Under a Changing Moon, page 23
Fliesse, fliesse, lieber Fluss!
Nimmer werd ich froh,
So verrauschte Scherz und Kuss
Und die Treue so.
The words had always moved her, but now they went straight to the marrow of her bones.
Ich besass es doch einmal,
Was so köstlich ist,
Dass Man doch zu seiner Qual
Nimmer es vergisst.
As she put down the tray, the cups rattled slightly, and she was glad that she had an excuse for looking down at the little table, her eyes hidden, for what she had seen and felt now was no longer the gentle light of the moon over river and valley—it was a cry of despair at the transiency of love.
Overberg stood up and bowed to her silently; after the emotional force of this poetry, words would have been meaningless. The three of them drank their tea in silence. Then the two gentlemen lit their pipes, and at length Uncle Emmo said, “Just fancy, child, the elder Herr Overberg wants to know if I would like to be his librarian. You have heard me say that his library is as exquisite as his wine cellar.”
“My father has always been a passionate book collector, but not a very systematic one,” said Konrad Overberg. “And as for me, I’ve only learned in the last few years from your uncle what a library should look like and how it should be arranged and complemented. Father and I have now decided that the time has come to establish a proper catalogue for our collection.”
“I am most grateful for the trust you place in me,” said Emmo Eisenberth. “And you can depend upon it, I will consider your offer seriously.”
“And what about us?” asked Paula. “Here you are luring our uncle away, and who’s going to tutor my two lazy brothers, Georg and Ferdinand, every year before Easter and attend to the gaps in my education?”
“But you would be welcome to visit your uncle in Bad Ems any time,” said Overberg. “Oh, by the way, I have another invitation to deliver. A week from Saturday, we’re going to celebrate the beginning of the wine harvest, down in our old house, Rheingold, in Assmannshausen, with a few friends. We’ll take the train to Ehrenbreitstein, and from there a chartered steamer will take us up the Rhine. When we get to Assmannshausen, the older folk will probably want to sit quietly on the terrace for a while and drink coffee. The younger ones will prefer to go up to our vineyard with me for an hour or so, and after that there will be a tour of the cellars. Then, after dinner, we’ll all go over to the Crown—there’s dancing every evening at this time of year. Young Hufnagel, the Crown host—in the third generation—was at school with me and has promised to reserve the best tables for our party. There’s room enough for everyone to stay the night at Rheingold if the young gentlemen don’t mind being a bit cramped. The next morning after breakfast, we go back by steamer, and on the way we can hear Mass in the pilgrims’ chapel at Bornhofen. What do you think of that for a program, Fräulein Paula?”
“It sounds wonderful. Don’t you think so, Uncle Emmo?” said Paula. “But I wonder what my parents will say?”
“Their permission has already been granted. May I remind you that you still owe me a quadrille?”
“I haven’t forgotten,” she replied. “The first, Herr Overberg?”
He knew from last winter’s Carnival ball that Paula liked dancing with him because he was a good dancer. And that’s all, my dear Konrad, he said to himself with a touch of self-mockery. Besides, she had told him at the same dance that she intended to go into a convent. If that was still her plan, it was no wonder men made no impression on her.
“But now that I come to think of it, they won’t play quadrilles at a wine-festival dance, any more than at our little summer parties,” he told her. “At this time of year, they play folk dances on the Rhine—quick polkas, Rheinländers, a schottische, and of course waltzes. How many waltzes are you willing to trade me for a quadrille?”
“That I’ll leave you to figure out, Herr Overberg. I’m sure we can reach agreement on it.” So now she was giving him sums to do!
Paula began to gather up the tea things, and he stood up and offered to take the tray for her. “No, it’s all right, thank you. It’s not heavy. You just stay here with Uncle Emmo. I’ll see you later, Uncle. Au revoir, monsieur.”
He held the door open for her and closed it again behind her. Then he knocked out his pipe, looked at the clock, and found that it was time for him to leave. “My father doesn’t like to be kept waiting for his meals. And apart from that, Nikodema has brought us up to be strictly punctual during her long dictatorship, twenty years and more.” The two men laughed; the strictness and at the same time the unswerving loyalty of the Overbergs’ housekeeper was known all over the little principality. Konrad took his leave and set off toward the hotel, where he usually left his horse when he came to town. As he was crossing the yard, he saw Adolf unharnessing Silver; the Amtmann had just returned from a short trip. Overberg stopped and watched for a moment with approval the experienced way Adolf was handling the horse. He could never pass a horse anyway without tapping its crupper and giving it a few friendly words. “Hello there, Adolf. Hello, Silver.”
“Hello, Herr Overberg,” said Adolf, always ready for a little horse talk. “I’ve been meaning to ask you what kind of stallion you ride.”
“An English hunter, Adolf. He’s called Eastermoon. The hunters are bred from Norfolk mares, sired by thoroughbreds. Do you like him? In November I’m expecting a foal by him, from my little Arab filly Suleika.”
“How terrific!” Adolf beamed at him. “A foal from an Arab filly! That’s the white horse with the little head and long tail, isn’t it? And what about your carriage pair?”
“They are Hungarian coach horses. Your Uncle Emmo tells me you like to ride. And I can see for myself that you know how to look after a horse. If you come to our party, I’ll show you our stables before we start from Bad Ems.”
“What party?”
“The beginning of the wine harvest in Assmannshausen. You’re invited, too, because you belong with the bigger ones now. The two old ladies have decided to stay home and look after your two youngest brothers.”
“Thank you, Herr Overberg. But I can only come if I may bring Aqua.”
Aqua heard his name and came out of the henhouse; someone must have left the door open. Adolf looked at him closely; either he was innocent this time or else he had licked his mouth so clean that no circumstantial evidence could be seen.
“Hello, Aquarius, you old Water Carrier who hates going in the water,” said Overberg. “Do you mind going on a boat, old chap?”
“Oh, he’ll go in a big boat all right,” said Adolf, running his hand over Aqua’s back. “He won’t come out with us in our little boat, but he has nothing against a regular steamer, I’m sure, not if I’m there as well. Isn’t that right, Aqua?” Aqua affirmed this with a few wags of his long tail. Then something else struck Adolf. “If you really think I’m good at looking after horses, Herr Overberg, can’t you leave your stallion here with me in the future instead of at the hotel? I’ll see he’s all right, and it won’t cost you a penny.” But if he lets me have a ride on the stallion by way of reward, I’d have nothing against it, he thought to himself.
“That’s a tempting proposition.” Overberg laughed. “If the Herr Amtmann has no objections, I’ll leave Eastermoon down here in the stable from now on.”
Fräulein Nikodemus, called Nikodema for short, the Overbergs’ housekeeper, had gone over to Assmannshausen two days before in the carriage to air the house and make all the necessary preparations for the big party, with the help of the coachman and two maids from the village.
“It smells like a tomb up here,” said Frau Schickel, the wife of the steward, who lived with her husband on the ground floor behind the firm’s offices, next door to the oak-paneled room where the wine tasting took place. She always kept a room ready for the young gentleman, who came over from Ems once every week to attend to business matters and to be the host at wine-tasting sessions. Down there, where coopers and cellarmen, customers and distributors were always coming and going, the house was alive; but in the upper part, where the family had once lived, there was the smell of death and times long past. “Just like a tomb,” repeated Frau Schickel. “A shame for the lovely house.”
But Nikodema had neither the time nor the inclination to talk to Frau Schickel about the reasons for this house not having been lived in by the Overbergs, father and son, for over twenty years. At that time, she had just joined the household, a young thing who had strayed from Hamburg into the Rhineland; and she was still with them, the strength and mainstay of her two gentlemen, whom she adored and ruled. This year for the first time in many years there was going to be a big party at Rheingold. The excuse for it was the wine harvest, but only Nikodema knew that it was really Konrad’s thirtieth birthday they were celebrating. Even on this occasion, however, the old gentleman would stay at the Crown, as he invariably did when he came to Assmannshausen.
“How are you going to put all those people up?” asked Frau Schickel as the maids went around taking the dust sheets off the furniture.
“There’s no need for you to worry your head about that,” replied Nikodema. After all these years, she still spoke with a Hamburg accent instead of the softer local dialect. “There are only eighteen coming this time, and in the old days we often had twenty weekend guests. Herr Konrad’s room is ready. Herr Emmerich Eisenberth will be sleeping with the old gentleman at the Crown—I gather they’ve all sorts of things to talk about. The Herr Amtmann and his wife go in the south room; Fräulein Paula next door, in the red boudoir that was Herr Konrad’s grandmother’s room. One of the young ladies in the white room, two in the green room, and another one we’ll put in the Chinese room—that makes five. Then there are two more married couples, one in the east room and one in the southeast room. The young gentlemen will be on the top floor. It’s just a question of organization, you see.”
“Is there one of the five girls that our Herr Konrad seems to be . . . I mean . . .”
“I know what you mean, but that’s no business of mine, Frau Schickel, and it’s no business of yours, either. If it will put your mind at rest, I can tell you that the five boxes of chocolates from court-confectioner Schilling in Wiesbaden that I had to put out, one for each of the young ladies, are all exactly alike. Now come on, down to work, girls. I want the eiderdowns out on the lawn. The covers must come off the chandeliers in the dining room and the salon, and the silver must all be polished. The flowers I’ll arrange myself later on. Now I’ll go down to the kitchen. When you’re finished up here, you can come and help me with the baking. And you, Johann, please see that there’s a good fire burning in the range and enough wood’s cut.”
When on Saturday afternoon the steamer moored by the bridge in the village, Nikodema was there to welcome the guests in her black dress and white collar, looking as dignified as a chatelaine from one of the old castles along the river. She led them into the house and to their rooms where they could freshen up. After that, the young ones set off to the vineyard, led by Konrad Overberg. The older people met in the shade of the ancient plane trees on the terrace overlooking the Rhine for coffee and cakes.
In the vineyard, which was reached by a narrow path through the park and then by climbing up the steep, slaty slope, there was great activity: The girls in their white blouses and gaily colored headscarves and the lads in their green smocks had been working since the morning, and in the middle of the day the sun had been hot. But they were still joking and laughing and singing. The girls’ baskets were quickly filled with bunches of grapes, and the men tipped them as quickly into zinc tubs and carried them down the slope on their backs. On the road oxcarts were waiting to take the grapes in large containers to the wine press.
The guests helped with the harvesting for a while, but more grapes went into their mouths than into the baskets. Konrad Overberg had a hundred questions from the ignorant city folks to answer, to the unconcealed delight of the harvesters. August climbed farther up the slope with his sister, to the edge of the woods, and they enjoyed a wide view of the proud river. Here and there old castles rose above the river bank, gray with age, watched over by ivy-grown towers, relics of a bygone era. Peaceful little villages slept in the valley, surrounded by the autumnal yellow of the meadows, the brown of plowed fields, the gold of the orchards. On the opposite bank, rows of cherry trees bordered the road that Napoleon had built for his armies.
Adolf had not gone up to the vineyards with the rest of the party. He had set off along the river with Aqua toward the ruins of Castle Nollich, a few kilometers downstream. As he walked, he dreamed his old dream: he was a wandering minstrel, on the way to a castle where beautiful ladies and great lords would listen to his songs, and it was no surprise to him that the ladies who waved to him from a window of their bower were three sisters whose faces seemed familiar to him.
Meanwhile, young Overberg had taken his guests into the park again and was showing them the cellars, which had been cut into the rock of the slope and which ran far back into the mountain like an underground town, with streets bordered by oaken barrels and shelves with thousands of bottles—catacombs of wine. It would have been easy to lose one’s way in these vaults had there not been a Caliban of a cellar-master, dressed in a big leather apron, walking in front of them with a miner’s lantern, and had not Overberg himself taken care that none of his little flock wandered off in a side turning. Right at the back, there was a kind of grotto, with water dripping from the mouth of a big fish into a stone basin; above it, the arms of the house of Overberg were cut into the stone—a grapevine with three grapes underneath the cross and the date of the founding of the firm: 1752. Caliban shed light on it all with his lantern: cross and fish and vine, age-old symbols of the faith, woven together as in an ancient hymn.
They came out into daylight again and went to look at the wine press with its grooved wooden rollers, which very gently pressed the wine out of the grapes without pulping the stems or the pips. “For the best kinds of Spätlese, the grapes are taken off the stems by hand,” said Konrad. “The juice that drips from these hand-picked grapes, without any pressure, gives the noblest wines. But now, ladies and gentlemen, it is time we were dressing for dinner.”
In Paula’s room, there was a glass vase with twelve beautiful yellow roses on a little table, which stood beside the voluptuously curved bed under a canopy of red brocade. Used to the simple charm of the homely Biedermeier furniture in her parents’ house, she found herself surrounded now by the extravagant elegance of the rococo period. The red walls set off the white and gold of the two graceful armchairs; the chest of drawers, too, was lacquered in white and gold, the doors painted with scenes in delicate pastel colors. The engravings on the walls, of ladies in swings wearing crinolines and powdered wigs, dated from the century that was already darkened by the growing shadow of the guillotine. On the ceiling, there floated cherubs with garlands of fruit and flowers, and on the big screen in the corner was a pastoral scene such as Watteau or Lancret might have painted; Paula had seen similar ones in Uncle Emmerich’s illustrated books. When she peeped behind the screen, she found a tin bath filled with hot water, beside it a ewer of cold water, and in a little flowered china dish a piece of scented French soap. She remembered that it was Saturday evening, when every clean person took a bath. The little curved tub looked funny and inviting. How different from the rough wooden tubs at home or in the convent! She undressed quickly and climbed into the bath. In the convent, there had always been long white calico shifts put out beside the tubs. When she took a bath there for the first time, she had not used the shift and had been reprimanded later by the bathroom sister. Surely mademoiselle hadn’t taken a bath . . . naked? Yes, she had. But in the future, to spare the feelings of the lay sister, she took care to soak the chaste shift in the bathwater and hang it up to dry on the clotheshorse provided for the purpose. She found it too difficult to wash properly in such long drapery.
After the bath, she put on her clean cambric chemise with its embroidered edging and, over it, the bone stays—the aunts insisted that a young lady’s waist should be slim enough to be encircled with two hands—the long under-drawers with the crocheted frills, and the under petticoat of piqué, called the modesty petticoat. So attired, she stood in front of the mirror to do her hair. Beside her face in the polished glass was reflected the picture of a beautiful woman that hung on the opposite wall, and on a sudden impulse she tried to do her hair the same way as the woman’s in the picture. Part of her thick dark hair she put up on top of her head in a braided crown, the rest she let fall on her neck in a deep chignon. Last of all, she put on the crinoline petticoat stiffened with horsehair and, over it, the skirt of her new green dress. She had chosen the material herself this time when Isidor came to the courthouse with his wares from the Frankfurt Fair and unrolled a length of delicate green silk before the ladies of the house. It was to have been put aside as a birthday present for Paula, and her birthday was not till November. But when the invitation to Assmannshausen came, Mama had decided to sew next winter’s ball dress now.
“Green!” the aunts had protested with one voice. “Impossible.”
“Green with my daughter’s pale complexion? What are you thinking of Isidor?” Mama had said.
But, “Green! Yes, this green, please!” Paula had pleaded. Even Babett, who was always ready to take Paula’s side, insisted that in this color she would look “like a cheese.”
But Isidor stood firm. “Apple-green” was the very latest color, and he quickly put beside the beautifully soft silk for the skirt a piece of a deeper jade for the bodice. “Not like a cheese, if the gracious ladies will permit a humble old man to say so,” he had assured them. “Like a princess, that’s how demoiselle Paula will look in it.”
