The Woman Who Had Imagination Page 8

  The steamer turned a bend in the river and slowly the Rhine straightened itself out again. The sky was dark and heavy with thunder over the distant breadth of the river. The steamer and the storm seemed to be floating towards each other at the same smooth, inevitable pace. Richardson tried to establish the point where the storm and the steamer would meet but his thoughts wandered off to Iben, the place where Karl had been born. He imagined a sleepy village lying in a fertile valley in the shelter of a forest of pines, the valley set with orchards and tobacco-fields and vine-yards and crops of wheat and rye turning white in the hot sun.

  A short German dressed in a white, pink-striped flannel suit staggered on deck with his baggage and his wife. The woman, who was eating sausage sandwiches, seemed afraid of the approaching storm. She breathed like a broken-winded horse and there were beads of yellow sweat on her large moonlike face. As she ate the sausage she picked off the circle of red skin and threw it into the Rhine and the skin floating on the greenish water had a strange scarlet brilliance in the thunderlight.

  The roofs of Bingen appeared, sharply outlined beneath the immense blue cloud of the thunderstorm. Afar off there had been a mutter of thunder and suddenly there was a louder peal which seemed to hesitate and hover in the sky before taking an angry leap into the distance, travelling away over the hills like a growl of artillery. The air was stifling. The German asked Karl if he thought they would be in Bingen before the storm came and Karl said ‘Yes’, in a tone as though the storm were a hundred miles away. The light was queer and brilliant. The vines were a wonderfully bright emerald and the river itself looked leaden and sombre under the darkening sky. The steamer slowed down its engines and drifted towards the red roofs and the storm. There was a strange stillness in the air, a hush that seemed to exist apart from the voices of the passengers, the tune of the gramophone still playing, and the quiet wash of water in the steamer’s wake. The German stood ready with his baggage and his wife had ceased eating. Suddenly the white thunder rain came racing down the river and whipped across the deck. The passengers herded themselves below and Richardson and Karl went down into the saloon. The sun was still shining as the rain came down and the air was like a curtain of silver. Karl ordered some beer and while he was drinking it the rain ceased with a jerk and the storm-cloud seemed to split apart and let in the light again.

  Karl and Richardson went on deck again. There was a marvellous stillness in the air, and up in the black sky hung a magnificent rainbow. It made a span between the town and the hills like a vivid, exquisite bridge. There was a soft reflection of it on the water and another reflection of it higher up in the sky. Everyone came on deck to look at it and the stout German and his frau forgot to eat the sandwiches at the sight of it. Its loveliness was unearthly and transcendent.

  The steamer swung across the river and came to rest at the landing-stage. The sun was shining brilliantly again and the rainbow had begun to fade.

  Karl and Richardson went up into the town. Great pools of rain lay among the cobbles of the streets and the town looked washed and bright. Karl went into a shop for some cigars and made inquiries about a bus to Iben. There was no bus to Iben but there was a bus in fifteen minutes that would drop them within three miles of it. They hurried across the town and through some public gardens. There was no time to eat. In the gardens some children under a mulberry tree were searching among the grass for the mulberries that the storm had beaten down. Richardson felt famished. He went across to a child and held out his hand. He could not speak a word of German. The child put a mulberry into his hand. He ate it and held out his hand again and the child gave him four mulberries more.

  The mulberries tasted of rain and the taste of them was still in his mouth as he climbed into the bus and sat down.

  Finally, when the bus started and they drove away out of the town, he turned and looked back. He could see the children and the mulberry tree and the hills beyond the Rhine but the rainbow had vanished from the sky.

  II

  It was late afternoon when they left the bus and began to walk along the road to Iben. The road travelled along for a mile in the shelter of a wooded rise and curved at last into an expanse of open country. There were fruit trees growing among the patches of wheat and rye and sometimes copses of birch broke up the line of the land gently rising and falling away to the horizon where the forest began. Where the corn was ripe and heavy the thunderstorm had flattened it to the earth in broad waves. The sun was hot and brilliant again but the air was fresh and sweetly scented after the storm and the roadside was gay with beds of wild yellow snapdragon and scarlet poppies and stars of chicory washed very pure and shining by the rain.

  The road turned sharply and mounted another spur of rising ground and beyond lay another valley and in the valley there were the red roofs and the spire of Iben.

  They walked down into the village without speaking. The road was lined witn trees of apple and pear and the rain had battered the ripe fruit to the earth. Richardson picked up a pear and ate it and Karl fixed his eyes on the village ahead. A solitary old woman in a white kerchief working on a patch of maize lifted her head and shaded her eyes in wonder and suspicion and watched them out of sight. They came down into Iben without seeing another soul. The street was steep and long and the houses rose up immense and gaunt on either side, rather forbidding and gloomy except for the bright green jalousies thrown back against the walls of dark stone and the little painted white balconies at the bedroom windows. The street was shadowy and deserted and the high wooden doors of the courtyards were shut. A stream of water flowed down the street, washing the cobbles a pale yellow. Nothing else moved. They came to a halt before a tall house with a great courtyard and high doors and a grape-vine spreading massive branches over the walls.

  Richardson felt a sense of relief and he turned to look back as Karl walked towards the doors of the courtyard. He was astonished to find that the silence and solitude of the street had vanished. Every door and window was crowded with gaping peasants and the street was suddenly all life and curiosity and excitement. He took one look at the chattering heads and turned to speak to Karl, but Karl had already opened the wicket of the house with the grape-vine.

  He walked after him and stepped into the courtyard. The peasants came hurrying down the street to take a last look at him. Karl shut the door. The courtyard was flanked on one side by the south face of the house and on the other by stone cow-barns and open sheds under which a litter of sandy-coloured pigs were feeding. A big manure heap stood steaming in the centre of the yard and red and white hens were pecking about it in the sunshine. On the steps of the house a fair-haired girl of thirteen or fourteen was stirring something in a big brown bowl. She looked up with a start. She stared at Karl and Richardson with an expression of absolute wonderment, momentarily petrified. Then suddenly she dropped the bowl on the steps and ran like a wild creature into the house.

  ‘They don’t expect me,’ said Karl. ‘I didn’t trouble to write.’

  They heard the girl talking excitedly in the house and they walked a few paces forward. Suddenly she returned. A thin, deep-eyed peasant woman, sixty or so, was coming after her, timid and bewildered as a child, and behind her two other women of thirty or thirty-five, stout and moon-faced and astonished. The old woman hesitated for one moment at the sight of Karl and then ran forward and began kissing him. She cried and laughed a little together and the other women came forward and kissed him and laughed, too. The young girl hung back and stared with wide eyes, and the wicket gate was pushed open and a little group of peasants came and stood in the courtyard and looked timidly on at it all.

  ‘My mother,’ said Karl. ‘My sister Maria and my sister Elsa.’

  Richardson shook hands with the three women. They looked at him shyly and worshipfully. The young girl ran like wildfire across the courtyard and scattered the peasants and vanished into the street, slamming the wicket behind her. Everyone talked excitedly. There was a light of joyful astonishment on the fa
ces of the three women as they led the way into the house and made Karl and Richardson sit on an old horsehair sofa in the kitchen, while they themselves ran hither and thither and clattered crockery and ground coffee and broke eggs and chattered as though the sight of Karl after twenty years had driven them mad.

  The kitchen was large and dim, with a long scrubbed wooden table in the centre of it, a life-size picture of Hindenburg on one wall and a fireplace raised up, like a blacksmith’s forge, in one corner. The old woman brought a great blue bowl to the table and broke eggs into it while she gazed and chattered at Karl like a child. He returned her gaze with absolute bewilderment, as though like her unable to believe in his presence there. The old woman seemed to break eggs enough for an army, and at every egg she made a long excited speech. Richardson sat still, not understanding a word. The kitchen was fragrant with coffee. The young girl came back and talked excitedly and took the bowl from the old woman and finished beating the eggs. When Richardson looked at her she flushed crimson and bent her head over the bowl. The two sisters ran backwards and forwards as though lost, coming to snatch away the bowl of eggs and lay the cloth on the table and set out cups and plates and wine glasses. Maria ran in with a bottle of wine. Finally the wine was poured out, a soft rose-coloured wine, clouding the glasses, and the old woman and Karl and Richardson stood up and drank. The wine was strong and sharp and as cold as snow. Richardson, glad of it, drank quickly and Maria pounced on the bottle and filled his glass immediately.

  Elsa ran in with a dish filled with a single enormous omelette big enough for ten men and Maria with a tall green-patterned coffee-pot and long loaves of wheat and rye bread. Richardson sat at the table with Karl and ate. The three women hovered about them and talked inexhaustibly. The omelette was good. He had never tasted an omelette like it, very delicate and rich after the icy sharpness of the wine.

  While they were eating there was a commotion in the yard outside. The women began fluttering and Karl stood up. A man of fifty-five or sixty appeared at the doorway and after him two boys of eighteen and twenty. The man was dark and moustached, with the same soft grey eyes as Karl, the same broad forehead, and the same impression of gentleness and strength. He was dressed in working clothes and a full peaked cap. He looked like any small English tenant-farmer who has worked and struggled. The sun had dried his face into a thousand wrinkles and the soil seemed to have eaten eternally into the wrinkles, as though it could never wear away again.

  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.

  III

  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 o
n 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: