was, compared with that of a man like Burckhardt, and that there were degrees and intensities unheard of which I would never have dared to dream. He himself, as a figure, did not appear to me behind this book; he melted and dissolved in it, and I recall my impatience when replacing it on the bookshelf, as though he had eluded me into a different, almost unfamiliar language.
