LITMIR.BIZ

       1

       Washday

      JACOB Dietmahler was not such a fool that he could not see that they had arrived at his friend’s home on the washday. They should not have arrived anywhere, certainly not at this great house, the largest but two in Weissenfels, at such a time. Dietmahler’s own mother supervised the washing three times a year, therefore the household had linen and white underwear for four months only. He himself possessed eighty-nine shirts, no more. But here, at the Hardenberg house in Kloster Gasse, he could tell from the great dingy snowfalls of sheets, pillow-cases, bolster-cases, vests, bodices, drawers, from the upper windows into the courtyard, where grave-looking servants, both men and women, were receiving them into giant baskets, that they washed only once a year. This might not mean wealth, in fact he knew that in this case it didn’t, but it was certainly an indication of long standing. A numerous family, also. The underwear of children and young persons, as well as the larger sizes, fluttered through the blue air, as though the children themselves had taken to flight.

      ‘Fritz, I’m afraid you have brought me here at an inconvenient moment. You should have let me know. Here I am, a stranger to your honoured family, knee deep in your smallclothes.’

      ‘How can I tell when they’re going to wash?’ said Fritz. ‘Anyway, you’re a thousand times welcome at all times.’

      ‘The Freiherr is trampling on the unsorted garments,’ said the housekeeper, leaning out of one of the first-floor windows.

      ‘Fritz, how many are there in your family?’ asked Dietmahler. ‘So many things?’ Then he shouted suddenly: ‘There is no such concept as a thing in itself!’

      Fritz, leading the way across the courtyard, stopped, looked round and then in a voice of authority shouted back: ‘Gentlemen! Look at the washbasket! Let your thought be the washbasket! Have you thought the wash-basket? Now then, gentlemen, let your thought be on that that thought the washbasket!’

      Inside the house the dogs began to bark. Fritz called out to one of the basket-holding servants: ‘Are my father and mother at home?’ But it was not worth it, the mother was always at home. There came out into the courtyard a short, unfinished looking young man, even younger than Fritz, and a fair-haired girl. ‘Here, at any rate, are my brother Erasmus and my sister Sidonie. Nothing else is wanted while they are here.’

      Both threw themselves on Fritz. ‘How many are there of you altogether?’ asked Dietmahler again. Sidonie gave him her hand, and smiled.

      ‘Here among the table-linen, I am disturbed by Fritz Hardenberg’s young sister,’ thought Dietmahler. ‘This is the sort of thing I meant to avoid.’

      She said, ‘Karl will be somewhere, and Anton, and the Bernhard, but of course there are more of us.’ In the house, seeming of less substance even than the shadows, was Freifrau von Hardenberg. ‘Mother,’ said Fritz, ‘this is Jacob Dietmahler, who studied in Jena at the same time as myself and Erasmus, and now he is a Deputy Assistant to the Professor of Medicine.’

      ‘Not quite yet,’ said Dietmahler. ‘I hope, one day.’

      ‘You know I have been in Jena to look up my friends,’ went on Fritz. ‘Well, I have asked him to stay a few days with us.’ The Freifrau looked at him with what seemed to be a gleam of terror, a hare’s wild look. ‘Dietmahler needs a little brandy, just to keep him alive for a few hours.’

      ‘He is not well?’ asked the Freifrau in dismay. ‘I will send for the housekeeper.’ ‘But we ‘don’t need her,’ said Erasmus. ‘You have your own keys to the dining room surely.’ ‘Surely I have,’ she said, looking at him imploringly. ‘No, I have them,’ said Sidonie. ‘I have had them ever since my sister was married. I will take you all to the pantry, think no more about it.’ The Freifrau, recollecting herself, welcomed her son’s friend to the house. ‘My husband cannot receive you just at this moment, he is at prayer.’ Relieved that the ordeal was over, she did not accompany them through the shabby rooms and even shabbier corridors, full of plain old workmanlike furniture. On the plum-coloured walls were discoloured rectangles where pictures must once have hung. In the pantry Sidonie poured the cognac and Erasmus proposed the toast to Jena. ‘Stosst an! Jena lebe hoch! Hurra!’

      ‘What the Hurra is for I don’t know,’ said Sidonie. ‘Jena is a place where Fritz and Asmus wasted money, caught lice, and listened to nonsense from philosophers.’ She gave the pantry keys to her brothers and went back to her mother, who was standing at the precise spot where she had been left, staring out at the preparations for the great wash. ‘Mother, I want you to entrust me with a little money, let us say five or six thaler, so that I can make some further arrangements for our guest.’ ‘My dear, what arrangements? There is already a bed in the room he is to have.’ ‘Yes, but the servants store the candles there, and they read the Bible there during their free hour.’ ‘But my dear, why should this man want to go to his room during the day?’ Sidonie thought that he might want to do some writing. ‘Some writing!’ repeated her mother, in utter bewilderment. ‘Yes, and for that he should have a table.’ Sidonie pressed home her advantage. ‘And, in case he should like to wash, a jug of water and a basin, yes, and a slop-pail.’ ‘But Sidonie, will he not know how to wash under the pump? Your brothers all wash so.’ ‘And there is no chair in the room, where he might put his clothes at night.’ ‘His clothes! It is still far too cold to undress at night. ‘I have not undressed myself at night, even in summer, for I think twelve years.’ ‘And yet you’ve given birth to eight of us!’ cried Sidonie. ‘God in heaven spare me a marriage like yours!’

      The Freifrau scarcely heeded her. ‘And there is another thing, you have not thought – the Father may raise his voice.’ This did not perturb Sidonie. ‘This Dietmahler must get used to the Father, and to the way we do things, otherwise let him pack up and go straight home.’

      ‘But in that case, cannot he get used to our guest-rooms? Fritz should have told him that we lead a plain, God-fearing life.’

      ‘Why is it God-fearing not to have a slop-pail?’ asked Sidonie.

      ‘What are these words? Are you ashamed of your home, Sidonie?’

      ‘Yes, I am.’ She was fifteen, burning like a flame. Impatience, translated into spiritual energy, raced through all the young Hardenbergs. Fritz now wished to take his friend down to the river to walk up the towpath and talk of poetry and the vocation of man. ‘This we could have done anywhere,’ said Dietmahler. ‘But I want you to see my home,’ Fritz told him. ‘It is old-fashioned, we are old-fashioned in Weissenfels, but we have peace, it is heimisch.’ One of the servants who had been in the courtyard, dressed now in a dark cloth coat, appeared in the doorway and said that the Master would be glad to see his son’s guest in the study, before dinner.

      ‘The old enemy is in his lair,’ shouted Erasmus.

      Dietmahler felt a certain awkwardness. ‘I shall be honoured to meet your father,’ he told Fritz.