At the Fireplace
1.
“I’ll tell some ghost stories! Yes, all the young ladies are clapping their hands.”
“Where did you get the ghost stories, old man?”
“Me? – that is easy. Just listen, how the pines blow in the October wind! And then in here, this bright, little, pine cone fire!”
“But I thought that ghost stories were completely the tools of reaction.”
“Gracious Dame, under your watchfulness, we will risk telling them.”
“Don’t make such eyes, old man!”
“I’m making not eyes, but we want to set chairs around the fireplace. – So! The chaise can stay where it is. – No, Clara, do not put out the lights! I recognize your intent, but… et cetera.”
“So start already!”
“In my hometown…”
“Wait. I want to lie down in front of the fireplace and throw pine cones.”
“Sure! -- So, a doctor in my hometown had a four year-old son who he called Peter.”
“That’s a pretty boring start!”
“Clara, pay attention to your pine cones! – The little Peter dreamed one night—“
“Ah – dreams!”
“What dreams? My ladies, I must ask.”
“Should I choke on an rejected ghost story?”
“That isn’t a ghost story. Dreams are not ghosts.”
“Shut up, dear Clara! – Where was I then?”
“You weren’t far.”
“Shh! – The father awoke one silent night, Clara! – from the terrified screams of the boy, who slept next to his bed. He took him and tried to cheer him up, but the child would not calm down. ‘What’s wrong, boy?’ ‘There was a big wolf, he was behind me, and he wanted to eat me.’ ‘You were dreaming, my child.’ ‘No, no, papa, it was a real wolf. His rough hair came to my face.’ He buried his face in his father’s chest and would not go back to his crib. So at last he fell asleep. After some time, the doctor heard the one o’clock hour strike from the clock tower outside.
“In the doctor’s house also lived an old sister who treasured Peter especially close in her heart. – He was a real tomboy, the boy, in an evening party of his parents, that he had once eaten all the anchovies from the buttered rolls. But that has nothing to do with the aunt’s love.
“On the following morning, as the doctor stepped out of his bedroom, she was the first to meet him. ‘Guess, Karl, what I dreamed!’ ‘Now?’ ‘I changed into a wolf and wanted to eat little Peter. I trotted on all fours while the boy ran screaming in front of me.’ ‘Ugh!’ ‘Don’t you know what hour it was?’ ‘It must have been after midnight. I can’t say exactly.’
– – – – – – – – – –
“And then, old man?”
“And then nothing. That’s the end of the story.”
“Ugh! The aunt was a werewolf!”
“I can assure you that she was an excellent lady. But Clara, put on another pine cone!”
“Sure, but dreams still aren’t ghosts.”
“Don’t anger the old man! You see, I know better how to deal with him. Here appears the drink with which the holy Hoffmann told his Serapion stories. – Place the bowl in front of the fireplace, Martin! – There is also a half bottle Maraschino, old man!”
“I kiss your hand, madam.”
“That sort of thing you just don’t understand at all.”
“I can’t deny that. One doesn’t do that in my home. However, I at least begin to talk about it already.”
“Please have a drink! – Clara, so that you have something to do, give him a full glass!”
– – – – – – – – – –
“I don’t know, my ladies, if you’ve ever driven through the marsh! In the fall and in the rain I wouldn’t wish it for you, but in the dry summertime there may be no better way, the fine gray clay, of which the ground consists, is hard and flat, and the wagon goes smoothly and easily over it. A few years ago I went in northern Schleswig for business to the little town T., which is located in the marsh of the same name. In the evening I was with the local family of the local country clerk. After dinner, as the cigars were lit, we were suddenly caught up in ghost stories, which isn’t difficult there, for the city is a veritable nest of ghosts and still full of pagan beliefs. Not just that every time a stork stood on the church tower a councilor would die, but also that at night a glass-eyed, three-legged horse went through the streets, and where it stopped and looked through the window, a coffin would soon be taken out. People called it “De Hel,” unaware that it is the horse of their ancient goddess of death, who must have long ago quit her service for that of Death. Of the many such conversations and stories that evening, for me however there was only one simple story that stuck in my mind.
“It was about ten years ago” – so told our host – “when I made a pleasure trip with a young businessman and some other acquaintances to a farm, which belonged to the father of the former and was governed by a so-called Hofmann. It was the best summer weather. The grass in the fens sparkled just so in the sun, and the starlings flew about in flocks with their merry cries around the grazing cattle. The company in the wagon, which rolled along smoothly over the flat marsh, was in the most cheerful mood, and no one more than our young business friend. But suddenly, just as we were driving through a rapes field in bloom, he stopped in the middle of most lively conversation, and his eyes took on a glassy expression so strange, stranger than I had ever before seen on a living person. I, who sat across from him, grabbed his arm and shook him. ‘Fritz, Fritz, what’s wrong?’ I asked. He took a deep breath and said without looking at me, ‘That used to be a terrible place.’ – ‘A terrible place? It’s as flat as a board!’ – ‘Yeah,’ he replied, still in a dream, ‘it was still not a good way to get away.’ – Gradually he roused himself, and his face recovered life and expression, but he gave no other word in answer to our questions. This little incident, which for the moment brought down the mood a little, was, however, soon forgotten after we arrived at the farm by the serenity of the environment and our own youth. We were served coffee by the old housekeeper in the gazebo, we went to the fens to look at the oxen, and in the evening after flasks we had brought along were emptied in the company of the old Hofmann, we all went back home as merry as we had gone out.
“Eight days later in the afternoon our friend rode out to the farm on the orders of his father. In the evening his horse came back alone. The old man, who had just come back home from his men’s club, at once set out with all of his people to look for his only son. When they came with their hand lanterns to the blooming rapes field, they found him dead, lying on the road. What was the cause of his death, I can no longer give.”
– – – – – – – – – –
It may go vigorously
over stone and road,
but there is a place in the way
that cannot be rode.
“Aha! Our poetic friend is improvising.”
“That not, Mr. Assessor. The verse is already printed. But Clara appears to be unsatisfied with my story again. She strikes me as much too impatient with the punch.”
“There! – You have a glass of punch! – I’m not saying anything more.”
“Now, so listen!”
“My barber – from whom I have this story – is the son of a clothier. When his father was still young, he came one evening as a traveling apprentice in a small Silesian town. At the inn he learned that he could work with one of the oldest masters. – ‘I only hope that it will be of some duration,’ the innkeeper told him. – ‘With goodwill, father,’ said the fellow, ‘you don’t trust me, or is there something wrong with the master?’ – The host shook his head. – ‘What, then, father?’ – ‘It’s just,’ the old man said, ‘although they wanted to have three apprentices, after a month they always lost one.”
“Our apprentice didn’t challenge him, but went that same evening to his ne
w master. He found both an old couple who spoke to him kindly, and a solid, homely dinner to strengthen him after his journey. When it was his bedtime, the master himself led him down a long corridor of the building back to the upper floor and showed him to his bedroom. The space for the other two apprentices was located in the bottom, but there was not space to accommodate a third bed.
“When the master wished him good night, the young man stood still for a moment and listened as the steps of the old man became more distant down the staircase and gradually were lost down the long passageway. Then he looked at his new quarters. It was a long, very narrow chamber with bare white walls. Below, engaging the entire width of the transverse wall, stood the bed; next to it the small table and a small chair of pinewood; and that was all the furniture. One single, very high window with small panes of glass set in lead seemed, as far as could be recognized by the moonshine outside, to look out to a large garden. – But he was already seeing it with dreamy eyes, and when he stretched out under the rough comforter and put out the light he fell into a deep sleep.
“How long it lasted, he could not say. He only knew that he was awoken abruptly by a sound in his room. And soon he distinctly heard a sweeping sound like that of a sharp broom, which gradually moved from the direction of the window to the depth of the room. He sat up and stared wide-eyed in front of himself, and the chamber was quite bright in the moonlight, with one wall lit from it, but he could not see anything but a totally empty room.
“Suddenly before it came very close to him, everything was quiet again. He listened for a while and tried in vain to make sense of it. At last, tired as he was, he fell again into a deep sleep.
“In the morning, when the matter came up between him and the master, he heard from him that whatever individual had previously slept in that room he would have heard the similar there. However, it has only been during the time of the full moon, and incidentally nothing has happened to anyone. – The young clothier allowed himself to be reassured, and in the nights that followed his sleep was not disturbed by anything that happened. Here in this house he had everything he wished. Work and income were regular, and he got on a good footing with both of his fellow apprentices.
“This went one day after another, until finally the time of the full moon came. But he did not pay attention because there was heavy, overcast sky and no light fell into the room as he lay down to sleep at night. Suddenly he was awoken again by that half-forgotten sound. Even more zealously and sharply, it seemed to him, than the first time it swept and brushed through his room, and strangely enough, now where it was most dark he thought he could see a shadow moving around towards the window. But, like the first time, after a while everything was quiet again, without it having reached the bed and without him being able to recognize something more precise. This time, however, he could not fall asleep as quickly and thus listened to the church tower beat one hour after another. Finally the moon broke through the clouds and shined into the room, but it illuminated only the bare walls.
“These things were so little agreeable to the fellow that he decided not to mention it to anyone, at least to suppress the sinister activities of the place for himself. As usual, the ensuing nights went without disturbance. – After a month had passed, he returned home late at night from a neighboring town, where his master had sent him with some business errands. When he reached the city he went not through the streets, but along the city walls to go through the garden in the back of the house, which he could enter with a key he received from his master. There was bright moonlight. Already in the vicinity of the house, as he walked between the flowerbeds along the straight paths of the garden, he happened to cast a glance up at the window of his room. – Up there was one thing, deformed and translucent, looking down through the windowpanes into the garden.
“The young man suddenly lost the desire to share quarters with such a companion. He turned around and sought shelter at an inn for the night. The next morning – so his son told me – he took his departure and left the city without anyone ever knowing what he had lived with for so long in the room.”
– – – – – – – – – –
“I can’t think of anything, either.”
“I feel the same way, old man.”
“I should think that would be a real ghost story. Or what was still wrong with it?”
“It had no point.”
“So? -- But a part of these stories confronts us with the allure of mystery and urges us to trace the things that, although long since passed, can still let shadows fall on an empty room.”
“Well, and your story?”
“I want to trust the whole acuity of the ladies and you'd rather say otherwise, when such a connection is self-evident by reflecting that the incident coincides with this self-appearance in a moment.”
“At the H. Gymnasium I had a classmate, an industrious and talented person who, because he lived in my neighborhood, I came into contact with almost daily. Just as he entered his second year his father, who held a small municipal office, died, and left his widow and son under the most difficult circumstances. – With the aid of scholarships, of which there were many, my friend could have nevertheless probably fulfilled his plan to study law, but the eager desire to earn something now to alleviate the last years of his aging mother induced him to leave gymnasium and enter the local government as a pay clerk. Our acquaintance wasn’t interrupted. We went as usual at noon on our sociable walks, and in the evening when he came home from the office, we sat in a room occupied jointly by him and his mother and went through with each other the lessons which should come the following days in school; for he had not entirely given up on his life plans, and when the evening was not over he unthinkingly used the night to help. So I’ve spent many hours working together or in friendly conversation. The mother used to sit with her knitting near us in front of a small lamp. I can still see the silent, ill face when she sometimes looked up from her work and rested her eyes on her only child with a look of care. If he noticed it, he then certainly took her pale hand and held it in his while he continued reading the books lying before him. But his reading was not as usual; it was as if the affection for his mother had scattered his thoughts, and I remember how on such occasions tears sprang from his eyes and with a smile and short glance of his eyes laid her hand back in her lap. There was an air of peace and tranquility in the room as I have experienced nowhere else. On one wall was an old, shabby piano at which we sometimes sang. Then the old woman put her knitting back on her lap, and if it was by chance a tune from her youth, she stood up along and went with inaudible steps softly humming to herself to and fro in the room. But if the cuckoo clock on the wall struck ten, she began to throw an uneasy look at the bedstead, which was at the back of a spacious room. Then we took our books, said goodnight, and went down the stairs to her son’s small bedroom, where we spent a few more hours continuing to study. She could peacefully slumber in the upper room, for it lay next to a courtyard where nothing would disturb the nightly quiet.
But this life with its simple pleasures reached its end after a few years. Shortly before I left for the university the mother fell ill. It was the seed of death, long lying in her, that now came to development. Neither she nor her son misunderstood that. At her request, I visited her before I left. The once friendly room was now dark and dreary, the window heavily curtained, and from the pillows under the dark canopy looked the suffering face of the good woman. As her thin hand grabbed mine, she just said, “Live quite well!” But we both felt that it was a final farewell for life.
“Now what followed, I heard later from the mouth of my friend, for I had left the city the next day. – He had, as his mother’s weakness increased in an unusual manner, received permission to finish work at home and sat in the sick room at the farthest window, where he threw back the curtain a little, now busily writing, now casting anxious glances at the dark curtains of the bed. If his mother woke, he sat in th
e old armchair by her bedside and spoke softly to her, or read to her from the Bible. Or he was only by her so that her eyes could rest tenderly on him. He would also stay there nights, and if the patient saw his controlled face she’d say, “George, lay down to sleep! George, you can’t endure it!” or when she assured him, “Go ahead, there’s no danger today,” he would grasp her hand all the more firmly, as if she would be torn away from him right now if he distanced himself from her.
But one night, as an alleviation of the pain had occurred and since he could barely hold himself upright, he let himself be persuaded. Below in his room he laid on his bed undressed in a dreamless, deep, leaden sleep. Upstairs in the glow of the night lamp he had left his mother in gentle slumber. Meanwhile the night had passed and as the day began to dawn he was drawn from his sleep by a gentle force. When he looked up, he saw the door of the room opened and a hand with a white handkerchief wave at him. He automatically jumped from his bed, but he was mistaken. The door to his room was latched as he had left it with his own hand that night. Almost without thinking, he went upstairs to the sick room. – It was quiet inside, the night lamp had burned out, and under the dark bed canopy he found by the dim light of dawn his mother’s corpse. As he bent down to press the dead hand hanging over the edge of the bed to his mouth, he was transfixed by her white handkerchief, which she held between her closed fingers.”
– – – – – – – – – –
“And your friend? What happened to him?”
“He’s doing well, because after much trouble and hard work he realized his life plan, and he lives now just as if in the presence of his mother. Her love, that she so unreservedly gave him in life, became an asset which in the darkest hours will not fail him.”
“But Clara, why do you have your hands over your eyes?”
“Oh – I’m not scared.”
“But you’re crying!”
“Me? – Why do you tell such stupid stories!”
“Well! So may that be the last. I know for today nothing better to tell.”