“Yes, revolutions are all made by women,” I said.
“You think so?” queried the landlady, as if tickled by it.
“No, I don’t think anything, but I’ve read it somewhere,” I said. “Women’s jewellery, fine style and precious stones wreck any kind of social order much more quickly than even inflammatory speeches by the fiercest of male rebels. There are dresses, coats and diadems in the world that have a much greater effect than dynamite, pyroxyline or any other explosive. They can only be compared with poisonous gases.”
“You must be unhappily in love at the moment, or you were in love earlier, otherwise you wouldn’t be finding things so topsy-turvy,” cried the landlady enthusiastically. “The French state, the royal court and the brilliance of its whole society were once created by women, not men. Frenchmen even today live on what women created.”
“No, my lady,” I contested, “to my mind it’s as I’ve suggested: not my idea, but one I once read when I was young and revolutionary.”
“Young and revolutionary, eh?” smirked the landlady mockingly. “Now, of course, you’re old and conservative.”
“At any rate much older and more conservative than when I read that French women, with their jewels and dances, did away with their king and after that themselves and many of their best men, by chopping off their heads.”
“Didn’t Nikolai the Strangler turn out to be a woman?” asked the landlord.
“Are you still on about your Nikolai?” said the landlady to her husband sneeringly. “You’d be better off giving us your opinion on this: if a man’s neck is twisted somewhere, it’s always done by a woman. Have I understood this correctly?”
“Well roughly,” concurred her husband.
“You, Herr Korporant, are of course of the same opinion?” the landlady turned to me.
“I don’t know women so well yet that I could express an opinion,” I replied.
“Just you wait, you’ll get to know them and then you’ll definitely share my husband’s opinion,” the landlady consoled me. “One day you’re neck will be twisted too.”
“May God grant that it happens as soon as possible, because it definitely will happen,” I said, laughing, though for me it was almost serious.
“It usually happens faster than anyone would expect,” explained the landlady. “There are men whose necks were twisted long ago, without them having the faintest idea of it.”
“I’d like a twisted neck like that for myself,” I laughed in response to the landlady’s words.
It was as if some god were sitting with us at the lunch table listening to our wishes, to fulfil them! At any rate I, on seeing Erika for the first time since the last evening, felt from the beginning that my neck was going to be twisted. I looked, almost amazed, into the face of the woman I adored, and found it altered and unfamiliar. Something bold and challenging had appeared in her, but her gaze avoided catching my eye. I got the feeling that I was not at the table at all. Even when I offered Erika something – and on this day I was trying harder than usual to do that – she somehow managed to remain very polite and yet did not grant me a single glance.
“Miss, don’t you want to tell us who is right, I or my husband? He thinks you’ve been gone because of illness; I think because of courtship.”
“Oh yes, my lady!” cried Erika “I am very sorry that I didn’t inform you. But my aunt and I have been at our wits’ end, so that I forgot everything: grandfather was mortally ill, and I was afraid that he wouldn’t recover. I have cried so terribly these past days, almost cried my eyes out.”
“I can see that even now,” remarked the landlady.
I looked at Erika’s face too, but couldn’t find anything that confirmed what the two of them agreed: it was only a little paler than usual, and her lips were convulsively pressed together.
“Grandfather got ill the evening when I was last here,” continued Erika. “I didn’t go home directly from here, but to visit an acquaintance, because I had in my case some things that I had to take away – my aunt sent them – and when I finally got there after a couple of hours’ delay, my aunt was running frantically through the rooms while grandfather lay in bed. But the doctor had left shortly before I arrived. This has been going on for a long time, as he has a weak heart, but every time it happens I completely lose my mind, because grandfather is the dearest person in the world to me.”
I had never heard such a volley of words from Erika at the lunch table before. The landlady was also surprised by it, as I gathered from her look.
“Then I did you a grave injustice, blaming your absence on courting,” the landlady apologised.
“Staying away from work for courtship even once is not worthwhile,” Erika explained.
“Oh yes it is,” opined the landlady. “It’s worth doing even worse things for courtship, if it’s the right one.”
“Well, then I suppose I haven’t met the right one yet,” laughed Erika a little nervously, glancing at me for the first time.
In the evening, when I was waiting for her in the street – I’d been doing that for half an hour before she came – she told me that she wouldn’t have time today, because the previous evening she’d received the worst dressing-down she’d ever had in her life.
“Just think about it,” she told me confidentially, “my aunt went out to meet me; she almost came in to ask if I was still here. Of course, in the end she went home with her nose out of joint. You can guess from that what was awaiting me at home. With great trouble I got grandfather around to allowing me an extra hour to come. At first I thought it was all over, and that’s why I didn’t tell the landlady anything.”
“Ah, so it wasn’t really grandfather’s heart trouble?” I asked.
“No, you’re wrong. Grandfather really was seriously ill,” she explained. “Of course it began with the terrible upset of my not coming home at the right time; God knows what was going through grandfather’s head. He must have feared that you really would compromise me, because he doesn’t know you so well. That ‘s to do with his ailing heart. He made me swear by all the saints about whether anything had really happened to me, and today he said, ‘Bear in mind, my girl, that if anything fateful happens to you, that will be the end of my life. So then, if you don’t want to be a nail in my coffin, come home every evening at the right time.’ So that is what I had to swear to do, and that way he allowed me to turn up for lessons again.”
That is how she explained her situation, and that would all have been fine were it not that she had become so talkative. She had always been in the habit of thinking through everything she said, but now her words somehow came easily and superficially as if gliding indifferently over everything. Even about her grandfather’s illness she spoke as if it didn’t move her at all, and when she mentioned the coffin nail I didn’t doubt that it was mere empty words. I would have liked to tell her that, or at least ask her to explain why I might get that impression, but I didn’t dare. She spoke almost incessantly about her grandfather, her aunt, other relatives and acquaintances, but I got to hear only the most trifling things: who had seen whom, who had been where, who had said what, who had sent regards to whom, who had received a letter or card from whom, who had greeted whom, who had wished whom luck on what occasion, and so on ad infinitum. There was no longer any chatting or discussion, and none of what a young man and woman like to talk about most. And if I did try to say something that might have had any sense in my opinion, she glided over it quite easily, as if it didn’t interest her or she didn’t understand it. This happened not only on this day, but also on the days that followed, when I, despite all this, went to meet her every evening to accompany her home. The only relevant question that interested her at all was the redundancies for numbers of staff that hung in the air. Almost every day the conversation led one way or another to that, and if she was told that still nothing definite had been heard, she would repeat, “How silly that pointless fear lasts so long! Maybe it will come to nothing.”