“And here comes the moral part of the story,” declared the landlord.
“Finally the moral part always comes if you’re a housewife and a mother, and if you are no longer a housewife or mother, there is no need for it any more,” said the landlady with conviction. “And really it was…”
“… the Lenten sermon about fasting that I wanted to give,” chuckled the landlord, again intervening in his wife’s flow, while trying to trickle some brown butter from the bean bowl on to his plate, as a result of which the beans poured on to the plate, the table, his knees and the floor.
“Listen, stop chiming in to what I’m saying,” said the landlady, turning to her husband, and seeing his treatment of the beans, added, “You are a pig, not a bit cleverer than your boys, always leaving leftovers under your feet.”
“Nah! If you haven’t served in a noble house, food is one of things that…” the landlord was about to make a silly joke, but the landlady stepped in: “Then listen to your wife’s Lenten sermon about food, about preparing and eating it. That’s the whole moral story here – today’s roast, along with the potatoes, fresh cabbage, beans and turnips and carrots.”
“Pickled and fresh cucumbers, cauliflower, pasta and tomatoes are missing,” noted the landlord in a matter-of-fact manner.
Now they all burst out laughing, so heartily that even the landlady had to join in, like it or not. Only a while later did she manage to say, “Now try and talk seriously at the dinner table! They’re all laughing and joking. And yet there’s nothing to laugh at here. Would you laugh if you didn’t like your meal? No, you’d all have glum faces. But haven’t you ever been interested in how tasty food is prepared?”
“I’ve never been,” replied the landlord, lifting fresh cabbage to his mouth, “I’m happy to leave those matters to the servants.”
“But if there were no more servants?” asked the landlady. “Some will be found,” replied the landlord.
“But there aren’t any who know how to or want to.”
“Well, if there aren’t any servants, then the women and ladies themselves do it,” said the landlord.
“No, my dear man, there’s a shortage of servants because there are no longer any proper ladies of the house, no housewives – that’s the whole issue. You think just like other men, that you open some new soup kitchen and in come the serving people. But they don’t. A servant only comes from a house, remember that. When there are no ladies treating housekeeping as important any more, how can there be servants who know their skills? Now ladies regard it as a personal insult if someone dares to think that they’re interested in housekeeping, but at the same time everyone complains and expresses amazement if a complete stranger isn’t enthusiastic about the mess they’ve been paid to clear up. What a terrible injustice! You pay the poor creature fifteen or twenty crowns a month, and she doesn’t into raptures about your duster or the sooty bottom to your pot.”
“They’re very right not to, because a machine can clean up dust, and you can cook with gas or electricity with no soot,” remarked the landlord.
“Why then do people go to London to learn cleaning?” asked the landlady.
“They go to London for the English language,” he explained. “Don’t you want to send your daughter there when she grows up?”
“I do, but on one condition: before going, she should learn to clean the bottom of my little pot at home, and then let her go to London to clean grime, or she’ll come back as soon as she can! Straight back even wilder than when she left, and then there’ll be nothing gained from the English language. No, my little piglet…”
“Now listen…” her husband tried to interject.
“Shut your mouth for once,” shouted the landlady, “because the dinner table is the only place where you’re dining with us all, otherwise you’d run off straight away, as soon as I start to say something. And I’m happy to call you a porker, because you run like the piglets to the trough, without knowing where the food comes from or how.”
“But chickens don’t know that either,” cried one of the children.
“Chickens do know,” contested the other. “Haven’t you seen how they lift their heads up and watch if something’s going on?”
“Quiet, children!” cried the landlady. “Don’t interrupt when mummy’s talking. When I was small, I wasn’t allowed to open my mouth when grown-ups were speaking.”
“That’s why you’re trying to keep them quiet now,” remarked the landlord.
“You’re not a bit smarter than your children,” said the landlady to her husband, almost angrily. “Let me tell the young lady what I have to say; it will interest her, won’t it, miss?”
“My lady, it’ll interest me very much,” Erika confirmed.
”I think it will interest you to know what an Estonian lady thinks of you and how she appreciates you. And I appreciate you very highly. The German lady I worked for was perfect and a proper lady of the house. She kept and cherished her kitchen and her home.”
“So, now we’ve come to the matter of love, and now you can’t be sure any more what will come or how it will end,” I said to myself, and threw a glance at Erika, but she didn’t notice it, because her eyes were fixed, whether out of interest or a sense of duty, on the landlady’s lips, and the word “cherished” seemed to leave her quite indifferent.
“And since the lady of the house loved her home and kitchen, she learnt to love her maid too. The German lady had respect for the titles of lady and housekeeper, and therefore the position of her assistant, her maid, was worthy of respect as a decent calling in life. Not like nowadays. A housewife is now a lowly creature among women, and her assistant is regarded as lower than some night-soil man.”
“Mummy, what’s a night-soil man?” interrupted her little daughter.
“You are silly!” cried her younger brother. “That’s the one who cleans up after others.”
“But then Loona is a night-soil man, she cleans up mine and…” The daughter wanted to explain in her bright voice, but her older brother put his hand over her mouth and they were suddenly quiet. The children burst out laughing, even the little daughter laughing along with the others, as her mother carried on talking: “You see, from a very young age! Where do they get it from? You silly child, if you talk like that about Loona, then I’m also your night-soil woman, a cleaner for all of you.”
“A proper lunch table conversation with white beans and fresh cabbage,” noted the landlord mockingly, while I said to myself, “Doesn’t matter about the night soil, as long as it’s not about love.”
“Dear man,” said the landlady, now turning to her husband, “if I have to pay your charwoman day after day, then I may dare to talk about it, even at the dinner table. And I demand respect for my work, like any other person. You think of course that paper smeared with printer’s ink is grander than a pan smeared with grease.”
“It’s not just me, the others think the same,” declared the man, who was very proud of his position at the office.
“But why do you complain that there are no other housewives apart from one or two and that no one wants to go into service any more?” asked the landlady. “Why do you cry that there are no children any longer, when you all prefer smeared paper to the smeared pan? Paper won’t feed your children. If I weren’t so superstitious, I would say, Thank God, my children have so far escaped serious illnesses and all sorts of complications only because I have kept a hold of the pan and pot handles when I was cooking and boiling food for them. You, my husband, are healthy only because I have fed you myself, otherwise you would be stooped there in the office suffering for ages, or you might even have kicked the bucket. But of course I don’t say that, because I’m afraid that as soon as I say it, everything will fall on me and my children that I had just been thanking God for avoiding. God doesn’t want to be thanked for the things we can worry about. Illnesses and diseases are in the soup pot, not in God’s hands.”