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Authors: Hermann Hesse

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BOOK: Rosshalde
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“It's good, it's perfectly right,” said Robert, flattered.

Veraguth had stood up again and was examining his palette. Robert looked at him. He was familiar with this concentration that came into his master's eyes and gave them an almost glassy look; he knew that he, the coffee, and their little conversation were vanishing from Veraguth's mind and that if he were to address him in a few minutes, the painter would wake as though from a deep sleep. But that was dangerous. As Robert was clearing the table, he saw the mail lying there untouched.

“Herr Veraguth,” he said softly.

The painter was still accessible. He cast a hostile glance over his shoulder, very much in the manner of an exhausted man spoken to when on the point of falling asleep.

“Your mail.”

With that, Robert left the room. Veraguth nervously squeezed a blob of cobalt blue on his palette, tossed the tube on the little lead-sheathed painting table, and began to mix his colors. But then he felt troubled by the servant's reminder. Irritably he put the palette down and picked up the letters.

The usual business correspondence, an invitation to contribute to a group exhibition, a request from a newspaper for biographical information, a bill—but then a thrill of joy passed over him as he caught sight of a handwriting he knew well; he picked up the letter and delightedly read his own name and every word of the address, taking pleasure in the strong character of the free, impetuous pen strokes. He tried to read the postmark. The stamp was Italian, it could only be Naples or Genoa. So his friend was already in Europe, not far away, and could be expected in a few days.

With emotion he opened the letter and looked with satisfaction at the rigorous order of the short straight lines. If his memory did not deceive him, these infrequent letters from his friend abroad were the only pure joy he had experienced in the last five or six years, except for his work and the hours spent with little Pierre. And now once again, in the midst of his joyous expectancy, a vague, unpleasant feeling of shame came over him at the thought of his impoverished, loveless life. Slowly he read:

Naples, 2 June, night

Dear Johann,

As usual, a mouthful of Chianti with greasy spaghetti, and the shouting of the peddlers outside the wine shop, are the first signs of the European culture to which I am once again returning. Here in Naples nothing has changed in five years, much less than in Singapore or Shanghai; I take this as a good sign and am encouraged to hope that I shall find everything in good shape at home as well. The day after tomorrow we shall be in Genoa, where my nephew is meeting me. We shall visit our relatives together. I expect no great effusions of sympathy in that quarter because to be perfectly frank I have not earned ten talers in the last four years. I figure on four, five days for the most pressing family obligations, then business in Holland, say another five, six days, so I ought to be with you on about the sixteenth. You will receive a wire. I should like to stay with you for at least ten days or a fortnight, and interfere with your work. You have become dreadfully famous, and if what you used to say some twenty years ago about success and celebrities was even halfway true, you must be quite gaga by now. I mean to buy some paintings from you and my foregoing lamentations about the state of business are a maneuver to hold your prices down.

We are growing older, Johann. This was my twelfth trip across the Red Sea and for the first time I suffered from the heat. 115 in the shade.

Think of it, old man, only two weeks! It will cost you a bottle of Moselle. It's been more than four years.

A letter will reach me from the ninth to the fourteenth in Antwerp, Hôtel de l'Europe. If you have any pictures showing on my itinerary, let me know!

Yours,

Otto

In high good humor, he reread the short letter with its sturdy, erect letters and temperamental punctuation, took a calendar from the drawer of the little desk in the corner, and wagged his head with satisfaction as he looked at it. Up to the middle of the month, more than twenty of his paintings would be on exhibit in Brussels. That was a good thing. It meant that his friend, whose sharp eye he rather feared and from whom he would not be able to conceal the devastation of his life in the last few years, would at least have a good impression of him, an impression he could take pride in. That would make everything easier. He saw Otto with his somewhat rough-hewn transoceanic elegance striding through the Brussels gallery, looking at his paintings, his best paintings, and for a moment he was thoroughly glad he had sent them to the show, though only a few were still for sale. And he immediately wrote a note to Antwerp.

“He still remembers everything,” he thought gratefully. “He's right, the last time we stuck almost entirely to Moselle, and one night we really drank.”

On reflection, he concluded that there was sure to be no Moselle left in the cellar, which he himself rarely visited, and decided to order a few cases that very day.

Then he sat down again to his work, but felt distracted and uneasy and was unable to regain the pure concentration in which good ideas come unsummoned. He put his brushes in a glass, pocketed his friend's letter, and sauntered irresolutely into the open. The mirror of the lake glittered up at him, a cloudless summer day had risen, and the sun-drenched park resounded with the voices of many birds.

He looked at his watch. It was time for Pierre's morning lessons to be over. He strolled aimlessly through the park, looked absently down the brown, sun-mottled paths, listened in the direction of the house, walked past Pierre's playground with its swing and sand piles. At length he approached the kitchen garden and looked with momentary interest up into the high crowns of the horse-chestnut trees with their shadow-deep masses of leaves and last joyous-bright candles. The buzzing of the bees came and went in soft waves as they swarmed round the many half-open rosebuds in the garden hedge, and through the dark foliage the merry little turret clock in the manor house could be heard striking. The number of strokes was wrong, and Veraguth thought again of Pierre, whose proudest ambition it was, later, when he was bigger, to repair the ancient clockwork.

Then he heard, from the other side of the hedge, voices and steps which in the sunny air of the garden blended softly with the buzzing of the bees and the cries of the birds, with the lazy-blowing fragrance of the carnation border and of the bean blossoms. It was his wife with Pierre; he stood still and listened attentively.

“They're not ripe yet, you will have to wait a few days more,” he heard the mother say.

The boy's reply was a twittering laugh. For a fragile, fleeting moment the peaceful green garden and the soft resonance of this childlike conversation, muffled by the breeze, seemed in the expectant summer stillness to come to Veraguth from the distant garden of his own childhood. He stepped up to the hedge and peered through the leaves into the garden, where his wife in a morning dress stood on the sunny path, holding a pair of flower shears in her hand and on her arm a delicate brown basket. She was hardly twenty paces from the hedge.

The painter watched her for a moment. The tall figure was bending over the flowers; her grave, disillusioned face was entirely shaded by a large, limp straw hat.

“What are those flowers called?” asked Pierre. The light played over his brown hair, his bare legs stood thin and sunburnt in the bright glow, and when he bent down, his loose-fitting blouse revealed the white skin of his back below his deeply tanned neck.

“Carnations,” said the mother.

“Oh, I know that,” said Pierre. “I want to know what the bees say to them. They must have a name in the bee language too!”

“Of course, but we can't know it, only the bees know. Perhaps they call them honey flowers.”

Pierre thought it over.

“That's no good,” he finally decided. “They find just as much honey in clover or nasturtiums; they can't have the same name for all the flowers.”

The boy was attentively watching a bee as it flew around the calyx of a carnation, stopped in mid-air with buzzing wings, and then hungrily penetrated the rosy hollow.

“Honey flowers!” he said contemptuously, and fell silent. He had discovered long ago that the prettiest and most interesting things are the very ones that cannot be known or explained.

Veraguth stood behind the hedge and listened; he observed the calm earnest face of his wife and the lovely, prematurely fragile face of his darling, and his heart turned to stone at the thought of the summers when his first son was still such a child. He had lost him, and his mother as well. But this child he would not lose, no no. Like a thief behind his hedge he would spy on him, he would lure him and win him, and if this boy should also turn away from him, he had no desire to live.

Soundlessly he moved off over the grassy path and withdrew beneath the trees.

Loafing is not for me, he thought irritably, and hardened himself. He went back to his painting and indeed, overcoming his disinclination and surrendering to old habit, he recaptured the industrious tension which tolerates no digressions and concentrates all our energies on the work in hand.

He was expected for lunch at the manor house, and at the approach of noon he dressed carefully. Shaved, brushed, and clad in a blue summer suit, he looked perhaps not younger but fresher and more resilient than in his shabby studio clothes. He reached for his straw hat and was about to open the door when it opened toward him and Pierre came in.

“How are you, Pierre? Was your teacher nice?”

“Oh yes, only he's so boring. When he tells a story it's not for the pleasure, it's just another lesson, and the end is always that good children must do like this or like that. —Have you been painting, Papa?”

“Yes, working on those fishes. It's almost finished, you may see it tomorrow.”

He took the boy's hand and went out with him. Nothing in the world so soothed him or touched the submerged kindness and tenderness in him as to walk beside the boy, to adjust his pace to his short steps, and to feel the child's light trusting hand in his own.

As they left the park and started across the meadow beneath the spindly drooping birches, the boy looked around and asked: “Papa, are butterflies afraid of you?”

“Why? I don't think so. One sat down on my finger a little while ago.”

“Yes, but there aren't any here now. Sometimes when I go over to see you by myself and I come this way, there are always lots and lots of butterflies on the path, and they're called blues, I know that, and they know me and they like me, they always fly around right close to me. Is it possible to feed butterflies?”

“Indeed it is, we must try it very soon. You put a drop of honey on your hand and hold it out very quietly until the butterflies come and drink it.”

“Wonderful, Papa, we'll try. Won't you tell Mama she has to give me a little honey? Then she'll know I really need it and it's not just foolishness.”

Pierre ran ahead through the open gate and the broad hallway; blinded by the sunlight, his father was still looking for the hatrack in the half light, and groping for the dining-room door, long after the boy was inside, pressing his plea on his mother.

The painter entered and held out his hand to his wife. She was somewhat taller than he, strong and fit, but without youth, and though she had ceased to love her husband she still regarded the loss of his affection as a sadly incomprehensible and undeserved misfortune.

“We can eat right away,” she said in her even voice. “Pierre, go and wash your hands.”

“I have news,” said the painter, handing her his friend's letter. “Otto is coming soon, for a long stay I hope. You don't mind?”

“Herr Burkhardt can have the two downstairs rooms, then no one will disturb him and he will be able to go in and out as he pleases.”

“Yes, that will be fine.”

Hesitantly, she said: “I thought he wasn't coming until much later.”

“He set out sooner than he had expected. I knew nothing myself until today. Well, so much the better.”

“Now he will be here at the same time as Albert.”

At the mention of his son's name, Veraguth's face lost its faint glow of pleasure and his voice grew cold.

“Albert?” he exclaimed irritably. “He was supposed to go to the Tyrol with his friend.”

“I didn't want to tell you any sooner than necessary. His friend was invited to visit relatives and gave up the walking trip. Albert will be coming as soon as his vacation starts.”

“And stay here the whole time?”

“I believe so. I could travel with him for a few weeks, but that would be inconvenient for you.”

“Why? Pierre would come to live with me in the studio.”

“Please don't begin that again. You know I can't leave Pierre here alone.”

The painter grew angry. “Alone!” he cried bitterly. “He's not alone when he's with me.”

“I can't leave him here and I don't wish to. There's no point in arguing about it any more.”

“I see. You don't wish to.”

He fell silent, for Pierre had come back, and they sat down to table. The boy sat between his estranged parents, both of whom served him and entertained him as he was used to having them do. His father tried to prolong the meal as much as possible, because after lunch the boy stayed with his mother and it was doubtful whether he would come to the studio again that day.

Chapter Two

R
OBERT WAS IN THE SMALL WASHROOM
next to the studio, busy washing a palette and a bundle of brushes. Little Pierre appeared in the open doorway. He stopped still and watched.

“That's messy work,” he said after a while. “Painting is all very well, but I'd never want to be a painter.”

“Maybe you ought to think it over,” said Robert. “With such a famous painter for a father.”

“No,” said the boy decisively, “it's not for me. Always filthy and always such a strong smell of paint. I like to smell just a bit of it, on a new picture, for instance, when it's hanging in a room and there's only a tiny smell of paint; but in the studio it's too much, I couldn't stand it, it would give me a headache.”

BOOK: Rosshalde
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